Kameruka The Meeting Tree 2008

Today I am sit­ting at the farm on the edge of my bed drink­ing a fresh aro­mat­ic cap­puchin­no cof­fee and day­dream­ing. Once, a few weeks ago I would day­dream about the future work I would put into the farm and the ani­mals, today I day­dream about tomor­row, what­ev­er that will bring.

I love sit­ting here. I look out direct­ly at “kameru­ka” the meet­ing tree, with the bird feed­er stand­ing proud­ly at the foot of it. Behind Kameru­ka I can see all the way down to the dam in the back pad­dock and I can just see the top of the water from the bed. Over the next week I am going to intro­duce the ducks to the dam (duck dam) and build them a lit­tle *portable* shel­ter down there. I can see the bright blue sky and steadi­ly dark­en­ing pink tinged clouds through the branch­es of the tees. All around me is the sounds of “the bush” with bird twee­t­er­ing and call­ing each oth­er, mixed in with the occa­sion­al calls from the roost­ers. I can not see a sign of hooman devel­op­ment out my win­dow. Only nature and the joys and won­ders it has to share.

The yard is sprin­kled with var­i­ous ani­mals all over. The chick­ens are peck­ing for juicy fat grubs in small groups around the bird feed­er and water tanks and the ban­tams are pok­ing their fluffy heads out from the branch­es of the wil­low tree near­by. Arnold and Elwood are sprawled out down near the pen, catch­ing the last late after­noon sun’s rays shin­ing down from between the trees.

Apos­tle Birds, Par­rots, doves and pigeons are scat­tered amongst the chick­ens and ducks, all  fight­ing over the seeds I have strewn along through the grass. Not far away, Ter­rance the turkey is all fluffed out, whoom’ff­ing every minute or so while stand­ing guard over his wives Thel­ma and Louise along with his daugh­ter Tere­sa as they peck around the com­post heap. The goats are all down between my win­dow and the dam, they are start­ing to all lie down and posi­tion them­selves for the cold win­ter’s night ahead. Snowy is look­ing like she willl drop her baby any minute now.

The ani­mals all roam around the yard dur­ing the day now. There is no need to keep them penned. They choose to stay with me and they are free, freer than me .……I know. Every­thing is calm and peace­ful as they all gath­er the last feed before sleep time.

Yes­ter­day I sat down in the grass above the dam after I had moved the goats and giv­en them fresh water in their troughs and I relaxed, pos­si­bly for the first time in years. I sat watch­ing the goats gallo­vant­i­ng around with each oth­er and feed­ing on the green stub­bly weeds in the pad­dock. Dora was reach­ing up on her hind legs to nib­ble at the juicy young gum leaves off the trees and Tof­fee was stand­ing on her tree stump above every­one else, sur­vey­ing her domain.  There was a grunt behind me near where Glen was untan­gling lit­tle Glen the goats rope from the lat­est mess he had got him­self into. I swear when they cut his balls out his brain went with them. I turned to big Glen and watched behind him as Arnold and Elwood the pigs made their way nois­i­ly towards us.

The pigs have quite fas­ci­nat­ing unique per­son­al­i­ties. They scare me a lit­tle after see­ing them kill one of the chick­ens when she was injured and then tear her apart. I see the dan­ger­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties there. Maybe they have a fair bit of fer­al (wild) blood in them because they could turn quite fero­cious I think.

Arnold, the spot­ted pig is the leader of the pair. She is much larg­er and fat­ter than her black sis­ter and much more extro­vert­ed. They still don’t like human con­tact or to be touched, even by me and they express their dis­plea­sure very loud­ly in grunts and squeals if you reach out to them. If the oth­er ani­mals get in their way at the food trays they shove them aside with their snouts and stand on the trays, hoof deep in slop food, pig­ging away.

The water trough is fun­ny to watch. All the chick­ens line up along it drink­ing from it. When they have all had a good drink and the ducks have had a wash down, Arnold and Elwood come and have a bath. One at a time they climb into the trough and roll around in it hav­ing a grand old time.  The water trough is made out of a 44 gal­lon plas­tic drum which has been sliced in half so when the pigs jump in, the whole trough rolls from side to side with them. They seem to have more fun than most peo­ple at a water­park.

They showed anoth­er side yes­ter­day though. They trot­ted nois­i­ly up behind Glen towards me and Arnold came and sat down beside me. She stared at me. I stared at her. I wish I knew what was going on in her mind at that point in time… It was prob­a­bly some­thing like “where’s the food bitch, I’m hun­gry”. After all Arnold is a real pig and a con­stant food shred­ding machine.

I stayed still but still talked to Glen while me and Arnold sat there enjoy­ing each oth­ers com­pa­ny. Elwood looked at Arnold and I with a look of dis­gust and she soon squealed loud­ly and went and buried her­self in some soft dirt over near mid­night the bil­ly goat. Arnold just sat beside me, seem­ing­ly enjoy­ing the tran­quil­i­ty as much as I did.

