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It's the little things with Kat Lavers
561 Plays8 days ago
After countless requests I present to you: Kat Lavers 🐈⬛
Wicking buckets, magic bug buttons, interspecies adventures, listener questions and more!
Kat and I recorded this convo at her kitchen table, surrounded by ferments and preserves and garlands of dried chilli.
At just 1/14th of an acre, Kat's urban homestead The Plummery has been known to pump out 428kg of fresh produce in any given year, meeting almost all the fruit/veggie requirements for two people. I M P R E S S I V E S T U F F.
Kat is a beloved permaculture educator, passionate gardener, and sustainable food system furtherer whose compassion for all living things could fill five football stadiums, whilst also being the poster child for small wonders.
You may have seen Kat featured on Gardening Australia, Happen Films, myriad permie/green media channels, and in this one-and-a-bit hour yarn we plumb the depths of her mind, heart and utterly delightful psyche through her list of 10 things.
LINKY POOS
Kat on Instagram (which she doesn’t really use)
Wildlife Homestead YouTube Channel
[BOOK] Once ~ Annie Raser-Rowland
Reskillience with Annie Raser-Rowland
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Transcript
Introduction and Joyful Experiences
00:00:03
Speaker
Hey, hey this is Katie, and you're tuned into Reskillience, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if the blow-up kayak of civilisation brings yet another leak. At our Women's Circle this week, the one facilitated by Meg Ollman, who we've heard from in episodes 2 and 32, we were invited to share what we're loving right now. What's really lighting us up?
00:00:32
Speaker
And besides bike rides, fresh basil and accidentally on purpose squirting myself with the hose, I'm loving ants.
The Fascinating World of Sugar Ants
00:00:40
Speaker
Specifically the sugar ants who've been congregating on our kitchen benchtop. I know that ants aren't everyone's cup of tea. That people's knee-jerk reaction is to set the traps and lay the poison. But I find them really rather endearing.
00:00:56
Speaker
Our resident ants are quite large and easy to observe. You can see their pincers, cinched waists and long, elegant antennae in exquisite detail. They're very well-mannered, too, appearing on time to mop up our honey spills and breakfast entrails before politely disappearing. As a festive gift, we left them an empty one-litre flagon of organic maple syrup encrusted with sugar crystals. They worked around the clock to hoover up every last molecule of glucose, leaving a sparkling clean vessel just a few days later. They didn't try and bite us, nor do they seem perturbed by my planet-sized eyeballs looming over them as they carry out their ant business.
00:01:37
Speaker
watching as they hold their little ant conferences, brush their little ant legs and scuttle away on secret ant errands. One really cute thing they do is kiss, like hardcore tonguing for minutes at a time, and this mouth-to-mouth behaviour is quite mesmerising for a creep like me.
00:01:57
Speaker
My first guess was that they were feeding each other, regurgitating food into each other's gobs like silent seagulls. So I looked it up and discovered that this kissing has a name, trophallaxis. It is indeed a method of feeding, but so much more. It's how they communicate, identifying nest mates and networking within the tribe. It's how new ants bond and separated buddies reunite.
00:02:24
Speaker
Researchers recently learned that the fluid passed from mouth to mouth contains proteins and tiny molecular signals that directly affect the growth and roles of individual ants, as if the whole colony is shaping itself via stories encoded in spit. Of course, this is all just what we see through our human lens, our human sciences, which can never truly fathom what it's like to be an ant.
00:02:50
Speaker
So I'm going to set myself a challenge to talk about Trophallaxis at Christmas lunch, and possibly, if I've had enough brandy custard, the monolithic space creatures who might be watching us do weird homo sapiens shit. So vast as to be completely invisible. And all we can hope is that if we get in their way, if we get swept down the intergalactic plug hole, they might tenderly fish us out, just like the bedraggled sugar ants I'm constantly rescuing from the sink.
Guest Introduction: Cat Levers on Sustainability
00:03:17
Speaker
It's all relative.
00:03:19
Speaker
We are ants in the forest and dust motes in the cosmos. Another reason why bugs and small wonders are on my mind is today's interview. My guest is the much-loved Cat Levers who is a passionate gardener, permaculture designer, teacher and sustainable food systems advocate who grows hundreds of kilos of fresh food on just one fourteenth of an acre. I know many of you are already familiar with Cat's Home and Garden, the plumbery in Melbourne, Naam, but if you're not, it's a rambunctious demonstration of everything that's possible in 100 square metres.
00:03:55
Speaker
The plumbery is occasionally open for tours and always on hand for inspiration in the numerous short documentaries and segments in which it features. A classic is the Happen films doco about Kat, her quails and her garden that has attracted millions of views over the years and in a cosmic turn of events I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days with Kat and her partner Hemi while George shot a new film with them to be released early next year.
00:04:22
Speaker
I discovered that Kat, like me, has a soft spot for creepy crawlies, and excitedly introduced us to so many tiny beings in her tiny backyard oasis which pumps with biodiversity. When we weren't ogling pregnant spiders or hoverfly larvae, we were being fed some of the best meals of our lives. Not in the style of ants, if you're wondering. We ate homemade blue corn tortillas with ricotta chilli sauce.
00:04:49
Speaker
Homemade pizzas adorned with garden salsa verde and a homemade sushi lunch that featured no less than five Japanese pickles from Cat's Clever Friend, which effectively stitched us into the plumber's extended web of connections and gifted condiments.
00:05:05
Speaker
I love when these podcast interviews are encased in a bigger and smaller story, something that's genuine and memorable and integrated. I really hope you can hear that goodwill in this conversation and not the creaking of my overextended gut. Cat's 10 things are freaking gorgeous, as is she. And I'm so excited to release this as the second last installment of the series, which will take us into 2025.
Challenges of Urban Living and Gardening
00:05:33
Speaker
I'd like to dedicate this episode to Sunshine, not just because I'm recording this on the summer solstice, but because a wonderful human from China named Sunshine, who volunteered at Meliodora earlier in the year, became a patron of the podcast this week and sent me a long heartfelt letter slash email from Peru.
00:05:52
Speaker
She's been listening to resilience while traveling the world for the past seven months, following her passion for permaculture, community and connection. It was such a joy to catch your story, sunshine. And I hope this conversation provides comfort and shelter as you move into the rainy season in the clouds. Solstice blessings to all of you, whether you're bathed in light or swaddled in the night. Thanks for listening. And here is the delightful Cat Levers.
00:06:20
Speaker
I miss the night sky and I miss deep breaths of clean air in my lungs. Those things are very sadly lacking where we are, but I also love being able to ride my bike everywhere, including to you know many of my closest friends and you know that the music and the culture and everything that's going on around us here is exciting.
00:06:44
Speaker
um So there's pros and cons and um you know I think about what it might be like to live a little bit further out and yeah I so definitely don't want to be getting in a car every time I need to do an essential life errand. So there's definitely there's good and bad things about being here.
00:07:01
Speaker
But I think being in the city besides being close to my family, which is important, is more of the world's people now live in cities and the problems that we're facing need to be solved in cities as well as in more regional rural areas. It's where a lot of the decision making inertia is.
00:07:21
Speaker
And so I feel quite motivated to try and contribute to some changing attitudes and behaviours in cities, specifically. um Yeah, I don't think we can afford to ignore them. And also the city has got huge resources available that we don't always have further out. There's incredible amounts of hard surface, which is obviously bad in many ways, um bad for soil health and bad for holding onto heat that can become really dangerous, but extreme amounts of runoff that we can direct to doing good things with. You know, we can double the rainfall of garden beds by having a similar sized roof next to them, shedding water into them.
