How to make soil and compost with no work

When it comes down to it, I am either lazy or clever….. probably lazy! As well as that, unlike many people, I don’t like buying things much, especially if they are in plastic bags and come from far away or if I have to get in my car to go and get them. I like staying at home and using what is around me which means I also like to sit on my verandah with a coffee and think about how not to have to go out, but still have things I need!

I like sowing seeds I have saved and I often need to have plants in pots for a while until there is room in the garden and I like compost; I just LOVE the feel and smell of beautiful compost. All this means I need something to put into my seed trays, something to put in my pots and something to dig into the garden….. and here is how it gets done at my place.

My chooks live in a kind of man made forest….. well, some of it is man made intentionally, some of it is a consequence of people living here. Some years ago someone planted two oak trees and a few fruit trees, all very much too close to one another, if you ask me, but they were there so I left them there when I moved here. Someone crazily planted 2 buddleias, which are now massive, one of which the chooks have chosen to roost in at night, instead of in the funny little tin and apple crate structure which they now lay eggs in, mostly. Then, unintentionally some mallow “tree” seeds probably blew in and a few wild plum trees grew on the neighbour’s side of the fence and some other weeds and plants got a hold and now it is quite a lovely forest for chooks. Add to this a lazy woman who throws most of the weeds from the vegetable garden and elsewhere, into the chook yard for them to deal with.

Next, the oak trees lose their leaves in winter and half the chook yard becomes literally 30cms or more deep in oak leaves. I keep tossing weeds on top, the mallow sheds its leaves too as do the  fruit trees, the other plants come and go and for months and months the chooks turn it all over, pecking at insects and edible bits and pieces, which they turn into eggs for me. Sometimes I can hardly open the gate because the chooks ALWAYS kick and scratch everything towards the gate! Oh lalalala, maybe the gate faces Mecca or something but I tell you what they NEVER kick it away from the gate!

So, one day when I was again in there with my spade trying to reclaim my desire to easily enter the chook yard through said gate I noticed how fabulous was this mound, how good it smelt and, kneeling down, how beautiful it felt running through my fingers…. I had discovered gold; a free, easy, continuous supply of beautiful, rich soil, hand made by a flock of assorted chooks of all ages who had been throwing it towards me for years and for which I had cursed them up until this moment.

All set to sift some gold for seed sowing	Now I have raked the area and the chooks are back to see what I have revealed for them!
4 buckets filled. The back right is sifted.	Here are the buckets, now by my potting bench which is next to the chook yard. All very convenient.

Now I can easily gather up a wheelbarrow of soil, which I sift well if I am going to sow seeds into it. If I want it as compost for the garden, I dig it in, acorns, little sticks and all (but I do curse those innocent acorns when they turn into oak trees faster than a speeding bullet!). If I want potting mix, I take the middle ground (like Goldilocks) and use the stuff that is not too fine and not too coarse and sometimes I mix it with some cheap potting mix from some of those wretched plastic bags I hate!

It does take some management because you have to get at it before the next lot of leaves fall and not just after you have dumped a load of the world’s worst weeds on top! Sure, a few grass seeds etc germinate but chooks have very beady eyes and do not let many seeds go uneaten!

All in all it is a brilliant system and allows me more time to sit on my verandah and contemplate other ways to avoid going out and buying stuff.

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….

Gardening in public…

I know I keep going on about it, but Carol and I have done an amazing job with the Cygnet Library garden. I spent a couple of hours there on Saturday, weeding, spreading a bit of mulch, planting some new things and watering and I felt like I was 10’ tall. I am so proud of it.

Every plant was chosen for several reasons – first it had to be edible, next it had to cope with VERY shallow soil and lastly, it had to be pretty. And I am pleased to say that, so far, they all score 10/10. Another reason was…. it had to be cheap or free!

We only had a budget of $150 and we spent every cent of that on plants, fertilizer, signage etc. Now we are running on empty but the Cygnet library-goers are regularly donating to a box I put on the counter inside and that is all I now have to keep the garden up to scratch.

