Ozearth Blog

Our best effort at a lazy Sunday

Because we didn’t sleep an awful lot at Susan’s on Friday night (late night, cold restless dog, early start to get up the Hill and – as it turns out, rather futilely – Teesyproof the container ahead of our visit to Bonorong), we decided that Saturday to Sunday would be a day for sleeping in.  So that’s what we did.  We were barely out of bed and totally still in jarmies when neighbour Matt showed up with a stainless steel saucepan / steamer combo, a compressor, a bottle of beer and a Plan.

It took a while to get the plan happening, but here’s a selection of what we did, a lot of which we had enormous help with from Matt:

* Unloaded from the ute: the Bonorong poo (and some horse poo we picked up on the road to Hobart for 50c a bag ) and the WELDER we had also picked up along the way – not as impulse a purchase as it sounds, we’d been mulling over some previously acquired info for a couple of weeks before we took the plunge.

* knocked down the entirely nonsensical front wall of the middle shed – the one inside the actual shed door, made of a wooden frame with various polystyrene signs nailed to it.  The signs will be excellent as makeshift insulation between the container ceiling and the colorbond roof.

* removed and reorganised about 10 tonnes of crap, mostly from the big shed (to the left of the middle shed, mostly full of caravan, which in turn is to the left of the container)

* reinflated the tyres of the van using the compressor that Matt had brought.

* Installed the ute’s towball, hooked the caravan up to it and towed the bloody nuisance thing out of the middle shed.  It’s now parked conveniently for Matt to collect at his leisure – he mentioned plans to make it into guest quarters for his brother, who’s planning a visit sometime soon.  We couldn’t be more pleased, and Matt seems fairly pleased and all.

* installed five rather excellent and very sturdy shelves in the middle shed. The materials for this were scrounged from sheds and scrap metal piles all over the joint – Adam, the previous owner, seems to have collected about sixteen shops’ worth of shop fittings, a few of which could quite handily get turned into our new storage area.  What with the new, swinging door, a second access point in the form of the large middle shed door, the shelves, and the fact that the space is now trebledin all dimensions, that space is a thousand times pleasanter and more useful, and we are extremely pleased with ourselves.  Having got to a relatively late start, it was getting dark by the time we were doing shelving, but because we were running the genny for power tools anyway, we were able to press into service one of the floodlights that Adam left behind – worked a treat!

Volunteering @ St James’s (finally!)

Today we were up bright and early to a beautiful sunny day, and FINALLY made it to a volunteering session at the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden at St James’s primary school in Cygnet.  It was a fun, challenging half-day of (supervising) watering, weeding, spraying seaweed solution (and a smattering of garlic spray because of an invasion of aphids), checking the worm farm, planting, repotting seedlings, starting two sprout cultures, etc etc.  Teesy came along and behaved herself beautifully in the face of a press of dozens of pre-teen boys and girls, even warming to Kate and Cameron’s lovely chocolate staffy/kelpie bitch (Kte and Cameron were also first-time volunteers today, and almost as new in the region as us!).  It was hard but very satifying work, and naturally Chloe struck up a conversation with Nicky, the volunteer co-ordinator, Roy the Kitchen co-ordinator, and Theresa, another sustainability bod and long-time volunteer with the program, about building them a cob pizza oven – using hyperadobe techniques and with us volunteering OzEarth’s time and expertise.  The brainstorming session branched into talk of adjacent cob benches, and getting the children involved in designing and realising mosaics for those and the outside of the oven.

Now, the oven is something St James’s garden / kitchen team has been looking into for a while and they may have other avenues lined up, so it’s not by any means a done deal, but we do hope that we end up being the ones to take on the project: it would be incredibly exciting if we could get the whole school community, and actually the Cygnet community in general, involved in the whole process.

New arrivals

While doing the “multiple outputs” thing of going to the laundrette and the post office (insanely ambitious seed order has been SENT!) Susan came to find us in order to tell us that our worms have arrived.  We ordered two sorts: earthworms and composting worms. 2000 of each (in egg form).

Other prospective new arrivals: in a Freecycle-induced rush of blood to the head, we are about to become the proud mothers of five bantams: three roosters and two hens.  We think we’ll offer one of the roosters to John down the Hill, because he recently lost his magnificent rooster and seems quite sad (as does his remaining hen, who followed us around pathetically the last time I was there to visit); so we should end up with at least two of each.  It will be SUCH a homecoming to finally have chooks again!

