Seeds that made me smile

Today was one of our regular Southern Food Gardeners get togethers. I was determined to put my best foot forward and take some things to showcase my garden, which I could also share with others.

My garden is a rabble of nationalities combining anything that will grow at 43 degrees south, with Japanese mizuna alongside Italian parsley edged with a border of young Tasmanian pepperberries and Chilean guavas. As I wandered around during the previous week, standing and watering or weeding, I noticed that several of the vegetables that I had let go to seed months ago in fact had seeds approaching dry enough to collect. So, that was it, I would take a fine collection of seeds from the edible world, to share.

This morning, as I clipped twigs of kale pods, strings of rainbow chard clusters, umbels of parsnip seeds and literally tree branches of purple sprouting broccoli pods I was in heaven. The basket I took out to put them in was not big enough and soon I had 2 boxes and a huge plastic bag full of future food for all who wanted them.

I had intended to shake off all the seeds, winnow them and put them into lots of little, labeled bags but, for one thing, I am far too lazy and secondly I had an idea! These days everyone buys seeds in fancy packets with photos but many people have no idea what the seeds look like on the plants so I would take them unshelled; in the raw, so to speak.

When it was my turn to say my piece at the meeting, I told them that this seed experience was like the difference between buying salad greens in a plastic bag from a supermarket, compared to picking it leaf by leaf from your garden. Then I let them at it and I watched on, answering questions along the way.

The first person approached the sharing table with a coffee in one hand and attempted to wrestle a kale pod off a stem with one hand. Of course this did not work and the seeds spilled out of the pod as it sprung open. I wanted to help but another person went over and called out to me that this method did not work and that next time I should put them in bags for them.

Luckily all the naysayers soon dispersed, leaving my seed experience for others. Someone asked if I could come and help as they were new to seeds and were not sure what to do. It was then that we had a wonderful time, me snipping pods and twigs and umbels with my secateurs and placing them into paper bags that the members were busy writing on. We were really focused on the job and talked about sowing methods, varieties and recipes. We all had a ball.

For the first time in absolute years I felt I was connecting people to seeds and bringing a sense of understanding of the importance and relevance of seed saving to people, some of whom have never grown anything from seed before.

Hopefully, when we meet next, some will have these vegetables growing from the seeds from my garden, in their gardens…..

The Chicken Feed Dilemma

I have been recently thinking about animal feed; for chooks in particular but all farm animals, in the bigger picture. Let’s think about my situation where I have 6 chooks, for eggs. Every morning I give them 2 cups of mixed grain, Australian grown, then in the afternoon I give them more grain, this time organic, Australian feed wheat (ie complete with some chaff and unwinnowed). This make about 3 cups of grain / day and keeps me in eggs all year round, plus I have plenty to give away to son Hugh and even a friend or two, at times.

Using our agricultural land to grow food for animals is worth thinking about carefully, when there are people without enough food, land cleared means native habitat destroyed and then there are the fertilisers, machinery and fossil fuels used to grow, harvest, package and transport it all.

I am feeding grain to 6 chooks and getting eggs, so I think that is a good use for 3 cups of grain / day. However, what about when my chooks get older and are no longer laying? Is it right, on all levels, to keep feeding them? Multiply that by the number of people who have chooks just in Tasmania and we can see that tonnes of grain would be going to old chooks (never mind to old horses and donkeys and alpacas and goats and so on).

Most people stop at the edge of thinking and say “Oh I don’t kill anything and my chooks can live for as long as they like (and therefore I am humane and a nice person).” However, just think about this in relation to native animal and plant survival, CO2 production, fossil fuel usage and a myriad of other, deeper concerns.

Is it ok for you to be “kind” but at the same time be killing wildlife somewhere else, where your chook grain comes from? Is it ok to be “humane” but at the same time be adding to climate change, peak oil, mining and transport problems?

I don’t think we can continue to stop thinking at our property boundary. I think that is precisely how we got into this climate change and earth destruction dilemma in the first place; putting our personal desires before the good of the whole. It may sound harsh to some, but it is far more humane, nice and kind to put old chooks into the stock pot or even into the compost heap.

7 Days and 7 Minutes Rye Bread

It is common for people to focus on the slips and stings of life’s journey but I prefer to ponder the diamonds and jewels collected along the way. One such for me has been a chance encounter about 6 years ago that resulted in what is now my passion for sourdough bread.

I have never eaten a lot of bread and still don’t but I learned what good bread was as a child, when my mother started making organic, wholemeal bread with fresh yeast. Sunday night tea was invariably left-over roast chicken with salad and a slice or two of her excellent bread, with lashings of butter, followed by fruit salad and ice cream. Only on Sundays did we eat in front of the TV because we all loved watching Young Talent Time!

How another 45 years slipped by without me discovering the joys of making sourdough bread is a mystery but I now rarely eat any but my own sourdough breads. I must say, though, that when I visit my 93 year old mother I do still love eating her freshly made, wholemeal, fresh yeast bread.

I run workshops about the sourdough method I use and those workshops have helped support me these last 5 years. In fact, if I could find a way to run more of them, I could happily give up various other parts of my work as I love giving the workshops as much as the participants love receiving them.

I describe my sourdough method as an easy, foolproof way to make nutritious, delicious bread. So it continues to amaze me that so many books are written about sourdough baking, and many of them very complicated, because sourdough is an ancient creation and is incredibly simple and natural. Most books have recipes that add all manner of ingredients to the basic loaf which all sound fabulous but which I find detract from the taste of a truly excellent sourdough flavour.

There is one book I do love: The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard. It is the story of Dan’s travels through Europe, Ireland, Scandinavia, Russia and more, recounting the villagers, grain farmers, wine makers, bakers, millers and grandmothers who have made sourdough bread using whatever grew in their climate and was available cheaply, since the dawn of time. It is a treasure of innovation and history and teaches you that fermentation has been harnessed by mankind throughout human history and, really, almost anything will ferment and some of the leftovers from other products (like grape skins from wine making) make exceptionally good bread ingredients.