It is completely different gardening on a narrow strip of ground between the library and the carpark, compared to in my private acre. I really quite like seeing people constantly coming and going, cars driving in then out and every now and then someone coming over for a chat. Today a German tourist came and sat on the bench and used the free wi-fi provided by the library. We were both pleasantly surprised that it was available even though the library was closed.

A local came and said hello and I picked her a lettuce and some herbs. You see, the garden is for everyone; not much use growing herbs and food if no-one eats it. I wrote a new sign on plastic milk bottle that I put upside down on a stake. It tells you what is ready to pick and encourages everyone to join in. Right now you can pick a few broad beans, some lettuce, kale flowers, all sorts of herbs including marjoram, thyme, rosemary and Vietnamese mint plus edible flowers like marigolds.

The red cabbage is forming a heart now and the black currants are ripening well. Don’t tell anyone but I ate 2 deliciously ripe ones today. I planted out a caraway plant and lots of garlic and plain chives which will clump up and flower later in summer – autumn. I am always looking at the garden with an eye to what will be finishing soon and choosing a few more things to put in to take their place when the time comes. This is how the donations are used.

I am hoping to take this theme up and down the streets of Cygnet, wherever I can get permission to add food to a piece of ground, no matter how small. I have already asked at the Commonwealth Bank and look forward to the reply when the bank opens again!

Happy food gardening!

Water…. like it is meant to be

If you imagine Tasmania, you probably conjure up pictures of glorious forests, pristine, stony rivers edged with tree ferns and a coastline of hidden bays, far removed from the rush of most of the rest of the world.

It is hard to think of a less frantic place to spend Christmas. I set up my market stall tent by my pond and 4 of us had lunch there yesterday, cooled by a light sea breeze and surrounded by the sounds of frogs. I was the only person who knew each of the others! All residents of Australia now, the 3 of them came from different lands originally…. One South African woman, one German woman and an American man. Perfect. Paradise. No photos.

I think I live in paradise. But today I went to the core of paradise, only 10 minutes or so drive from my house. It is a long and complex story but the gist of it is that the town water supply used to be a gravity fed, mountain spring but now the water is pumped from a busy river and then treated. Some of us would prefer to gather water from a pristine river where no humans or farm animals live upstream, and such places still exist near my home in Tasmania. So we headed to a secret location today, armed with buckets and jugs.

The track was rough but manageable and when we arrived at the end we heard the sound of the rush of water cascading over some rocks into a large, deep pool. After filling our containers, we took our shoes and socks off and sat on a rock with our feet in the icy water, hoping to see a platypus. None appeared but the 10 minutes of silence filled my head with tranquillity. I didn’t take my camera but it looked like the photo below, only the river was not quite so wide.

So, I now have a few weeks’ supply of water the way humans evolved to drink it; full of minerals form the rocks and filtered by nature with no added chemicals. I will keep it stored in a large, ceramic urn (that I found at the tip shop).

How many places are there left where you can find total wilderness so close to home but also, a short walk to the shop and you can buy St. Agur cheese!?

In case you don’t have a garden….

but you have a can….. and no can opener…. this could be VERY useful next time you go camping!

Wonderful Winter Edibles from My Garden

It has been freezing outside today and I have spent most of it inside, cooking. About an hour ago, between showers, I took my basket out to pick a salad…. then I took some photos of what I had picked because it just oozes with vitality; so vivid are the colours, so shiny are the leaves, so crisp and so juicy that I just had to share it, even if only on a blog! (Actually most of it is for the local family I cook for on Tuesdays, but a little bit of everything is for me.)

I could go on about bad food choices, bad agriculture, bad governments, bad, bad, bad…. but I am too happy, looking forward to dinner, to think negative things. Nearly everything I picked today was self-sown, requiring no work from me. If only I could help people get to this point; if only they’d want to come to my “Cook with me from my garden” workshops where I could show them how easy, healthy, worthwhile and delicious it is to live this way. 

Sandra’s vegan rice balls..my way!	Miners’ lettuce, radicchio, hakurei (Jap turnips), spring onion, mizuna
Today’s garden greens and eggs	Such shiny parsley….
Juicy, crisp, delicious fennel….	Winter chicory….
…and scuplit, Asian greens, etc, all bouncing with vitality.	Baked pasta, layered with garden veg, topped with home made yoghurt, today’s eggs plus cheese.
Tasmanian quinoa with snow peas, carrots, lime juice and herbs etc	My famous sourdough bread …. that everyone comes to learn to make, in my workshops!

