dear diary - May installment

Truly, these posts are spreading further and further out. Once a month, if we're lucky.

Also, I don't trust how much longer the internet is going to run free like this. Too many techbros who don't believe in the free flow of information among the peasants (that's anyone who doesn't earn a billion dollars a year, yes, that even includes you making money off bitcoin or whatever). They've been edging their way over here for twenty years, and we're about to see the fruit of their labors.

OBSERVATIONS: Colder weather, still very dry. Going to be a long dry winter, not sure about how cold - currently around 9-10C but we haven't hit the post-solstice chill yet, so might get some good frosts this year for the stonefruits (apricots in particular).

CHOOKS: The three little girls are growing up, getting to small pullet size. They're still in the triangle coop, snuggling up with each other, although we might have to take away the grille they've been sleeping on and get them up onto the perches. They know how to perch - they perch very happily during the day, but at night they cluster up on the grille.

Currently Hangyan has some honking problems, Jiandoy is limping, and Siyao has been having issues.

Sincerely, backyard chickens are way too expensive for the eggs they produce. FYI.

COMPOST: The rats have gotte into the compost bay where the girls are buried (Kerry and Carambah). I've also started a new 'cat poo compost' in the banana ircle. There's leafmulch happening in the PSN composter, and I'm probably going to have to set up another compost bin somewhere.

I should probably dig out the Coldie/Haamy compost - that's at least two years old by now, should be decently composted. And I could put the leaves in on that one.

Still have to redo the composting bays where I cleared them. Need to find something that can cut metal sheets.
EDIT: I think Matt is going to loan me a metalcutter.

PREPARING:

Set up metal garden bed in driveway
· Layer of mushroom compost
· Layer of straw
· Layer of cow manure
· Layer of garden soil

SEEDING:
· ONIONS - in a paper spiral (may have done it too deep)
· BRASSICAS (at least 6 each of CABBAGE, CAULI, BROCC, WOMBOK)
PEAS1: Sugarsnap Arcadis (with red acre cabbage)
PEAS2: Snowpea Arcadia (with golden acre cabbage)
PEAS3: Golden Podded (with broccoli)
PEAS4: Shelling Massey (with purple sicily cauli)
BOK CHOI

SWEET PEAS:
Triple 3 + High Society
Spencer Ripple
Beaujolais + Matucana

PLANTING OUT:
BRASSICAS (assorted - largely for the Crop Swap on the 31st)
CORIANDER
ZUCCHINI (a single zucchini)

I need to plant out all the small seedlings in pots that I have
DONE
COFFEE
LYCHEE
UNKNOWN (honestly, I don't remember what it is)
BETEL

HARVEST:
Yellow guava
Leafy greens
raspberries

Also, the capsicum from last year is still producing fruit, although I kind of doubt it will ripen:

much like the tomatoes

FEEDING:
BRASSICAS

PRUNING:
Need to ask to borrow James' chainsaw again (I asked, but no response)
Chipping is going to be hellish

THOUGHTS: One of the problems of prepping is that it naturally holds a paranoid mindset. I haven't found a channel or group yet hat doesn't half end up down the 'government is trying to control you' avenue, with a misty, nebulous 'they' who daren't be rusted.

Which, yes, there are certainly powerful people in places that are actively thinking to take power and food and life and hoice away from others. But a lot of them aren't necessarily politicians - politicians are often the short-sighted patsy that can only see the fiscal opportunities, not the long-term cost.

And also, I'm not fond of the "everyone out there is your enemy" narrative. It's not that everyone is your friend, but there's a difference between people who can be met and people who are just there to take from others. And I feel like most preppers think that most other people are just there to take from others, while I feel that most people can be met. It's a very different mindset.

Driveway garden
· In front of the air conditioner (really ought to just be grass tbh)
· Around the vegepod
· In the vegepod
· Behind the vegepod
· In front of the frangipani
· Behind and to the left of the frangipani
· Around the water barrels

How Gardening Is Political

At the end of the last post, I said

The goal for hosting a garden on the trail is to inspire others to growing even a little of their own food. We all need to ease ourselves off the utter dependence on the industrial food chain.

If you're here because of the Sydney Edible Garden Trail, chances are reasonable that you're interested in growing your own food. Maybe you've already got the full mindset and the reasons and just need the impetus to get started. Maybe you've started and are looking to expand and came around to get more ideas. Maybe you just thought growing your own food might be nice and hey, let's see what other people are doing!

All excellent reasons.

Please be warned: this post is not about gardening, per se. It's about people, processes, politics, pragmatism, and, yes, permaculture. It's about the way we approach problems and find solutions for them. And I know I don't have any kind of power to change anything more than my own behaviour and perhaps to influence other people to think things my way.

Permaculture always made sense to me – a permanent culture, instead of the throwaway one I grew up with in the 80s and 90s. I had more faith in politics and powers back then, I thought that more people thought like me – all of humanity, together.

The last 18 months since Trump II, six years since COVID, decade since America dived into its decline, have been a rude awakening for some, but there's been an inevitability about it, too.

War in Iran has just upped the timeline something savage.

Did you know that the LPG plant that was bombed processed a large portion of the fertiliser that industrialised nations use to fertilise their fields? And the Northern Hemisphere is going into spring planting right now.

There may very well be purists thinking “but that's great! Now we can just use natural fertiliser...”

On enough food for 8 billion people, spread asymmetrically across the world?

Yes, there are a metric FUCKTON of problems with the way we do things, but the problem is that if we stop doing things the way we do them just like that, then the billions of people who are depending on the produce of those things that are done the (problematic) way we developed them are going to suffer.

100 years ago, the population of the world was 2 billion. In a century we have cubed that. And although there are plenty of people living in poverty or on the poverty line, their lives are still valuable. They are still human beings with a right to clean water, clean air, shelter, kindness, human dignity...and food.

Let's not be absolutists about this. There are ways that we can use fossil fuels, or problematic processes less. But we cannot give them up entirely without serious horror being visited on a whole lot of people. And maybe those people don't look like you, or don't live like me, or don't think like us, but they're still people. They're still human. And I don't have to like them – or the processes that are problematic – to recognise that we need to wean ourselves off the shitty stuff rather than stop it all cold turkey.

People are going to die. Most of them will be children.

A friend (I don't remember which one, but it might have been the US Republican one) once said 'politics is the art of the possible'. I don't know if she still believes that – she's gone full-bore 'daughters of the revolution' which I think is a right-wing nationalistic 'natural citizen' type movement so...probably not. I imagine that now she would say 'politics is the art of preserving the culture that I personally want to live in with people who personally also see the world like me'.

Nevertheless, 'the art of the possible' is a nuance that entirely too many people no longer recognise – perhaps because the internet has siloed us into our groups, and we have no patience or space for those who think differently.