He does not use exactly my method but the recipes are easily adapted. One of my favourites is a combination of two of Dan’s discoveries, reworked by me to include sprouted, rather than cooked, rye grains as a substantial part of the loaf. I call it “7 days and 7 minutes rye bread” because it takes 7 days from the minute you decide to make it, until you can actually eat it, but it only takes 7 minutes of your time in total!

7 Days and 7 Minutes Rye Bread

Day 1: weigh out 300g of organic rye grains. Put into a bowl, cover well with water and leave overnight.

Day 2: Strain off water. Place the rye grains into a damp calico bag and tie that to a wooden spoon over a deep enough bowl that it hangs without touching the bottom.

Day 3: Fill the bowl with water and let the bag of rye grains soak for 30 minutes. Put the timer on because you don’t want to kill the rye grains by drowning them! Tip the water out and let them hang again.

Day 4: Open the bag. The rye grains will probably be just sprouting. If not then repeat day 3. Once they are just sprouting, remove from the bag, put into a sieve and wash well. Put them back into the bowl and pour over 250ml white wine. Stir and leave all day.

Meanwhile you need to feed the rye sourdough starter twice during this day so you are ready to make the loaf in the evening.

To make the loaf (evening of day 4):

Strain the wine from the rye grains and save both! Beat together 200g starter +the strained wine + water to make up to 150g. Mix in 400g of the rye grains (save the rest, about 1/2 cup, to put in a soup / stew / another loaf of bread).

In another bowl mix 250g organic, wholemeal rye flour + 1 tsp salt. Stir in the contents of the first bowl. It will be a sticky dough. Rye has very little gluten so there is no need to do 2 risings. Simply grease a small loaf tin and dust it with rye flour. (I use a loaf tin that will fit inside my cast iron pot for easy baking.) Press the dough gently into the tin and make an even top. Cover lightly and leave at room temperature for 15 hours….

Day 5: Heat the cast iron pot for 30 minutes at 240C. Bake the loaf as normal…. 35 minutes with the lid on at 240C then 15 minutes with the lid off at 180C. Remove from the oven but put the lid back on and allow it to cool all day in the pot.

Evening of day 5: Remove it from the pot and the tin. At this point it will be sticky and damp underneath. Don’t worry! I wrap it in a beeswax cloth, but Dan says put the loaf in a lightly oiled, brown paper bag.

Day 6: Do nothing! Do not eat it yet!

Day 7: Ok, now you may have a slice for lunch. If it is still a little damp, wait until day 8. It will be fabulous and you will be starting on the next 7 days and 7 minutes rye bread process.

Now, if we all took 7 days to make our own bread, instead of buying bread, we’d all be healthier and happier! This recipe is dedicated to Jan Howard, who kindly showed me how to make sourdough bread back in 2010 when I first moved to Tasmania and who is originally from San Francisco and told me about Tartine.

Kermandie Falls walk

Have you heard of Kermandie Falls? We had not until a bloke in Geeveston told us about it and drew us a map because there was so much snow and debris up the Hartz road we would not be able to go there .... gosh.....

Eventually we found the start, after discovering the road we needed to go on (Ogles Road)had lost its sign! First we scrambled down to the creek and heated up an early lunch...my baked beans and Hugh’s bread. Hugh had prepared everything so beautifully for my birthday adventure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The start of the walk was not signed but we saw a pink ribbon on a tree and headed towards it.

We followed more little pink ribbons, battled LOTS of fallen trees and the usual debris of the Tasmanian rain forest (including mud, slips, rocks, steep bits, very slippery bits and jumps across wash-aways). We came to snow and more obstacles but after a good 1.5 hours we arrived at Kermandie Falls. The sound was deafening as massive amounts of water hurtled over every surface.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We didn't stay long as the forest there was dark and menacing, the volume of moving water almost scary, the recent debris horrendous to climb through and the walk back was going to be as slippery, cold and tricky as the walk in..... and we had food to cook on our return!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back at the car the sun was shining and we decided to set up our table and BBQ right there, on the road, and joy what little warmth it provided as we cooked. Hugh brought wine glasses but, knowing I don’t like wine much, instead brought kombucha! What a perfect way to revitalise ourselves.

He had prepared everything without me realising….. picked salad greens from the community garden, adding some of my favourite things like finely sliced fennel and roasted red capsicum. Out came his excellent, portable BBQ and in a few minutes we had perfectly cooked lamb cutlets. Off came the grill, on went a ring and soon we had hot chocolate to wrap our by now cold hands around.

Thanks a million, Hugh!!

We followed Ogles Road on, until it met with what we hoped was Kermandie Road which got narrower and rockier until finally coming out somewhere at the back of Geeveston…. well worth exploring. The mountains in the south west were still a blaze of snow after the heavy falls earlier in the week and it was certainly a delight to come across snow on our walk up to Kermandie Falls today.

What has happened to our expectations to grow food?

Every day at the moment governments are making announcements about budgets, taxes, welfare, childcare, big and small business incentives, superannuation, mental health, hospital spending etc etc but never, ever do they broach the subject of self-sufficiency or self-reliance as goals for Australians. It is politically incorrect to expect people to get out and grow their food, join a community garden and become skilled in relying on themselves. However, the simple act of doing this would, to a large extent, overcome many of our national woes.

I enjoy learning about the ancient and more recent history of civilisations and their foods. Up until almost the 21st century, almost every person on earth either grew some food or had relatives that did. Stop and think about that for a moment….. your parents and / or grandparents no doubt fitted this statement and had vegetable gardens and fruit trees in the back yard. In only one or 2 generations people have started to rely on others, unknown and as far away as the other side of the world, to provide nourishment for their families. At the same time, there has been a huge increase in obesity, depression, stress-related, chemical-residue related  and diet-related illnesses.

