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Magpie Tears with Meg Ulman
1.4k Plays1 year ago
Can we tempt you sell your car, compost your shit and embrace a life of joyful frugality?
You don't have to answer right away. Listen to this conversation with Meg Ulman of Artist as Family to hear what a radically connected lifeway is all about.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode from growing up Jewish and getting intentional about time, to forest names, bush kids, menopause and grief.
GOOD LINKS
Meg + Artist as Family’s home on the web
Artist as Family’s humanure compost workshop
The Humanure Handbook ~ Joseph Jenkins
New Menopausal Years The Wise Woman Way ~ Susan S. Weed
Recommended
Transcript
A Quaint Rural Life
00:00:06
Speaker
A couple of years ago I moved to a village in rural Victoria. On the surface it's a pretty typical country town. Leafy streets, quaint buildings, weekend tourists and the occasional goat riding shotgun in a Volvo.
Sustainable Living Practices
00:00:22
Speaker
But it didn't take long for me to discover something strange about this place. An undercurrent of unusual activities.
00:00:30
Speaker
People here have skills. They make things from scratch.
Community and Unconventional Norms
00:00:34
Speaker
They grow carrots, hunt rabbits, tan hides, and make shoes. They carve wood, weave fiber, and ferment just about everything. Families have ditched their cars in favor of cargo bikes. Friends forage for mushrooms and weeds. Kids carry pocket knives and catch yabbies. In fact, a 10-year-old boy named Blackwood is my go-to knife sharpener.
00:00:58
Speaker
In this neighbourhood, peeing outside is normal. Shooting in a bucket is celebrated. And showering every other week? That's a bit indulgent. There are men's circles, women's circles, meal trains for new mothers and a runaway gift economy.
Meet Meg: A Community Icon
00:01:13
Speaker
And turning up to a picnic with salami and cheese you're saved from a skip bin makes you a hero. As I weave this word tapestry to describe my beloved town, one woman looms large.
00:01:25
Speaker
Come to think of it, she is the loom, a structural support without whom the threads of this community just wouldn't hold together. Her name is Meg, she likes to wear red, and her blunt black and silver fringe is unquestionably the best in the region. Like many of you, I've been following Meg, Olman and Artister's family for years, captivated by their radical disavowal of the status quo.
00:01:49
Speaker
I remember binging their videos in my boxy, south-facing Melbourne rental that was cold as a raven's eye and cost 600 bucks per week.
Exploring 'Resilience' with Meg
00:01:58
Speaker
Ironically, the foraging, scavenging, unschooling, non-showering neopessence who'd captured my imagination, who had the monopoly on warmth and belonging in a fully stocked larder, were the ones living below the poverty line.
00:02:13
Speaker
You're listening to Resilience, a podcast about skills, resilience, and living closer to the ground so we don't have quite so far to fall if our fragile modern systems fail us. It's hosted by me, Katie Payne, and gratefully recorded on Jaja Wurrung Country. Today's conversation with Meg Ollman,
00:02:34
Speaker
who I'm now stoked to call a friend and mentor, covers a lot of ground, from growing up Jewish and giving up her car, to forest names, bush kids, menopause and grief.
Sacred Tea and Songs
00:02:46
Speaker
I'm thinking this episode would be great to listen to with a cup of tea. And given that it's a Meg themed episode, why not try a steaming hot stem tea, which is a very Meg thing to do.
00:02:58
Speaker
She often turns up at a potluck or gathering with a thermos filled with steeping stems of some herb or vegetable, left over after the leaves have been plucked, like basil stem tea, or pesto pour over if you're feeling cosmopolitan, parsley stem tea, plantain stem tea, lemon balm stem tea, you get the gist. They're surprisingly delicious and make a strong statement about the sacredness of everything in life, not just the palatable bits.
00:03:26
Speaker
but the tougher, woodier, less popular parts too. Enjoy this magical conversation with Meg Magpie Amen. I make up songs. That's what I do when I write, I sing. And I was singing a song that I wrote about a cricketer, because we have turned into a family that likes cricket, because Woody plays the Hepburn. And there's a cricketer called Minus Labashane. So I have a little song about him. I could sing it.
00:03:54
Speaker
It's really short. Minus lavashein, such a lovely name to say. You love cricket night and day. You hit and catch that ball the way.
The Origin of 'Magpie'
00:04:07
Speaker
Minus lavashein, such a lovely name to say.
00:04:14
Speaker
Well, that's certainly one of the most whimsical ways to introduce yourself. I believe you also go by the name Magpie, Meg. Would you mind sharing the story of how the name Magpie came to you?
00:04:27
Speaker
Hi Katie, thanks for having me. With my partner Patrick we facilitate a forest school called Forest and Free and us and all of the kids have forest names, are invited to have forest names, not all of the kids do. And I really wanted an animal that I genuinely
00:04:47
Speaker
or a tree or a mushroom or a plant or something in the forest that really spoke to me and I tried on swamp wallaby for a while because I just love swamp wallabies when I see them in the bush and they're just so cute and I love that I love how they stop and look at you and I love their roundness I love their dark fur as opposed to most of the kangaroos around here
00:05:16
Speaker
But they're solo operators and I'm not a solo operator. And I was going for a walk, this is a number of years ago, and there was a family of magpies just in front of me and I thought, I wonder how close I can get before I startle them. And two of the family members flew off and one was just in front of me and she turned her head and I turned my head.