00:08:05
Speaker
and we've got a lot of resources, you know, coffee grounds spring to mind oddly and I thought it was a very coffee-loving city but um we've also got grass clippings, we've, you know, got all these cardboard boxes, we've got heaps of food scraps coming out of hospitality and all the essential ingredients really for maintaining quite fertile soils with good irrigation. so There's exciting prospects going on here and of course people nearby by lots of people so yeah we we have everything that we need um yes so that's what i I want to work on and contribute to. Yeah that's really inspiring and comforting for everyone who may feel like they're not quite doing you know permaculture right or environmentalism right if they're not in this very particular setting so
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, if you'd like to share a little bit about the plumbering in terms of what you are demonstrating here, like the quantity of food that you're growing in a certain amount of space and some of those design elements that really show what is possible, even in this old home that I know has its own set of problems and all challenges. Yeah, what are some of those key things that you're showing off here? Sure. Well, I want to say, just in case I forget to say it, I don't think that Growing food will solve all the world's problems um and I i think it it may even be dangerous to think that I think people need to be engaged in a lot of other levels as well politically and um and not just hiding away in a garden growing food, but that said it can make a really significant contribution to a lot of issues that we're facing and can cool down the surrounding environment and help with the extreme heat waves that are our most dangerous form of natural disaster in south-eastern Australia. Obviously helps with biodiversity loss, helps with food security, helps with yet more sustainable food systems, helps with physical and mental health. and
00:10:02
Speaker
can help with social health as well because people often bond over swapping produce and it's how I've met many of my neighbours by knocking on their doors at this time of year with a bowl of plums and saying hi I'm Kat. So I do think
Gardening Practices for Resilience
00:10:16
Speaker
it's it's helpful but it's not the only part of what's needed. This could actually lead into point number one. Perfect. If you like. Let's go friends. And so this one I've i've called Go For The Greens um And to give a bit of background to that, yeah the plumbery, so it's a 14th of an acre or 280 square meters as a block size but that includes a house. um So the the growing area is about 100 square meters and um that includes paths and things as well that you must have to get to all of your produce. And we have been collecting data here for more than 10 years
00:10:55
Speaker
now which gosh it's a pain but but it's really helpful and it's just not enough data to really prove the value of the assistance so I'm glad that we've done it and um so there's there's a lot of data so I don't want to overwhelm people with giving too much but so maybe I'll say the highest yield year we've had so far has been 450 kilos of herbs, veggies, fruit, eggs, tiny tiny amount of meat just from a few male quails.
00:11:27
Speaker
I did some calculations recently that were a bit exciting looking at the Australian dietary guidelines, which specify the weight of a serve of vegetables and a serve of fruit and how much you're supposed to have in your diet. And it turns out that if we assume that we are eating every single serve of vegetables and fruit every day for a whole year, I know I am. Which is like, you know, let's be honest, probably not because we like to go out and see friends and we probably don't eat five serves of veggies every single day. Hopefully we make up for it anyway.
00:12:03
Speaker
um ah In that high year the plumbery produced 92% of the veggie requirement for two people. Oh my gosh! I know, that's what I thought. And 70% of the fruit serves for two people plus um the equivalent of 10 chicken eggs a week to share between two people.
00:12:23
Speaker
So that kind of blew me away. That is amazing. It is amazing, isn't it? But I do need to put some caveats in there. We definitely wouldn't have as much diversity as people who can walk into a shop and select, you know, 20 different kinds of produce at any particular week. Yeah. So um probably unacceptable low levels of diversity for some people to be realistic about it.
00:12:44
Speaker
and a diet that's heavily biased towards leafy greens because um as we'll talk about the greens are easy so yeah I just yeah I don't want people to romanticize it you know in the sense that it's wonderful and we have everything you know but that said I think it really proves how valuable these sorts of home gardens can be at a small scale um and given that um you know the greens are dominant in there. I can only imagine the volumes of them, Katie, because they barely show up on the scale. they' so light Yeah, but we do have yeah we have some heavy crops in there like chocos and things like that. We're not trying to maximise the weight. um Weight's a very poor measure of you know the quality of the produce, the
00:13:28
Speaker
and ecological sensitivity with which it's been grown, the nutritional value of it. um Yeah, if we were trying to game that, we would grow a lot more than three zucchinis, as I like to say. And yet, I think it really helps people to grab onto, well, that is a really meaningful contribution by any measure. And what I wanted to say about it as well is that is with about four hours of labour for one person a week once set up so there's a lot of work in the set up of course but once it's there yeah it's it's it's there and you have um that system going for you and I had um you know a couple of years where I was going through a really rough time personally I got quite recently actually and then when I got
00:14:12
Speaker
better from that I just had to throw everything at my kind of professional work really to catch up on a few things. I just completely let go and I was really doing very bare minimum during that time and I'm actually very grateful in retrospect because the production fell to about 300 kilos for a couple of years there but Yeah, it didn't drop below that. Yeah, I guess it highlights that level of resilience that a good system does have. And yeah, again, the diversity dropped. We had a lot more edible weeds than natural target vegetables, but ah perennials, the edible weeds, the fruit trees were really strong. And so at no point were we in any danger of running out of like, you know, grains or, you know, things to eat there. So yeah, and I find it really exciting.
00:15:00
Speaker
um So my message that number one in this series is go for greens because they will be very reliable for you and give fantastic yields from a small space. Yeah and fantastic B vitamins and if you want to be reductionist about your health so many people have trouble with synthesizing folate like a honey folate like 40% of the population I mean they've really like they love to home in on this gene mutation that so many of us have but the reality is you know a lot of foods are fortified with synthetic b9 which serves its purpose but greens are flush with b vitamins and that activated folate and so people like me and i know geord we both really emphasize greens because
00:15:43
Speaker
we need that like real support for cellular energy production ah so yeah I'm always really thrilled that greens are not only like one of the easiest things to grow and the most abundant but actually for me like I desperately need that green mass quantity in my diet and I love that you can cook them in so many different ways including a delicious pie which of course you need the cheese because the cheese is the perfect vehicle for the bee. It's just like a classic age-old symbiosis between the yellows and the greens. Oh, that's good to know. Yeah, I don't have any training in nutrition or medicine, so I'll leave that to you. but But even that aside, you know, the sustainability impact that people can have by growing those locally and not having them packaged in plastic, put on a refrigerated truck, you know, driven from miles and miles away.
00:16:27
Speaker
it's really significant and we know statistically there's some of the highest wasted ingredients in Australian kitchens, greens and herbs and many of them grow quite well in part shade um which is obviously a real issue and more more so these days in the cities so there's some yeah it's about five different reasons why we should go for the greens yeah but yeah that that will add substantially to yeah the value people get out of their gardens if they go for those first. I wonder if yeah you just want to say a bit more about how farmers are so valuable in our lives and that we're not trying to be farmers. Yeah definitely and I would never call myself an urban farmer um and and you know this is just me so I don't um mean to disrespect anyone who feels that's a good label for what they do um but for me farming is it's an activity where you're supplying more than your household
00:17:16
Speaker
and your livelihood is producing food for other people and neither of those are true for me um and really like it's an incredibly difficult thing to master on a small scale um using sustainable techniques and yeah you really have to be on your game there to make a profit from projects as you and I both know it's yeah it's um Yeah, it's pretty rough. ah you know you um I heard a well-known urban farmer say once that if if he had to weed a carrot bed more than once, he couldn't make a profit from it and he should just plough it back into the ground. like it's It's brutal, the economic lens that we place on those people, unfortunately.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, it's also, I should say that the level of risk farmers take on on our behalf. It's crazy. You know, it's kind of like like a form of gambling. Um, it is a form of gambling. You have to invest a lot of money and time and effort in putting those crops in and who knows what the weather's going to dish out to you. So on the flip side, as a home gardener, one of the advantages we've got is that we are motivated to eat whatever grows that we can. Um, we'll eat it in whatever form it comes.
00:18:28
Speaker
You know, um we don't need our carrots to be, you know, the the standard carrot shape. But they need to be comical. We pulled a very rude carrot out last night, people. Yeah, it was pretty funny. But of course, carrots of all shapes and sizes are very welcome here. And we'll eat them if they've got a bit of bug damage. um You know, and so much produce is getting rejected for stupid cosmetic reasons, unfortunately.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah it's a very different thing farming ah and but it also means it's actually a lot easier to grow food at home and just eat it yourself with none of that pressure. Yeah I'm so grateful for I don't know if it's like blissful naivety or risk tolerance or whatever it is that those individuals have that means they're going to take that particular endeavor on and thank God for those people. But also how can we have a ah world that supports them like rain hail or shine or drought or flood or whatever it is. Yeah, we need to love them and celebrate them and support them. And I know that can be difficult sometimes, but I did hear um Dr. Rachel Carey who's a fantastic researcher from Melbourne Uni talking about
00:19:33
Speaker
you know just like an extra 10% of um local food being purchased it it adds up to yeah huge amounts of money so you know it's not like we have to get everything from those producers if it's hard to find or it's a bit expensive for people to manage but just a little bit extra um and again it's about more people doing it rather than a couple of people you know doing everything so yeah just just do the um the thing that's possible for you and that's a great contribution. Yeah awesome Cat.
