lantanaland

A New Addition to Lantanaland (with video)

2012-02-09T17:55:00.001+10:00

There has been much excitement and fussing this week at Lantanaland. No, young Cutis hasn't decided to walk a few months early, rather my dexter cow, Candy, has finally had a calf. Considering that she was due in roughly September/October, I think I was the only one who still thought she was up the duff. The problem with cow pregnancies is that they are hard to get to go to hospital and a vet call out fee would probably be more expensive than the cow so it is wait and hope and lots of both.

Still, when the result is a beautiful little girl calf like this you are not that phased about the wait. I came home on Monday and started throwing in a bit of fruit for the cows when I spotted the wobbly gait of a newborn. So cool. Indescribably cool. We all rushed down to have a look. Candy wouldn't let me get close enough to check her, but a bit later I lured her away with some food and took and educated guess about her sex.

The next morning I lured them into the milking paddock. I did all my jobs and was just getting ready when Ryno turned up for a look. A fairly happy cow but no calf was found. My heart sinking I scoured the small paddock with no luck. I couldn't believe it, 12 hours old and I'd lost her. Ryan went off down the street and I had one last look. There, through the fence where it was a bit high, in a hollow in the lantana was one sleeping calf. It turns out I know less about cows then I did about babies. Reunited with mum I left for work, now worrying that I hadn't seen her feed and what to look out for to make sure Lantanaland's first calf was ok.

Luckily I have some great mates who I have made through various mediums and they imparted all their knowledge. It was a great relief and gave me the confidence that I was going ok. Mum is going good too, becoming more protective by the day, the next big challenge is to train her up for milking.

The calf will get named by one of the herdsharers. It is run like the nba draft. The herdsharers who recieved the least amount of cheese and milk in the last year get the most chances in the draw. It then slides up to Simon and Ryan who I see every week, so they are probably the only ones I could legitimately charge the Herdshare fee to. They get one chance. The best two suggestions I have seen come from my dad who liked Faith, "because you were the only one who still had faith she was pregnant" and Sally, "Gurty, you know, yoGhurt."

In the past when something like this happened someone in your street would have cows and you would be able to lean on them. Despite my semi rural locale, no one here raises cows, a few people have them as grass eaters but not as milkers. So it was great to be able to ask questions of people through the net for some help, in particular Andrew and Maree at Silverwood Organics, two lovely people who run an organic sheep property in Western QLD who I met through work and who chipped in to the Herdshare, even though they rarely are in Brisbane. They happily took my call and questions.

My beloved twitter also came in handy, the fabulous Marian Macdonald, a dairy farmer and blogger in Victoria who increased my knowledge one hundred fold with one phone call and a series of tweets. I was also able to send her some video and photos and ask specific questions. So my farmer community might be a bit spread out, but it is still a bloody good one.

Guesting

2012-02-09T07:47:00.001+10:00

I was asked to do a little guest post on the excellent Flavour Crusader blog, which does excellent work in pushing fresh sustainable food and eating. So I did and here it is.

Lantanaland experimentation.

2012-02-05T20:48:00.001+10:00

I make a soft feta when I don't have time to make a more interesting cheese, which with a newborn around and all the other farm jobs is pretty much all the time. I do get bored easily though and when I was cutting and salting the cheese this arvo I had an idea to combine it with one of my favourite food items, preserved lemons.

I dry salt the cheese at first anyway, to firm it up a little, before adding water to make the brine. So I placed a layer of sliced lemons under the cheese, well coated in salt. I love citrus and can't wait till my trees at Lantanaland are big enough to supply me year round. Will it work? Doesn't matter if it fails, but if it is good, genius!

Photo walk round Lantanaland

2012-02-04T13:05:00.002+10:00

Curtis was being a bit grumpy so the one thing guaranteed to settle him is strapping him into the chest carrier and go for a walk. So I went for a bit of a photo walk, unfortunately not with my good camera as I'd left all the SD cards on my desk or in the iMac at work.

This is Dolores, my youngest cow. She is a black and white jersey, which is a bit rare. Hopefully she is pregnant. She is in the top paddock with the best grass as she gets bullied off the fruit and hay the others get. She also treats me a little like a 14 year old girl would the Bieber, minus the screaming. She absolutely adores me. I can't wait for her to have a calf cause she is so placid she should be a joy to milk.

This is Lafayette or Laf. I have been milking her for a few years. She loves me too but more like a marriage. She reserves the right to be in a bad mood or give me a kick if I don't touch her right. She is also an absolute greedy guts and will bellow if I walk past and there is a chance of a feed.

With all this rain around plants that have seemed a bit sad either from lack of correct treatment from me or a brush with escaped cows will make a mad dash for growth. This is a lemon. I have a fair bit of citrus round the place as we use bucket loads of it.

Another fruit I am very fond of, the passionfruit. We had a fantastic vine on the old chook pen but it never survived the transition to the chook Hilton. This year I made sure I was well stocked and planted four plants and a whole heap of fruit from my mums vine. These ones are down the driveway and they too have had a few setbacks from the Escaped Cow Fruit Tree Pruning Service. The best one on the chook pen is fruiting now.

The planting around the chook pen that I did to help bed in the mesh is also producing some chillies, there is also arrowroot, rosellas, cucumber and comfrey.

The garden on the outside is big enough now that I can let the ducks and chooks out to forage a bit, get some greenery and explore. Unfortunately they don't eat lantana.

The view down the western boundary. Not sure if you can see them but the neighbours cows are having a lie down in the lush grass at the bottom.

Everything booms after a wet spell in summer and the bamboo is no exception. New sprouts shooting on the bunch next to the bees.

The first fruit from the pineapples I planted down the driveway when first at Lanatanaland. They are hardy buggers surviving the long grass that encroaches on them and even the occasional trim when a mate helps whippersnip the yard.

Entropy

2012-01-31T08:48:00.001+10:00

Entropy, my high school physics teacher told me, is the tendency of the universe to want to tend towards chaos. He thought that we could all easily study the theory by examining the state of our teenage bedrooms but if he wanted a true study he should have come and had a look at my farm.

Lantanaland is just a hobby, but that comes with its own challenges because I can't afford the solid, stand the test of time fencing that proper farms have. All my fencing is electric. I have run into a few unique problems with the electric that have given my cows a holiday in the lush paddocks of my neighbor.

Strange that it might seem after all the rain last week we had a very dry December and January. So dry that all the star pickets my fencing was on loosened and the fence fell over. There is one sure way to tell when an electric fence has failed and that's when you see your cows on the far side of the hill. Unlike fencing a couple of thousand of acres it's pretty easy to walk the fence and redo the lines. The cows were pretty easy to get back, they wandered up the top of the hill after a week and I just called them back in. My beautiful black and white jersey, Dolores was so happy to see me that she didn't even want the food I was offering, just some pats. She is hopefully pregnant and I can't wait till she calves cause she is so beautifully mannered that she will be a joy to hand milk.

The next prison break happened ironically because of all the rain. I am stretching the energizers a bit far around the farm and I don't poison my fence lines. When it's dry, no worries, but wet weather like we had means every twig and thick stem of grass touching the lines becomes an earth point. The fact that there is better grass on the other side is simply an incentive to test the fence. Still, a few days out and some tempting grain and they come back.

Still on a place like this entropy can also work for you. the cows spread tomato and pumpkin seeds everywhere, ready fertilized and mulched for the next rain. There are tomato bushes all over the place and the ones that survive tend to yield some ripper tomatoes. I'm also hoping that the rain will finally give the grass the kick it needs. I have probably over grazed this year, I really need to fence the wildest paddock down the bottom, which means cutting fence lines through sometime ten foot high lantana thickets. The beauty of that paddock is that it has the dam in it and I would love the cows to clear around it a bit so I can get in and plant some things to stabilize the bank and boost a bit of biodiversity, maybe even put a duck island in the middle.

Still I can't complain too much about the forces of chaos on the farm. Considering the resources we have, most of the chaos is working in my favor, not against. It's not like I rely, yet, on Lantanaland to provide my income, I can't imagine what floods or drought or a falling tree or escaped cattle does to a real proper farm where fixing the fences might take a month, not a day, a pile driver, a pair of scissors and some gumboots.

Competitive Reading

2012-01-19T18:21:00.001+10:00

I find that I don't read anywhere near enough, that I need a kick to get started into books. I spend too much time on what I call light immersion, the net, twitter, Facebook, bit of TV. Not enough time writing or reading.

Maybe I just need that touch of competitiveness to it. In my first year in high school, my awesome English teacher was talking to me about reading while we set up a record of what books we had read in the back of our workbooks. I tried to show indifference even though I loved reading. I did mention that I read quickly and in a flash he had summed up a young boy who loved sports. Put it to me as a challenge. "I bet you can't read 50 books this year!"
"50?! I'll smash that easy Sir" I proclaimed.

So despite doing athletics and cricket (badly) I hit the books, hard. He fueled the fire, suggesting authors to me and by the end of the year I had read 135 books. I think he was a little shocked but probably chuffed that he had suckered a kid into being addicted to books.

It was with interest this morning that I saw on Facebook that one of the Herdsharers, Tony, was trying to read 52 novels this year. I saw an opportunity to get myself to read a bit more, to immerse myself again, so I threw out a challenge to him. Whoever can read the most books in a year, new ones, gets a novel of their choosing from the other. Sounds like great fun.

Tony has a bit of a head start on me but I have a few queued up that I have been time wasting on the net and not reading. 2 of Birmos books, a crime novel and the new Game of Thrones which I read two pages of, then got distracted by something shiny.

I wonder if he'll let me count reading books at bedtime to Curtis.

Hoarding is a skill.

2012-01-17T20:21:00.001+10:00

There is no denying it, my dad is a hoarder. Some have even suggested that despite him not being my birth father, I have inherited the hoarding gene. But you see hoarding is like the dark side and for every dark side there is a light and that is innovation and recycling.

I can always remember Allen recycling, even though I was too young to even understand the concept then. We had a beach shack on Curtis Island, and Allen built a home made hot water system running off the fire at the back, which was replaced by a home made solar hot water system. But the one that sticks in my mind was the back shed.

Completely built over about ten years from timber and steel salvaged off the beach and from the local dump, it was almost complete. All it needed was a tin roof, but no one at The Island was feeling particularly wasteful so Allen bought some new tin in town. Considering it had taken ten years to build at this stage, while he'd waited for materials to be washed up or dumped, this caused many jokes to be told at family dinners at his expense.

This was back in the days before The Island had a barge and the tin was too big to safely put in the boat so it was strapped to the little dingy and towed over behind us. We went a dead low when there is less swell but once we got through the gut it got a bit choppy. We were almost there when disaster struck, a rogue wave hit the dingy, flipped it over and all the tin slid off and down to the bottom of the harbor.

It wasn't until about a month later when Allen found a bunch of used tin at the dump that we were able to make jokes about the shed not wanting anything new to be added to it.

Mum and Allen have been down here helping us with the baby and Allen couldn't help himself. He had picked up some clamshell kids baths off the side of the road on the way down where they had been dumped or blown off a trailer. Perfect for cow troughs. He'd also spied some old guttering that had been replaced where one end had rusted out. A days work and he had rigged it up so that the drain that runs under the driveway and down the hill is now diverted into a water trough for the cows. Genius. Anyone else would have driven past those baths as junk, or tossed out that gutter. Allen wouldn't and I hadn't thrown that gutter out cause I knew I'd find a use for it.

Now all I need is to find a second hand tank of some sort so I can store the water and rig up a float switch. Maybe I'll go for a drive.

The positives and negatives of electric fencing.

2011-12-17T16:06:00.001+10:00

Being relatively poor, all the fences here at Lantanaland are of the electric kind. There was no real cow proof boundary fencing when we got here and to put that sort of fencing in requires serious money. I'd hate to think what sort of money goes into fencing at a proper farm. Proper fencing requires long term vision and planning as well. You have to think of all the possible ways you might want it set up, not just how you want it set up today. Once it is in it is expensive and time consuming to change. Electric fencing is pretty good as long as you stay on top of it and has one real benefit that fits in with my permaculture principles.

Permaculture has a theory that you learn with the land. That is the longer you are on a piece of land, the more you understand the most effective way to work it and make it work for you. Electric fencing is fantastic for this because it is really easy to reconfigure. Just pull out and bash in some star pickets and give that way a try. I think I have reconfigured the 'home paddock' about ten times already to get the best out of the set up. Learning the way the cows behave, building a chook pen and now setting up for a vegetable garden has all influenced how I build the fences.

The latest little permaculture program I have started is the veg patch. I've been watching the River Cottage Veg program and it made me realize that one of the reasons that I don't cook more veg is that the stuff from the supermarkets is fairly uninspiring, flavour wise. When I broke it down, the reason I don't grow more veg is that, well, I suck at it. I forget to water it, or feed it or don't have good enough soil. Hopefully the new patch will solve all these problems.

I have used tyres to build the beds because they are free and modular. That lets me do a bit each day rather than waiting for a whole free weekend to build beds with materials I can't really afford. The beds are just outside the chook pen and right next to where the cows come and wait to be fed, the best source of rich broken down soil. It's also gives me a super enriched fertilizer, the water from the duck pool in the chook house.

I redid the fences so that there is a little buffer between the beds and the paddocks so the cows can't reach those dexterous tongues through and munch on the tasty plants. I walk down past this garden every day to milk and there is always water down there for the cows so there is no chance of neglect. That is probably one of the most important things for me. If it needs daily attention then it had better be somewhere I have to go every day.

The next bit of refencing was around the tree and tank above the house. I have a little paddock there that is too steep for the ride on and I extended it round the big fig and second tank, down to the aquaponics. This little slope is a pain to slash, so getting the cows to do the work for me seems like a smart thing to do. It also means they can come down and say hello when we are on the deck or in the spa, something that Dolores will like. She is a very friendly cow.

All in all for a couple of hours work yesterday and today I have increased my pasture, got a secure vegetable garden in and started, fixed up another fence and moved Laf and Buster the bull into there. All done, until something comes along and gives me an idea and I change it again. All part of the fun.

Technology has to make it effortless.

2011-12-15T08:17:00.001+10:00

Mr John Birmingham had a nice little post today on using a notebook to you know, take down ideas and story plans with a pen. Old school. But just because technology is old technology doesn't make it useless or invalid. Sometimes it is still the best thing, simply because it draws you in to what you want to do.

I love my iPad. Do all my blog writing on it. However I foolishly jumped into an update of the software before checking that the blogging app I use had tested and updated for iOS 5 and it killed it. I could and still did write on the web interface but it was nowhere near as enjoyable. The iPad works for me because I cannot touch type and the pace of my typing roughly matches the pace of my thoughts. I tried some other apps for blog writing but they all made the process harder. The way apple has set up the cloud services now means that whenever I pick up the iPad all my photos and saved links are there ready to go.

I use a lot of pictures in my blogs so the ability to place and move pics around in my blog easily and quickly makes me more likely to write. I found a new app for $1.99 that did all that I wanted and actually made it far easier to put together a post than both my broken app and the web interface. The technology was easy and so I was more likely to write.

At work however things are a bit different. I do a lot of design and marketing stuff as well as forward planning and iPad software design. I have a big iMac but my favorite tool is these big blotters that one of our suppliers give us. Almost as big as my desk it has calendars down both sides, space for to do items on the left and big beautiful blank space to scribble in. Every Monday I start a new one and transfer any left over things from the week before. Coupled with a bunch of felt pens it is integral to the way I work.

I've not yet found a easy way to replicate that with the iPad. Maybe not enough space that I can see everything laid out. Maybe on the new iMac with its massive screen there would be a mind mapping app that would replicate it. One thing I do love on the new iMac is the touch pad that came with it. I have a series of desktops set up, one for photoshop, one for time wasting, one for email, one for the software that runs all our ordering and data at work. I simply swipe between desktops and it is like a little mental switch that clicks your brain into that workflow.

New features and new technology is fantastic, but if you are not going to explore and push it, then the best tech for you might be a exercise book and a pencil. Whatever works.

A birthday + I know a guy, chapter 32.

2011-12-11T20:07:00.001+10:00

We have been taking the advice of many, many parents and enjoying the last few weekends child free by pretty much doing nothing. Saturday was my birthday so we went down to a local winery, with good mate Ryan and had a lovely feed on an old classic Queenslander over looking some grapevines and some cows. The food was nice if not amazing but the view was fantastic especially with the recent rain making everything a nice English style green.

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching a bit of cricket, bantering with some cricket tragics on twitter and reading a few books before The Wife cooked a lovely quiche and we watched The Fantastic Mr Fox. I liked it but The Wife is not really a fan of quirky so lucky it was my birthday and I could get away with it. Oh and I got a chainsaw from The Wife, Ryno and the Paul Manttan family. Sweet! More gear to tame Lantanaland.

Today was also fairly lazy, I only just got a bit of lawn mowing in before the rain hit, but this afternoon we got an unexpected and welcome visitor. The neighbour that shares a back fence with us, the mythical back fence which I have only glimpsed once and never walked the full length of. He wanted to fix it up and was wondering if we could pitch in some funds.

We got to chatting and it turns out it is his cattle that wander all over the block to the right of ours. Not only that but he kills and ages his own beef. Of course I then mentioned I worked for a butcher supply company. There was a moment where we looked at each other and realized a fellow follower of the 'I know a guy' principle. It's quite simple, a bit like bartering. I trade or use my skills and contacts with yours. Never at market price of course.

Turns out that the cattle are just a sideline, he has an earthmoving business and keeps all his stuff on sheds on the land. Mentioned that he thought about buying our place when we bought it so he could run power up to his sheds. I reckon I know a guy that could help him there.

Food Miles and Flavour

2011-12-08T21:17:00.001+10:00

I was watching my food hero Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall tonight doing a show about going vego for six months. He's an inspiring bloke, at least to me and one of the key things I took away was that he'd got a new category added to the local show. Tastiest vegetable. It makes sense, especially in today's modern two tone supermarket system where taste would be at the bottom of a long checklist of things like whether or not the veg can bounce along in a truck for 500km.

One of the thing I love about Lantanaland is food miles. Food miles are the distance and energy used to get something to your door. I'm not saying that you have to get everything locally, some cultures and regions just do things better. I get a kick out of the smallest things though and tonight is was one small jar of tomato jam made with these small pear tomatoes that I planted just for jam.

These tomatoes have had a rough time, the cows have escaped a few times and they are on the driveway with some other tasty treats and have had a bit of a prune. I got just enough of the little beauties for one jar. I'm going to enjoy breakfast tomorrow knowing that my jam has food miles of about 50m.

The other food with very low mileage is obviously my dairy products. Now I understand that not everyone wants a cow, even though cows are cool. I've been making lots and lots of creamy feta and one of the other tidbits on River Cottage was a smoked soft curd goats cheese. If a soft curd goats cheese takes smoke well, I reckon my feta will, so this weekend I'll fire up the cold smoker and try smoking some cheese.

I understand that not everyone cares about flavour or where their food has come from. For some people it's price and convenience and nothing else. Some people support the local farmers markets or grow herbs on a balcony. But I'm pretty proud of my jam, small token or not.

Home Grown Veg

2011-12-04T20:27:00.001+10:00

Despite the beautiful lush rolling hills with meter deep beautiful topsoil here at Lantanaland I am terrible at growing vegetables. Actually all of that is a complete lie. Except the vegetable growing. For whatever reason I just don't have a fantastic track record with veg.

I understand the principles but seem to lose crops to cows, chooks, lack of water, pests, forgetfulness, goats and ducks. It's a bloody shame because home grown stuff increasingly has a far superior taste to any shop bought stuff and I like eating things that taste good.

The best success I've had this year has been with tomatoes. Some have just popped up from the cows eating lots and lots of tomatoes, some have been raised from seedlings. I have planted them everywhere. I'm enjoying a half decent crop too at the moment but not the absolute glut that would mean that I could make tomato sauce for pastas and the like or one of my favorites, tomato jam. I did today have an absolute joy, a bacon, avocado, home made feta and tomato sandwich.

In my ideal world I would be producing the following in amounts that could keep my kitchen running. Carrots, garlic, onions, potatoes, salad leaves, beans or peas, zucchini and I'd like a bit of corn, cucumber (I usually have no trouble with them) and cabbage. I also usually get pumpkins no worries but not in fantastic numbers.

I'll just keep trying, I have the worst soil going and have just started some raised beds so we'll see how that goes. In a perfect world I'd have the chaotic self seeding kitchen garden that they have at Northey Street farm where all sorts of things self seed and thrive in a random mix. I made some fantastic salads for lunch out of that garden, it had no order but fantastic production.

The beauty of having the farm is that I have the raw ingredients and tools to grow good stuff, I just need the knowledge and the practice. I look forward to eating it.

The Rains are 'ere Marge

2011-11-24T21:20:00.001+10:00

It's a cliche as old as the hills (see what I did there), but the one of the farmer looking up at the sky waiting for rain, dusty hat in hand has been used and over used by advertising and bad Australian soaps for years.

That doesn't mean it has lost its meaning. Here in SE QLD the memories of last years floods are very much in the forefront of the collective mind. But it wasn't that long ago that Brisbane was suffering from drought. All that meant was a few poor gardens and some water restrictions that most third world countries would be glad to suffer.

Now I am a smallholder, realistically one that doesn't rely on anything I grow or produce, but still one that is incredibly aware of rainfall and weather. Lantanaland is marginal land at best, clay and rocky soil and while I am improving it I rely on decent rainfall to make sure my feed bill doesn't run too high.

So when I woke up this morning about 4am to the sound of steady soaking rain breaking the driest November since 1919 it was the most peaceful, beautiful and relaxing sound I think I've ever heard. It means the grass will grow quicker than the cows can eat and I can seed the third paddock.

It's a good sound.

Pulling Tit Every Second Day Was Not Making Her Happy

2011-11-22T19:58:00.001+10:00

Well that should get the google analytics ticking over.

I have a problem. The problem is that I have never kept dairy cows before now and while I know that I know nothing, I thought I knew more than that. I have two cows in calf, well, I think I do. Candy looks bloody pregnant to me, but then Dexters look like little barrels on legs anyway, so it's a bit hard to tell. I thought Candy's udder had dropped and filled a bit and assumed that the calf was near. That was 6 weeks ago.

Now it doesn't really matter if Candy is a bit later in the year, let nature take it course and all that. The problem comes with how I've treated and reacted to my leading cow, Laf. When I thought that the calf was imminent, I started to dry Laf off, milking every second day. I thought this was the right thing to do, so that when I started milking Candy she could ease into the offseason and have a rest. About the same time she started to kick when I was milking. Laf used to give an occasional kick, but this was every minute or so. There is nothing like screaming obscenities at a cow in the dark at 5am who has just kicked over 6L of hand extracted milk. I just thought she was over being milked.

Pick the noobie dairy farmer.

If I'd thought about it, I'd have linked it to the change in routine. I know that cows are great creatures of habit and hate having things changed up. I guess I had just convinced myself that it was a particular reason and put my brain in park.

As time has passed and Candy has stayed fat but given forth no baby cow I thought I'd better go back to milking Laf every day. No calf is bad, but buying milk from a shop is catastrophic. When Laf went back to a daily milk it was like she had had a bit of time with the CIA and had her attitude adjusted. No kicks. Running down to get her food. Nuzzling me like a big dog.

Cows. Like. Routine.

So now in the early Lantanaland mornings all is again peaceful. The ground is no longer stained white with spilt milk and I am enjoying milking again. I learnt just how little I know about dairy cows, well actually I'm sure I still don't know how much I don't know, but at least I'm enjoying doing it again.

Ten Years of Bliss

2011-11-17T11:45:00.005+10:00

Today I have been married to a beautiful fantastic woman for ten years. We had a bit of party on the weekend to celebrate but some of our close friends couldn't come so I thought i'd throw up my little speech for those who have shared in our lives up till now. Here it is....

This time ten years ago I would have been kicking back nervously in my very last share house with Davey and The Bro cracking jokes in an attempt to chill me out a bit. Despite being together for a few years and many share houses I was quite nervous about getting married. I don't know why, now, because none of the traditional things about marriage, commitment, change, kids particularly worried me. There was no need, it's taken Ness ten years to get round to having kids. But our relationship hasn't changed that much at its core.

Because at the core of our marriage and the time before it is the friendship and love that we have for each other. When we first started going out it was a few months before we spent a night apart. Now I'm pretty sure that had something to do with Vanessa being quite hot, but it was also because we genuinely liked each others company, and always have enjoyed hanging out with each other. We are quite happy out here in our little farm with each other, as long I offer at least one back rub a day and the spa is working.

We've still managed to pack a fair bit in the last ten years, a PHd, new jobs, buying a farm, a pregnancy, just, and plenty of up and downs. I think no marriage that will last can be all one tone, it needs the occasional bump to wake you up and make you look at each other. I find that those bumps are always on the roads that come when I take a different exit to the one Vanessa is expecting me to take. Ten plus years of scientific training has made her mind rebel against what it sees as the best methodology and my hypothesis that it is interesting to occasionally go a different way home has been found to be invalid.