Forest Names and Cultural Connection
00:05:38
Speaker
and to the side and we were looking at each other and really it felt like she was really looking at me and I was really looking at her and I just felt this instant connection to her ancestors and as though she were connecting with my ancestors and yes she's an old-timer and I'm a newcomer to this land but it felt timeless and it felt that we belonged in that moment to one another throughout time
00:06:07
Speaker
And so I thought, magpie. And it's similar to my name, Meg. There's something definitely in that. And I come from a family of Collingwood supporters, so there's something about the magpie there too. But what came to me a number of days later was that magpies are the holders of paradox because they are both black and white at the same time.
00:06:33
Speaker
I really love that and I can hold many stories at once and although I'm not a well practiced holder of paradox, maybe I'm like a juvenile magpie, that's a lot more grey, but I feel like I can hold many stories at once.
00:06:49
Speaker
And magpies are also ground hunters and they're close to the ground and me being of short stature I really feel very grounded and close to the ground and they also spend a lot of time with their families and I do too and of course they're songbirds and I feel like I walk this sacred earth with a song in my heart so it is magpie and it's good to be here.
00:07:16
Speaker
That's such a great story. I heard Patrick's Blue Wren story for the first time too when he was sitting in your position and it's really special to understand how that's originated and how that
00:07:28
Speaker
how you've been claimed by that particular creature. And in our home, we each sleep in different lofts. So I'm at one end of the house, Patrick's at the other, and Woody Blackwood is in the middle. And I feel like that Woody is this tree and he's got little birds perching, nesting in his limbs. So I really like that as well, that we're two birds as parents.
00:07:51
Speaker
In the forest school, you mentioned that the children are invited to try on or adopt a forest name. What do you see happening to these children and creatures as they do, as they do identify and embrace a local creature or potentially an exotic creature? I don't know. Are there any parameters or rules?
00:08:12
Speaker
So the parameters are that it has to be something from this forest that we inhabit. And there's Echidna, there's Red Belly Black Snake, there's Eagle, there's Moss, there's Yabbie, Rainmaker. There's a whole bunch of different kids with different names. And what I find most interesting is which kids change their names all the time.
00:08:39
Speaker
Like, we'll see a brush tail. I'm brush tail! Or there are some kids who have been coming for years and they still have the same name. I think that's interesting for me. And just that... Yeah, just how they inhabit the names and how the name inhabits them. And I think it's just like with the totem, it's just this affinity to these animals that just shapes how you look at them.
00:09:05
Speaker
And I always feel when I see a magpie or I hear a magpie first thing in the morning especially, it's like they're welcoming me to the day. I hear kookaburras, I hear all kinds of birds in the mornings, but it's the magpies that I feel like are speaking to me.
00:09:24
Speaker
Can anyone adopt a forest name? Yes. People in the city? Yeah, sure. I think especially people in the city. And I love it when the parents of the forest school kids also have forest names. So we have Whistling Kite as a mum. There's Pelican, another mum, because she lives closer to the coast. And also there's Paper Daisy, there's Raven. Anyway, I like it when the parents do too.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, nice. I'm certainly in the Fickle Forest Name Club. I change mine all the time. As you're speaking about adopting a forest name, Meg, questions are coming up for me around cultural appropriation. Is this an example of that?
Choosing Values over Norms
00:10:08
Speaker
Has anyone ever accused you of culturally appropriating these practices? And also, too, I'm feeling into this bigger question that is around indigeneity
00:10:21
Speaker
and how much we whitefellas can claim to really belong to places and spaces and be connected to country in the way that I know you feel you are and then I'm starting to feel that I am.
00:10:35
Speaker
We all want to belong. And I think to do it in a way that is true to you, it can't be cultural appropriation. I mean, yes, we can look to Indigenous cultures to see how they did it and to see how they're still doing it, but we can't ever
00:10:56
Speaker
ever do it, you know, ever belong like that in that same way. It was a number of years ago I heard David Holmgren interviewed on a podcast and he was asked, the last question was, who do you wish that you'd, throughout history, like anybody in the whole world throughout history, who do you wish that you'd been, you know, if you could have been anyone? And he said an Indigenous person to know what it's like
00:11:24
Speaker
to have that deep connection to culture and to country and that's what we're not going to say but what we're all but that's what so many of us are longing for but we can only do it in our own way if it's going to be I don't like the word authentic but if it's a genuine
00:11:47
Speaker
genuine belonging. We each have to find our own way there and it's going to be different for all of us. Yeah, great response. I heard you describe yourself actually Meg at David Holmbrunn's lunch table, not David and Sue's lunch table one day, as a permaculture demonstration person. And I love, I actually hold on to that as this source of inspiration and motivation
00:12:11
Speaker
because I think it is motivating to want to live our lives in a way that does demonstrate something and does speak of our values and our principles. I would love you to share a little bit about your life, what you love about this permaculture, neo-peasantry, demonstration existence that you have here on Jara Country. I love that I get to live it. I love that I get to live my values.
00:12:37
Speaker
And then I've made some, I mean, made lots of mistakes. I've made lots of, I've unlearned a lot. I feel like, let me backtrack a bit. So I'm going to be 50 next month. And I've been thinking about my life and how I feel like the first half of my life,
00:12:58
Speaker
did what I was told and yes I was a bit of a ratbag and yes I questioned a lot but pretty much the trajectory I was on was what my parents and education system and culture at large wanted for me and then I spent the second half of my life questioning that, questioning
00:13:21
Speaker
what I really wanted for myself, what I felt was important, which is a hard thing to ask when everybody wants to tell you what you should be doing. And then unlearning a whole lot of stuff and then deciding for myself what I want to be doing with my time. And time has been a major theme for my life.
