Huon reflections …
As my final act before formally retiring from academia, I recently attended a conference in Seoul, South Korea. I found it wonderfully relaxing to sit and listen to all the papers with a sense of relief rather than the usual anxiety at all the reading I would need to do to keep up with the literature! When I was driven to the airport to return home after the conference, it was late afternoon and the blood red disk of the sun, which is so typical of parts of Asia, was sinking into the horizon. I suppose that I could have been forgiven for wallowing in nostalgia, but in fact I felt energised and invigorated at the thought of what was waiting to be accomplished down the Huon.
Cath and I embarked on our Tasmanian adventure in the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic in August of 2020. Since then, the little community on the farm has grown somewhat. At the outset it was just Cath and me and our collie, Pepper. After we moved down here permanently our venerable cat, Gracie, joined us and then about 7 months ago Knut, the Maremma, arrived. Pepper is a still a maniac, tearing around chasing both light and shade and trying to herd anything that moves. Knut is more grounded (not surprising given his size), ambling around sniffing the air like a polar bear on the hunt for a seal. Gracie is luxuriously dismissive of all the madding crowd’s ignoble strife and remains curled up in front of the fire whenever possible.
In terms of other creatures, last October we hatched eight chicks from eggs. They turned out to be evenly split between roosters and hens and we lovingly nurtured them through chick status into fully grown birds. Despite our best ministrations, we lost one of the roosters to something that looked like a problem with his crop, but the remaining birds are all well. Thus far the hens’ laying record is a bit patchy but on the up! We ate our first two eggs for breakfast with great ceremony about two weeks ago and then yesterday Cath baked a cheesecake made entirely from our own freshly laid eggs. Thus far the total count is just about a round dozen! As patchy as our egg record is, it isn’t as bad as our efforts at raising geese and guinea fowl. The wedge tail eagle (aquila audax) is a magnificent bird. We have a nesting pair that soar on the ridges above the property. Unfortunately, over the course of the last few weeks we have discovered that they like hunting on misty mornings. We have now lost two geese (Maverick and Iceman) to wedge tails. Only our female (Goose) survives at this stage. We hope to put her in with the chickens for company but haven’t managed to lure her away from the neighbour’s dam. Even worse, we have lost five of our original six guinea fowl keets to predation by brown falcons. Knut, the Maremma, is going to have to step up, but he can’t guard us and everything else as well. We are now considering a guardian donkey!
Yesterday was the winter solstice and the garden is largely devoid of life. We are, however, looking forward to spring with more than just the usual anticipation because we have great hopes that the garden will put on a spectacular show. The bare, over-grazed paddock that we inherited in the winter of 2020 has been transformed into a patchwork of garden beds with treasures liberally sprinkled around. Our latest venture is the “Japanese” bed which features a massed planting of azaleas and Japanese maples. Further from the house, the veggie patch is ready for a sustained effort as soon as the weather improves a little. Despite the wet and cold we have managed to mark out and dig the holes for our new stone fruit grove which is located on the slope just below the apple orchard. We are expecting 13 bare-rooted fruit and nut trees (apricots, peaches, nectarines, satsuma, figs, almonds, quinces) to arrive any minute. If they do as well as the apple trees, we will be well pleased.
At the outset this blog was really just a vehicle for sharing some photos with family and friends. Somewhere along the line it morphed into a historical record of our progress; a written chronicle of our successes and failures. I now note, with no little amazement, that this post is number 100 and at the time of writing the blog has received approximately 9800 views. Today my eldest son reminded me that when you reach a century you simply mark your guard and bat on. I guess that is what I'll have to do ...
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