A key part to our marriage has always been friends, and I include family in there because I count them as my friends, because friends are always there for you. When I was running the music venues and working stupid hours with high stress and low pay we used to have a cooking club with one of our best mates Davey. We had this low level bickering going that we would never have done in public but Davey is like a big brother. Instead of making an excuse and canning it he turned up week after week with his jokes and gently steered us into calm conversation. It was like the lightest of couple therapy. Luckily for him the food was pretty good.

I see a lot of our friends here tonight, many who we've lived with or played footy with and definitely shared a beer and a feed with. Food and drink has been another constant theme of our marriage, I love cooking for Vanessa, I never tire of it. Likewise she tolerates my experimentation and when all else fails I get her a carrot. (after slaving away at a very slow cooked lamb dish during her pregnancy, ness threw a minor tanty about not getting any fresh veg for dinner. I almost cried and very patiently offered her some carrot sticks. In five minutes she was cheerfully munching away and I went back and polished off my stew.) Our friends and family have always been generous with their help, time and affection and we would like to thank them for it.

I love Vanessa even more than those first days, it's a deeper love. It's a love that gives a little chuckle when she forgets how I have a cup of tea after ten years, a love that treasures every cuddle and caress and appreciates just how much she understands me and for that I am truly thankful. Not everyone gets to meet and marry someone like that and I look forward for all the things to come.

Old Wood

2011-10-19T21:29:00.002+10:00

Sometimes you just lucky with the people you become friends with. I've made two or three through the blogosphere that I would call real mates and communicate with even if the Internet ceased to exist. But the net makes joining of the minds like that easy. The real fun is when it happens through an old school interaction, like being neighbours.

When we moved to Lantanaland the first people we met was Eric and Di, the people who lived across the street. We didn't have that much in common at first, other than music. Eric has about 20 000 vinyl records of all different styles. He just loves music (my old hip hop buddies would go nuts). But he's not into technology at all, can't even save a called number into his phone and he is a fair bit older, different generations and all that. We would have the occasional chat and beer as we got to know each other, he has a great sense of humor and being a chippy, he did a few odd jobs round the house that were beyond my skills.

We got to friendly enough that when we decided that a 20 degree slope on one side of the deck probably wasn't that flash, we asked if he'd do the work of rebuilding it. You just have to look at his house to know eric isn't just a run of the mill builder. Hes a craftsman and like me he gets bored doing things the conventional way. He agreed and we did the work mostly on weekends so that I could be the laborer. Over that time I learnt a few things about building and discovered that we share a deep love for hardwood timber and in particular, recycled timber.

The stuff that gets put into landfill today is criminal, especially from old commercial buildings. Back in the day they built with timber that good craftsmen today would cry tears of joy to get their hands on. We wanted nice wide top rails so that we could take advantage of the fantastic view and enjoy our breakfast on the new deck. To buy new, in hardwood, would be way above our budget, but Eric got a call from a mate who was demolishing an old Nissan dealership. They had some great big slabs of timber that were going to be hacked up with a chainsaw and dumped. Eric rescued them and we ripped all the nails out and today I was sanding the lovely old wood back, exposing the saw marks that the mill probably made 50 or 60 years ago. It made me so happy to see the age, the character and knowing that it wasn't in some tip.

So Lantanaland has given me another gift, a friendship I probably never would have had, one that's grown through working together, building something, for us and the family to come.

The Stupid Tax

2011-10-07T10:11:00.001+10:00

I have this thing I call the Stupid Tax. When I was younger and getting into tech and gadgets I would quite often be fooled by the marketing and the concept and purchase on impulse. On arrival I'd find that the product, design and engineering didn't match the concept and marketing and so I payed the Stupid Tax for it, money wasted. Or I'll lose or break or misplace something that had plenty of life in it and I'll mutter to myself as I buy the replacement, that's $39 Stupid Tax right there Beeso.

This morning I had to fly to Rockhampton for a funeral, an up and back trip in a day. I was sure I had double and triple checked the date, one of my pet fears about travel but had somehow managed to book in November not October. I went up to the Virgin help desk, hoping, praying that they knew what the stupid tax was and were prepared for me to pay a hefty hit of it to get there.

Turns out Virgin Australia have tax exemptions for incredibly stupid acts and the very kindly swapped my flights at no charge, at which point my heart started beating again. These days I do my due diligence on anything I purchase and very rarely have to pay the Stupid Tax and I'm incredibly annoyed when I do pay it but today I would have gladly paid it to be there for my Grandmother and Mum.

Virgin will get my business from now on and based on form, I'll be paying them some Stupid Tax sometime in the future.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:On a plane to Rocky, luckily.

Sacrificing 7 virgins did the trick*

2011-09-27T15:26:00.003+10:00

Those of you that have a interest in my small dairy herd and cheese making attempts will know of my problems with butter. I've tried many, many times with no success, had a whole heap of advice from twitter (cheese makers and butter people on twitter are amazingly helpful). I was going to borrow the sherman tank of food processors off a mate of mine, The Snackqueen, but thought I'd give it another go this morning. Well sacrificing 7 virgins* seemed to do the trick because I finally achieved butter.

I cultured the cream with a bit of natural yoghurt, sat it on the bench during the day then chilled it overnight. Within a few minutes of beating I could tell it was different, the cream was thickening! It took a fair bit more to get the butter to separate out and the stem blender was pretty warm by then but I had butter.

I really need to get the mixer going so that i don't have to stand over it for half an hour but there is no stopping me now, hopefully soon Lantanaland will have a stockpile of homemade butter in the freezer.

*no actual virgins sacrificed. Couldn't find any at Beenleigh Woolies.

Raw deal

2011-09-20T17:50:00.001+10:00

This morning I had a whole bunch of twitter links about the fate of raw milk cheese and the slow food movements fight to protect the diversity of our cheese types. As the world grows smaller and more and more traditional cheeses are lost I think that raw milk cheese is worth fighting a bit for.

The fact is, that a small minority will want or seek out raw milk cheese if it was legal in Australia. There is no way FSNZA would just let cheese makers go at it, it would be regulated and tested within an inch of it's life, which means it would be more expensive. But we should have the choice.

Consider this. I'd only have to walk or drive for 5 minutes to buy something that is guaranteed, proven, peer reviewed, without a doubt to kill you, cigarettes, yet no government or government department would dare dream of banning them.

The links are here,here and here. Most people will keep buying the standard brie at woolies and I'll keep making my completely random, raw milk cheese at home. But it'd be nice, if you wanted to try the cheese in my world, you could.

Made by someone who knows what they are doing of course.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Footy training

Watching Grass Grow (warning contains actual description of grass and other things growing)

2011-09-11T20:34:00.001+10:00

Queensland doesn't really have a authentic winter. One morning here and there wearing a jumper to milk the cows does not a winter make. What does happen is the grass stops growing. What looked like more than enough feed down the bottom paddock disappeared far quicker than I liked and in the last month the cows have lost a fair bit of condition, despite the hay and fruit they get every day.

So the arrival of spring, the feeling of it, not the date, was very welcome. A few early storms and a bit of warm weather and the green started to peek through. The cows have bashed down a lot of the lantana and as the years go on I'll get better and more pasture but I'm also going to do a bit of improvement over the summer on the feed situation. I already have a nice start on the clover in the home paddock, which is beloved by both cows and bees.

While the grass is getting green, there is still not enough of it, especially for the jerseys who had really thinned off. So I fenced off a little treat paddock up behind the house, along the road. It's a real problem up there, a few rock retaining walls and a slope too steep for the ride on mower. Even the hand mower is difficult because you feel like you are sliding off the slope. It is right near my neighbors too, so I take them up in the morning and back at night so they avoid the "hungry/need to be milked cow alarm clock".

They really appreciate it too. Yesterday, after taking them back to their paddock, I was giving Laf a brush off and checking for ticks. After checking her over I went to do the same for Dolores. Laf quickly pushed her off and rubbed her head on me like an affectionate 300+ kg house cat. Cows can be so cool.

It seems like the spring feeling has brought on a flurry of work. Trees trimmed, cheese made, paths exposed, fencing (always bloody fencing), holes dug for shipping container foundations, fruit trees planted (fig, more passionfruit and kiwifruit), ducks moved down to the chook pen and bath installed, bees checked, more bloody fencing and gates installed and a bit of light lantana removal for something different.

Today's fencing was brought about by the suspicion that Candy the dexter cow is not that far off from calving, so I wanted her in the home paddock where I can keep an eye on her. The problem being the fruit trees I have in and around in that paddock. Nothing a few star pickets couldn't fix. The top paddock has a nice bit of grass and clover too which she will appreciate and I'll up her minerals in some pollard every morning.

I'm hoping that I can import this nifty hand milker from India that I discovered. I've rung them and besides a crappy line, shipping and getting them to understand why I want one I'm hopeful that when I am milling a few cows it will make things a bit easier. I doubt I'll be able to hand milk 20L a day on my schedule.

All in all I'm reasonably happy with the farm progress. Just have to get the shipping container in and sorted before the baby comes is the big one I guess. Plant more fruit trees and keep them going. The mulberry is not far off and I'm looking forward to smoothy breakfast season. I made 2L of yoghurt today for that very purpose.

Other than that, I'm going to sit back and watch the grass grow, because for someone who owns dairy cows, there is nothing more exciting.

Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

Pit crew

2011-08-16T19:29:00.001+10:00

I have two things occupying my brain matter at the moment. Both of them are quite reflective. The first of course is the birth of junior Beeso. The other is my first real head coaching job, coaching an A grade club side in the top Brisbane touch competition. But here's the thing, I'm a bit of a doer and the mind space of both these things is a bit like being pit crew for an F1 team. You are important, even vital, but you're not driving the car.

Last week at the midwife meeting I was struck by how little there is I can do other than move furniture around, keep the house clean and stay very, very calm. I'm loving the process so far, aided by the fact The Wife is doing this the cliched football way, one week at a time, not looking to much to the finals. It's meant I can just roll along, enjoying the discoveries as they come, like the 20 week scan and finding out the sex of the baby.

The footy thing I can drive a little bit more, but as I found out Friday night, as much as I train them, work on teams and game plans and positions and tactics, I can't actually run out there and change things. I've always been a player, only recently started coaching through a rep assistants job and Friday was a big wake up call. I spent hours after lying in the dark, trying to figure out how to do things better.

When I go on my road runs, I spend the long boring minutes thinking away about football and babies and tactics and cuddles and sub rotations and wondering how old a kid has to be before it can milk a cow.

The important things pit crew have to think about.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

Nothing on the Weekend

2011-07-31T21:01:00.001+10:00

I had nothing on this weekend. It started off well, a few beers with some mates (for me) to celebrate finding out the sex of my new little farmhand. (it's a boy and I'll write a bit more about that later). Slept in Saturday with the weekend gloriously unencumbered by any appointments, social outings or coaching.

Of course this is Lantanaland and that means the list of things I have to do is as long as a 14 year old girls phone bill. I started off with a coffee, everything should start with a coffee then a little light fencing with the cows. They are not really up to Olympic standard but it was enough to get the sweat going. This paddock is the small one and it had one gap that looked like it was an impenetrable bank of eight foot high lantana. There is a little (native?) pea that was growing over it and they soon smashed that down to a size where they could munch the pea. On the other side of that was a stand of bananas and I might as well have gone to a fashionable club in Sydney and yelled 'free cocaine for everyone' considering the stampede into the garden. So the cows went back into the big paddock till I had fixed the fence.

This is the last of the grass I have in the paddocks. The other two are eaten out and I don't think I'll get time to do the last big one, which has a much higher lantana to grass mix anyway. The good news is that when this rainy season comes there is a LOT more open land and I'll do a bit of pasture improvement with some green manures over summer as well, so I should get a lot further next winter.

In the afternoon I decided to tear the carpet up, as you do after a good lunch. Underneath was lovely floorboards painted green with white and yellow splashed everywhere. Interesting. We haven't decided what to do, but I'm glad we are shot of that carpet.

Sunday I slept in until the cows bellowing got too insistent to ignore. Laf was in the dry paddock watching the others eat the nice grass and wasn't happy. I was waiting for my chippy neighbour to come over and give me some advice on where my new shipping container was going to live. He was off buying several hundred records, so I planted out two mulberry cuttings and gave them a little electric fence enclosure. Mulberries are supposed to be great for a cows health and I love them in smoothies, so I'm trying to propagate them in all the paddocks. I did some citrus pruning, planted a finger lime, chopped out a few weed trees and prepped for some new vegetable beds.

When Eric came over, we completely changed the plan, deciding to run the container east/west and bury half of it into the hill, which I'm very happy about. The only problem was the end we wanted to start at was covered in a nice thicket of farmers friends and lantana. What a surprise! Eric went home to his many projects and I went got out Zombie Defense Tool Number 1 (the brush cutter). I gave the blades a quick sharpen and went at it with abandon. That done we did some quick and dirty measurements to see how much fill and digging there would need to be done and called it a day.

Ahh yes, a nice quiet relaxing weekend.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

Taking stock

2011-07-16T15:32:00.001+10:00

Lantanaland is in a interesting spot. I have one pregnant wife and two pregnant cows. After four years I now have a good plan of some of the things that we want to do.

Take in front of the house. There is a flattish bit that runs along the whole front of the house where the original owner built retaining walls. When we first moved in the chooks went there, with varying degrees of success. It's hard to build a completely enclosed chook yard all the way to the edges of the level ground because of the retaining rocks. I lost chooks to snakes and foxes and more snakes, ducklings would find gaps and kamikaze down the rock wall. Usually just as the veg garden would get going, the chooks would find a way in and destroy it.

When the ikea flatpack chook house arrived I had a much better idea of what I wanted to do with the space. I decided to build raised garden beds on one side and move the aquaponics to the other side and incorporate a pond for the ducks and a waterfall for The Wife. Now a few years ago that would have cost me a bit of cash, but now I have the materials from the rebuild of the deck and stuff to fill them, an unending supply of cow shit. The first bed is up and producing, the salad leaves are ready and the tomatoes are coming along nicely.

Everything has a flow on effect. Moving the aquaponics will mean I can clear out a path running behind the tank and access and maintain a little rainforest garden below the big fig tree at the top of the block.

Take for instance, the impending birth of The Child. This has pushed us to expand our one and a half bedroom house somehow, which means I lose the carport space where I do my building. I can't really have a whole bunch of timber, recycled guttering, power tools and assorted drill bits lying around with a bub coming anyway. This is good, because it means the mythological and much planned for shipping container has passed the Wife Planning Commission and will be installed in the far corner of the top paddock to be part cool room, work shed, storage and doghouse. Extensive secret plans to build world domination center outfitted with every apple device available have yet to be approved.

A bit further down the paddock sits the poorly designed and poorly built cow bales and yard. It's done the job but is woefully inadequate for when Candy has her calf and I need to lock it up for the night so I can milk in the morning. I've mulled many an idea over to build a decent barn while spending my budget of next to nothing and I'd pretty much settled on a tyre construction with render, despite it being a shitload of work.

Then it hit me like a large amount of rectangular building things, with the shipping container going in, I'd have a perfect mount for a cow barn and lockable yard for the calf, rock solid and just sitting there! Happy days.

Elsewhere round the farm things are going pretty much to plan. I've kept up my ambition to get a whole bunch of fruit trees in at regular intervals. Recent additions are a lemon and a finger lime (surely I won't kill this one), gooseberries, raspberries and passionfruit (both to shade the gooseberries and to cover the ikea chook pen). Next round I'll get some avocados, a grapefruit and some more apples.

I've ordered some fertile eggs, including a few silkies. Those raised garden beds are all the same size and I'll make a chookhouse that fits right over the top and when the bed is done producing I'll chuck a few silkies in and they can turn it over for me.

I guess the thing is, when you get a place like Lantanaland, you get all motivated and want to gung ho. Which is fine if you have buckets of cash. But it is better to go slowly, make a few mistakes and learn along the way, so when you do the big immovable things, you are pretty damn sure that it what and where you want it.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:On the road

Sex tourism for cows.

2011-06-14T21:02:00.001+10:00

I just went down and picked up my cow Dolores from the farm she'd be visiting to "put her in the family way" as they say. I'm absolutely stoked that Steve and Letitia have been kind enough to let my cows get serviced by their little dexter bull and I'm looking forward to having two calves to manage at the same time as a newborn human.

While I was there it came up that I had given The Pregnant Wife a cold and that she couldn't take any of the sweet, sweet drugs that we use without thinking these days. Letitia asked if I wanted some citrus. Of course I did. She proceeded to fill a bag with juicy lemons, lemonade, two types of mandarins, oranges and just for fun threw in a couple of custard apples. Woolworths value of about $50. I was stoked.

On the way home though, I got angry. Letitia could have given me three bags full and not even noticed the difference. To get that from woolies I would have paid a quite steep price, for, from what I've tasted so far, an inferior product.

I mean, I am trying to get an orchard and vegetable garden established, but I need to work harder at it. I want my kid to enjoy food. The problem is, that unless you want to pay the premium, you won't get food that tastes like it should. Unless we can somehow get something like the Victoria Markets in all our capital cities, seven days a week.

I bought some tomatoes the other day from a trendy inner city fruit shop cause I was there and in a hurry. Took out a small loan at the checkout to purchase them. But outside of the ones I'd grown myself they were the best tasting tomatoes in years. Got eaten in a day, because they tasted fantastic.

Now that just made me keen to grow some great tomatoes and I've planted four varieties this week, but what if you can't? Why would a kid keep eating fruit and veg if it tastes like colored cardboard? All the education and marketing in the world won't beat the taste of a fantastic crisp sweet apple. If it tastes good, people will eat it.

I haven't got the answers, unless you have the money to buy the good stuff. I have the answer for me, which is to plant a fruit tree every couple of weeks so that I have some sort of fresh fruit and veg all year round. But I have Lantanaland.

I can see the day when the bulk of people will get the bulk of their food from a powder or a tube, cause if the fruit and veg is tasteless, why go to the bother of preparing it? Just mainline it baby!

That future makes me sad and a little angry, but it's not going to be mine.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Theory into practice.

2011-06-06T20:18:00.001+10:00

When I was growing up, my parents would escape to a small beach shack on Curtis Island, off the coast of Gladstone. I didn't particularly like fishing and all my mates were back in town and I found it bloody boring to be honest. My mum would always tell me despairingly that I didn't know how lucky I was and she was dead on. At least then. As I got older I appreciated it more and more, the space to explore, the solitude, eventually even the fishing.

So much so that today Curtis Island is still one of my favorite places to visit, even though it has changed and the island doesn't have the same freedom to roam around in that I had when I was a kid. I still try and get back there as much as can and it is one of the main reasons that we searched for, found and bought Lantanaland.

One of most evocative memories of the island was the generator at the nearby shop. A loud diesel, it would thump away powering the rental flats until the curfew at ten pm. As it died the silence would echo and wash over you. I used to try and stay awake just for that moment, sitting in the dark, hearing the silence, before it would be filled by all the small noises, the crashing of the waves if there was a swell, the wind in the trees, the insects and the animals.

Fast forward to 2006. I had been living and share housing in Brisbane for ten years. Now I know that Brisbane is not New York or Tokyo. But the mental walls were closing in. I enjoyed the community that we had around Red Hill and I had my chooks and garden, but I felt cramped. The neighbors closest were loud and had no concept of a working week or sleeping at three am. And just in the back of my mind was the thought of a kid growing up there, unable to enjoy any of the things that I had when I was growing up. It was not a nice thought.

So we bought Lantanaland and have been on a journey that I have enjoyed every second of. My life is quite a bit different, milking cows and making cheese and building things that would hopefully still be there when I die. Much more fun than three tradies on a ice binge. Still in the back of my mind was the thought of what it might be like to have a kid here. Every time kids came round and got to have a go at milking the cows or petting the chickens I got a little taste. Good fun, but all in the theoretical.

Until now. Come December I won't be thinking about raising a kid in Lantanaland. I will be! I'm looking forward to it an amazing amount actually. I realize that he or she will bitch about milking the cows just like I did about fishing and they'll probably want to play Xbox 22 rather than weed the garden, but the joy is that they'll have the space to choose, to think and to grow, as much as they like.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Virgin airlines.

Lantanaland - the movie

2011-05-15T20:47:00.001+10:00

Coming to a cinema not near you.

Lantanaland from beeso on Vimeo.

Sucker punched by touch football

2011-04-14T17:43:00.001+10:00

12 months ago I'd pretty much given up on doing anything much more in touch footy. I'd enjoyed playing with the young guys the year before, but it's getting harder and harder to get fit enough to warrant running around. I played NTL 30s and wasn't really fit enough and I had no desire to be a fat old guy on Friday nights.

The club I played at has heaps of coaches or potential coaches so it looked like footy was over and I could look forward to Cheesemaking and brushcutting my weekends away.

Then I got a call from an old mate of mine. He has a slightly obsessive personality and his involvement goes in a cycle. Gets involved, then crazy involved, scouts and analyzes and puts in the sort of care and attention that NBA teams do with a staff of five and a 10 million dollar payroll. Burns out. Rings me and tells me he is never playing/watching/coaching touch again. Has a break. Gets rung up and asked to play/coach after six months. Repeat.

Anyway, he had been badgered by a bunch of young players to come back and coach the Brisbane rep team. He wanted me to be his assistant, partially because I would be happy to do some of the work, but mostly because I'm not crazy like he is and might offer some balance. I never thought I'd get to be involved in a open rep side so I jumped on board.

It was great fun. I got to try out a whole heap of ideas and the players were all talented, easy to coach and good guys. And we won, which is never a bad experience. I really enjoyed the coaching too, the technical aspect of it.

Halfway through the campaign, simon asked me to come down to a meeting of his club, Eagles. He wanted me to get involved there as well. Personally I thought the coaches there would want an ex dodgers player about as much as a dose of the crabs, but I came along. They asked me to help out with the A grade side, doing a bit of technical stuff to back up the coach, which again, sounded like fun. Right up to the point where the coach had to quit for family reasons and I suddenly became head coach of an open mens team.

So now I'm sitting at a cafe waiting for some of the players, to plan out an assault at an A grade title. Reading my notes and thinking that after I said yes to coaching twice without hesitating or thinking, Simon suggested that when QLD come asking, I might try and play a bit more hard to get.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Cedlen St,Camp Hill,Australia

Cows on twitter.

2011-04-05T19:34:00.001+10:00

I was tweeting my excitement and many photos Saturday because I had finally, finally solved one of my steadily worsening problems at Lantanaland. Cow pregnancy.

A cow will gestate for nine months and will give milk for as long as two years. Laf has been milking for 14 months and despite trying to find AI or a visiting bull for Dolores I had failed miserably. However a recent trawl through some Dexter contacts showed a small stud just over the hill from our little farm, down in the sugarcane fields.

I rang and enquired about two things, one, did she have any pregnant cows she'd be willing to sell? By now I really didn't have enough time to get Dolores preggers and keep milking Laf till the next calf came. I needed to fill the milk gap. Yes, she had a few pregnant cows and even better, she had one that was not a show bred cow, with a bit of jersey in her (which is cheaper). I said I'd ring back and make a time to come visit. I was also hoping to check out the bull as a prospective mate for Dolores.

When I rang back there was no answer. I left a few messages. When I finally got through, Letitcia was sick. I was beginning to think that I was cursed to never get some calves. Or worse still, that I'd have to buy a bull! But after NTL I got the call to come down and have a look. Steve and Letitcia were lovely folk. I think Letiticia's family have been on the cane farm for three or four generations.

I met the cow, so different to my girls, stocky and shaggy and barrel round where the jerseys are all bony hips and sleek coats. We got down to business. I'd buy Candy, a two year old Dexter cow and at the same time bring Dolores down for a six week sex holiday. I'd pay for her feed while she was there then pick her up, hopefully pregnant with her first calf.

I hired a horse trailer, which had problems of it's own. It had separator bars, but at horse height, which she could scrape under. I had nightmares about hitting a bump and breaking her back, so I drove the slowest, smoothest drive to Yatala I have ever done. When I got there I nipped two farms down and packed it out with sugar cane for the return trip, which was still pretty smooth and slow.

She's a lovely girl Candy, but very shy and skittish. She's used to a herd of about ten cows and liked Laf and Buster much more than she did me but hopefully with a bit of food bribery and pats she'll be calmer by the time it comes to milk her.

In seven months or so I'll have a new challenge, a calf, to run round after, but also to enjoy. The last say goes to one of my twitter buddies, a music journalist who I talk OZ hip hop and basketball with. He retweeted my cow photos post with the comment "things I don't normally read"....

