AN ABUNDANCE OF SUNLIGHT

Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains – a land of extremes. A land that gives abundantly of sunlight or rain, but seldom is the weather moderate. It is a harsh land that refused to be tamed by European settlers. The indigenous people did alter it over many centuries from rain forest to open forest with their use of fire, but that evolution was probably accidental caused by burning off country for hunting purposes. They lived with the land never attempting any form agriculture. It has always been a matter of interest to me that every third year several different tribal groups came from all points of the compass to gather at the Bunya Mountains at this time of year to harvest the nuts of the Bunya Pine cones. The town of Jondaryan took its name from Aboriginal words meaning the last big waterhole on the trek to the mountains. I attended the Yamsion primary school which apparently was sited on a good place for digging yam roots and my parents built a home on Black’s Camp Hill. Because of a fear of spirits in the mountains the tribal people descended down as far as this hill to sleep each night.

The early settlers tried to transplant the ways of Europe onto this continent. It, of course, ignored them and continued to bring the floods and droughts as in previous time. They tried to tame the land with fences, roads, railways and placed dams on the river, all to no avail as they could not change the climate. The land is not separate from its climate. Rather the oceans that send currents swirling around our shores, causing condensation to form and precipitation to fall are all linked in a chaotic pattern that modern man and his computer models are dimly beginning to understand.

Therefore, I believe it is essential that Australians learn to live with their land because they can not change the vagaries of the climate. One way we can do this is to utilize our abundance of sunlight to generate solar power.

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AN ABUNDANCE OF RAIN

Yes, from July 2010 until about three weeks ago we had an abundance of rain. Until the January floods the weather was almost perfect for gardening.  For six months I didn’t need to irrigate my garden, because every week we would get enough rain – nice steady soaking rain, not storms with damaging winds and heavy rain. I’ll probably never enjoy such a period again, but it was great while it lasted.

After the floods the sun has shone brightly, which was wonderful for the farmers of the Granite Belt. They had plenty of stored water for irrigation, but what their crops needed was hot, sunny days to ripen and sweeten their fruit. Even when Tropical Cyclone Yasi roared in across north Queensland the sun continued to pour its heat down upon our district. The grass had grown madly after all the rain and now it has gone to seed and is rapidly browning off.

This photo shows a view  from our farm to the ridge on the other side of the Glen Aplin valley, but only two weeks previously the grass country beside the river had been under flood water. Read the rest of this entry »

AFTER THE FLOODS 3

It was with shock and dread that most north Queenslanders watched cyclone Yasi bear down on the State, but also for those well removed from the location there was a sense of awe at the magnitude of this particular cyclone. Everyone had days of warning to prepare and Government and volunteer organizations swung into action. It was not only that Yasi could be one of the strongest cyclone to hit Queensland since 1918, but it was a monstrous size. Cyclone Larry that struck Innisvail in 2006 was a strong cyclone, but not a wide one. Queenslanders are accustomed to cyclones but this cyclone had the potential to wreck havoc and take lives like never before seen. Read the rest of this entry »

AFTER THE FLOODS 2

It appears that much of the media and perhaps the general public will only remember the dreadful tragedy, which overtook some people like those drowned in Toowoomba and Grantham, as part of  the seasonal floods that encompassed much of Queensland.

Flooding of the nature that affects Brisbane about three times in a century is something for which people can prepare. The unexpected nature of the deluge which hit Toowoomba and flash flooded the Lockyer Valley had never previously occurred. There was no history of such an event. There was no warning. There was no time to flee.

I wrote to a correspondent in the USA a week after the deluge.

I am sick to my guts with the way the media have portrayed the floods as a result of Climate Change. Senator Brown of Tasmania, and leader of the Greens Party, called for instant implementation of high taxes on the coal miners, who he claimed had caused these floods by creating global warming. There are plenty of the media who want to follow this line too, about this flood being unnatural and punishment from God. In Australia the Greens are laughingly called the Watermelon Party by people who say they are green on the outside and red for communist on the inside.

I’m tired of hearing the media talking up the great mateship of the Australian people. True, in fine sunny weather, 10-12,000 people across Brisbane rallied on Saturday and Sunday, armed with brooms, mops and shovels. They worked to clean up the mess in the homes of the traumatized victims. But, these were the same people who could be seen on TV throwing out items that only needed to be washed – items like plastic chairs.

I wanted to kick the sacred cow! Even more so, when the Queensland Premier started spouting words like, “We are Queenslanders!” She seemed to be indicating that people of this State were somehow stronger and more capable than other Australians. Most Australians are generous people who prove that when times are tough, the tough get going.  Australians give generously of their time and money whenever there is a disaster in the world wide community, or to help any person in need in their street. Read the rest of this entry »

AFTER THE FLOODS 1

For a number of reasons I haven’t been able to write a weekly post, but with a bit of luck I might be able to put up something more personal during this coming week. What I will share with you now is a newsletter I receive regularly from Food Connect. They are a group of organic farmers who have got together to market their produce directly to discerning consumers. It is my intention to visit the farmers of Food Connect here on the Granite Belt over the next month or so, armed with my camera, to pass on to you information about their ways of producing tasty food.

