WEEK SEVENTEEN

And so began my first full week on this little self-sufficient homestead in Tasmania. I didn’t really have much of an idea what I was going to be doing for the week, but I spent the morning picking the rest of the chamomile flowers so my host could make tea, and also was given the task of picking all the lavender – at least it smelt better than the chamomile! Some of the lavender was in rather interesting spots, and meant for most of the time I had to balance on some rocks at the side of a little pond he had made. However, it looked as if it had been there for quite a while and had a considerable amount of green slime in it, so. I did everything I could to try and avoid falling in! My host had gone out for the afternoon leaving me with a list of jobs to do – one of which was to finish weeding an area I started the other day. This patch however was behind a badly fitting gate, protected by electric fencing, so, I tried to pull and push the gate free, but after been zapped by the fence for the third time I gave up on my mission, pissed off and with a stinging arm. And so, with my host gone I thought I would have a cigarette on the verandah and enjoy the view. When he came back he had company – one of his friends was coming over to take photos of his new B&B to go on his website. It is a beautiful building that he has built on his land, and will be renting out to tourists in the near future. So they spent the evening taking photos, which, to be honest, really weren’t; that great, but they seemed happy with them, so once that job was done we all had dinner, and then got ready for bed. It was only then that I realised that I was in fact slightly sun burnt, and my shoulders were still burning when I fell asleep. Stupid hole in the o-zone layer!

When I woke up it was apparent I did have sunburn and with my glowing shoulders I went out to do some more boysenberry picking. And I got buckets and buckets worth of them, and also a good few scratches as boysenberries have the same defences as other berries, and are covered in little spikes you can’t really see until they have got you! I also had inadvertently sacrificed another t-shirt, which was covered in dark purple stains. Not good. My trousers had also succumbed to the same problem, but they were already designated as my horrible farming trousers, so they weren’t my problem…my t-shirt was! In the afternoon my host went out to see some friends and do some shopping, so I had the place to myself, and went for a walk to explore some more of the farm. It is an impressive feat, and amazing to think that until a few days before I arrived he had run the whole thing on solar power, but had now given into grad power to run his freezers, but it was lovely to see evidence of someone really trying to everything they can to reduce their impact on their surroundings, and succeeding. And then I had a little nap, terrible I know, but I genuinely felt like I needed it! As my host wasn’t home back by 8pm I decided to make myself some dinner and leave enough for him if he wanted it when he came back. At about 9pm he gave me a ring, and slightly scared about picking up someone else’s home phone, I let it ring for a while, and then thought it might be important! And so, he wasn’t coming home for a few hours, so, I sat down in front of the tele for a couple of hours and ate some pudding (for the first time since I got there!), until my host came back, and after a chat, we both went to bed, and I ran through the rain to my ‘bedroom’.

Wednesday was spent doing inside things as it just rained and rained solidly all day. So, I sat inside and de-headed lavender for hours and hours, whilst listening to the radio all about the floods in Queensland. My host on the other hand went back to bed at 11:30am (doesn’t make my nap look so bad now!) and was there for a good few hours. In this afternoon it stopped raining so heavily, so decided to go to ‘drumming group’. I had heard a lot about this group from my host and a couple of his friends I had met, and although I had no idea what it actually was I decided I would go along. We both went over to one of his friends for dinner (the one I had met a couple of time, so it wasn’t too awkward!) and had an absolutely lovely pumpkin and cheese quiche. It didn’t look too appetizing, and I was dreading having to choke it down, but it was actually really yummy – I’ll have to try and replicate it at some point! And then it was time to go to the drumming circle. When we arrived I quickly realised what I had gotten myself in for, and we were greeted by a middle-aged hippy, stoned off her nut, and arguing loudly with someone that her ex-husband was a bastard! All in all the night was incredible, with a lovely group of people, who were all complete new-age hippies, but lovely, and chatty, so I spent the evening with them, and after a while even joined in with the drumming circle for a little bit. I had well and truly landed myself into a very new-age part of Tasmania, and all sorts of interesting people came along to this night. It was still raining though!

My next morning was spent pruning and weeding and area next to the pond in the front garden, which was slightly more precarious than I first thought, and more than once I almost landed in the rather gross pond, but the actual work wasn’t too bad really, and it didn’t take me that long, which was good, because it started to rain again. And rain. This meant we were stuck in the house again for a number of hours so I finished de-heading the mountain of lavender I had been doing, and once again listened to the radio to hear about the floods in Queensland. In the evening we both sat down to watch some Robin Hood – just the ticket on a nasty night. Not the most thrilling day, but, at least it was one more day ticked off to get my visa!

It was still raining the next day, with just as much force as before, so, once again any outside jobs were out of the question. Although it meant I was actually doing very little for my keep, I was starting to do very little, and get very bored. There is a reason I moved away from the country, and this was precisely it! And then the sun broke through, and over the course of the afternoon the rain cleared, and by early evening me and my host were sitting on the verandah having a beer in the sun. Crazy Tasmanian weather! To make the most of the sun we went for a walk to the top of the hill, and had a beautiful view over the whole valley. It really was a stunning view, and well worth the wet feet I got from trudging through the grass! The full extent of the rain was starting to show itself, and the driveway to the house was a flowing river, and the dam was full – apparently for the first time in years. Once again, I managed to bring the rain with me –the same happened when I went to regional Victoria! We once again spent the evening watching TV – not much more you can do, to be honest, so, we spent a couple of hours watching some kind of rubbish, and then I went up to my little house, and very quickly fell asleep.