00:13:48
Speaker
because I prioritise time over money, and in this culture, the dominant culture, that's a radical differentiation. And to do it the other way, like to prioritise money, is how I have lived in the past when I was
Heritage and the Margins
00:14:07
Speaker
living in Melbourne and working for corporates, and that was just what I did. I didn't question it.
00:14:14
Speaker
But then to question it and to flip it has just been so, like just a relief for me just to have more time. But the question is, what do I love about my life? I love that I get to decide what I do with my time. And I don't know that many people who can truly say that. I love that I come from a family that knows how to get shit done.
00:14:41
Speaker
And I'm talking about my first family as well as my second family. So first family, as in my parents and my sisters, that I was always encouraged if I wanted to do something just to do it. And also that I can do that with Patrick and Woody at the moment too. That I can, if I want to do something, I can just do it. If I want to start a community group, I can just start one. And that if I need to, yeah, that I can
00:15:09
Speaker
take responsibility for my actions and my time and that I get to be accountable for all of the things that I do, for all of my mistakes and for my actions and I don't want to outsource, I don't want to outsource that. I don't want to outsource
00:15:30
Speaker
that to make my life easier. I don't want to have a car because it's easier. I want to take responsibility for my own movements and my own carbon footprint. And I want to eat meat. So I want to kill the animal myself or know the person who's killed it or know that it's roadkill and that it didn't have a choice. But I would like to take responsibility for those actions. And that feels like a really
00:16:02
Speaker
big, I want to say adult decision, like those kinds of decisions. Yeah, but they feel grown up. They feel like mature decisions. In a culture that is not very mature, so to know how to grow up, that's been a big lesson, a big journey for me, is how to grow up, how to be a grown up.
00:16:29
Speaker
So do you think that question, that questioning nature that you had, that you described was there right from the beginning? I'd love to know where you think that originated and then also what conditions were, did you find yourself in that allowed that question to really
00:16:45
Speaker
spring up and germinate and actually flourish until life you lead to date? Yeah good questions. So my family's Jewish and on both sides grandparents and parents and us my sisters and I and cousins and
00:17:03
Speaker
Although we grew up in the very Jewish suburb of Corfield in Melbourne, in the culture at large, growing up Jewish, we were definitely a minority and I always felt like an outsider.
00:17:16
Speaker
but I loved it. I never felt, I never experienced antisemitism. And I always loved that I had a belonging story that was over 5,000 years old. And I looked at the skippies, there's like the regular oddies, and I just felt that they didn't have a story. They didn't have a culture that was meaningful. And even though I'm definitely an animist these days,
00:17:44
Speaker
But I believe in God. I believe in many gods. But I've always loved being Jewish. I've loved that connection to something. And I feel very close with my grandparents who were spiritually and religiously Jewish. But I love the food culture. I love the storytelling. And it's a belonging story for me. So I've always felt comfortable on the margins.
00:18:15
Speaker
Yeah that's part of my questioning nature is to, because I have an outsider's perspective to the culture, I feel comfortable on the outside and I'm also a writer so I have a questioning eye, a questioning mind.
00:18:32
Speaker
And my parents always encouraged me to ask questions and my sisters and I. My dad started studying medicine when he was 16. He skipped two grades and then just, you know, head down, bum up, just studied really hard. And my mum also skipped one grade and was both my parents very bookish and having four very creative
00:18:55
Speaker
not so academic daughters, not so interested in academics, but all four of us are very creative. And our parents always said to us, whatever you want to do, do it, because you have to love what you do in this world. And so I think to have that permission as kids really enabled us to ask questions, how we want to be spending our time.
Writing and Reflection
00:19:23
Speaker
Did you ever spend a chunk of your life in a situation you didn't love? Did you ever feel stuck at any point in time?
00:19:33
Speaker
Not really, no. I mean, even when I was working for corporates, I loved it. You know, I had this, I had bright red overdyed hair and I'd sit at my desk on a big red bouncy ball, you know, and I was, I just have always had a sense of playfulness about me and that kind of naivety that you were talking about before in my songs. And I cherish that about myself just to have that connection to the childhood and childish me.
Playful Living Amidst Seriousness
00:20:03
Speaker
And that, you know, the world is a serious place. And I want to take myself seriously but not too seriously. I'm really fascinated by the points where we
00:20:15
Speaker
we don't listen to that kind of soul calling or the target, the ham or the compass kind of how we ignore that and why we ignore that and how we go back to, you know, riot story. Yes. So before I moved to Dalesford, I was living with my uncle and aunt around the corner from where I grew up. And that was a time where I didn't feel stuck. I just felt
00:20:39
Speaker
so full of potential and I didn't know where to put it and I've always said to myself so when I started keeping a journal when I was 11 years old and I haven't stopped and I remember I came home from school one day my mum was writing in her journal I said what are you writing and she told me what a journal and diaries and I knew but just to hear her say it and she said well you could have a journal and I said really?
00:21:04
Speaker
Like I could write about my life and that would be meaningful or interesting even if just to me. So I've always said to myself no matter what I'm doing in the world as long as I'm writing then that has got to be a good thing then those days are not wasted. So that has always felt it doesn't matter if I'm stuck or it doesn't matter if I'm lost because I'm writing and that's a purpose. I love that and that feels quite validating because I have that sense that
00:21:33
Speaker
I get to live twice as a writer and I am driven a little bit by fear and wanting to hoard my own experience at the end of each day making a note of the key things that happened and having a reference that I can look back on and not letting the day slip away and slip through the colander that is my memory so I
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, appreciate what you're saying about that ritally existence and all of those things kind of feeding into the mill of your own creativity.
