Even living on the most beautiful permaculture dream farm calls for a holiday sometimes.
Dealing with amazing people every day, managing beautiful old buildings, productive gardens, interesting emails and a never ending list of small, boring, necessary jobs can lead to cranky girls. I think we’d reached the point that the farm was as happy to see the back of us as we were to drive out the driveway in our big ol truck equipped with bikes, dogs, olive oil, veggies and fishing rods.
We booked in at the beautiful Flinders Bay Caravan Park a whole 40km from the farm, far enough away to feel like a real holiday, but not so far away that if a really serious issue came up we couldn’t pop home (and thankfully the farm was in great hands and no such thing happened). Flinders Bay is one of those rare east facing bays in WA, where after rounding Cape Leeuwin the coast swings North towards the mouth of the Blackwood before stretching its way eastwards creating the beautiful South Coast. What that means for us is that every day we got to see the sun rise over the ocean and we made a point of wandering down to the beach with hot coffee and happy dogs every morning to witness this special event.
But mostly we were on a fishing holiday and I suppose that’s the reason I felt it was worth a blog on our Permaculture site, we did such a great job of feeding ourselves and our friends by
standing on the beach pulling in fresh whiting and herring. I love eating fish but I hate buying it (as along with just about everything else that comes from the super market) it sends me into the sustainable shopping dilemma where everything from the packaging (local whiting are sold on polystyrene trays wrapped in plastic) to the place and method of harvest to the sustainability if the species is up for questioning.
Sometimes I hate being such a conscientious shopper as I watch others happily filling their bags with all the things I refuse to buy, occasionally I just pretend I don’t care and buy, guilt free (but it usually comes back to bite me), mostly I’m glad because it leads me to live such a rich and fulfilling life, doing things I would never have done if I didn’t question all the time.
We didn’t chose to go on a “eco holiday”, we just chose a dog friendly caravan park on the coast and took our style of things with us, it wasn’t till we had friends come to visit us saying “this fits so perfectly with you’re lives” that I reflected on how low budget, low fuel, locavore (eating local food) our holiday was……..oh and the bike trails are the best! You can bike ride pretty much everywhere.
I’m having a little bit of difficulty coming home, I’m here but I’m still in the truck, it’s got everything a person could need. The gardens have been rained on and are looking happy and healthy, the team has kept the place running smoothly and there’s a nice little pile of correspondence waiting but generally my head is still in the changing colors of the bay, the pelicans and dolphins of the river, the huge stingrays that swept around the rocks and the sunrise over the ocean.