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Ecoburbia – 10 years on . . . . .

I wrote this blog in 2013 when we first moved here. Tim and I had a bit of a vision setting session and this was my contribution. We have now been here for 7 years so I thought it might be interesting to revisit it. As I open my eyes I remember that today is our anniversary, although I am actually not too sure how many years it has been I think it was 2002 and now we are 2024 so that would make it . . . . over 20 anyway. And I just celebrated my 55th birthday. I suddenly laugh. When I first started “working” in 1990 that was the age that females were able to retire, access their super, slow down. Not sure there is any super in there . . . My second thought is that it seems quiet. I have not used an alarm clock for years – our two goats usually make sure no one sleeps past 6am. But today it is quarter past and I have not heard anything. Then I hear a scream “Hey Mum I did it! Five litres from Big Brown. All by myself!” I smile. Sophie lives next door and she has been wanting to milk the goats all on her own for weeks. It makes me think about next door. The previous owners had taken down the fence about ten years ago. They loved gardening and their block was small. We met them outside with Whimsy and Little White (rest in peace) after their second visit to the house. After a chat they bought the house, despite the fact the real estate agent told me people didn’t buy houses based on the community or the neighbours. Eight years on and they sold the house with no back fence, praising the sense of community and sharing. Tim awakes and reaches over for our morning cuddle and chat about the day. He lives so much in the moment these days that despite our weekly diary check I still have to remind him what is happening. Despite our best attempts for a long time, and weekly talk about slowing down we still do too much. We have a rule that there will only be one workshop or tour a day, but today there are two. Helen is helping me run a goat milking and cheese making workshop. I remember when we got the goats – we had the only legal goat stable in Fremantle, but now they seem to be dotted all over the place. This group is a bunch of mums from White Gum Valley who want to share a goat. Three live next to each other and their verge is perfect for daily grazing. We don’t charge locals money for workshops anymore, but ask people to donate the equivalent in time or Freo Funnies. Although only formally introduced five years ago, Freo Funnies have been around as an alternative currency for a while, and there are more and more things you can trade them for. The mums will be busy this afternoon. They wanted to know the truth about goats so I will get them mucking out the pen, mixing the straw with rabbit and chook poo, making a new pile of compost, and turning over the old one. Trimming the goat’s hooves is my least favourite job, so it will be great to share that chore. This afternoon Tim is “entertaining” a group of Western Suburbs families. This group really did not see anything different to “life as usual” coming so times have been tough for these folks – the mining boom is over, super and investments are worth nothing, and housing prices are a third of what they were since we bought here. There is a great deal of interest in converting their massive houses into units for either family, a passive income or for carers as people age. When we tell people the planning laws didn’t allow this sort of development when we started here they can’t believe it. The population of Perth didn’t double like predicted, but it did in Freo without any new houses or subdivisions. I find it funny – seeing folk who once wore designer dresses painting and doing basic maintenance jobs makes me giggle. They still find the bartering system strange but since we won’t take their cash they don’t have any choice. But first to breakfast – our oranges did well this year and I still have enough juice canned for a glass this morning. Eggs, spinach, tomatoes, toast on the solar cooker. After all these years I still can’t make bread. Thank god for trading. Evi still makes the best bread in town and she trades for most of her other food needs. I grin. I can still remember the first meal I made that was totally from the garden. When would that have been? Probably back in Hulbert Street. . . . sometimes I still miss that place. Before I sort out the equipment for the workshop I need to go down to the coop for some more hay for the goats. Once upon a time we had to go to City Farmers, but “Farmer Joe” from Wongan Hills has enough demand in Freo now that we buy directly from him. Everyone puts in an order, we store it in an old shop in town and Joe delivers once a month. I suddenly wonder – did I book the electric ute? Sometimes I forget and have to use one of the electric cargo bikes. No biggy – I will just have to do two trips. Last week Freo declared another “triple use’ road in town. I am amazed how quickly that concept has caught on, given we trialled it for the first time in 2016. I remember the uproar. “How can cars, people and bikes all on one road be safe?” I suppose the stats – one accident in five years speak for itself. They are hoping