Creative Food Practices
00:22:02
Speaker
Yes, the compost heap. Yeah. I was thinking of like a sausage mincer. I was thinking a stinky compost pile. I want to ask you Meg, I'm looking at, nobody can see this, but Meg has bought me today broad bean pod
00:22:23
Speaker
powder, which I'm sure you've never heard of because I've never heard of, and I'm not sure anyone has ever made this. Well, I have never heard of it until a couple of days ago when I decided to make it. And it looks, it's kind of charcoal gray, it's a really fine powder. And when I opened the lid and sniffed it, it is the absolute distillation essence of broad bean smell. And I'm really excited to use that at some point, maybe over dinner tonight.
Unconventional Family Choices
00:22:50
Speaker
But it's made me wonder,
00:22:52
Speaker
what your what your food philosophy is and also then how you give it such a creative twist. Well, when I eat at home, I'm a local vore. When I eat out, I call myself an opportunivore. But at home, we very simply, whatever is in season, whatever I can forage, whatever I can buy from our local food co-op, it's pretty limited.
00:23:22
Speaker
So I think you have to be creative. And I didn't even, I mean, I knew that you could eat broad bean pods just because I know that they're not toxic, but it never occurred to me that you could eat them until, was it last week or the week before that we were having lunch at Meliodora? And Beck had suggested to Sue, because we were having broad beans for lunch, that she pour olive oil and some
00:23:45
Speaker
salt and pepper and some spices over the pods and bake them and they were good they weren't delicious they weren't so delicious that i thought oh i could i'd like to make them again um i'd like to eat them again or make them at home so they weren't that good but i thought it does feel like a wasted resource because they're so big they're pods so i i do love drying and grinding things i do have
00:24:10
Speaker
loads of different powders at home that I like to experiment with. So I ground the pods first in my food processor, just quickly blitz them, and then put them on trays in my dehydrator, and then back in the food processor just to grind them up really fine. So it sounds like a big long process, but it actually wasn't. And you know, for people who grow broad beans, or fava beans as they're called in the States, that once you've
00:24:40
Speaker
taken the beans out that the pods turned black and so that's why the powder's black. So in the dehydrator it was completely black. At first I got a fright when I opened it and I thought oh no it's turned and then I thought of course it's oxidised. Do people die with broad bean pods? Like not cark it. Yes, DYE. I don't know. It'd be good to find out. Yeah well I'm very excited and intrigued.
00:25:07
Speaker
And that also ties into your question I wanted to ask you about like weird shit you do in your life that isn't weird at all to you. It's probably completely invisible and completely normalized in your household culture but the kind of aspects of your existence or habits that could be seen as kind of odd or weird or feral by you know the mainstream population.
00:25:29
Speaker
I think I live in such a permaculture bubble that I think nothing. This is all normal. But I know that when we have family come to stay or that we go to stay in family's houses, it's like, oh.
00:25:43
Speaker
You still use toilet paper? So things like that. So we don't use toilet paper. We shoot in a bucket. We're in a bucket. A different bucket. We don't shop at supermarkets. We don't drive cars. We don't fly.
Composting and Belonging
00:26:01
Speaker
Woody doesn't go to school. And I don't care if he ever reads and writes. I feel like that's really quite radical to say that. He is having lessons with Peter O'Mara at Literacy and he's really excellent. He didn't start reading or having lessons until he was nine and he's 11 now. We waited for him to be interested, to show interest in having classes. And I really loved that he
00:26:31
Speaker
He had this ecological literacy first and that was really our priority before reading and writing literacy. And I really love the oral culture. I feel like that's such a gift just to be able to speak and to listen and to really listen because you don't know how to read something. Yeah, I feel like that's very powerful.
00:26:57
Speaker
What else? I feel like a freak when I go to Melbourne. My hair is lots of white in it amongst the dark brown. And when I hang out with women my own age, they all dye their hair in Melbourne. So even that, it's like, wow, why are you dyeing your hair? The white is so powerful. This is your wisdom years.
00:27:24
Speaker
But that's that's my thing and you know, they're all on hormone replacement therapy and Yeah, that's that's that's for them that's not for me but I still feel Yeah, I feel like a freak amongst them. Mmm a beautiful silver I mean, I love it. Hi, it's Splendid it's glowing. Yeah a couple of questions about what you listed there. Do you have a Teflon colon?
00:27:53
Speaker
which is why you don't need to use toilet paper. Do they just slide right out and you have the correct squatting position and it just pinches off? Or do you have a substitute? Well, that is actually part of it. So when I found that when, so we live below the poverty line, this is another thing that we live below the poverty line. And I think we live like royalty and we have pretty much a hundred percent organic diet.
00:28:16
Speaker
And that's because we go without a lot of stuff as well, so we can save our money and spend it on good food when we need to buy food. And I feel very fortunate that we have an amazing food co-op in our town, so low-income families like ours can afford to eat such good food.
