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Artist As Family’s 10 Ways To Be Rich, Feral and Free
594 Plays4 days ago
This episode was recorded while sitting on Artist As Family's living room floor, glowing embers in the belly of the fire, cups of hawthorn and artichoke tea on the coffee table, and Meg’s famous ferments watching over us from the shelves. You’ll hear us accidentally knocking the microphones, some quality heavy breathing and Zero the dog dreaming and yipping away on the couch.
And it's our first audio quartet! Meg, Patrick and twelve-year-old Woody offer their list of ten permaculture neopeasant provocations as a whole family; a huge highlight was hearing Woody share wisdoms from his unconventional upbringing complete with knives and chainsaws and flames and the freedom to learn lessons the hard way.
LINKY POOS 🧙♀️
[EVENT] Artist as Family’s all day house + garden tour ~ Sunday November 17 in Central Vic
Artist as Family’s nook on the web
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Reskillians Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Reskillians! Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned into Reskillians, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't. I'm recording this in beautiful Jara country in my outdoor air-conditioned co-working space under a tree.
New Year, New Format: Ten Things to Bring
00:00:27
Speaker
So for anyone who's new to the podcast, we're playing with a different format for the next couple of months.
00:00:32
Speaker
in which guests share a list of 10 things that we can bring into the new year if we so desire. On the day I recorded this episode, Jordan and I had had a busy morning picking through dusty old doors and floorboards at the local salvage yard, looking for things for our tiny home. And after that we decided to stop at a cafe just down the road for refreshments.
00:00:52
Speaker
When we walked in, we found that the two waiters at the counter were pretty discombobulated because their payment system had been glitching all day. So we waited around while it beeped and rebooted and beeped and rebooted again. But far from annoyed, we really enjoyed hanging out with them, sharing one of those random yet exhilarating encounters with strangers where, for whatever reason, everyone felt safe to be weird and theatrical and hysterical and connected for a brief speck of time.
00:01:23
Speaker
Apparently the waiters kinda liked our company too, because alongside our drinks, they brought out two free bickies. Big fat melting moments, buttery yellow with a wad of white icing, to say thanks for the laughs. Jordan and I didn't have the heart to ask them, are these gluten free? Because we're both weedaphobes, so we accepted the flowery morsels, figuring that someone we know would eat them.
Artist as Family: Introduction and Tour
00:01:50
Speaker
We drove to Dalesford with the biscuits on the dash, sweating in the high spring heat, where George dropped me off at Tree Elbow, the home of Artist as Family. If you don't know Artist as Family, they get up to all kinds of neo-peasant shenanigans right here in Jarrah Country, such as growing, fermenting, writing, speaking, teaching, goat herding and belonging.
00:02:11
Speaker
You can meet them in episode 2 and 12 of this podcast respectively or on their website or on YouTube where their catchy folk tunes and how-to videos live on even though they've vacated the platform. They actually have a house and garden tour coming up really soon which they talk about in the episode and I'll link in the show notes so definitely get along to that if you're interested.
Interview with Artist as Family: Stories and Parenting
00:02:34
Speaker
We planned this interview to be a whole family affair where Meg, Patrick and 12-year-old Woody could share their list of 10 things together. And I was really excited to see how a four-person convo would roll. But apparently, before I arrived, Woody declared that he would only participate if I brought a delicious treat. So how stoked was I to be able to whip out two melting, melting moments. A little worse for wear, but well and truly meeting Woody's criteria. And thus, we tempted him onto the mic.
00:03:04
Speaker
This conversation would simply not have been the same without Woody, and a real highlight was hearing him share stories from his childhood with knives and hatchets and fires and the freedom to learn real bodily lessons, reflecting in real time on Meghan Patrick's radical parenting choices, well, compared to modern standards anyway, giving this discussion an interdimensional, intergenerational quality that is quite unique.
Cozy Recording Ambiance and Podcasting Insights
00:03:30
Speaker
Just so you can picture it in your mind's eye, we recorded this interview while sitting on the living room floor, glowing embers in the belly of the fire, cups of hawthorn and artichoke tea on the coffee table and Meg's famous ferments watching over us from the shelves.
00:03:46
Speaker
You'll hear us accidentally knocking the microphones, some high quality heavy breathing and zero the dog dreaming and yipping away on the couch. Good times. This is a really special recording with some of my favourite humans, sharing 10 things that will bring riches and feralness and freedom to your days should you choose to accept their invitations.
00:04:08
Speaker
There are a few other bits and bobs to tell you at the end of the episode, but without further ado, please enjoy the beautiful artistess family, and a little snippet of their song that is forever stuck in my head, by Roadside Fruit.
00:04:33
Speaker
the I didn't prepare anything because I put the onus onto my lovely guests to do that this season in which feels pretty unfair actually but it's also generating some good shit yeah and I felt that you were the kind of people I could test my preparation versus being present podcasting approach on because I'm always a little bit torn around how much to prepare versus how much space to leave in my brain for the conversation and for whatever wants to come up and I was thinking about being present as I took a wee in your garden and I was so present that I squatted right next to your beehive and it wasn't until I'd pretty much finished my evacuation that I realised things flying all around my head were the bees so I apologise to your bee family. I obviously am not feeling
00:05:24
Speaker
100% present but I hope to be during this conversation and I'm very happy to be here.
Woody's Learning Philosophy and Rites of Passage
00:05:30
Speaker
Thanks Jenny, welcome. Thanks for having me. thank bro Yeah, welcome to Back to Tri Elbow. Yeah, I love how warm and cozy it is here today because it's quite significantly cooler in Dalesford.