Pooooooooooo, fixing the road, and gathering soil

We spent this afternoon making homes for the worms. We had already (on that not-so-lazy Sunday in fact) retrieved a bath from the big shed and put it up on blocks to prepare for the composting worms, and have pressed an old fridge into service for the Earthworms (who apparently are sensitive to cold when they’re wee, so we thought an insulated space would be good).

Making bedding and food for our new critters was vastly aided by the timely acquisition of previously mentioned horse poo and Bonorong RooPoo.  We also used the woody last of the Huonville Trailerload of compost which we picked up three weeks ago when we planted the fruit trees, and a fair portion of a bale of hay very kindly donated by Paulette from near the base of the Hill.

For the earthworms, of course, we also needed, well, earth.  Our soil at the top of the Hill here is, presently, very compacted, very clay-heavy, with a fine to non-existent layer of topsoil and a LOT of stones, ranging in size from gravel to something far heavier than Chloe and I can lift between us.

We decided to try and kill two birds with one stone by going down to the most scarily rutted bit of our road, carving a few channels in it, letting the water run out as much as possible, and putting some of the excess earth in some bags to take back up.  It seems to have gone well – our digging work was accompanied by the babbling of temporary brooks as the water drained away.  The soil we got is lovely, and even had some already-resident earthworms – a welcome addition!

So as of this evening, the worms-to-be are all safely ensconced, and we hope they’re warm enough – there’s very little wind tonight and the stars look so close that you could touch one if you got onto your tiptoes – What I’m coming to read as sufficient conditions for a nippy sort of night.

With the rest of the poo and another chunk of hay, we took the opportunity to top-dress our valiant little fruit trees, some of which are starting to leaf up marvellously (the lemon tree even seems to be trying to bloom, which is amazing!).  Each of our possum-proof cages now has a generous berm of poo and a mulch of straw.  We hope that this will kickstart soil-building around the trees, and that the mulch will help to retain moisture at their roots.

Massive organic waste stream coming our way

Our ears have been frantically to the ground over these last weeks, hoping to get wind of some free sources of organic matter for the soil-building which we need to get into in a big way if we want any kind of summer vegie garden this year.  Most sources of poo seem to be being sold rather than given away, and in the sorts of quantities we need the stuff in, it’s not going to be affordable for us to be buying poo by the bag.

Today, during the morning tea break between sessions at St James, we had a breakthrough courtesy of the lovely folks at the Lotus Eaters Cafe.  We, being us, chanced our collective arm, and are incredibly grateful that they’ve agreed that we can collect their green waste a few times a week.  We’re told that it’s a fair whack of waste, which is just what we had hoped to hear. All their food is organic, which means that we can trust their waste stream.  Incidentally, I understand that they have discovered this blog courtesy of a Google Alert which tells them whenever they’re mentioned anywhere on the web – cool trick, and if any of you Lotus Eaters folks are reading this: we love your work.

None of this, of course, solves the immediate problem of what to plant the summer veg into, but we’ll crack that soon, too – watch this space.

Yesterday was AMAZING.

Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary hosts over 60,000 visitors a year at their lovely site near Brighton, 15 minutes or so north of Hobart. There, they showcase various rescued wildlife that is either as happy in captivity as in the wild, or too injured to be reintroduced to the wild, or both.  They run educational programs, but one of their most impressive achievements is their work rescuing native animals. Almost all the wildlife needing rescuing (they get between 3 and 7 callouts a day on average) has fallen victim to some anthroposophic ill or other (traffic primarily, dog / cat attack, toxoplasmosis from ingesting cat poo, getting caught in fishing line, etc). For a couple of years now, Bonorong has been the official after hours emergency number for Parks and Wildlife Tasmania. They train, co-ordinate and provide phone support and coaching to a large and growing group of volunteer rescuers and a smaller but highly committed group of volunteer wildlife carers. The wildlife rescue programme costs 100,000 dollars per year, and astonishingly, they run it with no government money at all.

And the cool bit: since last Saturday, we are among those volunteers!

When Chloe was doing the Visa Activation / recce here earlier in the year, she visited the Sanctuary and was enormously impressed and inspired by what she saw.  She spoke with staff members about getting involved, and finally Saturday was our opportunity to take a first step along that road. In fact, Chloe had A Feeling about Bonorong, and I’ve learned not to underestimate those.

So we went to the training session and it was, in a word, inspirational.  Greg talked for three hours with nary a PowerPoint slide, and had everyone in the room absolutely riveted.  We learned how to handle joeys of all kinds, echidnas, possums, macropods, lizards, and the list went on.  The information was simple, entertainingly delivered and really comprehensive.