00:28:39
Speaker
But I have found that when I eat our normal diet, because we're all squatters in our family, and so we have a compost toilet system and we can sit on it or we can squat on it. And so when you squat and you have a good diet, then the poodle sort of does come out. And I do know that when I go to a potluck dinner and I have too much cake or have food that I wouldn't ordinarily eat, it does
00:29:04
Speaker
my poo does stick a little bit more. We also use family cloth instead of toilet paper which we've been using for about five and a half years now which is just little pieces of, it's an op shop flannel sheet that we've cut up into rectangles and this is our second lot, our first lot completely deteriorated.
00:29:24
Speaker
And both times it's been some kind of gift exchange that somebody has been in with us to overlock the sides. And so recently one of our forest school mums gave us a new batch of cloth with overlocked sides. Thanks for explaining that. One more bit of clarification. Do you use pieces that then are washed?
00:29:47
Speaker
Yes, okay. So for those who've had kids and done cloth nappies, it's the same kind of thing. Well, for that, it was a little bit harder because there's poo in the nappy. So when Woody was in nappies, I would just scrape the poo into the composting bucket and then cover it with sawdust and then just throw the nappy in a bucket. And when the bucket was full, I would wash them in a hot wash. And so we do the same.
00:30:17
Speaker
so a bit of cloth we stick it in a bucket when the bucket is full then we just hot wash it so our washing machine goes up to about 90 degrees and we have solar power and we have water tanks so it just feels like this makes sense for us if we didn't have those things if i had to wash it by hand then i think then i would be using
00:30:38
Speaker
newspaper like Sue and David do here, or I would be growing heaps of mulan or some other plant. Lamb's rear. Yeah, yes.
Navigating Menopause and Growth
00:30:49
Speaker
Lamb's ear or cowboy's toilet paper, something like that. Yeah, that would be, yeah, abundant. This is a really cool thread that this brown string I want to keep tugging on because in a parallel life, I'm a door-to-door composting toilet saleswoman.
00:31:07
Speaker
And I think that closing the poop loop is just, it's this radical, simple and radical act. And I know that the stumbling block is regulation and how you do it in a smaller space. So you're on a quarter acre in a
00:31:23
Speaker
in a town, how do you compost your shit? So when we, so ours was a regular flashing toilet that we had and then we took that out and we were deciding what kind of, before we took it out we were deciding what kind of compost toilet system we wanted to install and we wanted to install ourselves so we didn't want to pay fifteen thousand dollars for an EPA approved one that's just not
00:31:50
Speaker
in our budget it's not something that I want to save up for so it is in our budget this just doesn't interest me and so we were thinking would we drill out a hole in the floor and then have a wheelie bin system that a lot of people do and I really wanted something that was easy and that I could do myself and that I could lift up the bucket when it was full and it wasn't going to be some huge shit bucket that it was just going to be
00:32:17
Speaker
manageable for me today that I wouldn't have to rely on Patrick to lift it. And so we just have, it's like a 40, 30 litre bucket, I don't know, a biggish kind of bucket.
00:32:29
Speaker
probably once a week we have to empty it and we have on the south side of our house on the cool side we have these compost bays so we wet the previous whatever is in there like the substrate of compost and then we are you wanting this much detail? Absolutely yeah because I just feel like how do we crack this yes how do more people get on board because it isn't
00:32:55
Speaker
it isn't easy psychologically and it's also not supported, as you mentioned, there are options that are really expensive that are the approved ticked options and then there's kind of nothing. So I think the detail is really good because how do people go rogue and adopt this system for themselves if they're interested?
00:33:12
Speaker
So on our YouTube channel, we do have a very extensive video, like a how-to video. Okay, I'll link that. Okay, great. So we tip the fresh bucket in there and I would have collected before a whole lot of comfrey leaves or yarrow leaves. So do a layer of that because they act like a compost conditioner and then put some straw down or some broken up leaves or some kind of carbon. And the way it was told to me was if you imagine a bird in a tree,
00:33:42
Speaker
doing a poo. Down the bottom is a whole lot of leaf litter. And then there's this tiny poo. Well, that's how much the leaf litter is carbon. The poo is the nitrogen. That's the percentage. Heaps and heaps of carbon and a little bit of nitrogen. So we put heaps of broken down leaves or straw or whatever carbon we've got on hand, shredded newspaper, something like that. And then we wet it. And then it has to be very wet. So you need the aeration
00:34:10
Speaker
you need carbon, nitrogen and the moisture. And of course the Humanure Handbook is a really fantastic resource for those wanting to do a deep dive into the composting of humanure. It's a really great book. It wasn't until we started composting our own poo, now we've always been pretty good composters, but it wasn't until then that the compost has just been so good because it's already been composted in our guts of course,
00:34:37
Speaker
But one, probably the most important thing that I want to say about Humanua is that it was my own shit and composting it that really started my belonging to this land. And it wasn't until I started putting my waste into it, if you can call it waste, of course it's a very useful thing, but it wasn't until I started composting my own poo and then
00:35:05
Speaker
using that on my garden many months later of course when it all broken down and then planting the seeds of a plant in there watching it grow and eating it and then composting my own poo and just sort of being part of that cycle as you say closing the poop loop but it wasn't until I started we started doing that that I thought wow I I belong to this land and this land belongs to me and of course I'm sure lots of people are going to say you can't say that as a white person but
00:35:35
Speaker
I can say that. I can say that I belong to a piece of land in the Wendell Berry sense when he talks about belonging because it's that intimate belonging.
