On the farm! (ish) – or, Adventures in Daylesford

The bus pulled through green, rolling countryside and up steep hillsides into the village of Daylesford, a magnet for creatives, artisans, and the spiritually enlightened, on a sunny Friday afternoon. It is a town of about 3000 permanent souls, expanding every weekend as hordes of urbanites make the hour and a half trek from Melbourne to enjoy the famed mineral spas and fresh air. It is the kind of town, as Kim put it, where you can find cashmere pashminas, but not underwear for your kids. The kind of place where the organic scene is thriving and the alternative has become pretty much mainstream. Though it has had its ups and downs, it is currently benefiting from renewed interest in the spas, as 15 years ago the place was not so robust. In the early days of the settlement (that would be the mid-1800s), it was mining that drew most residents to this picturesque part of Victoria, but as the gold dwindled, the town began to crumble. It went through several waves of boom and decline, and now is riding on a high, as aside from the spa tourism, it plays hosts to a number of festivals, including the Chillout Festival, and the Harvest Week Festival. It also has a high proportion of WWOOF hosts, which speaks to both the generosity of the people who live here, and the interest in small-scale organics.

Sun glinting on dusty road as I grabbed my bags from the undercarriage, I thanked the driver, who had been very kind to me when I came off the train in Ballarat and was looking at the bus bays with a look of confusion. This is a kindness I’d find repeated often in my travels – god bless transport employees of all stripes, for where would I be without their guidance? I walked down the length of the road to a collection of shops reminiscent of suburban strip malls back home before turning back to the bus stop, where a black SUV had pulled up while I was wandering down the sidewalk, and the butterflies that had been fluttering in my stomach heaved a collective sigh and settled down at the sight of my host family.

Morgan Williams and his two boys were a wonderful welcome party: cheery and chatty, and they set me at ease immediately. It’s always a little daunting to meet for the first time, even when you’ve spent some time corresponding, because paper (or email, as the case may be) is forgiving, but meeting in person can be a whole different beast. Sharing someone’s home and being invited into their inner lives, is both a privilege and daunting too. I have said it before and I will say it again, it takes a very generous and open heart to accept perfect strangers into your universe, and the Williams-Percy household has that in spades. They maintain that their boys benefit from the arrangement as well, as they get to meet people of all stripes and all cultures, thereby broadening their horizons. Certainly, the boys seemed at ease with me, and I had to marvel at that too, because I have memories of disliking having visitors as a kid at times. These boys were not ruffled in the least, and readily shook hands and chatted with me while we did a bit of a grocery shop. Joss, the elder, is a well-read, intelligent, articulate young man with an innate confidence that I think make him very well liked at school. His younger brother, Tarquin, is a smart, practical, kindhearted, mischievous ball of energy that hurtles himself into space, giving me tiny heart attacks throughout my stay, as I could picture disaster at every leap and bound.

We took a little tour around Lake Jubilee on the way home, a pretty little lake with a quaint house perched on the bank, currently serving as an second hand bookshop and café. We chatted while the boys got an ice cream and strolled around the grounds, taste-testing mineral water from various hand-pumped spouts. It’s amazing how water can take on a complex profile, as various minerals and metals in the ground get mixed to give each location, and sometimes each bore, a unique flavor. We filled up a water bottle with the water from the well that got the most votes as being the best and having the prettiest green tinge, and headed home.

Morgan and Kim have named their property “Four Winds”, which was carved in a wooden sign now swaying gently in the breeze, when Morgan told me that many people misread the capital “D” in WINDS as an “O” – and refer to their property as “Four Winos” instead. Try as I might, I cannot think of it as anything else now. Going up the driveway, their home is a lovely bungalow on the left hand side, shielded by decorative grapevines and rosebushes. Behind the house is a smaller granny-flat (which is where I was destined to stay), a charmingly appointed one-bedroom apartment that is home to the town dentist four nights a week. Two huge water tanks stand between the house and the flat, as the property operates on rainwater alone. Behind the flat a little ways off is a chook house, a couple of sheds, and a woodpile, which at this time of year is mighty useful.