00:05:43
Speaker
I don't think I've asked you Woody about how you liked the film that Happen Films made about you that was released pretty recently because that got so much love online but I know that it was a long time between when it was filmed and then when it was released so maybe you might have felt like a lot had happened and changed Yeah. Over that period? Yeah, that I felt that that was really good, but now I feel like I would would have liked to do it do another one now. because yeah You can do an encore. Yeah. Well, I really liked how you said, I think it was something like you don't get told what to learn, you just discover things.
00:06:22
Speaker
Yes. yeah yeah I don't decide what to learn. That's right. I just discovered things and that's my favourite line too. What kind of things have you discovered lately? Is there something that's really surprised you? Yeah, I've got a big brother um and he's just come out of jail. for He's been in there for Six years? Yeah, and it's kind of, and I've always been kind of an only child and now it's kind of really massive. It's been big to have an older brother around. He's ten years older than you. He's ten years older than me.
00:07:00
Speaker
yeah
00:07:03
Speaker
and it's been big really special for Patrick and I to get to know him as a young man because we've never had a grown-up son you know probably in our lives who we can talk about real adult things with topics and yeah just listen to his insights as an adult it's it's wild yeah yeah yeah that's new for all of us yeah yeah thinking about this podcast we went through a list of or we wrote down a list of things that each of us would like to talk about but the first one is know yourself which is probably a good segue from where's f spain because underwielding or or rites of passage particularly a teenage rites of passage is um or any really but
00:07:49
Speaker
in his case and our cases when we were teenagers and yours to be soon, would you? Yeah, knowing yourself is is a big part of it and because without understanding where our gifts are and our shadows, our fragilities and strengths. We are often just caught up in other authorities, in other people's authority over us and I feel like, yeah, so knowing oneself through
00:08:26
Speaker
some sort of rites of passage, whether it be organised in a community sense, like the rites of passage work Meg and I do, or are involved with, or through your own chaotic self-made one, like so many of us do, like I did and certainly Seth did.
00:08:46
Speaker
um And we seem to, if we, because also rites of passage, it's not always guaranteed we actually survive, survive it. And so it's a real dangerous time, particularly teenage rites of passage. And yes, I've came pretty close to not surviving it. And so and many, many young folk don't. So.
Rites of Passage and Self-Discovery
00:09:13
Speaker
Yeah, coming up against one's mortality is also a part of that process of knowing oneself and and that's what happens down down underneath in in the um in Baba Yaga realm where we're challenged and we see what we've got, we see what we've made made from.
00:09:36
Speaker
And that's not an age, really. it's not ah It's not specific to a number, although I guess in a an intact culture, there would be an age that it's associated with, but there are a lot of adolescents who are 60, 70, 80 years old. So this knowing yourself yeah can can start at any point in one's life, really. Even if that does feel a little bit confronting, demoralizing if you're behind the rest of the pack.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, it is so much better, I think, for young people to have organised community or village rites of passage. Hypothetically speaking, is there any possibility that people can complete a satisfactory earthbound rite of passage in the concrete jungle?
Digital Boundaries and Life Reflections
00:10:20
Speaker
Yes. Which leads us to number two. oh This is working so well already. um Get off social media.
00:10:30
Speaker
um So I have only been on social media officially for about a week. So I can now say that I have my badge with a pair of scissors. Although we've been. Yeah, so artists as family has been off social media for a number of years, but I've still clung to my profile.
00:10:51
Speaker
um I often look at our local community page, I use it for work to manage a group which has about 30,000 people in it and you know occasionally looking at stuff on marketplace, selling things on marketplace. And I was recently locked out of my account and the only way that I could get back in was by um doing a video selfie where I had to hold the phone in front of me and then move my face from side to side so a bot could determine whether I was flesh and blood.
00:11:20
Speaker
and I've been wanting to get off social media for such a long time it just haven't really felt a very strong pull or push or snip and so this was it I felt like this just gave me permission.
00:11:37
Speaker
and we've been talking a lot in our household about giving up smartphone, deleting apps and we've been very inspired by Paul King's North and he has over the last few years just talked to quite strongly about drawing a line and what is your line and in different circumstances that are are pressuring, what you know, what is your line? um So for him, for example, in COVID, he talked about not QR coding into anywhere.
00:12:09
Speaker
and that was his line and how a lot of people don't have lines because they're just sort of pushed and and pulled along. So this video selfie request, and it was the only way, they didn't give me any other option. And the frustrating thing is that I can't go in there to delete my account or my profile. um It is what it is. um But I'm happy, I'm frustrated, but I'm mostly happy for the gift of this freedom.
00:12:37
Speaker
and not that I have spent a lot of time on social media over the years but it is still shaping me and has still got a a hold on me so I'm grateful to be released.
00:12:50
Speaker
That feels really good. And I think when I have a look at people, you know, my peers or my friends friends, Facebook friends, a lot of them are older as well. It's like, I don't want to be an older lady going on holidays and documenting my dinners and posting them on Facebook like some people do. And I just, you know, that might work for some people, but I don't i don't want to be like that. So now I feel like I am untethered.