00:35:51
Speaker
It's not an ancient, deep, thousand-year-old belonging, but it's a short belonging and it's the first tiny step of belonging. And that's been really important for me just to take that step and to take that shit. Take a shit. I was thinking as you spoke that we can either pontificate or participate. And we often pontificate about what we should or shouldn't do or shouldn't say or what's right, what's wrong, attaching this kind of
00:36:20
Speaker
intellectual, you know, tag to things, but when you start participating like that, that's when you observe, you observe that you are a creature in a system and you interact like a creature in a system and you actually see the ramifications of your actions, you see the limits of, you know, you see the limits of what you need and what your system can provide for you and that starts a really important caretaking cycle, I think. So less pontification.
00:36:51
Speaker
You mentioned when you go to the city, Freaky Megan, the big city and your friends on HRT. And I did want to ask you in this conversation about menopause and your approach, how you're approaching menopause and what you might speak to in that sense for other women who don't have a kind of sacred structure around that time or have any sense of an alternative beyond
00:37:18
Speaker
hormone replacement therapy and just being kind of angry for 10 years or whatever it is. How are you approaching this time and what are your thoughts on the matter? I'm approaching it very humbly. I feel like this is such a new realm and new territory and a new phase of my life. So I'm perimenopausal at the moment so I'm still bleeding.
00:37:44
Speaker
It first dawned on me that something was brewing, something new was bubbling away when I started obsessing over catching up with older women. I started collecting older women is how I put it and I have a collection and it was I needed to see, I needed to be with these women.
Womanhood and Mentorship
00:38:05
Speaker
what's going on here? It just felt like it was out of my control and then my period started changing and then I realised that what was happening and that I was needing to be with older women to see how they age and I feel so lucky living up here in the hills that we have so many amazing older women
00:38:30
Speaker
and that I have some very special older women in my life to look up to and just to see just a couple of decades ahead of me, how they're aging and how they're approaching aging and eldering and eldership. So I guess the first thing I would to give advice would be, do you have anyone in your life who you admire how they're aging?
00:38:59
Speaker
and hang out with them and what a great resource to have people like that in our lives and I'm a very avid reader and researcher so I started reading heaps about perimenopause from
00:39:15
Speaker
the HRT path to the do nothing path and sort of everything in between, what exercises we could be doing to support our bodies, what herbs we could be taking, what foods we should be eating or avoiding, all these kinds of things. And I also feel like this is a real time, yes, there's definitely fire and anger and sleeplessness and all of these things are coming up.
00:39:42
Speaker
but I feel like it's a real time of reckoning and
00:39:48
Speaker
It's where we really need to look at what my life has been so far and what needs to change going forward and what I can change now and what things I can put in place so those changes can happen in the long term. And I feel like already because I've made choices and made mistakes, so I'm already
00:40:12
Speaker
as much as I can living my life according to my values that that's a really big first step and I know for a lot of women particularly women in the city who I know who aren't on that path at all they're still in the first part of their lives I see as doing what they're told to be doing that is really tricky I think to be going into the second half of your life without
00:40:40
Speaker
having really thought for yourself what do I want to be doing what's really important to me how I want to be living so I'm very grateful to Meg before to have made the choices that she had so I feel like this part it's it's it's um it's an adventure growing old is
00:41:04
Speaker
It's challenging and it's hard and already at nearly 50 things are changing in my body.
Embracing Grief and Growth
00:41:10
Speaker
It's like, oh, I didn't know that was going to happen. And I just need to, you know, change what I can and get used to what I can't. And just, yeah, a great lesson in impermanence and acceptance. Are there any particular books or podcasts or resources that you have fallen in love with to guide you through this time?
00:41:30
Speaker
Of course there's Susan S. Weed, her book on menopause and journey. And a number of years ago I listened to this terrible podcast which I found so useful. I'm embarrassed to say its name is called Beyond Bitchy.
00:41:46
Speaker
Do you know it? Oh, it's called Beyond Vichy and it's about boundaries, setting boundaries and all the different boundaries. Like there's listening boundaries. So sometimes when I hear something, it's like, I'm so upset by that. Or if I read a comment in, you know, online, then that upsets me. That's a, you know, a visual. I need to put up a visual boundary. There's so many different kinds of boundaries. And I found that really helpful.
00:42:11
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, there's food resources. There's a lady called Dr. Mindy, who has this really cheesy YouTube channel. She's like a footy coach kind of doctor who's all about, she's written a book called How to Fast Like a Girl, or Fast Like a Girl, I think it's called. And yeah, so she talks about the different kinds of intermittent fastings we should be doing throughout our life, but how that changes in our perimenopausal years.
00:42:40
Speaker
So I found that really helpful. Yeah, and a book by Frances Weller called The Wild Edge of Sorrow. And yeah, just for me that grief journey and coming to terms with
00:42:58
Speaker
grieving as a way of letting go, as a way of being able to move forward, I felt like that book has been really central to my growing up story.
Women's Circle and Emotional Support
00:43:10
Speaker
Thank you for providing the perfect segue into the next question that I really enjoy hearing your response to. I want to ask you about For Crying Out Loud.
00:43:23
Speaker
what is it? Could you please describe For Crying Out Loud and why you see that as important in this community? For Crying Out Loud is a monthly women's circle and we meet in the forest and we sit on low humble logs around a big blazing fire and usually Patrick or Woody lights the fire for us and
00:43:51
Speaker
We share stories. We cry. We dig deep into our emotional composts. We ask hard questions of ourselves. It's really soul work.