Interestingly, growing food has become a middle-class activity, seen as something you do in your spare time, after you have bought all the accoutrements that modern-day food gardeners seem to “need” such as raised garden beds and soil (as though the soil in the ground is not good enough these days!).

I am reading a wonderful book, given to me by my fabulous neighbour, Jilly, who recently blew in, in full wet weather gear, in the midst of the coldest and wettest day this year. We sat by the fire and talked for 2 hours, sharing interesting snippets about books, gardening and life. We seem to get together only about once a year but Jilly’s amazing knowledge of plants, history and everything in between keep me inspired until our next coffee. I now look at the old lino pattern on my kitchen floor as steeped in history, instead of annoying!

The book is called “The Nature of Gardens” and is a collection of essays brought together by Peter Timms. It sounds dry and just another intellectual, middle class look at garden design etc but I assure you it is not. I recommend it to anyone who has read this far through this blog piece!!

The first essay and my mother’s stories of life during The Depression have brought me to my laptop to write about the recent past’s expectation that you grew as much as you could and the poorer you were, the more you grew. If your job was not well paid or not permanent, you at least knew your family was going to eat well. This essay points out the interesting fact that when workers in the mines and in the coal and steel industries went on strike in Newcastle, NSW it was prolonged affair and they would not relent. This was possible because these same men all had food gardens so, even with no income, their families ate well. In fact, the free time afforded them because of the strikes meant that jobs in the garden and around the house could be done, and vegetable gardens better tended than usual. This is called resilience and is sorely lacking today.

If I had one day to rule this country, I would insist that welfare would include assistance for you to learn to grow food and even an insistence that you join a community garden where you would gain not just hands-on know how but broaden your social circle and gain a sense of community and self resilience. I know from experience how beneficial food gardening with others is to every single person who joins a community garden. But I also know that insisting people do something is not the best way to get them to do it! People who are transient and those who have short or long term rental are given a place to base themselves by belonging to a community garden. Once you get into a community garden then, even if you move, you take with you the confidence to find another, wherever you go. It is like having an extended family; always there and ready to nourish your body and soul.

At the Cygnet Community Garden we donate fresh vegetables weekly to the Uniting Care Food Aid in the same street as the community garden but I want to offer to walk with the recipients, one at a time, to the community garden and invite them, quietly and without preaching to them, to come along. This is my new goal….. if you have any helpful ideas of how to make this small gesture work please feel free to share them with me.

The Australian Outer Hebrides

I am in Adelaide for a couple of weeks, celebrating my mother’s 92nd birthday, spending time with son Hugh, gardening with friends, walking on the beach and having the odd swim in a much warmer sea than ever happens in Tasmania. Two glorious weeks of November weather; balmy nights, warm – hot days and streets lined with the wonderful jacaranda trees in full bloom everywhere I go.

As I drive familiar streets and take the freeway in the Adelaide Hills I sometimes listen to 891, Adelaide’s ABC radio station. Yesterday I heard the claim that in a study of Australian housing it was found that Adelaide has the biggest average house size in Australia and Tasmania, the smallest.

This I can verify as I found it amazing, when I moved to Tasmania, that the houses were so small. The house I bought is what I thought was very small; a little, old cottage, but which Tasmanian visitors asked of me when they saw it for the first time “Why do you need such a big house?” !!

Many people, when building in Tasmania, struggle to see why the minimum house size allowable to build is now 70 square metres, up from the previous 60 square metres. I know a few people who live very comfortably in their 60m2 houses, such as this one. In Adelaide everyone wants to build the maximum size that will fit on their block of land and I doubt anyone even knows the minimum house size, whereas in Tasmania most people want a small house no matter how much land they have.

This morning I have been re-reading a wonderful book from my mother’s bookshelves, called The Sea for Breakfast by Lillian Beckwith. These gorgeous books, written in the 1960’s follow the writer’s stay and subsequent move to the Outer Hebrides and are a joy to read for transportation to a simple but testing life, rich in Gaelic  language and traditions, of a small, island community.

In some ways the books reflect a life not dis-similar to some parts of life in Tasmania which often seems to me as I read the books, more related to the Hebrides than mainland Australia. One of these similarities relates to an attitude to work. Statistics put Tasmanians on the bottom of the list of per capita earnings in Australia but, from my perspective, apart from the unemployed, most people earn enough to have a deliciously simple life, scouring tip-shops and second hand shops for cast off clothes, pots and pans, garden tools and timber for renovations etc and swapping this for that with others, at every opportunity. Time and work are often shared, and customers and friends all blend in together.

I love the line in The Sea for Breakfast where the woman is wanting to get some small windows made bigger in her newly acquired, tiny, stone cottage and enquires about who could do the work for her. A man called Erchy is suggested who “quite likes a bit of work now and then, just as a change, when he can spare the time”. This perfectly describes a lot of people in Tasmania too and I think that is one of the things that makes Tasmania foreign to the rest of Australia, on the whole. Visiting Adelaide after about 18 months of my 4.5 years of simple life at the bottom of Tasmania has highlighted this difference more than ever.

None of this is a criticism of anyone or of any place; it is simply fact and interesting to notice!

Life is good; get there fast then take it slow.

Labne, asparagus and quail eggs, all on a Cygnet Thursday

By the end of my Thursday afternoon various goodies had assembled on my kitchen table. Thursdays are wonderful here in Cygnet! We start the day at 9.30am with Happy Swappers in the Cygnet Community Garden, where anyone can bring home grown fruit or veg, home made goodies, food plants and cuttings or seeds and place them on the sharing table. Then each person is free to take whatever they choose from the table. We chat and laugh and all go away with something from someone else. Today I took some rhubarb and a jar of Sally’s vegetable stock.

Next we spend 2 hours gardening in the community garden, and Jo picks a selection of whatever is ready to harvest and we share that too. Today I took some globe artichokes, a couple of hakurei turnips and a few handsful of young broad beans.

