1.6.2009
The Permaculture people who helped yesterday did a wonderful job at the old house site. I now have neat stacks of cleaned bricks and most of the dead plants are gone. I did love my home. We started life here as shell-shocked migrants, living in pioneering conditions as we tried to make a good life for our family. Our house sheltered us as we built it and gradually moulded its self around us as the kids grew up.

It was a first home for my second Grand kid and a refuge for family members in trouble. All my children returned to live here as adults when their lives hit rough patches. It was a cool haven in the summer heat, and a cosy warm space when winter set in. Twice a year, at Xmas and at Mid-winter we would cook turkeys in the Aga, set up a very long table in front of the Inglenook, and sit down with family and friends for a feast. Each time this happened I took a minute amongst the rush of work to reflect on how lucky I was to have all my children and their children gathered together.

Now, the house is just a ruin, but I want to clean it up and convert it to something beautiful as a show of respect for all the good times past. Perhaps it should be a sort of spiritual space as well as a space for parties. I would like to put up pillars made of the old bricks and some roofs for shade in a square shape leaving a central courtyard open to the sky. I liked the temples at Angkor Watt, and would love to create a mini version.

The old chimney could still be used and the roofs could help collect water. It could well be possible to get the underground water pipes going again so the water could take the old route to the big concrete tank. All ideas. Meanwhile we are struggling to get up some relatively simple sheds. Al suggested that we have the sheds with steeper than average slopes to the roofs so that they are right for solar panels and look more pleasing. This means special construction, but I do agree that if we just put up a huddle of off the peg standard shed it would look pretty soulless.

Mike has almost finished bulldozing a flat area to put the sheds on. We are lucky that it has stayed dry, as an enormous tonnage of soil has had to be shifted. It is lucky too that it is just a little bit damp because if we had tried to do this earlier in the year we would have been over whelmed with dust. We are probably getting things done at the right pace but some days it all feels too chaotic to cope with.

Last week Antonia, the big white goat who allowed all our visitors learnt to milk, has gone to a new home at an animal shelter in Healesville that needs goats milk. She was one of the oldest goats and I was worried about her being too stressed in the conditions here. We are still without fences and the animals are restricted to yards that get in a worse state daily. I cut greens for the goats from the weeds in the vegetable gardens but it is not enough to compensate for the lack of grazing. I just hope the animals we have sent away are better off than they were here. I would like to sell the calves but we have no yards, so no way of loading them into a truck.