Everything that happened before Joel Meadow's interview

A Reskillience Reflection

Reskillience Reflections are raw summaries of my thoughts + feelings following each interview – like a diary entry with a whole bunch of hyperlinks. Hope you enjoy.

Joel + scythe. Image courtesy of Joel Meadows.

I was harbouring quite a bit of resistance to Joel’s interview.

It was my first in-person conversation for ages, and besides a brief encounter on the street one morning, we’d never properly met. I felt rusty and shy. 

I was also carrying a heavy sense of incompetence after my last interview with Robyn Mundy. You know when you’re mid way through a sentence and suddenly realise you have no idea what you’re saying, where you're going, or how to stop? That happened multiple times during the call (despite Robyn’s glorious vibes) and my inner critic gorged itself on the fairy floss of failure. God bless the edit suite! 

Anyway, Joel had been on my Reskillience radar for many moons because I kept hearing people rave and rave about his teaching style, and he also has a raft of interesting specialties including rocket ovens and renewable energy.

Big barrel oven. Image, and rocketry, courtesy of Joel Meadows.

I actually had an email to Joel festering away in my drafts the day I spotted him at a local cafe, and couldn’t help but skip over and introduce myself, asking him onto the podcast in person.

Interrupting someone’s morning coffee is more dangerous than waking a sleepwalker, but Joel took it in his stride and matched my invitation by suggesting I come and have lunch at his family home and conduct the interview there.

Joel + family’s sensational solar passive home. Image courtesy of Joel Meadows.

Joel’s property is on the eastern side of Castlemaine where the houses trickle towards the forest. It is 1 ¾ acres of, as Joel will tell you, mining-knackered country that eats cubic metres of compost for breakfast. And before I was halfway out of the car, Joel was leading me in the direction of his gravity-assisted hot composting bays which you don’t turn so much as push downhill. Smart. 

Compost paths of least resistance. Images courtesy of Joel Meadows.

It was a beautiful winter’s day. We gazed out over the orchards and gardens where rivers of bees flowed between blossoms and hives, chooks busied themselves scratching, and deep green stands of fertility-loving nettle that declared, yes, the compost is working.

Kenyan top bar bee hives. Image courtesy of Joel Meadows.

Gravity-assisted chooks. Image courtesy of Joel Meadows.

I soon relaxed into Joel’s affable, knowledgeable company. 

We turned to behold his family’s strawbale home, built by hand and mighty handsome with its wavy roofline and warm clay render. ‘There’s no heating’, he told me – which was astonishing given that our own tireless fireplace hasn’t had a day off since June. “On the rare occasion we’re not warm enough I just move a rocket stove inside.” 

Looking at those huge, sun-hogging windows I believed it. Yet I hadn’t really thought about living without wood energy in our climate; just assumed it was too cold. 

I am pleased to confirm that while sitting in Joel + Cath’s unheated kitchen I peeled off all my winter layers and continued to sweat like an onion.

Cold morning, hot compost. Image courtesy of Joel Meadows.

Joel insisted on cooking me lunch even though he was the one doing me a massive favour.

I was tasked with slicing up onions and mushrooms while Joel sauteed green things from the garden. “You fine with wild mushies?” Joel asked. I thought about the poisonous mushrooms that take three weeks to kill you, your organs quietly shutting down till one day you drop. I eyed the pinky purpley specimens on the chopping block with suspicion. A championship catastrophizer, I weighed up the chances that Joel was wrong in his identification and/or trying to kill me against the fact that he is alive and well after, I presume, decades of wild mushroom omelettes. I said, “Yep, all good,” and pledged to make the next three weeks of my life really count.

Friendly little wood blewits. Image courtesy of Joel Meadows.

Anyway, when I saw the quantity of aged cheddar that Joel laid like turf atop the omelette, placing it under the grill to bubble and brown, I knew I was in for a quality feed. 

Joel called his wife Cath (who was working from home) to eat with us, and we three could’ve recorded a preamble to the podcast then and there. It was such a bonus to spend a little time with Cath who is a religious minister in Melbourne by day and a homesteading rebel by night (tell me more!). And if you’re wondering about the omelette – stuffed with onion and garlic and mushrooms and brassicas; bedecked with homemade tomato chutney, garden salad and balsamic – it was bloody unreal. 

I inadvertently triggered dessert by motioning towards a medley of home-saved herbs and other magnificent looking things in a spice rack that filled an entire wall. The wattleseed in particular caught my eye because it’s my all-time favourite tea, but the stuff I buy is sending us bankrupt so I’ve been meaning to forage my own. 

Before I knew it Joel had tipped a healthy portion of Acacia retinodes (Wirilda) – a local species – into a frying pan and the air filled with coffee-chocolate-hazelnut smells as it roasted. He gave me harvesting tips while retrieving a tub of yoghurt from the fridge made with Sellar Dairy milk. I’ve only ever had wattleseed as a drink, so I was delighted to discover that thick, creamy yoghurt is the perfect vehicle for wattleseed’s nutty crunch – with a drizzle of honey taking it into Oreo McFlurry territory.

Roasted wattleseed party. My one useable photo from the day. Priorities.

Fed and watered and wary of exhausting Joel’s best material before the interview, I set up the mics and we recorded a wonderful 90 minute conversation. It makes such a difference being in person.

Besides the food, what I loved most about this in-house yarn was the localness. I always intended the podcast to have a regional focus, and while I’ve done more remote interviews lately having picked the lowest-hanging permie fruit, people like Joel represent the next crop of neighbourhood guests who can speak directly to this context, this climate, this Catie. Because for all the potential listeners, every episode boils down to an interaction between myself and another human. And it I might sound strange in a world obsessed with scale and reach, but if the host and guest aren’t having fun, then what’s the point of podcasting? 

Here’s a list of leads you might like to follow after listening to the episode:

[video] Joel’s intro to hot composting

[video] A little explanatory video about YIMBY

[website] YIMBY (note all the tasty resources including the 'Compost Conversation' articles published each week in the Midland Express)

[video] Joe’s Permaqueer talk on appropriate technology

[video] Take a virtual tour of Joel’s house

[eBook] Joel + Tim Barker’s Rocket Oven how-to book