Along the way, Chloe and I started brainstorming about ways that we could help.  We will be going out and helping rescue animals as the need arises; but we also thought that we might be able to help with caring, particularly for birds (a special interest of Chloe’s and also of mine); and then we thought that we could contribute to fundraising (with knitted items, free singing gigs, children’s books / illustrations, paintings etc) and possibly admin (because I am a spelling, grammar and procedures Nazi, hear me roar).

So we went up afterwards and started to mention some of this stuff to Greg, and he was happy enough but very pressed with other people wanting his attention.  We approached him a second time…

And a magical thing happened.  Chloe mentioned (apropos of something or other) that we were going to be starting a natural building school, and blow me down if Greg didn’t ask: “Have you guys heard of Cal-Earth?”

Well, yeah, a bit.

That sparked off a hugely exciting discussion.  Early days to say what form/s our collaboration will eventually take, but it’s pretty clear to me that, once again, Chloe’s Feeling was right on the money.

Teesy the Destroyer

O where are my mummies?
I don’t like this ute.
Bite open the window
And gatecrash – I’m cute!

O where are my mummies???
They under this van?
O halp, now I’m trapped here
All cold, sore and wan…

A whole birthday fruitcake!
Don’t mind if I do.
Tomorrow I’ll cover
the whole house with spew.

(The third episode above was what we came home to after Bonorong on Saturday. Teesy seemed quite green but not especially emotionally distressed – the problem seems really to have been much more one of inappropriate diet than separation anxiety. So I guess that’s an improvement…?)

On Friday night we went to Hobart (or “town” as it’s known locally) and attended the exhibition opening of “Future Queer”, the seventh annual queer art exhibition in Hobart.

It was a really mixed bag: some very beautiful paintings, some highly ironic (a painting of “homo milk” reminiscent of Warhol), some hilarious, some quite frankly naff. There was a rather quirky “collective piece” involving a constellation of planets, an abstract sculpture of recycled and found materials which I was totally mesmerised by (a shallow, pitted, cracked cast iron bowl, nestled within it a swirl of skeletal wood and carved stone, set off by vignettes of gorgeously intricate woven copper wire). Perhaps we’re biased, but Shelly and Eirlysa’s contributions were definitely among the strongest. Me and Mine, Eirlysa’s painting, is a tiny, delicate piece, intricate with a hundred kinds of symbolism but joyfully (and rather sexily!) addressing the need for the legalisation of gay marriage. Michelle’s pieces, Gens Universa (a silver and scrimshaw pin) and Love for Love’s Sake (a pendant in silver with perspex insets) are again, beaufifully intricate pieces, perfectly balanced both in themselves and against one another. Both pieces boast a serpentine, spiralling asymmetry that just works, and both the delicate scrimshaw of the pin and the Gothically romantic, perspex-protected black and white photos of the pendant are complimented admirably by their settings.

The crowd was an artwork in itself. Everyone was extremely animated and had made themselves especially beautiful in a number of wonderfully outspoken styles. No fashion victims here (or at least, none in the main stream!): Beautiful 1930′s ladies’ suits stood next to hotpants over psychedelic tights (how the girl didn’t freeze is anybody’s guess); flannies and Mohawks next to purple velour dinner jackets over lime green lacy shirts.

To be there was fascinating: in one way joyful to see such a concentration and celebration of queer diversity, in another way intimidating (to be surrounded by such an animated crowd and to know nobody), and in another way a bit ghastly – we wondered afterwards what proportion of this beautiful, animated crowd was at all bothered about the things that make up the majority of our life’s concerns these days – trying to get the soil building started, the garden planted, our heat and shelter sorted, infrastructure bought, connections made with likeminded folks so that we can help each other… all in aid of moving away from dependency on oil and towards resilience in the face of certain change.

Warning – slightly preachy bit follows…

The fact that these things are our focus now in fact as well as in theory, means that we’re confronted daily with some pretty weird juxtapositions, and for me, the opening threw them into quite sharp relief. I went into the toilet at one stage and got a major shock when I looked at myself in the mirror: there I was in my glad rags, and yet my face would not have looked terribly out of place in a coalmine. This is what you get when you’re sleeping in a container heated by a rather ashy woodstove. Mortified, I scrubbed myself clean using paper towel and really harsh soap, and walked out looking like a fresh-cooked lobster – still, better than the alternative!

