Fire in our hearts; fire in our bellies

Dec 16, 2018 | community gardens, Dja Dja Wurrung, Djaara, economy, edible weeds, Feral & Free, fire, fire prevention, permaculture, Permaculture Living Course (PLC), School of Applied Neopeasantry, storytelling | 5 comments

Fire! It’s wild, feared, harnessed and praised. Our first tool. Like the Greek story of Prometheus stealing fire to give to mortals, Djaara people – on whose land we have made home – also have their stolen fire story. Waa, the raven, was originally white and in stealing fire got himself burnt. We heard this told at Yapenya in Bendigo recently. All comers were invited to come witness this new Djaara ceremony.

Djaara women performing Yapenya, before the ceremonial fire is lit.

Performing new ceremony is soulful, much needed work. Former SWAPs Connor and Marta – who met at Tree Elbow, got hitched, travelled far and wide and moved back to the area – are expecting a child. Patrick lit a fire for Connor and a number of men gathered in the forest to warm Connor into fatherhood with stories about being dads, sons and men. The night was transformative, a kind of medicine.

Meg concurrently held a women’s circle for Marta and again the night revealed many insights and gentle sharings, and this group also realised ceremony was missing in their lives as women.

The cultural absence of gathering around fire, in forests and in other more-than-human environments, led us to establish Make & Play a few years ago. Patrick has recently begun a second weekly group for older kids called Feral & Free – a radical form of scouts (drawing on both the ecological masculinities and ecofeminisms of our day). The following quote from Patrick’s book re:)Fermenting culture, which excavates the fire stealing creation myth of western culture, has been cited as the epigraph in the recently published, Ecological Masculinities: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Guidance:

A culture that has lost its beginning story is a culture adrift, destructive and self-harming. While the West can be seen as synonymous with imperialism, this is not our old people, this is not our true culture, gender-lopsidedness is not our only heritage.

Feral & Free crew

The Celts reportedly said that a woman’s soul is male and a man’s soul is female. How’s that for oldskool gender fluidity? The father fire (technics) and the matering earth (ecology) are within us together, regardless of how we identify. They are not opposing stories, they are intertwined. We are technical animals; storytellers. Story derives from fire.

Story features at all these gatherings in the forest. It is stories – what we tell out and to ourselves – that make us who we are. When we gather and speak together across a fire a raw heartfeltness springs forth. Courage to do this is more than required. Woody spoke his first public story recently, at the local community Cicada storytelling night. He mustered all his pluck to raise himself from his seat and make the slow walk up onto the podium at the Senior Citizens’ Room behind the Daylesford Town Hall. His story was called Spring Blossom, and he quietly spoke of beholding the blossom of a wild apple, trying with his 6-year old language to conjure that earlier moment of praise and delight for the tree, for all of us to share.

Pic: Juanita Broderick

Stories heard from across the crackling foci of the fire speak to our ancient selves in our present bodies. The podium or stage can adversely change this intent, but that’s another story for another time.

Woody is growing up within a general household narrative where a commons (of any form) is never to be capitalised, where an economy (of any form) never enslaves us or makes ruin terra mater. On working out how he is to save up for a new guitar he said: “If I get the sticks from the tip to make my kindling bundles, then I’m not selling them from the floor of the forest but only selling waste.” This ethic he did not learn at school but by learning to think with a forest’s thoughts. What if the dominant value system shifted from unrestrained growth at all costs to the sanctity of humus and earth others at all costs? What transformations of culture would we see?

If we know that the tumorous Internet of Things is just the next sales pitch in a long line of greed and intransigence, how do we garner the courage to turn away from such seduction and face and embrace humus, and all the quiet things of earth not screaming for attention? How do we perform other stories that don’t just passively go along with the dominant, egotistical ideology?

Pic: Laurel Freeland

Woody has been setting up his fire-starting stall beside his dad’s edible weed ID stand at the Daylesford Sunday Farmer’s Market. Like the mushroom ID stand Patrick offers in autumn, spring is weed time, and there are many beneficial autonomous plants to eat, make medicine from, preserve and ferment. None of these gems beneath our feet require climate altering transportation, weeds move around without industrial distribution systems.

Weed knowledges are just some of the things we’ve been sharing on our Permaculture Living Courses (PLCs) this spring. Foraging for weeds is a powerful way back to sensing what ecological economies might be performed in the near future. Weeds constitute about 5% of our diet, but because of their many health-filled properties this constitutes about 40% of our preventative medicines.