Bon appetit!

ps. You should watch this 6 minute video, to see why I am sooooooo passionate about what I do. And no, I am NOT vegetarian but I only eat meat from animals that once lived in a paddock near me, on land I can see and cared for by people I know.

A photo on a tray

How can it be? I am endlessly attracted to the glorious colours of winter salads, picked chilled by rain while the clouds sit on the hills around my home, the little creek tinkles its way through my garden and my jumper and hair are speckled with fine mist as I forage.

Deep crimson chicory is dotted about in my self-sown vegetable garden, next to fine, lime-green, frilly mustard. Gathered haphazardly into my picking basket, along with chervil, French sorrel, marigold petals, spring onions, new red Russian kale leaves, miners’ lettuce, mizuna, young bok choy and some leaves of the Japanese turnip, joy erupts on my face! The collecting continues for a while longer and I don’t want to go back inside until, eventually, the rain gets too heavy for my woollen jumper to repel.

Earlier in the day I made some fresh pesto, but not using basil. Rather, I picked an armful of parsley and chervil and blended them with parmesan, Johnston almonds, pepitas, lime juice and garlic.

Serve all this with a piece of my home made quince paste and a neighbour’s goats’ cheese and dinner is a photo on a tray. Everything from my garden or the community garden or a neighbour, except the parmesan cheese, crackers, pepitas and almonds, but at least these are Australian.

How can anything be more beautiful?

Foraging Workshop at Birchs Bay

Channel Living with Paulette Whitney
Saturday the 1st of June             10am until 12:00 noon
 
Take this opportunity to learn more about the edible plants, both native and introduced, that are growing all around you.  Paulette Whitney will share her extensive knowledge of these plants in a foraging field trip at Birchs Bay.

Paulette, a qualified horticulturalist, and her husband run their business Provenance Growers they supply many innovative restaurants and have a regular stall at the Farm Gate Market, where they share their passion for utilising little appreciated plants.
According to Paulette;
‘Foraging refers to the gathering of wild grown food, rather than intentionally raising and harvesting it.  It enables new and intense flavours to find their way onto our plates, and forgotten foods to be rediscovered.  Traditional Tasmanian foods give us a window into our history, help to humanise Tasmania’s past.  Weeds, prepared artfully to reveal their innate deliciousness and to allow us to enjoy their nutritional benefits, are fabulous foraged foods.’
 
An excerpt from Paulette’s blog; Provenance Growers where she shares some of her knowledge and experience with Grey Saltbush.
 
Grey Saltbush, or Atriplex cinerea, is in the goosefoot family, Chenopdiaceae, along with lots of other valuable edibles; silverbeet, beetroot, quinoa and spinach. Even closer edible allies share its genus, Atriplex, which includes orach and fat hen.
I can't find many references to Aboriginal uses of it, please tell us if you know any more, but in the early days of white settlement it was depended upon as a vegetable. From what I can gather of its history of use, there was a terrible famine in Tasmania when supply ships failed to arrive. Grey Saltbush took on great importance as a famine food. It was eaten boiled, and it is still recommended today that it be cooked before eating.
The most delicious use it has been put to in my kitchen was to as a covering for a leg of lamb. I'd put the lamb in too hot an oven, and placed a bunch of saltbush on top of it to protect it while it cooked. A great example of necessity being the mother of invention, we threw away the sprigs on top that were burnt, and underneath found the most delicious leaves that had soaked up a little lamb fat, and had become like crispy, lambey, vegetabley potato crisps.
 
Cost: $25 children free
Plus Channel Living Membership if not a member: $12 single or $20 per family
(All participants must be members of Channel Living to be covered by our insurance)
Email: workshops@channelliving.org.au to register or
Phone Cath Earnshaw 62921032 for more information
Limited numbers
 
What to Bring:
·         Photos or examples of plants that you would like identified (extensive range of reference books available for plant identification)
·         Water for drinking
·         Warm work clothes
·         Sturdy boots or gumboots and gloves

Mint.