What most in the developed world would characterise as “normal” seems increasingly like a sort of fever-dream to me. While we were in the Netherlands, it was really easy to go with the flow of having everything – hot and cold water, heat, light, power, transport, telephone, internet, waste and sewage disposal, consumer goods, even soil – on tap. Up here, so far, every one of those things presents a challenge. We have water, but we have to fetch it. It’s hot if we boil a kettle. We have heat if we gather (or buy) wood, build and light and maintain a fire, or if we fetch in and burn LPG. We have light if we burn candles, or remember to hook the solar lights up to their panels; a candle typically lasts about two hours, and the solar lights last about the same: we have three of them. We have power if we fire up the genny, which we don’t unless we’re using power tools; otherwise, we have to go into Cygnet to charge phones and computers. Telephone we have outdoors only; if we’re lucky we can receive an incoming call if we put our phones in the window. Internet depends on battery power, and the dongle runs out after about an hour and a half if not hooked up to a computer (which in turn compromises the computer’s battery life). We seem to accumulate two plastic shopping bags of waste per week that we can’t process here on the Hill: mostly plastics. Glass we are keeping for bottle walls, cardboard and paper are being composted or used as kindling, green waste and our own waste (and soon the dog’s waste) we collect for composting. Some consumer goods are to be had in Cygnet (a 20 km round trip, some of it over extremely rough tracks), but most are further afield and almost none are accessable other than by car. Soil we may be able to glean from the surrounding bush to some extent, but typically the topsoil up here is about an inch thick, so importing soil (or things that will become soil) is vital, and it’s no longer a case of nipping down the local Hoogvliet on a bike for 30 litres of potting mix at 1 euro per 10l bag.

This, by the way, is not a whinge – no, honestly! It is excellent to know that we typically refill 9 litres of water bottles three to four times a day, and that covers spongebaths, washing up, cleaning, drinking water, cooking and the essential hot water bottles. It’s wonderful to learn that you use a lot less LPG to boil water if you store your kettles permanently on the wood stove so that they’re always preheated. It’s extremely interesting to note that even a slow-combustion stove needs six armloads of wood per night to keep us warm under current conditions – that’s a lot of wood, and seems pretty wasteful to us. Equally, being able to observe what makes for good solar light longevity (and not) is an education ahead of getting a proper solar rig. We LOVE being in control of our waste streams, and in particular we’re very excited by the idea of closing the nutrient loop that is so horrifyingly open in a conventional sewage treatment system. As to the necessity of importing certain things, at least to start with: I’ve always been a combiner of errands, but what was previously motivated more or less by laziness is now necessity if we don’t want to be going through three figures’ worth of diesel a week.

When it’s a matter of turning a tap or flicking a switch or swiping a card and hopping on a train, and eventually paying a bill, more often than not automatically, the quantities of oil or gas you’re going through just aren’t real. The romantic environmentalist in me may not like our continuing high dependency on oil, but it does feel salutory to be dealing with the realities. I’d be fascinated to know whether we are now, in general, using fewer non-renewable resources than we were in Holland: possibly not. I’d say the major change to this point is in our awareness of what we use even for the day-to-day basics. The other difference is that we know that our consumption of non-renewables will steadily decline. Every day here, we take another step on the journey of using less and less, and using more and more renewably.

On Monday and Tuesday we did a two day Mental Health First Aid course. It was quite fascinating, and pretty confronting.

Today we fired up the genny, charged all the computers and the internet dongle, ran the engine in, and (most importantly) cranked up the power toolage!

A grinder liberated a window from its far too large frame; a jigsaw cut one thing up and then fell to bits (ho-hum, back to drawing board there); a driver drill, once we’d got John from down the Hill to unlock the chuck key (very impressive wielding of a shifter, handygrips and ManStrength was involved. We are jealous of ManStrength and wish we could buy it in tablet form), did more driving than drilling, but even that was a big help.

We (well, mostly Chloe) have now installed a window and a door in the front of the container. The draughts have thereby been reduced by about 80%, which boggles the mind since there are still significant gaps in the structure. THe most exciting bits are that getting in and out is no longer a huge hassle, and that the window will admit morning light

Tomorrow’s plan: get the solar panels for our lovely wee solar lights mounted permanently on the roof so that we can charge the lights from within the container, from first till last light (today we forgot to start them charging until about 2pm, so they all gave out within about three hours. C has made a virtue of necessity and lit a whole lot of candles instead; the effect is gorgeous, particularly reflected in the new window!). The other Big Rock is to tackle the Stupidest Sliding Door in the Universe issue. Can’t wait!

We’ve been contacting people about last minute Heritage Apples (the bare root stock is almost all away and should by rights have been planted weeks ago), and research is in progress into old breed chooks – and we note that some locals in Gardner’s Bay (very close to us) have a Permaculture site incorporating MINI-PIGS!!! Neighbour Matt dropped in today, as ever full of tips for cheap trees (25 bucks for a chestnut tree – cheers, don’t mind if we do!) and other good stuff. Having scrounged around for all the deadfall we could gather, we’ve decided that, as a one-off, we’re going to buy some wood from Matt, just to tide us over until our chainsaw course next month. After we’ve done that, we really will never want for firewood again.