There is always something new to try at lunch time in the community garden as they are all such good cooks, with a broad range of skills and cultures. A few weeks ago Sita brought some labne which she had made and it was so delicious I made some for myself. It has been in the fridge developing flavour ever since. 

Back home by 1pm I clean myself up and get ready for customers to my home shop, The Garden Shed and Pantry. Today I had a visit from Morag who wanted some kefir grains. She brought me a dozen quail eggs and we made a swap. Yesterday Erika gave me some asparagus of which a few spears were left over and I also had a left over leek from my own garden.

I have a neighbour who loves to grow radishes and also loves to eat my sourdough bread so we do a swap; I give him a loaf of bread every so often and he keeps me supplied with radishes.

On my preserves shelf I still have a few jars of passata from last summer’s tomatoes. On my bench I have some salt made in the oceans of Tasmania…. the only bought thing in this whole episode!

So, I cooked the artichokes and drizzled them with lemon juice and pepper. I boiled the quail eggs for 4 minutes. as Morag said, to hard boil them, then removed the shells. I sautéed the leek, gradually added the rest of the ingredients and served it topped with my labne balls.

I must say that this was one of the tastiest throw-together meals I have ever made; the labne being a key in making it so. I had rolled the drained yoghurt in herbes de provence, which was a perfect addition, as it accidentally turns out!

The lightly hard boiled quail eggs were each a delightful mouth experience as they were popped by the tongue. Nothing beats asparagus spears and those first, young broad beans of the season are an annual treat, after months of leaves and broccoli.

I thought of taking a photo….. but I was more attracted to eating than photography by this time. Compared to all the meals I have eaten out in the last 6 months, which truthfully is not many, this is way better and that is exactly why I don’t eat out much. Exceptional ingredients, with no food miles, grown with love, often shared with love and each with a story will always win.

Now it is time to make rhubarb crumble and relax.

Life is good and sometimes life is bloody good. Every now and then life is great.

No work and all play makes me very happy today!

A friend came by and brought me some of her wonderful asparagus this morning and all day, on and off, I have been thinking about how I would have it tonight….. raw in a salad, steamed as a vegetable, baked in a tart…. or what!

So, about 5pm I wandered out into the garden with my basket to see what was there that would make up my mind for me about cooking the asparagus. (I had already eaten quite a bit raw during the day.)

First there were the chooks to say hello to and some eggs to collect. Next I noticed that one of the chicories was stretching upwards before going to seed, so I decided to cut most of it off, as I really love chicory. The rest of it will shoot again and go to seed which will self sow and give me next more chicory next winter and spring, without me having to do a thing.

Near that chicory is a self sown red cabbage that is simultaneously growing a wonderful cabbage and sending up shoots with flowers, in a circle around the head. I picked one of the flower shoots and it was so sweet that I picked most of the rest of them, leaving the head for another day. I left a few shoots to continue flowering and set seeds which will self sow and provide me with red cabbages next winter and spring, without me having to do anything.

Earlier today I did some mowing and noticed how wonderful the dill is looking. These dill plants were dug up from a self sown clump that was very congested and moved to a more open area where they have done really well. So, I cut some fronds. I am surprised they have not gone to seed yet but soon they will and I will leave a few to self sow so I will have dill next winter and spring without any work at all from me.

There is one enormous frilly mustard reaching to the heavens. This gorgeous, lime green, frilly, beautiful plant is self sown. I am not sure why I didn’t get many this year but I will let this one go and hopefully it will give me more next year, without me having to sow any at all. I picked some of the pretty leaves as I passed by.

I looked over into the paddock next to my vegetable garden, where dairy cows sometimes graze. There, pecking away at this and that, were 3 of my chooks. I opened up the bottom of the chook yard fence a few years ago, just enough for a chook to get under, so my lucky chooks have free range over maybe 20 acres or more but they don’t don’t go that far away. I threw them some snails I found slithering through the perennial leeks and watched them fight over them.

While I was there, I cut some of the leeks which are so dense now that I just cut them at the ground and use them like spring onions, green tops and all. I love this patch which multiplies by growing little nodules around each leek which then grow into more leeks. If I thinned them out it would take me hours so I don’t bother. I love them thin and sweet. Eventually they will go to seed and grow fabulously beautiful heads of flowers that the bees will flock to and next winter and spring I will start picking the fresh leeks again, without having to do anything in the meantime.

By this time my basket was full and dinner was pretty much worked out, without me having to decide a thing. So, I slowly stewed the chopped leeks and most of the rest, in olive oil with the lid on then added the asparagus, s and p, and several beaten eggs mixed with some milk. When it was nearly set I grated over some good, sharpish, English cheddar (one of my ridiculous indulgences!) and put it under the grill to brown a little.

As I sat and ate my dinner I thought of the lovely 20 minutes or so I had spent in the garden, the fun it was tossing snails over the fence and watching the chooks race to get them and how nice it was that Erika had bothered to drop in on her way to work early this morning to give me some of her asparagus. And how I don’t even have to sow any seeds or do any work at all for this dinner to grow itself in my garden and my friend’s garden next year.

Life is good. Let things go a bit and watch them come back.

Look at the colour of that! Red cabbage shoots about to flower.	I love dill.
Fat Bastard asparagus from Erika. Beautiful.	The final result of 20 minutes in the garden and 10 minutes in the kitchen. All of which made me smile! And there’s leftovers!
Punnets of cucumber  seedlings from yesterday’s Cygnet market. Soon to be a summer lunch ingredient. And so the seasons go round and round….