00:20:02
Speaker
All right, well, shall we get on to number two? Number two, and follow the smoothies. These taglines are whole crafts in themselves. Yeah, so let's explain this. um So I i practice permaculture design, which is a lot of different versions of what that means to different people and what you might have heard.
00:20:26
Speaker
But for me, it's like a really solid design approach that leads to outcomes that actually work, guided by a set of principles that learn from patterns in nature and patterns in traditional cultures that have lasted a lot longer than our our one mind.
00:20:42
Speaker
And yeah, so so using those sort of principles and and also some ethics to guide us towards really good outcomes.
Teaching and Expanding Perspectives
00:20:49
Speaker
And um my friends at Very but Edible Gardens, Adam Grubb and Dan Palmer, put together a really nice design process diagram to explain that and you know teach that very well. And in their work, they talk about tensions when we're doing design.
00:21:06
Speaker
And tensions are those things that clash, um that create um conflict or inconvenience or i think you know things that don't work. um you know It's the tree that's blocking out your winter sun or the driveway that's eroding before your eyes because it was placed in the wrong place in the landscape. um So tensions are, you know, and they're a real thing and we can look for them and then we can design to avoid them or to mitigate them.
00:21:33
Speaker
But I've been thinking if there's such a thing as attention, there's got to be the opposite of attention. And I just made up the word smoothie. It's a smoothie. It's working really well. And and yeah, so what isn't working is often a lot more obvious because you can see the drama that it's creating in whatever way. But smoothies often go unnoticed because it's just seamless.
00:21:56
Speaker
um You know, it's like good facilitation, you know, you could just fade into the background and let the conversation happen. So smoothies, we should sort of tune in and try and actively look for. And you know, one example is you go to a lot of home gardens, I do design consultations, and you go, all right, so you can see all these issues here, but what's actually working really well for this family? And inevitably, it'll be greens and herbs, as we've just talked about, because they they are quite easy to grow in a lot of contexts.
00:22:24
Speaker
Here at the plumbery we've got a really tricky spot in um the area outside the back door which is under some laser light that was there when we moved in. It gets dusty, I can't actually clean it properly because of the design of the structure and also blocks UV which i I'm undecided about how relevant that is but what it contributes to is a microclimate that is very difficult for plants to grow in without a lot of work to maintain them and after yeah where are we at now like 15 years of trying and the one plant which is really a smoothie in there is the rocoto chilli a perennial chilli chilli variety and having noticed that that is happy it it wins now i don't necessarily need like 10 kilos of really hot chillies but because it's working it's the smoothie in there we're just going to go with it and become like a hot sauce supplier for our extended family networks
00:23:21
Speaker
so um So yeah, smoothies. And I guess a social example of that I've noticed is asking for help from neighbours, um because the more that we ask for help, the more they feel that they can ask us for help. And the more that we see each other, the more we interweave our lives together and start to come up with more ways to have fun together and, you know, spend time. Yeah, whatever that means to to you and others, that follow the smoothies in your life.
00:23:49
Speaker
I love the the twist and my expectations because I was thinking of a big green smoothie. But also your social example, Kat, and obviously because I'm yeah so curious about people's lives and how they arrive, where they're at. has your Have you followed the smoothies in your professional life, in your creative life?
00:24:10
Speaker
like Do you believe in leaning into those things that come quite naturally to us or have you actually tried to develop gnarlier parts of yourself? um Well I guess for me um teaching has always been a smoothie. It's something that I enjoy doing. i I seem to get really good feedback but there's also complacency as well in there I suppose and it's nice to push your boundaries a little bit So um I guess in that example I've tried to expand the edge at which I'm comfortable teaching by doing it in some places that have been challenging like in Mongolia and also including a course in the Gobi Desert um and working with nomadic herders, cooperative farmers and some aid agency staff under mentorship from um one of my teachers, Rick Coleman and also in Malaysia working with the legendary Rosemary Morrow
00:25:00
Speaker
ah working with um refugees in Kuala Lumpur from a lot of countries there and they've been yeah incredibly challenging contexts to teach in but ultimately the most fulfilling and I feel the most impactful based on what I've seen happen since. Yeah so following smoothies but you know adding some like chunky ingredients. I was just thinking we add um nuts and seeds into our smoothie because chewing them activates our digestive enzymes so you actually get more out of the smoothie experience. Yeah. Oh man, just the, the analogies never end. All right, let's like slip and slide on down to number three. Okay, number three, the magic bug button. Oh my God. I'm enjoying this so much. Okay. Sorry.
00:25:47
Speaker
um I um updated my iPhone recently from 7 to 14. That must have been not a whole overhaul. Yeah so this is really normal for me and I always buy them secondhand because you pay a pretty stupid premium for new products and of course it's better and environmentally.
00:26:08
Speaker
I tend to be on these really long upgrade cycles um for environmental reasons but also because I just feel like the major leap in benefit was actually having a smartphone in the first place and then all these upgrades are just tiny incremental benefits really so I don't really care about them I do care when the apps are not working anymore and the security updates are not coming and the batteries flat and so I decided okay it's it's time yeah so anyway iPhone 14 and and I've been like whoa look at this and my partner's like oh you'd spend there for a while
00:26:48
Speaker
i'm been amazeed but and One of the things that has been quite good is the camera is a little bit better than the iPhone 7 and um as you know we've been talking about the last day you've been here I spend a lot of time taking photos of small critters in the garden im always out there following you know something that's new something I'm i'm noticing and anyway so I was out there and this often happens when I'm hand watering which is one of the reasons I still do like to do hand watering instead of always using the drip. I saw this big spider um just suddenly drop and then scurry away and then immediately after it I saw this wasp just sort of you know follow the same path and I was like
00:27:33
Speaker
Is that spider running away from a wasp? Or if I just sort of construed that because it's yeah a convenient like narrative in there. Anyway, grab my lovely new iPhone 14 or second hand iPhone 14 and um I got a photo of this wasp and zoomed in on it, which is pretty cool because these things are quite small. And anyway, so when I when i did that, ah this little button appeared.
00:27:59
Speaker
And I hit the little button and it came up with an ID. What? Yeah, I know and so for years people have been telling me about iNaturalist and I have played with that but my experience with things like that had been you know I aim it at an Ivy Leaf and it says it's a Choco plan. So I've been like healthily skeptical of those things. But like anything, you know, it's getting better over time. um And this is like an inbuilt tool now, at least in the iPhone software. OK, so when I zoomed in on it and I'm going to show you Katie this, even though we're recording, so you can't see. But there's a magic bug button that appears down below. yeah And when I pressed it, it comes up with Entypus unifasciatus. And I click on that.
00:28:44
Speaker
Um, and it can take me to a Wikipedia page, um, where it talks about this being a spider wasp. I'm going to read it to you under the ecology section. Female wasps paralyze large spiders and deposit them in burrows. The wasp lays a fertilized egg upon the spider. After hatching the lava feeds on the living but paralyzed spider until maturing into a pupa that overwinters and emerges as a winged adult next summer.
00:29:14
Speaker
So you bet that spider was running away from This crazy crazy wasp that's coming to eat it alive is gruesome Yes, so gruesome and so I gotta say like I don't know that the species is correct here But certainly the genus and you could probably almost definitely get the family if you get a good enough photo here. I am Definitely for anything that helps people understand what's going on around them and connect with the natural world more
00:29:46
Speaker
So um yeah, there you go, the magic bug
Ecological Perspectives and Empathy
00:29:48
Speaker
button. I bet you didn't think we were going to go into like iPhone upgrades is one of our points here. I really hope so. Are you going to talk more about bugs in your following points? I don't know. Is that the main bug department? Probably probably the main one. but Yeah, I also um I also found a black chipped orange ichnumen wasp in the tomato bed as well through a similar process.
00:30:14
Speaker
um And it turned out they are actually the predator of the looper caterpillars that have been a problem for me in recent years Yeah, so um yeah, I guess one of the exciting things that the plumber has been ah Just the emergence of so many new species every year you know almost every day in spring where we have this sort of peak of um activity going on it's it's just been mind-blowing and um yeah it's just opened up this whole new level of joy that I'm getting from seeing yeah all all this some cacophony of species around me. Yeah there's something really uniquely magical about
00:30:52
Speaker
witnessing, perceiving things that have been right under your nose. I'm always amazed with little birds that people haven't known are in their environment before, especially things like the spotted and strident partalotes, which are just bejeweled and the most like incredible little characters you've ever seen. But so, so many of my friends haven't had them in their conscious awareness and so when you you suddenly point out that this thing is has been there in the garden and it's seeing this beautiful kind of wind chiming tingling song and then it opens up all of these possibilities like the invisibilia and the texture of the world around us suddenly like comes to the fore and I think bugs are such a great gateway into that awe and wonderment that obviously and profoundly connects us in a way that
00:31:36
Speaker
is kind of the on-ramp to a more kind and custodial relationship then with place. And yeah, and we spoke off air to Cat a little about how, you know, the plumbery is all about the small and what's possible in these these micro kind of spaces and how much richness is there in and noticing those predator-prey cycles in your own backyard on any scale, like it's going to be there.