On Friday we are going to see an Exhibition Opening – Michelle (Susan’s daughter) and Eirlysa her partner are both having (absolutely gorgeous) work shown, so we’re off to mortify them by being overly enthusiastic.

Then, on Saturday, we are training at Bonarong Wildlife Sanctuary to be rescuers of wee hoppity animals. In our Copious Free Time, you understand.

We are thinking about christening this place “Starfire Farm”, partly because the night sky is so breathtaking here, but also because of the powerful female energy in the historical symbolism of Starfire – much as we are envious of ManStrength, we are rather fond of strong female energy around here!

There have been various calls for photos from our dear readers. One evening when our batteries will go the distance, C promises to upload all the photos we’ve been accumulating since getting here!

Lots of love to all
xox H

The genny is in; we had a brief bad moment upon being told that only really tiny stupid little stick welders would work with as few Amp hours as our genny outputs, but actually it looks like a different brand of welder will do the thing just fine.

On our travels we also acquired a big metal drum for free (and the guy says we can go back as often as we like) which will be a perfect big rocket mass heater; and a whole lot of tyres from the bottom servo, which we will certainly use for building, but also, in the shorter term, for potato towers. Warwick, your man at the bottom servo, also lent us his ramps for unloading the genny, and let us leave various dead batteries with him.

We took a uteload of some of the more scary superannuated flammable poisonous stuff from the shed and around the place down the Hill to the tip today. There’s still quite some dubious stuff lying around – what are we to do, for example, with a dozen 10 litre containers full of carpet shampoo of unknown composition and vintage?? (Not a rhetorical question, that, by the way – suggestions are welcome.)

On the way back we stopped to refresh the wood supply, which was becoming a bit impoverished. It meant I got to see a bit more of the land (good grief, but there is indeed rather a lot of it!). I reckon we’ve more or less picked up what there is to pick up along the stretch of road we covered – bring on that chainsaw course (next month!) so that we can actually tackle some of the larger logs that are lying around!

The Folk Club on Friday evenings continues to be lovely – I actually went sort of prepared last night, and jammed through some traditional Irish stuff and a smattering of Steeleye Span. Next week is Open Mike, and I have a couple of ideas about what I’m going to do.

I’ve definitely got a spot in the Cygnet festival, next January. It was kind of them to let me be involved, given that I really missed the submissions deadline. Watch this space for details – it may be that, as well as performing, I do some kind of workshop(!)

Susan of Cobweb Designs and her family continue to be incredibly generous and lovely, our go-to people for information and in any time of strife (as in the case of some recent bank hassles, hopefully soon to be resolved).

We have discovered another fantastic source of local plants, both food plants and a large range of natives, at really good prices, and run by the delightful Mireille (who is originally from French Switzerland) and her partner whose name I am ashamed to say I have forgotten.

Chloe’s building a drystone wall out of the pale golden Permian Mudstone that’s lying around up here, to give the orchard a bit of wind protection. It is rather attractive! She’s also busily planting and possumproofing all manner of new plants – primarily grapes and soft fruit, but we’ve also got ourselves a fig and a couple of herbs (Vietnamese Mint and Horseradish, among others).

The trees we planted earlier are all getting ready to leaf up – we may even get blossoms! This is very exciting for us. It will feel like a major triumph to have the orchard up and running – the first in a series of steps that will transform this place into a garden paradise

Tomorrow – after visiting a special double-sized Cygnet Market – we christen the genny. We’re going to tackle the container, installing a front window and a non-sliding side door out to the caravan shed, to make it a bit lighter and a bit less draughty.

After that, a dog run and various other bits and pieces!

Greetings from the Hill, where wireless mobile broadband is now connected, hoorah! It’s not cheap, but it works – and, courtesy of an antenna, it even works inside!

C and I have both been struck down by the lurgy (me a few days ago – am slowly recovering – and C early this morning), so it’s nice that we have the internet up and running so we can be doing something constructive with the enforced rest time.

We are making lots of lovely friends, particularly through the folk club. Last night we were invited to a going-away party for two of the stalwarts, who are off for a holiday in England (at this time of year!! Are they mad?). It was a jolly evening full of good company, good food, a fair whack of ribald humour (Gerard and John, two expat Irishmen – one from the North, the other from the South – excellent musicmakers both, and Chloe got together and lowered the tone admirably!) and plenty of musicmaking.