Greater desires = more work

Masanobu Fukuoka’s book The One Straw Revolution, written back in the 1970’s, is even more relevant today than it was then. A scientist himself, while researching various areas of agriculture, came to the conclusion that chemical agriculture was leading the consumer and the land on the path to illness, and that there had to be a better way. So began his journey into natural farming, using observation and patience to guide him. Eventually he developed simple ways to grow rice and a cereal crop in rotation, without chemicals or hard work. The book is a delightful and insightful look at life and agriculture through the eyes of a Japanese scientist turned farmer.

In one chapter he is discussing the supermarket’s desire to offer the same vegetables all year round and all the same size, with fresh (unnatural) colours and how this puts incredible pressures on the farmers to move towards out-of-season production, with huge losses if the products are different in size as well as the problems of expensive cold storage and chemical coatings to every piece of fruit and vegetable to ensure artificial long keeping.

Then he puts this back onto the consumer by saying….

…..To say that what one eats is merely a matter of preference is deceiving because an unnatural diet creates a hardship for the farmer and the fisherman as well. It seems to me that the greater one’s desires, the more one has to work to satisfy them….

That is the nub of so many of society’s present day ills; desire for more than is natural to have or be or do.

When I read books and articles I always refer back to my life and the lives of the world I see about me as a kind of reference point for making an opinion about what I am reading. My life here is funded by the tiniest income, so tiny I don’t even pay tax. I can do this for several reasons and one is because I was fortunate enough to have the money to set myself up when I came here with a house, a car and modest household goods. It is only from that point on that I needed to make enough money to live on.

Many people who have chosen to live here in southern Tasmania have arrived with the same ability to set themselves up as me. But then they return to a hectic life of working far from home and lots of driving and shopping and expenses that I don’t have. I assume, thanks to that paragraph in the book, this is because their desires are greater than mine.

It is natural to eat by the seasons and I have no problem at all with preparing delicious meals almost entirely from organic, seasonal food.  I cannot think of much that I eat that is not seasonal except spices and grains (which of course ARE seasonal but because they are dried seeds, are usually available all year round). My food bill is very low indeed, especially compared to the trolleys full of packaged food that I see people wheeling to their cars. I have no desire to even know what all that stuff is.

I don’t feel that my life is lacking; in fact I feel it is very rich and wonderful. I love what I do in my Garden Shed and Pantry home and market shop. I love Cygnet and have no desire to shop elsewhere. It is with great regret that I shop online for certain books and technology and I could not live anywhere without the internet! I love the community garden and all rowing and all the simple pleasures of outdoor, rural Tasmania. 

I have learned to say no to taking on more roles and doing more things because after a certain point, more is not better; more is less do-able. Everyone has a natural state that may not be the same as your friends’ or neighbours’. Trying to do or be more than is right for you is self-destructive. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by what I must achieve this week or tomorrow, even though I know people who can do twice as much as me without any (visible) problem.

It seems to me that the greater one’s desires, the more one has to work to satisfy them… Thank you Masanobu for your words of wisdom relevant to the field and the soul.

Deranged chooks

My life seems to follow a pattern that I would like to change!

This is how it goes…. I have an idea, get it going, make a success of it and someone comes along and tries (successfully usually) to take it over and kick me out.

These people have the gift of the gab and the time to weave their evil in other people’s ears, seeming to want to turn my success into theirs.

I will not fight with them. I can see exactly what they are doing but am powerless to stop them.

Since I have come here it has happened twice; first with my Wednesday gardening group and now with the Cygnet library garden. Both these small enterprises were meant to be for my relaxation and hence were meant to be small. They were small gestures to demonstrate to the community that anyone could have a beautiful, edible space to garden in, in a relaxed way.

In both cases people with grander ideas spent many months expanding their vision until they make a bid to take over, with endless criticisms of my small, peaceful, relaxing approach. Holding on to the small and easy to manage has been like trying to hold back a tsunami, so, in both cases, I withdrew, leaving them to their inevitable collapses.

It has always been the same, all my life. I would very much like to change it so that I can quietly and peacefully potter about doing something for the good of the community without some puffed up, deranged chook trying to make themselves top of a pecking order where once there was none!

Life is good. Small is good.

5 organic bananas or a piece of cake

There are 3 busy cafes in Cygnet. All have lots of beautiful cakes which are hungrily eaten every day, sometimes by me. One piece of cake is around $5. No-one bats an eye lid at the price.

There is 1 organic fruit and veg shop, Cygnet Garden Larder, which is equally busy. I bought 5 organic bananas for $5. The lovely girl serving looked shocked when she told me the price.

The people eating cakes in the cafes are the same people who tell me they cannot afford organic fruit and vegetables.

These people drive 20kms to a supermarket which has chemically grown fruit and veg.

What has happened to the world?

On Cygnet Market days I like to buy organic fruit and veg from the local market gardeners who have stalls outside on the street. One of them is Alex from Golden Valley Farm. The queue for his vegetables, picked that morning at dawn, stretches down the street if I don’t get out there early enough. His produce is priced to make a living for him and his family and so it should be.

I don’t have much money but I don’t even look at his prices. I grow what I can in my garden and the community garden and buy what I need from Alex. I would much rather have the best, organic vegetables I have ever seen, from a man I know, than drive to a big supermarket and stand in a check-out queue with stuff my mother would not even call food.

It used to bother me that I was preaching to the converted when I talked about such things with my friends and could not seem to reach those that would benefit most from conversion. Now I have stopped beating my head against the wall…. or at least maybe I will soon!

Life is good. Join Alex’s queue.

Cabbages and Convicts

We see history all around us; monuments to lives lived and lives lost. Cities brimming with entrepreneurial enterprise has made them what they are and the history of their eras is in every building, every business, every museum, every suburban street and every bridge. The everyday lives of people in our collective histories are in our minds as lives of families, villages, farms and armies, punctuated by events and remarkable individuals.

It is with quite some mental adjustment to live in a state (almost like another country, in reality) where convicts formed a great part of the white man’s history. Shipped to the other side of the world for crimes as small as stealing bread to feed a child and as big as murder, men and women thrust together in gangs built the infrastructure and were the manpower involved in businesses and life in Tasmania, at the very bottom of the world.

