A Gardener Goes Away (2)

South-western NSW is flat and red.


Trees are found near watercourses. Most of the other land was cleared for grazing. Previously, there would have been a sparse covering of small trees and tough shrubs.


Nowadays, much of the agricultural prosperity of the western slopes and plains derives from irrigation.


The use of laser-graders has vastly improved the use and reuse of water.


I still have mixed feelings about irrigation per se, but with only normal rainfall, this garden would not be possible...

A Gardener Goes Away (1)

I am sorry for the slight delay in telling you about our holiday trip. We have had a couple of computer problems which prevented me from accessing our holiday photos for a while. At least I have had a chance to plant up all my punnets for hot-weather vegetables, and some have even started to come up!

From Sydney, we went west over the Blue Mountains and across the beautiful Central West, with its rich farmland and lovely old towns. We were nearly to Parkes when we first noticed a recurring motif of our trip: sheep grazing in what appeared to be a recently-ploughed field with sparse greenery in it. Dear readers, that's what happens when rain doesn't arrive on your wheatfield at the right time. It's happening all across south-western New South Wales, and has been for the last eight years. The price of bread will not be going down any time soon!

Again when we were nearly to Parkes, we saw signs indicating the presence of Chilean Needle Grass. I assume this is the same "Spanish Needle Grass" that Mary found in her dress in Little Town on the Prairie, and which Pa says is so dangerous to stock. Fortunately, while this nasty plant is considered a Weed of National Significance, we only saw a few signs about it.

There is one major tourist attraction at Parkes, and we visited it the next morning:

We were lucky enough to have picked a day of calibration testing, so the Dish was very active! Then off we went on the 350-km trip to our first farmstay. Forbes for lunch, West Wyalong for afternoon tea, a comfort stop at Rankins Springs. Finally, we reached it:



As we stepped out of the car and stretched, a beautiful kelpie bounded up to make friends. And what does a tired three-year-old do when he sees a strange dog? Throws up his arms, screams, and starts running. And what does the friendly kelpie think? Time to play Chasings! The Geek managed to contain his laughter and catch the Sprig, but the damage was done: the Sprig spent most of his time at Corynnia Station in the Geek's arms, and cried whenever he saw a kelpie. He was not even too keen about the fat little puppies that we met later! On the other hand, the Twig loved Wal and the other dogs -- a new departure for him, as he's never been comfortable around dogs either. I am not sure whether it is maturity, or whether farm dogs are so much better trained than pet dogs (and make no mistake about it, they are better trained).

Off on Holiday

We are heading off today on a ten-day holiday to visit the Geek's relatives in Mildura, in Victoria. Mildura is about 1000 km away so we are taking it easy: Parkes today, Goolgowi tomorrow, reaching Mildura on Friday. The return trip will be via Griffith and Canberra so we can visit some friends who have recently moved there. I am looking forward to showing more of our state to the boys and seeing Far Western NSW myself. I have never travelled west of Deniliquin on land and have only set foot in Victoria twice.

Some months ago The Sprig became particularly keen on farms. I would be pulling out of the driveway and he'd ask, "We go to the farm today?" Er, no; we're going to the shops! I have arranged two farmstays en route and I know he'll be thrilled. Our visit to the Parkes Radiotelescope tomorrow is of special interest to The Twig, who loves the movie The Dish and is proud that his Grandpa worked on some of the Dish's electronics.

The only bad aspect of going on holiday in Spring is that we are going to miss so many interesting things in the garden. Out the front, my 'Grandmere Jenny'rose is showing colour on seven plump buds, and the Naked Ladies have started to open. We will probably miss the latter altogether and while the rose will flower all summer, I'm sorry to miss the first flush. The sweet peas have barely started to flower. With 35 C forecast for Thursday and Friday, I don't expect our Spring blooms to last long! Nor am I sure about the survival of all the vegetable seedlings I have planted in the last two days. Fortunately, it is a watering day today. The weeper hoses went on straight after I woke up and I will turn them off when I leave.

