The dry, gravelly voiced construction edition - with a frog in its throat
Ann's very personal, highly biased and incomplete guide to the ecovillage ... in a nutshell.
With this endless-summer weather, I’ve been disinclined to come in from playing outside, to get my bum on a seat in front of my computer and write some Niblets. But I thought I’d better jump to it, to stay ahead of the progress being achieved here particularly by trucks, diggers and jackhammers. My desire is to make some sense of all the change I feel happening around me; I had forgotten how much can happen rapidly, with a few men in machines.
Dairy farm career change
The dairy farm that once was, is rapidly being disassembled and repurposed. Starting in the early days of Yarrow, this farm raised cattle. The buildings we’ve been making good use of for storage, carpentry and common house activities, once served those cows- for milking, storing feed, providing winter shelter, ‘loafing’, and collecting manure. And now they’re on the move to serve our vegetable farmers .
A Barn for our farmers
The bunker silo is gone . The ‘loafing barn’ has mostly gone. Timbers and boards piled into stacks.
As Krishna reported recently, one of its internal incarnations--- perhaps the most ancient of the rectangular barn shelters--- the “Flying Phoenix’ is sitting on wheels, ready for its trip down the farm runway to become a ‘new’ barn the back pasture.
Farm lane and bridge
The first completed task is a graveled surface down the farm road, replacing the previous parallel–linear-mud-ponds that constituted a pseudo-road. And there’s a safer duck-along route for kids beside the parked cars, so they’re not in the line of the trucks on their way to school.
Coco (Coordinating Committee) is justly proud of a recent accomplishment. By being confident of the structural integrity of our heritage bridge over our creek, they have saved us from paying an extra $20,000 accidently-falling-in-the-creek contingency fund to George the martian wetland contractor.
Wetland marsh
Last week at the back, the stake engineers had laid out patterns of fluorescent orange sticks in a ballet of lines and shapes. I don’t know why they bothered. The back hoes have completely obliterated them by digging giant holes. I believe they are taking a certain glee in the largeness of their endeavors.
Because the actual viewing of the holes is an adult-only activity after 5pm, I have posted a little film that you and your kids are guaranteed to enjoy, to save you the trip down there--
Note- We’ve received a security warning related to the ponds. Apparently there’s a thief nearby ( in our midst??) who brazenly cuts bulrush heads and makes flower arrangements with them. My coco spy won’t reveal her identify, but also suggests that Coco could save the $20,000 cost of a security fence or closed circuit camera system around the pond, if we simply plant extra bulrushes. If you’re in favour of the second option, please show up for the work party to be announced for about three weeks time. And let’s show that thief that there’s more than one way to skin a cattail.
Synopsis --- How to a construct a wetland marsh
1. Dig up all stakes, making a big hole ( or four holes + two trenches)
Throw in some pipes
2. Fill with gravel and sand ( or vice versa - ask George)
3. Line with rubber sheets, just like those in a real ( constructed) pond
( or, put the pipes in second, with the gravel first, then sliding the rubber underneath the whole works)
4. Fill with water and frogs
5. Plant the edges
6. Keep an eye on Maureen --- floral designer.
Efficiency and synchronicity department
Next to the old loafing barn was a large underground pit/tank---still filled with ancient manure. That 'liquid gold" - quote by Nevin- was trucked to the fields at the back and distributed over the soil to grow our carrots( solid gold), which we'll eat next year. The pit - with its thick, reinforced concrete walls- itself needed to be removed - and so it was, by the” jack hammer on steroids”( quote from Cheryl ) --- leaving a very large hole. When gravel trucks drop their loads at the new marsh, they bring back loads of fill and drop those into the pit. If we weren’t digging everywhere, all at the same time, we wouldn’t have this awesome human, cow, truck, carrot and soil cycle.
Here and there, then and now, back and forth. We're becoming at one.
Haiku finale
Freshly dug wetland
An old frog tries his new jump
Frog-water sound. Our song!
The best-known Japanese haiku[18] is Bashō's "old pond":
古池や蛙飛込む水の音
furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto (transliterated into romaji)
This separates into on as:
fu-ru-i-ke ya (5)
ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu (7)
mi-zu no o-to (5)
Translated:[19]
Into the ancient pond
A frog jumps
Water’s sound!