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

Cheesemaking at The Foccacia

2011-03-27T19:53:00.001+10:00

The Wife, my In Laws and my best mate walked into a bar......sorry now is not the time to tell that joke, especially as they bought me a place at a two day Cheesemaking course.

Read about it at Mother Foccacia.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Inspirational!

2011-03-06T10:13:00.001+10:00

It's funny how things go. I got the cows to make my own cheese. It wasn't really going anywhere as I had no fridge to age it in at the correct temperature. About eight weeks ago I scored a fridge from the in laws that started off a little chain reaction that has got me fired up about making cheese.

It started with the fridge, but about the same time I opened up the new paddocks and with the new tasty grass Laf started producing up to 6L of milk a day. Meant the pressure to use that milk increased.

I had a success where I previously failed. My first attempt at feta was miserable. Fell apart. So I left it for a while, but with the extra milk I really needed to have another crack because it is a midweek cheese, one I can make in a nights timeframe. This time it came out fantastic and I haven't looked back. We use a lot of feta and I haven't bought any for almost a month now. The marinated one I am doing in lemon zest and herbs is particularly tasty.

This weekend though was where it all came to a point where I think I am really, really hooked. We were going to a family wedding in Byron and I threw in one of the first Bries that I was confident would be good. I thought it would be a nice thing to have on the weekend. I was also nervous. I really wanted it to be ok. Not mind blowing, just good enough to make me keen to keep trying. It was better than that.

Soft and creamy on the inside with good flavour. Maybe a bit too much rind, but I've already learnt a trick to stop that. I was very happy. However I had hooked up a meeting at the Bangalow markets with Justin from Bangalow Cheese the next morning so I snagged a piece for him to try and stashed it away.

The next morning The Wife and her Dad huddled under the market tents buying veg while I picked Justin's brain while a parade of people came past to buy my cheese. He thought by cheese was a pretty good go and gave me some fantastic tips and knowledge while I was there. Knowing my butter troubles he even gave me some of his fantastic cultured butter to try. I can't thank him enough, it was just a great boost to be able to talk to a professional, let alone one that's just won multiple awards at a cheese show.

I was even more fired up about cheese making. In two weekends time I'll be doing my Cheesemaking course and when I came home this morning what did I find at the postbox? My cheesemaking book I ordered with lots of new recipes. Today I'm making some Castle Blue.

Later I hope to solve the problem of the upcoming milk gap and considering the roll I'm on this weekend, maybe I'll come home with a cow!

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

I am a Fucking Idiot.

2011-02-27T21:00:00.001+10:00

Apologies to my more genteel readers for the title, but unfortunately it is very true.

A few weekends ago I spent a fair whack of time and effort running fence line. I blogged about how I was betting on the fact that fence, while very good was not yet complete and that this would be good enough, as the cows would be satisfied with the lush grass in the new paddock and still come up the hill to be milked.

Let me repeat, I am an idiot and that assumption meant I had two days of hell where I thought my cows might be gone for good.

Wednesday night I had footy and didn't separate Laf out at night. I do this occasionally when I get home late and I'm too tired to take some food up. I usually compensate by going up and beating the calf to the morning milk. When I went up in the morning Laf wasn't at the gate. Again, that's not that unusual as there is good grass down the bottom. I went down the path a bit, calling for them. I could hear some mooing down the bottom but no cows came up. Cursing their recalcitrance I gave up and went to work.

Thursday afternoon I called again but couldn't go too far as I had a guy coming to look at hooking up the top tank to the house so when we lose power we still have a water supply. After he left I went further down as the light faded but still nothing but distant moos. I was starting to get a little worried.

Friday morning I was up early and as soon as there was enough light I was off down the hill, calling and walking every path in the paddock. Not a sound nor sight. I even checked up above our house in a paddock on the hill the neighbour keeps mowed low and that the cows love. Nothing. I was really worried now. I love the cows, they are a massive part of Lantanaland now and a big part of it's plans for the future.

The only positive is that all three were gone, which meant that they'd probably gone wandering together. Considering we have hundreds of acres of thick lantana and bush next to us, it was a small comfort. Friday arfternoon I scooted from work as early as was decently possible bought a new blade for the brush cutter and came up with a plan.

Thanks to the technology of near map I know there is a set of yards and water in behind our place. I planned on going in along the western boundary through to the paddocks beyond and start calling. I stood on the deck planning my route when a flash of monochrome on the green hill across the valley caught my eye. I quickly grabbed the binoculars and sure enough, in the far distance, there was Dolores. I could see a patch of brown that was surely Buster higher up and then Laf wandered into view.

Whew. They were all still alive and together. Now I just had to go and get them. There were cow tracks of sorts on the eastern side of the valley but no real path. Time to fire up the brush cutter and imagine the zombie hordes were invading. It was heavy going down the hill, but as we got down lower the cow paths were heavier and older and once we crossed our back boundary line (which, until then, I had never seen!) we were in beautiful lush knee high grass paddocks. No wonder they weren't coming when I called.

The Wife and The Dog came and joined me as I walked up the far hill as I put the halter on Laf. Where Laf goes, the others follow. I gave the rope a tug. Laf looked at me pityingly. "Have you seen the grass up here?" she seemed to be saying as she budged not an inch.

Luckily The Wife (phd) is much smarter than me and had brought a loaf of bread with her. Laf quickly forgot the grass and followed us home in a stop start way, the other two trailing behind. Only took about three hours.

Saturday saw the brush cutter fueled up and going flat out. Simon, perhaps guilty he had tricked me into coaching two teams this year came down to help. By lunch all the posts were in and we were drenched with sweat. By late afternoon just about all the fence lines were done and a nifty gate to the dam installed. Except the two posts were too far apart and the post driver was up at the house. Damn.

No matter, a few hours on Sunday and the paddock was finished. My boss has a saying, a sale is not a sale till we have the money in the bank. Well a fence is not a fence until the bloody thing is finished.

Something I am not likely to forget in a hurry.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

Maximum amount of milk for the minimum of moo.

2011-02-19T07:17:00.001+10:00

In my mind I have a list of infrastructure that needs doing at Lantanaland. It's one of those pieces of paper from a loony tunes cartoon that when unrolled, the bottom runs across the floor and out the door. Fencing, gates, cow sheds, garden beds, fix the deck and the floor downstairs, attempt to make the kitchen bigger than a galley from the first fleet, fruit trees, a cheese production room in the laundry, a cellar, a workshed/lair, the list goes on. In my wallet however is a very tiny piece of paper titled, available funds which usually makes me sigh and put it away again.

Take the cows. Some dear mates helped me carve out a paddock last June and a small one in September. Ideally, with enough funds, I would have cut another paddock further down for when those ones had been eaten halfway out. Instead I stretch and wait and use the free fruit and bread I get to supplement their diet. They are healthy, but not fat and it probably means I get less milk.

Recently my lead cow was a bit sick, probably with what the vet called "three day" a mosquito borne virus. When I was walking down the hill to her to give her a bit of food and water in the shade she was hiding in, I realized that while there was some grass still there, it was not enough. I'd extracted about as much as I could. So the trusty brush cutter was dusted off and I strode off down the hill to cut fence lines, slashing and gouging like I was in some Z grade American horror movie.

I did get a pleasant surprise when I finally, after two days work, I tunneled my way down to the dam. It was very full and had much more water and plant life in it than it had when I'd last seen it, two years ago. The following weekend I opened my wallet and purchased about enough gear for 500m of electric fencing, just over $150. This was not enough to completely enclose the paddock, but it turned the cows inwards, stopping them from getting out and onto the tracks that lead back up past the house.

Now if we had money, I would be putting a star picket every five meters, instead of stringing it out as far as I could, using the plastic posts to hold up the wires in between. Hell if I had money I just would have got a bobcat in and terraced the whole hill and regrassed it.

The point is that if we were flush with money we wouldn't have bought Lantanaland. As well as the lack of infrastructure the house is run down, the soil is crap and there is no established fruit trees. That though, is half the fun. It means that I can redo the kitchen in a skeleton of stainless steel and old timber. It means that as the cows roll back the eight foot high grass and smash tunnels into the lantana I get a better feel for the shape of the land, so that when I do get the heavy machinery in I'll be able to direct it, know where I need terracing and paths.

The reward at least this time was immediate. Milk production has more than doubled and I've made large amounts of creamy feta, a soft blue mould, white mould cheese and this morning as I type this I am waiting on curd to set for a soft washed rind. All of which will hopefully lead to me paying back my initial herd sharers so that the cows can start earning some management fees. Maybe then I can be a bit more proactive with my cow infrastructure, more milk, less moo!

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

Grass Envy

2011-01-27T19:51:00.001+10:00

Every day I drive to work I pass a lush green paddock on the left. At the moment the cows are belly deep, munching away with the look that cows get when they know they will probably only have to move four meters in one day. (in fact I can't drive anywhere anymore without looking at ground in terms of grazing. We were at a beautiful windswept grassy hill in northern NSW for a wedding, when The Wife, seeing a faraway look in my eyes, enquired about my thoughts. "be a great bit of grazing for the cows this").

There is a bit of anger as I drive past, because it used to be two paddocks and the other one is now a gated legoland community, complete with matching gardens and roofs. But mostly It is envy, because I have probably ten square meters of top grazing in my two paddocks.

Now that's mostly because until recently the top paddocks had been covered in lantana, the place isn't called Lantanaland just because I have a bit on the driveway and I'd always thought the mix of grass and weed down closer to the dam was even more biased towards the lantana. I was basing that assumption on old data, because I hadn't been down to the dam in two years. When we got the place, QLD was still dry, but by the end of year one the cattle agisting had been removed and the lantana had closed down the paths.

On Australia day, I had to do a bit of fence repair, as the cows had been escaping a bit too much even for my entropic ways so I wandered the fence line to see what was the problem. The fence was easily fixed, a bit of the electric line had escaped it's holder, but the state of the grass was another matter. There was a little there but it would be hard work for the cows. The envy came on tenfold. How many years, I thought, until I have a nice lush paddock.

I have been investigating native grass regeneration so I am doing some good as well as getting the best fit for my climate and soil, but I looked at the rocky soil and despaired. Oh well, time to cut out another paddock.

The trusty brushcutter had been playing up a little, no doubt in rebellion against the 100% humidity we had for a few months. Some new fuel and a bit of coaxing and I was geared up to slash away. I worked myself down the old cow path before turning down the slope towards the dam.

Well, if you'd seen me then, you'd thought I was a teenage girl presented with Justin Bieber clones for her birthday. Grass! Tall lush grass, thick luxuriant grass. There was thick lantana, sure, but the cows could graze here for quite a while without even making a dent.

I slashed away with renewed enthusiasm, until I ran out of petrol. The bull calf, who'd escaped when I'd been fixing the fence, wandered along the conveniently cut path to say hello.

I came back in the afternoon and pushed on, through some truly thick lantana. I tell you, if we have a zombie invasion, give me my brushcutter, a tank of fuel and my harness and let me loose. I'll be death in workboots.

Of course, as can only happen when you are at the bottom of a huge hill, the blade came loose as I was about five meters from the dam. No matter. Saturday I'll return and join that path up with the fence line and run some electric fence and the cows will be in heaven.

Soon I'll be a able to drive to work and look out the window without even a hint of green.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

'Ave a go, at making cheese.

2011-01-25T20:45:00.001+10:00

I just couldn't help myself.

I've been making a bit of cheese lately, a batch every weekend, since the In Laws donated a old fridge that I could use for aging. Mostly soft brie like cheese, as the turnaround is fairly quick and I'd love to be able to start getting everyone in my Herdshare a bit of product.

Cheese making is one of those things I'm not really cut out for, requiring precise temperatures and timing. I'm a bit, well, a lot more slapdash. I've been good though, only ruining two out of the last three batches, one when I didn't watch the temperature of the water bath I was using. The second was when I left a cheese to dry and went out training. The book was probably meaning European room temperature, because when I came back my lovely soft cheese had collapsed in the heat.

Today I came home and took Laf up to the driveway to have a feed on the much greener and lusher grass there. I get a heap more milk the next morning. I've been tethering her there overnight, which only backfired slightly last weekend when she started bellowing to be milked at 3am. I milked out almost twice as much though. As I was leading her up I noticed she was very full in the udder. The calf hadn't had his afternoon drink. I couldn't tether her out in that condition, she'd bellow all night.

So I milked her out and went down to make some cheese. Trouble is, I'm running a bit low on supplies, I had no brie starter culture or white mould or liquid rennet. I did have my back up junket tablets and a bit of cheddar culture.

So after reading up a bit I decided to ignore all the recipes and try and make a semi hard cheese, with the culture of the milk dominating. The milk was just the right temperature so in went the junket tablets and a touch of culture. I've cut the curd and stirred and broken it all up. I'll drain it, salt it and lightly press it overnight. Then into the fridge to age, then, who knows?

If it doesn't work out, I've got plenty of raw product to work with!

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

Tassie Tough

2011-01-03T20:48:00.001+10:00

They have a term over here, called Tassie Tough. Queenslanders were definitely not Tassie Tough. At least thats what I was being told by a bunch of Tasmanians sitting on a beach at Coles Bay in shorts as I eased into what felt like arctic waters for a swim.

This was our new years trip, visiting the holiday shack of Marj's parents at Freycinet. I stayed in that bloody water for about ten minutes, nine minutes too long before running up to the shack and huddling under a doona and shivering like a teenage schoolgirl watching her first horror movie.

We'd had a leisurely drive up, mostly food related, no surprise there and then a lovely salmon dinner before crashing out. The next day we did a walk to Wineglass Bay. It was what I called a longish walk but well worth it for the stunning views and countryside.

Davy and Marj, being Tassie tough, called it a short stroll and we had barely finished lunch before they were gearing up to go snorkeling for some abalone for dinner. I was knackered but went along for a look. It seems like you can't go anywhere in this place that is not scenic, which The Wife loves. I've pretty much lost control of my good camera.

We had a pretty quiet New Years and I crashed out straight after midnight. For good reason as it turned out cause the next day I woke up with a mutant Tasmanian cold. Definitely NOT Tassie Tough. I pretty much slept all the way home, refusing both caffeine and potatoes, a sure sign that I am truly sick and not having a whinge.

I slept the next day too, putting our Bruny Island adventure back a day. It also means I have a wish list for next trip. Houn Valley, Tasman peninsula, the distillery, other cheese places.....

Dave and Marj have been the most brilliant hosts, Sarah (Dave's sister) has been great company too. This ends the southern part of the trip, tomorrow it's the Cradle Mountain and Chez Flinthart part of the journey.

We'll be back again for sure and I hope soon, great mates, great food and lots to do ensures it. Maybe then I'll be a little more Tassie Tough.

Lantanaland from my iPhone

Two days in Tassie

2010-12-30T16:56:00.001+10:00

I knew there was a reason that I'd put on an extra layer of fat in December. Between Xmas parties, my birthday tapas party and Xmas itself I was a little more padded. It was all so I could go for a swim in Tasmania.

The water here in Coles bay is beautiful, crystal clear and inviting and today was a warm day, we got a bit of a sweat up picking cherries this morning on the way up, but I am still shivering under a blanket 20 minutes after getting out. The water is chilly! We are up here for tonight and new years, staying at our mates Marj's family shack. It's a small place nestled into the she oaks a stones throw from that clear cold water.

Food has been a big part of the trip, I've been writing about it at Mother Foccacia here mainly because there is so much to write about. Taste of Tasmania yesterday, fruit picking and an amazing bakery today.

The mates we are staying with in Hobart, Dave and Marj, live in the last few houses on Mt Wellington. After Taste yesterday we went for a look up the top. It had been hot and sunny at the festival and Dave and I were going for a run after, while the girls did a walk so I was in a tshirt and running shorts, a vest and scarf. I froze my arse off! Those few extra hundred meters up make a big difference.

After the run and all the food the fire was lit and we sat round reading, one of the true pleasures of life that QLDrs don't get to experience. So far a great trip and so much more to do, as long as I don't die of hypothermia from my swim.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Freycinet Dr,Coles Bay,Australia

Holidays

2010-12-27T15:31:00.001+10:00

This time of the year is crazy busy, but considering I am doing this blog on the Flinthart model, as a record for my future kids to read, I have been amazingly lax at chronicling all the stuff on the farm.

For one we have been finally rebuilding the deck, much to regular visitors relief. It has really changed the feel of the house, making it look a bit higher and bigger. Work has ground to a halt, because Queensland seems to be experiencing a spot of rain. I can't remember ever having such a sustained period of wet weather. I love the rain, means more grass for the cows and more growth generally, but we are escaping the big wet for sunnier and warmer climes. Tasmania.

When we get there I will be hanging my head in shame as I screwed up the car booking so now we are reliant on the good will of our great mates Dave and Marj. They are doing a road trip to come and get us and it means my highly anticipated visit to Casa De Flinthart is postponed to the end of the trip.

Oh well, some good food and wine and more food should cure my stupidity. That's if we ever leave Brisbane. The rain seems to me diverting and delaying flights. At this rate the room I just booked will be obsolete.

- Lantanaland from my iPad.

Location:Brisbane airport

Old School

2010-12-03T18:07:00.001+10:00

I wrote the following for a publication celebrating my primary schools 150th year. Gladstone Central Primary school is a small school at the bottom of Auckland hill, when my mum went there the harbor came right up to the school fence, you could go fishing in the lunch break! Now all that is reclaimed for the port and there are railway tracks and silos but it was a great primary school to attend, small enough that you knew just about everyone. Three generations of my family attended there and while it's very unlikely that my kids will attend, I'm very glad that just down the road from us is a very 'Central' like school.

Most of my mates were in the year below me in primary school. That made it very easy for my parents to take me off traveling for a year and let me start high school with them. It was a good deal. When I returned and went off to my new school everything had changed. Not my mates, rather the way we spent our lunch hours. For some reason we were all suddenly too cool to play sport during the lunch hour.

Sport is what I remember the most from my days at Central. There was those innocent first two years up in the top playground where you just ran around chasing each other. What you really wanted was to go down to the oval. Where the big kids played. You always had a try, but the small school defeated you every time as the teacher always knew where you should be. Year three therefore, was a big step, you got to get onto the main oval and play sport.

The year was divided up into three sections. Summer of course was cricket. There would be games on the basketball court before school. The good players brought their own bats and everyone would bring a tennis ball, as quite a few would make it on to the nearby railway tracks. Lunchtimes would see multiple games, usually in year groups, using the trees along Auckland Street as stumps. I seem to remember one tree being particularly ours, at least until year seven, when the school managed the previously unthought of luxury of a kanga cricket stumps set. We could then set up shop in the middle of the oval and imagine the MCG or Gabba.

Imagination and sport went hand in hand. Being the eighties we all imitated the West Indies bowlers and Dean Jones batting. When winter came it was soccer and rugby league. Of course at origin time both teams were mostly stacked with Alfie Langer clones, unless you were from NSW and were weird. We would always push the boundaries and try and play tackle, each successive hit up becoming more tackle than 'hold', before a teacher would come and warn us and we practiced our innocent looks.

One of the biggest questions of my school life at Central was when you actually changed sports. There was always boys that liked one more than the other so would start bringing the bat or footy to school, setting up the stumps or piling the bags into try lines. We sorted this tense situation out with diplomacy that would not be out of place in the middle east, by playing a third sport called Sandwich, or more succinctly, Kill.

It was a game breathtaking in it's simplicity. Throw a ball into the air and watch 30 odd boys run like made to be first to get it. If you got the ball, you were fair game and you ran like hell until you thought your life was in danger at which point you threw the ball as high as you could into the air. Fear and self preservation usually kept the ball moving but occasionally you'd misjudge and find yourself at the bottom of a scrum of blokes, with latecomers doing swan dives onto the pile. It was usually at this point that the teacher of the day would politely suggest that perhaps we could find some other form of entertainment.

The worst thing that could happen to you at Central was forgetting your hat. Lunch, you could do without but to miss cricket or soccer at lunchtime was a tragedy. I'm sure Shakespeare first got in the mood for Hamlet by missing out on a game of cricket.

Every time I return to Gladstone I'll drive past that oval and instantly remember the times running around that green oval, wolfing down lunch so I could fit another oval or kick in, turning up early at school for just one more game.

- Lantanaland from my iPad.

Coda. Recap and top ten live albums

2010-11-06T08:39:00.001+10:00

So I really enjoyed writing about my favorite albums and the comments on here and twitter. Even found out a few things I didn't know. When Dr Yobbo and I were setting this up on twitter and arguing out the ground rules, he correctly excluded live albums, because we figured if a band couldn't get their shit together to write a good studio album then they didn't deserve the spot. He's right, I've never understood why a band like Hunters and Collectors would produce such overproduced anemic studio recordings but sound so amazing live. They should have just miked up a big room and played all their albums like a live set. So here is my top ten live albums. Some of these bands are just better live than with a producer playing with their shit.

No 10. New York City - Peter Malik Quartet and Norah Jones
Great laid backed sound, which suits her voice to a tee. I think she is a bit underrated because of her profile. Great singer.

No 9. Live at Brighton Beach - Fatboy Slim
The Wife was on a train to see this set, or the second one I can't remember and missed a connection and missed out. A shame cause Fatboy Dlim live would be a great party!

No 8. Live on Earth - The Cat Empire
A good album, not a great album, but there a great live songs here that capture the essence of what makes them a kick arse live band. The little live show they played at The Rev for radio executives was probably the second best gig we had.

No 7. Ben Folds Live - Ben Folds
Amazing to think that a guy behind a piano could be so captivating. He has a fantastic voice and writes killer melodic pop songs with thoughtful lyrics. The version of Fred Jones Part II on this is haunting.

No 6. Live at the Matterhorn - Fat Freddys Drop
4 songs. 70 minutes. That pretty much sums up the Fat Freddys live experience. They don't just hit you between the eyes. They sneak up on you slowly, adding layer upon layer of music. When I first saw them live, they had just the bass player and the singer on stage for the first three or four minutes, and the singer was just grooving to the bass line! One by one the band came on stage, joined in and eventually the whole crowd was dancing to this amazing tightly played song, but the buildup was so relaxed and subtle.

No 5. Live Like Dogs
Again, Resin Dogs never truly captured their live style that made the beloved in the Brisbane Live scene. This album captures them pretty well, with the tracks with DNO rapping, The Mics Sound Nice and Freak the Funk the standout.

No 4. Feel The Seasons Change - Salmonella Dub and the NZSO
A band marrying with and orchestra doesn't always work, re listening to the Metallica one has left me a bit cold, but this is a great example of what it can be. It has that cinematic or stage show feel, with ebbs and flows and I would have loved to seen this live.

No 3. A-Z - Paul Kelly
I'm not sure that this has even been released yet, I have all these songs from the slow release Paul did on his website. These are from the A-Z shows Kelly does every year, shows which are amazing in itself, how many artists could even do an A -Z show without boring everyone to tears with obscure tracks. The tracks are being released with a huge book of liner notes which I can't wait to get.

No 2. Roseland NYC Live - Portishead
An electronic band playing with an orchestra? Sounds a bit contrived but this totally works, with her voice soaring above the music and the electronic parts blending into the background.

No 1. Living in Small Rooms and Lounges - Hunters and Collectors
Terrible, terrible studio band. They had this huge big kick arse sound and somehow manage to make it sound like a three piece on a record. Here though, they capture all the sound, the driving energy, the fantastic brass, that made them one of the best bands to see live. I only saw them once, on their last ever tour and it was amazing.

That's the record that would have easily slipped into my top ten. All those live records are on pretty high rotation at my place though, well worth a listen.

No 50. Dire Straits - Dire Straits.
No 49. Good Gracious - M-phazes
No 48. Achtung Baby - U2
No 47. Manipulating Agent -
No 46. Stone Broke - Brothers Stoney
No 45. Based on a True Story - Fat Freddys Drop
No 44. Unit - Regurgitator
No 43. Apocalypso - The Presets
No 42. Signs of a Struggle - Mattafix
No 41. GRand Theft Audio - Resin Dogs
No 40. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness - The Smashing Pumpkins
No 39. Elephant - The White Stripes
No. 38 Chutes too Narrow - The Shins
No 37. Stoned and Dethroned - The Jesus and Mary Chain
No 36. Alright Still - Lily Allen
No 35. Sea change - Beck
If you were a fan of Odelay than you'd be mighty surprised to find Beck writing sad assed country songs. Bloody good at them though.
No 34. In the Nude - Pornland
No 33. An Elefant Never Forgets - The Herd
No 32. Felt Mountain - Goldfrapp
No 31. Orchid for the Afterworld - Sonic Animation
No 30. La Roux - La Roux
No 29. Renegades - Rage Against The Machine
No 28. Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords
No 27. Play - Moby
No 26. Mezzanine - Massive Attack
No 25. The K&D Sessions - Kruder and Dorfmeister
No 24. You've come a Long Way Baby - Fatboy Slim
No 23. Rocking the Suburbs - Ben Folds
No 22. Tragic Kingdom - No Doubt
No 21. Prozac Beats - 2 Dogs
No 20. Dummy -Portishead
No 19. Kick - INXS
No 18. Fashion Nugget - Cake
No 17. Think Tank - Blur
No 16. Ok Computer - Radiohead
No 15. Power in Numbers - Jurassic 5
No 14. Nevermind - Nirvana
No 13. Wild Colonial - Ozi Batla
No 12. War Stories - Unkle
No 11. Two Shoes - The Cat Empire
No 10. Decoder Ring - Decoder Ring
No 9. Taste the Secret - Ugly Duckling
No 8. Surrender - Chemical Brothers
No 7. Angel Dust - Faith No More
No 6. Deep Down and Dirty - Stereo MCs
No 5. Blood Sugar Sex Magic - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
No 4. Shin Ki Row - Shin Ki Row
No 3. Killervision - Salmonella Dub
No 2. Foggy Highway - Paul Kelly
No 1. The Calling - Hilltop Hoods

- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:Late.