I picked a salad; some from the community garden, some from my own….. leaves of every shape, colour and culture. So what? I do this every few days. But today I had mint at last. Mint dies down here in winter and it is only this week that the shoots have been long enough to start picking again. Going all winter without mint is sad but not something I usually notice that much, until it returns!

Mint is so versatile and so distinctive. Mint goes with everything from lamb to chocolate. It can be eaten or drunk. If I don’t have any coriander, I use mint. If something needs a lift, mint will do it. Everyone seems to like it and there is a mint or two for every climate and every culture. Its even in toothpaste!

The first mint to wake up from winter here this year is spearmint….. I crushed a leaf and smelled it….. instant recognition….. Wriggleys Spearmint Chewing Gum from my childhood  ….in those little silver wrappers….. do they make that any more??

Mint. Probably my favourite herb.

What do pepper, lemon and mocha have in common? They are the flavours of Australian spices!

Most of us have ancestors from other lands and, no matter how Australian we ourselves are, most of what we eat originated also from elsewhere on the planet. There are several reasons for this; one being that Australian native plants, on the whole, are notoriously difficult to propagate, from seeds, cuttings or any darn part of them. Another reason is that, when our ancestors came here, they did not know what was edible and instead brought seeds, cuttings and whole trees with them to plant in their new land and we have continued with that tradition.

For an embarrassingly long time no-one consulted the aboriginal people! Even now, with a coin from 1792 that I found in my garden pointing to over 200 years of white history here, I seem to be trail-blazing with my recent introduction of some native spices to the range of spices I sell at the Cygnet market.

It is also interesting that, although practically everyone here knows of the Mountain Pepperberry (Tasmannia Lanceolata), which grows prolifically in the forests all over Tasmania, most Australians have never used it. Moreover, the plants are sold at many Tasmanian markets, making it one of the easiest natives to propagate and, even so, they are not used daily by most Tasmanians. The flavour is hot pepper, with a dash of eucalyptus and a background of a deeper aroma. For everything there is to know about this plant watch this video:

You can see in that video that Diemen Pepper are very professional and sell a wonderful product. However, I am simply selling the pepperberries picked from home grown bushes and dried without any fans or inputs of any sort. I met a local woman at the market who has several bushes and I bought the dried berries from her. When hers run out, I will be getting them from Rudy, who grows them in northern Tasmania….. that sweet bloke who sent me enough samples to last me for years, for my personal use. His are also dried without any aids. Because pepperberries are a bit bigger than a regular peppercorn, they mostly will not grind happily in a regular grinder, so Rudy also sells them cracked (not ground) and this allows them to go through any grinder. I am not selling the leaf yet.

Next is Lemon Myrtle (Backhousia Citriodora); an exquisite and incomparable spice sensation, something like intense lemon grass mixed with lime zest. It is native to the subtropics of Australia but will grow even here in Tasmania, although the flavour is less intense. I am buying the ground leaves from Warren at Tumbeela, in the Adelaide Hills, where The Hills and Plains Seedsavers visited when I was there a few years ago and Warren was just starting out. The leaves keep their brilliant green even when ground and do not lose their colour into the foods you cook them with. A pinch of lemon myrtle in rice is beautiful, but a pinch steeped in cream for a few hours and served with chocolate wattleseed mousse, is unbelievable! (Recipe soon to be uploaded here)

The aroma of lemon myrtle is so intense that it has to be kept in an airtight container ALONE! However, if you want to have a fresh, lemon aroma wafting through your house, this is your answer!

Lastly, wattleseed, roasted and lightly ground. Not all acacias have edible or flavoursome seeds but Acacia Victoriae certainly has. It is rich coffee mixed with hazelnut and chocolate. The aboriginal people of mainland Australia certainly had a wonderful treat with this spice and, if they had enough, they’d grind it to a flour. Here in Tasmania, wattleseed ice cream is THE most favourite, according to a friend of mine who has a stall selling her home made ice creams at Salamanca market in Hobart. I recently made some fabulous chocolate wattleseed biscuits. I am also getting the wattleseed from Tumbeela.

