On January 5, I arrived back in Australia, looking forward to spending the Aussie summer on some of my favorite farms - helping and learning with friends and mentors, making more paintings in the Open Road series, and seeing the country through new eyes inspired by my own home projects underway in Cambridge, MA, USA. [For more on art shows, community food cooperatives, home fermentation, and teaching experiments from my home base, check
www.facebook.com/lqjcolorfullife .]
Kris and Jilly's place, now called Twelvetrees Farm, in Tasmania's lush Huon Valley, was the first extended stop this time round. January is the height of blueberry season, which made it easy to join the team for picking and packing, market-garden cultivation, and shared-house living.
This was my fourth visit to their farm, in as many years. Now, two new little ones have sprung up: Georgia and Franklin, who giggle in the garden, entertain all, and cover themselves cheerfully in hearty farm food. [Earlier accounts of inspiration from their homestead and community are here: ]
Still as in my memory, the eucalyptus and wattle trees rustle in the river's salty breeze, blowing in over the Costal Road while we work, sleep, grow, dream.
Three weeks here now is enough time to experience changes over the course of the summer, and reintegrate with the peaceful daily rhythms of farm, family, and community. Here are some freshly-harvested lessons from the mediation of this time:
More than about berries, or even about farming or developing a small business, this place is really about two things:
people, and
good food - every day.
The farm is changing as the living organism at its heart - Kris and Jilly's family - grows, and is given top priority. Farm work schedules are made around what emotionally works for the family and extened home community. Meals together happen together every morning and evening. Every family members shares a generous and flexible portion of play time and caregiving with every other. When close friends come to town or events in the community call for attention, they get full focus. If dynamics among residents in the shared-home look like they might become cloudy, Jilly and Kris find simple, easy ways to shift logistics and keep everyone feeling healthy, with no fuss.
Their kitchen embodies this, and inspires me...
...to make a painting I've long imagined.
Jilly and Kris' passion for local good food - wild caught and locally raised whenever possible - is becoming their strongest voice as a a family, and as farmers.
Standing in their always-creative kitchen, here's what we're treated to: garden veg daily roasted and sliced into delicious garlicy salads, sausages made from the neighbor's cow, rabbits killed by a friend become an epic paella, a friend's honey and jam from /fruit we gather slather onto Jillys sourdoughs made with local rye, goat meat from the kids raised last year on the property roasted and stewed to crunchy tenderness, cheese from over the hill is as delicious as ever, salmon salvaged as overstock from a local fishery, roasted veggie chips, and bone-broth stews filled with Jillys garden veg fill our plates nightly. Not being a meat-eater, I stuck happily to the veggies. Everone shares the spirit of good food gathered resourcefully straight from the land that everyone shares here. While structure and efficiency to the family or farm schedule may ebb and flow, the constant is beautiful meals make and enjoyed every evening, together.
The farm as an entity and business has taken a strategically local turn. Now, the focus is on selling direct to local buying groups and farmer's market customers, hosting pick-your-own party days at the farm, and using social media and friend-ly connections to pre-order and deliver direct to consumers in Melbourne. Large orders shipped to Sydney happen only once or twice a season now, as opposed to being the staple in years past. Everything is becoming more sustainable - ecologically, and in terms of human time and emotion.
Bouncing along in the yute, Kris points out, "things are on the go - slowly, but we're seeing progress. Jilly's working on the garden, which could become a market garden soon. We're going to experiment with bringing parts of the fruit orchard and vineyard back. We've hosted some catered dinners at the farm and it seems there's a market for more of that. We hope to diversify and sell more directly to local customers who value good food and are willing to pay for it -- which seems to be the only way small farms can really survive these days. Plus, it's much more interesting and fulfilling for us to do many things instead of just one polyculture. There's potential for the farm to be a very dynamic place in a few years."
Jilly collaborates with another chef-friend to cater locavore events on the river -- either in front on the farm on the banks of the bay, or on a historic yacht on the river. Twelvetrees produce, as well as Jilly's excellent cooking, go to other catering events and the famous local cafe.
A top piece of land on the farm has been transformed from a grazing paddock to a large home/market garden. With the afternoon light coming down through the valley, we work together. Uncovering beds covered in shade-cloth, under which rich weed matter has been piled to decompose, we prepare for planting by adding with layers of mulch and compost. Hundreds of seeds are poked and patted into the ground - silver-beet ("chard" in the US), celery, leeks, potatoes, zucchini, and herbs in abundance.
Jilly glows and sparks with excitement when she talks about gardening, an we feed each other's energy. She talks over with me her strategies for very low weeding but high organic matter, mulching with wood chips from small limbs of local trees, and interplanting. Her constant research among farm communities - mostly online - clearly has accumulated to deep knowledge and strong theory based on evidence. She stands over the long bed of fluffy soil, her curls and cardigan blowing in the breeze, hands me the carrot seeds and tells me, "Let's plant them in lines - gosh, I don't think I've ever said that in my life!" We shovel wood-chips from a pile the size of a small car, which she secured from the town council tree pruners in exchange for a case of beer and some berries. I spread the mulch 10 centimeters or more thick and we exchange glances about whether this is the right depth - I'm not being stingy, and I can tell she didn't want to be either. She reaches out to pat it lovingly and says, "Yeah! I reckon that would be a luxurious layer."
The family farm started by Jilly's parents nearly 30 years ago still offers a gracious, evolving example of inter-generational wholistic living. As Jilly and Kris now come into their own stride, caretaking and running the farm, her father lives in a cottage on the top corner of the property. Building on her parents' homesteading legacy and giving it their own identity they recently gave it a new name - Twelvetrees Farm.
This January, we celebrated two birthdays. Jilly threw her Dad, John, a lovely 70th at his church parish in town, with new and old friends from all over the world. A few days later, we celebrated little Georgia's 3rd birthday with a waffle-and-berry-cream picnic under the willows by the creek, fashioned after the Brambly Hedge stories about a self-sufficient community of field mice living under the willows. This thick fabric of community and family, among generations, seems like one of the land's richest harvests.
For me, being here again now is even more like coming back to a home I love... and also stepping out to a new edge. Returning, I feel the peace of knowing where the extra oats are stored in the pantry, using the same tea mug that I always loved, being welcomed on morning runs by the same trees and the arching road that I love, tasting the berries which are as sweet as they are in my dreams. This time, I see my friendship with Jilly, Kris, and their family and community deepen. Long chats in the kitchen or garden about growing techniques and innovative food projects, brainstorming and advice shared and sought on all sides about ways we go about our projects, and sharing the daily rhythms of life with a growing young family -- I feel lucky to have these friends, and I'm so happy if I can offer something back. Jilly said to me as she hugged me goodbye: "You've made the world a lot smaller for be, returning as you do..."
This year also, I am aware and excited about new challenges, new horizons on my road. I look forward - with some healthy anticipation - to continuing to apply my learning and inspiration to my home and community around Cambridge, MA. I'm excited to explore a new chapter of my own art and life, deepening and building on the energy I've found here in Australia, and everywhere my shoes have stepped. This is a year of blossoming -- I'm looking forward to heading home for that spring.