Coda. Recap and top ten live albums

2010-11-06T07:59:00.001+10:00

Location:Late.

The Final Countdown. 10-1 Beeso's 50 top albums.

2010-11-02T10:15:00.001+10:00

I wrote this post yesterday in a sparkling and witty price of writing that surely was one of my best. And then lost it. So you get this instead. On to the last ten.

No 10. Decoder Ring - Decoder Ring
You'd have to be happy with this if it was your debut album. Dark, moody, cinematic, it is so seamless it is more one price than several tracks. Big chunky guitar riffs, throbbing organ lines, or was that the porno I watched last night? Not on iTunes unfortunately but well worth tracking down.

No 9. Taste the Secret - Ugly Duckling
Only one US hip hop band could write a hip hop lullaby, or in this case a concept album set in a fictional fast food chain called Meatshake. Great songs with tight beats and witty and mocking lyrics, the skit between the manager of Meatshake and his nemesis, the manager of rival VegeHut is hilarious. Good enough that a mate of mine who has rock music through his veins and shoots greenies on sight might actually enjoy some hip hop.

No 8. Surrender - Chemical Brothers
If only all electronic music was this good. Driving beats and fantastic guest vocals from start to finish this is one of my favorite albums to play really, really loud.

No 7. Angel Dust - Faith No More
Speaking of playing loud, this is how I like my rock music. Big riffs and chunky, funky bass lines and then Mike Patton's voice. It can do more tricks than a cirque de solie troop, going from an evil low croon to a howl that would rival most metal bands in a nano second. Then throw a chart topping cover in for a bit of a laugh.

No 6. Deep Down and Dirty - Stereo MCs
I got this album in a bunch of promo CDs that I regularly got for The Alley and it sat on my desk until the week before the Livid festival. I popped it in when my house mate mentioned they had written Connected, which by law must be used by every telecommunications company in the world at least once. I'm so glad I had a listen or I would have missed one of the top live experiences of my life. The albums has really tight song writing, with the contrast of that gravelly, serious British MC and the bright, happy vocals of the backing singers. I'm not a fan of the albums before and after, in complete contrast to the UK, which wanted the pop style of the other albums and trashed this one.

No 5. Blood Sugar Sex Magic - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Easily their best album, with that funk style still rough enough to not be commercial poppy crap. A mate of mine, upon hearing Califonication, wanted to put together a fighting fund to send them some more drugs, in the hope that it might get them to write more albums like this.

No 4. Shin Ki Row - Shin Ki Row
A band with the wrong timing. Today, when hip hop is played regularly outside community radio and JJJ these guys would have had a great career. They had a live band with a MC and they were a good band too. The lyrics were like a hip hop version of Paul Kelly, examining the suburban life. "wrap tape round a tennis ball, over the fence it's out, on the bounce it's four." Unfortunately they had come and gone by the late 90s and not many people would have this album.

No 3. Killervision - Salmonella Dub
It was a really long and hard think to decide which album to put in for Salmonella Dub. They have so many styles they draw on, the main one being dub and it's easy to think that most of the percussive sounds you hear on this record and that give it that special sound come out of a sampler. Until you see them live and look at the huge box of instruments they dive into during a set. Never get sick of this album.

No 2. Foggy Highway - Paul Kelly
It seems strange now but I was never a fan of Paul Kelly until this album. It was another that came across my desk from EMI and sat there for a while, despite Darryl talking it up when he gave it too me. I mean a Paul Kelly bluegrass album? However from the very first listen I was hooked and it made me appreciate the quality of his writing and I have since become a huge fan and devoured his back catalogue. Easily Australia's best song writer and I would say he puts guys like Bob Dylan in the shade as well.

No 1. The Calling - Hilltop Hoods
Easily the most influential Australian hip hop album in the last twenty years, because it was the album that broke out of the community radio, JJJ cycle and onto the Nova's and Sea FM's of the world. I even gave my copy to Gold Coast FM through a record company mate because the distributor hadn't sent them a copy. Why would they? It wasn't that far removed from MMM's no rap crap ads. It is a great record. Party tracks like The Nosebleed Section right through to the hip hop version of Hotel California, (The Sentinel) it holds up well even now and they have gone on and sold bucket loads of records and are pretty much as mainstream as you can get. When this album came out, that was unthinkable.

That's it. It was an interesting exercise thinking about my music collection and what I actually thought were the strong records and about ones I loved when they came out and no longer really listen to. Sorry to the Phil Collins and Coldplay fans, no joy for you.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Should save my work.

Over the crest. Beeso's top 50 albums 20-11

2010-10-30T08:07:00.001+10:00

I guess the key factor to the last twenty albums is that I like to listen to these ones in the whole form. There is something about sitting and listening to a whole album start to finish that gives it a sense of what the band was about, gives it another depth.

No 20. Dummy -Portishead
Fantastic voice and great production. These guys were the best of the moody electronic bands going around when I was at uni, top of a killer class that included Massive Attack, Morcheeba, Faithless and Sneaker Pimps.

No 19. Kick - INXS
I missed seeing them live because of a small problem with not having a lead singer for the gig I'd bought tickets too and they've well and truly trashed their legacy now. But listen to this album and you can understand what a great band they were, one that was selling out Wembley and the football stadium in Rio.

No 18. Fashion Nugget - Cake
Give me quirky lyrics and brass hooks and I'm yours. Bought this album because of the two big singles, but the writing is so offbeat and out there, you can't help but enjoy this record.

No 17. Think Tank - Blur
To me there is no question who was the best band of the Brit Wars in the 90's. Blur kicked Pulp and Oasis arse. This is a great rock album, full of light and shade but still has some great rocking songs as well. Gets better the more you listen to it.

No 16. Ok Computer - Radiohead
Still enough of the chunky guitars and great rock songs that The Bends had, but the album as a whole has this great cinematic feel, like it was written to a story. Sadly, they discovered samplers.

No 15. Power in Numbers - Jurassic 5
Great MCs and storytelling on this album, proving that not all hip hop has to be about guns and bling and bitches. Cut Chemist and Newmark put together some of the most inventive beats going round. On the bonus DVD I got, Cut Chemist recorded Newmark banging on the plastic lids covering their rider and then turned it into a beat for a song. Amazing.

No 14. Nevermind - Nirvana
Strangely enough I wasn't one of those conflicted teens that worshiped Kurt Cobain. I vaguely knew of Nirvana when he died, probably just Teen Spirit but it wasn't until I saw the classic albums doco on them that I gave the album another look. It's a fucking masterpiece, so simple and raw, yet I don't think grunge ever made another album as good as this. Not a bad song in the whole thing.

No 13. Wild Colonial - Ozi Batla
Most of you might not have heard of this solo album from one of the MCs from The Herd unless you listen to the Js, but this is OZ hip hop growing up. A varied and layered album both lyrically and musically it goes from party track to a dark historical introspection. Reminds me of Paul Kelly, varied and deeply Australian.

No 12. War Stories - Unkle
A kick ass album, big fat driving beats, great guest vocals. Just doesn't let up. MUST be listened to for the first time start to finish and really fucking loud.

No 11. Two Shoes - The Cat Empire
Party music. Not everyone likes these guys and I don't know why. Good tunes, brass, two vocalists.... It's not like there is anyone else out there doing anything like this. How those clowns with their top 100 Australian albums included a bunch of mediocre rock pop at the expense of an album like this is beyond me.

Only the top ten to go. I am certain Havock is going to be disappointed, pretty sure Phil Collins is not going to slip in, no matter how cool the cadbury gorilla ad was.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:In bed instead of building the chookhouse

Hump Day. Beeso's 50 greatest albums 30-21

2010-10-28T21:10:00.001+10:00

Ok. No we are getting into the territory of albums I listen to fairly often. enough introductions, let em rip.

No 30. La Roux - La Roux
Welcome to the eighties revival. Anyone who sneers down their nose at music being too derivative is just an idiot who can't read history. And this stuff is fun!

No 29. Renegades - Rage Against The Machine
Their first album was fantastic, but what they did with this album, which is to cover a bunch of songs in a way that unless you were a huge fan of the original, you'd never know. That's not easy to do. RATM just make me fire up. Cracker album.

No 28. Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords
This might seem a bit strange but they do write great songs, with lyrics better than most of what you would see on video hits on a Saturday morning.

No 27. Play - Moby
Definitely an album that has probably suffered from overuse especially in ads, but still a great listen. I fondly remember coming home at 5 am from the live show and playing this really loud while I lay on the lounge room floor.

No 26. Mezzanine - Massive Attack
A brooding electronic album but with the typical fantastic vocal performance and great beats. So many great songs off this record, angel, teardrop, inertia creeps....

No 25. The K&D Sessions - Kruder and Dorfmeister
Bought this fantastic double album completely on a whim after hearing Myf Warhurst and someone discussing it on the Js. Even though this is a remix album of sorts, really just one long track with bits of songs twisted through it, anyone who has tried to do a mix like this will appreciate how hard it is to get this good.

No 24. You've come a Long Way Baby - Fatboy Slim
That guy kicks ass! Damn straight a great album guaranteed to get an absolute flogging at any party we had at Chapel Hill and we had a few.

No 23. Rocking the Suburbs - Ben Folds
While I like the live version better, there is no denying the Ben Folds is a fantastic songwriter. This album is full of good songs and I love his slightly offbeat style.

No 22. Tragic Kingdom - No Doubt
While I view Gwen Stefani now with a certain detachment and disinterest back in the day I loved this rocking little band with the cool chick vocalist. I thought I'd grow out of this album but I never have.

No 21. Prozac Beats - 2 Dogs
You have to love an album that starts with a scratched up vocal from Rodney Rude. This is pretty much what it would have been like if you'd dropped into Dj KATCH and Dave Dog's house for a beer and they were playing around.

Definitely more beeps and blips than chunky riffs in that section it's a great mix. I could quite happily listen to all of those in a row on a Saturday afternoon.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Are we there yet?

Beeso's top 50 albums 40-31. The wonder years.

2010-10-27T21:52:00.001+10:00

While Dr Yobbo mocks me by doing yet another large post I will chip away at my list, mainly because I'm not quite sure of the ordering of the final 40. I think I'll start with a bit of nostalgia.

No 40. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness - The Smashing Pumpkins
There are a few bands that could've filled this spot. Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, but not Pearl Jam, oh no, never, ever Pearl Jam. This one holds up the best for me. I still can sit down and listen to the whole album without feeling like I need to buy an $18 bottle of scotch and sit in a squalid share house to enjoy it.

No 39. Elephant - The White Stripes
I love these guys, so stripped back and raw. The kick drum alone is enough to warrant owning this.

No. 38 Chutes too Narrow - The Shins
Beautiful layered lush rock pop. If all rock pop was this good I'd take up poetry and give up sport and become a floppy boy.

No 37. Stoned and Dethroned - The Jesus and Mary Chain
I loved this little quirky album so much I bought the rest of their catalogue one day and was massively surprised to find out that they normally played fuzzed out guitar rock. I'm glad that they did this for whatever reason, because it's such a sweet gem.

No 36. Alright Still - Lily Allen
I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS SHE WRITES GOOD SONGS WHO CARES IF SHE IS A SLAPPER A GOOD SONG IS A GOOD SONG. Let's move on.

No 35. Sea change - Beck
If you were a fan of Odelay than you'd be mighty surprised to find Beck writing sad assed country songs. Bloody good at them though.

No 34. In the Nude - Pornland
Great, great fun, it pretty much is all summed up in the name of the band. Big band, big sound, orgasms a plenty.

No 33. An Elefant Never Forgets - The Herd
One of the two albums I think really broke Australian hip hop into the mainstream. This might not have been to everyones taste because of the politics, but at least they had something to say and they said it forcefully, getting notoriety for getting the C bomb on national radio.

No 32. Felt Mountain - Goldfrapp
I really struggled to pick which Goldfrapp album I liked the best but I feel that this one just captures that ethereal quality that I love about her voice the best.

No 31. Orchid for the Afterworld - Sonic Animation
A fantastic dance band and a fantastic album, I always rated them much higher than the Avalanches who were around about the same time. Another album that got a thrashing in the share house living. The Presets might have listened to this one a thousand times or so.

That's it. Deciding who gets in the middle third will be hard, I mean no one really loves the middle child as much right?

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Lantanaland

Top 50 albums. (Dr Yobbo is wrong I tell you!)

2010-10-26T19:19:00.003+10:00

After gritting my teeth at Faifax medias' stupid bloody online experience to view their greatest Australian albums of all time, I then started yelling, both at the screen and on twitter. This led to my usual musical sparring partner Dr Yobbo and I to decide to put up duelling posts on our top 50 albums of all time. He has a good run down on the conditions he screwed me on in his post, so I'll just begin with the honourable mentions and some omissions.

The new album I've been listening to from Laneway could definitely make the cut, but i've only owned the album for two weeks and I don't think it will qualify on those grounds. Powderfinger. I just couldn't find space for them. The album I like the most is Double Allergic but i just don't listen to them anymore. Reef - Glow is another album that i like, but i've only just forked out the cash for it, so it missed the cut. Couldn't find room for Norah Jones or any jazz or KT Tunstall or Coldplay (thank god).

I am going to string this out a bit more so lets get started with the first ten.

No 50. Dire Straits - Dire Straits.
This was the band that I grew up with through primary school and early high school and I own all the albums but this is the album that holds up the best. Without any of the MTV pop it just showcases what a good guitarist Knopfler is. Six Blade Knife is just a killer song.

No 49. Good Gracious - M-phazes
This spot was going to go to Brisbane band George's first effort, but it is an EP so I'm going to give the spot to a new hip hop producer, M-Phazes, who had a stellar cast of MCs for his first album. It's tight, funky hip hop, in other words, Australian!

No 48. Achtung Baby - U2
These guys almost didn't make the cut, but unlike Powderfinger I can still listen to this album without dying of boredom. Another big one in the early teen years but has great songs.

No 47. Manipulating Agent - Katalyst
Party music. Katalyst would never make a live album list cause he's crap live but he is a fantastic producer and this record never misses a beat.

No 46. Stone Broke - Brothers Stoney
I don't love every song, but this is old school Aussie hip hop, rough and raw and full of booze, drugs and wit.

No 45. Based on a True Story - Fat Freddys Drop
Great kiwi grooves, beautiful instrumentation and layer upon layer, fat freddies are unlike any dub or groove band I've ever seen, just so tight yet appearing to be laid back and loose. If you love a bit of brass you'll love this.

No 44. Unit - Regurgitator
My arch nemesis Dr Yobbo reckons this was one the forerunners of the acceptance of hip hop in main stream Australia, which goes to show that the prescription drugs are better in NZ. What the gurge did was mine the eighties long before it was cool to do so for this rocking techno sound. Played a million times at least in one of my sharehouses.

No 43. Apocalypso - The Presets
Or as I like to call them, Sonic Animation II. All the JJJ presenters going nuts about their sound being new had obviously missed S in the music library, but that doesn't make this album any less great, electronic party music at it's best.

No 42. Signs of a Struggle - Mattafix
Bit of an unusual one, a mix of grooves and hip hop, but it really works. Sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a London gangster movie not made by Guy Ritchie.

No 41. Grand Theft Audio - Resin Dogs
Easily their best studio album ever, with Lazy Grey still the MC and the beats keeping you dancing and dancing. And then they throw a cool little number like Jazz Crime in just to mess with your head.

That's the first ten. Unless I change my mind overnight and completely rewrite it all.

- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:Lantanaland

Paul Kelly writing an album for Mazzy Star

2010-10-21T19:48:00.004+10:00

In another time, in a land far away, I ran a music venue. At that mythical and magical place I saw so many indie pop, singer songwriter, acoustic, hippie bands that any music that starts with the gentle strum of a guitar usually sends me heading for the hills. I am incredibly, stupidly picky about the music from that rough genre (which to be fair, The Wife and I had trouble defining) and one of the incredibly sad things about The Alley is that the best bands didn't always pull the crowds, get the airplay or sell the albums.

Take Alex Oliver, a long time muso around Brisbane and a legend at 4ZZZ radio, he had this incredible storytelling style and an unbelievable way of picking an acoustic guitar, but he never seemed to finish a lot of songs. He never got his shit together to make that next level.

Sometimes a band like Angus and Julia Stone will pop up and shine through the dross but how many great bands just slip through the cracks? In OZ hip hop, the genre I champion above all others, the good stuff tends to pop up, simply because there are just not that many acts and the good ones get noticed and promoted by the bands that do have the media profile.

When I was at The Alley I probably got fifteen indie pop/acoustic demos a week! And I was the smallest original live venue in Brisbane. How can you push through so many acts? How do you get noticed?

Recently through a set of unfortunate circumstances I was having an email exchange with some old mates from my home town and it was mentioned that Louise had an album out. This family have always been incredibly talented in the arts so I wasn't particularly surprised. Louise was kind enough to give me a promo code to download the album and to be honest I was blown away.

Imagine if Mazzy Star came to Paul Kelly and asked him to write her some songs. (just a side note, Paul Kelly is the bomb. You can keep your Tom Waits, your Neil Diamond, your Bob Dylan, I'll take Paul any day of the week). This is what that record would sound like. I love the way Louise's voice sounds.

So please go to laneway and have a listen. Buy the record. For me, I'll be going to my first live show since I quit the live venues, it's going to be great.

- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:Ten years ago

If the fire dies, who would you want to hang out with.

2010-10-19T20:41:00.001+10:00

One of my favourite books is by SM Stirling, an examination of what might happen if the "fire" goes out of the world, electricity, gunpowder, in fact anything that goes bang. The REASON I like it is it makes me see the world differently. That big rain recently? Imagine if you had to try and keep up all that infrastructure without power, or cars. How long would the roads last before they would simply disappear. You only have to see the grass beside the road grow a metre while it's still too wet to mow to realize that our ordered world needs a lot to keep it that way.

Now I could fool myself and think if the impossible happened and all the power went away that I'd be better off than most. By about one week I reckon. I have a cow and bees and chooks, but my garden is pretty poor and the fruit trees are a few years off truly producing and the tanks don't have gravity feed yet.

Stirling really looked at the way people reacted though. Some started little dictatorships. One group banded together and formed a clan. It truly was just pitching in and helping each other till things got back on keel. It only worked because of the attitudes of the people made it work. A different bunch trying the same thing might have torn themselves apart in a week. This is what I love about his writing, it makes a filter for your brain that can just drop in at unexpected times.

We've just come back from a weeks holiday at my parents beach shack at Curtis Island. It's a fibro open house and has solar power, tanks and home made solar hot water. It's not for everyone. There is bugger all privacy and you have to moderate your lifestyle for the resources. For the last six years a group of our mates have been joining us on and off for a week at The Island. I do all the cooking and we go fishing and play lots of cards. There is a mountain of washing up and little jobs but things just get done. There is no TV. A fair bit of drinking. But halfway through the week it struck me, if the fire died and I had to band together with a group of people, this would be them.

Unselfish, thoughtful, funny, willing to learn and always there when a job needed doing, that's the sort of people I'd want if my life depended on it. Luckily it doesn't, so we can still just go fishing, eat, play cards and drink beer.

- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:In Bed

Butter Makes Me Batty

2010-10-16T08:29:00.001+10:00

I like butter. A lot. Margarine has not passed my lips in probably ten years and butter was one of the main reasons that I wanted cows so badly here in Lantanaland. Most of my cooking knowledge comes from either a French or Italian background and there is nothing better than a sauce made from a reduction of pig trotter stock, with a dash of white wine and finished off with a big knob of butter. Preferably with a small mountain of mashed potatoes on the side. With butter.

Now I'm hungry.

The dairy industry is still getting my coin, because despite the large amounts of cream at my disposal, I have failed miserably to make any butter. I've tried leaving the cream out, the blender, the food processor, the stem blender, a whisk, the egg beaters, shaking it in a bottle, but nothing. Do I have some sort of anti butter field that prevents cream molecules bonding in my presence?

What makes it more vexing is that I am having moderate success with the cheese making, turning out reasonable haloumi and mozzarella and learning every time from my mistakes.

But no butter. It's making me a bit batty.

- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:Windy, Windy Lantanaland

Raw deal

2010-09-19T20:09:00.001+10:00

Having now invested in a herd share of three cows I am following the raw milk debate with some interest. Mainly because I have zero trust in the government to get these things right. I have a parallel in my current industry where there was a big push on lysteria that would have made it almost economically impossible for a butcher to do their own smallgoods.

Now food standards and various state bodies claim that they are trying to protect the consumer. But regulations like this, that remove production from the small butcher and put it all in the hands of the big factory producers means that soon you will be having maybe five very similar hams and bacons in Australia. The ability of a butcher to be able to make their own ham or salami or kransky gives them a point of difference from the Coles and Woolies of the world. It gives our palates a testing point, to find out what we like in a food.

The thing is, the big producers mission statement would read like this, profit, profit, profit, taste. Our suppliers make cures and premixes that allow the big guys to make more money. Sliceable water was one of the phrases I heard at my last technical conference.

So when I see the big dairy producers in Oz telling me that raw milk is dangerous and that pasteurized cheese is just as good, I get the feeling that they are looking at their mission statement dreading the small producer that might force them to change to taste before profit.

-- Post From My iPhone

PS. One of the twitterati pointed out that if governments were that worried about raw cheese affecting our health, they might remove cigarettes from sale, something that is proven to kill more people than any food product available anywhere.

Mates

2010-09-12T20:14:00.001+10:00

Lantanaland can be a lot like my cows. If I go away for a few days, or their feed drops off, I get rewarded with piddly little streams of milk. Green grass, some fruit waste from the fruit shop, a brush and de ticking and I get multiple litres of creamy goodness.

Likewise lantanaland seems to like a bit of attention. Following the big Feastin N Fencin weekend in July the cows have gone to work, eating and smashing and bashing their way through the tough long grass. I thought that that paddock might last them a bit longer, but in the last month in has become apparent that while there looked like there was enough to feed them for the rest of the year, there wasn't that much edible food.

This time I planned ahead. In front of the house would be the next paddock, using one of the fence lines from the existing paddock then winding its way up the boundary to finish right in front of the spa. I'd planted some pasture improvement and started it off with the grey water and I had a nice patch of lush green carpet for the cows to start on.

What I really needed was a few helping hands. The fencing weekend taught me how much easier it is to get a fence built with even just one more set of hands, so I put the call out. Not to too many people, I'm always a bit worried about abusing peoples goodwill and it was about a days work for two or three of us.

Helping hands from mates really are the lifeblood of this place. I can toil away as much as I try, but the affect just having a few helpers can have is simply amazing. By lunchtime Simon and I had carved out the path with a big petrol hedge trimmer and bashed in all the poles. Do you realize HO little you use those muscles in your forearms? A beer and cob loaf with bacon, corn, herbs and five types of dairy went down extremely well.

In the afternoon Ryano and The Wife joined in and we had the fence lines strung and clipped, a new gateway put in and the energizer turned on and tested. Laf just about bowled me over when she saw the gap to that lush new grass and she must have enjoyed it because we got 3L of milk this morning, which is good even for a weekend.

As we sat in the spa enjoying an icy beer I reflected on how long that would have taken me. A month certainly and the hedge trimmer hire would have not been used as well, you can't really tell the bits you've missed until the fence is up. I then reflected that I'd left the bloody gate open and the cow was coming up the hill and if I didn't move quick smart there might be one more in the spa.

So thanks to everyone who's ever put even a minute in here helping at Lantanaland. I couldn't even contemplate this grand adventure without you.

- MF from my iPad

Location:Needham Rd,Luscombe,Australia

Three Years in lantanaland

2010-08-29T09:37:00.001+10:00

Well it's been almost three years since the delivery truck backed down the slightly washed out and steep driveway and dumped our meagre possessions onto the deck in a crazy race against a developing thunderstorm. I'm going to do a few video pieces of the different bits of the farm so I thought it'd be good to do a bit of a breakdown of what I expected to have done and what I wanted from the farm.