They say pigs are intel­li­gent. I see that in many ways but I would more call it cun­ning. I have watched them walk up to a bar­ri­er I have just erect­ed and put their bull­doz­er snouts under­neath to lift it up. Then they just walk on through. “Pig Proof” is hard to achieve. They are great at dig­ging gar­dens, if that could be con­trolled in the area I want it, then I would­n’t need a rotary hoe. They bury their snout in the ground and just fur­row along with brute strength and force, not unlike a min­ing machine. When­ev­er I walk down the yard with the blue feed buck­et now I feel like the pied piper of Ham­lin. I am fol­lowed by two pigs at my heels try­ing to trip me up, 8 goats, 5 ducks, 4 and a half turkeys, a sprin­kling of roosers, var­i­ous silkies and ban­tams and 11 Rose­mary’s (the brown lay­er chick­ens are all called Rose­mary because you can’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between them. *sigh I real­ly need my cam­era back)

*inter­jec­tion.. I hate run­ning out of cof­fee halfway through a cig­a­rette while writ­ing a blog.…I’ll be right back…

That is bet­ter where was I.. ah the dam and the pigs…

Arnold sat with me and enjoyed the tran­quil­i­ty a while longer before she decid­ed I had no food for her so with a grunt towards her sis­ter, she trot­ted slow­ly down into the dam. Elwood wig­gled her­self up and fol­lowed. Soon the two pigs were in the dam togeth­er hav­ing a fan­tas­tic time “mud bathing” They made sure they were both smoth­ered in mud before they came back up the bank and shook them­selves like dogs do. They wan­dered off back up towards the pen.It is quite amaz­ing to watch the con­nec­tion between the two pigs. They flow togeth­er in move­ments, turns and speeds and always seem to head in same direc­tion. When they are sep­a­rat­ed they squeal to let each oth­er know where they are.

As I sat there I real­ized how con­tent inside I am. How relax­ing my envi­ron­ment has become. How much at peace I am from a tur­moiled soul.

It is all so relax­ing. It is calm­ing and peace­ful. I feel at peace. No mat­ter what “mur­phisms” are going on around me, I still feel calm and at peace inside. I know its the farm and the atmos­phere I have built here that is respon­si­ble for my inner peace.

A tiny pierc­ing sharp pain runs through my heart as I think about how soon it will all be tak­en from me. I have my gar­den seeds ready to plant out but no desire to do so. Will I be here to reap what i sow? Lit­er­al­ly.….

What will tomor­row bring?

The still­ness sur­round­ing me calms my soul and allows me to car­ry on. I have dreams, I have goals I have plans.…I have hope and aslong as hope remains.…… life is good…

Foot­note 1

I will answer com­ments on my pri­or blog short­ly. As I am writ­ing this my net is down once again. It went down for three hours late last night as well. I don’t get to spend much time on here and so I was rather piffed that it did it when I did have the time to sit down and “surf” myspace.

Foot­note 2

To update every­one about the goats. I have par­tial­ly solved the mys­tery. After speak­ing to the coun­cil and rais­ing my con­cenrs that this was a “nui­sance call” over my “nui­sance goats”, it was tracked down. At first the source of the mys­tery could­n’t be found but after a few hours and a call back it was explained… Some­one drove passed my house and “appar­ent­ly” saw my goats near or on the road so they rang coun­cil. Coun­cil came straight out and could find no goats any­where near the road but saw my goats way down near the house. So the paper­work was gen­er­at­ed because they had come out here.

We both remarked how strange the whole thing was and I had pre­vi­ous­ly explained that the goats nev­er went any­where near the front, the front fence or out the front gate. They are scared of their own shad­ow, let alone traf­fic and noise. They have nev­er been near there. As she said… coun­cil found NOTHING when they came out straight away so yeah.… hmmm. it was around the same day that the first house inspec­tion hap­pened.… co inci­dence or fun­ny pecu­liar I don’t know. But at least the coun­cil knows now that it may be a trou­ble­mak­er. They admit­ted it did­n’t come from any neigh­bours. In fact they did­n’t even have a name of who did report it.. sus eh..

Foot­note 3..

Franken­fish and his four wives are doing great. Of an after­noon they all gath­er near the top of the pond wait­ing for the girls to come out with their dai­ly feed rations. Frank is still about three times the size of his wives but they are all grow­ing and thriv­ing in the pond. They are quite pret­ty to watch swim­ming around and nib­bling at the food.

Foot­note 4

I can’t do much oth­er than sit here on the bed and gri­mace or cry out every now and then. I pulled my back out rather bad­ly when feed­ing the ani­mals so I am enjoy­ing the rest while I am forced to endure it.. I hate being ill or injured.. I tried lift­ing the feed­bags this morn­ing and now I can bare­ly move my right leg.. arggh­hh .. I’ll be right in a cou­pla days.. noth­ing keeps me down long..