00:13:19
Speaker
Thanks, Free Meg. I wonder if there's an opportunity just to talk a little bit to the losses which are very real when you, for instance, came away from YouTube and you've consolidated around your website and I know you've done things with your website too that are Defying kind of like the bigger platforms and you're really wanting to have that as a space that you feel feel good about and it's actually You know um your personal journal and scrapbook that is unfettered and untethered in itself so there's so much entanglement with our work and our sense of who we are and our
00:13:56
Speaker
Bigness, you know in the online sphere so if there's any Anything you can offer around what it felt like to literally lose a whole bunch of followers when you came away from YouTube and and yet all of the people that you interact with on retro suburbia Like it would be really lovely to just hear that very real struggle Yeah, and we should go back to meta because we, like it was several years ago, we removed ourselves from both Instagram and Facebook in terms of artists as family.
Building Meaningful Information Networks
00:14:27
Speaker
So there's about 30,000 subscribers there and then there's 10,000 on YouTube.
00:14:34
Speaker
um So, you know, a small number, I think I've said this somewhere else, Katie, it's like when I went throughout school, I was really happy to have ah just a handful of people following my work and people are now talking about tens of thousands of followers.
00:14:51
Speaker
it's It's very abstract, those numbers. um I think, for me, I feel really connected in a village sense. We definitely get emails and we are connected via sub-stack, ecologies there. I guess that's our next thing. Point number three. Point number three is building information ecologies or growing information ecologies as opposed to being socially manipulated by either Zuckerberg or metas Products or or Google and so, you know, like I think the more awareness people have about what these companies are doing to shape and corral and a spy um and extract um It just becomes more and more apparent what to do and so at this stage this
00:15:43
Speaker
things like this independent website, subscribing to them. Substack's great for publishing because there's so many ex investigative journalists or journalists that used to work in mainstream media who can no longer do that. And then a whole lot of writers, creative writers, poets, artists, permaculturists, people, alternative in the health sectors, education sectors. So there's this's this incredible opportunity while the internet is still ah in its in its form even though it's being constantly enclosed. It's still very possible to build an information ecology and I think I'm more excited about that than how many numbers we're reaching or and having like
00:16:35
Speaker
meaningful relationships rather than just you know big numbers of not very meaningful relationships across and also in places like sub-stack you can still have differences of opinion and people don't sort of retreat to their silos because it's not augmented that way in the business plan of sub-stack at this stage anyway so yeah I say that because Unfortunately, everything that's beautiful gets captured by um the machine and and corrupted and fucked over. So I'm hoping, yeah, we have some more time on sub-stack, but we will just ah again move when we have to. and That's just number three. Number four is over to you, Woody. You have to come closer. Yeah. What is it? Um...
Woody's Tool Skills and Repair Cafe
00:17:29
Speaker
So Woody's not really into, he's into reading but he's more into actual ecology, not necessarily at abstract information ecologies. Do you want to talk a little bit about tools? Well I have a lot of tools and um I pretty much all of them I've saved up and bought myself and I look after them really well. I find if mum and dad buy me something, a tool, then I kind of don't look after it so well. because i kind of i or But when I do buy them myself, I but work hard to save up for them. And then I find I look after them really well. Oh, I love that. So taking care of your tools. Yeah. But also having the intrinsic motivation to take care of them because you're invested right from the start. Yeah.
00:18:24
Speaker
And there's lots of conversations before he buys different tools about appropriate technology, about his his role in the family, um how he can participate in a meaningful way, so if that tool will help him in that, how he can contribute. So there's yeah loads of discussions and I feel really proud of you because from a very young age you've you've bought things yourself and really looked after them. So that's been yeah beautiful to watch. Yeah. You've got a couple of YouTube videos when we were on YouTube. Our videos are still up so people can, we haven't shut that down, but because it's quite an archive, but Woody um made quite a number of videos. Do you want to talk about your, um, yeah. Um, yeah. Well, I,
00:19:21
Speaker
had a video well dad film me and i um did the I did video on me sharpening secateurs and we put it on our YouTube channel so a lot of people just go to the hardware and buy really cheap secateurs and then just throw them out once they get rusty.
00:19:36
Speaker
but It's actually cheaper in the end and better for the universe and the world to buy, go to a printing shop or buy them on eBay. Really good quality. I've got Felco Secretaries. I saved up, I think, about $90 or so. But it's really good to spend that sort of money on the good pair of Secretaries. And then once they get a bit rusty, then you take them apart and clean them up with some wet and dry sandpaper.
00:20:07
Speaker
Yeah, really fine. off here You've actually sharpened my knives, maybe knives, plural before Woody, and I know that this look on your face told me everything, which was, what have you been doing, woman? These knives are the bluntest thing that I've seen all day. yes And then you got to them you got them to the point where you could ninja slice a piece of paper straight through without a sound. There was just confetti everywhere in the air.
00:20:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty good at sharpening knives and we have diamond blade sharpeners and Yeah, we were recently because my grand- my grandma was sick and we went up to and stayed with dad's brother while we were seeing her and that all the kitchen knives were so ridiculous he blunt like he couldn't i and and yeah Dad shut on me. Yeah, got to work on those. Yeah They just had a house full of sharpened edges by the time that you left. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Do you want to talk about um what you do at repair cafe? Yeah, so we have a local repair cafe that goes every month. i And yeah, I have a little ah stand there and i've I've got sharpeners and sandpaper and different glues and stuff to fix things. People bring in and yeah, I just sharpen them up.
