I’ve kept paper journals since age 14, and still find them really nice places for writing freely, as well as excellent practice for writing without drafting. Also, there’s something about the ritual of pen and paper, and about producing neat handwriting in this age of typed screens, that appeals to me. Occasionally I will share …
Tasmania By Campervan, Easter 2009
We’re looking forward to finally making another trip to Tasmania next year, for the first time in ten years… having meanwhile bought a farm, built a shed and outbuildings and farmhouse with our own hands, planted thousands of trees, looked after animals, planted an orchard and permaculture garden, etc etc. In celebration of that, here …
The Ride That Wasn’t, Electric Fence Blues, Broken Glass And The Deluge That’s Coming
We have a huge cold front coming in, just sitting off the West Coast, and are scrambling to get ready for the gale-force winds, torrential downpours, cold and hail forecast to go on for the better part of four days. The gales arrived this morning, the deluge is coming overnight. Brett and I finished some …
Red Hot Sunday, January 2014
(In Praise of Farm Dogs Everywhere) The day was red hot, and you could tell it would be a scorcher at dawn. The sun stung like a bluebottle at 8am, and the birds were silent. Horses and donkeys queued up at the paddock gate for fly veils and release onto the common, which is surrounded …
Burning Days
The following piece was written in order to allow readers to walk in our shoes as we engage in cool small-scale mosaic burning of the sclerophyll bushland in our 50ha on-farm conservation area in the autumn while also juggling the 10ha smallholding on which we grow much of our own food using organic and permaculture …