Slowly I will add to my range of Australian spices. They are unique, amazing, versatile and should fit easily into our cooking, once we give them a chance. Please do tell me your favourite so I can introduce it to people who live at the very bottom of the world!

The joyous lavender farmer

Barb gardens in Provence and is in search of some lavendula plants. She happens across M. Barjot and the Vallon des Lavandes. Barb writes beautifully; do read her story here....

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

 

 

.....and while you are there, you may also like to read about the little frog that sang for rain - Consulting the Oracle

Thanks Barb!

Where the weather determines what is on the plate...

 

World's "best" restaurant

Is it a sign of the times that the restaurant voted as the world's "best" has a strong tradition of foraging on land and coastline?

Wanted: Smiles of comprehension....

I hear it so often and I am sick of it.... "I have a vegetable garden... but... so much gets wasted because I don't get around to eating from it..... Its so convenient to shop at the supermarket....." etc etc etc etc until I want to scream. It is a disease; contagious, malignant, but avoidable.

These people feel distressed, annoyed with themselves and helpless to know how to change. I see it everywhere and hear the same excuses, smell the same car fumes, see the same rushing, rushing, rushing in the main streets but, at the same time, I sense the desire to do it differently, the pleading for a solution.... and now help is at hand!

I am going to give a few talks and run monthly workshops, where I show people how to live and eat from their gardens; where we go into my garden together, find dinner and cook it in minutes, then eat it together. We will laugh and enjoy it. This is my passion and I think I can do it, if only I can inspire them, from the very beginning, to listen with their hearts and minds and learn with me. We will relax, step back and review the way we approach thinking about food and we will have fun doing it. It will definitely be more fun that shopping in a supermarket and so rewarding.

Smiles of comprehension are what I am aiming for and if just one person continues the journey afterwards, I will be happy. Diseases are sometimes persistent and need constant, repeated treatments so I want my garden to be open for therapy.... like a personal trainer, I will be!

Contact me if you'd like to join in.

Foraging for Food Walk

All night it poured with rain. All through breakfast it continued. I was sure there would be cancellations. I checked my emails and listened for the phone.... then they started to arrive; early, happy, laden with home-made food and drinks to share. Before long the clouds lifted and as we stood in my lawn, while Jilli gave us her introduction to the world of weeds and herbs through human history, I thought to myself how wonderful it is here.... how lovely the people are..... how they turn up prepared for any weather...how generous they are..... how lucky I am to have Jilli as a neighbour.

We set off to Jilli's and spent a good hour and a half delighting in her amazing knowledge of English edibles which now run rampant in our gardens. Jilli's garden follows the same creek as flows through my garden and on the banks of it she has naturalized what we generally call weeds but are, in fact, the staple foods of the peasants of England for thousands of years. Here we all are, walking beside the trickling stream and looking for the little orange markers Jilli had used to mark the plants we were learning about.....

Telling the difference between Dandelion and....	Cat's Ear, for example....
Jilli's newest composting method is this  woven design from Suweto.	Then back at my place for a shared lunch....

Jilli had made stinging nettle soup, using the large, English nettles from her garden but I have the smaller, Tasmanian nettles in mine. The soup went so fast that this is all that was left on the hotplate of the gas BBQ for a photo!

I made a dip which started out being chickweed pesto but, oh lalala, I had an embarrassing number of disasters while making it and thought it was ruined..... but people loved it and even asked for the recipe!

Amanda is a blogger who came all the way from Hobart and brought this fabulous elderflower cordial (quite different to Deb's divine nectar but equally as delicious), amongst other things. She has a great blog called Gourmet Gatherer. Since she is new to blogging, do call in on her and say hello. I was lucky to get this photo of Fern and John with the cordial because it too disappeared in no time!

We finished the afternoon with coffee and Judy's soft and perfect scones.

Jilli provided us with handouts for the weeds we happily now call friends, and even recipes to make sure we enjoy them in our everyday lives as well as a comprehensive reading list.