00:21:28
Speaker
that's such a great service i love coming along to that and also there's always free tea and cake and i don't know where it comes from but there's always an old lady giving me a cup of delicious tea right it's gold yeah it's also gold yeah i'd pay the donation that's the donation and then the tea is a gift
00:21:50
Speaker
um Woody, I have a follow-up question for you. Have you ever a wanted a gadget that's just kind of frivolous but other people have it and you feel sad that you you don't have it? yes well that's right yeah mum and dad have never really let me have any toys and i guess i will i've always really wanted nerf guns because they're really cool but now me and dad go out hunting with his wheel gun so that's a lot cooler we both have nerf guns we're just going for the real thing i'm same with i remember going to a friend's party and
00:22:26
Speaker
him and playing with this his um ah like like a toy circular saw and then he said I could take it home to play with it. just He was happy to lend it to me just to play with and mum said I couldn't and then when I got home dad taught me how to use the wheel thing.
00:22:46
Speaker
His wheel Makita one. I see a pattern here. Yeah, that that was really cool. You don't need training wheels you're just straight on to the other stuff. yeah When Woody was younger, it's true, we didn't have any toys for him when he was a baby or a child. I think I had wooden blocks.
00:23:04
Speaker
Were you gonna tell the kitchen drawer? ah Yes, so we didn't even want any sort of educational toys, diner-ish kind of, I just didn't see the point. I just thought, why keep him in this sense of,
00:23:19
Speaker
it's just it's I felt I was disrespectful to to him as an individual. like Just give him real things, he doesn't need to practice things. So we had our utensil drawer and our island bench, so I would, when he was a baby... Full of sharp knives and objects, sharp objects. Yes, and so I would get the knives and push them onto his hand just lightly and go, ow, ow!
00:23:41
Speaker
and then put them back in the drawer and then walk away and I thought believe he cuts himself well that's up to him and that's his learning you know this is a one year old and a half year old but he never did cut himself And the same with, a um we never had to put a guard around our fire because Mum and Dad did that with ah my high chair. i They just put a candle on it and then went, ow, ow. And I burnt myself once and never ever went near, like burnt myself on a fire or a candle or anything again. We just had to say, hot, hot. Yeah, that was your first word at nine months. Yeah.
00:24:16
Speaker
first we put a tea light candle in front of him and we showed him that poor heart and then he he did if he burned himself just a little bit not bad no blister anything but just he learnt the lesson yeah and because you learnt it bodily and experientially yeah and we were really um yeah we were really influenced by reading about Indigenous children around the world who, like Inuit kids, who were handed fish on a razor-sharp knife. Had to pick it up themselves. Pick it up themselves. And just, yeah, just that, again, suspending, yeah, like to see one of our goats being
00:25:00
Speaker
ah birthing a little kid goat and within 15 minutes they're standing up finding their way to the teats and we seem to take 20 something years to to work out how to buy our own milk from the shop. yeah I feel like we were a lot more trusting of Woody and just trusting him to yeah to find his own way and to make sense of the of the real world and we have you know we would when I'd be using the blender he'd be watching me when we have a grain meal he'd be watching me a juicer you know he'd be helping me with real with the real toys with the real and I always
00:25:38
Speaker
I loved watching dad use his chainsaw and also once I was I so wanted to be able to like at least play with the chainsaw they at their local steel shop they sell like little toy fake ones plastic ones they have like a little motor they go boom boom it doesn't don't do anything and then I weirdly wanted one and then dad said oh no no mom and dad said no but um and then i said when i when i'm 10 i'm allowed to get my chain first chainsaw and then like when i was like nine i used dads and dad was so impressed how well i could use it that he that i was allowed to get one when i was nine and i never i've never ever had an accident with it
00:26:20
Speaker
I've been doing household wood ever since, like me.
Parenting: Balancing Fear and Freedom
00:26:25
Speaker
yeah I am praying to the pantheon of gods that I reincarnate as a member of your extended family. Maybe like one of your kids would be. I'll come back as one of your yeah your family members. yeah I want to be parented.
00:26:39
Speaker
There's a lot of fear in our you know you know society. Yesterday, um we were down at the cricket, and one of the men down there was saying, oh, I saw Woody coming down to the cricket via Ajax Road, which is this sort of big, winding, beautiful forest road that's very wide. We ride our bikes. Ever since he's been a baby, we've been up and down that road as as a family. and Woody left about 10 minutes before me. I had some business to finish. And um so he was, he went solo down to cricket and at the end of the cricket training, this fella sort of apologized at first for bringing it up, but he really needed to tell me how utterly dangerous it is being on the road. And um yes yeah he was just, yeah, he was expressing a lot of fear in his body and
00:27:36
Speaker
I get it. I'm a father who ah goes to bed and sometimes imagines the worst. We're a bike riding family but having ridden our bikes to Cape York and back and yeah knowing how there's a sense of entitlement with car drivers in Australia I still come back to the better to live well and free for 12 years than be a 60 year old man full of fear and projecting that fear into the rest of society And I know that's a very hardcore thing to say, and if something happens to Woody next week, I know there will be a lot of fingers being pointed at me for being so ah brash about that. um But it's the same with Zero too, like when... At Jack Russell. Yeah, at Jack Russell, when we've been down at the lake and tourists who've come up.
00:28:24
Speaker
with their correct dogs and their correct leads um come across our feral little Jackie and and demand that we put a lead on him. A hundred dollar fine? we Oh yeah. There's a guy down like who's always walking his dog and now we call him a hundred dollar fine. He's always saying a hundred dollar fine whenever we see something.
00:28:48
Speaker
We value freedom and we value different ways of doing it and that's becoming ah Yeah, life is becoming homogenous and it's becoming homogenous because of safetyism which is fed by fear and when we have fear we project a lot of violence into the world, ideological violence. And so we're just really trying not to do that. And if a child learns well by understanding that the nature of fire and the nature of sharp things, obviously it's different for every child. But would he use a child who responded very quickly and learns very quickly? I got my first pocket knife when I was four years old. Yeah.