00:32:03
Speaker
But I also heard you speaking at George a little earlier about peoples. a lot of, I don't know if it's cultural or instinctual, but there's some deeper version that we have to creepy crawlies. yeah And I think it is quite cultural. I know, yeah, people in more Westernized settings are just like, so, so they balk at anything scurrying and small. So I wonder like how how you've gone with, because you've you've been giving presentations on insect life. And now you met with people who were just like,
00:32:34
Speaker
I don't even want to see a picture of that spider. Yeah, and you know, not to trivialise that because some people have very real, you know, and traumatic experiences in the past that have shaped that and you know, a lot of messaging that's come through and I can absolutely see how that fear evolves. Yeah, it's to be expected. But it is a shame because so many of these species that, you know, I'm looking up, they're almost always neutral or helpful.
00:33:02
Speaker
it's definitely the minority that turn out to be an actual threat or danger or problem in the garden yeah so I don't know I don't know how to unravel that except for people to maybe just learn a little bit more about them um and the more I've learned the more I'm quite happy to have the odd spider crawling on me and it's like I understand it's no threat to me at all yeah and I you know, I guess it's worth saying that Australia has a reputation for having a lot of very dangerous spiders and and snakes and that sort of thing, which it does. But in the little pocket that we are in here, I know the couple of spiders that are dangerous and I know, you know, I don't like stick my hand under a dry pot rim without a glove on it. Yeah. So, you know, you actually would have to be quite unlucky to have anything bad happen to you where we are now. But there's probably places where you need to take a little bit more care. Yeah, but just actually knowing what the risks are so that you can keep them in perspective And then just hopefully just appreciate the joy of having all these creatures around you. Yeah, it's really good. dick Yeah. All right, let's keep moving Yeah, well, it's a good segue and so the next one is an adventure This is not in the kind of like put your hiking boots on and you know get your gear and go out It's more of a sit with a cup of tea type
00:34:24
Speaker
adventure um so I work in a fairly corporate office a couple of days a week, a local council running a sustainable gardening program. and um Going into the office recently, I noticed we've got this little atrium. It's quite lovely. There's lots of plants and you know a little water feature or yeah so something going on in there.
00:34:49
Speaker
um But um yeah, I saw this welcome swallow sweep out under the eaves and realised that they'd actually built a mud nest in the corner of this little square glass atrium. And because it's glass, you can actually see everything that's going on inside, including, you know, the well not into the nest, but you can see the edge of the nest and so on.
00:35:10
Speaker
and so there's a couple of people like just gawking at this nest who's got a couple of chicks in it and the adults that are coming and going almost constantly bringing them food and as often happens I find myself imagining what is this like from the swallows perspective and and it kind of comes in occasionally and just goes well there's people gawking at me and kind of backs up to a light fitting that it can sit on and wait for the danger to pass but yeah there's a thing here around imagining the world from the perspective of your non-human neighbours that I've always really liked to do. So the adventure is to yeah just imagine the world from their perspective and I give you full permission to anthropomorphise as much as you want you know um and you you can do this with
00:35:55
Speaker
insects, to you can do it with animals. You can even do it with the smooth river pebbles down the road in someone's front yard landscaping. You know, where have they been kidnapped from and how do they feel about that? But yeah, I like to think about, you know, what are their daily rhythms? What makes them really happy? What makes them feel afraid? What are their movements? What are they looking for? What kind of food do they need? Where do they get their water from?
00:36:23
Speaker
those sorts of questions. And I did this recently, I actually did it for work. I was making a colouring in shape for kids on four of the endangered species in the area that I work as a sneaky way to try and get them onto a fridge and and influence the adults in their life.
00:36:43
Speaker
And I did one for the Swift Parrot. We also did Growling Grass Frog, the Legolas Lizard. I also did the Golden Sunmoth. I did a few, but I'll tell you about the Swift Parrot. And they are one of our endangered bird species. There's maybe three to five hundred of them left. They are called the Swift Parrot because they clocked a male flying at 88 kilometres an hour.
00:37:10
Speaker
so magically driving your eye and i go How do they think in time to pull up before they hit something when they're flying at that speed? And um these incredible birds, they actually cross the Bass Strait and breed in Tasmania. You're nodding as you probably know about them already, but they tend to return to the same tree hollows every year.
00:37:31
Speaker
And then they you know cross the Bass Strait and they spend um the winter time on the eastern coast of Australia, going up to maybe New South Wales, but also spending a lot of time in Naam, in Melbourne, in the suburbs here. They could be in your backyard, if you're listening, or in your local park. um They've been spotted a lot.
00:37:51
Speaker
And because of the preferences they have for, I understand the shape of their hollows that they look for, they really can only do that in quite large trees and these hollows can take 150 years to form. um So unfortunately with the logging that's going on, they're increasingly finding it hard to get those hollows and there's problems with predators and things as well, getting them.
00:38:13
Speaker
So anyway, I wrote the story of the Swift Parrish in the first-person tense, talking about the challenges that they face and you know how they spend the year, yeah how they need our help to look after some of that habitat. I found myself right now you know getting quite emotional as I was writing it, thinking about how challenging I must be and what you know what they must feel. I imagine they feel something when they arrive and they can't find that special hollow.
00:38:38
Speaker
um So yeah I do this just like I think it sensitizes you to other ways of seeing your space and I hope it you know might help people to see through other ecological lenses and sometimes move people enough to encourage a shift in their behaviour. You know maybe we will, okay maybe we're we're not going to grow food because that's not quite a good fit for our lifestyle at the moment but maybe we'll make sure that there's good habitat in the garden space and then we don't have to do a lot to maintain it.
00:39:14
Speaker
I think habitat gardens are a really valuable contribution for people that might not be able to manage a food garden at the moment. So what what can we do to make sure that there's you know there's some water source, there's um food sources, whether that's seed or nectar or insects or yeah ah other things that they need. Is there a you know is there a perching point that they can safely look for food is there a prickly shrub that can harbor small beds safely so yeah just thinking through what can we do to make this creature feel more at home and and safer oh i love that cat and it also it helps us
00:39:53
Speaker
it populates our world, repopulates our world again, where I think so lonely in these limited, you know, like our limitations around how many plants and animals we know in our local space, like it's lonely to be the one kind of apex primary entity and I think that we will all benefit from having so many more friends and such a diversity around us. And yeah Jordan and I have been watching this channel on YouTube that is a beautiful kind of demonstration of this perspective flip. It's this guy, I don't know what the channel is called, but it's it's like a wildlife homestead. that's the the term that he's coined. It completely evolves that notion of like the homestead is kind of funneling back into the home and the sustenance of the human creatures living there. But his whole thing is this outward looking, I'm giving all of this land, you know, back to the wildlife, but also influencing it and shaping it in a way that is, you know, he made a pond and he filmed it for a year and just there the cacophony, like the brouhaha of creatures through the season, just with these little subtle interventions
00:40:54
Speaker
and then they're kind of stepping away and letting lettingdding the wildness kind of take root. um So I love Hugh's channel for this idea of who else are we supporting in our backyards and our and you know the eaves of our home and the swallows you know who are nesting there. and having some empathy and and also finding the joy in that that sharing of our space. Yeah that's absolutely true and it can also come with considerable sadness as well and I know like you and I are actually both sitting here with tears in our eyes. No I've just been dropping onions. You know it's it's it's hard to confront just how much struggle we are placing on other spaces at the moment. Yeah I don't know about you I've
00:41:35
Speaker
really struggled to watch any kind of nature documentary for years now because of the increasing crises that we're in and yeah the burden that's placing on other species and other generations.
00:41:49
Speaker
but Anyway, try not to impart too much of that sadness in this interview, but um I did also want to mention our friend Annie Raiser Rowland has just published a new book called Once, and she actually does a very similar thing in there.