CHICKENS - the big plan for the chooks was to be breeding my own and eating them. Well I've done that but not exactly like I planned. I've only just raised the first batch of my crossbreed chickens up. I've eaten a few meat birds that I've raised up and a few ducks. When the guinea fowl are numerous enough I'll definitely be having a kcrack at them as well.

I've lost a lot of chicks and young birds to carpet snakes, who view my pathetic attempts at coop building as a sort of drive through takeaway. Add in a fox attack or two and I've learnt the hard way that if you want your birds to free range then you'll lose some birds. The next stage is a large fully everything proof pen with a straw bale house. Spend the time and the money to make sure they are safe at night and when we are away.

The guinea fowl experiment continues. I have a lot of ticks and long grass and only six ranging birds so I guess it is a bit early to call on that experiment.

DOG AND SPA - we have both these things, so The Wife is happy.

FRUIT AND VEG - I am going to be honest, I have failed, almost miserably in this department. Lack of infrastructure, poor soil, poor management has meant that I have had sporadic results at best. Bananas and mulberries have been the biggest success in the fruit tree department. I've killed a lot of trees through too much/too little water, overtaking by weeds and animals eating them. The best plan is to put the tree where you see it all the time. This is real basic stuff in permaculture but for some reason I thought I could put trees half way down a hill in six foot high grass and still remember to water them every couple of days. Yeah right.

Now just about all my trees are on my walk to the cows every morning and I ensure that they are looked after. Well rotted cow manure on tap doesn't hurt either.

I must have lost about 20 artichoke plants to the chickens, ducks and goats. My herb garden is nothing to write home about, but I have discovered sorrel in a big way this year. My dreams of big bunches of thyme are only realized when asleep. I've had some good pumpkins and tomatoes, but never enough to make the excess into tomato sauce or jam.

Again, the soil improvement you can make with manure is beyond belief. The new garden beds between the sugarcane bales with the manure from the holding yard for milking has been one of the best I've done. Thanks to Twitter mate Tammy I finally have a horseradish plant that is growing and I have five, FIVE artichoke plants that have survived. So I think things are on the improve there. I am planting tomatoes all over the place, in the hope that they will go a bit wild and provide me all year round. The litmus test for me is carrots and potatoes. And that has yet to be achieved.

BEES - last year was a bad year, too wet all summer. But that rain should mean good flowers this year and if we get on a good flow I will try and split the hive to get a second one. The hive is fairly strong, I have a bit of hive beetle but not enough to threaten the health of the hive. I never have enough honey to go around so two hives would be handy.

THE HOUSE - other than the spa, which was a condition of buying the house from The Wife, the house has been pretty much unchanged in the last three years. This year will see the deck done, not before time, I have to get my guests to sign release forms before they walk up the front steps. Once that's done we'll replace the carpet downstairs with something cheap and that will do for a good decade or so.

THE LAND - the cows have done an amazing amount of work clearing out the land. We have walked though bits of the land we had not seen in the three years. I am now on a pasture improvement program to try and get more value out of feeding the cows. The next big purchase for the herdshare will be a hedge trimmer. It will go thought the thin lantana like something hot through something else that melts easily.

THE COWS! - one of the big reasons I moved to Lantanaland was to have cows. All the traditional methods of smallholding revolve around the the house cow. I cannot thank my herd sharers enough for giving me the chance to get these beautiful animals. Like everything I attempt, it's never turns out exactly as planned. Milking is relatively easy, now that I have a technique down pat. Making butter has proven beyond me, much to my huge frustration. How hard can it be! The dairy products made have been of varying quality, as to be expected.

So what's left? Pigs are the other big small holder staple, but they might be next year, judging by The Wife rolling her eyes every time I mention them. I need another paddock for the cows so I can start rotating and spelling. Get more fruit trees in. Write more about the fantastic, beautiful place in which we live. Shoot some video. Stay happy.

That's pretty easy here.

- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Adelaide St,Tweed Heads,Australia

Politics and Technology

2010-07-31T09:10:00.002+10:00

I woke up this morning, milked the cow and then sat down with a coffee and perused my Twitter feed. I came across this discussion between Adam Schwab and Stilgherrian, both commentators for Crickey.com.

I'm no technology or political or broadband expert, so I'm not going to get bogged down in the politics or minutiae of the arguement. But I'll take Schwab to task on a few things. He says that "In return, Australians will then need to spend upwards of $100 a month on a high-speed internet service that most don’t really want (for that price) and almost all don’t really need." My graphic designer that we use for work lives a stones throw, literally, from one of the major highways in Brisbane, Australia's third biggest city. She cannot get ADSL2+ or cable but relies on satellite broadband. It recently went down and she had to rely on a 3G modem. For two weeks. I had to post, by mail, all the images that i needed in our next mailout. Instead of talking by Skype, with the images on the screen that we could talk about and change, she was emailing me a low resolution image and we talked about it on the phone. And repeat and repeat and repeat. Is this good enough in 2010?

This is what we have now. I have three reps on the road working off 3G and it is far from reliable for data. I am trying to build a new application for our business for the iPad and after using technology like Skype and GoToMeeting i made the decision that they are just not robust enough to rely on, I employed a local developer.

In other countries where broadband is seen as an essential part of doing business they demand speeds that will outstrip the pace of the technology that is developing it. With devices like the iPhone and iPad and all the different devices of the Android marketplace becomes commonplace the demand on our internet has jumped markedly. Soon we will be expecting wireless everywhere we go, in the doctors and in cafes in train stations and anyone who has used 3G for business would laugh at you if you think that network can cope with mainstream internet as well.

Here is my main point, Telstra, Optus and the rest are there to make money. If they can do that without putting large amounts of money out there to build a new network they will. But if we want to develop as a nation economically we have to keep pace with the rest of the world, there are third world countries in Africa that have faster broadband speeds than we do. So isn't the government's responsibility to ensure we don't get left behind? Instead of talking to Liberal MPs and former Optus executives try talking to the people that rely on these technologies, today, tomorrow and into the future. Take the politics out of it and deliver us something. Now.

Keeping Up With My Mind

2010-07-21T07:47:00.003+10:00

I love my technology, as anyone who knows me even slightly on the blogosphere or twitter will know. I particularly like my iPhone, and the convenience and utility contained in such a small device. Sometimes though I get thoroughly frustrated with the pace of technology to keep up with my mind, to produce what I see as quite logical leaps to applications that can take advantage of the world we live in.

My main frustration this year has been with our national broadcaster, the ABC. The ABC has this amazing amount of content, in particular audio content. Local ABC radio has these little regular segments on their shows, probably too small to podcast, but incredibly interesting nonetheless. Stuff like the AFL and NRL sunday shows, Spencer's chats with Susan about kids entertainment, The Hidden Persuaders, the radio version of Gruen Transfer that came before Gruen, Richard Fidlers friday afternoon cocktails or Kelly HD chats with Amy Gray, which while incredibly funny could do with less Glee and more Dr Who.

Now you can access a lot of this content on the presenters blogs, where it is put up, in f*&^ing flash. Flash is the twilight vampire of the web, sparkly, but ultimately utterly, utterly useless. I spend a lot of time in the car for my job, as do a lot of other people, and a lot of people spend times in trains or buses, where they have the time and inclination to listen to the wonderful content the ABC can provide and I do have a lot of the podcasts on my iPhone. But the hassle of getting that content from the web onto a device is too hard for me, a tech nerd, so it would be way too hard for the ordinary punter.

Which brings me back to the iPhone, which is almost as ubiquitous as the sparkly twilight celery eaters, but much more useful. It has apps. The ABC has an app, which for all intents and purposes, is useless. It doesn't provide me with anything more than the webpage does. Now if they had been trying to push the envelope, here is what they could have done. They have recordings of all these little segments from all the incredible shows the ABC has. And i only know of the ones for my local ABC. What about all the cool segments from Sydney or Alice Springs or North QLD? What I'd have is a virtual radio station. Let me build my own station, dragging and reordering my segments how I wanted them. Then let me cache 10 hours of it on the phone when I have a wifi connection, or let me straem bits over 3G.

I don't really care how its done, but the ABC is doing itself and its stakeholders, us, a disservice by trapping the content, by not realising that there are ways that they could be giving us all that content easily. There are over 1 million iPhones in australia already, not counting iPod touch's and iPads and you could just as easily write an app like this for Android as well. Considering the market for a 24 hour news network and the money spent there, is there really more people who are interested in that than being able to easily access their favourite ABC segment as they sit on the train on the way to work?

Early morning cows.

2010-07-19T18:30:00.001+10:00

Despite a few years running a bar, I am without doubt, a morning person. Now The Wife is not and while I'm sure she loves me at least to about 90% at 5am, she doesn't like my habit of singing nonensical lyrics to my favorite songs at that hour. "Crazy" is probably the nicest of the terms hurled at me. That's why I'm really enjoying my 5am milking of the cows.

I get up, heat the water and sterilize the bucket, rouse Tally and head up. Laf is already penned up so I go and fetch the calf and Dolores and bring them down before letting Laf lunge into the pen so she can start inhaling her feed. I smear lanolin over her nipples and get to work.

I've been singing quite a bit of The Roots new album to her while I milk, mixed with a bit of Hey Jude and Hunters and Collectors. She doesn't seem to mind, well her milk hasn't curdled yet so maybe she's just deaf.

Each milking is yeildng between a litre and 1.5L. You can tell she's dried off a bit, she's never really bulging with milk. The grass is not particularly lush so I'm not keen to force her production higher. It means it will be another nine months before I can really start paying the herd sharers back in good kind, but they will be getting something.

Yesterday I made my first real cheese. It was, I hope, a farmhouse Bree, unpasturised of course, from 5L of Laf's finest product. It will be interesting to compare to shop bought cheese. For a start everything I've read and been told is that the quality of the feed determines the quality of the cheese and Lantanaland's pasture is pretty poor. It will get better of course, I am already knocking back the long stemmy grass and sowing clover and mung beans and pigeon pea. Secondly I have no idea what I'm doing. The curd felt very firm when it went into the molds, did I work it too much? At least it is a five week turnaround to find out, not twelve months like cheddar. On the plus side, raw milk cheese, with it's own bacteria, will be idiosyncratic but on the whole, a nicer product.

The process itself seems to be quite easy, but damn me but it is slow food. Lots of waiting for whey to express and to turn molds. Good for a Saturday arvo. I've already learnt a fair bit and I'm saving this weeks milk for another batch. Then I might bust out an improvised press to make a rough farmhouse cheddar. We'll have to see.

So if you come over and milk the cows with me I'll try not to deafen you with my singing, but don't blame me if the cows are grumpy, they like their tunes!

Lantanaland From My iPhone

The future?

2010-07-06T21:34:00.000+10:00

I want to give people money and they refuse to take it. In fact they are actively making it harder for me to give it to them. Sound insane? Well, welcome to a large media industry waking up to the digital age.

I am a curious mix of old school and high tech. I milk a cow by hand, but also love my iPhone and use it for a whole bunch of things (as opposed to 95% of iPhone users, who use phone, web, photos and music. Maybe a few games.) Books had always been firmly in the old school camp, I love the feel of them, they way you can look at my bookshelves and tell which books I love by the level of abuse they have been subjected to. Plus all the normal things like reading in the bath (essential) and lending to other people.

The iPad triggered an interest in ebook readers and after having a look at the Kindle app on Monster Yuppy's iPad I thought I'd download the kindle app onto my iPhone in anticipation of us getting ipads for work. I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. Once I'd read a few paragraphs and was into the story, I completely forgot about the medium. All I was interested in was the book, the plot and the characters were far more important than whether I was holding paper or electronics.

When I did notice the difference was later that day in a waiting room, killing time before an appointment. Instead of pulling up twitter or playing a mind dulling game, I pulled up the kindle app and was away, back in the story. I'd never remember to take my book with me.

Ok. Techy bloke likes a piece of tech. No great story there. But wait, here comes Techy blokes slightly angrier twin, Ranty bloke. You see amazon, or perhaps more accurately the publishing industry, want to make it very hard for me to buy books. First of all I opened my amazon account and went to the kindle store. And was amazed as I put in author after author, title after title and got back nothing. I'm pretty sure unless it's Dan Brown or John Grisham, it's not in the Oz kindle store.

So, as all good tech blokes do, I consulted twitter on how to set up a US amazon account. Easily done and a whole new, slightly bigger world opened up. I mean a few of the books I was chasing were available. Which I bought, obviously, to give the app a spin. But what I was hoping for was a nice swim in Lake Nostalgia. A bit of the Three Investigators or The Hardy Boys. Even a bit of Blyton's Famous Five for a giggle.

None of the back catalogue of my youth is there and I think that publishers are missing a great niche market here. Fair enough, hold back the new books till they've had a run in print first. I can understand that. However in the not too distant future devices like the iPad will be common place. Hell at the way it's selling in the very close future. I can easily download a song or TV show or movie that I have a sudden urge to buy. Compare that to the effort I'd have to go to on a rainy Sunday to go and buy a copy of a Three Investigators novel. There would be no copies in print, so I'd probably have to trawl the second hand shops. Say a whole day to maybe, just maybe find a book .... Oh look season two of Arrested Development on iTunes, let's watch that instead.

I know that the publishers are afeared that once they let the digital genie out of the bottle that there is no turning back. But consider this. I lend any book I own to anyone who wants to read them. Make all those back catalogue books say, three bucks and people wouldn't need to lend books as much. You already sell a whole bunch at that price point already. And it's just a matter of time before someone invents an easy way to digitize a book and if there is no digital copy for people to purchase, they will take the illegal copy available.

So while you still can, make it easier for me to give you my money please.

Lantanaland From My iPhone

So, what now?

2010-06-21T04:56:00.004+10:00

Big events like Feastin and Fencin can have a real snowball effect if you follow them through. The most immediate thing that came out of last weekend was the combination of the bales being finished and as much grass as the cows can eat. Milk. My first decent amount, which was only a litre but so satisfying.

Last night I locked up the bull calf with Dolores for company. Laf doesn't need company as all that runs through her head is "food food food food food food water food food". When we came down this morning her udder was the fullest I'd seen it since she came to Lantanaland. The calf was also very thirsty and as I led her down to the pen I had to shoo him off her udder.

I got her into the bales and got to work. Of course the first thing she did was step in my nice clean bucket. Oh well. Then it was a combination of squeezes, pulls and squirts to get the milk out. I did ok for a bit with the traditional method but my hands soon got sore, especially the two fingers that I'm fairly sure I've fractured playing footy. I persisted and The Wife had a go as well and we have one tasty litre in the fridge. Butter and cottage cheese will be the go this week.

So the cows are producing. Next week I'll book the AI man to get them both pregnant. On July 1 the vet comes to make my bull a little less bullish. Meanwhile they continue to open up Lantanaland for me, exposing the lie of the land that we have never seen in our three years here.

So to give you a rough idea where lantanaland is at here is a arial view. The red section is the top paddock. This is where the bales are and where I'll keep the cows when they are close to calving. The green is the new paddock that we cut, maybe about 2 acres. The yellow would be a really easy paddock to do next as two sides are already cleared. The pink is probably the next big push as it would take in the dam. This would allow me to have a paddock that has it's own water supply when my tanks run low. The white and orange areas might get done when I have the money to hire an excavator to cut me some paths, swales and terraces.

The top paddock will also become the house block for the new house sometime in the future. There is half a house block already cut. Along the top fence I am planting out fruit trees. I have learnt the hard way that if you are random and unorganized like myself don't plant fruit trees where you only see them every six months. Plant them where you can get to them and walk past them regularly. I have a grape in on the gate posts, a grapefruit and an apple. Now that the top paddock is nicely cleared I'll be putting in more, starting with some mulberry cuttings. Cows love mulberries.

I have sown a little clover, both for the cows and for the bees and will be doing some research on a nice mix of fodder species for a dairy cow. The next project will be planting out some garden beds. This time I am trying rotted cow manure between sugar cane bales. Then another revamp of the chickens and maybe even another pen up near the bees for the second group of guinea fowl. With the amount of ticks the cows are picking up from the long grass I think it will be a few batches of eggs before I'll be selling keets.

Still life is never boring or still at Lantanaland. Soon I'll be experimenting with cheese making and I have to master the art of hand milking and rig up a solar panel for the electric fence and untangle the goats and and and and.....

Lantanaland from the iPhone

I have the best mates in the world (lantanaland will never be the same again)

2010-06-16T19:40:00.008+10:00

I have had mates of mine insisting that they'd come and give me a hand on the farm if I did a big working day. I sort of never thought that people would actually turn up, let alone do the unbelievable amount of work that was achieved over the long weekend.

Before now it would have been useless doing any major work anyway. Clear away a big section of lantana and it just grows back or is replaced with eight foot high grass that needs slashing and mowing which is what I call repetitive useless work.

But the cows, the cows have changed everything. Apart from being beautiful creatures, they are grass eating, lantana bashing, path creating machines. I got them probably a month too early, bashing up a quick paddock held together with old bits of timber with electric fencing draped everywhere. I paid for it too, with the cows showing me all my weak points. I got a bit of knowledge back as well, learning that unless you have good well maintained barbed wire fences the cows will go through it without a single thought. Well maybe one thought, "that grass over there looks quite tasty". Electric fencing though, they show more respect to than a teenage boy dating a shotgun collectors daughter.

So I put the word out that I was going to have a working bee to cut a new paddock and fence it off properly with electric fencing. All I promised was free beer and good food, but I do have a small reputation for decent food so I thought I'd get one or two hungry boys and girls along.

I took the Friday before off to do a bit of preparation. Key amongst the jobs was to kill and pluck one of my eating chickens. Only one of them was big enough but I did the deed with that same sense of pride and melancholy that I get from knowing that I've grown and killed my own food. I also near killed myself getting a trailerload of concrete blend. The trailer was a touch too full and as it hit a bump it locked the wheel against the mudguard and slewed all over the road, dragging the Xtrail with it. It was some extra stress I didn't need.

Still I got most of what I needed prepared, lots of beer wine and champagne, fridge groaning with food, all the fencing equipment. My first guest arrived Friday night and it looked like being a real chilly weekend, at least for QLD. We got up early for some boiled eggs on muffins, something I can never weary of since I got chickens. Nine coffees later (for me, Andy doesn't drink coffee) we got to work.

We started off digging nice deep holes for the big top gate, wide enough for a bobcat or excavator to get through in the future. As more and more people arrived I ran round trying to divide up the jobs. In the end I gave rough instructions and left them too it while I drove in to town and bought all the things I'd forgotten or underestimated the day before. Then I started the cooking. I occasionally wander down and check on the progress and every time I was amazed. They were hacking out an enormous section through lantana, grass, weeds and trees then bashing in star pickets and running good gauge electric fence cable.

Meanwhile I was preparing dinner. Organic dorper lamb from Silverwood went into the camp oven with a crusting of garlic, chilli and rosemary. The free range pork I'd bought was a little more tricky. I carved the ribs off and cut the extra belly off for bacon later. But what the hell was I going to use as a spit. My last spit roast was a disaster thanks to the crappy spit I bought from BBQ galore. In the end the fence was the inspiration. A star picket wrapped in foil gave me a three sided spit and the meat was tied on and skewered through the holes in the post. Once the fire died down a bit it all went on, the ribs went into the oven with a sticky honey, soy and garlic basting, the hearty soup was checked and I was ready to receive hungry, and very thirsty workers.

Most of the fun in doing something like this, for me anyway, is the eating and drinking, the telling of stories (KC scooped the pool with the baby being born in the elevator) and the laughter. There was so much laughing. We got stuck in to all the food and a fair bit of the beer but I crashed out, leaving it to the serious night owls. The food went down brilliantly, all the lamb gone most of the pork and a few requests for the recipe of the brown rice vego dish I did.

The next morning was pancakes, some new workers and a few sore heads. This pancake recipe is so popular I never seem to cook anything else for large groups and it is bloody good. Another three rounds of coffee later and it was off to finish it all up.

Once we got going you could start to see real visible progress. The fence was joined back up to the new gate. The electric fence was redone properly on the top paddock. The cow yard and bale was finished The new fence was tensioned and plastic posts were put in to make sure it was at the right height. Trees were trimmed and grass cleared. I was shocked at how much they'd got done and the sheer physical effort needed to do some of it. It would maybe take me 12 months to do that sort of work, by which time the bit I'd started on would be all grown back.

All in all it looked tip top about two in the afternoon and we opened the gate and shooed the cows in. They got to work straight away. I can't wait to see the results.

So to Dave and Marj my awesome mates who were visiting from Tassie and worked twice as long as they thought they'd be able to stay, Andy and Pia, comedians both, Cobbs, The Big German and Rozy, who didn't want to walk up the hill that last time, Delia and her family, Ed and KC, who had fun giving Ryan a hard time, Neil, such a fantastic father in law, my man Pol, who'd been helping me prepare weekends before, Darryl whose picture is next to 'worker' in the dictionary, Simon and Sarah who have impeccable timing and my darling beautiful wife, thank you a million times. Lantanaland thanks you as well because it is on the way to becoming a productive farm and maybe a cooking school and before now the vision was getting cloudy.

I can see pretty clearly now and it's looking good.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Feastin on Film

2010-06-16T18:28:00.003+10:00

I'm writing a longer post on the fencing weekend but here is a small tidbit on what happens when you work someone hard all day then give them free beer.

Work like a bee

2010-05-17T14:36:00.003+10:00

A heap of people have indicated a willingness to come and help out over a weekend. I am going to fence off a second paddock so i can start a bit of rotation. If you know me you know there will be great food and cold beer.

Things have been happening

2010-05-11T08:28:00.002+10:00

Things were grand. The three dairy cows I'd bought were in the back of my neighbours horse truck. He'd kindly loaned himself and his truck for me to go and pick up what would be the centerpiece and the pride and joy of Lantanaland. Two dairy cows and a young bull for beef would be living here because of the kindness of friends and the marvel of herdshare. It was the fruition of a seed planted ten or so years ago by a raw celebrity chef from Essex, a English smallholder and an author and his wife living in the NSW countryside. The harsh doses of reality that had formed in the last few weeks and would come thick and fast every minute after I opened the trailer door were unimaginable to that kid all those years ago.....

The realisation of the rule of my mums house that the cook didn't wash up was probably what got me cooking. When I came to university I was at least able to not solely rely on takeaway or stirfry. I can vaguely remember trying things like packet beef stroganoff and being pleased with my daring. I did a lot of cooking for the boys in that house, mainly potato based. Despite eating mounds and mounds of the humble spud I never got sick of them or the butter and cream that went into them either......

As soon as we bought Lantanaland I wanted a cow. Look at all that grass! (in between the lantana). Free milk and meat, endless cream and butter. The cow will amble over and stand patiently while she's milked. Alas there was bugger all fences and no cash so the cows would have to wait. I'd have to make do with getting a rooster to keep my girls company...

I figured that cooking was a good way to get or at least keep a girlfriend. So once The Once and Future Wife introduced me to the fact that yes, she did like me, I was keen as Keens mustard to show her that I could cook. Buggered if I know what I cooked in the early days. Something with potatoes no doubt. Then came along the likely lad from Essex. Jamie Oliver's simple recipes and the way he stripped food back to its basics gave me the confidence that I could cook from first principles....

I had confidence now from the fencing the free goats from across the road that I would be able to keep cows in fairly easily. Still had the cow energiser that I'd been given for Xmas by The Wife. I could hem in paddocks of land with an electric fence and the barbed wire fence could be checked and mended. My derelict paddocks would become rolling green hills.....

"The drawbacks of living this kind of life elicit little sympathy from those who've not experienced them personally, so I'll simply add that derelict houses in derelict villages are derelict for a reason" I read eagerly from 'A Year of Slow Food' I'd bought on a whim from the Malaney bookstore during a romantic getaway in the hinterland. In a tiny toaster oven roasted two baby chickens stuffed with new potatoes. I was adapting my cooking style, based on French and Italian, but always that simple fresh ingredients came first. And now here was this amazing book about living off the land, with bees and cows and fruit trees and hard bloody work. But I glossed over those parts when I read it the second time the next day.....

I'd been watching the cattle classifieds for a bit. I'd put up a post about herdshare on the blog and had enough interest to seriously check every day. Wanted Dexters or Jersey cows and needed a calf on the mum, so we could go away for a weekend and the house sitters wouldn't have to milk. There was a lot of hard work to be done though. I needed to slash a path for the electric fence through six foot high grass and lantana. Needed to make or buy a gate and get that in. Patch the barbed wire along the driveway. Get firmer interest from people about chipping in, starting a little community based around a cow seemed pretty cool....