The Value of a Verge Garden

  The other day a friend confronted me. “I reckon those garden beds on the verge are a waste of time. People are spending $50 or $100 setting them up and they are kidding themselves. They won’t produce food of significance. It is a waste of time and money. I started to think about the value of those verge veggie garden beds. You know the ones – they are pretty common now. The often appear bursting with life, and you go home more determined to work in your own garden. Then summer hits. With often no irrigation, things start looking a bit dry. Lettuces go to seed. Tomatoes get diseases. It makes sense to let it go. Sometimes the garden in revived after summer, sometimes not. But it got me thinking – what is the value of a verge garden bed? There are a few things – Firstly it makes a statement. It says” I know that food security is important and I want to learn to grow my own. I am willing to do this in a public space, risking vandalism and theft. I will no longer water my lawn so I have pulled it out. This is a statement about what I value.” There is a wonderful story doing the rounds on the internet. In the end there is a hummingbird trying to fight a fire all on its own. When asked why it is bothering, the bird replies “I’m doing the best I can” Second it makes you think about public spaces. Who owns the verge? Who is the government? Can we share common public spaces? If we can manage this now what potential is there for future projects?” There was a value in schools when I was a principal that talked about “obeying just laws” At the time kids used it to argue that they should not have to wear school uniform. But a garden bed on the verge says “I am willing to take a risk, I know this is legally wrong but ethically and morally it makes sense to me. I will beg for forgiveness if things go wrong, rather than wasting time and energy in getting permission.” Third you learn about gardening. People pass by and give advice. I will never forget the first papasan I planted out with an entire punnet of six tomatoes. The old Croatian man came over. “One only” he kept saying, “too many plants, one only” I smiled nicely looking at his the watered and fertilised lawn in his front garden. Six weeks later with a tomato bed looking like a jungle and no tomatoes I could get to, he took me out the back of his place. He had an entire market garden out there!. He pointed out his tomato bushes and taught me to identify the laterals that I should prune. I learnt that there are skills and resources in my community that I knew nothing about. Four you learn about seasonal food. You try to grow corn and tomatoes in winter and broccoli in summer. You fail. You get why prices fluctuate in the shop, you see why sometimes the only available produce is from overseas. You don’t make those recipes at that time of year. Even if you don’t grow food yourself, you eat with the seasons. You save money. Five you learn how hard it is to grow food. You put in carrots, you hope, you struggle, you fail. You look at a kilo of organic carrots on special for $4.99 and you wonder “how on earth does the farmer do that?” You look at an organic broccoli without a single cabbage moth hole and you wonder. You are more willing to buy an apple with a brown mole in it, some grapes with one or two overripe ones, the ugly tomatoes . . . . Six you become able to give advice. Someone walking past asks you about slaters. You tell them about the seven ideas you have heard about and tried. You tell them the one that worked for you. They walk off happy and you feel chuffed somehow. You feel proud. You feel like a gardener. And lastly there is that magic moment. You are out there fussing over your tomatoes and your eggplants . Maybe you are tying them to their stakes, maybe you are collecting for dinner. Someone walks past with their dog. “Good on you they say! I just wanted to tell you that I put in my own veggie patch after seeing yours.” One verge bed might not make much sense, but one outside everyone’s house. . . . . . . The salad you just picked for lunch never tasted so good.

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Plastic? Fantastic? Fifty and Five