00:44:08
Speaker
It's a conversation with ourselves, it's a conversation with the other women there, so the protocols are that it's not an advice group, we don't fix, we don't help each other, as in by offering advice, it's a listening and witnessing
00:44:26
Speaker
circle and I call it witnessing so W I T H witnessing because we're we're doing it together we're witnessing ourselves and we're witnessing one another and it's also a conversation with the dominant culture because the dominant culture
00:44:45
Speaker
is a machine. And as Paul Kings North says, it's the machine world. And the machine world doesn't want us to have a soul. What does the machine world want us to do? It wants us to be binging out on Netflix, having food ordered in, feeling really shit about our lives. It doesn't want us to be empowered, howling together joyously, crazily in the forest.
00:45:14
Speaker
So I feel like it's also a conversation to what is happening outside the forest and what's happening in the culture at large, in the broader culture. And this is us reclaiming our animal cells and our creaturely female
00:45:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's just rich, juicy soul work and I love it so much. And I was a part of two other women's circles before for Crying Out Loud and one of them we met inside and that just
00:45:55
Speaker
It was in someone's home and I loved it but it just didn't have what I was looking for and the other one was outside and there was crystals and tarot cards and also wasn't what I was looking for but I definitely learned a lot from both those circles.
Community as Resilience and Activism
00:46:13
Speaker
So for Crying Out Loud, it stemmed from a motherhood circle that we had for a local woman, Marta, who's since, not local anymore, she's since moved to the coast. And so that was five and a half years ago.
00:46:29
Speaker
And, yeah, we gathered for Marta's circle and it was just so beautiful and so powerful and all of us said to one another afterwards, like, we should do this more often. It's like, you know what? We should. And if no one else is going to start it, I'm going to do it. And I'm so glad. It's such a beautiful coming together and I look forward to it every month.
00:46:55
Speaker
And we all used to, or me in particular, we used to cry with my head down, you know, sobbing embarrassingly, saying, sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm crying into my hanky. And now I cry with my head held high. It's like there's some magical kind of alchemy when our tears hit the earth. There's something that happens. It just feels like it's reciprocal. Yeah, it is a very magical circle with the hawthorns and the fire.
00:47:22
Speaker
and our bare feet on the ground. And surprisingly not too many blood suckers, not too many mosquitoes daring to sup. And also at this particular circle that the men meet there fortnightly, the children we meet with the kids there weekly and then the women monthly, it just feels like there's so many and we have the winter solstice and you would winter solstice gathering at that circle too. It just feels like that forest is alive with the stories of this community.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah, I'm thinking about how men's circles and women's circles and grief circles and storytelling and singing, how these represent really potent and powerful forms of activism in a way, because obviously that threat of activism is running really strongly through your life. But in these more kind of whimsical or cosmic and subtle spaces, it can be
00:48:20
Speaker
harder to explain why they're important, why they're the work of our times and obviously they don't need to be the exclusive work but I'd love you to make the connection between these practices and this this gathering and these technologies of village building and connection how why that matters in this this context of crisis and emergency and everything has to change yesterday.
00:48:45
Speaker
I think they matter anytime. Whether there's crises happening or not, it feels like they feel this is the work because this is the human work. And the human experience, the human work is to
00:49:04
Speaker
is to belong to our experiences and to express our experiences and whatever needs to happen so we can express them, then that's important. So whether there's wars happening, whether there's pandemics or whether there's, you know, a thousand nights of weddings and joyousness, we still have to express ourselves.
00:49:27
Speaker
And because if we don't, then that's when we become discontent and that's when we become unwell. And I want to live in a world where there are loads of forest schools and there are loads of grief circles and different community groups and different village rebuilding activities happening because that makes sense for me.
00:49:57
Speaker
So that's where I give my time. Yeah, the explanation of why grief needs to be witnessed and how that can be transformed and how when it's suppressed, you know, shitty things happen. That's what I find tricky to broach with people, but perhaps it is as simple as having those spaces or initiating them in your community if they aren't already there and
00:50:26
Speaker
letting that process kind of work on people however it will. Because I know there are some people who I've talked to about for crying out loud and they've said oh no I could never do that you know like my grief is a private thing and I understand that because I used to be like that too and because I'm very good at crying and I always have been I've I've always
00:50:50
Speaker
hidden that gift that I am a good crier because I was embarrassed. It makes people uncomfortable when you cry in front of them but when you learn to cry proudly it shifts things. It has shifted things in myself definitely and that's okay if it's not for everybody.
00:51:18
Speaker
But for me, when I have bottled things up in the past, it hasn't been good for me. I want to change tack a little as we come to the end of the conversation. I'm really, really curious to ask guests of this podcast how much attention you pay to the degradation or the unraveling of the systems that we have currently, our modern systems and society. Is that a focal point of your life?
00:51:46
Speaker
are you concerned about what's kind of coming down the pipeline or is that something you've you know cast aside made some kind of piece with like how are you reckoning with the future whatever that might look like for you? Yep great question um they're all great questions but I feel like I reckon with the future every day and
00:52:11
Speaker
I love Woody not going to school for example and I love having him at home, I love not having to outsource his education to people who I don't know, whose values I don't know, you know, to a system whose values I don't like.
00:52:29
Speaker
I love that he's at home, I love that he can be part of this forest school, that he is surrounded by a community of other kids who also don't go to school and that's so much in the present tense for who he is and the joy for all of these kids but of course it's future-proofing because I
00:52:50
Speaker
spent the first half of my life doing what I was told, which, which relegated me to having no skills. And I do not, did not want that for my child at all. So I wanted him to be so skilled going into his uncertain future. So, you know, that's a big part of it that, you know, the skills that we need and the skills that future generations are going to need are skills that we've always needed.
