We haven’t published a song for a while. Must be winter coming – a time for singing, reading, recouping and culture making.
Recognise the tune? John Roderick Bannerman wrote the original Gaelic song Màiri Bhàn (Blond Mary) in 1934. The lyrics were subsequently changed and put into English by Hugh Stevenson Roberton in 1936. Roberton’s lyrics had little resemblance to the original Gaelic and became known as Mairi’s Wedding. Countless people and bands have covered this song. Then in around 2022, we overhauled the words again on a busking and hitchhiking trip up north. This version includes both our own lyrics and arrangement. Thanks Johnny Bannerman!
And thanks to Hassan Lahrech (The Sound Cell) for recording us live at Tree Elbow a few years back.
Hello Dearest Reader. <waving hand emoji with dirty fingernails>
Greetings from Tree Elbow where we have been busy with late summer labours. In accordance with the Djaara six seasons it is Wi and Kurnmil time, and so we’ve been filling up the wood store and the cellar, getting out into the forest each Monday with the Forest & Free kids, writing a new song, and planning two up coming house & garden tours.
Our song, News of the world, shows a little of the spirit here, or as our mate David Holmgren might say, ‘Revolution disguised as gardening.’ We hope you enjoy our latest musical missive. Here’s the video clip that accompanies it,
and here is the audio-only version (for low bandwidth, gallantly frugal friends).
~
A number of readers have requested we run some more tours, so before we bunker down for winter we are going to open up our home and garden once again. Twice. You are warmly invited to book a place on one of them.
House & garden tour details
Dates: Saturday April 5, 10am – 4pm andSaturday May 3, 10am – 4pm. The School of Applied Neopeasantry, Tree Elbow University, Daylesford, beautiful Djaara Mother Country. Address supplied with booking.
Topics covered include: community-sufficiency, household economies, replacing fiat with compost, subsistence resilience, access to land, ecological economics, permacultural neopeasantry, fermentation for both thrift and health, organic food that low income households can afford, green gym (or active economics), children in the household biome, transitioning to a non-reliance on predatory capitalism, future proofing by skilling up, food-medicine and active disease prevention, trading fear for empowerment, self-care, unintentional communities and neighbourhoods, and composting ideology with joyous sleeves-rolled-up pragmatism.
The tour includes: Sharings from Meg, Patrick and (likely) Woody; morning tea and a neopeasant lunch.
Cost: $100 per person, $85 concession.
Who is it for: The day is informationally dense so we request 12 year olds and up only, please (babes in arms are most welcome). Participants will need to navigate uneven surfaces and at times rough terrain.
Hello! It’s been a while. So many spores of thought, of doing, of feeling and living have moved around us in these parts. A catch up post is imminent. However, in the meantime, we have a little sharing to offer.
This mid summer has seen the birth of a new song in the family. We sing and play it here, juxtaposed with 1950s super8 footage of family taken by Patrick’s grandfather, Fred Jones. It shows a post war time when life was less hectic and far less mediated.
It’s a peace song. The lyrics recognise that each of us has work to do to bring about peace and end war. Physical war. Ideological war. It’s a reminder song, for us, and anyone else who finds resonance with it.
By not giving power to those who construct conflict and by recognising the conflict we create within ourselves that feeds external conflict in our homes, communities and beyond, is for us the dance of consciousness.
This song was first inspired by Krishnamurti’s book of the same name.
Oh, and this is Lilly Pilly, laying beside Krishnamurti. She’s the newest mammal member of the family. More about her another time.
So, without further ado, here is Can conflict end? written by Patrick, edited by Meg and featuring the vocals of Patrick, Meg and Woody, alongside Patrick’s blackwood wattle guitar finger picking and Meg’s pear wood recorder playing.
Gratitude, in advance, for your deep listening.
Here is the audio-only version.
We welcome your comments, Dear Reader. What came up for you while listening and/or watching?
Yesterday we sketched out a new song, and we’re sharing it here for those who like our songs that are still bubbling away in the Pandorean brewing pot. It’s a peace song with a pinch of trickster energy. The first two lines of the chorus derive from one of our favourite quotes, ‘The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right’ by Hendrik Ibsen. We hope you enjoy our latest musical offering.
It’s the cult of
having to be right
It’s the game of
proving your might
But have you sought to
lay down your gloves
and walk that gentle road
home to your loves?
The majority is always wrong
the minority is rarely right
Can we sing a different song?
Can we give away this fight?