Recently I was asked to speak about Plastic Free July. My specific brief was to talk about 50 bits of plastic I can live without and five bits of plastic I cannot. I thought I would share my speech . . . Lots of fives . . . and funnily enough this will be the fifth year I have participated in plastic free July . . . . but of course I am NO WHERE NEAR fifty years old! Fifty bit of plastic I can live without . . . Really this is a list of fifty bits of plastic I learnt to live without during plastic free July. They generally fall into five categories First things I just had to be vigilant about. It wasn’t hard, I just needed to be conscious and say “no” – plastic shopping bags, take away coffee containers, water bottles, straw. . . .. Not much of a change really – just awareness . . . and the occasional gumption to walk out a pub that only sells beer in plastic containers and refuse to fill my water bottle with wine! Second, new habits I needed to adopt – buying in bulk – flour, peanut butter. Rice, lollies, chocolate, popcorn. Finding a butcher who would wrap meat in butchers’ paper only. Going to local farmers markets for organic fruit and vege. Taking a container and cutlery to the markets to avoid plastic takeaway containers. This will take you more time and organisation to start with, but less in the long run. Third, there were things I had to find alternatives for or cut out of my life – I gave up on timtams, starburst lollies, store bought strawberries, balloons. And fourth, (and most excitedly) new skills I had to learn, things I had to make – those little cloth bags you put your fruit and vege in, cloth sanitary pads, yogurt, toothpaste, deodorant, my own jam, canning fruit in season, making ice cream (yes I’m sorry all bulk icecream has some plastic packaging  – damn it!) Some of these skills are old skills being revised (do you know anyone who makes their own sanitary pads?) and many of the people who know those skills are not here anymore . When it comes to these things all I can say is “thank goodess for google” The number of times I jumped on line to ask “is there a plastic free alternative to  . . . . “ The fact someone out there had thought of it and taken the time to add it to the net made me feel less alone in my quest. One of the best exercises I have seen involved these four ways to reduce plastic. A teacher got her class to do a stock take of the plastic in their household pantry and fridge. Each child was then randomly given a “tricky” item to see if they could find an alternative. The creative ideas and research that came out of that assignment was incredible. And fifth, some things I did were truly just radical and just strange. In my third year of Plastic Free July I could not source milk that was not in plastic so  – meet Kirsh. Kirsh had triplets last year and in the end she was producing nearly six litres of milk a day. I learnt to milk her, I learnt to make goat cheese (lots of goat cheese . . .).I trained a goat around the streets of South Freo without running away from dogs, I learnt how to wake up at exactly the same time each morning so the neighbours didn’t complain about her bellowing . . . When I tell my plastic free story, most people say “good on you” but occasionally you do get someone who comments “What difference is this going to make really? This is nothing in the scheme of things” I usually tell them this story. There is a girl in our street. She goes to a posh private school in Perth. After we screened the movie Bag It, she decided that she was going to refuse to buy bottled water again. She simply took a water bottle. When her school took the girls up to Karagini for a camp, she put on her permission form that she could not drink bottled water. She added it to the allergy part of the form, she added it to special requirements and she attached a letter explaining her stance. It is a long way on a bus to Karagini. At the first stop the teachers got out the water and fruit for morning tea. “I can’t drink that Miss, but I have a water bottle I filled before I left home.” She is a good girl, but by lunch time her drink bottle was empty. She was offered water in a bottle. She refused. She got into trouble, but still she refused. Kids always love a rebellion and soon other girls started to join in. By the next town half the bus would not drink bottled water. At the next town the teachers bought large esky water containers (remember them?) Despite the head teacher being really annoyed one teacher pulled her aside to tell her she was actually impressed. The school has changed its water bottle policy. No bottled water will be taken on school camp. They go on 25 camps a year with an average of 30 girls, each one drinking 5 bottles of water a day. That’s 3,750 plastic water bottles. What was that about one person not making a difference? What if we add school carnivals? Cross country? The other thing that people say is “you can’t get rid of all plastic, what about . . . .” I always reply “By god your right! I suppose I am only thinking about reducing what I can avoid” I am pretty proud of the plastic I have avoided in my life, but I have a dilemma bag too. The