Unfortunately we got home to find that all was not well. We had given Teesy dinner and left her up the Hill, trusting that she would sniff around, perhaps destroy a couple of things, and then settle down in front of the fire. Once again, we underestimated her residual separation anxiety after quarantine…

She was not in the container. Hard not to panic in this sort of case – missing deaf dog, dead of night, middle of the bush – not a good look.

It was clear that her attempted escape route had started with pushing open the sliding door to the next shed. In the next shed is the usual random crap, including a decrepit old caravan where we’ve been putting her at night and keeping our clothes and bedding (when the container is set up in its day mode).

After five minutes (it felt longer) of searching and wondering if she’d actually managed to find a way out of the shed and into the wilderness, we found her. For reasons known only to herself, she’d decided to crawl under the caravan, where it’s dark, cold, cramped and full of tangling hazards – which Teesy found out, getting thoroughly wound up in electrical wires. We have no idea how long she’d been there – long enough to give up on howling for help, at any rate, which almost certainly means hours. Happily we were able to extract her with no greater harm done than a fair dose of filth and distress to all concerned.

Poor wee dog, dragged from pillar to post for months on end. She’s currently sunning herself in the container door, and seems fine – but we’ll be finding ways to secure that sliding door as soon as may be, and the bloody caravan’s days are numbered, too.

Speaking of dog antics, I drove to Hobart the other day to get the car window replaced, only to find that the telephone operator at the insurance company had ordered the wrong window in. Given that getting to Hobart costs about half an eyewateringly expensive tank of petrol, we were Not Amused. The correct window should be coming in today, so we’ll go and get that done later in the week when we need to be in Hobart again anyway. I did my best to improve the shining hour by buying various basics while I was in the Big Smoke (groceries, washing baskets, a tub for the sink), but those who know me will understand that this didn’t really compensate for the epic boomeranginess of the errand.

So, just to update you on where we ended last time: we bought a chipper. It’s a bit of a toy one, but it’ll do us for a start, we think. We got refunds on all the kit that we’d bought in error, and got a replacement wheel for the barrow. Almost all the fruit trees are now in – about thirty in total. We now both have Tassie driver’s licences and the car’s rego has been transferred, too (it was quite an adventure, racing against the clock to get the rusted-on VIC plates removed in time to surrender them to the Huon Valley Council before they shut their doors for the day! Big thanks to the Beaurepaires Huonville lads, who not only helped us with that, but also provided replacement bolts with which to install the new plates). We’ve also now both got Telstra mobile SIM cards (only sort that works up here); I managed to keep my really spiffy number, which makes me nerdily happy, and we’ve also both radically downgraded to basic handsets that are designed to get signal in remote areas. We are sad about our iPhones, but after a couple of weeks of struggling with flat batteries and dropped calls, we’ve had to resign ourselves to the fact that they’re designed for a much more urban life than the one we have up here. Irritatingly, the new handsets still don’t work inside the container, but they do have relatively long standby, which is pretty essential when you don’t have electricity. Looks like paper diaries, to-do lists and maps for both of us: I have oddly mixed feelings about this. I adored having everything in one cloud-connected package, readily searchable, every stray thought or to-do item logged as it came up, complete with alarm if it was time sensitive, yada yada yada.

On the other hand, the haptic aspect of PAPER and STATIONERY is rather attractive. I have been amusing myself with daydreams of Filofaxes (or actually, far cheaper knockoffs thereof), and bespoke holepunches so that I can stick in gregorian chant staves and handmade paper. The thought of actual, handwritten Morning Pages is beguiling, especially since the dawn up here seems to make me want to write music. So hey, swings and roundabouts.

The big news is that we’ve ordered a really serious generator, one which has the capacity to run a welder – we have so much scrap metal here, it counts as one of our major Permy resources, so we’re keen to make use of it. The genny in question also has an eco-throttle function, which means it only runs as high as is needed to deal with the demand of the appliance it’s running. This is great from all sorts of perspectives – noise, pollution, fuel consumption. Once the genny is in, we should be able to start doing some serious work around the place – installing a window at the front and a door at the side of the container (for passive solar gain and to kill the extraordinary draughts), building a crate and run for the dog so that she’s actually safe and able to stretch her legs / get out a bit while we’re not in; starting to construct rocket stoves for various purposes; getting the awfully cute solar panel-lets that connect to our wee nightlights up onto the roof where they can stay (and provide charge for the lights from dawn til dusk), rather than our present rather inefficient system of taking lights, panels and all out as we rise each day (NOT at dawn). I might, in a few months, even get my act together to build a guerrilla vertical axis wind turbine out of a fischer and paykel smartdrive washing machine motor and an oil drum. Just to see how well it works up here.