Strong positions on
global affairs
Stirs the guns of
ideological warfare
We may be right or
we may be wrong
Or perhaps we could be listening
to someone else’s song
The majority is always wrong
the minority is rarely right
Can we sing a different song?
Can we give away this fight?
The majority is always wrong
the minority is rarely right
Can we sing a different song?
Can we give away this fight?
[Who bombs never wins Right and wrong is the game that kills our friends Each of us lose when we parrot the news – The experts paid to spruik the establishment’s views]
Hello pickled turnip and purslane lovers, introducing… a new Artist as Family music video to celebrate Meg on her 49th birthday, featuring Maya Green on fiddle.
Now for the recipe:
First:
Add your cleaned turnips to your jar. We pickle ours whole, but feel free to slice yours first. They will taste the same, but will ferment faster if they are sliced. Pick your purslane and wash if needed. As purslane grows along the ground, it can collect soil. Break off the leaves and smaller stems. Keeping these on will turn your ferment into mush. We only ferment the larger stems. Ideally wait until the stems turn red in colour, but dark green is fine too. Add the stems into a second jar. We pickle the turnips and stems separately as they ferment at different rates. Keep the turnip leaves for cooking, and the purslane leaves and smaller stems for eating fresh.
To each jar add:
Pepper corns, mustard seeds, fresh dill or dill seeds, bay leaves, peeled garlic cloves, slices of fresh lemon or dried lemon. For the brine: 1 tablespoon of salt (non-iodised and without caking agent in it) per 2 cups of water. We use salt from Loch Iel (the Pink Lake) and rainwater.
Fermenting:
Make sure all the solids in your jars remain under the liquid and that they stay that way for the duration of the fermenting process. You can keep the lid on your jar tightly, loosely or not at all. As the veggies begin to ferment they will release carbon dioxide and brine may spill from your jars, so it’s best to place each jar on a plate or bowl to catch the liquid. You may need to top up each jar if a lot spills out. The time your veggies take to ferment depends mainly on the temperature of your home. The hotter the environment, the faster the process. Fermenting is a relationship. Don’t be afraid to taste the brine with a spoon each day to witness the transformation, to embody it, and so the brine can be part of your development too. The brine will start out clear and will turn cloudy. After 10 days or so in a summer home, your veggies might be ready. Taste them. If they are too crunchy, let them ferment for a few days longer. Once you are happy with the flavour and crunchiness, put your jars somewhere cold, such as a fridge, cool cupboard or cellar, to slow the fermentation process right down.
Eating:
We like to put our pickles out in a bowl and just munch them, or chop them up and add them to summer salads.
The community garden beside the library in our home town has been a site of commons reclamation since a small bunch of us occupied this so-called ‘crown’ land, twelve or so years ago. This little patch of non-monetised, unenclosed, available-to-all organic food commons sits as the only ecologically complex environment in the central business district of Daylesford; a town that sells mostly unnecessary things to tourists in service to the dominant economic orthodoxy – hypertechnocivility.
Last night we gathered to celebrate the solstice, re-commoning and Djaara Mother Country at this bright moment – the longest day.
Artist as Family has been playing music with our friend Maya Green for a while now, and we put together a small set of songs to share with our fellow community gardeners at this gathering. At our first gig as Dirty Trees, we featured poems by an anonymous ancestor, William Blake and Martha Postlethwaite that we’ve set to music, sharing some of the wisdom and lyricism we’ve been holding dear this year.
In this video we play an instrumental version of Mairi’s Wedding (also known as Marie’s Wedding, the Lewis Bridal Song, or Scottish Gaelic: Màiri Bhàn AKA ‘Blond Mary’). It is a Scottish folk song originally written in Gaelic by John Roderick Bannerman (1865–1938).
We hope you enjoy this little garden-brewed moment as you slide into the summer’s downtime or into winter’s hibernation, wherever you are.
Thank you to Blackwood Ulman Jones and Anthony Petrucci for your filming craft, and thanks to you, Dear Subscriber, for staying with us in our various forms this year.
A few days earlier we celebrated solstice at David Holmgren and Su Dennett’s permaculture home, Melliodora. The mens’ Firechoir sang at this event six months after they formed, at the winter solstice. Patrick has so enjoyed facilitating this group with Anthony Petrucci as choirmaster and the men look forward to sitting in circle and singing with the women’s group, facilitated by Meg, in 2023.
Much neopeasant love for a festive and heartfelt season of joy,