By the time we made it home, dusk was settling in, so there were not too many outdoorsy things for me to do. Instead we started prepping dinner and took a look at the all artwork in the house. Morgan and Kim run a graphic design business in Daylesford, which was one of the connections between us. When I contact potential WWOOF hosts, I try to look for places that have skillsets I’d like to pick up, but also have a common touch-point or two. They’re both artists, with Kim just having returned from New York City, having taken part in an art fair in Manhattan. She has a few pieces up in the house that I adored: moody, atmospheric manipulated black and white photographs, the kind of landscapes you can stare at for hours, mining out different scenes depending on how your eyes shift.

I had arrived at a good time of the week, it turned out, as we got to go to the weekly farmer’s market on the weekend. It was an outdoors market with a mixture of produce and antiques, which much like home, is all the rage here. And even at an outdoor farmer’s market in Australia, there is a booth with an espresso machine. It’s always a mixed pleasure and pain for me to do these sorts of markets while on the road: the temptation to shop like I’m at home is almost torture. It was rather busy, with a heap of very well heeled people wandering up and down the market aisles (I’m assuming Melbournites – Melbournians? – out from the city for the day), mixing in with the more relaxed local vibe.

Speaking of dress, Kim is an inspiration, as she is a masterful vintage buyer, and puts together awesome outfits. She snagged a pair of gorgeous Frye boots while in New York and I made her promise to go shopping with me the next time I’m in town. Op Shops (thrift shops) are hugely popular here, and they seem to carry better wares than the ones back home. There’s a thriving alternate clothing scene here in Australia, above and beyond the castoffs that find their way into the second hand stores back home. Even the name is indicative of a different mindset: an opportunity shop, rather than a second hand shop.

As hard as I found it to not buy up every piece of cheese and salami at the market, it was nothing compared to the compulsions I had to fight later in the day, when Kim took the boys and myself to a neighbouring town, which was hosting a 2-day book festival. Part of the main drag was cordoned off, and tents housing books and authors were lined up in a neat little row, tempting me…teasing me… So many books! There was one tent where everything went for $5…I don’t think I have to tell you the agonies I suffered. This is the curse and the boon of living out of a backpack: can’t spend any money because you’ve nowhere to put your wares – but you can’t buy anything you want to because you have nowhere to put your wares! Instead I took names and titles and Amazon will find itself in possession of some more of my money very soon. Hannie Rayson’s “Hello Beautiful” is at the top of the list.

Just as we were about to head out, a busker performance started, and I am kicking –kicking – myself for not having taped it. Damn copyright and intellectual property mindfulness that got drilled into me at YSDN – I didn’t want to tape him because I was not sure if he would like me posting it up on the web, or even have it for personal use, and so I didn’t. It was incredible though. Or, incroyable, I should say, as it was a man playing a French waiter, juggling on a super high unicycle. The shtick to get up onto the seat of the unicycle was the most hilarious part, and the man is truly a professional because he was in character yet improvised freely, the accent was spot on, the look…the moustache! Turns out he sends his kids to the same school Joss and Tarquin go to, and I got to see him out of waiter weeds and sans accent a few times throughout the week. I dearly wanted to ask him to repeat the performance so I could record it, but this is a lesson to me: always have the camera ready, and always seize an opportunity.

In between the fun of shopping some work was done too. In hindsight, each place I go seems to build upon the previous one, with tasks that gain in complexity but draw on the foundations of what I’ve learned at the place before. Therefore it was quite fitting that I started here with pruning. Big hedge shears in my hand, I set to cutting back the grapevine snaking its way around the fence on one side of the house. I also set to cutting back the rosebushes, which I have learned enjoy a good pruning, and gouging my hands with their thorns. The need for gloves became very clear very quickly. We also spent some time clearing up a little patch of ground in front of the kitchen door, which are destined to be a veggie patch. Morgan had bought a couple of bags of soil to prep the plot, and Joss and I filled up a barrowful of straw to spread over the newly laid soil, while the family cats were doing an excellent supervisory job, walking here and there and everywhere. Tarquin was also quite handy with shears and shovel, and nipped into the house twice to bring me and his mom a glass of water, not because he was asked to, but because he thought we were getting hot and might like a drink of water. My heart melted like a piece of chocolate under the Australian sun.

