MORE ABOUT TREES

Some of my readers are wondering what it was that Peter Spencer wanted to do on his property. I’ll quote the words of Kahn Spencer posted on Agmates.
The people on this forum and those all over the world that are supporting Peter in his stand deserve to know what his motives are. At this point money is obviously a major concern, the bottom line is Saarahnlee and many other properties are no longer a viable business due to this legislature. So yes money is part of it but it is not the sole reason or the main reason for his stand.
The irony is that not only does Peter not have plans to do any major clearing on the property, he has spent a great deal of time and money researching and designing a forestry sustainability plan for the property. He had a goal several years ago, I remember because he would talk about it all the time when we were children, that goal was to selectively harvest and replant a variety of, mostly native, trees. By doing this the farm would be able to sustain a very controlled form of forestry without ever causing a significant reduction in the total vegetation. It was in essence a vegetation management plan. This devastating legislature will not even allow him to do that.

For details about the legislation and how Peter Spencer has not been able to get a hearing in the courts of Australia, go to http://loveforlife.com.au

Those of you who have read my November posts related to Peter Andrew’s book Back from the Brink will know that water not only flows over land, but travels downhill beneath the soil to our gullies and rivers, unless it is all taken up by the thirsty Eucalyptus saplings now stealing two percent of Queensland grassland each year. They are nothing more than woody weeds but are protected under the State vegetation laws

Romeo Lane Corner 2006

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SMOKE FILLS OUR VALLEY

We are experiencing a period of hot, dry weather. This is what the farmers need to ripen their tomato crops before Christmas. Have you ever noticed how expensive tomatoes are at Christmas time? The crops in the northern districts like Bundaberg and Bowen are finished and the backpackers are moving south looking for work. Here in the cool mountain highlands of the border between Queensland and New South Wales our tomato plants can not be planted until the frosts are finished. This year the farmers on the Granite Belt had heavy rain in May to fill their farm dams and the weirs across the creeks and Severn River. They have water to irrigate their crops and now have been blessed with a heatwave to encourage the quick growth and early ripening of their vegetables.

But last night the weather forecast for today included a severe fire warning. And yes, I awoke this morning to the sight of our valley filled with smoke.

Bushfire smoke

With visibility reduced by this pall of smoke I do not yet know where the fire is situated and if it is headed in our direction. What I do know is that thanks to our foresight in clearing trees in close proximity to our house and undertaking a controlled burn of our country at the end of winter, we will not need to evacuate our home. Read the rest of this entry »

A TALE ABOUT DAMS

To write in support of Peter Spencer and why he is on a hunger strike I need to tell my readers how country Australian land owners are being robbed of their rights to utilize their land. I will explain how our Australian Government can act, when it so chooses, to over-rule State Governments. Our farming property Das Helwig Haus B&B is free hold title, but increasingly what we are allowed to do on our land is being eroded by State and Federal laws. I do not have the freedom to now clear land, build dams or light fires - freedoms taken for granted by my Australian forebears.

Our fallow farm land

On the Agmates site Rob Wass explained How our Politicians (at all levels) Appropriated our land (property). Read the rest of this entry »

REMNANT VEGETATION

At last it appears that the main stream media in Australia seems to consider there could be a story in the hunger strike of Peter Spencer. There are to be a number of radio interviews today. See Peter Spencer.

It is my intention to continue writing daily posts and illustrating them with my photographs to discuss some of the State laws which have been imposed on country people in recent years. As an illustration, consider a frog dropped into hot water. It will immediately respond by jumping out. However, if you place a frog in tepid water and slowly increase the heat the poor thing will stay there until it can no longer jump.

Such has been the encroachment on the lives of country Australians by various State governments in the past twenty years. Each issue was hardly worth a fight until now when we suddenly find ourselves powerless in the courts of Australia. This is another issue that I’ll elaborate on at another time, but the courts of Australia do not have the power to over-rule State court decisions. It has been a hypocritical act by our Australian Federal Government to encourage State governments to introduce laws that then allow our Federal Prime Minister to claim the credit for meeting greenhouse gas emission targets, without the affected people having any right to claim restitution via the courts of Australia.

As many of you know we have a beautiful river frontage and that we have a license (another tax) to draw water from this river for irrigation purposes. I have not utilized this license to grow commercial crops. We have only drawn water for the garden and to irrigate the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies each spring.

Severn River

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EUCALYPTUS FORESTS = HOT BUSH FIRES.

As always happens when people people join a FORUM to support a person or project they start to discuss other matters. Thus while I’m writing these posts in support of Peter Spencer I can not do much more that let people know why this courageous man has gone on a hunger strike. It must also be noted that every time I write the words Peter Spencer the powerful Google search engines will recognize his name and give it more prominence.

I posted my words yesterday on http://fayhelwig.com supporting the stand of Peter Spencer, who is on a hunger strike to draw attention to the lack of compensation for Australian country people who have had their rights to utilize their land, as they see fit, taken from them by Qld and NSW Government land grabs. I gained inspiration to write another post after reading comments on http://agmates.ning.com/group/peterspencerhungerstrike

Despite the fact that CO2 is a potent plant food, and that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would only result in a rise of 1 degree Celsius, why are we tying up vegetation? Wouldn’t it sequester more CO2 if trees were grown, the timber utilized, and then more trees grown in their place? Instead we have the ridiculous situation where vegetation is grown until senescence, then it falls down, cant be harvested or collected and adds to situation such as the recent ‘Black Friday’ here in Victoria? Comment from Colin J. Ely

Saplings clean much more CO2 out of the air and produce more O2. A plantation of new trees will help, rather than leaving the existing trees. Perhaps a compromise could be reached, a part of the land could be used as a plantation which could be used for logging once it has reached maturity. Just a thought. Comment by Leith Carnie.