On the third and final 2018 PLC we hosted Ryan, Lucille and Clare for two weeks, and reperforming commons of all forms was central to the curriculum. As was making leek kraut, another arsenal in our preventative medicine chest as it is both a pre- and probiotic.

Just three students at a time is small enough to engage intimately with the many interrelationships and layered learnings within a permacultural neopeasant household. We began the course with a big list to get through, that grew and grew from this picture on…

Wood was collected on bikes from areas of forest where fuel reduction burns take place. We talked about the importance of reducing fuel load going into the fire season while at the same time leaving more than enough for habitat, mycelium and humus production.

We also scavenged useful materials from the tip such as chicken wire and fire wood. (If you’re reading this in your inbox you’ll need to click through to our blog to watch the video below).

We gathered elderflowers for brewing tonics and ciders in ready for the festive solstice period.

We planted pumpkins at the community garden, yet another goodly place for reclaiming and expanding the commons.

We prepped beds (double dug and humanured) in the Tree Elbow annual garden. By the time a PLC participant leaves The School of Applied Neopeasantry they would have been introduced to the imperatives of origin-known food. They are also introduced to our economic form: subsistence first (nourishment of household), surplus second (gifts in and out to community), money third (paying the rent and bills). If money by its very nature must grow as an economic form, and knowing what this means to terra mater, it must be sent into degrowth. Money constitutes just 30% of our economy now. We are active degrowth-ers.

Each day of the PLC, when we broke for refreshments, we engaged in discussions on the philosophy, poetics and politics of neopeasant economy, permaculture garden-farming, or regenerative culture making (take your pick of language). Oh, and the subject of Zero was a high priority…

While philosophy, poetics and politics are important, they are nothing without a sleeves-rolled-up pragmatism and a goodly interspecies back scratch.

While Ryan, Lucille and Clare were with us we updated our fire plan, a three page document featuring various codes and scenarios, and what our actions will be with each. We’re sure this doc will be put to use a number of times this season.

We carried out a dress rehearsal on the first Very High day in early December. The PLC participants will no doubt call on such prep work well into their climate changed futures.

Bush fires are, of course, going to be more and more frequent, and more or less a direct feedback to neoliberal economics. Thanks Jordan Peterson environmentalism! Thanks neoliberals everywhere! Thanks belligerent Baby Boomers and your mainstay Ayn Rand ideology! Go get ’em Hercules, Superman, indulgence tourism! Plugging and filling our gutters with water is really such a quaint response to the climate leviathan so indelibly ready to pounce. But plug we will.

As a car-free family, we (ironically) need to be even more prepared on fire risky days than those with cars. Which days we stay home and defend and which days we leave early (on the bus out of town after hopefully persuading the driver to let Zero and his PTV rail approved dog carrier on board because we are, pleadingly, climate refugees) will be critical to call. Packing special items and required documents to have on hand throughout the season is just one of the many tasks listed on our plan.

Ryan, Lucille and Clare carried out fire mitigating work on public land nearby to Tree Elbow. This labour also has the benefit of ensuring a weedy commons is not sprayed with pesticides, burnt or bulldozed by one of the various land managers, and thus the weed cycle returned to phase one, again. Using chop and drop techniques and an old peasant trick of laying down a sheet of iron or a large board onto the brambles, we reduce fire risk while using the crushed material to make more humus for other (fire retarding) plants to grow within.

We made this video to highlight holistic, post-pesticide methods of fire and weed mitigation, which is not the same as traditional Djarra land management practices, due to the fact the A1 soil horizon, and thus the ecology, has changed so radically. However, like both contemporary and traditional Aboriginal principles of land care, our methods aim to incorporate fire-risk mitigation with ecological enhancement. Watch on our Youtube channel or below.

Fire is something we handle every day. For us it is a local, renewable energy. Our outdoor kitchen stove (repurposed from the tip) to fuel our 8-slice toaster made up of a wire rack (again from the tip), powered by wood (also from the tip) collected on foot or by bicycle. No grid is necessary. Being of the mindset that nothing needs replacing, things just need repurposing, remaking or mending, we move our household’s economy further into a degrowth of money and debt, growing an abundance of relationships with people, forests, soil communities, knowledges, nourishment and skills.