The weekend flew by in a dream, and before I knew it, I was with Kim at the office on Monday, as they had graciously agreed to let me spend some time at the studio and help out. It is a beautiful workspace, originally built as a home, with a semi-industrial vibe: big open space serving as a meeting/dining/kitchen area; concrete walls and floors; wooden beams and exposed piping; erstwhile bedrooms now offices occupying the upper floor. I set up shop in Sarah’s office, a lovely young woman who is one of the web developers on staff. Kim asked me to re-jig a small advert for the local Dharma school to be published in two newspapers, and provided me with a template from last year to work off of. It did put me in mind of my internship two years ago though, and the uncertainty I felt back then rose up again. Mainly, I was feeling unsure of how much authority I had over the project. I felt like I had to guess what it was that any of the other designers in the office would do if they would be given this task, which got me all knotted up and tentative. I realize that in a new work environment, I like to sit and observe how people work and what they do for a day or two before I get comfortable enough to take the reins myself. I need to become better at clarifying parameters right off the bat when given a project to do, as to what needs to stay the way it is and what I can take control of, and then just go for it. I was going to help in editing the school’s logo as well, but then we had to actually go and pick the boys up from the Dharma school, so we called it a day.

This school is amazing. Kim and Morgan are one of the original supporting families, enrolling Joss in the first grade when it got started. There were a handful of kids back then, and now they’ve swelled to over 70 young people across the primary grades. They’re looking to expand premises in order to be able to take on more students, as the demand is increasing. The school is technically nondenominational, as you don’t have to be Buddhist in order to attend; rather, it is a school founded on the principles of Buddhism: compassion, kindness, and mindfulness. The kids are encouraged to think of themselves relationally to other living creatures, great and small. When they speak to each other or play together you can see that there is a sense of care that is more pronounced here, and if there ever is a need for scolding, it takes the form of questioning behavior, as in “do you think what you did was kind towards your friend there?” When Tarquin was feeling dejected one day, Selena (who we will get to forthwith) took him aside and asked “Can you tell me how you feel?” followed up with “why do you think you are feeling this way?” If I had kids, I would send them to this school in the blink of an eye.

Tuesday evening I met Selena – honorary auntie, 3-R (reduce, reuse, recycle) Queen, and an all ’round person of my tribe. She took me under her wing for the following three nights, as the flat passed back to its usual Monday to Thursday occupant (I had spent the Monday night on the very comfortable and warm living room couch). She lives in Kim and Morgan’s old home, before they bought Four Winds; a charming 3 bedroom stone house originally built in the 1800s as a miner’s cottage, before it got added to and changed in places. Surrounded by fruit trees in the front and a large garden in the back, it looks a little bit like a hobbit home. It is practically overflowing with stuff, and looks like a mix between a science lab and garden lab and library, Selena’s spirit binding the whole place together into a warm and cozy home.

We built a fire in the open fireplace: starter at the bottom (newspaper and other easily flammable things), with kindling over that (twigs and small branches that catch fire easily) and then the logs over top, which take the longest to catch and will burn the longest, but need the merry fire from the things below to get them going. She has fairly lights strung up around the living room, and we sat and chatted and petted her tiny, adorable dog Kenai. The house also played host to a Huntsman spider, which did give me a start to begin with, but once I discovered he wasn’t poisonous, I gave him a name and leaned in closer for a look at the patterns on his legs and back. He was a rather unassuming, mossy-brown colour, but the markings on him looked like stacked peacock feathers. Truly beautiful. His name is Gustav Senior.

I felt like a farm girl already.

While with her, I spent a day at the Dharma school, helping while she taught the gardening class. It was “bring a special woman in your life to school day” so a few of the moms came, and we learned how to brine olives (which I had picked in the morning from the olive tree in the front garden). Then I took a couple of the younger boys around the playground with a “treasure” list, where we had to go find things: a feather, an insect, a leaf, a stone, and so on. This was to encourage their observation skills, and matching words to real life objects, and teamwork. It was a really fun day and I enjoyed working with the kids…remembering my own childhood and wanting to go home, crawl under a blanket and read some of my children’s books to stretch that feeling of nostalgia for as long as I could.