The next day we went into Deloraine, which to be honest seemed quite exciting after not leaving the house for a few days – our main mission was to pick up the boys, which we did as soon as we got there, but then they wanted to go and see the flood water, and so started the adventure. Firstly we went into the town centre to see car parks and roads underwater from the flooding river, and then we went down to another area down by the river, which had been badly affected, and the little bridge had huge logs piled up against it from the previous night. So, as my host was talking to a farmer about the damage I took the kids down to the river to teach them ‘pooh sticks’ – which they greatly enjoyed! I couldn’t believe that they had never played it before, saying that, Australian kids don’t know what ‘Punch and Judy’ is, so I wasn’t too surprised. Hehe! When we got back to the house it was time to do more raspberry picking for the next couple of hours, and this time I ended up lying under the canes and picking them from there – I still got scratched to buggery though, but I did get all the good ones in the middle. And, once again with buckets full of berries I went up to the house to sort them out. That night we were going to a ‘fire ceremony’ and my host wanted to make something to take, which is fair enough, so he decided on pumpkin pie, and then went to meditate, leaving me to make it. I didn’t really mind really, it is a simple enough thing to make, but what did annoy me was when it was in the oven, he insisted it was time to leave, so I just had to crank up the heat and get it cooked, which slightly burnt some of the pastry on the outside. Grrrr! Other than that it would have been a masterpiece. So, more about this ‘fire ceremony’ – when I hear these words I think of Beltane, or something similar, but it seems that my mind went in completely the wrong direction. So, when we arrived at the place it was happening I was slightly surprised to see a tiny little fire set up, with flowers and petals and incense around it. It turns out, when new-age hippies say the term ‘fire ceremony’ it means that a group of them sit and chant around a fire- called a ‘Havan’ (sadly every time someone said it my mind jumped to ‘Coven’ and I just imagined all of the people there as witches chanting spells into their cauldron!). But, I was there, so, in for a penny, in for a pound; I thought I would give it a go. There were a couple of other WWOOFers there, so I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what was going on, which made it slightly less awkward. And so we sat on cushions, closed our eyes and started to chant something 108 times – this was almost right, but me and a couple of other people had to keep our eyes open, so we could read the chant. I have no idea what I was saying, but by the end of it I had gotten quite into the rhythm and was joining in with the others. After a bit of Googling when I got home I found out what it meant:

OM TRAYAMBAKAM YAJAA MAHE SUGANDHIM PUSHTI VARDHANAM URVAARUKA MIVA BANDHANAN MRITYOR MUKSHEEYA MAMRITAT.

-- I worship the three eyed Lord Shiva, the compassionate One whose fragrance nourishes all beings. May I cling as closely to Him as the cucumber clings to the vine, and may He grant me liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

After we had finished that ritual, we moved onto another one, and this time, ended up sitting around a newly planted tree, which was encircled by power crystals of some description, and chanting other stuff which people were suggesting. Weird though it all was, it was really interesting to be there, and a completely eye opening experience, which I would never have done if I wasn’t forced to complete these 3 months farming, so for that I am grateful. One nice thing about the whole night was the sense of community these people had, and how friendly and accepting they were of an outsider coming along to this event. And, although it really wasn’t my cup of tea, I thought it was worth a go, and thoroughly enjoyed it, even if I had no idea what the hell I was chanting about! Oh, and the pumpkin pie went down a treat, it was gorgeous, and just confirmed that I would have to steal the recipe. Someone else made a fruit crumble cake, which was great, and sounded very easy, so I might try that at some point soon – it looked quite fancy and tricky too! And so, with our various chantings done, we all climbed back in the care to endure the rather windy journey home, and experienced a beautiful sunset. What a fantastic day, completely out of my comfort zone, but really interesting.

I started Sunday with more boysenberry picking, they seemed to have appreciated the excessive amounts of rain we had had, and there were, once again, buckets full of them by the time I finished. And, in my opinion, you can only do one of two things when you have too much fruit – much jam, or make a crumble, so I made an amazing boysenberry and raspberry crumble for pudding that night. My next job was to clear the bean patch as they had all been harvested and were starting to die. A surprisingly soothing job, it took me a couple of hours to get it done, but when there was just a patch of soil I had a big sense of accomplishment. I also got to feed the beanstalks to the chickens, which was such fun. I forgot how funny chickens could me, and they were all rolling around and scratching in the plants. So I watched them for a while, just quietly amused by them! My final job for the day was the lawn mowing – why oh why am I always given that job – and I was glad that it had cooled down slightly; I have learnt my lesson about doing it in the middle of the day. As I was half-way through my job I noticed that my host and the boys were all going down for a swim in the dam, which annoyed me slight – I wanted to got too!! So I kept going with the lawn – cursing the fact the property was on a rather distinct slope! When they came back from their swim my host said I had done enough for the day – hurray! In the evening I thought I would be adventurous and try and make custard from scratch, to go with my beautiful crumble – and I thought it was all going well, until all of a sudden my crumble had the consistency of watery scrambled egg. I tried my best to fix it, but couldn’t, so went to throw it away when my host said he would try it, and said he liked it. I’m pretty sure he was just being polite (which wasn’t necessary – I had tried it, and it tasted liked sweet egg) but, he proceeded to pour it all over his crumble, in my opinion, ruining the whole bowl of food. Very sweet of him, but he really didn’t have to, it was foul! Bird’s custard powder is normally too much work for me, so I’m not sure why I attempted this, but I have learnt my lesson, and from now on I will just buy my custard in a carton. After a day of working in the garden and then a good Sunday-lunch style stuff up, we were all pretty knackered and had an early night. Hardcore life in the country!

So, I am seven days closer to getting my visa, and to be perfectly honest, I haven’t really done much to earn it, but, I’m not going to complain. And with only two more days left on the farm, I am looking forward to my time in the City again, and all the perks of city-life. But, I will make the most of the next two days, and try and help out as much as possible, and keep my fingers crossed that he signs off for more days than I was actually here for. Fingers crossed.