Permaculture week tour

 22.3.26

 

We had a big day yesterday and did a tour here for Permaculture week. This year we had helpful nice Autumn weather and everyone could look round outside as well as examining the house. Over the last few years, it has been too late in the season for the gardens to look there best but this time the autumn joy sedums were at the height of their display and the leaves on the Virginia creeper were turning red.

 

The zucchinis, pears and nashi pears were covered in fruit and Cher had cleaned up the brick paths and swept up dead leaves.  Josh got up before everyone else and set up the worm tea brewing tank and pump and Edd helped me move the worm farm over beside Josh’s set up in the car port. This tidied everything up but it also is a start of my retreat into the house site and away from the ruins. My plan is aimed at cutting down the amount of work we do.

 

Today we have another glorious Autumn Day and it is hard to connect with the threatened fuel shortage we will probably have to deal with. The government is blaming panic buying as the reason some arears have no diesel for the farmers who need to get their crops in.  My family members with electric cars are looking smug. We are very relieved that Al has cancelled his family visit to Spain. P and the kids were going to stay there for 3 months with Al coming back here for a month in the middle. This plan no longer appeals.

 

I have joined a resilience project group and am working on plans to try and help people adapt to disasters and changes. I am now also on the community centre committee. Doing nothing in the face of impending disaster was depressing so I have decided to get involved rather than just worry.

water tanks are filling again

5.3.26

 

Suddenly everything changed!  Edd had been struggling to keep a water supply for everyone.  He had moved pumps and laid pipe from the last resort tanks and had pumped water around until the spare tanks could be used. Before this work was completed, we had huge thunder storms that caused floods in the city and were followed by a wet humid week.

 

This was a welcome change and has saved the life of several trees. The fig tree lost all it’s leaves and so did the gingko. The sugar maples down the drive are probably unrecoverable.  Growing vegetables has been difficult and we are eating lots of zucchinis and silver beat.

 

I have advertised the young goats for sale but so far no-one is interested.  We tried to put the kids we have weaned in with the rest of the herd because they were damaging an oak tree. It was too soon and the kids started drinking from all the milking goats. Edd has put electric fencing round the oak tree and we moved the offenders back were they used to be.

 

We are stressed about what is going on in the world. We are stressed about inflation and the sky rocketing housing prices here. Everything is moving onto AI really quickly. Our kids use it for their work but we have not found a useful way to get it to help us yet.  The awful thing is that we can no longer say seeing is believing. We trust no-one.  This is a very uncomfortable situation to cope with.

 

Most of our local doctors are from Asia and the middle east. Edd’s GP is from Iran and he is kind and good to deal with. We trust him more than we trust our politicians. He has family in Iran so he is more stressed than we are. It is all horrible and hiding away on the farm is not a solution.