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The news and high views from Tree Elbow (this week)

 

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.

Meg on Futuresteading, New Peasants news, and a second drop for The Pretty Good Cricket Podcast

 

G’day from beautiful Djaara Mother Country, where a droughtish spring is getting lashed with heavy droplets from the heavens of the many conspiring sky gods who bring such gifts. Received with gratitude. We have a few things to share today.

Meg attended (virtually) the Aotearoa, premier screening of The New Peasants, while Woody and Patrick were at cricket training last Thursday evening. Meg said the questions came from such an engaged audience and it was inspiring to feel the energy for change in the Nelson community.

If you would like to organise your own community screening, please get in touch with Happen Films. And. if you live near us in Central Victoria you might like to attend a screening and Q&A with us and director Jordan Osmond at Radius Gallery in Hepburn on November 23, starting at 5pm, and MC’d by David Holmgren. We’ll post a link for tickets shortly, or keep an eye out on the film’s website (click image below for link).

Speaking of Hepburn, our family (as players and nourishers) participated in playing against Hepburn Cricket Club on Saturday. It was an exciting game of community cricket, which Mark and Patrick unpack on their Substack page, The Pretty Good Cricket Podcast. As captain of the under 16s for Campbell’s Creek, and a key player in seniors, Woody had a magnificent day with both bat and ball. He scored an unbeaten 48 runs and took 4 wickets across both matches. Go Woody! Here he is with fellow teammate, Mitch, after they put on a 25 run last wicket partnership for the seniors.

In other news, Meg and Jade have a goodly yarn about ageing, grieving, menopausing, eldering and much more on Jade’s podcast, Futuresteading.

Well, that’s our news roundup. A reminder (as mentioned in our last blog post), we have two upcoming house & garden tours coming up on January 18 and April 4. Bookings are open; just email us and we’ll book you in.

Getting away

It was quite some effort to leave Daylesford last Friday. Months of work, teary farewells with friends and family and a general emptying of settled life. All this culminated at the Albert Street community garden before we pushed off towards banjo country, accompanied by our friend Clay.

At Guildford we spotted water ribbons (Triglochin spp.), a traditional bushfood, and dug up a small plant to discover that the rhyzome was comparatively small. While our digging tool was out we dug a hole for our first compostable nappy.

The hills of home flattened out and it was a cruisy ride into Castlemaine where Juliette and Tosh kindly offered their home and Lee and Dave generously cooked for us. But despite all the warmth and familiarity of Castemaine we were keen to push on.

There is free food everywhere (milkmaid tubers, roadside trees coming into fruit, dozens of edible weeds) but we have brought supplies still fresh from home to keep us going (thanks for the lovely cookies Chris),

so we just pass by many noteworthy things. A magnificant crop of roadside Salsify (Tragopogon spp.) en route from Redesdale to Heathcote.

We are just finding our pedals in our very new way of transitory living, which is tiring and mid-day seistas are mandatory,

for all.

Yesterday we travelled for 75 kms to Nagambie, happy for the most part. We found that our 70-80 kg bikes are rideable without electric assistance, even up the hills. We’re in training for the high country.

Yet this is a year-long, low-carbon art performance, not the Olympics. We’re only wanting to travel around 30 kms a day but we’re finding out that sometimes a good camp spot is worth the effort. Zero leads our road train, forever on the look out for free food and free accomadation,

which isn’t as difficult to find as you might expect.

We’re spending about $20 a day and the nightlife is awesome.