This afternoon we harvested our first lot of potatoes. I had harvested and cooked some tubers last week and was surprised at the freshness and taste. The Gippsland soil is rich and fertile. You can drop seeds into the ground and they spring up over night. As I pushed my fingers through the rich loamy earth, I reflected on how incredibly far most people are from being able to produce their own food and what would happen in a world that would demand many in today's cities and towns to work the earth in order to eat. Most probably would find it very difficult or frankly they would starve.
Out of necessity, we are gardening. I have never been a keen gardener and have preferred animals always over digging in the dirt, but I have taken to gardening and find it quite relaxing and enjoyable. There is the added satisfaction of eating food that one has grown rather than bought. Anyway I have always been big on food and remember years ago, my fellow students at Uni would eat at the most atrocious places and I went to health food stores and ate practically organic before it was fashionable, because I cared about health and what I put into my mouth. Yes, it was expensive, but goodness knows how my health would be if I had not. I see some people who are my age and they look ten years or more older than I do. Mac Donald's are some of the worst and when I see some very young people looking as if they could rival the side of a bus for rear axle butts walking down the road, I feel incredibly sad.The health of these people is going suffer and they will be crippled at forty if they do not take care and look after their diet more.
We - son and I have been working on the garden and he has his own section. He will grow a few things there of his choice. I am getting another handle for the big hoe. It snapped. They do not make hoes like they used to do. He has his own little hoe and is pretty busy with it.
We have replanted some potatoes and should get another harvest in about six to eight weeks or so, maybe a bit longer. I am amazed at the quality of the potatoes and am looking forward to the pumkins flowering and fruiting. I have plans to put the floor of the old chook pen onto the garden. It is good fertilizer. The goats will be housed in the chook pen in winter. Osnat will be pregnant by then and as it is bitterly cold here in the winter, I will work the chook pen floor out and level it and put down a bale of rice husks and straw on the floor for the two girls.
Ozzie or Osnat will be going to Melbourne with us on Friday to spend Shabbat with friends in their back yard. We will milk her there and they can keep the milk. I am making yogurt for an elderly friend of mine and giving her some milk as it is very good for arthritis. Some one said to me last Friday that I looked good and relaxed and I do know that I have lest joint pain and am able to use my hands more freely again. The slightest bump against my hands and especially thumbs used to send pain shooting up the wrists and forearms. Now I can move them more freely. While my back is still not much chop I can move more freely once I warm up in the morning.
Quite scary that I find it so difficult to walk in the morning and have to hold onto things until I have warmed my joints up through movement. That is as a result I believe of the stress from being bullied and not a natural aging process. I am doing another meditation course this coming Sunday which is free. I have to put myself in a space that does not allow me to be affected by the negativity and anger of others and their jealousies.
I also have to train my son not to be affected by the foul language used by some students in his government school and their angers and pain coming from homes where they have very disturbed parents. I see some of the mothers covered in tattoos and piercings and think 'What is wrong with people that they have to cover their bodies with these designs that look quite disgusting now, goodness knows what they will look like in twenty or thirty years time. It is creepy to have a mother who is barely over twenty with two or three kids and she has tatts down her arms, her back (she wears something really skimpy to show off the tatts on her back and stomach) and lower legs.
There was a young girl in a place called Cheap Fabrics a few weeks back and she had the most revolting tattoo of a woman with her chest opened out and you could see the lungs, heart and organs. Now why would some one want an anatomical drawing like that on their body in a prominent place. Obviously she wanted people to notice her. She was the only member of staff not wearing a cardigan and not wearing a name tag. It was quite narcissistic and even idiotic. She is not someone I would want serving my customers in retail. She was in her short short uniform that if she bent over you probably would see her undies if you were looking and sleeveless so you could see her tatt in its macabre glory. BBBRRrrrrrr very creeepy.
I am trying to instil in my son, moderation, trust in G-D, don't take drugs, (even medicine - except if you have no choice. Preventative medicine in the form of good living and good healthy food is the best.) Do your best, treat people well and fairly even if they do not do the same for you and be hard working, even if you have not got a job, you can still improve yourself, find something constructive and useful to do.
Some how I need to buy four or five geese when I can afford it and keep them in the shed. They will get rid of the snakes if we have any around the house. Geese are good and pretty fiercesome birds. They will also eat the food scraps and leftover stale bread. I can probably get eggs if I get a gander as well and let one of the females sit on eggs. They are smart birds and every six months we will have to get some of them shteched to have a freezer of fresh geese. I have decided I could not eat goats I raise. It would be too personal. Birds are a little different however. I like goats too much and think I would find it hard to eat a goat I also had not raised as they are almost human and very smart. Yes, roast goat is off the menu.
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