00:29:34
Speaker
yeah Had a little round tip, didn't it? Yeah, so I couldn't poke myself. i don't do do you think i Did I ever cut myself? A few times, maybe once. or No, I think the worst you've done is the higher the hatchet when you're 18 months old. I was cutting a little block. I was just like... You were shaping, yeah. I cut my thumb, but my left thumb almost down to the bone. but and And I remember it was really sore but I've still got a scar from it. and That was a lesson to you. Yeah, but I never did it again or anything like that.
00:30:12
Speaker
yeah It's great to hear from you Woody. I'm really glad that you're part of this conversation. yeah Number five. So as Patrick and I have aged, well as we are aging, we are really seeing the importance of the people care um ethic of permaculture and have really given a lot of thought as to how we can be of service to our community with people care in mind and so about six or so years ago we both started um that men's and women's groups, the fire circle we we go down to the fire circle and
00:30:58
Speaker
um Patrick runs fire choir and I facilitate for crying out loud and just to have these circles as part of our months has just really helped shape us as individuals and has we've seen the ramifications and the ripple effect that that has had in our community and just how valuable how how needed they are in terms of village rebuilding in terms of mental health um facilitation and just the relationship with being in the forest. I feel like the forest loves us there. The forest holds the stories, the forest holds us and we hold each other as we listen deeply, as we share deeply, as we cry and howl and sing and shake and move and whatever is moving moving in us.
00:31:57
Speaker
so our this this point is really about helping so to join a circle if you can to start a circle if that's what's needed and you know reach out to us if you um would like to have a chat about how we started our circles um because they've just been so so valuable and i'm so grateful that to live in a community where we have just we have people who ah who come and sit in circle and having been away for four and a half months and my first circle back in that forest, we all just had such big deep shares. It's like we all just sort of fell fell back in and some of the worst circles while I was away. And I was just, so I howled and I howled. I really wept that first circle. I just needed to process and release
00:32:52
Speaker
what I had been through the last four and a half months, what I was still going through, just the landing. And I felt like this, the land, that the country there was asking for my tears. There's this, yeah, the special relationship, um which I do talk about in my resilience magpie tears conversation with you. And yeah, I'm, yeah, just so,
00:33:17
Speaker
grateful to be part of that circle. And we also facilitate um ah a group for kids called Forest and Free, which is a group for unschooled kids. And the men sit in the circle ah twice a month, the women sit once a month, and the kids sit weekly. And kids are, you know, from eight years old, are learning how to sit in circle and how to, we we start with a check-in, we go around, the kids listen to one another, and and they talk freely, it just feels like really good. And sometimes my boy's foot lever and whoever, it if he interrupt, then you don't get a foot lever.
00:34:00
Speaker
Punishment circus. usually is really quiet and so that works seems to work well. Because for some of the kids this is their first time of sitting in circle and listening to each other. And it's ah yeah it's just very beautiful to see the kids who initially might struggle and might need a bit of bribery from my spice quincefruit leather. And just to see them you know a couple of weeks later just listening intently because they know that if they talk through someone else's shared then other people might do that to them and it doesn't feel good when people when you sit in circle or even just in conversation and we always say to the kids if you can learn that the skill of deep listening now all of your relationships are going to fall into place because it's just a skill that
00:34:49
Speaker
you know And this is back to your point, at your first point um of know yourself and get to know yourself. If we can deep listen to ourselves and then give that gift of attention you know in the world that everybody wants a little bit of our attention, but if we can genuinely, focusly give it to somebody and deeply listen and deeply listen to ourselves, I feel like that's just a really good platform to to start with.
00:35:16
Speaker
it's different to be witnessed and to actually offer yourself in a circle to witness someone else because then the neediness goes when we have that basic human need met and it doesn't demand some attention we don't have to show off we don't have to be big egos we don't have to go run away and in the forest and know that someone's thinking of us doing that extreme thing yeah we can actually be all seen and heard in a really profound way without interruption and without
00:35:52
Speaker
advice given and without fixes coming in to fix that which may not be able to be fixed but just needs beholding and I think that the other gift and the the beauty of sitting in circle to witness others and to witness ourselves is is the well first of all it's much cheaper than therapy but even better that we're doing this collectively and so this is the self-care and communitarian care in the same instance that's why i'm so passionate about circles and
00:36:31
Speaker
Yeah, so if you' as Meg said, if you want to know more about starting a circle, we started without any knowledge.
Community Circles and Deep Listening
00:36:40
Speaker
It's just something that was asked of us and bumbled our way through. And it came from a deep yearning for knowing that it was what we needed. yeah yeah So it was sort of like this deep knowledge. We didn't know how we didn't know the practicalities, but we did we did hear the call.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yep. Have you done a lot of things like that? Having the desire button, no framework and no practical assistance? Oh, totally. Yeah. Lots of things, including, you know, parenting and going off on big adventures where we don't know what's going to happen, you know, half an hour later, but we're just up to the up for the adventure and up for the challenge.