And when the day’s labours are done, and the heat is upon us, we descend to the lake with our big post-carbon rig. Just about everything we need comes from the tip, skip bins, op-shops, garage sales or from terra mater herself. A blow-up dinghy is only ever a reclaimed waste product, lovingly patched. It never comes new off the shelf. When the tip runs out of such things, then we’ll learn to make our own canoes from scratch. This is powerdown in action.

Picnicking by the lake is a great chance to unwind, especially after the stresses of a day prepping for potential fire. Although it only turned out to be a dress rehearsal, it was a great opportunity to see where the weaknesses in our fire plan lie. Swimming in untreated lake water is so restorative after such a long, hot and windy day, especially after we’d been so pragmatically staying with the reality of climate chaos, trying not to lose our senses.

On the last night of the third PLC we invited the first 6 participants to join us. Nearly everyone was available. We walked with Liam, Cara, Ryan, Lucille, Clare, Moe and Marty up to the forest so each could see what the other had done in the commons to allay fire threat and continue the work of moving ecological succession into the next phase.

The PLC alumni came together for dinner and swapped notes and sang some sweet tunes. A tradition we’ll keep going.

Marty and Cara, from The Rattlers, and the first PLC, gave a wee after dinner performance. (Again, you’ll need to click through to our blog or Youtube channel to watch if you’re reading this in your inbox).

Aren’t they great! We’re continually inspired by the love, labours and intent of young people on their respective regenerative culture making journeys.

Connor, Marta and Jeremy – the three Tree Elbow musketeers of 2017 – have all moved back to the area permanently, and are all brewing up special things of their own. Jeremy will be taking interns at his place in 2019, especially for those interested in learning all things curing animal skins, blacksmithing and other lost arts. Here he is with newcomer to town Tony, harvesting broad beans at the most recent community garden working bee.

Community garden working bees really get the love juices going. Through activities like gardening, the soil releases nonpathogenic Mycobacterium vaccae, which increases levels of serotonin and decreases levels of anxiety in mammals. Do it communally and you get oxytocin as a top up. Oxytocin is the bonding chemical found naturally in the body and exchanged between loved ones (including between dogs and humans). Though be aware, it also heightens awareness of enemies and potential threats. This smiling assassin will rake apart any mug who threatens terra mater.

And this mama, Lovely Duck, is also a fearsome warrioress when it comes to keeping her brood safe. It has been a pleasure to get to know her over the years. Her truly giving demeanour instructs us and lets us know what love is possible as radical homemakers.

There are many in our community who are actively engaging in a flow of gifts economy. These lil beauties were brought to us by Fiona and Edward from Adsum Farm. Kohlrabi kraut is the best! Knowing where the great majority of our food, medicine and energy comes from means we can better live accountably to our local land’s logic and processes, and know what we need to give back to keep such abundance flowing.

Thank you Fiona and Edward for your generosity and nurture, and thank you Sari for your flame red morello cherries that you didn’t want to see go to waste. They have lit our days; a wild morello cider is on the brew, and a bottle or two will boomerang back to you.

Flame red morello cider will be appreciatively consumed this summer as more and more fires will burn in the nation-state of Australia, never ceded. Bill Mollison famously wrote that, “Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”

Fire is a wild force that could more than displace us and our community one day. Creation stories across the world speak of how humans tamed or procured fire as our first tool, and how we got burnt in the process. With climate change fire will be wilder and far less tameable. Djaara people haven’t forgotten that Waa got burnt stealing the first tool and they are retelling that old story today. We would be wise to heed such a story.

Merry solstice everyone! May you continue to trust the fire in your bellies in 2019, and stoke your guts with goodly microbe-generating fibres and ferments from your homeplace hearths.

If you would like to come and visit our homeplace we have three more house + garden tours coming up in 2019: Sunday 24 February, Sunday 31 March and Sunday 28 April.

Pic: Jennifer Polixenni Brankin

Sending our very best wishes for the solstice and new year, much love from Artist as Family.

Neo-peasants rise up!

Dec 4, 2016 | bees, bicycles, community gardens, community schooling, fermentation, Indigenous health, Indigenous knowledges, jun, jun tea, permaculture, self-schooling, soap making, swales, Warm Showers | 10 comments

English writer George Monbiot contests “the oddest insult in the English language [is] when you call someone a peasant, [because] you are accusing them of being self-reliant and productive.” Go Woody! You proud lil ‘peasant…

Words such as pagan and heathen were insults Christians used to describe various nameless land-sacred peoples of Europe. In our community our peasant, pagan, heathen women get together to raise awareness about the relocalisation of food and medicine in an age where Christian-capitalism is becoming a spent and dying force.