00:53:21
Speaker
conflict resolution and herbal medicine and, you know, what does a post-collapse world look like? You know, it looks like, for me it looks like systems are broken and we need, you know, this is where community sufficiency really comes to the fore and how we get along with people is huge and how we can get along with ourselves.
00:53:48
Speaker
And trust is a really big one. Can we trust ourselves? How do we build trust with people who we might not necessarily like or get along with? So we call where we live our small lane, we call it an unintentional community.
00:54:06
Speaker
because it's with people who we didn't choose, but here we are, all lumped together, and how are we going to get along? And it's a beautiful experiment. We had a neighbour come over today to say, if we need help putting our nets on our fruit trees, because he'd like some help, then I'm babysitting tonight for some other neighbours at the end of the street. You know, we all just sort of find our way to get along with each other. So I do pay a lot of attention to
00:54:35
Speaker
the future and the systems that are collapsing.
Diverse Community Living
00:54:40
Speaker
But I've also spent with Patrick the last, I don't know, nearly two decades, you know, pretty much our whole relationship, future-proofing our lives. So when the pandemic came along, it was like, oh, you know,
00:54:53
Speaker
here we are. This is actually, we're going to be okay. And not in a kind of selfish, we're fine, and no one else is. It's like, okay, we're pretty good. Now, how do we be of service to other people who aren't so good? And having that time as well, as I was talking about in the beginning of the podcast, is having time to be of service and time to
00:55:14
Speaker
To be able to reflect and to think about what are the skills we need, hard and soft skills, what are the values that I want to help instill in my child and other kids around me, I feel like that's something that I want to give my time to.
Sustainable Futures
00:55:37
Speaker
What are the things that have allowed you to reclaim your time?
00:55:41
Speaker
Not living with a car has been huge. Because it costs so much. It costs so much. Cars cost so much. Whether it's petrol, whether it's servicing and registration and parking fines and all of that stuff, it just adds up. You know, when I have to get my bike serviced, it's, you know, it's some jars of fermented food that I exchange with a neighbour as opposed to, you know, like $1,200. A friend recently had to spend on getting some, not some scenes, some like,
00:56:12
Speaker
things on the side of his car fixed, it's like, wow, that's a lot of money. So that, definitely living without a car. And of course, when you live without a car, you're much more mobile, you're out in all weather. So you're fitter, you're hardier, you're much more present to the world. So that's a really good trade-off in my mind. I think it's just living without a whole lot of stuff. You know, not having any monthly subscriptions. That feels like a really,
00:56:41
Speaker
big thing to say but it's like when did all this stuff when did people have start getting all these monthly subscriptions not having a credit card you know trying to get out of debt that just felt like that was a big journey but just really prioritizing time which means
00:57:00
Speaker
being much more active and much more engaged. And are there any other resources or workshops or fun flavours or colours that you would want to share with people listening as kind of recommendations or things to indulge in or imbibe if they're curious about your way of life?
00:57:21
Speaker
As a family, we're involved in our local repair cafe, and I feel like we have so much stuff, all of us, even us neopessents, we just have stuff that we've just collected. Yes, we may have bought it secondhand, but we still have a lot of stuff.
00:57:37
Speaker
And to be able to fix things I feel like is just a really great skill and to know people who can fix things and repair cafes. I'm sure most of your listeners are across it, but just in case you're not, it's a global movement of volunteers who get together usually about once a month.
00:57:55
Speaker
in the individual towns and we have a Dalesford repair cafe and there's a people they have teas and coffees and people donate cakes and it's called coordination to have something fixed and they have electrical fixes they have people who do sewing machines and dining and
00:58:18
Speaker
They also have someone who mends broken hearts. Yes, so I sit there at a little table with a sign saying mending broken hearts and you know Patrick sharpens knives and tools and chainsaws and secateurs and Woody has his soldering iron and he had it in fact he was using that soldering iron today he had a torch that was broken and you know as I was getting my bike to come here he was inside soldering and then he said I fixed it mum and then he turned it on and it worked it's like wow
00:58:46
Speaker
But he really should be reading and writing. You know that's exactly what I want for my kid is to you know and for myself as well and for all of us like how do we look after the things that we already have how do we look after the people the animals and
00:59:04
Speaker
all of life animate and inanimate. Beautiful Meg, as a big ugly truck roars past on the road. It's been so, so wonderful chatting with you today. You really brought the energy and the fizz. Thank you. Thanks Katie, great to chat.
00:59:27
Speaker
There are more links than you can poke a stick at in the show notes, including Meg and artists' families' writings, videos, and creations. So go there, click one at random, and spend the next 10 years applying it to your life. In other administrative news, I haven't quite decided on next week's episode yet, so get excited for a mystery interview with someone magnificent.
00:59:49
Speaker
That reminds me too, to thank everyone who sent feedback on the first instalment of resilience with Dave Pollard, as well as your dream guests and topic requests. Interacting with you all like that makes this podcast feel spine-tinglingly collaborative, like a beast we're feeding and grooming and saddling up to explore new terrain together.
01:00:09
Speaker
If you already like where Resculience is taking you, I'd be absolutely chuffed if you shared it with friends, family or jaded work colleagues. You can also leave Resculience stars on Spotify or a review on iTunes, which adds to its legitimacy and also the likelihood that I'll keep on going. Because unlike a growing number of sovereign and self-motivated bush kids, I still kind of get a kick out of gold stars. Thanks for listening. Reskill you later.