Reflections on Kindness and Understanding
00:42:05
Speaker
I think it's ah it's a retelling of Hansel and Gretel.
00:42:09
Speaker
that the fairy tale with geological historical and ecological context including telling the story through other species that are around the main protagonists and I think it's incredibly clever um and it's really rich with her observations of the natural world so for anyone who might be thinking of taking up that little adventure yeah I think it's also a pretty magic read yeah as well yeah Annie and I spoke before she released once so she was saying how much she learned about volcanic activity in the course of writing that book so now that it's out yeah definitely point people in that in that beautiful literary and ecological direction yeah oh we're at the halfway point oh my gosh okay number five um live well by thinking about death
00:43:00
Speaker
Mmm, I thought you were gonna get a little bit lighter Yeah, this could be pretty light um i um I Turned 40 this year, which I suppose is a natural like reflection point in life and going. Oh Wow. Wow. Here we are. Is this it?
00:43:19
Speaker
What matters is definitely not, you know, the car you drive, which is lucky because I don't own one. It's not, yeah, it's not the professional achievements, anything like that. So I've been thinking about that and a way that has prompted me to think about it better, I think, is let's imagine that I'm near death, what would really matter to me and what would I reflect on as an urgent priority and Yeah, I suppose a lot of other people have done this as well. But, you know, I've been thinking that what matters to me most, I think, is just being a kind creature. And um also, I think, you know, the thing that would be the biggest bummer is if I had not told the people around me how much they mean to me. I think that's actually what I would regret the most. um So I'm so blessed, you know, just so many really remarkable, kind people around me.
00:44:15
Speaker
And I just deeply want them to know that. um And also the people that you know I don't know as well. you know Why not tell them how how much they mean and you know what their special talents are that you're noticing. Yeah. What's your preferred vehicle for that message, Kat? Because it can be hard to deliver something sincere. Yeah. It's hard, isn't it? But why is it hard? why Why do we make it so hard to do that? So Katie. No.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, I had to think about this. So Katie, we don't actually know each other that well yet, although you're someone who I feel like I've known forever at the same time. Yeah, um yeah you have, you know, in the same way you talked about this place feeling feeling warm to you, you're you're just a warm human that is really easy to connect with. But I also wanted to tell you, I just feel like you're a really gifted storyteller and the way that you write and articulate yourself is there's so much eloquence in there and you also managed to do it with so much humor as well. I love that you sign off your emails with goat slave. So it's a woman who says warm rhubarb, which I absolutely love. But yeah I just wanted to mention that to you. I just think you have a very warm and generous presence and you embody that kindness that I think is probably my number one value in a human.
00:45:35
Speaker
I'm not even going to try and hold back the tears any longer, Kat. It really means a lot to me because because I admire you so much. So there's a lot of, you know, like soaking in that that beautiful gift from me right now. And also, I was saying to Jord last night, does everyone feel awkward and inadequate on the inside a lot of the time? Because I just,
00:46:01
Speaker
that's how I feel like just trying to and maybe it's an over over exaggerated desire to try and make people feel at ease and so then I'm often like oh I'm so awkward and I said that thing and then you know I mean not you know a ah super pathological way but I just I understand that a lot of people who seem really smooth and capable on the outside can too have these internal scripts that cause a lot of pain and suffering and so you're interrupting of that and you're gentle kind of feedback.
00:46:33
Speaker
to me and to anyone else could actually mean the world and I think that's such a wonderful invitation at this time of year like maybe this time of year is particularly ripe for those expressions and those little PSs in your Christmas card or a letter to a a Grandparent or an extended member of your family that you've never written so yeah, I really appreciate that and also kind of dispelling or diffusing some of that and that grief that we will carry i think around who we are and what we're not achieving and what we're not doing so yes yeah yeah just to be really clear i have a ton of those internal dialogues and many insecurities and anxieties yeah we were talking before about like i'll never listen to this podcast again because i just can't i can't i just
00:47:20
Speaker
I have too much insecurity to listen back. I have fought that for so many years but now I'm just going to accept that that's the way that my brain works um and just try and celebrate the bits that you know are coming to me more easily and yeah and things as well. Yeah maybe it just goes together with not not being a flat-out narcissist like we're always going to have that self-regulating or the checking mechanism of of wanting to be a little bit kinder and that's maybe a healthy thing. Wow Kat, very revealing.
00:47:52
Speaker
content.
00:47:56
Speaker
i hey i mean this a lot hos myself ah um The next one is listen to understand if not agree um and yeah in the prompt for this um podcast you said yeah let's talk about what it means to live well. I was trying to think about that on a few levels I um practice this with my dad a lot, who doesn't really believe climate change is a thing, still. We've had that as an ongoing thing in our relationship, you know, since I was in uni, yeah, 20 years ago. So it's an interesting dynamic, but yeah, we've learnt to navigate that and to love him for who he is.
00:48:37
Speaker
Yeah. So there's always people that push our buttons. And I was thinking about the last point and telling people what they mean to you. And then I was like, ah, but you know, sometimes you just want to tell people where to always do or say things that we find quite difficult. But unfortunately, we seem to be getting into a state in our society where people are so quick to shout at each other and criticize, particularly over social media, which I'm largely not on anymore.
00:49:05
Speaker
um for those sorts of mental health reasons. But I was thinking, you know, one of the things that I love so much about my partner Hemi is he also is a very kind, very generous human. And when people, you know, behave in ways that are a bit challenging.
00:49:21
Speaker
he'll he'll play this little game and we'll sometimes do it together and he'll go, well maybe they've just been fired and they're having a really hard time. or So we'll we'll kind of work out what context might be around something that's fueling that behavior. Maybe they have been told something by the ure YouTube algorithm so many times that it's become real um for them you know or maybe they've experienced something really traumatic and you will never know what's going on for people but when someone's reaction seems to you disproportionate to what's happened. You can bet there's like a very long story behind that. And it yeah, it does much more underneath than what you're actually saying. And I think it
00:50:04
Speaker
pays to remember that. And I don't mean to excuse bad behavior here at all, but sometimes I think it can help to explain the context so that we can respond yeah again more kindly to people and yes see them for the you know that the rich and multifaceted human that they are rather than the particular comment or behavior or whatever is going on for them.
Personal Connections and Consumerism
00:50:28
Speaker
yeah And I also think, of course, that at these edges of friction with other people,
00:50:34
Speaker
if they are handled well they can also teach us an enormous amount maybe there's something that we need to learn from what's going on here you know it can force us to progress in that way but yeah it's it's unrealistic to expect that we will always agree with every other human but yeah trying to listen and really understand why and and how they've arrived at that i think it's a really valuable thing to try and practice um as much as we can yeah and not always you know the best example of that all the time myself but you know it's one of those issues you just have to keep trying at.
00:51:07
Speaker
yeah yeah Yeah, for sure. And it's it's a little bit harder to try and flesh out someone's context as opposed to slap them with a good, bad, evil label, which I feel like none of these actions happen in a vacuum. no There's all of this this like domino back to the beginning of time that has influenced that particular response or behaviour. I like to practice road love as opposed to road rage, because you know when you're just like,
00:51:31
Speaker
why is this person going 40 kilometers an hour in a 60 zone? And then you finally pass them. And they're this, this little old, little old woman named Dot and she's trying to deliver a hamper to her granddaughter who just had a baby and she doesn't know the streets. And it's like, you just, most people aren't trying to be fuckwits on the road. You know, like they're just trying to find the park or yeah they're having a conversation or they're a little bit vague today. They've got a headache. It's like, I would love.
00:51:57
Speaker
Yep. I love that. I will, I will take that and, and work with it. And I think that like the worst thing we can do is ostracize people who think differently to us. And I've got this very strong instinct to try and keep people in the tribe. Yeah. So I do, I really deeply believe like we usually have so much more in common with people than we realize, even if we think they're quite different, the underlying values can be quite strong even there.
00:52:20
Speaker
if they're expressed in different ways. I've had had some neighbours before that have, wow, you know, totally different caps and different ends, but actually when we talked about things, yeah, we we all believe in the sorts of shared values that I think are important around community and and so forth.
00:52:40
Speaker
Yes, I think that's worth thinking about. I'm referencing a few things in there that I want to mention. I learned through the group work centre, which is ah just an exceptional organisation that teaches people how to work in groups and how to lead groups and facilitate well.