Living in the inner city with The Wife I was reasonably content with my chickens and my vegetable garden and my aquaponics. Then came River Cottage. The way Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall bounced around the community started something else in me. Maybe I could make a small living off having a bit of land, I had a few ideas and he really made it all look like he was having a ball. He just exuded this carefree attitude of "who cares if something goes wrong, I'm a smallholder I'll adapt and roll with the punches".......

The worst possible thing had gone wrong. I needed to slash another 20m of grass and scrub and hammer in ten or so star pickets to run up this fence and I could barely walk. I'd partially slipped a disc playing touch footy the night before and was in severe, sharp pain. I couldn't walk without aid. A nice sixtyish women helped me into the physiotherapists. Will I be able to fence by Saturday, I asked? Not a chance. The next two days were spent ringing and texting and facebooking for help. One of the herdsharers, Mick, came through and I hobbled around in the afternoon, running the light nylon cord that would hopefully keep the cows in the small top paddock. Everything I'd read reckoned that it should be fine.....

I laughed at the book I'd just been given for my birthday. We were at Lantanaland for my birthday party, The Wife had organized some bee hives and two of my best mates had a little something extra. The Healthy House Cow......

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. The energiser was registering a fault. Oh well the cows would stay up the top while I ran and got the more powerful one I used for the goats. By the time I'd run shuffled to get rh gear and back they were on the other side of the fence. Arrrrgh! I shooed them back in and patched the fence and away they went, munching happily away at the green grass......

I fired up the mower for the fourth weekend in a row. Lots of summer rain meant the grass was growing faster than I could cut it. I didn't mind the mowing but there were so much better things I could be doing with my time......

I'm not going to have the time, I thought as I drive home in a panic. Lafayette, the big mum had gone straight through the barbed wire. It was Wednesday afternoon and we left Friday morning to drive to Gladstone for my grandmothers 90th birthday party on Friday morning. The Wife had done her best to get them all back in but had almost injured the young cow Dolores by tethering her while she herded the other two. When she came back she'd got herself tangled up. I borrowed some fencing gear and got my head torch and started work. My back ached but my mind ached worse, what if they went through the fence while the the house sitters were here?

I went to bed thinking that my dreamer tendency had finally got the better of me. I really needed at hot-wire all around the fence and the only time I had was the next morning. I usually leave for work just before six am. So when the alarm went off really, really early I got the head torch back on and traipsed up to the top paddock. The mist gave me about a meter of vision but blanketed everything with a wet peaceful silence. After joining up the fence I noticed that one of the tied off ends was arcing on a fence post. I was wearing heavy riggers gloves so figured I'd be fine to brush it away. BANG! Bloody hell, if they don't respect that then I've got no hope.

I don't think the level of anticipation driving home had been greater than the first day I drove home to Lantanaland. Cows in - good. Cows out - bad, very bad. I'd only have that afternoon to fix the problem and I'd have no idea if it would work as I drove away Friday morning, to a party 600km away. I came down the hill and there they were, all three, INSIDE the fence, waiting at the gate. A huge wave of relief washed over me. Things would be ok. I could make this work.

Of course it's not that easy. I have no idea to hand milk and no one to show me. My herdshare depends on me being able to get the milk the herdsharers own out of the cow and turned into butter, cheese and yoghurt. I have no bales or crush. When we came home yesterday Dolores was covered in fat paralysis ticks.

However I feel the enthusiasm that Hugh, Jamie and Gerda and David Foster had for living with food that is fresh, to make the land that we own into something productive. And I have friends to help. Two of the herdsharers run an organic lamb farm and are a repository of great farm advice. Mick who helped with the fence has worked on dairy farms and has mates in the business. My mum owned a dairy farm before I was born. The lovely neighbours who lent me the truck have lent me fencing tools as well. My natural (The Wife would say unfounded) optimism has returned. I'm pretty much as raw a rookie as a smallholder can get, but the only way is up!

Postscript. Ive been talking about a working bee day in June for a while. A few of the foodbloggers would like to see the farm. Mates want to help. Good food will be eaten. The eating chooks are growing daily. We have chosen the long weekend in June, 12-14. I will try and cut some new lines for fencing and maybe build a woodfired pizza oven. All I can promise is great food and drink and spectacular views. And potatoes.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Herd Share II

2010-04-18T19:11:00.001+10:00

Ok people, time to commit. I have an offer in for a little herd of Jersey cows, one is milking now, but I need to semi commit to them by Monday night.

The lady selling them want to sell them as a group, she has heaps of offers for the individuals but none for the group so please leave me feedback so I can contact you if you are keen to get involved. Raw milk, raw milk cheese, butter, cream, milk, meat.

I'm hungry already.

-- Post From My iPhone

Panasonic Lumix DMC GF1 micro four thirds camera.

2010-04-08T18:53:00.003+10:00

I bought a new camera a few weeks ago. This is my or the households third digital, the last two being small compacts which The Wife loves because they can be tucked into a pocket or purse and grabbed at any occasion and snap away. And that's cool but I'm not really keen on "framed" smiling party pics and I was keen for a little more.

The trouble is that I also need a better camera to take pictures of stuff that we trial for work, that can make me extend a bit as a photographer, that can document the progress of Lantanaland in way that I can archive seriously but I don't want to lug around a DSLR all the time, too bulky, too expensive, too much.

The answer is a new format that Panasonic, Lecia and Olympus came up with to differentiate themselves from the big boys. It's called micro four thirds. Without geeking out too much a small compact camera has a small sensor and a cheap lens in a small body. A DSLR has a large body to accomodate the mirror that let's you look through the lens to frame the photo and a large sensor and interchangeable lenses. A micro 4/3rd camera has no mirror and a slightly smaller sensor which allows a much smaller and lighter body. You still have interchangeable lenses, but they are also better engineered to be more compact as well. The result is a camera you can quite easily hang round your neck and carry around. It's too big to fit in a jeans pocket and if you are used to looking through a veiwfinder you'll hate the LCD only way of taking pictures but I'm so used to digital now I can't remember the last time I framed a picture that way.

I love this camera. After two weeks of playing round with it, only using the small 20mm lens with no zoom I've taken a few great pics.

I took this one at Brunswick going for a walk to test the camera out the morning after I got it. I'd grabbed a coffee and was just playing round with depth of feild when this bloke rode past, adding interest to the out of focus background.

This was out of the window of the car going at 100km/h on the way to brunswick.

A bit of fishing at Ocean Shores. Took this with the burst mode on and got that great rod bend.

The Wife and her bro at their dads 60th. This was taken, no flash, in a dimly lit resteraunt.

A mate of ours neice. I was demonstrating apperature to her and her brother and took this great pic of her. She likes acting up for the camera so was surprised at the softer expression on her face. In fact this is an awesome camera for taking pics of people. The big LCD let's you hold the camera low and not get in peoples faces. I then gve her the camera and she took this one of me.

The less said the better.

This one I took of The Wifes dad while we were having coffee. I was just snapping away from the hip and got this great unguarded picture. My favourite with the new camera so far.

My mad mate Andy.

This camera retails in Oz at $1300-$1500 au at all good camera stores. Those good camera stores or Panasonic Australia need to have a good hard look at themselves though, because I bought a grey market one for under a grand, same one year warrentee, shipped in three days instead of two weeks.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Afternoon Swarm

2010-03-28T19:28:00.001+10:00

Had a great weekend. The Wife organized a surprise dinner for her dads 60th birthday. He's the fifth boy in a group of six rowdy siblings so it was a great night. Neil had said he didn't really want to do much except hang out with close family for his birthday but you could see he was genuinely touched to have a big group of friends and family to help him celebrate.

Brunswick Heads is a great little township for a weekend like that. We had swims, coffee, caught some worms and whiting, I did a few photo walks (more on this later in the week) and the actual birthday dinner was a great feed. I'll put up a post on dinner at Mother Foccacia toomorrow.

So it was good to get home and just chill out. I have given up with my escaping chickens. They are now going to get a highrise, hopefully fox proof chookhouse and they'll just have to take their chances with the snakes. I rarely lose a full grown chicken to a snake anyway. Then I'll fence my veg garden in. I like having the chooks running round anyway. I'll build a smaller everything proof small pen that will be used as a breeding pen and nursery. There is always something to do on a smallholding, as I was about to find out.

I was handmowing around some newly planted fruit trees near the bees as a bit of easy exercise on a lazy Sunday arvo when the bloody bees swarmed. I quickly grabbed The Wife to keep an eye on where they went while I kitted up and grabbed the spare box. Of course the little bastards went right to the top of the fig tree, so it was off to Eric, the magical builder neighbour who has everything, most of which is in, on or around his two shipping containers (lucky bastard). He quickly rigged be up a makeshift pole with a bucket gaffed to the end and I was off.

I managed to tap a few of them into the bucket first go, but the tipped them out on to the ground as the pole was quite a bit bendier than I'd anticipated. Next go more bees and into the empty box. There were bees at the entrance and none on the tree when I went up to check later so I might have a new hive! I hope so or I've lost all those bees.

A bit more exciting end to the day than I thought. Oh well all I have to do now is research herd share agreements, write up dinner at Fat Belly Kat, do a new section for the goats, rebuild the deck..………

Lantanaland from the iPhone

I'm gonna buy a cow.

2010-03-25T15:57:00.002+10:00

I'm going to buy a cow. I've been saying it from the moment we signed the contract to buy Lantanaland, but only now is it anywhere near close to reality. Getting the goats has forced my into purchasing some infrastructure, so now i have the means to contain them. If the fence will hold the goats it'll frighten the cows.

I have always been keen on Dexters, a smaller breed much beloved by smallholders, because they have good beef and good milk. Being smaller, you don't have to deal with as much meat at one time, which is much better for home use. What I'd really like is a small herd of three or four, but one is probably all I can afford. That was until I was at dinner with some mates and the suggested buying a few lambs and running them on my place until they were ready to eat and I slapped myself. Herdshare!

Surely there are a few of you out there who are interested in owning your own cow for some beef or butter or cream or cheese? Keeping them with me has a few advantages. I know a whole heap of butchers to help with the slaughter and breaking of a beast. I make awesome sausages, the likes of which you'd be hard pressed to buy in a shop. I know nothing about making cheese, but do know that if you get a group together it is much cheaper to do Graham Redheads excellent cheese course, which you could do with your own milk!

Now i could have completely misread this and you might all think that I am insane, in which case I'll be just buying the one cow as planned, but who knows? If only two more people are interested, i'll have a herd not a cow, to share!

Courier Mail and the greatest hits

2010-03-02T07:13:00.003+10:00

I had a small piece in the Taste section of The Courier Mail today and they were kind enough to put a link back to here. If by some strange reason you've typed it into a browser and you want to know a bit more about Lantanaland, well i'd start with last weeks State of the Union.

Then check out the cold smoker and the bacon that comes out of it.

Then there are the bees and shipping containers and mates helping out and a few small things.

Not to mention using Lantanaland for your holidays.

Also, I love food so much that there is a whole separate food blog where a whole bunch of degenerates help me write about food. Some of them are much better cooks than me .

Trip to Lismore

2010-02-28T20:16:00.001+10:00

As anyone who knows me will know, I love my jesus phone. Well i was playing around with it during a trip to Lismore for an engagement party and came up with this

Enjoy!

Bloody blogger won't let me post this in a suitable format, hence the link.

State of the Union (call for help)

2010-02-21T13:00:00.002+10:00

We've been living here on Lantanaland for about two and a half years. I always said that I wanted to just sit back for a few years to gauge the mood of the land, not to do any major works of infrastructure until we had an idea of where we would like the place to end up. I feel that I have a good feel for the land now. I know I have to cope and plan for snakes and goannas in my chook and duck pens. I know what sort of fence I need to keep in goats ( bloody decent ones) and I have a rough idea of how we can start shaping the land.

The first part came when my fantastic parents and grandmother gifted me a ride on lawnmower for birthday/Xmas. It let's me keep the house and surrounds neat when I'm busy. Last year we were away in February and the lawn got away from me. I can put in the big weekends knocking it back with brushcutter and push mower, but the big ride on allows me to keep it under control. Think of it like an old fasioned war or a zombie movie. I've establised my defensive zone but the grass is always trying to breach my perimiter. Now I am secure enough to start sending out sorties armed with cricket bats and shotguns to drive back the undead, I mean lantana.

The way that I think I will do this is to split the place up into smaller zones, fence them off and let the animals clear them out a bit. I can then get to bits of lantana, plant some trees and plan for each bit while the animals clear the next patch. Another key to this will be a winding path on an easy gradient down to the dam that I can quickly mow. This will be the core access to the rest of the property, I can keep it clear and work off it.

This probably means I will need some more animals, two cows and some milking goats. Maybe a few geese for a particular feast i have in mind. Goats, if you can keep the little bastards fenced, are great value. Should be tasty too. It all goes back to making my grass give me a valuable product, rather than just growing, get slashed, grow get slashed.

The other big consideration is whether to build a new house or add to this one for a future family. Eventually I want to run a cooking school that embraces paddock/garden to plate and the current house we are in would be a great little venue for such an enterprise, with a bit of work. A new house might allow us to put in things like a decent kitchen, a walking in insulated pantry and a secret library with a revolving bookcase door from which I CAN RULE THE WORLD, MWHAHAHAH.

Sorry.

Anyway the point is I would like to have a working bee day sometime in the middle of winter where I have a go at the first major project that will set Lantanaland on the path to perhaps one day being the cooking school that I want it to be. I'm not just asking for free graft either, for anyone who comes and helps, even if it's just for half an hour, I'll be offering food, food that you just won't get at a woolies or IGA. The centrepiece will be spitroasted chickens and duck, for sure and maybe some guinea fowl and geese. But these will be MY birds, raised here on my scraps and grain and grass. There will be pancakes made with my eggs and maybe milk and cream and butter. There will be homemade sausages for lunch, there will be smoked salmon and bacon from my cold smoker, veges and fruit from the garden.

What I'd like from you guys and girls who read this blogs is ideas, or send it to people who have ideas. I want as many suggestions for how I could do things or the way that you have done things or seen things done. I'd love for people to come help me too, but I'll put that call out when we get closer to the time, which is when those tasty, tasty chickens are ready to go into the oven.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Shipping Container

2010-01-30T10:20:00.001+10:00

Apparently, I am the only one in my group of freinds that read such literary masterpieces as The Famous Five, The Hardy Boys and Alfred Hitchcock presents .... The Three Investigators. It does strange things to a young boy, such reading.

I have always wanted, when I finally built my own house, a secret room, hidden behind a revolving door or bookcase, only accesiable up a narrow rickety hidden staircase. Regretablly The Wife didn't start reading for pleasure until her university days, so she doesn't understand my desires. So secret rooms in the house are probably out.

A shed though would be quite acceptable. And not one of those vanilla bogan ones. No three car tin cookie cutter design, what I want is a shipping container. I have a cunning plan to get it too. I'm going to accumulate so much stuff that the wife will have to surrender and let me have one just to get rid of the shit lying around.

Once I have my forty foot container I would dig out a bit of hill and I have lots of hill, and set my container down into it. Then I'd cut a few skylights in the top, cover it with a waterproof membrane then backfill with rocks, which I also have quite a few of, then cover with soil and plant out a wild garden of flesh eating hybrid triffids.

A few cunningly disguised solar panels would charge the battery banks to run the power tools, kick ass sound system and the Iron Man suit that I'd keep to go and round up any lost cows.

That takes care of the top approach. The front is more problematic. I have to have an access that I can drive my new beaut zero turn mower that my fantastic parents and grandmother bought me. Maybe a camoflauged door that I can crash through, A-Team style when I need to do some mowing.

Then maybe a blackberry maze for the walk in approach. So far my sphinx breeding program has not gone so well, they keep trying to use the quiz from the Sunday Mail for questions. So I might have to go with the traditional three headed hellhound, but that's ok, I'm down with going with the old school ways.

Inside I might need a small cold fusion reactor in case it gets a bit cloudy, a full kitchen, larder and aquaponics system under lights in case the zombies come or I get a bit peckish or I have to entertain a super spy who's got through my defences as some sort of training exercise. Probably some lasers too.

Oh and I'll need a secret room. Behind a revolving bookcase.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Physical vs Creative. Deathmatch

2010-01-23T07:42:00.001+10:00

It's been an interesting start to the year. For the first time I am having a crack at playing over 30's representitive touch footy. I'm training the most I have since I was at university and had more time to burn. Now I have more fat to burn. Still, with all this running around something had to give a little in the old mind and it turns out it is my creative side.

I'm no artist, don't get me wrong. My creative outlets run to this blog, cooking and playing round with logos. Specifaclly for TShirts. I love a cool shirt. What I needed was some sort of kick start. Usually I am at my most creative when I have something else that urgently needs doing. That's when my creative brain kicks in and starts throwing awesome ideas at me. It's a natural developement from the procrastination skills I learnt at uni. I did all the classes, even thought of doing an honours in procrastination, but in the end, I couldn't be bothered.

January is a quiet time at work and other than the war I'm having with my free spirited goats, the only thing that is dominating my time is training. And after some of these sessions all I can do is crash, running up and back ten metres for two and a half hours in forty degree heat is not the best for generating ideas.

A mates blog though, gave me the jump start I needed. Dr Yobbo writes a fantastic fictional account of the band Flange Gasket, set in and around Brisbane and the Nothern Rivers in the same time that I was kicking around in the music industry. It's hugely funny, well written, lots of sex, drugs and rock n roll. My kind of story.

Flange Gasket in one episode had a band TShirt made up, a parody of The Monkees called The Drunkees. When I first read it I thought it was awesome. In the story, The Monkees quickly sue and the shirt gets pulled, making it a collectors item. I reckon that when I read that chapter I was already subconsciously thinking about doing the shirt. When it cropped up again in the latest chapter it was like a big candle to a moth. Here was a good bit of fun. So I designed the logo for the fictional shirt for the fictional band.

Of course it's no good just doing the design. To do it justice I needed to get one printed and send it to the Doc. I could have screen printed it myself, but it would probably be only a few shirts and my screenprinting rig really needs to do about 20 to make it cost effective. Google and web surfing came to the rescue. I found a site where I can set up a shop and sell the shirts and they'll do the print, no matter how intricate the art. The cost stays the same.

So I give you, Flange Gasket's, hey hey we're the drunkees limited edition band shirt!

Lantanaland from the iPhone

THe Catch Up

2010-01-12T13:10:00.004+10:00

Wow. Been a long time since anyone has been in here. Just before my birthday in fact, but don't read anything into that, I love birthdays, love the celebration. Even the three death metal bands playing at The River Stage across the Brisbane river at my birthday BBQ didn't hassle me, cause I was having a fantastic time. To be brutally honest it has more to with a gift from my neighbours a few days before Xmas. Goats. Two desexed males that he'd bought for his kids and they'd tired of them. He had no real fences and no inclination to build any but didn't want them to end up in the pot.

I was initially reluctant, The Wife more so and with good reason, we had no idea how much they would escape and rampage through neighbours gardens, trampling goodwill as they went. Free is still free, however and I have a lot of grass, more so after the summer rains.

Being a smallholder is a funny business. You can read and research and watch but until you have an animal you don't really start learning. For instance, the goats love the very green long grass i have in amazing abundance at the moment, I had read that they prefer more woody and fibrous material, but gees, they love that grass.

The electric fence works well right up to the point where the feed runs out and they can see that green, long grass on the other side and then they bash through to get to it. But I'm learning as i go along and as well as being amazing clearers of rough land, they are very personable, a byproduct of being raised as kids pets, I think.

Other than building fencing to keep ahead of their voracious appetite, there's been the usual Xmas rush around. The Wife had this fantastic sign made up by a mate of ours in our Loveslugs touch footy team so visitors will be able to find us at the top of the hill. I've been baking a lot of bread. Reading lots and lots of books. Went to the Bell races, a small country meet where they ran out of rum three hours before closing.

Oh and the goats can't do all the work so I've been mowing a fair bit of lawn. Lantanaland looks like a small patch of England at the moment, we've had over 300mm of rain in the last six weeks. So between lots of mowing, slashing and training for a touch tournament i've been pretty bone tired and too slack to write.

That will be amended. After all, once i have this goat thing down, i'm expecting to see a lot less of the whippersnipper.

Music makes my world go round

2009-12-04T22:48:00.002+10:00

Dropped through Albion Love Den's blog today and went "ohh a top ten list, my favourite!". So I thought I'd steal some of it. Not the top ten or the fact that the albums were made in 2009 but just the music that I've been riffing off this year.

Now I try and not to get stuck in a time preiod. I want my kids to have a wide variety of music that doesn't contain smashmouth or khe sahn. So here it is, I expect and welcome all smartarse comments

POP
Lily Allen - Its Not Me Its You
I understand why people look down at me for digging Ms Allen. But hey I don't read who weekly or listen to commercial radio so couldn't give a flying fuck about her private life. Her lyrics have a great wit and she writes great pop hooks. That's it.

The Shins - wincing the night away.
I love these guys and can't believe I let this one slip by me. If you like the shins you'll love it, if you don't you'll probably not change your mind on this record. Melodic pop rock at it's best.

La Roux - La Roux
Great electro pop. Again just fun music to listen too, great hooks and tunes. Don't know if I'll still be listening to it in ten years, but love it now.

The Presets - Apacalypso
I don't jump on the bandwagon that these guys are ground breakers, they sound just like what Sonic Animation would be doing if they were still around. That said, I loved sonic animation and I love this album. Play it loud to get the adrenaline going before footy.

The John Steel Singers.- the beagle and the dove
A blend between Sgt Peppers and Gomez these brisbane guys are just an infectious sing along bag of fun. Hope they get much, much bigger. In the old days I would have booked them as much as possible.

HIP HOP
Anyone who knows me knows that Oz Hip Hop is my thing and the standard bearers are definetly...
Hilltop Hoods - State of the art
Great album, good songs, but, but I reckon as they have got more cash they have got better gear and because the boys are perfectionists the sound has got more polished. But is it a better sound? I'm not convinced that it is better than that rasp you get in The Calling.

Ugly Duckling - audacity
Not up to the standard of Taste the Secret or Journey to Anywhere but that just means I play it all the time rather than flog the fuck out of it. Great clever lyrics, no ego rap or bitches here sorry.

Singles
Seth Sentry - simple game
Anyone in a dead end office should listen to this song. Great beat too.

Dialectrix - outcast
Great bouncy beat, another pre footy song.

ROCK
Paul Kelly - live off his website
If you didn't know, Paul gives away free tunes from his website, a letter of the alphabet every month. Best song this year? Winter Coat. If you don't think Paul Kelly is australia's best singer /songwriter well you can listen to this in your padded cell.

Nirvana - nevermind
This is a funny one. Never really liked Nirvana in the 90s. After watching their classic album episode though, I went and downloaded ( iTunes thank you for asking, I will not steal music) and realized that this is a cracker of an album.

MGMT - oracular spectacular
Again had no idea this band was cool. Heard one of their songs on a teen american comedy. Bought the album. Loved it.

Singles
Muse - uprising
Passion Pit - moths wings
Temper Trap - sweet disposition
These are all rock pop songs the Js have been flogging and like mindworms have entered my brain and will not leave. Good songs though.

Ok. Let rip. What did I get wrong.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Anti aging from football

2009-11-23T21:19:00.002+10:00

On saturday, I looked quite mature, maybe late thirties. By Sunday night, I'd lost a decade, regained my youthful good looks. Let me explain.

About 15 weeks ago I came back to Whites Hill to play div 2 touch. My teammates were a bunch of lads from the 90s. Born in the 90s that is. Yet this group of guys were the best fun to play with. There was not a selfish bone in their bodies. They worked hard. They listened to our supercoach, the best touch player in the world, nathan jones. So halfway through the year, we had had one draw and four or five wins. We were looking pretty good for finals and the boys laughlingly suggested that if we won the grand final I'd have to shave off my Kram from Spiderbait beard I had been cultivating.

Despite being quite attached to my bushy growth, I jumped on the idea. As each week went by and the wins piled up, they grew more cocky, they wanted more. They wanted my long flowing locks too! They tried to renegotiate the deal and we came to the agreement that if I got player of the final I'd shave my head as well. It was a pretty safe bet. If some of those boys keep developing and playing like they are now I am certain representative teams will follow.

I was right too, we won the final convincingly and I played ok and scored a few tries but our young guys tore the other team up. I ended up with nothing but a cold beer and a hitler mustache and the best feeling I've ever had after a full season of touch.

I trained harder this year than I have in ten or so years. I wanted to make sure I could keep up and be fit enough to show a bit of leadership. Our captain was in NZ for a funeral and I was stoked to get to skipper the side in the final. What a season.

Thanks boys. Thanks Nath.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Boating

2009-11-09T15:20:00.003+10:00

When I was at the end of primary school my parents decided to take me round Australia for a year. There were several reasons. They have a really bad case of wanderlust. All my closest friends were in the year below me and I am one of those in between ages, being born in December. Also my mum and stepdad were using it as a trial to see how I would cope with us as a family unit, which was hilarious, Allen was the only father I had ever known and I was already saying they should get married.