Today a great number of its inhabitants are descended from convicts and this itself is a deep and sometimes hidden side of family history. It was recently quoted that as many as 80% of those Tasmanians descended from convicts have never been outside Tasmania, even to this day. This makes for a far different place from the rest of Australia and a place where I feel a foreigner in some regards.

My travels by foot and kayak into the depths of its beautiful environments often leaves me speechless, for more than just the scenery; cabbages loom large! Before roads could reach these areas, boats and ships plied the seas and rivers, carrying tons of logs destined for England and the British Navy who needed timber for ship building, carrying minerals mined for manufacturing the construction of life in Tasmania and in Britain and carrying convicts to do the work. Do you ever think how they fed the convicts doing this toil, stationed in the remote wilderness?

I have been on the edge of the wild, south-west Tasmania world heritage area, mesmerized by sea eagles, grebes, dolphins and seals, by mountain ranges draped in soft sheets of cloud, by forests full of the fresh scents of wild Tasmanian plant life and then I am told that where I am standing was once cleared and planted with 5,000 cabbages to feed the convicts. Further on I am told that after serving time and gaining a ticket of leave, a convict had a very successful import / export business right here, shipping out timber etc and bringing in supplies for a town that grew to 500 people, mostly convicts. All this, where I thought was pristine wilderness at the bottom of the world.

There is a group of 3 islands just off the beach at Dover. I have paddled my kayak around one of them on a glorious summer’s day, feeling the sun on my back and revelling in the joy of being out in wild, southern Tasmania. Again my head is abruptly sent spinning when I am told that here too, on the next island, thousands of cabbages were grown by and for the convicts.

I would like to learn more about feeding the gangs of convicts and about the individuals who were the gardeners and farmers; about how they chose a site, how they managed the soil and what seeds they used. Some Tasmanian families probably are still growing cabbages and other vegetables from those seeds. I’d love to meet them and hear their stories. I’d especially love to have some of the seeds, the seeds of civilisation in Tasmania, and sow them in the Cygnet community garden.

Integration brings integrity; making it work for Tasmania

Tasmania is a magnet for rural tourism. Why? Is it because of the scenery? It certainly isn’t because of the facilities or large resorts. Is it because of the non-existent raging, city night life or sprawling shopping malls?

I rent out a room in my house on Airbnb and I meet the tourists who read my profile on the website and choose to come and stay in my old cottage on an organic, rural 1 acre in the town of Cygnet. I hear what they say when asked why they come to Tasmania. I see the streets of Cygnet literally full of tourist vehicles all year round and I have a stall at the Cygnet Market which provides most of my income because, even for a town of 1,000 locals, this market is what people want to experience.

Everyone with excess produce in their gardens offers it to the girls at The Lotus Eaters cafe who cook the most amazing stuff, using food grown within a very small circle of the cafe. It is always full of people, all year round. In winter you see people in their coats and scarves at the outdoor tables, hands around hot cups of coffee and their famous chai, because this is what they come here for, not to sit in the air conditioned environment of a shopping centre or resort. There is no view from this main street cafe, but there is more atmosphere and warmth and genuine soul than any view can give.

Then on the other side, I listen to the radio and hear how “experts” say that Tasmania needs to catch up with the mainland of Australia and provide more facilities and exciting things for tourists to do and it makes me want to scream! They say we need to build more roads, big hotels and a cable car to the top of Mt. Wellington. This is segregation; dividing tourism off from the everyday life of ordinary people and is expensive and unsustainable in a tiny, cash-strapped state.

I hear about Tasmanian agriculture and how so many fruit orchards have been ripped out or fruit left to rot because of cheap imports. I see that the major supermarkets sell apples from China, when not that long ago, Tasmania was called the Apple Isle and exported all over the world. And yet, local fruit growers have set up roadside stalls and they are patronised by locals and tourists in huge numbers as are all farmgate operations. Every road around here has properties with small groves of  mixed orchards, wood lots, a few animals and a vegetable garden. Many are new or have new owners who can see the wood and the trees! And this week has been Agfest, a rural show of mammoth proportions, visited by anyone and everyone who can get to it, from all over Australia.

The experts are segregating, not integrating. They look at figures for tourist spending in other places and think that this is relevant to Tasmania. They don’t spend a couple of weeks as a tourist in Tasmania and actually see for themselves. Tasmania is unlike most of the rest of Australia in that it is decentralised and people live in nooks and crannies all over it. The “cities” are small; the capital and biggest, Hobart, is only 250,000. It is more like south west France, with very rural villages every few kilometres. And, like rural France, that is exactly what people come to see; rural, everyday life supplying excellent quality, local goods and services in rustic villages and markets.

Everyone wants to go France; where every facet if life is integrated; ancient buildings are not museums, they are loved and lived in. Markets abound with local food and the French people themselves would not buy food grown elsewhere if it was grown locally. Rooms on farms and in rural homes are on every visitor’s list of accommodation. Every tourist to France goes to the markets and villages to see the real French way of life; and so it could be in Tasmania.

Integration means business is life; farmland has tourism in its agenda; farmers integrate ideas with neighbours, instead of competing, to provide diversification; people live and work in their own town, using the shops and services; cafes cook and shops sell what is grown locally; artists use local materials; nothing is dependent on one big industry. Using very little from outside means a low earth footprint which, in itself, is worth advertising for tourism and makes for a sustainable future. I think this is how Cygnet is developing, almost accidentally, and I look forward to the blinkered government and local authorities staying right out of it’s fabulous future!

Sydney is buying and shipping thousands of tons of sand per month from northern Tasmania for making concrete for developments. Is this how Tasmania should be making money?