 

This kind of knowledge is invaluable for we Australians who have no tradition of eating from our own wild places, having scoffed for too long, over the last 2 centuries, at the Aboriginal people who knew the land and Australia's own wild edibles. We must now learn to eat weeds from other countries, gathered in our own gardens, and to find what knowledge we can about edible Tasmanian plants.... including a native elderberry and a raspberry found in the forests.

Food for Pattie's Daughters gives me ideas whilst at sea...

I am sitting at the little desk in my cabin on the Spirit of Tasmania Ferry, in Devonport Harbour, Tasmania. Its been a nice half-day's drive from Cygnet, in the south to Devonport in the north ... Tasmania isn't a very big island! The ferry trip is overnight to Melbourne and as I do not like the public areas of the ferry much I prefer to eat a picnic in my cabin, watch the port drift slowly out of sight before dark and then sit in bed and read or write. These cabins are the perfect way to travel and include power points for me to plug in and write a blog piece on my laptop if I am in the mood.

Sitting by the porthole which is spotted with drizzle, waiting for the ferry to leave port, I opened Pattie's book, Food for my Daughters. It is as if we were both thinking the same things at the same time because the pages I turned to (pages 34 -36) are about two of my favourite topics.... easy soil fertility and eating weeds! (By the way, the ferry is now moving.... I love it when we finally leave the land and head out into Bass Strait).

I think it was me who first told Pattie how I use the paths in my vegetable garden as in-situ compost areas. I throw onto the paths most of the weeds I pull out from the beds. From time to time I put straw or sawdust on the paths to neaten them up and cover the weeds I have discarded. Gradually this layer builds up in the paths then the worms move in, the composting process begins below the surface and by the end of winter the path has turned into a beautiful river of compost, cleverly lined up alongside your garden beds!

All you then need to do is use a spade to scoop it up onto the beds at the beginning of spring and hey presto, no compost heaps, no barrowing heavy loads of compost from distant corners of the garden, leaving more time for sowing and planting and enjoying time in the garden. (At sea now and heading towards Victoria where wild weather is forecast!).

This method is great for dry climates as, in summer, the paths become higher and level with the beds as you fill them with weeds and sawdust etc. Then it all rots down through winter, finally ending with the mounding of it all up onto the beds, allowing for good drainage through spring when the rains come.  I have seen photos of some parts of India where the paths are built higher than the beds to keep the water in and stop run-off.

What I used to find in my garden in Adelaide was that almost everything self-sowed into the paths because, I presume, of the fertility and lack of competition there. Sometimes, like Pattie, I would actually turn the path into the next year's bed, so lush and prolific were the self-sown seedlings! My Tasmanian vegetable garden is not yet at this stage and people reading this having not seen my Adelaide garden will wonder at the audacity I have in speaking of this much order being claimed about my current garden!! Well, come back in 5 years, I say, and I will show you what I mean.

Pattie then goes on to talk about the current star (in the chapter on early spring) of her garden - chickweed..... and there's a delightful story which you will have to read yourself but the gist of the thing is this.... my neighbour Jilli and I are organising another Kitchen Garden Walk and this time the theme is Foraging for Food. (It is on Dec 11th and you can register by sending me an email) and it will be followed by a BYO BBQ at my place, using some of the things we find to make some of our shared lunch..... and Pattie had a great idea.... using chickweed as an ingredient in pesto and I think it would be wonderful in tabbouli, at this time of the year when my parsley is all gone to seed!! Its touch and go if there will be any suitable chickweed by December but if not then we will make some chickweed soup the day before, instead.

I love the way reading blogs and books can take your mind to a similar place on the other side of the world and you can feel like you are having a brain-storming session together, even years after the event..... or am I just crazy?? (No need to answer that one!)

This won't be published until I reach son Hugh's house in Adelaide where I will be online again....

Evolution...

September 19th: So (as Pattie would start) I am sitting at my laptop with my coffee at 6am, like I often am, when in pops an email from Pattie.... "read my blog" was the gist of the message. So, being a good, obedient girl I went straight to her post that day on Foodshed Planet in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. What this usually means is that some amazing, deep and meaningful thing has happened which changes Pattie's direction and I sit and read it with tears in my eyes because she writes sooooo well. This time I also had tears in my eyes but for a different reason; it was hilarious.