The answer – from a six year old

You know some days every good sustainability crusader wonders if it is all worth it. Deep down we kind of get that the human species will die off eventually. What is the point of all the work, the behaviour change programs, the rallies and petitions? And some days I draw a weird sort of  comfort from the fact that the earth will  sort us out in her own way, regardless of what we do. I can stop and breath for a moment. And then I wonder . . . .I mean I would never go and buy a hummer, but  . . . The other day Tim spent three days making a sand sculpture for the 2013 Nectar Festival. After helping him pound sand for the first day, my job was to stand and chat to people, let them know what he was doing, and make sure the kids who always end up playing in the spare sand don’t jump all over the work until he decides he is finished. I notice a little boy watching. I wandered over to him. He was about six, maybe five . I didn’t find out his name so I will call him NK – Nice Kid. We  had a conversation. The conversation went a bit like this: NK-  That is a good sand thing. It’s a lady. What will happen when he is finished making  her? Me – Mmmmmm What do you think will happen? NK – It’s only made of sand, it might get wrecked. (he pauses) That would be sad. Me – Yes I suppose so, the rain might make her wet, the wind might blow her away. Or someone might jump on her or smash her. NK – Then it only be a pile of sand. Me – Yes I suppose so – she was made of sand so she will be sand. NK  – Will that man (being Tim) be sad. He is making her. Won’t he be sad? Me –  Funny everyone asks that. But he doesn’t mind at all. He brings her to life, he enjoys making her, see he is gently making her? He really has to concentrate. It takes a long time too, but he is not sad when she is sand again. That’s amazing hey? All that work and he doesn’t mind. NK – I hope no one wrecks her before he is finished. (he pauses) It’s like she is born and then she will be dead. Me – (slightly shocked) I suppose it is like that. When things die they go back to the earth. She goes back to sand. NK  – And animals– my bird died and we buried it in the garden. Everything that dies goes back to the earth. Everything comes from the earth and goes back to the earth. People too. ( I pause  – I am slightly freaking at this point.  He is so sure of himself. Remember, this kid is six. Then I start thinking  maybe this kid is the reincarnation of the Dali Lama or something.) Me – If we all go back to the earth, I wonder if the earth will die? NK – (he looks astonished, as if I have not been listening) Of course, everything dies and the earth will die too. Me – Oh, how will the earth die? (Imagining he has heard about global warming, or peak oil, or over population . . .  or is the reincarnation of the Dali Lama) NK – The sun will go out. Then everything will die. Me  – Oh ( I really had not thought about the sun going out). . . . . when will that happen? NK-  Oh , maybe  in about 1,500 years. You won’t remember. You will be in the earth. Me – Oh that sounds sad. No more earth. Are you worried about that? NK – Why would I worry? Everything dies. That man (being Tim) is not sad about his sand lady. Me – I feel a bit sad about the earth. NK – Yeah maybe. But we could concentrate and be gentle as she dies.  And don’t anyone wreck her before her time to die. . . . .   I don’t know – maybe all six year olds are the reincarnation of the Dali Lama!  

Machinations on the Mundabidi (by Tim)

You know that saying, chalk and cheese?  It’s pretty evocative eh?  One smooth and creamy, slipping down your throat with a tasty tang, the other dry, crunchy and tasteless.  You can almost feel the spit drying up in your mouth. Let’s try another word association ‘Mountain biking’ and ‘kids’.  Does it do the same thing for you?  Mountain biking; mud, blood, speed, wilderness, adrenalin.  Kids?  Soft, fragile, needy, crying.  