Druids!

On tuesday night Ben and I attended a meeting of the Canberra Organic Gardeners Society. It was a pretty interesting night. Lots of elderly people, some very stern looking young folk with that air of social conscience about them, some farmer looking types and the odd hippy or two. Having come straight from work I was in a serious looking black suit. Ok so I didn't exactly blend into the background. This interesting mix of people were a very nice bunch and they had a little library of books their members could borrow. The speaker was a lady who was clearly a world expert on biodynamic gardening (she teaches all over the world). I found some of it I had to really force myself to let go of the conservative in me in order to take it on properly. Some of it was easy..."we must work in harmony with nature"...yep that sounds pretty reasonable..."plant your seedlings in the afternoon and they will do better than if you plant them in the morning"...fair enough, sounds reasonable...."prune your fruit trees during the new moon rather than the full moon, the wounds will produce less sap and heal faster"...okaaaay, I don't really understand why but if you say so I can go along with that..."fill a cow horn with manure and bury it for 3 months over winter, dig it up, scoop out the goop and make some liquid fertiliser with it and spray it over your land"....I must admit my first reaction was okay, the druid lady is scaring me now....but i got to thinking...

ok so i probably wont go out looking for a cow horn to fill with manure to bury over winter, but if someone else had done so and said "spray this druid juice around your garden and it will be bonza," you know what? I probably would. What the hell do I know after all? Luckily, Ben is keen as mustard to collect some cow horns over Christmas at his father-in-laws cattle property to get the process started. So I guess I am quite interested in the learnings of the Druids so long as I don't spend too much time wondering "why?"

After we got back from the druid circle we had a butcher's at the lunar exclipse with their telescope. great stuff.

Ben and I ordered some more seeds and bits and pieces today. A veritable heap of vegies and 8 different types of herbs. We also ordered some propogation trays so we can get them all started.

Had chicken soup for dinner and succumbed to the sample tray at bakers delight...sun-dried tomato scones...yum.

Ben and Trish loaned me a book on home farms on tuesday. Its brilliant. how to set up if you have say 3 acres, or 5, or 10. great stuff, I love those wee Pop Larkin type farms that have a little bit of everything. chooks, vegies, fruit, bees, a bit of everything. Of course if you have a couple of hundred with plenty of trees, some cleared land and river frontage you can have wind power generators, wood fires etc. brilliant!