The Hooters Thief

Killer Cody: Tales from the farm

Home town Dallas, Texas was getting too hot and humid so I skipped and headed north to New England. I was twenty years old at the time and I was getting a little sick of going to gun shows with the old man, and besides my shorts just wern't cutting it these days.  I got on a plane and GPS'd several Hooters establishments in the Bay State.  I needed to figure out a way of getting into those girls shorts.  They were indeed no where to be found in any retail outlet.   On the plane I hatched the idea of throwing a fake birthday party at one of the restaurants and then tricking one of the girls out of her pants.  Sounds hard right?   

Farm Talk: Juice of the Cantelope

The cantelope ripens and it is bursting!
It bursted. 
Now it will be.
 For the bees and the crew. It is fantastically fruity.
The bees do so too.
The workers dismay.
They fight and duck and dodge to get out of stings way.

Safety and now the plunge. 
Teeth and jowls and lips and cheeks.
Your soul is happy.
Saturated sweetness, lollyed up into one.
It is natures gatorade and it is simple.
Delicious and sticky.

A smiling residue crests the cheeks.
As the flavor lingers sweetly.
But so do the bees.
As they wait to meet me.

The race is on to the water trough.
A fresh start awaits.
Until tomorrows dew.
The bee shall be tamed.
Awaiting the smiling crew.

Farm Cooler: Lance Lives On.

As the morning crew gets ready to part ways for the weekend we muse on the possibilities of fun that await our labor day crew party.  A BYOB extravaganza at the farm is one option, or we could shuttle our veggie loving butts up to Maine to white water raft 9,000 CF of freshly released damn water. I am hoping I end up with my paddle chin deep in white water.

Poor Lance Armstrong got his 7 Tour De France Titles stripped away from him this week after refusing to fight doping allegations.  His legacy may have taken a hit but it is good to hear his donations to his cancer research foundation, LiveStrong, have increased since his decision to stop fighting the courts ($78,000) donated in one day following the news of the controversy.  And I am glad, proof that the attributes of a publicly recognized hero are more important to the psychology of the public than his illegitimate championships.  We still love our heros even if we are reminded of them through bad press.

Z

A backdated post about Uluru

Greetings Family and Friends,

It has been a while since I last posted.  I enjoyed three days doing some rendering to a straw bale house in isolated Mongarlowe, NSW for a lovely woman named Alice.  She has 100 acres of beautiful bush land and is intending to develop two or three more straw bale houses on her property for her and her friends.  Her rambunctious German Shepard Toby provided the entertainment.  (Watch out for junk, see pic below.)  Two days of applying a lime-sand based render on three sides of the interior of the house and we ran into a moisture problem and spent day three putting up a rather ad-hoc temporary tarp roof.  Moody Mongarlowe tends to experience 4 seasons in one day.

(PICS: The Huff and Puff Crew, Quinn by the water barrel in morning, playing with Toby, Alice exposing moisture, Quinn constructing temporary roof, rendered wall - a days works, the roof going up)

After Mongarlowe I spent a lovely three nights back in Sydney staying with a builder friend on Manly Beach.  Manly is a 1km crescent shaped beach.  It is twenty minutes outside of the CBD and if your’re working in the city your commute either a 45 min drive in typcial city traffic or an amazing 30 min ferry ride across the harbor.  There was a definite beach vibe in Manly but it seemed to be more a more humble one.  I imagine the typical Manly resident saying; “I love to work out every morning on the beach and get ripped.  But I’ll put my shirt back on before I go to by my milk and bread.” 

