Envy and Abundance

Good evening y’all. Another week of life and growth has come and gone. The plants are taller, the girls are bigger, and we have all learned a few new things. The lessons that Matt and I have learned aren’t as clear as the girls’ newly acquired skills and knowledge, but you can’t go a week in life without learning something. One new fact I will retain is what a huntsmen spider looks like, and that it is harmless. It hunts insects and its leg span is larger than the palm of my hand. I have seen them and been told this before, but somehow resting on the ceiling above my sleeping baby’s crib this reassurance from Matt stuck more this time. The rustling of leaves outside my bedroom window as I write is a curiosity. You never know what creature will turn up on this land. Today a peacock wandered over!!??? He must have heard about the good food Keith offers all refugee animals at our place. Then there was the deer swimming across our dam the other day. Deer are rare non-native animals who were brought over for a venison industry that failed, leaving a bunch of lost wild deer. Farmers shoot them to prevent major crop loss. This would explain why the swimming deer never stopped for lunch, despite the good food it may have found.

Perhaps if the deer knew I was preparing a huge batch of granola to sell at the market, it might have come for a visit. This weekend I packed the girls up in the truck full of tables, chairs, homemade Macadamia Bread, Nutty Granola, seedlings, pitchers of Iced Herbal Tea, toys and food. I spent a few days preparing: gathering ingredients, packaging, making labels, testing different herbal tea combinations, baking, potting up lettuce, celery, tomatoes, and a few abundant herbs from the garden to sell as seedlings. I had no expectations of actually making a profit, it was just for the fun of spending a day in the midst of the market. I tried not to put too much energy into preparation, saving a lot of work to be done at the market with the girls. With a little help from Matt, Keith and Mary, Genevieve, Jacinta and I made it to the market before 8am to set up and sell our goods alongside my friend Trish who was selling lemon butter and lemon cordial. We had a nice time, consumed a lot of each others’ goods, made it through the heat, took turns working the stall, and even sold a few items.

Markets, as I have mentioned before, are like big garage sales here. People come to sell their own junk and others come to buy it. Much to my chagrin, they do not come to buy food. I thought perhaps that it was the lack of food that left nothing but junk to buy. But it’s just a big rummage sale and that’s the way most people like it. The ambiance was great: good music, good people watching, a nice location under massive pine trees, and interesting people to meet. Perhaps one of the lessons learned this week is that the old idea of meeting weekly at a market to buy and sell fresh local produce just isn’t going to happen here. I was very lucky to live in Detroit where there were plenty of local weekly farmer’s markets. American efforts on this front are fairing rather well compared to our area here in Australia. It seems strange that out in the country where farms are abundant, the demand for farmer’s markets is so small. Most people are happy to buy whatever they put in the fruit shop or supermarket and don’t worry about its origin, as long as it is the right price. This seems to be the case in America also. There are always a few local items at the fruit shops here, and this is a selling point. I think farmers either sell to the shops or ship the produce to Sydney because city people will pay more for it. It could be that “wasting” a day at the market to sell very little is less enticing than selling to the local fruit shop.

Having spent the wee hours of the morning baking bread and granola, then watching it go relatively unappreciated at the market, I can now understand why my friends gave up selling their organic produce at the markets. Selling directly sounds great, but it gets too personal. Justin used to sit at the market all day, watching his beautiful produce wilt from the heat, trying not to think about the time and energy he had spent the day before harvesting it all. I had a lovely time with Trish and my girls, luckily coming with no grand expectations of raking in the money. We’ll see if I try again. It’s Monday now and I am still catching up on sleep.

It’s hard to catch up on sleep when one child never naps, the other one rises early, catnaps and goes to bed late. I do make the most of my long days though, no longer begrudging Jacinta for her lack of a nap. I do get a little annoyed when Evie stays up past 8pm, and in my fatigue, begrudge this sweet, innocent little child for her sleeplessness. This is the reason it has taken me three nights to write this one journal entry. Even coffee fails to keep me awake. Earlier I chuckled to myself as Evie continually pursued the music book as I tried to play the guitar thinking that someone must be slipping her some caffeine as a cruel joke on us. She is always pleasant company, good thing because she is the kind of company that doesn’t take the hint when the party is over. Jacinta is usually good company, but can be quite moody these days. I have realized that part of her moods can be explained by our lack of routine. So this week I tried to establish some routines, to eliminate her efforts to choose if and when we do things. She likes to spend time out in the garden, but often thinks to herself that staying inside, to do something like play kangaroos with Pop sounds more enticing than going outside. I used to give in and allow her to stay in if someone else would play with her, fearing her negative energy throughout our stay in the garden.

This week we started the new regime: gardening every morning first thing after breakfast before it gets hot. Breakfast, garden until it gets hot or we get tired, morning tea, bath then whatever else may be. Of course children need routine, that much choice in the day is overwhelming. Left to my own devices, I am usually not a routine kind of person. I leave my options open and see which way the wind is blowing each day. Jacinta has been left to my daily whims for a while, and has done her best to enjoy it all. Evie is still a baby, and for now, she is just as whimsical as me. Perhaps if I allow her a bit of routine she may learn to nap, we shall see.