00:37:26
Speaker
Well said and I'm looking forward to hearing what number six entails. Well and we're out of order a bit but I feel like the next one is taking responsibility for our our health. So I thought I'd might just talk about that as ah as a a kind of classic male who's often punished myself physically and forgets to eat when I get working and forgets to ask for help to lift things and just constantly um finding myself, especially when I was younger, you know, on an upward spiral of productivity and then a bodily decline into depressive um
00:38:13
Speaker
achy problems with my body and so yeah I feel oh because of where mainstream medicine is going um I feel like the onus on ah ourselves to take responsibility for our health is even more sharp even more important now um We used to have a good relationship with the GP and that GP and others have retired and there's a new generation which are ideologically weird to us. We're no doubt ideologically weird to them. Yeah, my age and also what's happening in the bigger
00:38:57
Speaker
medical space um has really pushed me and I would say probably pushed our family to be much more proactive. I start the day with at least half an hour, if not 40 minutes of of yoga or stretches, a combination of mutant yoga and, you know, old footy stretches, kind of feral version of something that is not of any tradition, but of just of my own making, because it feels good.
00:39:25
Speaker
um To do all of those different stretches and then and then so strength work chin-ups and push-ups and things like that and then a Cold water plunge cold water plunging good food obviously meaningful and stress-free life and is just getting one's economic and social relating in in right relationship. That's taken many years. I no longer have youth on my side in terms of repair, and um but i I definitely have a bit more bodily wisdom and just
00:40:02
Speaker
Loving being in the discipline, the daily discipline of self-care and knowing what to do also, um whether it be calling on Meg for herbs um or whether knowing that cold water is anti-inflammatory.
00:40:19
Speaker
ah but also really great for mental health, my mental health and then yeah just also joining a cricket team with Woody because his love is in cricket and that mine used to be 30 years ago and then just falling in love with a sport that I used to love um through a child's eyes and my own child's um love so calling a bit of that play
00:40:44
Speaker
because you're having a dream. rain hey zero um I just wanted to share an image from I go on a walk every morning and I check the news and by that I mean I'm checking what's happening with the wallabies and the birds and like what's changed and who's doing the same thing and who's doing something crazy and different but I saw a wattle bird using its beak to kind of wound a tree and then lick the sap and watching its tongue it's got this white really long um curly tongue going up and down and up and down the little furrows that it it had created in this I think it was a type it was a wattle of sub description and it was so meditative and mesmerizing and I thought that's
00:41:27
Speaker
Like, has anyone lately watched a waddlebird do that? And thanks for the entertainment. Waddlebird, yeah. Amazing. The update in your feed. Exactly, it was a big news day. Sometimes it's a lot. Yeah, that's a special moment to behold that. All right.
Food Preservation and Lifestyle Choices
00:41:47
Speaker
When we talk about food, it brings us to our next point, which is for us a really big part of our meaning making has been growing food and preserving food and I feel like this needs a mention because we spend time doing it every single day whether it's foraging whether it's tending to the garden or planting or watering or weeding or harvesting or sowing whatever it is I mean particularly at this time of year being spring
00:42:19
Speaker
we've got food on our on our brains. And especially because we've just come back from being away, the garden was overrun to kind of get it into back into shape. um And eating a lot of originless food as well. While we're away. Yeah. And being very aware of that. Yeah. Well, originless to us. Yeah. yeah Sort of anonymous to us food. Yeah. um Definitely. And it's been really good way to to ground ourselves has been to eat our way home.
00:42:47
Speaker
um things that we're we've preserved in our cellar or um um food that we planted before we went away that we're now harvesting and fermenting and preserving and it's just been yeah really beautiful way to land back home is just to yeah be be part of the sea this current season again I've really enjoyed that so definitely that's sort of up on our list news and just a way to um see ourselves in relationship in relation to the earth as as a creature who needs to eat and to take that responsibility for the food we eat has been really important to us as part of our belonging to the cycle of life and to belonging to this beautiful patch of Jarrah Country.
00:43:42
Speaker
Do you ever put a percentage on it like some people do? They say I eat 76% of my food from my own property or that I've hunted myself. Do you know roughly what percentage of food you've either foraged or grown or hunted? We used to know. yeah and't really pay attention to that anymore. We sort of grow as much as we can. We swap lots of food with other people. We're part of a food co-op, so we get local food that another way. Yeah, because we, yeah, we sort of, last year with our animals, we had no pregnancies, so normally we're eating
00:44:25
Speaker
all of our own protein animal protein and we get you know time to time big influxes of unwanted roosters and so but a lot of our meat supply has gone down so we have been purchasing from local farm farms which we haven't had to do that much um um in recent years but yeah so noticing we are buying at the moment and I think it's just because we're grounding back home after being away and um but noticing that we are probably buying more food.
00:45:03
Speaker
um there was a huge amount of food gifted to us when we came home there were baskets of produce and preserves and bunnies and bunnies that we didn't have to shoot um or gut or feel gut and skin and yeah we've just started going hunting again. I think like our life way is in preparation so that if the industrial food grids or the even the small scale local regenerative farming food grid goes down, we're not going to panic. We're also completely prepared so if we say we can't afford a water bill and they say well we'll turn it off,
00:45:44
Speaker
you know That's ah another line in the sand, like the the the Facebook bot. We're not like just waiting to be sitting ducks. We will continue to maintain our processes as things get harder, because they will get harder.
Community Sufficiency vs. Self-Sufficiency
00:46:00
Speaker
and yeah The course that we're running in a few weeks' time is really about... It's a tour.
00:46:06
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. It's a tour all day. House and Garden Tour is really speaking and showing all the future-proofing that we're doing in order to be continued to live in an ecological economy and continue to live well and with meaning and to have abundance so that we can share outside of our Household into the into community sufficiency, into the community economy space, which I think is the next point, is community sufficiency. Do you want to go for it talk about that, Mark? Yes. um So I know a lot of people sort of in the homesteading sphere talk about the importance of um household sufficiency, self sufficiency is the term.