Bushfire at Glen Aplin

This was the view from our farm boundary fence in October 2002 of a bush fire, on the other side of our Glen Aplin valley, which took the life of a local woman. The little clearing on the hill in the centre of this photo above is the Felsberg Winery. Read the rest of this entry »

OUR GLEN APLIN HOME

Our 14 hectare (32 acre) farm is situated at 113 Mt. Stirling Road, Glen Aplin, Queensland, Australia. Glen is a Scottish word for a valley and the first Government surveyor who came through this region was a Scottish born man with the surname of Aplin, who named this pretty valley after himself. It became a valley of small land owners growing stone fruits or vegetables and grazing a few head of cattle. Within the past 20-30 years tourist enterprises like wineries, restaurants and guest accommodation have brought changes to the region.

Our home, Das Helwig Haus B&B, is situated in the forested area at the centre of this photograph, which was taken from the Felsberg Winery on the eastern ridge of the valley.

Valley view

To give you a greater appreciation of where we live, below is a view taken with a telescopic lens. Try to place that road, directly above the cluster of trees. The roofs of our buildings are barely visible behind the forest of eucalyptus trees.

Das Helwig Haus B&B

Over beside the road, you can just see the golden wildflowers above our entrance drive way.

Entrance wildflowers

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THE HEN HOUSE

Throughout most of my life I have lived on farms where the previous owners had constructed  poultry pens. These were rough structures with some form of shed cover, like a rusty iron tank split in half to form a roof, and a wire netting run where hens could forage during the day. Due to the prevalence of foxes in country regions poultry must be securely penned at night.

This year I needed to use the existing poultry pens for my growing flock of geese which led me to the decision to create a new enclosure, but where? As my readers know I’m always looking for ways to recycle materials and my projects usually serve more than one purpose.

When we purchased this farm 17 years ago it already had an igloo garden shed frame. I bought a plastic cover to go over this igloo frame, with thoughts of having a hot house in the winter. Although I have a beautiful garden, I’m not good with pot plants. Even my seed raising beds are established directly in soil out in the larger garden. This shed sat idle, within my garden begging to be put to use.

Igloo garden shed

When my infant granddaughters came to live with us, the idea occurred to me that I should convert this igloo into a hen house where the little girls could feed the ‘chooks’ and gather the eggs. Read the rest of this entry »

THE VALUE OF SHADE

Recently, when reading Peter Andrew’s book Back From the Brink, it made me take a good look at my upright willow trees and ask myself if I was utilizing them to full advantage. I planted these trees in 1998 at the end of a drainage system to serve three purposes.

• To soak up excess water
• To create a green view  behind our vegetable garden
• To provide a wind break

I quickly became disenchanted with these trees, as they spread their roots out into the area where I had previously planted pumpkins. It was a space where the pumpkins could spread. But, with the willow trees stealing all the moisture from the ground, my pumpkin crops began to fail. We ripped the ground and pulled up the roots, but within 6 months the roots had again colonized the area. The past couple of years this ground has remained bare. The trees were serving their intended purpose, but they had restricted my use of this portion of my garden.

Pruning willow

The willow trees had grown too tall. In August 2008 while they were deciduous, I hired men to reduce the height of the trees by cutting them back with a chainsaw. I used the solid wood for the fires and the twiggy branches for support structures for climbing beans and sweet-peas. When they grew again they had a bushier shape. I have seen trees like these repeatedly cut back to fence height to create a dense hedge. Read the rest of this entry »

TEA FOR TWO, OR MORE

As a child I was only allowed to drink milk or water until the age of twelve, with a soft drink as a special treat during an occasional visit to town. My parents drank Bushell’s tea with their meals.

Nowadays there are multiple drink choices available for adults and children alike. One has only to walk into a supermarket to see rows of bottles and cans stacked high containing cordials, fruit juices and carbonated drinks. At the dairy counter there will be different sized containers of milk, in plastic or cardboard, offering a variety of flavours.

Move to the racks of tea and coffee and you will have a choice of roast coffee beans from all over the world. You can buy beans or ground coffee, some of it decaf. Usually in the same aisle it is possible to select dried teas in surgical dressings, as one of my friends once described the sachets commonly called tea bags. You will be confronted with brands and varieties from many countries.

It was on a trip to the USA in 1981 that I first encountered the powdered concoctions mixed with water which the local people called iced tea. Later, when I visited my German in-laws in 1990 I was offered a choice of herbal teas with the evening meal. These were always served as a hot tea.

In 1992 we moved to the Granite Belt to establish Das Helwig Haus B&B. Amongst our first visitors were Meg and Peter Stevenson with their children Darren and Belinda. During an excursion they discovered a herb farm and returned with several pots for my garden. One of these little plants grew into a Lemon Verbena bush.

Lemon verbena

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MULCHING MATTERS

During the past weekend when we opened our garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B for the Australian Open Garden Scheme, I was frequently asked about my mulching methods. I use several methods of mulching but they are all intended to serve these purposes.

• To stifle weed growth
• To prevent evaporation of moisture
• To keep the ground cool
• To prevent erosion

Most green ground covers serve the same purpose, provided they have sufficient water to encourage their continual growth.

Ivy as a ground cover

I planted this ivy in 1993 to grow over an old tree stump situated in the garden at the rear of the house. This is the western side and after soil and rocks had been moved to build the guest wing of our house this spot looked like a dessert with white dusty soil and raw boulders. I hired Frank and his bobcat to create a rocky upper terrace above this portion of the garden. My priority was then to green my summer view by planting deciduous fruit trees and to cover a couple of old tree stumps with vines. Read the rest of this entry »