Glorious Rain!

by Hannah Parsons

Well, what an eventful week we have to look back on! Our weekend was spent at Imago Forest with a gathering of friends, eating wonderful food, relaxing in the sun, trekking across Julian’s land, running from snakes, swimming in the dam and entertaining three very lively and excitable children! A fantastic period of leisure to prepare us for a busy week on the farm…

With Hannah and Paul in Sydney for a few days, Julian and I are on the farm just like old times. We spend Monday exchanging between outside work in the Mandala and inside work on the computer, typing up and modifying the instructions I have been working on for the past six weeks. We have decided to make them into an organised manual for future Wwoofers, so a little part of me will live on at Imago once I’m gone! Whilst on a stint in the garden I notice two of my poor chickens have runny bums and so I spend the best part of 45 minutes trying to catch them to administer castor oil, chasing them round in circles while they hide and run…I don’t think they like me that much anymore!

On Tuesday Julian and I have fun moving one of our chook domes to a new location as the rooster ‘Sunrah’ and a few of his ‘Spooky Kids’ decide it’s a good idea escape out into the garden! With all my catching practice from Monday it doesn’t take us long to scoop them back into the dome. We spend time completing a new observations and actions sheet for the Mandala, and have some ideas for future work and improvements. The afternoon consists of sowing some seedlings for transplant into the beds at a later date.

Wednesday is a quiet day with just me on the farm while Julian is in Singleton doing what seems like thousands of vital jobs. I do some maintenance on my chicken dome, heightening the roost which has dropped down of late, and replacing some bolts which have come loose. I re-seed some beans which haven’t grown in the recent heat, and make trellis for some that are desperate for something to climb…they look much happier when I’m finished.

I harvest some beans and peas and have a cheeky taste…delicious!

Evening comes round quickly and Hannah, Paul and Paul’s parents arrive back in the rain (which we’re obviously loving after weeks of pure sun!) and dark, welcomed at the yurt by a warm fire and a dinner of homemade soup and bread. Tomorrow will involve bed planting and work in the Mandala so we jump into our beds to get a good nights sleep before another busy day…

King Henry VIII, Sun Rah and Pratt

With four of us now working in the garden, we've divvied up the mandalas between us. This means that we take responsibility for our particular beds and chooks. To make it more personal, Hannah Parsons has named her rooster and chooks King Henry VIII and his wives. Hannah Lawrence has named her rooster Sun Rah and the chooks are called The Spooky Kids. While Paul has called his rooster Pratt and the hens Barbarella 1-9.

Following on from last week's success with the hand sprinklers. Two movable micro-jet systems have been set up which allows us to put a decent amount of water onto the vegies, but in a gentle way.
So we're expecting some good growth out of the gardens now that we can keep the water up to the plants and have a system to do it regularly.

Wonderful Water

Reflecting on the last twelve months at Imago Forest, we've learnt so much and grown more vegies than we thought would be possible without using irrigation. In particular salad mix and carrots are now possible, whereas previously they were not.
With the warmer weather we've been excited about all the crops that we could plant. However almost exactly in time with the warmer soils came the "Big Dry". All of five weeks of no rain. On a typical farm this would barely even register, we imagine, however at Imago Forest we've been looking anxiously to the skies, but have realised that as we are now growing crops that are much more water dependent, we must choose to start irrigating occasionally, or stop growing these extra crops.
As the carrots and salad mix have been popular, we thus began the investigation into how to irrigate... and it was looking like it would easily run into the thousands of dollars. So with a bit of initiative, Paul and Hannah took advantage of the dam being uphill from the mandala garden (part of the permaculture design) and pieces of hose around the farm and constructed a gravity feed pipe from the dam into barrels in the garden.
From the barrels we now hand water the beds as required. Fingers crossed that it will rain as predicted this week, however we now have an option to get by on.

Hannah and Paul

I arrive back at Imago Forest to be greeted by two new WWOOFers, Hannah (now there’s two of us which could get confusing!) and Paul. They are also from England, and are going to be helping me in the Mandala Garden as well as pursuing an exciting project of their own…building a small shelter on the property.

Julian, Hannah and Paul go off to Singleton for deliveries this Wednesday so I formulate a list of activities to keep me busy in their absence. In the cool of the early morning I paint wound dressing onto the grafts we planted in the orchard two weeks ago to stop them dehydrating in all the recent hot weather…I pray for success and a little bit of rain! Following this I bag up some grass cuttings that Paul has slashed over the weekend, and spend a few hours raking, sweltering, drinking gallons of water and applying copious amounts of sun block. Lunch time is a much needed rest in the shade of the yurt, safely away from the three brown snakes I’d encountered during the morning! The afternoon is spent in the shade writing and improving my farm instructions.

Thursday comes round quickly and we WWOOFers spend the morning out in the Mandala, pruning, tidying and getting to know each other. We talk about things we miss about England, and things we love about Australia. Julian does a farm tour with a family from Newcastle, and Perra looks on in amazement at all the unusual noise and activity. We sell some of our stock of eggs…the chooks have been extremely busy of late! After lunch we chill out briefly in the cool of the tipi where we chat about Hannah and Paul’s amazing building plans. They tell me stories of falling frogs and kangaroos outside at night and I wonder if I’d be brave enough to sleep out there! In the afternoon I lead in planting two more beds with help from Hannah and Paul. We plant summer vegies that are a little more drought resistant such as capsicum, eggplant and tomatoes, so our veg variety is increasing quite nicely. After a successful day we head inside for a movie and homemade pizza…heaven.