Zeph and Woody, like true neo-peasants, are learning grafting techniques to expand the food commons in their locasphere.

Woody (pictured here after his first haircut on his birthday morning) gets to four years of age without eating processed sugar,

and for another half year his brother is lovingly unschooled through the gifts of the community.

(Thanks Tosh, Danny, Nick, Kirsten, Pete, Jeff, Cath, Hamish, Fiona, Henri, Edward, Tim, Angela and Gael for aiding Zeph’s learning).

Zeph also experiments with his own forms of neo-peasant culture-making in his video Treeffiti:

and mucks around with developing his own written language.

He helps in numerous home projects such as building the cellar from stone unearthed from our land.

Nice job 14 year-old!

Zephyr is loving having his own pad to sleep in, entertain friends in and as a venue to host impromptu gigs by touring friends Formidable Vegetable Sound System.

This is Angela, who we welcomed as a SWAP (Social Warming Artists + Permaculturists), and who has since become a friend to all of us.

In this photo Angela and Meg are preparing a bed for cabbages.

We have irrigation lines set up for the dry months but for the rainy months we harvest water passively in our swales.

It wasn’t just Angela who arrived to our place by bike. These last few months we have hosted four Warm Showers travellers: Maya, Kirsten, Jaz and Tom, (pictured below). On most days we talk about upcoming cycle trips that we are scheming, but for now we are happy to be home where we can repay some of the kindness shown to us while we were on the road.

We also love being home because we love being community gardeners, helping to build an alternative food system based on care, nourishment and trust. The Daylesford Community Food Gardeners are planning to be in the Daylesford New Year’s Eve parade again this year, so please get in touch if you’d like to join us.

Love the poster, Jeff! We’re rapt you promised a bike or two for next year’s poster.

Learning the art of bicycle maintenance is an ongoing affair at our place. Bicycles are a preferred neo-peasant mobility.

But you always see more when you’re walking, such as this little family of hard shells we spotted at Lake Daylesford,

while fishing for some feral redfin.

Wild plants, fish and mushrooms are part of any neo-peasant sacred economy, as are wild bees. We caught our first wild swarm this spring, aided and tutored by Nick from Milkwood. Thanks Nick!

We’ve been mentoring and handing on knowledges too, while getting fashion tips in exchange. Thanks Ruby!

Harvesting the early planted garlic was an experiment worth repeating. We planted these bulbs in February.

Gift economies only work if the gifts flow in every direction. We’ve been foraging in the nearby forest so carrying out work that enables the diversity of that forest to flourish is the return.

And we’ve been speaking, sharing and learning at a number of events including talks at libraries, sustainability festivals and at this event, Futurelands2, where Patrick introduced Bruce Pascoe in the Kandos community hall.

We shared an event with Kirsten from Milkwood and Uncle Kevin Williams, a Wiradjuri man, at Ganguddy,

and we did a most non neo-peasant thing and flew to Cairns, breaking our no-fly principle. All throughout the flight we had to burp Beverly, our jun mother.

We were invited to Cairns as guests of the 2016 International Indigenous Allied Health Conference, and got to spend three days with this wonderful group, each of us sharing stories of resilience and creativity from our respective communities.

Patrick gave a keynote called Fermenting country: caring for the ecology of our guts, and Meg ran a complementary workshop on making fermented drinks, including jun.

Meg separated 16 parts of Beverly to give away. She named each one after a strong woman in our community. Here is Leith, an exhibitor from the Dept of Veteran Affairs.

The gifts flowed our way too. Matthew Tafoya, a Navajo man, designed and made this famous t-shirt in the Bush jnr era. Matt’s talk about his people’s community food gardens was inspirational.

So as you can see we’ve been busy lil’ neo-peasants and raising quite a sweat these past few months. Meg made us some soap so we can clean up a little before new year.

Wishing you all a peaceful summer solstice season, with love from Artist as Family…

Preparing the ground for more flowering

Aug 21, 2016 | community, community education, community gardens, flowers, homelife, planting, the commons | 5 comments

It’s been a busy month since birthing The Cumquat and Land Cultures. There has been much late winter, early spring labouring under an occasional sun.