00:52:57
Speaker
um It's yeah one of the best educational experiences that I've had there. Do they do online offerings as well, Kat? I think they do. yeah yeah i felt I went to learn how to facilitate better, but I think it actually just helped me to be a better human. Sincerely, I want to recommend that to people who feel like their path is working with groups. Oh, fantastic. I'll actually personally take you up on that because I've been wondering about this facilitation piece and I know that that's something you've dove, divined So Dave, how do you dive past tense? What are you joking to?
00:53:33
Speaker
Excellent. All will be revealed in the show notes. There will be a huge list of resources there for everyone. Cool. Number seven. Number seven. Stuff that tells a story. Maybe this one's going to be a bit lighthearted. I just think...
00:53:47
Speaker
It's nice to have not too much stuff, but the stuff that you do have, it's very lovely if it tells a story. And, you know, I have some beautiful fingerless gloves that one of my dear best friends, Taygan, has knitted for me recently. And every time I put them on, I feel the warmth of the gloves, but I also feel the warmth of our friendship and oh my god there's so many layers of just joyful experience that come from that um and I also have a saucepan lid that our mutual friend Ollie welded back together for me after it lost its handle and in exchange I repaired
00:54:24
Speaker
ah Jumper that to be honest probably had too many holes in it god My friend Erin Lewis Fitzgerald who taught me how to mend things a lot better. She would say there's always another hole It's like you hold it up to the light and go. Oh gosh but we did it we didn't exchange and so every time I use that sauce for now I think of my friendship with Ollie and um it's lovely to be reminded of that I also say somewhat hilariously I have a very dented stainless steel bowl and it's dented because we went on a camping trip with some friends and I have not
00:55:05
Speaker
Used like a butane burner. I'm a I'm a transient a wood fire camp cook myself and did not set up the butane burner properly and it exploded and dend the
00:55:21
Speaker
I've kept it, you know, as a reminder, you know, A, not to blow up your friends and B, have a really nice camping weekend that we had down at the beach. intense pressure So yeah, I just, um, I don't know. I think it's, um, you know, sometimes it takes more effort to repair things or to make things, but yeah, it adds a lot more meaning to life when you,
00:55:45
Speaker
get to be reminded of your connections every time you use these daily objects? Yeah or sometimes I find myself trying to understand why we don't do that more often and I wonder cat what your perspective is on or if what your experience has been just getting sick of stuff and wanting something new like do you have that that dopaminergic like novelty seeking thing that happens and you have to tell yourself no I'm gonna repair this jumper even though I'm like want that really nice one that's to stop the road and shop and go. Oh it's really hard isn't it because we're fighting we're fighting you know something that is quite natural for us as humans that search for new and and novelty and it of course is a massive capitalist machine that is geared towards encouraging that. It's actually I don't really want to go into this because it was like yeah it was a not a not a great year for me but my honest thesis was actually on
00:56:35
Speaker
that issue and how we actually construct our identities based on the stuff around us and how as the meanings behind the stuff that we were consuming changed, we would seek new things in order to construct you know our our outward identity. One of the things that has really stood me well from that research journey was understanding that now that we don't know everybody in our village anymore, we rely more on stuff to tell the story of who we are and to represent ourselves.
00:57:05
Speaker
and you know and maybe what I'm wearing at the moment is the case in point like now that I know you I know that you won't judge me for having a massive roof in the crotch over the leggings that I'm currently wearing. That could only bring us closer. I guess in our sort of culture maybe that's celebrated like not you know getting new stuff up all the time so it's constructing a different kind of identity really.
00:57:29
Speaker
But it's a real problem. I don't have a great solution to that. But for clothing, I do find um I put away some clothing. I've got like a couple of little suitcases and I um do this with seasonal.
00:57:42
Speaker
clothes, but also sometimes when I've worn something a lot, I'll just put it in there. And then when I bring it out again, you know, in six months, it's like, Oh, I knew shit, River. That's such a great psychological hack. Yeah. I guess it's kind of gaming that need for novelty a little bit. So I don't know. I try to be aware of that, but I'm also just, you know, conscious. It's hard for people to fight all the marketing that's around us all the time. Well, yeah, there's a bigger picture and deep work we can do in terms of,
00:58:11
Speaker
our own level of like self-love and security and then the little hacks and ways we can set ourselves up to win by shopping our wardrobe and feeling that fresh newness in a kind of orchestrated fashion. I think so. Orchestrated fashion, hashtag. Awesome cat. Number eight, and this is connected actually, life is the occasion.
00:58:37
Speaker
I learned this recently from a podcast, that that little phrase, but I love it. And we do tend to, in the the culture that I was raised in, have a nice set of things. And, you know, maybe Sunday best is an expression that people might have heard of this idea that we would have you know something that's for daily use and something that's for special times but really just ends up having you know twice as much stuff in our homes and then needing a bigger house to fit it all in which doesn't seem like a good idea and I would extend this idea to a problem that we've had in the past which is having special produce for
00:59:15
Speaker
that we preserve and stuff into the pantry or into the freezer like berries might be an example and we go oh they're for a special occasion because they're special special and then you know months and months later they come out and they're no longer in good condition anymore because you save them for an occasion where life is the occasion So the one of the things we've got to work on here is just don't save it, eat it straight away and enjoy the specialness of that, you know, that day, whatever that day is. So we're we're working on that here, just eating these things immediately. I do have an exception to that, though, which is clothes.
00:59:51
Speaker
because I don't assign lived all my life wondering if other people would just have some kind of secret, but if I don't have a set of clothes that I put aside for my professional work, it is just covered in cobwebs, compost stains, oil stains. All my clothes become gardening clothes if I don't quarantine some.
01:00:13
Speaker
And there is still context in my life where, you know, it's not socially acceptable for me to walk in looking like I've just, you know, come through a compost tape myself. I wish I'd quarantined some of my wardrobe before moving to Meliodora. It was quite hard on, ah hard on my gear. Yeah. There's something in the garden, which is giving me white stains on my clothes and I can't work out what it is. And I don't know if it's like a latex sap from something, but they will not come out no matter, you know, what I do to them. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah But I also love having, you know, 95% of my garments being totally comfortable and cool with me wiping my
01:00:51
Speaker
my nasal secretions on the sleeve or you know my hands, if they're oily from cooking, like the liberation of that is unreal.
Mastering Skills Through Small Efforts
01:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Number nine. um This is a bit of a matchup for me that I'm going to be just reminding myself of. in the years ahead ah because I've seen so many examples of it now and it is many small efforts consistently. We're in this well this sort of Western well which is just pushing us more and more towards instant gratification for everything all the once all the time and for me I kind of love that
01:01:28
Speaker
you know pretty much all the things I can think of that are worth doing or worth knowing they can't just be looked up on Google or you know instantly purchased. Yeah so the things that are worth doing take consistent effort and many of these small efforts to learn them and really build the skill. The example I have of that he' I want to preface this by saying that I don't kill things unless there's a reason for that and outside my block I would never contemplate killing a moss but we're in a house here at the plumbery where we have pretty good you know large supplies of seeds
01:02:10
Speaker
um We've got, pat a you know, well stocked pantry, we've got lots of woolen garments and moths are a real problem. So I'm okay with them outdoors where they're being eaten by parasitic wasps and things, but inside I need to kill them. And I usually do that just by chasing them until I can clap them with my hands to kill them quickly. And I do that, I've done that, you know, so many times that these days I'm like a ninja.
01:02:36
Speaker
And, you know, first attempt, you know, done. And I was just reflecting on that the other day. It's like, wow, you know, that was cool what I you know just managed to do there. And it reminded me of one of my neighbors, an elderly neighbor who was in the army and he actually used to hunt wild feral pigs with a bow and arrow.
01:02:59
Speaker
a long bow and that's a whole other story by the way super interesting guy and but he described it to me because i I had a go at actually drawing it and honestly i'm just drawing a bow oh my god the strength to just draw it let alone hold it steady yeah and then to release it and actually hit a target yeah it is no joke it blew my mind And I expressed that to him and he just talked about this idea of I've never looked through a sight in a gun before, but the crosshairs in a gun and he explained it like you've got sort of a vertical and a horizontal and they start a long way apart. And then the more that you actually use the tool, the more those crosshairs actually align.
01:03:42
Speaker
And it's it's kind of a comment about calibrating and tuning your body until you can just pull it and let it go and hit the target. um And so I had through many small, consistent efforts calibrated my hands to clap that moth.