Other than running power tools, we hope only to be using genny power as a backup.

Research into low-end DIY solar arrays and backhoes / excavators continues apace, with some actual progress being made. Watch this space!

… two last things: there has been a rainbow every single day we’ve been here so far (that’s 17 days running, folks!) and a bird just flew into the container, and straight back out again!

Much to report!

The past few days feel like a weird whirl of meeting people, gathering information, and trying desperately to get various things sorted. It’s also been characterised by a really large amount of driving, which is still making us feel guilty as anything.

One of the highlights of the Sorting Outings was meeting Cheryl of LiNC Huonville. What a powerhouse that woman is. She hooked us up with a chainsaw course (when about half a dozen other leads we’d pursued independently had come to nothing), doggedly staying on the phone for the better part of an hour until she got an answer she liked. And then she invited us to attend a mental health first aid course being run for free in Cygnet later this month – which we will be very interested to participate in!

We’ve spent a lot of lovely time with Susan Fullmoon-Rising, the owner of Cobweb Designs and Gallery in Cygnet. She has rather taken us under her wing, offering us a civilised bed and a hot shower whenever we need it. We all stayed on Wednesday, Chloe stayed on Thursday while I went up the Hill with Teesy, and I stayed on Friday, leaving C on the Hill. Susan is busily gathering in all manner of people who she thinks we’d like to know about and who’d like to know about us – including John from halfway down the hill (excellent guitarist, and among other things expert miller of his own timber using a Lucas Mill), David (a Northern Irishman!), all the folk club people, and Todd, whom I have yet to meet but who is into sound therapy and interesting building projects.

After about a week of heartache and insomnia ever since jailbreaking the Puppeh, we seem to have solved the problem of Getting Sleep. We’re still woken by the wind here (which is nontrivial) but by putting Teesy in the caravan adjacent to the container, we have eliminated a major source of being woken several times a night. Oddly enough, Teesy (having got over the initial separation anxiety) actually seems more comfortable in there – she has a big bed all to herself and a lovely doona to curl up under, and her red coat is proving invaluable.

I was a bit sad to be without C down in Cygnet on Friday, because Friday nights at the Top Pub are when the Folk Club meets. Last Friday was the In The Round session, where everybody sits in a circle and people take turns. It was a smallish gathering (apparently it is mostly a bit larger), but a huge variety of styles and sounds and a fair whack of really serious talent. I sang some Chant, which seems to have gone down well – half the people we’ve met since have said “oh yes, have heard about you!” which is gratifying.

Last Saturday was a HUGE day. We rushed off to Nicholls Rivulet to attend a last chance bare root fruit tree sale, and made off with a number of apple, plum, apricot, cherry and citrus plants, and even a blueberry! Having (as ever) jumped in with both feet before we had any infrastructure in place for actually PLANTING said trees, we then madly rushed around gathering some minimal tools and, vitally, doing a compost run. We started, upon the advice of Bluey, our fruit tree guy, by picking up a possum who was one of the previous evening’s many furry road accident victims (this is a thing about living in Tassie – lots of little roadside corpses ). We slung the possum into the back of the ute for later burial at the base of one of our fruit trees. It will be fascinating to see what effect it has on the growth of the tree we put it under!

Huonville waste transfer station sells vegetable-based compost for 20 bucks a scoop – and actually, our guy just filled the tray of the ute, which was closer to 2 scoops. He also went against the stated rule against scavenging, and upon C’s request picked up a HUGE clump of a rather nice ornamental grass on the loader. He then tried plonking it on the ute – and it promptly scooted off the other side and fell back on the ground. He and C eventually wrangled it onto the ute by hand, and off we went.

It became quickly apparent that we were going to need to tie the grass down and cover the compost if we were to stand any chance of getting it all home intact and without either causing trouble to fellow motorists, or getting a stern talking to by the Fuzz, or both. So we made a quick stop for bird netting and rope, and off we went (again!). We were a bit nervous about getting the ute, with a tonne or two of compost, up the Hill, but Maud (the ute) did it in style.

Finally, in the evening, we went to a party in a nearby town to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of Helen and Andrew Wadsley. It was a huge event with dozens of guests, so we decided that it would be best to leave Teesy in the car…

Teesy had other ideas. Despite various care packages and visits from C during the evening, at a certain point, enough was enough. We don’t actually know what happened for sure, but she suddenly appeared at the back door, and was let in by one of the hosts, whereupon she promptly disgraced herself by stealing lots of food and being mean to the resident Collie :-/.

