farmdoc's blog post number 680

(For some mood music whilst you read this post, click here.)

As Coco wrote yesterday, in Australia today’s the first day of autumn. Here on Farmdoc’s Blog I’ve waxed lyrical about autumn twice before [1, 2]. It’s my favourite season – a beautiful and mellow time here in Mole Creek. But its arrival also signals the end of the warm, full bloom of summer. And that winter’s on its way. Australia’s organ donation rate’s now among the lowest in the Western world (e.g. half the per capita rate in the US and Italy, and a third of Spain’s). I don’t know why it’s so low. In 2009, only 247 deceased Australians donated 889 organs to 799 recipients. At the start of 2010 there were some 1,700 Australians on official waiting lists waiting for the phone call that could save their life. Australian Organ Donor Awareness Week, aiming to increase our nation’s organ donor rate, ended yesterday. Its message? First discover the facts, then decide whether to donate, then discuss it with your family. Registering your consent and telling your family are the two most important things to ensure your wish to donate will be carried out. Would you accept an organ donation if you needed one? If so, then it’s worth thinking about being a donor. Check out the website [3]. It’s the least you can do – on this first day of autumn.

farmdoc's blog post number 351

The hours of daylight continue to dwindle. The autumnal equinox has come and gone (so sunrise to sunset is shorter than sunset to sunrise). Daylight saving has ended (and I’ve turned back all my clocks). The days are cooler (but mostly it’s still t-shirt weather). The nights are too (but not yet enough for me to reach for my flannel pyjamas and the flannel bed sheet). The solar panels are tilted up (to catch the ever more precious sun now it’s lower in the northern sky). The backup generator is fuelled and its oil topped up ready for when the battery charge falls below 70%. The fire permit season has finished (so fire brigade training has reverted from twice to once each month). The sycamore leaves are goldening (and their first leaves are falling, to the goats’ ravenous delight). Passover and Easter are nigh (I always think Easter marks the local tourist season’s end, after which the tourists stop coming, leaving the wintering here to the locals – a responsibility I’m glad to accept). In their song ‘Goodbye Earl’, the Dixie Chicks sing ‘…and summer faded into fall’. I'm only too aware of that. My summer has faded. And winter approaches. Inexorably.

farmdoc's blog post number 5

Four Seasons is the shirt that made Gloweave a household brand name. It is also, some say, the most-recorded piece of classical music. It is the name of a chain of hotels though I have never stayed in one. And it is a brand of condoms and other adult paraphernalia, but believe me I only found this out courtesy of Google. Here in rural northern Tasmania where I live, the four seasons are so distinct that you can go to bed one night in one season and wake up the next morning in the next. If you were to ask me which is my favourite season here, I would think for several seconds, I would rub my chin pensively, and I would tell you I like all four. But then I would blurt out that I love autumn the most. Autumn where I live is cool, dewy and at times misty mornings – and similar twilights. It is carpets of crunchy golden sycamore leaves. It is lush green pasture. It is wispy curls of smoke from wood-heater flues. It is the signal to tilt up the solar panels since the sun is lower in the sky these days. And it is the time to plant the onions and garlic before the soil cools. Yes, Mole Creek in autumn is the place to be.