01:04:01
Speaker
ah So it's ah just a little example of a really important principle I think which is like our bodies are incredible instruments and they're very good at getting better at whatever it is we tell them that we want to get better at and if that's um sitting on the couch finding you know something to watch on telly then yeah you'll get really quick at doing that. And if that's like learning a new language or an instrument or a skill, it's going to be that. But it can never happen through like one massive effort. It has to happen through these small efforts consistently. And you have to believe in that because those
01:04:36
Speaker
tiny, tiny actions and their effect is almost imperceptible absolutely until you're the moth-clapping ninja.
Embracing Relaxation and Simplicity
01:04:42
Speaker
That's it. And I just keep getting reminded of that principle here through things like the observation of plants and animals. So this week I looked out at the quail that I have instead of chickens that are on a very small block. And I just noticed, and you know, sometimes you see something and your brain goes, ah,
01:05:00
Speaker
that quail is getting really old now and I have to actually backtrack and go, well, what have I seen that's told me that? And what I noticed this time was that the arch of her back had changed. Um, and that is actually, yeah, now, and now I'm recognizing that that's, that's an indicator that I'm picking up on or I noticed that a plant, it's a hop spine actually in the aviary as well. And I'm like, Oh, that plant's sick. And I, hang on a sec, what's going on there? And I noticed it was just the,
01:05:27
Speaker
Just the faintest dulling of the leaf that had started to change. I guess that like increasingly subtle indicators that we can build up through practicing observation daily. And then it feels intuitive. Yes. But I love your interrogation of that to understand what signals and observations you're you know rapidly making to come to that conclusion. But the feeling of that intuition or connectedness to our environment and the communication, like we're in conversation with things, but it is all these little little tiny stories and inferences that we're making. That's it. Yeah. And even down to... like ah This plan is not growing at the expected rate. There may be no other visual indicator, but that sense of time you know can also give you that cue. yeah so I actually find it really exciting, but it does mean consistency and the discipline to keep at something is what really counts and you know can extend to other things like building up some savings.
01:06:30
Speaker
yeah you know other like relationships so putting that many small efforts in consistently yeah to grow that over time yeah so wise cat are we are we at the end we're at 10 i'm kind of excited
01:06:48
Speaker
You look really cheeky and devious. Okay, so i'm I'm smiling because there is no tenth.
01:07:01
Speaker
Oh my god, I always thought, you know, he enjoy to just be offered this podcast with you, Katie. But I was thinking of all these things and I'm like, it's okay not to get it all done i just couldn't think of a 10 and yeah getting it done is more important than you know having everything there and it all being perfect and um yeah it's like i just gotta to let go a little bit more and maybe that's my 10 um You know, I take a lot of inspiration from my my beautiful cat Carbonell whose fancies days wandering from nap spot to nap spot and stretching out occasionally for a belly rub and I just feel like we've really overcooked life as a species and it would be great if you know and I realize not everyone has the privilege to do this but for people who can just to relax a little bit more and enjoy being a creature rather than a
01:07:52
Speaker
someone that's just driven by endless lists of things to
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:07:55
Speaker
do. And I realized that the world will not end because Kat couldn't think of one more interesting thing to share with Katie's book. Don't underestimate your account, Kat.
01:08:06
Speaker
So there you go. That's just a little reflection. Oh my God, it's okay not to, not to just do all the things all the time. I appreciate the role modelship and I think that is absolutely perfect. Um, and Kat, you have,
01:08:19
Speaker
I've offered it's so much of your time already this morning and your energy, not just this morning, always. ah I do love offering people, especially on Patreon for the podcast, but also on Instagram, just the chance to ask a few questions of Resculiant's guests because it feels lovely and interactive and like I have an actual bonafide radio show. So maybe if it's okay with you, there are a few questions and if you want to just give like the most kind of the pointiest simplified answer. Okay, cool. Because there's some goodies in here. So from my lovely patrons on Patreon, we have a question from Richard Telford, who we both know. Richard asks what, this is a pretty big bloody question, Richard.
01:09:02
Speaker
What has worked well in your garden and what hasn't? Oh my God. Richard, you're a gardener. You should know that one's like, you know, a 20 page essay. Far out. I got to pick something. I mean, we did cover the smoothies and those sorts of things I think are really important to think about. We didn't talk about maybe I'll just say plums.
01:09:24
Speaker
but You know, um plums are another smoothie that is worth people thinking about because after you've done herbs and you know, easy grains, having perennials like fruit trees in play are once established very easy for most households.
01:09:41
Speaker
and there is a reason why a lot of old backyards have got plums and it's because people used to know that and they were very reliable fruit and also conveniently one that people recognize people know what to do with so yeah I know that may not be the extensive and and and detailed answer that Richard is hoping for but that's one that's one answer and often when I go and work with people who you know make um have me do a design consult or something like that. Yeah there might be a busy family, people who are working professional jobs realistically despite their best intentions they are not going to do an intensive annual veggie patch but we can get them a salad bed or her bed and we can stick in some really reliable fruit trees for them.
01:10:21
Speaker
The plum double up for that answer to not to put words in your mouth is though that you were speaking last night about the variety being maybe not exactly what you had in mind. Oh yeah that's true yeah yeah so um there's a little design lesson in there um and yeah as you're aware we harvested some decent baskets of plums yesterday but this particular plum that we have is the methly plum I believe. Lost the tag which is a rookie error Never make that error again. But we got the sign from the Heritage Fruit Society, which is just an exceptionally important organization that is preserving thousands of varieties of heirloom fruits in Naam in Melbourne. And um this methyplum
01:11:01
Speaker
is a very early plum, which is wonderful because we have plums mid-December, which is awesome. But the problem is that it really can't be preserved successfully in very many ways. And it basically collapses into a sauce or even a juice really. So drying yields this just terribly hard rock of a dried plum with quite a bitter edge to it. And bottling just results in like a liquidy plum slop. And um it's been a disappointment in that sense because I really did want to have bottled plums for more of the year. So to tackle that, we have re-grafted an already grafted plum that we grafted onto a cherry plum. And the new graft that is emerging now is a Victoria plum, which is a um reliable English bottling plum that we hope will fulfill that role.
01:11:53
Speaker
So what has worked is another small piece of an answer is thinking through what is the intended purpose of this crop and selecting varieties that meet that purpose for us well. So this is a question from Kat who is just such an exceptional and engaged listener and participant in the podcast because she's even volunteered with some of my guests. She lives in Naam and massive shout out to Kat because I just really love her enthusiasm.
01:12:21
Speaker
So she asks, well, she first of all said, how exciting that she can ask you a question. She says, I think that video being your last happen films video and George making the follow up as we speak was my gateway to all things permaculture. That's really cool. I'd love to know how cats thinking and planning has changed in response to the worsening meta crisis. So, you know, are there different plants in the garden, different habits in your house? Yeah, it's ah another big question.
01:12:48
Speaker
Thanks. um um Yeah look I mean we never know what's going to happen in the future but having options and having reliable things around you will be helpful. So again in terms of the garden you know we've had a lot of time observing what is reliable for us and what is going to work in lots of different conditions. And one thing that springs to mind to me right now is amaranth as a crop. One of the natural disasters that is probably most present for people who live in cities is extreme heat.
01:13:24
Speaker
and keeping some of the common vegetables alive when it could be, you know, 40 degrees, maybe be higher than that in the future. um ah we We have had 46 degrees Celsius here for people who might not know the area. Yeah, it's it's very present for me on what would the garden look like after going through that, maybe a couple of times in the summer. And the thing about amaranth is it just doesn't seem to matter how hot it gets. it It's always there, it always works.
01:13:53
Speaker
And um I suppose definitely have a having a bias towards those and you know while I'm not gonna stop growing zucchinis and you know other things that we quite like eating a lot of, knowing what the reliable things are and having ah you know edible weeds that we know how to use and really comfortable eating hardy plants, hardy fruits. Yeah, just having gone through a few of those experiences, but things like the pandemic as well and just knowing what can be produced without so much effort and input.
01:14:24
Speaker
That's been a continual shift. And also just realising that, yeah, the plenary is not an island and, you know, it still wouldn't work if we had food and no one else around us does. And that's a pretty extreme scenario, I will say. But going through the pandemic and being kind of OK while a lot of people were struggling around us, that was an interesting experience, to be honest, and just reinforces the need to assist your community in any way possible.
01:14:50
Speaker
um and help more people to set up resilient systems. So my hope, I suppose, is that there will be like an example of a locally contextualised resilient home in every city, every suburb, yeah maybe every street.