In the vegetable patch, we have only harvested a handful of asparagus spears, so the plant will be covered in foliage when we come back. And I do love asparagus, especially cheap asparagus! We ate what we had of it in a vegetable frittata last night, with a side dish of young home-grown broad beans. If we're lucky, the remaining broad beans will be mature, not rotting on the ground, when we come back. There are two lovely-looking bulbs of Florence Fennel. The other winter plants have started to bolt as it was so hot on Sunday. And half the bumper crop of lemons is rotting under the tree. I have had very little chance to cook with them.

Worst of all, I haven't been able to start any new vegetable seeds for a while. That means a delay in my main tomato crop, among other things. There will be frenzied activity among the punnets when I return!

Another $100 Chook

After Rusty's death, I began to notice Penny behaving peculiarly. She seemed to be breathing deeply, standing with her legs wide apart, and bearing down. Sometimes, she'd sit for a while and bear down. Her poos were runny, so she had dirty rear feathers. Oh dear, could she be egg-bound? The symptoms matched. The only peculiarity was that Penny seemed quite alert and was eating and drinking a little; egg-bound birds deteriorate very rapidly. She has lost condition -- always rather a skinny chook, her keel feels like it could cut your hand now.

Last night I gave Penny a nice hot bath, the kind that water-births occur in (only hotter, because chooks have a higher body temperature than we do). She seemed to like it, but the only result was a fart and some green goo which landed on my foot. I left her with a heat pack overnight. While she was no worse this morning, she was no better, either.

The forecast was for 33 C today, and I was worried that she'd die from the added heat stress, so off I went to the vet instead of church. It turns out that Penny has a respiratory infection -- chook pneumonia -- and that the other behaviours are related to keeping her lungs open. I had considered respiratory infection, but discarded it as I couldn't hear her breathing or see any discharge. She looks reasonably well, and we're hopeful she'll pull through. I really don't want to conduct two chook funerals in a week!

Funeral

On Thursday, Rusty the $100 Chook looked broody -- she kept heading to her nest to just sit, and she wasn't eating much. To break broodiness, you need to put the bird in a coolish spot with no nesting material, so that's what I did. Our chook dome was sitting on the freshly-mowed lawn, so I popped her in there with food and water but no nesting material.

Unfortunately, she wasn't broody. Yesterday morning she was sitting where I'd left her, but with her head on the ground and her eyes closed. She was too far gone to eat or drink. I warned the Twig and the Sprig that she would die that day (the Twig was very sober on his walk to school, the Geek told me) and settled her on a comfortable bed of dry lawn clippings in shade. We had to go out, but I doubt she lasted the morning -- she was stiff when I popped home at 2:30. In retrospect, she had probably been a bit off-colour for a few days, but she had no particular symptoms.

Rusty became our $100 chook a few years ago, after she began to suffer diarrhoea. It turned out that an egg had broken internally. The shell was removed by our vet and she had to go on antibiotics, hence the sobriquet.

The Geek is now digging a burial site selected by the Twig, under our lemon tree. The Twig has been watching a DVD about Ancient Egypt and plans to build a pyramid over Rusty's grave.

Penny, our remaining chook, looks rather lonely. I have been trying for a while to find some chooks to add to the flock, but it has been a bit more difficult than I thought. Isa Browns are easy to obtain, but not long-lived (as we have seen) and most heritage breeders live outside the Sydney basin. We'll have to take a day trip somewhere soon.

From Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is a lightly edited version of Laura's column "As a farm woman thinks," from November 1, 1923.

While driving one day, I passed a wornout farm. Deep gullies were cut thru the fields where the dirt had been washed away by the rains. The creek had been allowed to change its course, in the bottom field, and cut out a new channel ruining the good land in its way. Tall weeds and brambles were taking more strength from the soil already so poor that grass would scarcely grow... as [my companion] looked over the neglected farm he exclaimed, "Oh, it is a crime! It is a crime to treat good land like that!"... It is a crime to wear out and ruin a farm and the farmer who does so is a thief, stealing from posterity.

