Doing for ourselves
I know Meredith Freeman OAM would be mortified (she’d use that exact word) that I’d mention her public honour as well as calling her a hero, which I’ll do now because she is one.
Much of my life and career has followed along the trail of curiosity and courage laid down by Meredith (Mem) and her husband Gil’s explorations and investigations into hands-on education, buying land collectively and how to connect local farmers with their communities.
In her new book, Doing for Ourselves – From Self Sufficiency to Resilience, Meredith takes us for a walk along her life’s trail sharing over time how she and Gil have met their family’s basic needs for food, clothing, shelter and energy in the kindest possible way for the Earth and in the most satisfying way for themselves and their community.
Drawing from public sources and her own history Meredith charts the change from our self-sufficient selves of a hundred and two hundred years ago to our current lives of interdependence, boundless knowledge yet far fewer skills.
Broken into sections Sun, Soil, Water and Air, Meredith explores with curiosity and gentle humour her engagement with bees, chooks and feral animals, the embodied energy in her washing machine, approaches to house building, getting from A to B, heating and cooling, lawnmowing and other ways to discipline vegetation.
Doing for Ourselves is a social and environmental autobiography of a life lived deeply over eight decades spanning Mem’s frugal post-World War II childhood, reading of Silent Spring in 1962 as a young woman, embracing the 70’s back-to-land movement, the birth of Permaculture (Bill Mollison wrote chapters of Permaculture II while sleeping on the Freeman’s couch), being at CERES’ first working bee, selling organic produce at Victoria’s first farmers market, reviving Bush Food farming in South-Eastern Australia, leading various local food collectives and authoring books on her journey at Kardella.
This is also the story of a family of unrelenting experimenters; between The Compost cohousing Meredith and Gil established in Thornbury in the 70’s and their nine acre farm, Tarnuk, one of Australia’s most joyously productive Permaculture properties, Meredith, Gil and son Rhys have continually responded to the conundrum of living a life in balance with nature in an increasingly unnatural world.
From early solar adopters to modern EV drivers, explorers of rare fruit trees to keepers of bees, from bread bakers to eel smokers, from starters of food collectives to wood gasifiers, with every word you can hear Mem’s voice, well-worn with experience, humility and an openness to ideas, a willingness to make mistakes, hit dead ends and own them.
Illuminating, humble and at times hilarious – the chapter on the Royal Sanitary Commission of 1888 is pure gold – this is not a desperate exhortation to change, it’s an invitation to share in a life of practical and positive activism.
Riven throughout Doing for Ourselves is a willingness to reflect and move-on when things don’t turn out, the joy to celebrate and give thanks when they do and the courage to share the knowledge either way.
You can find Doing for Ourselves here and look out for the book launch coming to CERES Nursery
Have a great week
Chris