01:15:05
Speaker
so that if we get pressured in various ways, there'll be some kind of example there that's had a bit of a road test that people are able to look at and copy. So that feels like a priority to me in there, just sort of testing this out and being able to move in lots of different directions, having options available. Yeah, fantastic.
01:15:25
Speaker
Okay, so Sophie from Big Things Little Things, which is a podcast that releases whenever at once, which I love. Sophie is bloody awesome. She's asking about gardening in pots because yeah um she's saying how they dry out so quickly and things die. Yes, definitely. And pots are becoming the reality for most people who are renting and and you know living in smaller places.
01:15:49
Speaker
i'm Obviously extremely fortunate here that we can put things in the ground um but I've also increasingly been growing things in pots um partly because I can take them along to workshops and show people something in you know physical reality that will work in their context. What has been really working in our climate is making a wicking bucket pot.
01:16:12
Speaker
And this is such a simple thing. It's um using maybe 10 or 20 litre food grade plastic buckets which are honestly often thrown out by hospitality. Many commercial ingredients in bulk quantities come in these buckets and um I have a relationship with my local Indian restaurant and that they're so lovely and I walk in there and order curry and buckets occasionally and they go oh the bucket lady's here and I find it actually helps with that if you can show them a photo of what you're looking for because they can be like what you want what what is it so if you show them a photo they'll often and go yep okay we've got plenty of those out the back and so to retrofit them all you do is maybe go about five centimetres up from the base
01:16:59
Speaker
ah So on the side of that bucket and drill a hole or make a hole that's about maybe a centimeter diameter, 10 mil. And that will act as a little overflow so the the bucket can't flood and act as a bucket. And then in that we've been filling it with actually soil, a sandy soil mix. So not actually potting mix, which is what a lot of people are trying to grow in. And I've got to acknowledge where most conventional horticulture advice would point people. It has not grown great veggies in my experience. I really do feel like veggies want to be in proper soil, but it's got to be a sandy soil. Otherwise, yeah, the the clay soils will just become a muddy mess.
01:17:39
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, a bit of a detailed answer, but fill that up. You don't need any scoria or gravel or any separate layers in the bottom. So it will be like saturated soil in that bottom part. yeah But it seems to be okay. And if anything goes wrong, you can just empty that bucket out, let the soil breathe a little bit and then try it again. But does not seem to require that in my experience.
01:18:00
Speaker
Fantastic. Yeah so try growing in there and then I just treat it exactly the same as my normal beds and by that I mean adding compost every time I replant and adding a layer of mulch and you just water them you know through the surface until you get water running out that hole and that will signal that it's full.
01:18:17
Speaker
And I found we can get things through a heat wave, no worries if you filled them up um yeah the the morning or the night before. And you can move things if you want. You can move them into the shade during a really extreme day. You can take them from house to house. You move them around the garden into the sun or yeah whatever you need to do. So a really awesome strategy for renters. I will say the buckets do eventually break down in the sun, even though they're food grade, which I think is pretty safe to have in contact with you know a food producing plant.
01:18:47
Speaker
um So what I plan to do now is copy my ex Danny Ashley has mastered this in apartments and just using a heat treated palette to make a ah wooden facade for the buckets which will keep the sun off them and they also help cute too. Look really cute and help the soil to stay you know a little bit cooler in those hot days and yeah those buckets should last an incredibly long time if they're not getting any direct UV.
01:19:10
Speaker
Those buckets are like a girl's best friend. I want a whole bunch of them in some kind of like dowry situation, but maybe I just need to befriend. Yeah, they kind of run a productive household, don't they? um Yeah, it should never buy like a normal bucket from it anyway. We're just, you know, trying to buy things anyway, but but these buckets are so much sturdier and more reliable. Yeah. um Yeah. and we're We're like a 20 bucket householder. That's various uses. Alright Kat, last one from Forrest Mimp. This is up from Instagram. How do you stop rats from eating everything? Oh yes, very pressing. Excellent questions from the the audience. um Yeah, this this is a reality. When you get really good at growing food, your pests will arrive.
01:19:55
Speaker
and um some some of them might be native rats of course but around here we tend to get the introduced rat species and people often blame possums and yeah it's rats that are going after tomatoes and things like that So Rodent Cerro, yeah just a given. For mice I have had great success setting snap traps in spring and you do have to do this in the hungry gap time of year when there's not a lot of other food sources around for them. but if we put snap traps out in spring with peanut butter they're very successful and I like I don't again I don't like killing anything even rodents and things like that but if we don't there's yeah there's definitely issues mice they're not very smart it can set like four traps in a row three of them can have dead mice in them already and a fourth one will still come along and think oh gee this looks tasty
01:20:52
Speaker
so sorry little guy um but yeah rat rats are a lot harder because they're very smart and they will learn quickly so i haven't found snap traps work for them i will never use poison because that ends up killing owls so really the the only thing that has worked here is containing my cat within the food producing area and allowing him to do patrol and deterrence at night. And i you know I wish there was another way because the stats on cats killing wildlife are horrific and that's not just feral, that's domestic cats as well. For me, there's a compromise in here because he is contained. So yes, it means yeah theoretically he could kill something that came within our perimeter fence. But yes yeah, the net benefit of being able to produce this much food
01:21:37
Speaker
is yeah It's only actually possible because we have that um and we have had significant rodent problems before and I, you know, they'll be gnawing on beetroot as it's growing in the bed. So that's been our solution here. There is a reason why cats were domesticated and a reason why farms always had cats and it's because that's really like seems to be the only manageable long-term solution to deal with that kind of pest. So it's not a great answer because not everyone wants a cat, not everyone should have a cat, you know it can be very hard to contain them. We are using a low voltage domestic scale electric fence which is sold to help people contain their own cat or to keep possums out and it works extremely well.
01:22:16
Speaker
And I should say they're not like getting a shock all the time. They touch it once and they go, I don't touch that. So it's just a training device and it can actually be off a lot of the time with the same effect as it turns out. But yeah, it's an extraordinarily hard problem to solve. And for anyone who's aiming for decent yields, eventually you have to sort of confront that. The only other thing really I could say is building like a rat proof cage and growing within that, which I might consider if I was in a high wildlife area outside of the city for example but yeah you've got to be pretty onto your building skills to build something that Iraq can't get into as well. Well I'm so glad we have you Kat roaming in the world and inspiring us and delivering such yeah rich and compassionate practical knowledge to everyone. I just feel like
01:23:09
Speaker
You take the time to really understand things as wholly as possible and the details. Well, I'm like a more slapdash person. So I very much exalt your, your commitment to those details and the finer points and and the data. It is why we've been recording for an hour and a half because it's just, you know, there is so, so much that you have to share and the value of this conversation is huge. And you spending this time with me and with us is, is so delightful and so special and I remember that years ago we first emailed about doing an interview and that was the future setting I believe and um I'm just thrilled that it's come full circle and we could also spend spend time together outside of this. It just makes me feel like a very
01:23:54
Speaker
lucky and wealthy person to have you okay in our orbit. Thank you so much. That is a really really kind thing to say and yeah I appreciate it very much and I'm sorry this has been an extended long podcast. No apologies. But yeah i um yeah I've had fun and I hope it's valuable to um to you and maybe others and I've already told you exactly what I think of you.
01:24:24
Speaker
That was Kat Lavers from The Plumbery in Melbourne, whose offerings are all linked in the show notes. If you're listening right to the end of this episode, you're obviously a superfan, or someone with a little too much time on your hands.
01:24:37
Speaker
So either way, if you love resilience and feel like flinging the show a little seasonal support, a great way to do that is by leaving a written review on iTunes, which is just so bloody valuable. Or tapping the star review function button thing on Spotify. These actions help immensely. You can always share it with a friend or a group.
01:24:57
Speaker
pop it in a community newsletter or send me an email with feedback or guest suggestions. Perhaps the penultimate display of goodwill is heading to patreon dot.com forward slash reskillience and pledging a donation, making it viable for me to keep pouring a significant portion of time and energy into the show's production every week, which I obviously love. It is unreal to receive a small amount of community funding with no strings attached. You can always see the total amount on Patreon as well, I really value that transparency. So again, that's patreon dot.com forward slash resilience if you've got a couple of spare dollars to gift to the show. And I'm mighty excited about next week's episode, which, you know, I haven't recorded yet, but I will very soon.
01:25:41
Speaker
it's going to be a sweet, intimate and unusual format to bring the cheer and ring in the new year. So I really hope to meet you back here next Monday. Till then!