Integrate not segregate is permaculture principle 8

                   Many hands make light work

Gangster Gardening

Humbled by this real life story I feel I am spinning my wheels and not going anywhere, while in the food desert of south LA, this man is making it happen. What I so much want to do is unite people in a desire to bring food gardens to the streets and so to the gardens, homes and kitchens of Cygnet. The whole point is to make people healthy and responsible for themselves because in doing that, the whole planet will benefit. And, when it comes down to it, that is what I care about most.

 

Sure, I have a cute little patch of ground at the Cygnet Library that is a fabulous start and which I am unashamedly proud of. Everything to do with the effect that this patch has on our community is positive and, at times, quite remarkable. Linking food growing to the library connects people on neutral territory; with no age, sex, political or social barriers. Accidentally we have found a brilliant way of influencing everyone who reads as the library system of Tasmania is a model that should be adopted everywhere.

This man, however, is influencing those most in need of change and often these are the people who don’t or can’t read. These are people who don’t have a garden, don’t know about chia seeds, fish oil, organic carrots or detoxifying your liver. While I am doing superficial stuff in a rustic, gourmet little town he is turning gangsters into gardeners and giving people their health so they can make choices and move away from the fast food nightmare.

In a few weeks I am taking a tentative step into the equivalent of his world, here in Cygnet, when a group of mostly women, who have lived here all their lives, some of aboriginal decent but all suffering many health issues, come to my garden. Some probably can’t read. Over a couple of hours we will look, touch, smell and pick a few things then go in to my kitchen and make some soup which we will eat with some home made bread. I have no concept of how this will pan out but I hope that, in some small way, it sows a seed in someone’s mind. And I sure hope that I feel inspired to continue on trying to connect people and their food, through gardening.

Day 2: A new way of thinking about community gardens

Community gardening is changing. Young, creative, energetic people from all walks of life are taking the bull by the horns and bringing outside the square thinking to the whole idea of what a community garden is and whose it is.

In Australia, people have seen grants from all kinds of government, local, state and/or federal, as the way to get a community garden going and keep it funded. The recently elected Liberal Government  has closed this option and many at the Food 4 Thought conference are now without any funding.

Our Cygnet community garden does not work this way, although someone in its history did get a grant to build a green house and 2 rain water tanks for which we are very grateful. We rely on our own initiative, fund raising in small amounts such as selling to the local grocer when we have excess, having a pancake stall at the Folk Festival and selling plants at the Cygnet Market from time to time. We use water for some of the garden from an adjoining house for a small fee (water is cheap in Tasmania!). The local hardware shop gives us a 10% discount when we shop there, which we often do as it is just across the road. Although this is working well for us, we have not gone any further, unlike a small group in Darwin.

The Darwin Garden Education Network has evolved under the outstanding and creative leadership of Lachlan McKenzie and Emily Gray, both of whom look to be in their 20’s. In essence what they have done is simply link all interested parties. So, local businesses, chefs, schools, councils, health departments and commercial kitchens have been linked with community gardens, sharing events and facilities to promote one another.

For example, in order to teach people how to use a particular seasonal vegetable growing in the community garden, they invited a local chef to run an after school workshop for anyone interested. The chef promoted his restaurant, the community garden provided the vegetables and promoted their garden and the school made use of their facility and encouraged students and parents to join in.

At their annual fair, community gardeners from all over Darwin collaborated in running a pop-up cafe, with all food cooked beforehand by the gardeners, tables and chairs provided by a local business, straw bales by a garden supplier, all of whom could have their own stalls. The profits were shared by all participating community gardens. Schools were given the job of decorating a combined zone with anything they chose to promote their schools in exchange for each running a 1/2 hour workshop on something garden related. Businesses were encouraged to have a stall, the payment being simply a gift voucher which was then given as payment to anyone who ran a workshop, thus reducing the need for book keeping on the day.

On Friday afternoons, a local seedling nursery gives all its leftover punnets of seedlings to any group that shows up at the gate and also offers work experience to local schools. People talking and connecting really make things happen.

By being in touch with local health authorities and councils who are keen to promote such self-motivated and healthy events, compliance fees and rentals could be waived. And so the linkages have extended until now there are about a dozen community gardens, some in very close proximity to each other, where only a couple of years ago there was only one. Working together to achieve common aims is far easier than everyone re-inventing the wheel and competing for limited funding.

These are real community gardens, linking every level of the community with every other under the umbrella of encouraging local, organic, affordable, home grown food with associated education and workshops; using common land to connect people of all cultures, ages and abilities with nature, each other and their food, in a full circle.

Interestingly they don’t have a website!

I am REALLY excited to say that Emily was voted in as the new president of the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network, the body that gave us this fabulous Food 4 Thought conference. I can’t wait to see what she and Lachlan come up with!!

Breath-taking Tasmania… 5 days by kayak and on foot

It was like paddling a kayak through a mirror reflecting a rain forest so dense and so full of diversity that we felt the silence fill our senses and it was hard to tell where the surface of the water was….

Nothing between me and South Africa… paddling to Ocean Beach, down the Henty River in the unusual and glorious, summer sunshine where 3 days without rain is a very rare treat!

And paddling on Lake St. Clair, where wilderness meets hydro- electricity…. see the pumping station, built in the days when beautiful architecture ruled.

Shadow Lake…. a full day’s walk up to a hanging lake through another magical forest…

where I had never seen so many fallen trees, many from the storm I wrote about recently but many more from the long life of this forest…. this one had had a slice cut out to make way for walkers.

You can see more photos here.

The Singing Swans are born!

Cygnet Sailing Club’s 150th Regatta…. Everything, from the tiniest rowing and sailing boats, through every shape, size and age boats to these gorgeous ships will be in Cygnet this week!

This morning the autumn mist sat on the hills, the sea was glassy calm and the weather mild as we set off rowing our skiff, 6 women, some who built her too. We started to sing! Our ideas and courage grew as we rowed…. we formed The Singing Swans… one of the group is going to teach us sea shanties and we will sing our way up and down the Tasmanian waterways, every Monday morning!!