With another family we planted out chestnuts and walnuts on common land for the next generations.

Each of us contributing in our own way.

We planted trees, and we grafted medlar scions onto hawthorns.

We attempted this several years ago in the little forest near home with no success.

With a little more understanding we are trying again, and are willing the sap to flow into these fruiting branches to make more fruit possible.

With food forest work the natural order of things to follow is bee work. The boys have been making new housing for native bees.

Now we’re awaiting the warmer weather for the occupation.

Community gardening has been an ongoing priority for several years now. This winter we hosted two pruning workshops with Ian Clarke, a knowledgeable tree elder.

The pruned cuttings were cycled home and sat in the snow,

before being made into biochar, to feed back the flowering earth.

Each day the boys are involved in what Gertrude Stein once called the processes of circularity.

It has been a great relief for Zeph to be outside the strictures and inflexibilities of institutional life. Removing fences at a community garden working bee is not just a metaphor.

He has begun work on a critical-creative research project of his choice — The history of street art. For two hours every day he reads, writes and explores this world. And we’ve been on excursions to help better understand this world.

For country kids the city offers colour and excitement, as well as an understanding of the context for how urbanisation makes ill the world’s worlds. Such illness, such an interruption to life, is the very medium for graffiti writers and street artists who are not well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

On another day the boys take old tip-discarded timber and build a new bridge over one of the swales in the garden. Zeph taught his younger brother to use tools and calibrate his eyes and arms to the task of making the home garden more functional and productive.

Zeph has moved into the Cumquat. Imagine being 14 years old and living in the little home you co-built! Each morning between 7-9am he works on his street art research project and during the day he heads out to work with various skilled friends in our community. On organic and permaculture farms, at light earth building sites, stone retaining wall constructions, selling local produce at a market stall, and learning traditional restoration work on an old church have all been part of his experience over the past two weeks since he left school.

And we’ve been sharing our skills too. Here Meg teaches the art of fermenting grains: sourdough bread and rejuvelac making.

And for the first time we have been eating our own oranges throughout the winter. Drying the peel to grind up and use to flavour fruit bread or using them as fire lighters to start our wood oven.

Most of the world’s worlds are flowering places, and these places that flower nurture and keep well the communities of the living. That this understanding is absent from the teaching that occurs in schools is why our culture is involved in permanent forms of destruction. To be involved in the sacred realm of buds and bees, seasons and cycles is what we want to pass on to our kids. And to further grow our understanding of what keeps life flowering, fruiting and making more life possible.

A short essay on the future, by Zephyr (aged 13)

Aug 6, 2015 | adaption, children's learning, climate change, community gardens, fossil fuels, renewables, share economy, solar energy, wind energy, Zephyr | 16 comments

What will my life look like without fossil fuels?

It’s likely there isn’t enough fossil fuels to last us for very much longer, especially the way we are using them, so what is the future going to look like? This is the question I’ve been asking myself over the last few months.

Jason Clarke, the Australian film and television actor, says “we are most likely going to have to collect our own water, generate our own electricity and grow our own food – and “share, if you will.” To me this says the main money economy will change too. Sharing could play a bigger role in the future, where people help each other more. The Rockefeller family are one of America’s richest families, made rich in part by their financial interests in fossil fuels. Recently the Rockefeller family pulled out their investments in fossil fuels saying they’re too “risky“. They are turning to renewable energy because they know they are the future. This has nothing to do with sharing but it does tell us something about what the future might look like?

Climate change

Climate change, which has largely been caused by fossil fuels, has not been taken seriously enough. What will be the effects if we let human-made climate change get worse? We are already seeing many more extreme weather events. Renewable energy will help. We have got solar and wind power in some areas but it’s not enough, everyone needs to be turning to renewables now. We will also need to reduce consumption and live without many things. Germany knows that climate change is a real threat. In 2008 their renewable energy production was at 9%. In 2014 it was around 30%. In ten years time Germany could be powered by only renewable energy. Germany is one of the few countries at the moment seriously trying to adapt to the future. If other countries follow their lead we would have a greater chance of reducing the worse effects of climate change.