Now I’m not trying to suggest that kids are “dry, crunchy and tasteless” rather that, at first glance anyway, they’re incompatible with the rigours of mountain bike riding. I was talking about the kid/mountain bike dichotomy with a friend, Sarah. Sarah had recently returned from an epic two year mountain-bike tour (from Alaska to Chile) with her partner, Tom. When we were chatting Sarah was six months pregnant and was starting to get a bit worried that child birth, and indeed parenthood was going to curtail her opportunities to go mountain biking. After all even the most gadget laden bikes don’t have braise-ons for a baby. As a deliberately childless person, I could empathise with her – see “The Snip”:A song about vasectomy with accompanying percussion on garden shears. On more than one occasion I have had the sad experience of seeing friends who were once ready to go riding (or walking or climbing or paddling) at the last minute drop of a hat, disappear into a whirling vortex of nappy-rash treatments, sleep deprivation  and after school care. Fortunately over the last few years I have made a couple of friends who contradict the theory that more kids necessarily equals less adventures. Meet Ben and Britta. At ages three and six respectively Ben and Britta moved into my street and into my life, introducing me to the joys of other people’s children.  From the time Ben was three he was belting down the street on his tiny little bike, flying over a home-made ramp, falling off, crying for about thirty seconds and then jumping back on again. His sister Britta mastered manoeuvring the street cargo bike before her little legs could bridge the gap between seat and pedals (much to the embarrassment of less agile adults). Another mate, Greg, a very keen mountain biker, is also the primary carer for two small girls – Meg, aged five and only recently off trainer wheels, and Molly, somewhere between trainer wheels and a pram.  His girls see bikes as the most normal (and preferred) form of transport – either on their own bikes or strapped onto the back of Greg’s pushy. Then of course there’s Tom and Sarah and their embryonic child. In order to bring this group of people together and answer (or at least ponder) questions about the compatibility of children with gravel tracks, I invited them to join in on an overnighter on the Mundabidi Trail.  We chose a section of the track between Jarrahdale and the Wungong Site via the Balmoral P.O.W. Camp.  This section is about 25 km of fairly flat track (good for kids to ride on) interspersed with a few really steep, slippery, boggy pea gravel hills (good for sweating, grunting, falling over and finally dragging your bike up.) Our choice of transport for this trip included the Big Dummy (a stretch framed bicycle ‘ute’ which Tom rode on his epic trip), a tandem (with the near seat post cut down to fit small legs) towing a BOB single wheeled trailer, a couple of standard 26” wheeled mountain- bikes, a 20” kids bike and, my favourite, a DIY trailer that Greg built from scrap metal and road verge recycling. I was visiting Greg for my weekly dose of talking, tea drinking and tinkering with tools in the shed when he showed me the trailer he was planning to use for the trip. It was made out of scraps of aluminium, a couple of wheels from 20” kids bikes, a universal joint cut from an old socket extension and a couple of pre-loved baby car seats.  I was privately considered it highly unlikely that it would hold together for the trip.  I consoled myself with the fact that it would most likely fall to bits before we got 100 metres from the support vehicle so at least we wouldn’t get marooned in the middle of nowhere.  I had to bite my tongue when Greg assigned me the task of modifying his trailer to accommodate a bike as well as a baby seat.  His theory was that initially Molly could ride in the baby seat while her big sister Megs road alongside.  When Megs ran out of legs we could bolt her bike onto the trailer and then perch Megs on the top of her bike, perched on top of the trailer, behind Molly and towed behind Greg’s bike … before tearing off down another 25 kms of pea gravel and coffee rock. Fearing the trailer was under engineered, I over engineered the bike bolting brackets and crossed my fingers. The following weekend we all converted on the Jarrahdale Deli for a fix of caffeine and sugar before heading off –  looking something like the Wombles meets Tour De France . By the time we got from the deli car park to the official start of the track Meg’s bike and Meg were riding high.  By the end of the first 2km Molly had moved to the BOB on the back of my tandem.  At about 3km Ben told me his legs were tired and he wanted a lift … which he also told me at the 4km, 5km, 6km and 7km mark and so on. . . . until I let him climb on the back of the tandem. Shortly after that we met Demelza who had dropped the support vehicle to the half way spot and then ridden out to meet us.  By the time we got to the vehicle at the Belmoral camp all the kids had tried out of all the transport possibilities. After smoko Demelza took the support