The highlight of the trip was undoubtedly the first days barramundi fishing in the NT. It was really just a trial run in the tinny, to make sure the setups worked and the gear was all ok. But on the second or third pass I caught what was to be the biggest barra of the trip, 83cm. Since then I have always had a soft spot for that little tinny.

Once I left home for uni, the folks got down to some serious travelling, with a much more serious boat setup. The little tinny stayed tucked under the house in Gladstone and when we bought a place that was near the river I dropped a few hints about the old girl.

Much to my delight this year it arrived with the folks on one of their trips south. I bought a cheap electric motor and a deep cycle battery and yesterday we putted off down the river. It's not like the NZ rivers, the Albert, being a shade of brown and having lots of leaf and twig litter on the surface but it was still very relaxing, puttering along the water almost silently, getting quite close to the wildlife.

Didn't take the rod but there were hundreds of fish working, one mullet even jumped in the boat, so the next trip will include a few lure, a beer and some food, should become quite regular!

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Bows and ammo and bucks and weddings and puzzles and friends and.....

2009-10-25T20:29:00.001+10:00

I've been in beautiful Wanaka for a wedding. Seany is one my sharehouse buddies from one of the best sharehouses I have ever lived in. He has bounced around between Oz and NZ, but finished up in queenstown, hence the wedding being in o e of the worlds most beautiful landscapes, at this time of year anyway. Going from hot parched SE Qld to the lush greenery and snow capped mountains was a great little trip, not to mention one of the best wedding settings I've seen.

By the time we arrived I had just enough time to get dinner on and have a quick shower ( more on the food at Mother Foccacia later), only to find the owners had forgotten to turn the hot water on. Water from a lake fed by snow capped mountains is an effective but unpleasant way to shake off hardly any sleep from the night in Christchurch airport and the second flight and drive.

I met up with all the boys for the start of the bucks party, two days before the wedding! It started at this place where you could target shoot with bows, 22's and shotguns, plus drive golf balls to your hearts content. It was all great fun, we split into teams and cycled round the venue. Some of these boys have been shooting rabbit and fox for years, the most I've ever shot was a BB gun. I did ok with the 22, had an awesome time with the clay shoot, 8 from 15, not bad for first time and won the archery! At 15m I hit the bullseye 3 times in ten shots, five in the target overall. Not bad for first go. I reckon I might buy a bow and set up some targets here, it was great fun.

The thing is though, I've been reading Ian Stirlings great 'change' series, where it explores what happens if we had to go back to the old weapons. I know you would get better with practice, but it wasn't easy at fifteen meters. What would it be like at 100m, with a cross breeze and a deer spooked by your scent. No wonder animals were domesticated.

The rest of the bucks was the normal drunken hilarous debauchery. I have a great little video that I won't post, despite its low quality and the fact it is one of the most funny things I have witnessed, I'll obey the time honoured rules.

The next day the other flatmate from that great house arrived. Davey and his partner Marj turned up in the arvo after we had recovered a bit. It was so good to see them, we used to have a cooking club together and slipped straight back into our old chatty ways.

The day of the wedding was one of those days where I could move to NZ in the snap of my fingers. We went down and played some touch and frisbee and although all the kiwis cheated all the time, it was great fun. After we went up to puzzleworld, they had all these cool optical illusions and a maze! I was like a ten year old, in fact we all were, running through the maze trying to get to the four towers and back out. Running into each other and demanding "how many towers have you got" and "how the hell do you get to the yellow tower?". So much more fun than running 3km in a straight line.

The wedding itself was a blast. Set in this amazing landscape just lent itself to the magic of the occasion. Seany and Steph are just one of thos couples whose goals and sense of humour just mesh so well together. All the other people were lovely, even the UN diplomat on the bus back who cheerfully insulted half the bus on the fifteen minute journey.

A coffee in the morning with davey and marj and all that was left was the journey home. A car ride and two planes later and our little adventure was over. Keep an eye on MF for the food perspective of the trip.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Postscript.
One of the hardest things I find about leaving lantanaland is that if something happens to the animals I feel guilty that I wasn't here. Not that it makes any difference, the predator doesn't respect my precence.

When we got home Maxi, my beautiful, plucky silkie, who had been with us since we lived in the city and had survived fox and snake, had been killed. She was a gift from a relative of a mate and a great mum and chook with personality. She'll be missed here on Lantanaland.

Ramblings from a cold floor in Christchurch at 2am

2009-10-22T05:26:00.001+10:00

Airport floors in New Zealand are not that warm, who knew? Flitting in between half sleep and hypothermia I have been thinking a lot about Lantanaland. I've been slack this winter, lots of new things at work, my fitness kick and my natural inbuilt laziness have conspired to ensure that I have been nowhere near enough busy.

No matter. Things have a way of working out. I have made mates with another neighbour at the other end of the hill. Noticing that they were bagging horse manure and leaving it at the gate I left a note in the letterbox. Turned out they have a matured pile of horse shit next to their stables and are happy for me to take a trailer load whenever I want. Honey and duck eggs will ensure that they will stay happy for me to raid their pile. You may think it's a bit strange to get excited about manure but it's an essential part of permaculture, my soil is basically rock and clay and adding a half meter of mulch and manure on top is the simplest way to get going on a half decent topsoil. Until I get my own cow and even when I do, this will be a resource worth more than money in the long run.

The Chooks and ducks are really going for it right now. Birmo is the lucky one because none of my mates like duck eggs so he gets the occasional delivery when the pile gets too high. My Malay Game rooster is starting to crow and the other pure bred girls are getting big enough to start cross breeding my meat birds. This is one of the projects I've been keen on ever since coming to Lantanaland, but foxes and snakes have knocked me back to square one time and time again. I figure that around June I will be killing and cooking my first home grown chicken. It will be the first of many midwinter parties/feasts that I will be having to celebrate my food, things that you won't be able to buy in any resteraunt or deli. Be nice and I'll send you an invite.

I've also come up with a few solutions for little problems round the place, a good edible plant for the shady area under the fig which I constantly have to slash (yukon), a better design for the Chookhouse so that my housesitters have less issues and more spa time. I'm hoping to get a few more fruit trees planted round the house and finally run an electric fence line in preperation for a dairy cow. I figure if I have the infrastructure in I will be more likely to go looking for real and that will instill a bit of saving discipline into me.

The mulberries, duck eggs and raw honey are the things I love about this place. Hard to get from any shop and just so good. The mulberry, honey and yoghurt smoothies are like heaven in a cup. Just wait till I have my own milk and yoghurt as well!

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Levels of Communication

2009-10-14T14:28:00.002+10:00

Was listening to a bit off the ABC called the Hidden Persuaders, the unfashionable father of The Gruen Transfer on the iPod this morning and there was an interesting conversation about a petition tabled in state parliament about mums in 4X4s dropping kids off at school. The marketing guru basically said that a petition, while it will get a bit of media, will be ignored by a politician or a company. The rule seems to go like this, the more effort that you have to put in, the more it gets noticed. Non for profits will employ casuals on a basis of bonuses for the amount of signatures taken and it really is maybe twenty seconds of your time to participate and thus is largely ignored. A email takes more time and a letter even more time (and money) so are treated with more respect. I'd imagine that the letters and emails run by groups like GetUp where the work has been done for you are only given a touch more consideration than a petition. Ten letters chiselled into stone and dropped on the steps of parliament house would probably get laws changed on the same day.

All this is fair enough, why listen to a bunch of people hassled into signing a bit of paper more than someone that takes the time to put their red hot thoughts onto paper. The problem I have, is that I believe that there is an even higher level of communication and that's money. Business can buy a level of influence that a non for profit or an individual just can't match. Personally I'd love to see all political parties banned from receiving donations of any kind, for no other reason than it would mean less ads. Holding political parties to the trade practices act would be an interesting one as well. A lot of people will say that it will restrict politics to a subset of Australian society, but we get that now, the major parties are dominated by unionists, party machine people and lawyers. how many plumbers, sparkies, teachers (as opposed to teachers who've been in the union for the ten years before entering parliament) are in the ranks of our MPs.

This is why I really like Twitter. I'm not claiming it to be a revolutionary tool, although it has proved useful for very quick outcry, a digital mob with a pitchfork and burning torches. What i like is that at least for now it provides a direct line to the person. People who are getting their hacks to tweet are soon exposed, ridiculed and ignored.

Now excuse me, I'd like to make some real change in the way we pay our researchers in this country, so I'm off to find my stone slab and chisel.

I should not care this much about this.

2009-10-09T23:02:00.000+10:00

"Beeso, you're like our Steve Price."

So said one of my very young teammates after tonights game. For those of you who have no idea who Steve Price is, he is an older rugby league player who keeps getting picked for rep sides where he promptly gets sledged for being too old, too slow, too outdated in a young mans game.

He then goes out and plays all over his opponents, dragging his team down the other end again and again. So I'm not sure if it is the ten year age gap between me and the next oldest player or the fact that I too like to drag us down the other end every set, but I was pretty stoked.

I shouldn't really be getting this excited about touch footy. The level is about the same as QLD cup or the VFL so it's pretty good, it's just the way touch footy makes me feel. Nervous.
Every game.

The last time I played at the good level I left badly. I've always lacked confidence in myself when it comes to physical things, playing music, sport and dancing and the way I left last time destroyed my less than strong ego. I wasn't enjoyed playing anywhere and I hated that. I love playing competitve sport. I love winning and feeling like I've made a difference for my team. But for two years all I could think about when I got on the feild was "what if I do something that loses us the game?"

At the bottom of it I didn't care, I was fat and lazy and was thinking of going and playing darts. Then I got a bit fitter. I started enjoying myself, wanting to win again. By the time this season came round I was keen to give it another shot, just to play hard. I wanted just one game of A grade. The bunch of guys in my team are kids with better attitudes than some of the rep players I've played with. And it shows, tonight we won our final round game which gave us an undefeated record for the regular season. The funny thing is, last week I played A grade, mainly by default, but I was feeling like I'd let the boys down, I paced around while they played, screaming encouragement, running water. When I played my game it wasn't the same, it wasn't my team.

I still get nervous, really nervous before games, but they're good nerves, they pump me up so I can cart that ball forward every set.
Just like Steve Price.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

My life in music.

2009-09-19T14:31:00.003+10:00

My mum, bless her cotton socks, was not big into music. As a result of a hrs life and a car accident she suffered from and still does of debilitating migraines. So deep purple LPs lying around were going to be in short supply. In fact the only record I can remember her playing was a Slim Dusty album. Once. So it would be fair to say she had very little influence on my musical taste.

The first tapes I can recall owning were Dire Straits - Love Over Gold an EP of sprawling stories with lots of beautiful guitar and piano. I'd wanted their album, Brothers in Arms, with all the classic pop songs, but ended up with that. Despite the initial distaste of ungrateful 11 year old, I still love that EP. I also got a few hand me down tapes from my step brother. Choirboys was good. Right on Track 87.

If you are a 13 year old boy can there be a greater lyric than "boom, boom, boom , let's go back to my room"? I think not. I think the first tape I bought was Icehouse - Man of Color. A great Aussie band writing good pop. And of course every Christmas for about five years I got the Smash Hits compilation tape. Bros, Kylie and the gang was the musical equivalent of feeding a baby fairy floss and Dagwood dogs. That's why it is highly ironic that in grade ten, Bon Jovi came to save me.

You see, my mum, money conscious that she is had greeted every statement that I was going to purchase a CD player with a question. "do you need it?". I wasn't sure. A cousin saved the day by buying me the gold tour edition of Slippery When Wet. A fine excuse to pony up the cash. It was then that one of the biggest influences in my musical education kicked in. My mate Motts.

I joined a music club that gave you three CDs a month at a better price. We split the purchases between us. I think Motts got Faith No More - Angel Dust and the Jesus and Mary Chain - Stoned and Dethroned. I got the Chilli Peppers classic Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Of course we swapped CDs and I got an introduction to grunge. Alice in Chains, Soungarden and I hate to admit it now, Pearl Jam followed. Not Nirvana, strangely, it would be years later that the doco series Classic Albums would get me interested in them. Of course I loved U2 and the live Hunters and Collectors double album but I reckon that between high school and Motts and I living together the first year and a half of living in Brisbane, that he introduced my to every new band that I got into.

Except one. A girl that I was more than a little interested in was a big fan of a couple of bands that were very conducive to young hormones and poorly lit bedrooms and dance floors. Portishead and Morcheeba come on down. The love affair with them, Massive Attack, Tricky and others lasted much longer than my teenage hormones.

Another beast was about to raise its head. Brisbane in the late 90s was the best place to go out and see a bit of live music, even if I didn't really know what to go and see. I can remember going to a Livid and just hanging round the main stage. I can only recall a bit of Shihad and two Reef songs while I was lining up for the toilets. Now I kick myself that I missed them, but back then I had no idea who they were. My local watering hole was also a great little room to see the odd local legend like Glockenspiel. The Alley would have a much bigger part to play later.

After a few years Motts, The Wife who was at that stage The Girlfriend and a few others got another share house together and introduced me to a strange new music. Aussie hip hop, specifically Resin Dogs. It rocked my world. I was hooked and for good. And live, Jesus they were something else, with Dave standing at the kit, drumsticks flying and Lazy Grey on the mic. We saw them live a lot. And a few others as well, Moby's tour of the Play album was a highlight. Salmonella Dub. There was lots of music festivals of which I can remember little but live music was about to become a much bigger part of my life.

I was working at The Alley now, in the tradition of getting a job there from spending more than half my waking hours in there playing pool, drinking and listening to music. Trouble was I had this wedding coming up and I needed to pay for some things. Suddenly the boss quit and despite no knowledge of booking bands or running a pub I put myself up for the job. All good. Over the next five years I saw more live bands than I can count but I grew very weary of singer songwriters, there were so many crap ones and the good ones, like Alex Oliver and Asa Broomhall and a few others made the others seem like cats yowling. But Aussie hip hop was what I liked. Starting with my heroes Brothers Stoney, with Len One and Lazy from Resin Dogs and stretching through to Hilltop Hoods with little side visits to bands like 11 hour limit, an instrumental hip hop band, bass, scratching and flute. I booked them all. Ok so there was some crap ones but then there are guys like Koolism or Bias B.

The other big influence from this period was my good mate Darryl Bailey from EMI music. He swung The Alley lots of new music to play between sets and put me onto some artists that I'd never have bought. Paul Kelly, K-OS, Beth Orton. And others that we both loved like Cat Empire and Salmonella Dub.

So now where to. I don't really go to live shows anymore. I've got back into Triple J lately, which is good for new hip hop and rock mindworms like Muse and Passion Pit. I've left a lot out like the great story of Stereo MCs for another time. It's been a great ramble through my back catalog and I might open some of the cracks another day.

But to Motts? Thanks mate.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Class of politician

2009-09-09T07:10:00.000+10:00

Listening to the fantastic Fran Kelly this morning interviewing a MP on the reduction of the printing allowance and MP's salary in general. It was put to this MP whether $120G was enough to lure talented people into politics. The MP mentioned a number of talented people had turned down going for the safe seat of Bradfield because of the pay. So does that mean the only people worth attracting into politics are ones who think $120G is not enough to leave the private sector for public life. Is anyone in federal parliment now on more money than they were previously?

I wonder all the time about the people in politics. Are they really a representative of us, how many teachers, miners and plumbers are there in federal parliment. If all we have representing us are party political animals, unionists and executives who think $120G is a paycut, how can they write policy for the rest of us little people.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Down the coast

2009-09-01T20:49:00.001+10:00

Had four days off down at beautiful Brunswick Heads with the folks and my dads brother and a heap of his family. It came at just the right time, I'd had a brutal week at work and was starting to feel a bit heavy from the non stop training so a few days of this was just what the doc ordered.

Ian and Allen (my dad) are old school fishos so there was a fair bit of fishing planned. The fish of choice is the blackfish, a good feed but boring as batshit to catch. Give me whiting fishing any day. Allen has brought me down the little tinny for me to have, so I'll be finding out what's good on the Albert River. I'd planned on doing a bit of eating, drinking beer, cooking, reading and writing.

I read two books in the three days. I picked up the first just as we were getting ready for dinner. Straight away I was not hooked, but intriuged. World War Z is, as the title suggests, a zombie book. I'm not really into the old Zed, never seen a Romero movie or read any Zed fiction. This book was something different though, it was a historian going throughout the world, gathering aneccdotes about the war on Zed. The closest thing I've ever read to this was old Tolkien's supplementary books, the Simmilarion and Unfinished Tales, which were like history books for the world Lord of the Rings was set in.

Great read. Once you read a bit you forget that Zed is a figment of the authors mind and concentrate on the stories and the picture that he builds of how the world could go if something when wrong. Doesn't have to be Zed, could be swine flu or bearded nutters the only problem was with the book is that it switched me into rude mode, where I partially ignore guests and just keep reading.

The next book off the pile was blogger/author Sam de Brito's The Lost Boys. Birmo reccomended this to me, maybe they have a club or a union or something. Anyway despite enjoying having a tradional narritive again, this was a hard book to read. Running the pubs, I knew characters like these, fuck ups that they are. It's one of my motivating factors in life, don't end up like one of them. Despite the depressing and bleak material, it's a good read.

I love Brunswick, small, quiet, good coffee and a beautiful setting. We ate well, fresh blackfish in foil with ginger, chilli, garlic, butter and lime. Shin beef slow cooked with Montieths Winter Ale and split peas, beans and pearl barley. Rib fillet in a marinade of garlic, lime juice, soy, honey and chilli. Four days of not training.

And a three day working week to come.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Bite sized reading

2009-08-19T19:18:00.002+10:00

I read really quickly. If it's a book that I'm really in to I can rip through a book in a few hours. It's not speed reading, cause if it's boring it takes me weeks to get through something.

So I've hit a bit of curly one. One of the fellow travellers over at Mother Foccacia also has a blog that is essentially a novel, broken up into small parts. It's funny, crude in bits and hits a lot of the memories that most of my fellow flatmates from yesteryear will recognize with frightening clarity.

However it rolls along in small chunks. At the start that was fine because it was convenient to fit in at the end of the day or while waiting in line, anytime I had a spare five minutes. But now I am hooked in the way that if this was a printed book would keep me up until I'd read the last word.

Birmo has written about doing something like this for his fanfic, to be ported into an app for the iPhone or google android. You always have it with you and read it at the doctors or on the train or bus. The writing style will be slightly different because you really have to keep the reader coming back again and again.

That's what Doctor Yobbo's done. I'm hooked. The story/blog is called In The Worst Possible Taste. It's a good read, check it out. But start with the first entry.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Touched by the sun.

2009-08-16T16:09:00.001+10:00

Touch can be a confusing sport to understand what is good and what's not. For a start, in QLD at least we have a superleauge type venture that runs an unaffiliated comp on grounds all over south east QLD. Whites Hill on a Friday night is the best competition short of representative touch that you can play in QLD though, without a doubt. The last game I'd played there wasn't that happy.

I'd played two seasons of the top grade. I was the worst player on the team, to be fair, but at least I'd played. One game into the third season I rocked up to find that I'd been dropped back to div 2. I deserved to be dropped, I was out of shape and low on confidence but also deserved to be told at the start of the week. I then played ordinarily for div 2 before badly rolling an ankle and never going back. After seven years playing on a Friday night then backing up for weekend work I was enjoying having a few beers on Friday afternoon, watching the footy and then sleeping off the consequences. Such as they are for me, easily the lightest drinker of all my friends.

There was never any thought of going back and playing A grade. But this recent fitness kick has brought back a few competitive juices and I asked a mate if there would be a spot in his div 2 side. This mate is regarded as the best player in the world so I was pretty confident he'd be able to at least get me a start.

Friday night was first night back. I was bloody nervous for a simple game of footy, but it might have been the redbull talking The first thing I noticed was that all my teammates had never, ever, had personal experience of the eighties. There is now an over thirties comp on a Friday night, so all the old guys have cleared out to relive glory days against old foes. The second thing I noticed was at tap off. This game was bloody quick!

I soon settled into it and found that I was having an absolute ball. My mate was filling in as coach and all the young guys were having a real crack against a slightly older late eighties born model of a team. The second half was even better, I got into the middle and did my thing, which is defending and getting the ball down the other end so the flashy guys can work their magic. All this fitness thing had worked wonders too, I was blowing but still felt strong, or was that still the redbull?

We didn't win, the young guys tightened up mentally in the end of the game, but I'll take a five all draw. If the next nine weeks and finals are like this, I reckon that the last memories I have of Friday night touch will be much better than last time.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Sunday, not the day of rest.

2009-08-11T20:51:00.002+10:00

When I ran the pubs I worked a pretty normal working week, but then most of Friday and Saturday nights, plus a bbq on sunday. So when I got this new job, which is a Monday to Friday gig, I discovered the joy of weekends and came to imbue them with a mystical significance, to be protected at all costs, defended to the death.

However judging the continental sausage at the royal Brisbane show is not something to pass up, so I gave up my Sunday morning to toodle off to Brisbane for a 8am start. That would have been fine except the mob running the judging would be hard pressed to organize a piss up at Oktoberfest in the biggest brewery in the world. Me and the boss were used for a total of about 20min of judging. At 11am. Three hours of sitting round watching a train wreck of organisation.

Anyway, bolted off to get home and build some racking for some more bee hives that are guesting, maybe permantly, at Lantanaland. I quickly ducked in to grab a present from a good mate that she'd picked up in Italy and sent home with her mum. Thanks Jess!

The bloke who owns the new bee hives, Matt, came round and we whipped up this heavy duty frame that will hold about five hives. We built it out of reclaimed deck posts that my builder neighbour had salvaged for me. They are bloody good gear and I have plans already for the rest of them.

Matt took off and came back with three hives. Only one problem. One of the hives the tape had come loose on the entrance. The boys got stung quite a bit moving them, I was wearing a singlet and was soft, I stayed well back. They eventually got them in and came down for a beer and then I crashed out.

I paid for it Monday afternoon though, suffering my first case of Mondayitis in years. I struggled through the training session and good case of mental fog. Thank god it's back to normal this weekend!

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Bloody big towtruck and lots of caffiene.

2009-08-02T19:11:00.000+10:00

Normally you need a bloody big tow truck to pull me out of Lantanaland. I like pottering around on the farm on a weekend, thinking about things to do, or starting new projects instead of completeing ones already started.

Friday night was drinks for an old mate heading off overseas. Anita is one of the crew from The Alley days, one of the best workers I ever had and if I ever get Lantanaland up to a comercial opperation, I'd find a job for Anita in a heart beat.

After a mini pub crawl and a failed attempt by unnamed females to drag the group into the strippers, we ended up, as you do in Brisbane, on someones back deck. I was the designated driver and I was pretty tired to start with on Friday, so I'd hit the coffee pretty hard through the day, but now I had an IV drip of red bull and it was even starting to fail. Time to head home.

I've been on a big exercise kick and decided the best way to shake the cobwebs out was two coffees and a bike class. I felt much better and the bacon, eggs and coffee breakfast post ride didn't hurt either. I was all fired up for the second excurision of the weekend, Hughesy's Non Fic festival and it was The Wifes turn to drive.

Ahhh no.

Turns out the night before had struck a heavy toll and the thought of 2 x two hour drives and some political panel discussion was making Wifey go sleepy. So I ponied up, grabbed a mate and went off to hear Annabel Crabb, Birmo and some George bloke from The Australian talk about Malcom Turnbull.

(I have a theory that The Wife, faced with pregnancy and designated driver duties in the not too distant future, is making me drive as much as possible when we go out. A designated driver bank, if you want. )

I won't read The Oz because I reckon it's a bit preachy and has it's own head so far up it's arse it can touch it's own ego, but my mate loves the rag and is studying economics post doc, so he was thrilled to get a last minute invite. Hughesy puts on a good gig. Turnbull was discussed, but the conversation rambled naturally off topic to more intersting things. Both Annabel and George were excellent speakers, insightful and funny without pushing their point of veiw. I thought it was a nice touch of Hughesy to include a punter who got up and harraunged the panel for not answering the topic question. A true festival experience. By pure chance, nowhereBob sat next to me as well, introducing himself by writing a message on his phone and tapping me on the shoulder. He got to ask the first question in QandA. "Annabel, will you elope with Abe Frellman?". No, wasn't that my question. I forget.

We hung round for a feed and I got to have a good chat with Annabel and her husband Jeremy, Bob, Hughesy, Birmo and Richard Fidler, who had chaired an earlier panel. It was an extremely entertaining evening and with a bit more caffeine I made it home to Lantanaland a sattisfied man.