Fossil fuel pollution

Pollution from fossil fuels contaminates natural environments and reduces biodiversity. Low biodiversity makes people sick, produces diseases. Pollution ruins animal’s habitats and their food sources. Pollution comes from cars, factories, toys, toothbrushes, packaging, computers, bikes, etc. Most things that are made today are made by using fossil fuels, so we will be living very differently without them. The benefits for the environment and peoples’ health will be huge.

What will my family do to minimise fossil fuel reliance in the future?

Here’s a list of things we will continue to do:

-Recycle and reuse paper, plastic, steel, timber, clothes, glass and cardboard

-Grow a food garden and keep chickens

-Compost waste and build soil quality

-Capture solar power and keep a low-carbon house

-Capture rain water and use it wisely

-Exchange food with neighbours and community friends

-Be involved in local community gardens and food swaps

-Walk, bicycle and use public transport

In summary

Going back to my original question “what would my life look like without fossil fuels”, there may be things that would be difficult, especially if climate change is allowed to fully develop. Perhaps food and other goods would be very expensive. There might not be as many cars and trucks on the road. There might be violent riots against the government and big businesses. The police and the military could have a bigger presence in public places. People may be very hungry. Some could be in great debt and be kicked out of their homes. Then again some may be much better off, they may be able to harvest their own food and renewable energy and not have to pay big business a cent.

Zephyr Ogden Jones has been an active member of Artist as Family since the collective began in 2009. His previous writing can be read here.

Summer time harvesting, writing, communing

Feb 14, 2015 | community, community gardens, drying apples, plum wine, plums, preserving, sourdough, writing | 4 comments

It’s been a time of great harvest, probably the best fruit season for a decade. All this food is free from a combination of street trees, neighbours and or our own garden.

It has been a time of writing, bringing our book together for a looming deadline.

A time of getting to know Maarten and Marlies and share skills in the garden as they spend a fortnight with us.

A time of preserving, stewing, fermenting and drying,

A time of making bread.

A time of making plum wine.

A time to work together.

A time to shovel shit. Thanks Mara!

A time to pull weeds. Thanks Ayumi, Maarten and Batiste!

A time to observe those more-than-human.

And a time to be photographed by Jay Town and written about by Rebekah Cavanagh.

Our first month home has been quite a time of adjustment. Although we are loving being back in our climate zone and among our community and all the free food of summer, we still miss life on the road. There is nothing quite like waking each morning and having nothing to think about except the day ahead.

Mobility and food (our first week home)

Jan 16, 2015 | apples, bikes, bulk food, chickens, community gardens, ethical food, family, food, food co ops, homelife, walking | 14 comments

Now we are back home we find not all that much has changed. Just as it was on the road, our home-life is also all about mobility and food; how we move around and how we sustain ourselves.

After such a long time on the back of their parents’ bikes, the boys were keen to get their own forms of mobility cranking. Zeph made roadworthy one of our old tip bikes and Woody gave his hand-me-down first bike a thorough going over. Thanks Carly!

We continued to bike and walk as our main forms of mobility. Woody now walks a few kms each day.

We pedalled up to the community garden working bee (blogged here), to contribute to the community gift economy going on there.

We painted up some new signs to be put up at two of the growing number of food gardens in our small town.

We helped Peter install the signs,

and we began to organise some music events that will take place in the Albert St garden to simply celebrate life there.

We biked up to our local food co-op to buy what we couldn’t freely obtain and to support a more environmentally aware monetised economy.

We walked, bussed, trained and caught a tram to visit Woody’s great grandfather (aged 96) in the metropolis.

We pushed our wheelbarrow over to Maria’s, our neighbour, to collect cockatoo-spoiled apples,

to feed to our girls.

We worked in our annual produce area planting some more food. This row: cayenne peppers as food-medicine for the winter.

We welcomed back Yael and Matt, Akira, Essie and Dante, who so wonderfully tended the house and garden while we were away and planted food for us to come home to. Thank you beautiful family!

We got busy in the kitchen making sauerkraut with cabbages that Matt and Yael had planted with the kids,

we revitalised our five year old sourdough starter and have been making bread daily,

we have made music each night before bed too,

and we have made our version of vegemite: miso paste, tahini, lemon juice, olive oil and garlic. Delish!

It is lovely to be home, and so far we haven’t got itchy pedals. After so many months of uncertainty, the comforts of home and community life have been both regenerative and restorative. We thank you, Dear Reader, for accompanying us on our journey in settling back into domestic life, and hope you too have both regeneration and rest cycling around in your neck of the woods.

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