Life is good. Again. At last.

Inspirations: Vegetable Seeds for Cool Growers

There are some amazingly interesting and wonderful people in Tasmania. It really is like another country, rather than another state of Australia. I am struggling to explain concisely what it is that makes it seem this way but it has to do with a history of isolation and necessity being the mother of invention and self-sufficiency.

Up north in the Tamar Valley are a couple of blokes passionate about beans, who have been trialling varieties from all over the world in an attempt to find those which will produce well in the cool climate of Tasmania. Currently they grow over 100 varieties!! The purpose is to make them available for home gardeners to grow and people to cook and eat. One of the newsletters went into the health reasons for eating beans of different colours. What these blokes know about beans is staggering.

Every month they write a newsletter about what they have been doing and when we might be able to buy the new seeds they are producing in quantities big enough to sell to home gardeners. I find it all incredibly inspiring. I have spoken on the phone to the man who runs the nursery and one day I will go and meet them. It reminds me of somewhere I went in France where a man did a similar thing with pumpkin varieties…. but the name of the place has slipped my mind now.

They do all sorts of research into other vegetables too, always with the home gardener in mind.

Tasmania, actually, is not dissimilar to France in the way that it has remained totally itself and has not been over-run by agri-business or any other big business but is full of small enterprises and individuals making the most of what they have in their area. I love this way of life dearly and would not now want to live anywhere different.

Here is the latest newsletter from Inspiration Seeds.

Here is another newsletter concentrating on the health and vitality of beans, fresh and dried.

Life is good.

Carl Barnes and Glass Gem Corn

….. truly an inspiration to all who save seeds.

A stunning variety selected by Carl Barnes, a part-Cherokee farmer and breeder, from several traditional corn varieties. Produces a diversity of gorgeous translucent, jewel-colored ears, each one unique. A popcorn, the kernels may be ground into cornmeal or popped….

…..For millennia, people have elegantly interacted with the plants that sustain them through careful selection and seed saving. This process, repeated year after year, changes and adapts the plants to take on any number of desirable characteristics, from enhanced color and flavor to disease resistance and hardiness.

The bounty of genetic diversity our ancestral farmers and gardeners created in this way was shared and handed down across generations. But under today’s industrial agricultural paradigm of monocropping, GMOs, and hybrid seeds, this incredible diversity has been narrowed to a shred of its former abundance. A 1983 study compared the seed varieties found in the USDA seed bank at the time with those available in commercial seed catalogs in 1903. The results were striking.

Of the 408 different tomato varieties on the market at the turn of the century, less than 80 were present in the USDA collection. Similarly, lettuces that once flourished with 497 heirloom varieties were only represented by 36 varieties. The same held true for most other veggies including sweet corn, of which only a dozen cultivars were preserved out of 307 unique varieties once available in the catalogs. Though this data leaves some questions around actual diversity decline, the trend toward dwindling crop diversity is alarming. In just a few generations, both the time-honored knowledge of seed saving and many irreplaceable seeds are in danger of disappearing.

Though much of this diversity may be gone, all hope is not lost. The emergence of a breathtaking heirloom variety like Glass Gem reveals that the art and magic of seed saving lives on. It reminds us that we can return to this age-old practice and restore beauty, wonder, and abundance to our world. Indeed, this renaissance is already underway. The rising seed library movement is encouraging local gardeners to become crop breeders and empowering communities to reclaim sovereignty over their food. Our pioneering Seed School program at Native Seeds/SEARCH is training people from all walks of life in building sustainable local seed systems rooted in ancient traditions. And as eye-popping images of Glass Gem continue to spread around the world, Carl Barnes’ kaleidoscopic corn has become a beacon—and perhaps an inspiring symbol—for the global seed-saving revival….

Copied from “Native Seeds”, an American native seed company.

Gardening Australia gets to the core and soars to the stars….

"Meet Joost Bakker - artist, florist, inventor, architect, builder, landscape designer, restaurateur and eco-entrepreneur. He's a big ideas man."

 

I have been getting a little tired of Gardening Australia but this week hit the spot for me, with some amazing innovations that really are world firsts. Honestly, each segment was not just interesting but so inspiring and creative that I wanted to jump up out of my chair and go and join in. If you can, watch it on iview.

 

It started with this wonderful man…. Joost Bakker…. who has ideas and just gets them done…. "I just believe that we don't need to generate any waste in any of the things that we do in everyday life," says Joost. "We can live in a world that is sustainable and doesn't need to have an impact and we don't need to put anything in landfill. Everything endlessly reusable and recyclable - that's my philosophy."

Sure we’ve heard that all before but Joost is a BIG ideas man…..he designs recyclable houses, he recycles buildings, he turns 100% of his cafe waste into compost on site. He is just simply wonderful!!

"In this cafe, we don't have any rubbish bins," says Joost. "We don't accept anything in cardboard, we don't accept anything in glass - so our milk comes in stainless steel vats, our whiskey comes in wooden barrels, all the produce comes in black returnable plastic crates.

And there’s so much more!

"Well, if you look at Sweden, they've decided that by 2020 they're going to be totally self-sufficient in fertiliser. So every new house that gets built there has a urine-harvesting toilet with a tank and the government comes and empties the tank once a year. Urine is sterile*, so you can store it for a long time and they have equipment that injects it into the soil," says Joost. "So, rather than using chemical-based fertilisers they want to use natural fertilisers."

And I bet he gets this one done….

"I'd love to put a farm on top of an office tower in Melbourne. That's my goal. I actually want to show how much food we can grow with the waste that the restaurant generates. I want to have a restaurant, a farm, a composter and use things like olive pips to generate energy and have a completely enclosed loop of a supermarket at the base, where people can buy the produce that we've grown. Anyway, I'm working on it. It's a big dream. It'll happen. I'll make it happen!"

Suddenly the rest of the world seems so small.