The day after, Selena had to go to Melbourne, and I stayed home and worked on the gardens. I’m proud to say that blackberry brambles stand no chance against me. Despite the deliciousness of their berries, they’re a pest here, as they grow at incredible speed and are very prolific. I also cut down maple saplings growing too close to the house; trimmed rosebushes, fennel, and silverbeets; and weeded the veg patch. I got into a fight with one of the apple trees, as a branch kept on smacking me in the head, no matter which way I turned or how low I ducked, and then I stole a lemon from the lemon tree (but then I told Selena all about it) which I kept in my pocket, as a sort of talisman, for nearly a month (it didn’t rot; it just…sort of dried up). Don’t ask me why. I sometimes do odd things.

While toiling in the garden, walking armfuls of plant cuttings out to the front driveway, I met Dave. He lives next door with his lovely wife, in what used to be Kim and Morgan’s garage/studio, and now serves as open-concept loft living for Dave and Tina. It’s a beautiful space, which they have decorated warmly – bits of colour against a muted palate giving the place a clean, vibrant feel. He is a freelance travel writer, who WWOOFed for 7 years before settling down in Daylesford. He stayed with Kim and Morgan for a good 8 months, going to Melbourne for the weekends or on side trips and then coming to stay during the week and working on their property. He was so lovely and offered to share his lunch with me, which I gratefully accepted. Turns out it was the right thing to do, as it was delicious – a rice and cashew medley spiced just right and zinged up with lemon juice from the trees outside, and the easy flow of the conversation made me feel like I have made a friend.

Talking with Selena focused greatly around lessons in growing things – like, it needs to rain twice in order to be useful: first rainfall is about softening the soil, while the second penetrates and does the plants good. The water from the first rains just run off, and collects in other places. With Dave, we talked about travel, and what it means to carve out your own niche in the world. The lunch with him marks my first “pay attention to this, this is important” moment. He spoke really thoughtfully and gently about learning to trust his instincts and respect his feelings, borne out of his adventures on the road, which I will posit is the reason for his measured, calm, lovely way of being.

He spoke of following his heart, and trusting that things would work out – like when he quit his work so that he could concentrate full time on writing, and how, every time he thought he had reached a desperate moment in that first year of attempting to establish himself, something, somehow, would come along to give him a little further lease on life, until he reached his goal. Now, his aim is to launch a magazine himself, turning from a person who knocks on doors into one who maintains them. This just serves to reinforce to me that once committed to something, it’s inevitable that the universe steps in to help. He also impressed upon me this sense of learning acceptance of your feelings and your body and your intuition to work together to point you in your right direction; to be aware and in tune and to question more deeply into the source of your actions and reactions, and not accept what others place upon you, whether it be their expectations or prejudices, or whatever. He just radiated confidence, and I greatly admired him for it. I confess that I am at the beginning of a journey that I hope would give me the same sense of equilibrium and self-trust.

I think I am learning to pay attention to my gut a lot more than I have in the past…it certainly lets me know when what I’m doing is stepping out of line with what I think is the right thing to be doing. Isn’t it funny, how we’re capable of doing that? Believing one thing, have a self-image and sense of self that says “A”, but then act in a way that is totally out of line with that image. Either because we’re too weak to stick to our values, or because we’re just unaware, or because we’re not present in the moment and don’t realize the consequences of our actions until later. That is hell, once you realize that what you’re doing and what you believe are two different things, and you either shape up and bring yourself in line, or you’re going to be mighty miserable for a long time.

Though takes work to really think of what it is you stand for, what kind of person you want to be, and then to actually live those values, to stand tall in defence of them. But, the way I see it, it is only through this kind of work that you can stand firm, and no force on earth can bend you; where the inner core of steel will keep you on your right path. It’s obvious, of course, much like it’s obvious smoking is not good for you, but until it hits home, until it really pings your heart, it’s just like skywriting: vapour. Yes, this is an adventure, and yes, I want to see the world. But truly, I am here to learn how to stand strong. Isn’t it funny, how that message for the inward journey ping-ed my heart in Daylesford. I will always be grateful for that reminder.

 

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Other things around Daylesford