Gardening has been a great joy this week. Genevieve just loves the mud, her favourite toys are sticks and leaves. I have finally given up bringing down toys and a picnic blanket. She instantly escapes into the dirt anyway and finds some “nature” to chew. Jacinta has enjoyed digging up lettuce seedlings to transplant, eating borage flowers, watering plants, planting corn, transplanting basil seedlings, digging up compost, going for wagon rides, sprinkling compost over the plants she really wants to grow (strawberries and blueberries) and of course, harvesting strawberries. Sometimes she’ll just zone out and sing to herself, draw on her chalk board, make cakes for animals out of green fallen fruit and leaves, or munch on carrots, celery, or baby spinach. No doubt though, she never disagrees when I suggest going back up to the house. We accomplished quite a bit and had a lovely time. Genevieve had a few naps on my back, but also had a lot of play time in the dirt. Best of all, there were a lot of strawberries to be eaten, and even Genevieve joined in.

Routine has helped Jacinta, but another major issue is that jealousy has entered her little world. She does not know the word itself, but the feeling is very real right now.
No longer is Evie welcome to knock down her the towers she has built, she is gated off with pillows and blankets. Sometimes you can hear Jess’s frustrated yell, “NOOOO!” from the other room. Rightly so, her inventions are becoming more complicated by the day, as Evie becomes more mobile and destructive. Jacinta now has to either join in while I feed Evie by climbing on my back, cuddling in close and grabbing Evie’s hands or distracting her or she leaves in search of some other human to love. When Genevieve is on the other side of the room and Jacinta is feeling particularly threatened, she will lay claim to the “mama” and make sure she gets her turn. Luckily, she is not always feeling vulnerable, and still happily plays with her little sister. They sat together in a cardboard box (boat) and played for quite a while the other day, giggling and smiling all the while. If Genevieve has a good nap, I am sure to spend some alone time with my big girl. It sounds silly though, I always spend good time with her, it’s just shared time. Genevieve is so easily entertained that half the time she is awake she plays happily on her own with toys. I suppose it is the other half that kills Jacinta, when she is not the center of the world. Preschool may do wonders for the girl. Learning that she’s one of many will be hard at first but a relief in the end.

Genevieve is a determined little girl, she knows exactly where she wants to go and can now get there. She may bonk her head on a chair, a corner, a door, or the floor on the way, but her little crawl is quite deliberate. Each little step is full of purpose. Most often, the steps are accompanied by excited panting and lead to the dog who doesn’t appreciate the attention, a dirty pair of shoes or a brightly colored toy. She is already trying to stand up and can do it successfully on the hefty basket filled with musical instruments. We wish she’d slow down; crawling, sitting up and getting a tooth in just a few weeks is a bit much already.

Mainly I am mothering, but besides that I was able to teach my little French class this week and try a few new recipes. My favourite things to cook are new things, especially making things that I may have eaten a million times but never created myself. In this category so far I learned to make mayonnaise, salsa, jam, yogurt, and bread. I have just added to the list: ketchup. I made six bottles and had fun doing it. It turned out pretty good, and has encouraged us to eat more French fries this week. This didn’t bother Matt  Matt has kept busy fathering, working on websites, studying counselling, reading, music publishing, mowing the lawn, and digging the big hole which will soon be our root cellar. He made a footing for the wall of the cellar with some cement which will also serve as a footing for the veranda-to-be. It’s hard to imagine a cellar beneath us, pondering how much I’ll need to grow to fill it.

There is hope though, things are growing beautifully. Life is abundant in my garden, in my family, and in so many places. My sister is pregnant for the second time. Growing, growing, we are all growing. Yesterday I had over an hour on my own in the garden, what a rare and beautifully contemplative hour. I hilled potatoes, and while digging up dirt to throw on the potatoes I found little spinach plants which had blown over from last years spinach gone to seed. I gave them a new home in the hopes of future spinach salads. I staked tomato plants which were also volunteers, I fed celery plants which had self sowed also. I thinned out lettuce plants and gave them new homes among the garlic stalks. Everywhere I weeded, I discovered more volunteer plants that I would soon be able to eat: celery, fennel, anise hyssop, strawberries, watermelons, pumpkins. I planted many seeds a month ago that failed because the chickens dug them up, but right here among the weeds were cucumber plants already growing with no help from me.

This is permaculture, the garden grows itself and chooses what will thrive. This is pure evidence that life is GOOD and abundant. In my beautiful hour alone, I thought back to a visit in Seattle to an organic farm that had regular female prisoners working on the farm. These women got to see what I see, that life is full of goodness. They left with hope and dreamt of a better life. So much crime and societal illness comes from the failure to see that life, creation left to its own devices is innately good. So my blind optimism has changed its goal of weekly markets and everyone eating in season to getting murderers, rapists, and thieves to live a few years on the land and watch goodness growing up out of the dirt. The only hitch is…who will take the risk of farming next door to the criminals? That’s a big hitch, yes. Don’t worry, I am laughing at myself here. The English sent their criminals away to do this very thing. They decided to send them all to Australia, this was their answer to the neighbour question.

Enough of my ponderings, I bid you good night. Genevieve has woken three times
since I began writing, what a hopeless sleeper. Here’s wishing you a week with endless reminders that life is good, and a lot of good sleep.

Peace,
Shana