Q&A #2 Hard work

Q: Isn't your lifestyle a lot of hard work?

It certainly is! But what is wrong with that? To be asked this question by a person who pays money to work out in a gym is sad to say the least. I would prefer to do work that yields a practical result apart from making me fitter and a gym owner richer. There is a real satisfaction in finishing with a new stretch of fence or a pile of firewood for the winter.
It is also just what we do. We do not drive fast cars or go to the football each weekend for entertainment. In general I find the concept of watching someone else playing a sport to be an exercise in futility and complete waste of my time*. Our fun is found on our farm. When you have a yard full of livestock you will never need to watch a soap opera again! The longer we live here the more reluctant we are to go out into town. There is always something interesting to do and when done spending time sitting in the shade with a cup of coffee just enjoying the view will keep me happy for hours.

*Except for Sumo. If two fat guys smacking the crap out of each other is not a night of fun I don't know what is!

Q&A #1 "Why do you do it?"

Q: Why do you live the way you do? Why live the green/ permaculture/ organic/ hippie etc lifestyle? 

For the most part I will simply answer that I prefer to live on my own farm growing my own food. I suppose the larger answer is that the world is going to get a lot more crowded in our lifetimes unless we as a species start accepting some responsibility. Taking control of our personal impact upon this planet is the major reason we chose this lifestyle. We are responsible for our own food and for the wastes we produce insofar as we are able. Even though we are not now and probably will never be fully self sufficient we will still attempt to do as little damage as humanly possible.
Our lifestyle is also a living example and encouragement to those who are interested for whatever reason. Many folks in our community use us as a practical library- we have taught people to grow veggies, milk cows, slaughter livestock, make cheese, keep bees, build fences and so on.

The last and possibly most accurate reason for me personally is that I just need the space to live like a real human being. I firmly believe city life is entirely detrimental to human kind. It is an environment where people are shielded from the natural world and as a result lose the understanding of their place in the natural cycle. We are just another animal on this planet, nothing more, and it is high time we began behaving like good neighbours rather than overlords.

On our farm we live alongside nature. Our farm is divided in two. The top level of our farm is paddocks and orchards. This is where we live alongside our livestock and grow our food. The bottom half of our farm is tropical rain forest and will remain so. It belongs to the local wild life. We do not farm this area or allow our animals to enter. We do not take from this area except to pump water for our tanks in the dry and we allow none of our wastes to enter this area in any form.
We also learn to live with the seasons. We eat whatever is in season at the time or learn to preserve for when it is not. We read the weather and learn to prepare for the coming rain or dry. We understand the language of our livestock and care for their needs. We are aware of the sound of the world around us- I can tell the season by the birdsong or know a predator is near by the change in noise. I know if a stranger or a local is walking along the road by the sound of the livestock.

I believe this is the healthiest and most natural way for a human to live. In the coming years the possibility of such a lifestyle will become rarer as more and more humans join us on this planet. I want space for my son and his family when I am gone and I want my son to know how to live well. I want to try to spread this message to as many other people as I can in the time I have left.

Question and Answer time

There would appear to be an ever growing interest in living the green lifestyle. I regularly find myself answering the same questions over and over. I speak to many people around the world, on the internet for the most part but also through local groups and just folks I meet in passing.
So here are some of the most commonly asked questions and the accompanying answer. Please keep in mind that I am in no way the definitive expert on these subjects, I am only offering my own opinions and experiences such as they are. I was originally going to do this as one post until I realised how long it would be so I shall instead post answers as I get to them.

January, an overview on squab, magic and bannanas

Well Christmas was good. We has surprisingly cool weather due to a bank of rain coming over, not unwelcome, even requiring us to return the blankets to the bed and wear a pullover in the mornings. As always we ate too much, drank too much and generally had a lot of fun! The young feller scored the usual haul of presents, he also took great joy in giving presents to others. Something I am delighted to see in a five year old.
January came and the weather quickly returned to normal. Away went the woollies and out came the fans. Now we have entered the pre-monsoon countdown and the weather turns hot and sticky. Thunderheads roll about the tablelands making a lot of noise but generally not giving much rain. Not to us anyway, the wind is coming out of the west right now so the rain is exhausted before it gets to us. I don't mind, those folks out west need it right now. Soon the monsoon band will form near Indonesia and Papua and will descend to the eastern coast and the cool will come.

I am pleased to report the pigeons have been a success! They are breeding rapidly and we have been enjoying regular meals of squab, which is posh speak for young pigeon. They are delightfully easy to pluck and draw, taking less than five minutes per bird and one squab is a good serve per person, two if you really want a big feed. Apart from the actual slaughter it is quite nice to go and harvest a half dozen squabs and then sit in the shade of a tree with the wife and prepare them.

The adult pigeon flock are a rowdy bunch and have adapted to farm life well. Each morning we are greeted from the shed roof where they can eyeball us as we have our morning coffee.

If we take too long the general level of noise increases until we give up and go throw a handful of grain out for them. The guinea fowl have also learned we are throwing grain out in the morning and will come to do battle with the pigeons. In the end everyone appears to be well fed so I don't really care that much. The Guinea fowl hens are bringing in their annual mobs of keets. As the weather has been dry thus far I think there is a reasonable chance of a good number of them surviving this year. That reminds me, I am intending to harvest a few guinea fowl the next time I have the cold room running for a week. This is so I can hang them to age- I am told they should be treated as a game bird to get the best results. Recently I had a chance to handle a cock bird and found him to be very well fleshed all over. He looked tasty indeed!

