20 Saturday Sep 2014
Posted in events, regeneration
In August 2014, Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi granted us the name Yarnauwi to describe the landscape of our farm. We approached Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi, a body of Kaurna people and linguists dedicated to the revival of the Kaurna language, for a property name as a way of acknowledging the enduring connection of the Kaurna nation with the landscape of the South Western Fleurieu.
29 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted in art & craft, trees
Tags
art, design, erosion, farm, history, logo, revegetation, southwestern Fleurieu
After a year and a half, we’ve finally got to developing a visual identity for the farm. While our working name for the farm, “Trees, Bees and Cheese”, is more conceptual than place-based, we wanted the logo to reflect some of the distinctiveness of the farm’s landscape.
Yep, there is wind and rain, but there’s also the symphonic light that rolls across the hills and the late afternoon haze that reduces the sequence of valleys into golden layers of theatre scenery. There are the rolling, low clouds that we ache for in late summer and autumn, then look forward to farewelling by late winter. These tumbling clouds also reference the nearby sea. The lone tree and falling rain suggest how the landscape has been reshaped over the last 180ish years through clearing and subsequent erosion, but also remind us of the resources available in restoration when we harvest rainwater and gather seed. Perhaps in the future we might be able to add some more trees to the logo to reflect the changing reality of the property!
We also have a black-and-white option, particularly good for stencilling farmy things. We’d love to hear what you reckon, and if you have any ideas for tweaks or adjustments!
10 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in diy, events, regeneration, waterways
Tags
erosion, events, history, picnics, reuse, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, summer, waste, waterways, winter
Hauling junk is over-represented on this blog. Despite how often we allude to it, cleaning up piles of scrap has steadily been slipping down the list of ‘things-to-do’ in favour of the million other farm jobs. So this year, to keep motivated, we registered as an official Clean Up Australia Day site.
The Picnic at the End of the World: Morning tea at Ground Zero
The day was windy, marking the shift back towards winter, and as we set to work, two Wedge-tailed Eagles circled above, one harassed by the resident family of magpies while the other lazily surfed the thermals. After the burst of heavy rain a couple of weeks ago, already fresh new grass is emerging. Continue reading
19 Sunday Jan 2014
Posted in art & craft, regeneration, waterways
“Tangents in the landscape” (detail), 2014, mixed media installation, fencing wire, ratchet straps and Holden Rodeo ute
A day spent hauling junk out of gullies can put you in a philosophical mood. When we first purchased this property, we were drawn to the erosion gullies filled with generations of farm rubbish with a kind-of masochistic fascination. After a year of hauling, stacking and shunting loads to the dump or recycling depot, today we loaded up our ute with the final bundles of unruly and ancient fencing wire.
Bye-bye horror horse!
The most recent round of dump trips has also been momentous in that it finally marks the banishment of a terrifying, rusted and threadbare rocking horse from the property. The horror horse, wedged between rusted 44-gallon drums stuffed with irrigation pipe and topped with a decaying mattress, formed one in a series of mobile art installations mounted on the back of the ute, displayed for a brief, one-time-only journey between our block and the Yankalilla dump. A number of more conceptual, minimalist pieces followed shortly after, composed of snarls of fencing wire of assorted vintage. Continue reading
27 Wednesday Nov 2013
Posted in ecology, planning, regeneration
November marks one year since we began our relationship with this patch of soil, grass and rusty car parts. If the permaculture imperative is to obtain a yield, then the yields of this first year have been largely intangible, but no less real. It has been a year of observing and learning about the land, ourselves and what we can do here. I remember emotions I was feeling about this project a year ago, and I think my terror has been mostly balanced by a sense of calm. Where 12 months ago I was overwhelmed by the scale of our ignorance, now, our ignorance is still largely intact, but I’m more confident in our collective abilities as a family, nested within a community, to unravel the challenges we face. Continue reading
12 Saturday Oct 2013
Posted in ecology, regeneration, reviews
Tags
books, ecology, history, kangaroos, permaculture, revegetation, soil, trees
In The Biggest Estate on Earth (Allen & Unwin, 2011), historian Bill Gammage describes a detailed vision of Aboriginal land management prior to European colonisation of Australia. While many Australians have a broad sense that “fire-stick farming” was (and is) a tool used by Aboriginal people, The Biggest Estate on Earth begins to fathom how finely tuned Aboriginal fire use was. With fire as one of a suite of tools, Aboriginal people across the Australian continent carved the landscape into a mosaic of ecosystems, each harbouring plants and animals of differing sensitivity to fire, each maintained to maximise ecological diversity and each nested within the other to increase the ease of hunting or harvesting. For Gammage, Aboriginal land management across the continent was directed by three main principles: “ensure that all life flourishes; make plants and animals abundant, convenient and predictable”; and to “think universal, act local”. Continue reading
