TREASURES

There is something in my psyche that makes me enjoy the life of  hunting and foraging, not only for food but for items that I can reuse. As a child on farms our family never had access to garbage disposal services so we had to compost, burn or bury our rubbish. Today I still live on a farm and I don’t have the luxury of wheeling a garbage bin out to the kerbside for collection. Instead as part of the service we pay for via council taxes, our Shire Council provides bins on a site near Glen Aplin where we are allowed to dump household refuse. There is no recycling service for paper, aluminium cans or bottles. Further away near Stanthorpe there is a dump where people can dispose of old household furniture, white goods, car tyres, rusty wire etc. But, to travel that far is seen as a nuisance, so instead of taking these items to the official spot people not only fill the bins but leave any item that they can not fit into the bins lying on the ground nearby. Eberhard says Australian’s are a rebellious lot and won’t heed the voice of authority. I say that the Shire Councillors should consider solving the problem rather than complaining about the untidiness of rate payers. After all – they are elected  to meet the needs of shire residents.

This is a rural area into which many ‘tree change’ people have moved in recent years. During their former urban life they have never had difficulty disposing of their rubbish so they expect the Council to service their needs. Thus instead of shredding and composting garden rubbish, or even burning such piles, loads of shrubbery and even tree branches are thrown into the bins. Everything from kitchen utensils to paint buckets are cluttered beside mattresses and TV consoles until the Council eventually sends out a truck and a team of men to clear the area.

I am a law abiding soul who only deposits what garbage I can not recycle on my own property, but each trip I make to the refuse dump reminds me of the saying, “One man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure.” There are times when I will bring home a greater load than I have taken away. Not for personal use, but to recycle in the garden.

Such treasures include geranium cuttings, insect screen doors and a baby’s bath tub.

Water is a valuable garden resource. These two recycled former 44 gallon fuel drums now stand below the roof of a shed where the runoff rain water can drip down into the first drum. Warning – if you store water in such open containers be aware of the dangers. I check my drums regularly to look for wrigglers – mosquito larvae. A thin film of kerosene applied to the surface of the water will quickly suffocate them. Also, once the level has dropped, birds who have been coming to bath in this water may not be able to fly out. I insert a stick into these drums to allow birds to stand on it while they shake their feathers dry and thus prevent them drowning. Of course, if I was a rich woman I could have another covered rainwater tank placed on this site, but I have grown up ‘making do’ with what was available for me to use. I find these drums exceedingly useful when filling buckets of water to carry to my poultry each evening. Again if I was a rich woman I would have pipes reticulating water to the poultry pens. In this instance I could easily fill one drum, but had no way of flowing excess water to the second drum until I saw the baby’s bath tub thrown away at the refuse dump. Now once one drum has filled, I can place the tub slanted across the top to flow water to the second drum.

GARDENING WITH PETS

A year ago I had to replace a rusted corrugated iron rain water tank with a new polythene tank. I placed the new tank in a different position to allow me to keep the three rings of the old iron tank which I then converted into three raised garden beds. The base of the original tank was left in position and the other two rings placed nearby.

I hired a man with a tipping truck and a bobcat to bring sand up from the flood plain of our Severn River frontage to partially fill these rings. Then two French Wwoofers, David and Thomas, used wheelbarrows to top up these gardens with my homemade compost. Finally they spread a layer of hay as mulch over these garden beds, hindered by my Jack Russell female puppy, Trixie.

These gardens thrived and this year have produced an abundance of fresh vegetables. But, with both a cat and a dog who can easily leap onto these gardens and who both enjoy digging holes in the soft soil I needed to find a way of deterring their activities.

The first step was to lay down a rough mesh from recycled concrete reinforcing.

This mesh can be removed to be used in another place once the vegetables are established. Even so, another problem arises when Patches, our black and white cat decides that she will lie down amongst them to enjoy the sunshine. This problem was solved when I discovered an insect screen door thrown away at the rubbish dump.

Patches has adapted her needs, probably appreciating the circulation of cool air through her fur on a warm summer’s morning. As it bec0mes necessary to raise the insect screen door I am also required to fence off the open sides with recycled security screens to prevent either of my pets going under this barrier.

As you can see I have managed to live in harmony with my pets and still grow superb crops of salad vegetables. “Where there is a will there is a way!”

You can read more about self-sufficiency in the book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine which I wrote about a year in my life here in the wine vineyard region of the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.