The Bannanas have also done well in the heat. They are larger than usual this year and there is more than enough for both the parrots and the humans to share.
In other news I taught my son how to hypnotize a chicken the other day. It has been many years since I had done it myself and I was a little unsure if I could pull it off, but with a little patience I soon had a young cockerel lying upside down on the table with a rather glazed expression. Much awe from the wife and child. After a minute or so I gently clicked my fingers beside its head and it woke before strutting off wondering what the hell had just happened.

On new calves. part 2

So a couple of weeks in to the whole forced milking and things have settled down a bit. Bonnies teats are now of a (barely) milk-able size by hand and we have taken over the milking duties twice a day. This milk is then fed to the two new calves- the Brown Swiss "Jessie the second" and the Fresian "Lilly". For this we use a calf feeder which is essentially a pair of joined buckets with rubber teats. It has been christened the "Robo-Cow" by the youngest cloud farmer. We are doing this as it is important we continue training Bonnie to be milked. The calves love it and engage in considerable pushing and shoving as they drink. To prevent one calf pushing the other off the teat we have someone position themselves between the two. We call this doing "bum duty". This job usually falls to the youngest cloud farmer as the adults have their hands full.

It is quite a wrestling match most days.
Now things take a turn for the weird. Anna, who had forcibly adopted Bonnies calf Arthur, handed him back to his mother who has accepted him and is allowing him to drink without too many kicks to the head. He also goes back to Anna for a drink as well.

So we lost a calf and have gained three. Arthur is a Brown Swiss-Dexter and will be a superb meat steer in a few years time. The two heifers will be sold as weaners and should fetch a good price. I am spraying each calf with pyrethrum daily to prevent a repeat of the original tragedy and it appears we are having a bad year for ticks- there are an awful lot about this year.
So that was our Christmas this year. Pretty standard on the Cloud farm. Cheers.

On new calves. Part 1

As you will see from the last post, it is not always sunshine and roses on any farm. Anna was considerably upset at the loss. For several days she wandered the fields calling and looking for her calf. I have been told by a fool in the past that animals do not experience emotions as humans do. I just wish that idiot was here to see this mother in her grief!
In any case nearly two weeks later, and ten days overdue, Bonnie gave birth to a fine strapping bobby calf. He was for reasons best known only to the youngest cloud farmer promptly name "Arthur".
Here is where the trouble started for I had unwittingly left the cows together to provide some small comfort to Anna. Unfortunately Bonnie was a new mother and was reluctant to begin immediately feeding as often happens. The usual remedy for this is time, just leave mother and calf alone and they will get on with it. However having a bereaved mother present and a calf calling for a feed is a bad mix and Anna promptly claimed Arthur as her own! To make matters worse Bonnie appeared reasonably unworried by this. This left us with several problems for Bonnie has a very big udder and as is usual with new cows, small teats. So small in fact that we physically could not milk them with more than a single finger and thumb and this quickly becomes an impossible task, especially when you have a new cow who has no desire to be involved in the whole process. This is usually solved naturally by having an enthusiastic calf suckling and the teats will quickly lengthen. Only then would you attempt to begin hand milking.
Now I will freely admit this mess is entirely of my own making. I should have well and truly known to separate Anna and Bonnie before the birth but failed to do so. Lesson learned. The obvious solution was to obtain another calf, or two, from one of the local dairies and get Bonnie to take them on.
It is unfortunate in this day and age that the milk from the cow is much more valuable than the calf it feeds and so most excess calves are usually shot and dumped the day they are born. Heifers are kept if the herd needs new cows but bobby calves are considered worthless. We were fortunate to quickly find a local dairy who promised us a pair of calves the next morning for $30 each (odd how a calf that was going to be shot and dumped suddenly is worth money isn't it?) but as we were in need I readily accepted.
The next morning my son and I loaded a crate on the back of my ute and we drove over to the dairy as they were finishing the milking. To my delight the owner supplied me with a beautiful pair of heifers, one pure Fresian and one pure Brown Swiss. Apparently they were excess to needs and shooting heifers went against the grain.
So we carried our new calves home and introduced them to the cows. Bonnie had no interest in them at all of course and this is only to be expected. Here is where the arsenal of tricks comes into play to get a cow to accept a strange calf. Rubbing them down with the mothers dung, or better still the afterbirth so they smell like her, locking them up overnight in the dark, fettling the mother with beer and so on.
With an older cow these methods work well but with a new cow the odds are much smaller and when this fails (as it did with Bonnie) you have to go to forced feeding and tie the mother up so the calves can suckle. This involves driving the cow into the stall and roping a leg back so she cannot kick. The calves are then put on the teat. Care must be taken to make sure the calves are not too rough with the teats and that they swap to new teats as each quarter is emptied. The whole process is quite traumatic for all involved until the cow learns to accept it and I received several kicks and a mashed hand in the process. Cows can indeed kick to the side.

Goodbye little Jessie

I am very sad to report that a week after she was born, little Jessie has died. A few days after her birth I noticed she was walking a little stiffly. I checked her over to find three large paralysis ticks in her fur. They could not have been on her for long as I had checked her and given her a spray down with pyrethrum just a day before. Unfortunately the ticks must still have had enough time to inject sufficient venom to kill a small calf. After trying everything I could I was forced to put her down three days later.