What do I do for the month of April?  I have the entire month to bide my time before the next building job starts.  What about Bali?  Too expensive.  What about a scuba diving trip to the G.B. Reef?  Too expensive.  Sailing?  Too expensive.  Eating, traveling, walking, breathing in Australia is too expensive.  Come on Zack be creative what’s your next move going to be?  Three options came to mind.  1.) More farm stay work (ideally on a horse farm)- I want to learn to ride and I like the cowboy image (yes I am vain), 2.) More building work, 3.) Go out to Uluru (the red centre ofAustralia) no plan see what happens, high financial risk.  Yep.  Took option three.  I flew out of Sydney to hot and humid Darwin.  A bit of a wild west town.  Full of well paid tradies, out door enthusiasts and loads of backpacker.  I met a lovely and amazing woman who bought me dinner.  She was on her way to be a field nurse for the Australian military base in very violent East Timor.  Machete attacks, shootings, kidnappings, and rape are all very serious realities for this young rock star.  I admired her.  She aspires to be a medical chief (like her father) a position I don’t doubt she will achieve in her lifetime.  She had her head on straight with the confident flare of what I would label as the educated red neck.  Strong willed, sure of herself, likes beer and sport, can ride a dirt bike.  Despite being partially in love I was not surprised when she told me she grew up on a farm.  My travels and life experiences have shown me many people.  Some of the strongest and best in character that I have come across were raised in rural or agricultural settings.   Perhaps it’s living closer to our mother earth or being forced to account for the weather, the price of fuel and other economic factors that makes country living “more real”  The people that can do this in good humor and with some success are usually first class humanoids.  Any-who, after a beefy dinner and a few drinks we parted ways and like many brief encounters of the traveler our relationship will probably go no further than facebook.  Ce la vie.

A slow but romantic two day train ride on “The Ghan” took me to Alice Springs, Australia’s most land locked city. Alice Springs is a small-isolated, ruff and ready place almost directly next to Australia’s geographic and magnetic center. The purpose of my three day adventure here was to experience Uluru (Ayers Rock)- the heart of Australia, the Red Center, a place of significant and almost unexplainable Aboriginal spirituality.  One of the easiest ways to get there is to book a three day adventure tour – a completely unspiritual and unsustainable way to experience the rock – but I accepted the cheesiness of the experience and actually had a good time, me and 23 other people.  In three sunny days and two full moon cloudless nights in the desert we saw Kings Canyon, Ayers Rock, and the Olga’s.  The pictures explain the experience best.  And now back at the youth hostel in Alice Springs I still have three weeks to kill before the next build. I may stay in Alice and find a bit of work or I may move on if something better turns up.  I’ll keep you blogged.

Uluru (expected to run 2-6km below the earth)

Uluru at Sunset

(The Olga's at sunset)

Currently struggling through “The Human Condition” by Hannah Arendt and in a bit of sappy juxtaposition with my most recent trip “The Hara – The Vital Centre of Man” by Karlfried Graf Von Durckheim. 

Just do it. 

Farm Talk: Live Long and Lobster and The Ipswich River

After three days in Maine I am back and reporting for duty.  I plan to still continue with the 21 day challenge of commenting on daily conversations both in personal life and work.  Maine was a fantastic weekend get away from the city with some of my oldest and best friends from growing up.   We spent a day on pontooning on Lake Thompson, two nights at the new and always over crowded Oxford Casino, and one epic night of bomb fire madness with oversize marshmellows and a fortress of wood.  We capped off the weekend with a dip into Portland, ME.  What started out as a quick trip to find food turned into a two hour wait for a lobster roll.  But with great summer weather in one of New England's finest port towns there is nothing to really complain about.  was great weather

That was the weekend.  Today at the farm we moved the harvest operation to the tot soi an Asian mustard green-spinach like plant.  One topic that came up was the Cicada Wasp.  Get this!  This parasitic wasp captures cicada's and can have a torso that grows over an inch long.  Major heads up if you are a squeamish bug person!  An even more startling factoid is that once the wasp catches a Cicada it implants eggs (which acts as a parasite) into the Cicada that proceed to hijack its bodily functions until the hatch.   It sounds gruesome but true to mother nature's form, balance is the key, with one death comes another birth.

After the day I took a fantastic river cruise in The Ipswich Wildlife Sanctuary in one of the canoes belonging to Green Meadow's Farm.  Next time I think I will push it to the Atlantic some 6 miles away!

More from the Farm Cooler tomorrow.