Son of Norman – By Tim

For an aspiring urban peasant, the chicken – nature’s ultimate permaculturist – is a must‑have item.  You can fit a chook or two in almost any back yard, they eat your scraps and weeds, and in return give you; eggs, manure, pest eradication, companionship and perhaps best of all their gentle clucking voices give a soothing country ambience to urban environments. When it comes to procuring these amazingly versatile feathered friends there are lots of options. You can buy 16 week old chooks ready to lay or get cute fluffy day old chicks and raise them to maturity.  For the more poultry‑savvy you can even get hold of some fertilized eggs and hatch them out by putting them under a broody bantam or electric incubator.  It’s a wonderful thing to watch the soft fluff balls of life emerge from a rock-like shell and then follow their growth through to maturity where they start to lay their own eggs and complete the cycle. The downside to day olds and fertilized eggs is that you’re not 100% sure what you’re really buying, a bit like buying your undies on line.  You know you’re getting some sort of poultry (unless someone’s slipped an alligator egg in with your hi‑lines) but the adventure of chicken-raising always entails some uncertainty of outcome. Take gender, for instance.  If you start with a dozen eggs the odds are you are getting to end up with at least some roosters and, of course, in the early stages boys and girls look pretty much the same.  Sometimes it’s not until you’ve been woken up early one morning by an adolescently screeching crow that you realise Henrietta is actually Henry or Winifred is actually Winston and by then no amount of loving attention is ever going to get him to lay eggs or stop crowing.  Some of our neighbours recently acquired eleven eggs of which nine turned out to be boys. As I said it’s an adventure. In suburban chook yards (unlike a certain large and rapidly expanding Asian country) being born male is not looked upon with joy and excitement.  Apart from the obvious issue of low egg production (and I mean really low) roosters are cursed with the anti‑social propensity for crowing earlier in the morning than most urban dwellers want to wake up.  So unless you live on the very outskirts of town, being born a male chicken generally calls for drastic action. Since it’s the rooster’s head that does the crowing, a common solution is to remove the problematic area (ie circumcision of the head). For many urban peasants the bonding that they undergo during the process of raising their birds means they don’t feel too good about this rooster quieting activity. Enter Shani, Tim and the South Fremantle Rooster Euthanasia Program (SFREP for short).  We have found there’s a huge demand for our services.  Basically, if you have a noisy rooster that’s surplus to requirements you can bring it around to our place and we will assist it in its movement up the food chain (usually in the form of soup).  Quite often these days I get home to find a rooster or two in a milk crate on the front verandah (with or without explanatory note attached )and consequently we seldom need to buy meat. About a year ago a cargo of roosters arrived just as we were heading out for dinner.  We underestimated the roosters’ passion for freedom and by the time we got home they had escaped and were running all over our yard.  They were rounded up and shortly thereafter moved up the food chain…… all except one. The next morning we could hear a rooster crowing somewhere down the street.  It turned out that one of the freedom‑hungry roosters had made it down the road to the chicken pen of one of one of our neighbours, Philippe.  Someone had seen the rooster next to Philippe’s chicken pen and, assuming it had escaped, had put it in the pen with the hens.  By the time we discovered where the rooster was and how it had come to be there, the rooster had been named Norman and made itself right at home strutting around amongst Philippe’s formerly male‑free chook house. There is a theory (not endorsed by the SFREP) that once a chicken (or rooster) is given a name you’re obliged to leave its head in place no matter how much noise it makes.  In Norman’s case he was a small young rooster and had a relatively low level crow so the neighbours decided that on balance the country farmyard vibe that he provided outweighed the slight noise nuisance which accompanied it. Unfortunately, Stormin’ Norman’s morning vocal exercises increased in proportion to his increasing size and at the end of eighteen months we invited the neighbours over to share some chicken stew and the street fell silent once again. Of course, Norman hadn’t directed all of his male energy into crowing and it wasn’t long after we’d had Norman for dinner that his echo returned (like the 17th remake of Sylvester Stallone movie). Yes, Son of Norman was soon making his presence felt (or at least heard).  Like Norman he started off with a relatively subdued crow and it wasn’t until Norman’s grandson started to join in that Philippe asked the SFREP to intervene.  I got the message that Phillipe wanted his roosters quietened down (with extreme prejudice) second hand via my partner, Shani.  She told me that Phillipe would be bringing them over but it had to be during the evening after the chooks had gone to sleep.  Knowing that Phillipe was an absolutely exceptional chef, I assume that he wanted to have his roosters dispatched after they had gone to sleep to somehow enhance the taste of their meat.  Maybe rooster stew is particularly tender if the roosters are killed while they are asleep before their adrenalin kicks in. Early evening is actually an awkward time for me as

