A selection of our writings from 2009 to the present. If you'd like to keep up to date with our latest posts, please subscribe below.
In this post Patrick argues industrial civilisation radically limits us, and he offers some responses to the predicament of hyper-domestication and safetyism.
Listen (9 mins),
or watch.
We’d love to hear some of your life jacket removal hacks in the comments.
Last week Patrick spoke with Ann Stanley from Food Connect on 3CR radio on a range of topics, from big picture to small. We hope you enjoy their conversation. (25 mins)
How does mother goddess cosmology live through your household? How are you restoring the abundance of Pandora?
Hello! We are very happy to share the news that The New Peasants is now available worldwide to watch. Last night we attended a Q&A screening in Hepburn, the 15th screening in Australia, which was MC’d by our friend and elder, David Holmgren. Now the film can be watched anywhere at anytime.
On Kinema, the movie platform where The New Peasants is hosted, you can privately watch the film ($5) or host a community screening. We are very happy to attend online Q&A sessions after community screenings of the film, so please get in contact with us if you’d like to host to such an event.
We are also open to groups getting in touch with us to organise house, garden and forest tours, so again, please let us know and we can discuss it further. A reminder we have two public house and garden tours coming up. There are still a handful of places left. Go here for more details.
With spring warmth, from our patch to yours,
Artist as Family
Patrick speaks with Diego Castaño Valencia, a Colombian GP who found permaculture in Australia, and came to volunteer with us this past week.
Diego regards permaculture as an antidote to the industrial medical complex and to globalised industrial society more broadly, and is about to head home to Colombia to put into practice what he has learned on his travels.
Listen to the audio (46 mins).
We had such a wonderful week with Diego. We hope this yarn gives a little insight into our time with this special young man who is taking his life seriously, with grace and curiosity.
As always we welcome your reflections and your comments.
Hello dear Subscribers and laissez-faire readers,
We seem to be in a pattern of weekly blog missives. We’re going along with it as there is energy for that. Here, on the southern ridge bone of the Great Connecting Range in Djaara Mother Country, winter has momentarily returned with overnight temperatures plummeting to 1 degree celsius. This chilly weather system has coincided with our water heater springing a leak, the tank of which we drained and which, in turn, has meant we can’t light our wood stove so as not to damage its water jacket chamber. So we have been rugging up and sitting with the gratitude of what this hearth means in our life, when all is well with it.
In other news, Zephyr has stepped back into a creators role for Artist as Family. Zephyr experienced the full horror of modern drone warfare in Ukraine earlier this year, and escaped with his life, while he lost a number of comrades who had also joined the Ukrainian army. First Person View (FPV) attack drones have become an ugly part of modern warfare, meaning that soldiers – people – can be tracked and attacked with flying ordnance by a remote controller. Another cowardly gift from late industrial capitalism. As part of his recovery from the trauma, Zephyr has taken up using a FPV drone for peaceful operations, and gifted us this footage he took of Tree Elbow’s spring garden this week, to help promote our forthcoming house and garden tours. Thanks Zeph!
Zephyr is setting up a small business with his drone, so please get in touch if you’d like to employ his services in central Victoria. And, please get in touch if you’d like to attend one of our full-day house and garden tours (January 18 & April 4), which also includes time in the nearby commons that we co-steward with our neighbours and our goats. Meet Pav, the newest member of the blackberry munching herd.
This week we’ve been listening to Tommy Castles’ music. Tommy composed the exquisite soundtrack for The New Peasants. One of our favourite compositions from the soundtrack is called Bike Scavenger (ft. Carl Dickens). This music enters the film as Patrick fixes the wheel of his bike trailer to ride up to the local tip – our hardware store – to collect materials. The New Peasants will shortly be available to view online, and for peeps in this neck of the woods, Radius Gallery is holding a screening and Q&A on November 23, MC’d by David Holmgren.
In other news, The Pretty Good Cricket Podcast has just dropped Episode three. This week Blue Wren and Black Cockatoo dive into a sodden pitch and welcome in their first guest.
Well, that’s our neopeasant round up for the week. For those of you who have requested a video from us about hosting men’s and women’s circles, stay tuned. We are on to it. We love hearing from you in this quiet cul-de-sac of the web, so let flow in the comments section for a little more connection.