00:46:53
Speaker
a lot of people use and I can definitely see the importance of that and I feel like we um thought that was a really good goal um that was really important for us to be self-sufficient but then as we you know we're on a quarter acre here so as we started to live a more um sufficient life way we really saw that self-sufficiency wasn't the goal that we were aiming for that it's It's not fun, it's stressful, it's too it's it's too laborious to be self-sufficient, but to be community sufficient is relying on each other, that people rely on you, you rely on it each other. the Other people um were much more interested in the flow of gifts economy, which is all about your relationship in
00:47:45
Speaker
um in you know where you are in relationship to other people and it's fun. It's so much more enjoyable to be community sufficient because you don't have to be the expert in in everything. You can just be good at some things and other people can be good at other things and it's a way to to help your skills, help hone your skills and help honor other people's skills as they gift their produce that they've proudly grown across the fence and you can reciprocate. And what I've noticed in really leaning further and further into community sufficiency is that
00:48:23
Speaker
each individual and or each household has abundances at different times and or scarcity at different times and so that um because there's about 80 households locally that we're constantly in a flow of gifts exchange with it means that when so when people are scarce the abundance can go into those into those places and and vice versa. I like to call it an indebted economy rather than a debt economy.
00:48:53
Speaker
where there is a social bonds and indebtedness to um loved others in the community and they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily even our besties. They're people who have a very similar ethic for a flow of gifts economy. So they're not, yeah, there's quite a lot of those.
00:49:13
Speaker
80 households that are not, we're only close through the exchange. Yeah, the summer are also besties, but um I really love that. And also the neighborhood sphere, how important that is.
00:49:27
Speaker
It also feels like everybody has a role that you know people often say to us, you know ah i'm i'm you know I have this a disability, you know I can't grow food or I can't ride a bike. you know what is What can my role be? And I love that in community in the community-sufficient world that whatever you can contribute is a gift. And especially looking at children,
00:49:52
Speaker
Now over to you Woody, that they have such ah an important role to play in in the community-sufficient world. Beautiful setup. You want to talk about play and exploring and learning through play.
00:50:11
Speaker
Do you want Katie to have a more leading question? What is the question?
Learning Through Play and Mentorship
00:50:17
Speaker
Do you like to play? Yeah. Tell us about that. Go on.
00:50:23
Speaker
um what I like to play. is Is play important? yeah Yeah. Do you wish that adults could play a bit more? Yeah. I wish that dad would play. Oh it's good to talk to a kid about this because as a kid you just want to play all the time don't you? And then as an adult you forget what the deal, like what's the big deal? Why does it feel so good? I don't know. I guess it's getting energy out and having heaps of fun. It gets really annoying that adults don't like to play. what What do you think that's about Woody? I would rather stand around the app all day.
00:51:02
Speaker
like we're doing now instead of rolling around outside of the grass. So it is, yeah, I think it's really great to have kids around you, whether you're they're your biological relations or not.
00:51:18
Speaker
I think it's really great to have kids in your life to help reignite your sense of play, whether it's, you know, we like to play music together, and um Patrick and Woody like to play cricket, and now I like to play cricket, we play darts of a night, you know, we can rumble with each other, but yeah, just lots of storytelling and Yeah, it's it's it's true that we probably don't play enough. But we also have been kids. And I remember going to adult parties just thinking, oh my God, kill me now. if This is what being an adult is, where you just sit around and talk and drink wine. I do not want to be an adult. And now that I'm an adult,
00:52:00
Speaker
Not that I drink wine, but I do like to stand and talk to people. I met some adults that are still wanting to play and like kids. Yeah. Really? We just had a wonderful volunteer group. Yeah, but he's 27. He's still an adult. Yeah, that's an adult adult. Yeah, but it's not like old adults. Yeah, it's true. it's not he's still got He's still probably just growing up. Medium rare. Probably just growing out of his fun habit. Well, hopefully he won't. And hopefully... yeah maybe this number nine on play could be also play slash don't have children too late in your life yeah because it's such an interesting thing i feel very much my
00:52:45
Speaker
two boys, 12 and 22, you fellows, you know, Zeph is moving around and bumping me on the the life cycle a wheel from into eldership or into um Yeah, a different time in my life. So you were 32 when he was born and then 42 when Woody was born. Yeah, exactly. You were way too old when I was born. Yeah, we shouldn't have waited. We waited eight years, we shouldn't have waited. Yeah. But we did. We waited a long time. And we're glad that we did because here you are. Yeah, you wouldn't be here. Yeah, because you are. We have some other kids here. Yeah, be some other kid. And they were. And they were quite a few. They were quite a few that didn't make it. Yeah. Yeah. Some of your siblings.
00:53:36
Speaker
But they didn't get born, they were miscarriages. Yeah, but play I think is different for your age and and my age, Woody. Yeah. Because i I like to play with story and writing.
00:54:02
Speaker
which is a bit different to your kind of play, yeah which might be at times wilder. But I do like to meet in the middle, like with cricket and darts and like actual, even just throwing or kicking a ball with you, is really yeah it's it's fun.
00:54:20
Speaker
and playing music together as a family, as I said before, that's just joyous. yeah More play and poking the old people. We're up to number 10. Are we? Yeah. Yeah. Who's going to deliver it? that i ah It is. So it's like, it's not the other end of play, but it's, um, so we have kids at one end of the spectrum to help us, um, remind us of our playful sides. And then at the other side, um for us it's been really um a joyous part of our journey to seek out mentors and elders to learn from. And yeah, we I feel so lucky that we have such beautiful elders in our lives and such beautiful children in our lives and that we can be sandwiched between between them.