We had no idea how she’d managed to escape the car… until we went out and discovered the rear window on the passenger side of our brand new car was smashed! We think it almost certain that Teesy is herself responsible, but at this point we’re not telling our car insurance folk that (so if you, dear reader, could keep that to yourself and all, we’d be much obliged.)

Yesterday (Sunday), in passing, we mentioned these exciting events to someone at the Cygnet market, a twice monthly event at the Town Hall featuring really excellent live folk music, and beautiful handmade things of every sort – including the excellent “witchy-poo” hand-made all natural shampoo bar which we bought from a lovely clever woman who makes a gorgeous range of such things. Today, it seems, everyone in town knows about the dog’s escapades! Village life is quite the thing.

The rest of Sunday was spent in preparation for planting and in planting our very first tree. Advice from Bluey was to protect the tree with a tree guard (we have used over 60 pieces of mesh – ex shopping display shelves – and a dozen makeshift pickets, fished out from the resident piles of metal (SUS!) to fabricate these. The results are very sturdy and about half a cubic meter in size. Trev and Lindy would be proud!) John of the Lewis Mill, however, reckons that Possums can and will climb mesh – and even horizontally placed corrugated iron! – up to 1.4m tall, for Pete’s sake!! So today, when we (well, mainly C actually) planted a whole lot more trees, C made sure that the treeguards actually have tops – or in one case, are boobytrapped with precariously balanced bits of pipe and so forth) . We will watch with interest how things develop – the possums haven’t quite discovered this place yet, but from what we hear around the traps, it’s only a matter of time.

One growing frustration we’ve been having is with light after dark up here. It may seem trivial, but the inability to read or knit after dinner is driving us a bit potty. We thought we’d hit on the solution with the windy-up torches, but I think we may already have mentioned that they DO NOT do what it says on the tin. So we then weighed up other options: a kero lamp? Very smelly. A gas lamp? Okay, so we tried it. It’s no good. It produces prodigious, warm light, but that’s where the good news stops. It also gets bakingly hot, which is pretty inconvenient; it makes a STUPENDOUS racket, which rather defeats the purpose of being up here in the quiet; and worst of all, it’s got some very dire warnings written on it about Carbon Monoxide poisioning – and after all, how are we going to know? CO is odourless.

So that experiment was a failure! However, all is not lost – it appears that the very thing we’ve been looking for is available at Woollies. It is a small, magnetic-backed, solar-powered rechargeable LED lantern. It charges during the day and you can read by it during the night. And the magnetic back means that, in the container, it can be stuck up more or less anywhere – problem solved, thanks to the brains trust of John of the Lewis Mill!

Yesterday afternoon as we returned home from the Cygnet market, we came across a beautiful little red robin sitting in the middle of the road up to the Hill. It didn’t move as we passed; when we pulled the car over and went back to see what was up, it made no attempt to get away. It was pretty clear that it had been dealt a glancing blow by a car; we took the poor beautiful tiny thing up the Hill to see if we could help it survive.

We probably scared it half to death bumping it up the road and bringing it into a space that smelt of dog, but we kept it warm and dark overnight and it was still alive this morning. I rushed off into town to buy fat balls, birdseed etc, while C made a fantastically ingenious little cage (without the benefit of anything resembling a decent tool) for it to be safe and yet out of our vicinity, to give it a chance to heal. Sadly, while we were busy with all this stuff, the poor tiny creature finally succumbed to its injuries. We feed ridiculously sad and guilty, but at least the amazing cage will be good for all sorts of other things: protecting such various items as berries and baby chickens.

The other major event last night also wildlife-related. I woke up to fluttering sounds and the occasional sort of crashing noise, and thought the wee bird had escaped, but no: it was a BAT, about 15cm in wingspan, flying around in a panic!! So we opened the door and eventually it flew out, to our relief. It’s certainly the bush out here!

What else? We saw the “failed” bread from the Schoolhouse cafe (“our bread ingredients: Flour. Water. Yeast. Malt. Salt. The rest is technique”) going out in a bucket to feed the Gourmet Farmer’s pigs. We bought one of those wheelbarrows with two wheels at the front at what we reckon to be eyewatering expense, only to discover upon getting it home that one of the wheels is (as the very helpful servo attendant put it this morning after watching me haplessly trying to get the bugger to inflate) “cactus”.

Tomorrow we are away in search of a chipper, a genny, the continuing quest for Internet And Decent Signal on the Hill at a Reasonable Price, and an end to various paper trails (Australian driver’s licences and a Tasmanian rego for our car). We shall see how far we get…

Hope you all are well – drop us a comment and tell us what you’re doing!