Sleepless Nights When the Kids Leave Home

At 5.00 o’clock Sunday morning two weeks ago you would have found me fast asleep (probably snoring like a trooper) and dreaming pleasant dreams of urban self-sufficiency after a big Saturday in the garden topped off by a trip to Jarrahdale to pick up our two pet goats, Sunday and Kirsch.   Suddenly my peaceful slumber was shattered by a horrible scream that brought me bolt upright in bed. “What? Where? Is someone being murdered? Oh no!! There it is again! It’s coming from the goat pen. Someone must be attacking my goats!!” (Okay, maybe not the most natural conclusion, but the first one that sprung to my sleep addled brain.)   I stumbled out of bed and through the hole in the fence to my neighbour’s backyard to where our goats live. Expecting a life and death struggle between a goat and maybe a fox, or at the very least one of the goats with its head somehow tangled in the fence wires I was surprised to see Sunday peeking bleary eyed out of her shelter and Kirsch standing in the middle of the pen, hale and hearty, as she drew breath and let rip with another ear piercing (drums that is, not lobes) scream. After a quick assessment whereby I realised there was nothing life-threateningly wrong with the girls ( ie they were intact and had food, water and shelter) my anxiety about our lovely four-legged family turned into an even greater anxiety about how my long suffering neighbours would be reacting to this 5.00 o’clock goaty serenade.   Trying to live as an urban peasant on a tiny 213m2 block means that our gardens, bikes, compost, bees and livestock tend to be constantly sneaking into any under-utilised public spaces. Any food scraps or building materials that are left lying around usually get appropriated and it’s not uncommon for a group of kids to come knocking on your door looking for empty jam jars or egg cartons. All this calls for pretty open-minded and tolerant neighbours. . . .   So as Kirsch sucked in another gargantuan breath, I looked desperately for a way to stop whatever was causing her to make this most unneighbourly noise.  I noticed that her udders were huge and swollen and it was then that in spite a premature and shocking start to the day my brain started to make sense of the situation.   Kirsch and Sunday had spent the previous week staying with our friend Keren, who has  a goat minding facility. While Kirsch and Sunday were with Keren she had found new homes for Kirsch’s month-old triplets (Red, Yellow and Blue Boy). Although we had been milking Kirsh a bit over the last month she was obviously used to the kids taking most of the milk and, without them, she was bursting at the seams, a sort of mammary expanding empty nest syndrome.   Quick as a bleary-eyed, sleep befuddled flash, I whipped out the milking gear and started milking her. To my enormous relief that seemed to provide Kirsch with the sort of relief she needed. As her frothing milk poured into the stainless steel jug, she stood quietly on the milking stand munching on muesli , using her mouth for its gastronomic rather than operatic purpose.   The relief was short-lived, however, as it quickly became apparent that the two litre stainless steel jug we customarily used for milking was no longer up to the task. Without her kids feeding, Kirsch was a veritable river of milk. As I rushed inside to get another container she let out a series of bellows (how could so much milk and so much noise come from such a small goat?) which continued until I was back milking her and started up again as soon as her udder was empty. Not knowing what to do and fearing any minute some enraged neighbour would come bounding over the fence armed with a roll of goat gagging gaffa tape, I opened their gate. In a flailing of floppy udders she charged out of the pen and up the road with me stumbling after her.   When I finally caught up with her she was standing in the middle of a ‘paddock’ (a scrubby block of unused land at the end of our street) moaning and bleating. It took me an hour to calm her down and lead her home again. After scrambling through all of my goat books and trawling the net, I realised she was, of course, pining for her kids and the consensus of opinion seemed to be that she would come to grips with the loss and settle down in a day or so (a bit longer than it took my mum to stop pining when I left home.)   In a rural setting a few days of screaming goats would be fine. You just turn up your radio or put in your earplugs. Not so easy in suburban South Fremantle.   I went to bed early that night after setting the alarm for 5am. After a restless night tossing and turning I am pretty sure the alarm and the goat went off at exactly the same moment. With a sense of déjà vu I jumped out of bed and pulled six litres of milk from a screaming goat and then followed her down to the ‘paddock’ where I tried to calm her jangled nerves (and mine) before coaxing her back home. I couldn’t keep this up. Something had to be done. Then as I was filing up the goats drinking trough, an inspiration struck me….. Goats hate to get wet.   Next morning as soon as the first decibels of goat chorus hit my ears I jumped up, ran into the chook pen where the hose was and gave Kirsch a short sharp squirt. Then I ducked down into the chook pen. Immediate silence resulted. After a few quiet moments,  Kirsch gave another, slightly more tentative bleat so I

Everything Bikes

Thursday July 14th Moore and Moore Cafe 6.15 ride for 7pm This should be a fabulous night and a great celebration of everything bikes! Start your night with an early dinner at the Upmarkets (Old Shangai Food Hall) and then meet the Freo Bug crew at 6.15pm  for a ride to Moore and Moore. Make sure you have lots of bright lights and clothing as it will be dark, and we want to be seen! Meet at Moore and Moore at 7pm and let’s see how many car bays we can fill up with bikes! Then join your fellow bike enthusiasts a chat and a cuppa (M&M will have cuppas and some simple food available) before the first ever Freo Bike Talent Show. Please bring your favourite bike photo for a massive bike photo brag board  The movie Beauty and the Bike will be screened at 8.30pm and it runs for about an hour. If you are a total bike nut, come along, if you are not really into bikes but wish you were, come along, if you have 5 or 6 lyrca bike outfits at home, come along, if you would not wear lycra if you were paid to, come along, if your bike is worth more than your car, come along, if you bike came off the side of the road, come along ALL WELCOME!! TELL YOUR FRIENDS    Many thanks to Dismantle,Freo BUG and Moore& Moore for helping organise this event!