 Background...You see, Pattie has written a book that everyone in the world needs to read: "Food for my Daughters.... what one mom decided to do when the towers fell". Here, Pattie shares the evolution of her outlook on life from being a good, American citizen to being a citizen for the good of Americans.... I don't remember how I found Pattie's blog in the beginning but I started reading her journey right at the start, when her blog did not include the word planet, even.

Pattie had never grown food, or collected water from her roof or even mowed her own lawn. Since the towers fell, Pattie has helped start the first community garden in her area, fought hard for bike tracks, turned her back yard into an edible garden and even planted vegetables around her letterbox, become a voice for feeding the poor home grown food, started foraging from public fruit trees and started the Sustainability Commission at her local council, just to mention a few things.

But the book is not about that! It is about making connections, finding hidden treasure in people's souls, it is about passion, kindness, laughter and fulfilment. It is about children and childhood and growing food for, and now with, her daughters. It is about what happened on the inside as much as what Pattie did on the outside. It takes you to a space that removes the fear and stress of wanting to do something, and replaces it with a spirit which whispers to you "This I can do".

September 23rd Another early morning message from Pattie to read this piece and I laughed again, even more than before. So now I have 8 years to get ready for the arrival of Pattie and Julie, by kayak. If they time it right, they can paddle nearly right up to my front door. They'll need to duck under the bridge though, if the tide is high! Hmmmm, I'd better gets some ropes ready and maybe put in a post to tie the kayaks up to in my creek! Dreams and plans give life to us all, and having a friend like Pattie, who I have never met or spoken to, makes me very, very happy.

Life is good; get there fast and take it slow. (Do I need to explain this?)

A Food Forest Organism....

He came upon it by chance in Morocco, when the surf was flat and he wandered inland.... 2,000 years old, 800 people supported by it....

Forests of food. Taking a leaf from the book of nature.... well thumbed but often forgotten.

Then he discovered another.... in Vietnam.... 28 generations of sustenance

These are examples from Ogbuzz....

....I suggest that we plant shelterbelts windbreaks and Food Forests of nut and fruit trees grown from seeds, mixed with edible and medicinal perennial plants and mushrooms on a scale even larger than the shelterbelt plantation efforts in the USA after the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, or even China's Green Wall....

New Forum about Food Forests at: Ogfor.com

An old cow ....part2: Kate the cave woman exposed

I have to make a confession; deep down inside this vegetable vagabond lives a cave woman whose eyes shine with glee when she sees the hunter return home with an animal for dinner.... not a plastic-wrapped fillet from the supermarket but an animal with bones and skin and flesh and even innards, opportunistically gathered as described in the previous post .

Once it is cooked she tears off a leg and attacks it with gusto, without plate, cutlery or ceremony. She relishes every last morsel, leaving nothing for the vultures....

An old cow for dinner

I try very hard, passionately even, to do the least harm in an educated and informed way. I am not vegetarian; I am a locavore; an opportunistic gatherer of food. Tonight I am having beef stew for dinner. The cow gave milk for years to a local family then spent the rest of its 10 years munching the grass in the same paddock it had always lived in. This winter has been extraordinarily wet and the old cow's legs were having difficulty with the mud so it was decided it would be kindest to end its life and remove the daily stress of walking over the extremely wet and boggy land.

I was given some of the meat. I hate the thought of that cow's body being turned into blood and bone at the abattoir. To me, the ideal use for a dead cow is to share it amongst friends and eat it. Then the remains are turned into blood and bone at the abattoir and sold by the trailer load.

Barely a drop of fuel in that 10 years was used to care for, kill, butcher and share this cow. Same could be said of the turkey I ate at Christmas time and the rooster, pork and beef I have bought since I came to live here. A few animals kept by caring people,  on farms almost visible from my garden and killed at the Cradoc abattoir only a few kilometres up the road. I eat small serves of meat and these opportunities to buy from friends and neighbours are sufficient for my needs.