My good news is that Colin Campbell, who many of you will know from his appearances as a presenter on behalf of Queensland gardens on the ABC TV program and in the magazine Gardening Australia, has kindly agreed to read my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine. He will then write reviews of the book and submit them to the Courier-Mail newspaper and the Gardening Australia magazine. Colin is a delightful man who has visited my garden a number of times, including November 2009 when I last opened it for the Australia’s Open Garden Scheme. www.australia-book.com.au

On http://fayhelwigauthor.com I put up a post yesterday which included some beautiful photographs of the vineyards around Stuttgart, Germany.

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JANUARY FLOODS

Firstly I wish to extend my sympathy to all those families who have lost loved ones in the recent floods. I feel empathy too for those who have lost their homes and possessions.

If you are not a regular reader of my posts I suggest you read my last post for 2010 which I ended with the words:

• I expect more rain and more floods at least until Easter. It is during Autumn that the Pacific Ocean current which determines if eastern Australia will experience an El Nino or La Nina season fall into place. At the moment the Oscillation Index which measures this current is still high indicating a continuation of the La Nina weather pattern until Easter.

I had been watching the Oscillation Index rise during last winter and actively saying since July 2010 that we could experience a really wet summer this year. I knew that wet year cycles come around regularly every 25 – 30 years. I am also issuing a further warning. I believe we could continue to have cyclones, heavy rain and floods right through to Easter. So the Queensland disaster could get much worse yet. Like all other warnings, my warnings will only be heeded by a few people.

We prepared for this wet season that I knew was due. Twelve months ago, in preparation for such a wet year, we paid to have our entrance road built up to drain the water away that would run down the slope of the hill and I’m very glad we did so. This has allowed us to drive to and from Mt. Stirling Road without churning and sliding through mud since the rains began here in July. The last thing I want to do is sound righteous, but many of the decisions we make in life are choices. We could afford to get the road constructed, but equally we could have spent the money on holidays or a luxury item. Read the rest of this entry »

DECEMBER FLOODS

At this time when much of Queensland is experiencing widespread and severe flooding I would suggest that my new readers go to my archives and read my posts of October 2009, especially My Spring Garden 8 and 9 posts concerning the control of water flow.

I offer my sympathies to those in the cities who have had their homes flooded and to the many farming families who have lost firstly their winter crops which should have been harvested in the late spring and now their recently planted summer crops. While city folk have lost their homes and possessions and country folk have lost their income I am grateful that there has not been much loss of life.

For some time I have been commenting on weather cycles, mostly in the form of a rebuttal against the media’s portrayal in recent years of weather variations as being the result of man-made pollution. My generation of school children grew up quoting the words of Dorothea McKeller’s poem My Country. www.dorotheamackellar.com.au/archive.asp

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me! Read the rest of this entry »

ALL IN A YEAR

It is at this time of year that I receive a number of Christmas letters from friends detailing the highlights of their year like births, deaths and holidays. Although my doctor, a woman younger than me, has remarked on my age whenever I’ve consulted her on minor matters this year, I had not considered seventy a huge milestone until I attended the funeral of a cousin in June and realised that not only have I lost three cousins but I am now the eldest living grandchild of Hugh and Ettie Mulcahy. As they lived to the ages of 87 and 94 and my parents are still with me at the ages of 95 and 94, I tend to think that when I reach the age of ninety then it will be time for a celebration.

Nonetheless when my children decided to give me a 70th birthday party in April it proved to be a great celebration shared by my family and friends.

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ALL IN A WEEK

My post this week has been triggered by a comment from a reader who wrote, “You seem to live the life I would love to live.” Perhaps I do. I feel my life to be truly blessed, but maybe this is because my parents impressed on me at an early age that I must count my blessings – number them one by one etc.  When I wrote Wildflowers, wilderness and wine my editor, Dr. John Cokley, told me that I must direct my writing at an imaginary woman who dreamed of sitting on a terrace, overlooking vineyards while sipping a glass of wine. Such a woman, he said, will not want to hear about two older people struggling with arthritic pain and the vicissitudes of life. Nor should I try to write a book about an older couple using humour to portray their difficulties, like ‘One foot in the Grave’ and ‘God’s Waiting Room’, two wonderful British TV sagas. He told me, “You have missed the boat. The era for those was 1992.”

When you subscribed to http://fayhelwig.com you were promised a newsletter, which is standard for most blogs, but as I’m not trying to sell you anything other than my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine, which most of you will have now read I’ve never felt the need to send out a sales pitch.

So, I’ve decided to write two December posts about the intricacies of balancing my personal needs with those of my loved ones. This first one will be about the nitty gritty detail of what I’ve been doing in the past week. Next week I will write a Christmas letter and give you the bigger picture of my life. Read the rest of this entry »

WET AND COOL

The Australian states of Queensland, Northern Territory and New South Wales have recorded their wettest spring in 111 years of records with an average 163mm of rain. A moderate to strong La Nina weather pattern through the Pacific Ocean has delivered this wet spring. Due to the cloud cover Queensland has also experienced the coldest spring since 1932.