00:55:13
Speaker
and we yeah We have different elders in our lives who remind us and who can teach us different different aspects of aging and um what it means to be a human and yeah we have know some really wild and radical elders and we have some really quiet and humble elders we have some really deep listeners and um and holding and wise generous elders and yeah some elders who are just um yeah really silly and light-hearted and they're still
00:55:51
Speaker
playful even at at older in their old older years and we've really cultivated those relationships too because um we were seeing an absence of eldership in our in our community and we were noticing reluctant elders that weren't given the status of eldership and so I feel like the last 10-15 years we've been really cultivating the status of elders to to a rightful place and that's not a powering over place because that's not what an elder is.
00:56:29
Speaker
That's what a politician is or a captain of industry is, but um you know a true leader is is someone who doesn't necessarily offer their opinion or advice, but is a go-to person for a range of challenges and crises we might have in our our lives. and And so, yeah, mentors ah fit into that as well because mentors are generally younger. Having said all this, I don't think there's any age definitiveness with any of these terms. And you see older kids at forest and free um being elders to the younger kids and certainly to seeing them mentor as well, just quite spontaneously.
00:57:25
Speaker
I think industrial processes and models and schooling funnels us into age-specific, engineered um social relations. And species-specific. I feel like we know we have also sought out elders of other species. yeah And I think living with ah a dog who is so wild and also so domestic But in his, you know, he's in dog years, a hundred or so now. So he's, yeah, just to to watch him age and to, you know, as we're aging together, zero is aging with us. And yeah, just to have his wild spirit amongst us, he's definitely a teacher for us.
00:58:06
Speaker
And as he ages, he's getting under our feet. And so for me, it's a constant daily lesson of patience. I feel like that's an opportunity, an invitation not to steer away from it like I might have once done, but actually to go into those relationships and go into those co-unions, I guess, with a body that is aging and finding its way to the decay years, the autumn years.
00:58:35
Speaker
Yeah, and to open to any fear that might arise, yeah, open to an awareness around that I think is a very beautiful thing and a very ah liberating thing too to be fear free of fear of mortality and of aging is is definitely something I'm open to and loving being in that space.
00:58:59
Speaker
Well, thank you for such a generous and expansive list of 10 things. And I'm wondering if there's a thread that weaves them all together thematically, or, you know, what would happen if someone just off their own deck, under their own steam, went ahead and set all of these things in motion? Like, what does this generate? A very rich life.
00:59:23
Speaker
Yeah, and I think a relationship with, as Meg said before, courting the wild twin, a relationship with feraldom and with domestication. And the mystery and the chance and unknown. Yeah, and then the domestic is the beauty and pragmatism of like I guess a neopresent practice of of permaculture which is rooted radically in subsistence economy making.
00:59:55
Speaker
not wanting to give any more sense than we already do to big powerful forces, not wanting to feed the machine, the global capitalist industrial machine. um And yeah, I feel like, yeah, they're practical, ethical, poetical, political things.
01:00:21
Speaker
And yeah, that's the domestic aspect, which we're really alive to. So I think, yeah, I think probably what ties everything together is those 10 is that is the integration of the wild and domestic. I like it.
Artist as Family Tour and Patreon Shoutout
01:00:40
Speaker
And you'll be demonstrating that to a group of people pretty soon. Would you like to just, you did mention the all day house and garden tour, but if this just so happens to meet people's eardrums before that time and they wanna come along, yeah, what what does that entail? So it is from, is it 10 to four? I can't remember. 10 to four on Sunday, November 17. Is it our place here? Tree Elbow in Central Vic.
01:01:10
Speaker
and we have more details on our website artistasfamily.is and it's just it's a house and garden and commons tour where we take people through our processes and sort of the practical processes but also the thinking behind them.
01:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, while also like all the workshops and tours we run here, it is also a time to connect with people. So it's not just informational um sharing. it It's also that, yeah, connecting with each person that comes is really important upfront so that, yeah, we we hear hear from everybody why they've come and and that really grounds It creates a community for the day, which which is just always really nourishing. and
01:02:01
Speaker
yeah yeah absolutely even just that pausing reflecting and feeling into what you might want to grow in your own life and then coming and seeing that in practice and then of course that incredible mysterious network that flourishes from all of the people that you meet on the day who are obviously of like mind and spirit so so many great things can happen between the hours of 10 to 4 at Tree Elbow
01:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, well thank you so much for spending time today. Thanks Katie. I love hanging out with you. And Woody's gone off to play so he's not here to say goodbye. Perfect.
01:02:42
Speaker
That was Meg, Patrick and Blackwood of Artist's Family, and you can find all the good things they're up to in the show notes, including their house and garden tour. A huge and appreciative shout out to everyone who's supporting the show on Patreon, and a special welcome to Annie of Shortacre Farm and Rebecca who joined us this week.
01:03:01
Speaker
Hello! Thank you so much! You can have a squiz, I bought what we're up to at patreon.com forward slash reskillience and keep your eyes peeled in the next couple of days for a little gift from me to you. Oh, and while I think of it, don't go using the Patreon app because Apple have just slapped a 30% fee on top of those pledges which means you're actually paying Apple, not creators, so I recommend using the desktop version and sidestepping that particular shitfuckery.
01:03:28
Speaker
Ok folks, thank you so much for listening and see you next Monday for a list of 11, yes 11, with a too cool for school dirtbag rich