Z

Day 2: Talk from the Farm, Philosophy - Do bad people really exist?

What does it mean to understand human interactions?  Should you ever hate someone for who they are?  What if you are around someone who is always rude or manipulative?    An understanding person might say that this person probably has a reason for being this way.  Maybe it was circumstance or bad parents.  But does that make them bad? I think not.

This is a massive topic that was discussed after we were drinking some Honest Tea and discussing the benefits of Coconut Milk, even though the actual coconuts are from Thailand!   I believe scholars and philosophers from Hanna Arendt to Socrates have contemplated the human condition and why we are the way we are. So I am not going to analyze the topic too much. However, I personally think that no matter how much of an asshole someone is, there is no such thing as a bad ass hole.  A rough upbringing, an inferiority complex, a confused belief system, or maybe some people are just socially awkward.  But as humans we are very much "connected/social" beings.   Therefore I think we seek out the good in people more times than not.  Even if that means putting up with a jerk - though they aren't bad.  

Other topics - good carrots, cantelope is awesome, garlic is good for soar throats!

See ya tomorrow. 

Zack

Lets see, where were we? Where am I?  How did I get here?

I left the east coast of Australia about three weeks ago to travel inland.  I had a hunch about Uluru. The big red rock in the desert.  I wanted to see it and get a feel for the Outback.  I thought it was time to get away from the cities and get in touch with my spiritual side. Little did I know that two weeks later I'd be feeding baby kangaroos three times a day....

I flew into Darwin from Sydney and was immediately cloaked in the tropical Northern Territory humidity.  After the briskness of New South Wales it was a welcomed heat.  I always enjoy the first impression of a place when leaving an airport.    Everything is new!  The air, the time of day, the people and even the cheesy tourist gimmicks are different.  For some reason I tend to smile when passing brochure gauntlets.  There are so many different fun ways to spend your money! Usually I object to such gimmicks but this time I was all in for a tourist bonanza.  Uluru sits behind the Great Barrier Reef and or the Opera House in Sydney on Australia's list of "must see things before you die."

The best/easiest way to get to Uluru or "The Centre" as it so affectionately called is to get your self to the small city of Alice Springs which is about 2000km from nowhere, smack-dab in the middle of Australia.  Alice has the charming label as being the "closest" to all of Australia's beaches.

So I took a brilliant train ride on the infamous Ghan Scenic Railway and 24 hours later ended up in Alice!  One day later still I was on a bus with 23 other travellers geared up and ready to see Kings Canyon, Uluru, and the slightly less known but equally impressive Olgas (Kata Tjuta).  Despite the cheesiness of the tour the guide was entertaining and the group got a long well especially after several boxes of beer and I had a great time.  We slept in swags under the stars, cooked camping meals together, and managed to get up in time to see a pretty bad ass sunrise!?

Uluru was amazing!  It took us two hours to walk around it.  It rests an estimated 6km underground and it has out of this world spiritual significance for the indigenous Aboriginal culture.  You must respect the significance of this rock. I do feel lucky to have seen it. To be connected to the earth in the way that the Aboriginal is culture is would be worthy of an entirely lifetime of study.

Flash forward a week and I visited a small horse/cattle property doing some more wwoofing helping a lovely family of five prepare their property as the family gets ready to move to 1 million acre cattle station 9hrs drive into the outback.  It is so far away that their children (Colton, Mia, and Savannah) will be getting their schooling through weekly airplane parcel drops delivered by the School of The Air.

I then spent a unique 5 days at a wildlife sanctuary helping with some home repairs and feeding baby kangaroos and wallabees (Joeys).

I am back in Darwin now and it is good to be surrounded by people again.   The last three weeks were very solitary ones.  A very dear friend of mine once said that at some point we should all be alone in our lives. And I agree. Maybe not Outback isolation but certainly to be on "ones" own is a great way to experience who you are and what things in your life are important.  I came for the Outback and while I may not have found my center I do feel a little closer to Australia's.  And now it is time to work.