Dealing with such a rare weather phenomena as a truly wet year, in a 25-30year weather cycle, means problems for some people, but it is an ill wind that doesn’t blow some good. Cattlemen are watching their cattle grow sleek and fat standing in grass up to their bellies, but the hopes of many wheat farmers were dashed. After growing the best crops of the past decade wet fields have prevented them harvesting their grain.

My wheat was planted late, the third week of July. It grew entirely on the natural rainfall. Now it is ripening off and after Christmas I will have to harvest the poppy seed and the wheat.

Harvesting poppy seed isn’t difficult. We just walk through the field snipping off the dry poppy seed capsules and turn them upside down into a large paper sugar bag. This allows the capsules to dry completely and spill their seed into the base of the bag. I then pull out and throw away the dry material and pour the seed into a smaller container.

Eberhard has promised to sharpen the sickle. I will then have to walk through the field, slicing through the tall straw, which hopefully I will then have WWOOFers to bind into sheaves and stook to dry in the old-fashioned manner of our pioneering farmers. What then? How will I store all these wheat sheaves to keep them dry and away from vermin, like mice and rats? Stay tuned. As I discover answers to these difficulties I will keep my readers informed. I don’t intend to grind the wheat for organic flour, but rather I will feed it to our poultry and sell some sheaves at my market stalls for dried flower arrangements.

For three weeks recently I had here two young French WWOOFers – Thomas and Esther. One of the jobs they did for me was prune back my fijoa bushes and shape them into trees. When I constructed the poultry run to include these trees they were intended to provide shade for the hens. But, due to the excellent season and the fertility provided by the poultry they had grown too large and were preventing the sun from drying out the ground.

In this view you can see the hedge of fijoa bushes in the pen behind the garden bed where Thomas was turning over the soil.

After I cut back the fijoa bushes, Esther snipped them into smaller pieces so the leaves could be incorporated in the compost bins and the stems put aside to be shredded for mulch.

Following the construction of this pen a couple of years ago,  I abandoned the previous poultry pen and allowed the outdoor area, which had served as a day time free range enclosure for my hens, to fallow.

In September I took my Honda tiller and broke up the fertile soil and in early November planted the enclosed area with vegetables. This pen was fenced with netting to keep out the rabbits, but when my climbing beans reached the top wire, I knew it was time to add another width of netting to provide them with support. Thomas and Esther had left, so it was Ikmo Kim, a Korean WWOOFer, who provided the necessary agility and muscle.

Again the vegetables in this garden have flourished without the addition of any fertilizer and on natural rainfall.

There are climbing beans along two sides of the square and rambling yellow cherry tomatoes along one side.

In the midst of the square I have planted sweet corn, water melon and gherkin cucumber seed.

I prefer to grow climbing beans, rather than dwarf bush beans as they yield over a longer period. When I have an excess of beans I prepare them for use, scald in boiling water, drain, package and freeze for winter meals.

The Golden Ripple cherry tomatoes form a huge rambling bush and are difficult to pick unless provided with a structure over which to grow. Eberhard chooses not to eat red tomatoes, which I also grow, so I first grew these little yellow tomatoes for inclusion in salads.

I then discovered another use. They can be used to make a delicious marmalade.

TOMATO MARMALADE

• First take a large quantity of tomatoes and scald them in boiling water. Cool to allow handling and then pop the flesh from the skins. Discard the skins. Weight for weight  of  tomato flesh add the same weight of white sugar. Add the juice of one lemon per every 500g of tomatoes.
• (For Americans following this recipe consider that 500g or 1/2 a kg is roughly the equivalent of 1lb.)
• Prior to juicing your lemons thinly peel some lemon rind. Cover this rind with water simmer over a low heat until tender. Cool and slice into short, thin strips.
• Add sugar lemon juice and prepared rind to the tomatoes  and bring to a rapid boil.  Now the pot must be watched to avoid boiling over and stirred regularly to prevent sticking.  The faster the jam can be cooked the clearer and lighter the colour.  When mixture stops frothing and makes strong bubbles that begin to spit, it is close to jellying.  Place small volume on a lid in the refrigerator to quickly chill to test for jelly.
• If placing in commercial bottle with a good seal, fill jar, screw on lid tightly and turn upside down for 2 minutes.  This will sterilise the remaining air in the jar and keep the jam air-tight to prevent spoilage.

At this time of the year our thoughts turn to Christmas gifts. I am offering you the opportunity to give an inexpensive gift this year. I wrote THE SUMMER OF THE MORNING STAR as a gift for a 10 year old granddaughter and gave it to her as an e-book on a disk. When I made that e-book available as a free download on this site, I found the subtle humour gave many adult readers a real chuckle. Although this e-book is copyrighted against anyone else using it for commercial gain, you are welcome to download it and give it to a grandchild or a friend as a Christmas Gift.

Once you have read this first chapter of THE SUMMER OF THE MORNING STAR You may also go onto http://fayhelwigauthor.com to download the second chapter. The second book in this series is called AUTUMN DAYS and is available for you to download on http://www.australia-book.com.au