Now excuse me, I'm off to bed with my autographed copy of Art, Life, Chooks I bought last night.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Fatherhood

2009-07-24T13:29:00.002+10:00

Alright settle down all of you who read this blog and fit in to the subset of people who constantly badger me and The Wife to have kids, she's not pregnant, not yet anyway. No this is about when we do have kids how i will be ready for the whole gamut of looking after young girls. I assume that with high spa usage i will be unable to have boys.

You see, The Wife, thoughtful and charming lady that she is, has me on a highly tailored and specialized training program for fatherhood. It helps that i am already one of those most irritating of people, a morning person. I also am pretty regimented in the mornings which makes things easier. I have also taken to making up and singing silly songs at the top of my voice to try and raise The Wife from the dead. Doesn't work.

The morning typically goes like this.

Alarm goes off, on a different floor so i make sure i get out of bed. I wander down, squeeze my glass of juice and drink it while i prepare The Wifes breakfast and juice. I take it upstairs to her and at this stage she is training me to deal with a cute 5 year old girl. She mumbles as i shake her and turns away, pulling the covers up over her head and curling into a ball. Ahh, so adorable, I'll give he a little more sleep.

I go off to make my breakfast and first cup of coffee and when i return The Wife has moved onto the thirteen year old training session. Along with bleary eyes and lethargic movements comes the vacant stare and the complaints. "its too early to be up", "it's too cold" and "can you get me a jumper". I pay little attention and read the online papers and the blogs before going and getting the large crowbar and forcing her from the bed.

The final stage is the sixteen year old girl. This is demonstrated by the 45min shower that follows being tossed out of bed. I feed all the animals and iron my shirt before claiming the shower for a quick rinse and I'm off to work. Its quite possible that by the time The Wife leaves for work she has gone back to her true age, but when i leave she is still standing in front of her clothes in a towel, absentmindedly picking at random bits of clothing.

Guess i'll just have to sing louder.

Fit for what

2009-07-19T18:22:00.002+10:00

I like being fit. And for the last four years despite a slight resemblence to this fellow

I was quite happy being unfit. I don't really like getting fit. As I wrote a few weeks ago, I had become quite dissatisfied with playing football and sucking, but instead of doing the sensible thing, giving it away and drinking more beer and cooking up a storm, I decided to do something about it.

Something, it turned out, was the gym. Me and gyms have never really seen eye to eye. For one I'm a bit of a music snob and all the bump and grind r'n'b that they play gives me a headache like a speed addict detoxing in a room full of blackboards and chicks with really long nails. Second off I always had the image of instructors being inanely cheerful urging me to "go for it" or "be your best" at every opportunity.

The fact is, I'm a little competitive and I mostly will try and push it a little harder, which in this case means that instead of bitching about the music or the instructor I was more worried about, what's that thing I'm meant to do, oh yeah, breathe.

I'm really enjoying the classes to augment training with the rep touch boys. I've even gone to one or two at 530am. I might even venture onto the floor and do some weights. Maybe not. The one that hurt more than any though was the pilates. Absolutely killed me. Anyone laughing right now can send their comments to this man.

He does it three times a week.

Of course I haven't lost any weight and it's bloody hurting but I'm on the way. Wind back the clock five years, here I come.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Hottest 100 songs by dead people and Radiohead

2009-07-13T20:39:00.002+10:00

I don't know what it is about triple Js hottest 100, I just love it. The debate, the trivia, the memories of share house parties listening to the countdown, it's all good fun. The Twitter during the last twenty songs was particularly a good laugh.

The Hilltop Hoods were my highlight though. Highest ranked Aussie song. Only one of two (?) hip hop songs in the list. A relatively new song amongst all the sudden boom of nostalgia for 90's alternative music.

Back in the day, I ran a small Brisbane live music venue. Rock and pop was king in Brisbane, but through my love of two great hip hop bands, Resin Dogs and Brothers Stoney, I was determined to bring more acts to The Alley to showcase the genre. The night was to be called “Mics Sound Nice" and we kicked off with a cracker, Brothers Stoney and Koolism. Went off. They were followed by The Herd and a couple of the Obese crew, Reason and BiasB. All top shows with a packed room.

One thing I'll say about the hip hop scene, it's dominated by nice guys who are a pleasure to work with. Loved Dan and Hau from Koolism. Bias was like the landed gentry of hip hop. The Herd once backed up for me after a Livid festival. When they walked through the door they looked so worn out I thought they'd be flat out lifting the mike, but they were bouncing off the walls during their set. Len and Lazy from the Brothers and another local, Gav from Miss Brown were always there to help out with advice. In fact one day Len recommended I drop into a national DJ battle to check out the live act that was traveling with them. Pretty good, he reckoned.

The night did not start well. After working during the day I had channel surfed between the rugby, league and AFL only to watch the broncos, wallabys and lions all lose. The lions loss was particularly galling as it was to my second most hated team, Port Adelaide. Not really wanting to go out after that, I managed to drag myself to the Valley to check the guys out. The crowd was pretty thin but they bounced on stage. "our boys thrashed you weak lions tonight, how do you like that Brisbane".

Bastards.

Once they started their set though, all football was forgotten. They had killer beats and a raw bounce to their delivery. Monday morning I rang PJ, their manager and booked a date, any date.

Their show was madness of the best kind. I have no idea how many I packed in but it was too many. The Alley was literally a concrete box so it was oppressively hot. But they absolutely smashed it. There was no security or crowd control but everyone was there to have a good time and listen to some top tunes, nothing else. I doubt there was a better gig at The Alley and we saw a lot of good gigs.

They broke big on the Js after that but still honored a commitment to come back and headline a three day hip hop festival I ran. They all came, The Herd, Reason, Koolism, Bias, funkoars, cause they were all top blokes. That's why I'm so happy that the Hoods got in the top twenty. They are that good and they deserve it.

PS. All through the Lions glory years I never let the Hoods forget that we were winning premierships while they were choking. Of course in the fourth quarter of the Port-Lions final when it was obvious that we couldn't come back I got a phone call from the boys. They rang me from an Adelaide pub. All I got was "ready, one, two, three, FUCK OFF BEESO".

Bastards.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Infrastructure

2009-07-07T19:14:00.001+10:00

A very lazy weekend rolled by in which the definite highlight was "Prognosis Death", Girlclumsys improv comedy gig. Seriously if you live in Brisbane go and check it out, it is side splittingly funny. However I didn't get anywhere near enough done on an extra pen for the ducks and chooks. The medium chooks and the guinea fowl are outgrowing their super secure digs and they are big enough to go into more mature digs and eventually free range.

This is one of the blessings and curses of Lantanaland. When we came here, there was nothing here, just acres of lantana and a small house. Compare that to the other house we looked at while house shopping. It had an established orchard, stable, chook pen, fences and an easily accessible dam. The down side would have been if I hadn't liked the way any of that stuff was set up, it's a bit of a waste to pull it down. Mind you, chicken mesh and star pickets don't come cheap, which is why today I started my bamboo poles in concrete experiment.

The new run also had a recycled screen door and a chook house made from pallets that work was throwing out. It's not just the chicken runs though. Getting a cow will mean repairing and adding to the run down fence I have before stringing the electric lines up. It all costs money but sitting in the spa watching the misty rain roll in over my new pen I realized, it's also a heap of fun.

Thanks to Pol for helping out today, it's so much easier to do stuff if you have someone to hold the star picket straight or hold the door while you drill.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

The Jesus Phone

2009-07-02T17:50:00.002+10:00

I'm a bit of a tech geek. Not a full member, I failed the Star Trek written exam and I play and watch far too much sport. But I do have the new iPhone, but unlike probably half the iPhone users out there I am really interested in seeing how far I can push this little device.

I already write all the blogs with the phone. Now the new one has a half decent camera as well. So what, says half the Nokia owners out there. Well, this, for a start.

That was all done from within the phone. It also does basic video and video editing, with direct upload to YouTube, so now I can add video to the blog, like this,

without having to jump back on my MacBook. Pity i forgot to frame the right way, but the buggers were pecking me! I still have to do that from the web, but an app will written soon enough that will add the video before accessing the web. The next app I expect to see now that has let developers have access to the camera is the ability to record voiceovers.

Ok. Now imagine you are a foreign correspondent. In one device, you have a wifi and mobile enabled camera, phone and video that will let you shoot, edit, voiceover, write your article and send off to your site or editor.

In fact I wonder if it will accelerate a trend where the best freelance guys will have their own sites, rather than selling to a paper to get it out on the web. Have a look at a guy like John Gruber, who writes some of the most insightful articles on tech from his site, Daring Fireball. Even Birmo, who gets more traffic to his various journalistic work from his personal site than through the actual media gateways. The thing is, I trust certain writers, journos and podcasters, much more than I trust a brand like the SMH or The Australian. In fact every bad piece written in a paper makes me wish that journos like Kathleen Noonan or Annabel Crabb had their own sites.

The Jesus Phone is not for everybody, but the chances of me carrying round a big digital video camera or SLR all the time while I work and shape lantanaland are pretty bloody slim. And if i was away from the laptop i would have to wait till I got home to edit and upload what I was thinking or seeing. As the guys on one of the podcasts say just about every time they discuss a new camera "the best camera is the one you have with you".

Well the best way for me to write, do photo and video and edit is with me all the time.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Four meats in one day

2009-07-01T20:56:00.002+10:00

Had a cracker of a day. Up early so I could get all my calls done so I could make it to lunch with all the burgers and my mate Ryano.

Started with the buffalo wings, then progressed to the rib platters. It was a tasty meaty lunch, the high point being Girlclumsy reading parts of "swank" magazine in her beautifully modulated newsreader voice. From memory. Wow, The Wah is a lucky man.

After that I picked up a few loaner books (thanks mate!) and did a bit more books before hitting the gym for some boxing to burn off at least the buffalo wings. I then resisted the urge to have some salad for dinner and completed the day with some tasty lamb.

But now I am very tired and can't decide which book to start.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Mentally deficient.

2009-06-21T18:03:00.002+10:00

Two finals for touch footy this week. The semi on Wednesday night was interesting. The team we were playing were a bunch of the Gold Coasts next generation, young, dumb and fit, wheras we had a couple of current champions, quite a lot of old canny stagers and a few young uns'.

We started perfectly running in three easy touchdowns with almost Swiss precision. But in the second half they came at us and our fitness and application began to fade. Right to the point where it was equal at full time, but our champions came through for us in golden point and we went through to face our repeated and mortal enemies, the kiwis. After all, this is the coast, it's remarkable it's not two kiwi sides in the final.

We seem to play these guys every year in the final and it's a always a battle. They had touched us up badly last game. This time we had a game plan for defense and for once we executed it perfectly. Guys who'd been isolated on the line were suddenly rock solid keystones. To beat this team, which has about 5 international players in it, we needed to play at our best and dropping three balls over the line is not really affordable, even in the wet. Final margin? Funnily enough, it was three points. The better team won, but it was good to see that tactically, we had a chance, that we got ourselves into the game.

Losing the game is not what has been bothering me today, even though I hate losing anything. The last two seasons I've been getting increasingly anxious about playing. I left playing the top grade in Brisbane in a crap way and I've never seemed to get that touch of belief back. I'm starting games not willing the long balls to my wing or hoping I can make that big touch in defense that lifts the game. I'm fine when I'm on the field doing my job, but not on the sideline. I've got a little monster sitting on my shoulder eating up that extra ten percent that I used to have. Part of it is my weight and I'm working and will be working harder on removing that as an excuse.

I think too that training with Nath and AJ has really brought it home. I feel like I have the same attitude as them when we train, but their absolute belief that they will be able to change the game is just so different to what I feel when I rock up to play

The funny thing is, you talk to me about any other part of my life, the things that define me and I have absolute faith that I am not just good at them, but absolutely fucking great. Just ask me. Lantanaland, looking after The Wife, cooking, my job and even writing this blog, I just feel that while I might not get everything right I very rarely go to sleep feeling like I have failed, but in the last two years there would only be one or two games that that thought wasn't in the back of my head.

The minds a funny thing.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

By Jove and by Jingo

2009-06-16T17:29:00.003+10:00

"By Jove and by Jingo". I have been heard to pontificate, as I clean my monocle and fill my pipe, "I will not have one of those modern contraptions in my house. The wife will just have to boil her milk the way my grandaddy did it and women’s lib be damned."

I refer to a contraption that for ten years I have fought tooth and nail to deny precious bench space to in my kitchen.
The microwave.

I just don't see the need for it. As far as cooking kit goes there is a long, long, long list of stuff I would give the bench space to, but my usually reliable ability to swim against the tide has been worn down by a few factors. The biggest one is we seem to be having a few babies amongst the visitors to Lantanaland, fair enough, we all want to procreate, but the assumption of the traveling baby chef is that the kitchen they will be visiting will have a microwave. That's why the other weekend you would have found me heating some pumpkin mash on a double boiler as well as cooking dinner.

The other spear through my quite reasonable aversion is The Wife. She is convinced that if she could heat her milk for breakfast it would save her a precious ten minutes that could be much better spent daydreaming in the shower or lingering in bed instead of getting to work.

I've never liked the way it cooks food. Mum used to reheat my dinner after I came home from footy and it just tasted.... zapped. I'm sure I'll cave and use it to melt butter or chocolate but if you visit Mother Focaccia and you see a recipe for Lamb Roast in Microwave, get havock and Dr Yobbo to put a swat team together and take me out to a deserted farmhouse with nothing but butter, bacon, fresh eggs, veg, herbs, a fire and a fryypan, tie me to a chair and let Finthart do some severe reeducation.

All round it's been a bad week for my moral indignation. I'd been viewing the whole Twilight phenomenon with mild hypocritical disdain and as I buy all the books, movies and music for Lantanaland I had managed to steer the wife gently away from the books, despite the chorus of women on facebook channeling their inner fifteen year old.

The first breach was a couple of mates coming for a weeks visit of good food and lots of laughs. As a thank you I got a lovely bottle of scotch and The Wife got Twilight. To my dismay she then did an uncanny impression of me with a new Terry Pratchett, ignored me completely and read it cover to cover.

So while shopping in bigW, being the lovestruck fool I am, I saw the second one on special and got that for her. I couldn't get any worse could it. I might as well sell Lantanaland and move to a townhouse in the city. All my ideals are shot. But no. Going to training on the weekend, The Wife, unused to weekend mornings, squinted in the bright sun. I couldn't resist a shot across the bows.
"not turning into a VAMPire are you?"
"you know" she replied, with the look of a fisherman casting into his secret spot where the odds of a bite are 100%, " in Twilight, vampires aren't scared of the daylight, instead they sparkle!"

"They F^#*€NG what?!?"

I wonder if microwaves burn books.

Lantanaland from the iPhone
Grumble bloody grumble twilight grumble.

Slow news day

2009-06-08T09:44:00.002+10:00

Been a bit slow here lately, mainly cause I've been living at mother foccacia a fair bit. Mmmmm hungry. Had some mates over last night for dinner and young charlotte gave my hard core choc mousse the big thumbs up. She went from sleepy to hyper in about 10 sec. What a cool kid. I think I'll be doing a video on that as well, it's such an easy recipe for such a great payoff.

In other Lantanaland news, doing tax is good! If the promised returns flow to the land of lantana there might be a rethink on the sheep and the jersey cow might be back on the agenda. Which means I will be looking at the cheese course again. It's heaps cheaper if you get a crew together and you get to pick your cheeses. If anyone is keen can you leave a comment or ping me on twitter? Hughesy? JB?

Lantanaland from the iPhone

I might lose a mate over this.

2009-05-29T18:22:00.001+10:00

I've only met Simon Bedak, Esq., cattle baron, the once. He is a great one for spruiking the benefits and flavour of beef! and I agree with him wholeheartedly, I love a hunk of bleeding beef on my plate.

However the move to large animals at Lantanaland is going to start with ........ sheep. There is a reason for this. I can get a few dorper cross lambs for fifty bucks, whereas a nice angus jersey cross will set me back at least $200.

Don't get me wrong, I really want a cow. It will give me an excuse to go do that cheese course I've been lusting over. It will provide me with lots of tasty dairy products and rib fillets.

I've just never kept or had good contact with someone who's kept animals for meat and sheep seem like an easy way to start. Docile and easy animals for docile and clueless beginners if you like.

So unless squire Bedak can convince me, shotgun in hand, that I should go head first and get a cow, soon Lantanaland will have two sheep.

Oh and a happy birthday to one of my mates for yesterday, Kerri-anne. You might have to wait six months for your present Kerri, but I promise, the first few dozen pure white eggs I get are yours.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Do the British have this over us

2009-05-25T16:39:00.001+10:00

Being in the car 90% of my working day, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Sport, design, music, tech and comedy. Comedy. Why can't we get a decent show on radio or podcast in oz. The Brits have fantastic stuff like the news quiz, The Now Show and the sadly gone Im Sorry I Haven't a Clue. We have comediens on breakfast or drive radio.

That's cool I guess but where is the equivelent of The Daily Show or The Glasshouse or even The Chaser doing something on radio. I downloaded some comedy hour the ABC did last year and it was, well, woefull. University revues would have been embaressed.

Considering we can crank out Summer Heights High and The Hollowmen, there is no excuse. Cmon oz, make me laugh.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

No Sandra Bullock tie ins please.

2009-05-17T19:34:00.003+10:00

Had a bloody good weekend. Kicked off with a double feature at the drive in which despite some false advertising about the wolverine/ star trek explody goodness double, did include my roast chook in bread. The second movie turned out to be teen/family movie "17 again". Maybe I had low expectations but this movie was genuinely funny, the bit where he lectures high school girls about self respect was just gold. Star Trek, well i'll leave it up to my mate Cobbs, whose two lines straight after, "to cheesily go where no cheese has before" and "who'd have thought Zac Efron would win the day" summed it up.

Saturday contained one of those moments that I just love to have in Lantanaland. I toodled off in the morning to go to the dump (no rubbish service here) and pick up some gravel and mulch for a bit of gardening and driveway repair. At the landscape place they had no recycled concrete, but in a lovely gesture pointed me down the road to a recycling place that did industrial soil and concrete. Met a guy there who hooked me up and we got chatting about Lantanaland. Turns out he used to work for a company that specialized in clearing lantana. They even have a special machine just for that. I didn't have cash on me so he just said to come back Monday and he'd bring in some photos of the work he'd done to show me. Seredepity I'd call it, except that sounds like a Sandra Bullock movie, so I won't.

I'm the afternoon I went and cut some bamboo from a stand next to the river that I noticed a while back and had been meaning to get stuck into. Those poles are from just two bits of bamboo. They'll form the uprights of a frame for another chook pen which will have grape vines trailing all over it for shade in summer.

Fresh duck pasta with mushrooms and home smoked bacon for dinner than a chat with Mr Flinthart while I watched the mighty Lions dismantle Adelaide.

Today I got into the bees, it looks like they had swarmed, the hive was half empty and very little honey. This is probably because I've been very lax, partially because of a busy social schedule and partially because of all the wet weather. Mostly just cause I'm slack. I'll have to keep a real eye on them to make sure it was a swarm and not disease. Then I baked a carrot cake and planted some radish, carrots, onions, sage and zuchhini. Chicken, mango, cashew and mushroom filos to tip off the day.

A productive weekend all round.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Compete?

2009-05-11T17:08:00.001+10:00

A mate of mine is known for his competiveness. He should be, I guess, having played for his country, but a story I'm sure he'll love me telling will illustrate the extent.

A few of us used to go to my folks house on Curtis island for new years, it became a bit of a tradition. Lazing around after a few cleansing ales a few of the boys were enjoying my young nephews connect 4 set. Ryan had never played the game. Andy on the other hand, coming from the wrong side of the tracks, had dabbled quite a bit in board games in his youth and quickly dispatched him. Trying to shake the fog from his brain Ryano went again. Bang 2-0. Ryan was clearly getting annoyed, something that Andy, keen to no doubt motivate the rookie player, made public to us all. Game 3. Pride on the line. Aaaaand bang, another routing. Ryan jumped to his feet, the constructive comments of the crowd ringing in his ears, declaring that his short and colourful connect4 career was in fact, over. And that we could all go and shove our heads in that well known valley where the sun shineth not.

I used to be like that. Hated losing at cards. Hating losing at touch footy. Ground my teeth and took the ritual humiliations on the tennis court from the wife like a barely grown, sooky man.

That however, was all in the past. I got fat. The Rev defeated my competitive spirit. I could play backgammon and lose three in a row with barely a sulk.

It was like my grape vine that The Wife would have declared dead ages ago and I had even contemplated pulling out. Not quite dead despite appearances. The first shoot was going back and training with AJ, Nath and "connect 4 Ryan". I didn’t lose weight but started to feel a little fitter. A leaf opened on Wednesday night when I had an ok game. That is I didn't give my celebrated impression of a fat 30 year old. The opposition was of a good standard. Then came the catch up game on Saturday.

The opposition was the best team in the comp. Four internationals and a few NTL reps for good measure. I let a try in where technically I reckon I did everything right. I just got burned. By a fitter, stronger, lighter, more agile player. Another moment I ran into a small hole and had to reach and juggle for the ball because I was half a step too slow. Little things that really had not much bearing on the game, we got thrashed, but they burned me a little.

Sitting there having a beer later (the irony!), I thought about what might of happened if I was that 5-10 Kg lighter that I reckon I should be. The next day, doing a training session with The Wife, I reckon I ran just a little harder every time I thought about letting in that try.

The vine has been fertilized now, who knows what sort of fruit it will bear.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

I'm back baby

2009-05-08T18:07:00.000+10:00

Been a bloody busy time. The folks dropped in on their way home from their South Australia fishing pilgrimage. Allen had always wanted a decent crack at the King George whiting and from the sounds of it, they'll be back again they had so much fun. It was good to catch them and Mum got to participate in The Wifes special facebook program, How to Edit a Whole Trips Worth of Photos into One Facebook Album in 12 easy steps.

The Wife is a master of trimming photos so you get a tight cohesive story and they worked 500 odd photos into 60. We then had a nice trip up the mountain, caught up with an old mate and had lunch at the Mt Tambourine botanical gardens. Highlight of the day was the honey mayo made with duck egg and Lantanaland Gold honey. Mmmmmm.

Of course the weekend was finished off nicely by me getting swine flu. I mean I eat heaps of bacon sandwiches, so that must have been what I had. Tuesday I stacked on the sudafed to go out to dinner with my mate Ryan, to celebrate winning an international series. He was on one arm though, because he had shoulder surgery three days after playing!

I've stocked up on chickens now that I seem to be snake proof. Anconas, Barnvelders, Welsummers and Malay Game round out my Chooks stocks, for now. The Wifes accusation that I have compulsive poultry purchase disorder are completely groundless.

I mean 34 is not that many, is it?

Lantanaland from the iPhone

Playing for your country

2009-04-27T21:37:00.001+10:00

A few memories from the journey I've been on a small part of.

Months ago train with Ryan and Nath in preperation for playing against NZ, doing these torturous drills called malcoms. Sprint, pushup, sprint, pushup, repeat. Watching the two guys push each other harder and harder as I tried to make the jelly that once was my muscles work to go at about half the pace, Ryan was slightly ahead and dropped and did a pushup when all he had to do was turn. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen but they both found it hilarious. I was too busy trying not to collapse.

Game two for the mens, two kids about ten sat behind us. Nath comes on and gets a touch and they exclaim " that's Nathan Jones, he's an awesome player, I love Nathan Jones". For the most laid back guy I know, who wouldn't say boo to anyone, to have fans in such a low profile sport was just a great feeling. I tried talking Ryano up to them in his game, but they were keen on Benny Moylan, the red headed gun, sorry Pol.

Watching my best mate play with the same skill and drive at an international level, that he does when I play with him on a Wednesday. The step up in standard didn't seem to bother you mate.

Watching Nath execute a move we ran through with him at the end of the last few training sessions and recognizing the play after the first step.

I understand, having trained for a bit with these guys what they have to do to get there and I'm pretty proud to have played a very, very small part in their preperation and I was glad I was there to watch them win an international series. You blokes are legends.

Lantanaland from the iPhone

A little bit excited

2009-04-20T20:04:00.001+10:00

I'm a little bit excited. For the last twelve months or so I've been training with a couple of boys who this weekend are slipping on the green and gold and representing Australia.

In that time I have gained a little insight and a shitload of respect for what they have to do to make it at that level. I have played with them in pretty good teams, but I have never played rep, and I know why, now.

I've seen my best mate go through rehabing his shoulder, doing endless strengthening exercises while I sat there and drank beer. I've become mates with a few other boys I think, just from doing lots of up and backs and twelve minute runs.

So this weekend I'll be sitting in the stands at WIN stadium, Wollongong, cheering on the boys and blogging, drinking beer and thinking about all those up and backs, the pitter patter drills, the bloody malcom drills that almost killed me, but mostly I'll be thinking about how much more Ryan and Nathan worked than I did.

Stay tuned to Lantanaland for a bit of commentary, I'll even take the voice recorder down for some audio!

Lantanaland from the iPhone