Greetings from Blogosphere

It is taking a bit of time to sort out all that I need to have on this blog, with photos and links, and all the rest taking their sweet tech-time to get through the myriad of other things I am doing at the moment.

We have finished a harvest of 6tonne of Syrah grapes, a wonderful variety that should produce good wine in another year or so fermenting in the barrels. Look for it under the Hay Paddock if you are so inclined(around 2008, I reckon). I am not a wine drinker, I grow , and grapes are just one more experience in how to maintain living plants in a commercial fashion that will help me one day I suppose. Food is important to us. Wars will be fought over water, and living in a place that has plenty of it is a wonderful feeling. Yet, what is it being used for? Food needs to be understood from an ecological point of view, so we know where and when it was grown. Much of what we pay for is simply another supply-chain fossil fuel-hungry system that delivers little at great cost.

The wine will be good, but getting the Community (either this one, or any other) to start to support their farmers, and eating locally grown produce is a passion of mine. So much of what we eat determines out overall health, vitality and attitude. I am SO over packaged, sweetened, and preserved "food", and want to get together with others and produce great food again. I hve done it before, and will do it again. It doesn't have to be a commune (which it was the last time in the 80's , and of course deteriorated in a septic convulsion of egomania and financial malpractice, but that is for another post - the point being it can be done.)

And so as one of the remaining cyclones of the season down here in the South Pacific makes its roundabout way throught the Tasman Sea, I pour over the bills from my business and hope that nobody else growing is put out too much by the unstable weather(we ar only getting the remnants - Queensland got the full brunt.) Still, having ripe fruit, and heavy rain is a recipe for disaster, and there are a few frantic growers around the island at the moment.

It all seems a bit insulated from the traumas and dramas elsewhere in the world, and I am OK with that. My view out over the little community of Rocky Bay, with its reident population pushing 100, offers solace and companionship along a windswept coast, every bit as real as anything in Iraq or Belarus.