We are the heirs of the ages, but the estate is entailed as large estates frequently are, so that while we inherit the earth, the great round world which is God's Footstool, we have only the use of it while we live and must pass it on to those who come after us. We hold the property in trust and have no right to injure it nor to lessen its value. To do so is dishonest, stealing from our heirs their inheritance.

The world is the beautiful estate of the human family, passing down from generation to generation, marked by each holder while in his possession according to his character.

Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner? A dishonest greed is shown by robbing the soil: the traits of a spendthrift are shown in wasting the resources of the farm by destroying its woods and waters, while carelessness and laziness are plainly to be seen in deep scars on the hillsides and washes in the lower fields.

It should be a matter of pride to keep our own farm, that little bit of the earth's surface for which we are responsible in good condition, passing it on to our successor better than we found it.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Proto-Environmentalist

A Girlsown friend has recently lent me Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks * (thanks, Sharon!). Laura wrote a column for the Missouri Ruralist between 1911 and 1924 called "As a farm woman thinks," which dealt with a vast range of topics of interest to rural women.

What has struck me is her awareness of working with nature when farming, rather than against it, as well as the keen powers of observation and description which you can see in the Little House books. Take this (ostensibly from Almanzo's point of view) from 1912:

As I never allowed hunting on the farm, the quail were thick in the orchard and used to wallow and dust themselves like chickens in [the] fine dirt close to the tree. I wish this fact to be particularly noted in connection with the other fact that I had no borers in my trees for years.
A near neighbor set out 2,000 trees at about the same time and lost seven-eighths of them because of borers. He used every possible means to rid his trees of them except the simple one of letting the quail and other birds live in his orchard. Instead he allowed his boys to kill every bird they saw. (p. 21)

There is a recurring theme over many years that one does not need a lot of money to farm well, and numerous examples of successful farms where the owners simply couldn't afford commercial fertiliser, but used their brains to work out ways to fertilise the soil with local materials. A number of farmers, including Almanzo, used alley-cropping while their orchard trees were small.

Yet Laura's interest in wise use of resources extends far beyond farming. Her article of September 5, 1919 discusses the alarming loss of forest across the USA and the country's future lack of coal -- apparently the end of the American hard coal supply was in sight back then (according to Wikipedia, the peak of US anthracite production was in 1914), and she wondered what future housewives would use as cooking fuel.

Now if the editor of theMissouri Ruralist thought that this sort of stuff was interesting to rural women, why are women's columns and magazines these days filled with such tawdry rubbish? When Laura wrote about coal and forests, women's suffrage had not yet been achieved (and she had a number of comments about the responsibility of the vote when it did come, in 1920).

Laura wrote about something that all of us in the gardening blogosphere can relate to here:

Now is the time to make garden! Anyone can be a successful gardener at this time of year and I know of no pleasanter occupation these cold, snowy days, than to sit warm and snug by the fire making garden with a pencil, in a seed catalogue. What perfect vegetables do we raise in that way and so many of them!... Best of all, there is not a bug or worm in the whole garden and the work is so easily done. (pp. 133-4)

Well, I tend to do that sort of thing in late summer, when it's too hot to do anything else, and our cold days tend not to be snowy, but the picture is true here too!

Laura saw travel times move from horse-drawn to aeroplane pace, bringing people closer together:

The world is growing smaller each day. It has been shrinking for centuries, but during these later years it is diminishing in size with an ever increasing swiftness, yet so gradual is the change that we do not realize what is taking place unless we compare the present with the past... Theses people whom we have always carelessly bunched together in our minds as foreigners will be our friends and neighbors from this time on.(p. 159)

Wouldn't she have loved blogging!

*Hines, Stephen W. (ed.) (2007). Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks. University of Missouri Press, Columbia.