Process

I’ve been putting off writing anything much on the blog for sometime because I have not had any complete stories to share. There is no way to narrativise the happenings here. Or, if there was a complete-ish story to tell, for example the case of our potato harvest last December, I missed the moment. It seemed weird to use the time I had today to update the blog to write about the potato harvest, so long after the fact. That said, we did plonk the baby atop the wheelbarrow of potatoes in an attempt to “Anne Geddes” our farming triumph (poor thing doesn’t look very comfy though!) and we did enjoy those potatoes for several months. We are currently enjoying pumpkins, pickled chillies, herbs of all stripes and I’m having some luck with seedlings after a very helpful seed raising mix workshop at Milkwood’s Skygarden at 107, Craig is in the throws of building an IBC aquaponics system, Sophie’s concrete removal project is pondifying the back rock platform and birds are bathing in the newly uncovered shallow pools and Gabrielle’s Garden of Bad Flowers is going wild.

Life is a good mess of these things, plus baby, baby feeding, baby pooing, nappy washing, compost turning, seed planting, chores (sometimes), writing lectures/papers/articles, sneaking out to work and talks, having dinner (parties?) with housemates and neighbours and friends, bathing, singing, thinking, running, teaching, working, collaborating, swimming, camping, planning and all sorts of other activities ending in -ing (going to Art as a Verb at Artspace, for instance). I didn’t want to flood the internet with more half baked stories or, worse still, half arsed attempts to synthesise a story that wasn’t ready to be told. I also didn’t want this page to turn into a fail blog about things we haven’t grown, harvested or pickled.

This whole Farm thing is a process. While there is an abundance of information out there about how to succeed and whole centres committed to the pursuit of Excellence, Triumph and Greatness, the Farm project is partly a rejection of more conventional models of success, excellence, triumph and greatness and the active pursuit of something else. But if the path to conventional kinds of success (say: a good steady job that actually exists on the job market) these days is not entirely clear or safe, then the path into a good steady job that doesn’t actually exist is decidedly less so.

In sum, this blog is now a process journal and a place for the sharing of interesting fragments, photographs and part stories.

Stories of the house down the road that is for sale. The major selling point is the “potential view from a second story addition”

Stories of Stanley eating dirt.

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Stories of our perverse papaya tree.IMG_3998-1

See you soon.