Compare the above with someone who gets their protein in other ways than meat and tell me that it is less harmful to the animals of the earth. As I see it, the more processing and transporting that is done, the more harm is done. Processing and transporting and big ag require a lot of mining to get the ore to make the metal to make the machines and all the parts have to be brought to some location and assembled before anything can happen. All this requires land to be cleared, buildings to be erected and people to drive daily to work at the mines and shops and factories..... and so on and so on. (This piece is not about employment, it is about doing harm to the earth and its life.) Consider a bag of tofu and all the people, machines and oil involved in getting it onto your supermarket shelf; all the invisible deaths due to land clearing, oil extraction, manufacturing and road kill....

I have lots of friends who are vegetarian and I do not for a moment want them to think I am criticising them. No. Everyone has the right to choose. But they must be informed choices, not emotional ones, if those choices are made in order to do least harm. We are especially lucky here in this part of the world to have food growing all around us. There is not one right answer for everyone in the world so it is necessary to weigh up each situation, remembering to look out beyond the final product on the shelf, all the way back to its source.

Eat, think and be merry.

My philosophy

The paths that we take in life, although they may dart here and there and sometimes seem to lead to nowhere, do, I think, follow the theme we were born with, or developed in young childhood.

When I was 2 my parents bought a shack on the beach, only 45 minutes from our home, but far, far away from our home life. I am lucky to have the poster of it in my kitchen here. There, I spent every waking moment on the beach; wind in my hair, sun or rain on my face and my fingers playing in the sand, in the rockpools and through the hair of our 5 dogs who were my companions. My brothers are both 10 or more years older than me so I spent a lot of time alone with dogs and the sea. We went there at least one weekend in 4 and for nearly every school and uni holiday for 20 years.

We used to put a little net out in summer. I would paddle my canoe out and collect the fish at 6am, before the crabs got up. I was very young and I suppose my parents were watching me, but I felt hugely free and independent from that young age; just me and the sea. I learned about the waves and the wind. Launching my canoe was all about timing and I enjoyed the challenge. Often it was glassy calm in those sheltered waters and I could see to the sand on the bottom as I paddled.  I frequently shared the early morning with dolphins and sting rays and once even a seal. The net was crusty with salt and often had coloured seaweeds entangled in it. I loved the feel of them in my hands as I removed them from the net but once I had collected the 2 or 3 fish caught overnight, I would paddle madly back to shore before the slimy bodies of the fish slid from the front of my canoe, to the back where I sat. I never thought to take something to put them in until this moment!

In winter the waves crashed on the shore, not far from the shack and I slept to the feel of the shack being slammed with the wild wind and pelted with rain, the roar of crashing waves and the snoring of a dog or 2. There were a few other shacks in the row below the cliff and, luckily for me, there was often someone to play with. In winter we'd run down the beach to where the waves for body surfing were biggest, dive into the freezing cold sea without hesitating, and, with our towels flapping in the wind, we'd race back to hot cocoa and scones. It was paradise for me.

This close connection with nature and growing up feeling I was a part of it and not that it was separate from me, has given me a connection with the earth that few people I know have. I keep it to myself mostly because it is not easy to explain in full. But the philosophy I live by is to live with the earth and do least harm. This means I need to know about food; where it comes from and how it is grown and processed. I do not want to damage anything, just to feed me. All creatures are equal. I would rather eat a kangaroo shot in the wild, than any farmed animal because the kangaroo does not require the clearing of forests, the building of fences or the use of machinery. Best, is eating feral meat, shot on the hoof; wild goats, pigs, rabbits, deer and camels, in S.A. Then I would be helping the wild animals and plants by reducing pests the destroy their native habitat.

Some people say being vegetarian is best. I don't agree, here in Australia. One animal shot dead in the wild would feed me for months, with no other destruction to anything. The rest I grow or collect or buy locally, except for spices and coffee and the odd bit of soy sauce etc. This may not be possible to feed the world but it would certainly help if more feral meat was available here in Tasmania, as it is in South Australia.

Everything I eat has come into my kitchen through close scrutiny, and I read labels constantly, trying to work out what to buy or not buy. It is part of who I am, part of inner me. My whole life I have felt this connection with the earth and the need to teach others to take care of what we have, to look at what you do and do least harm. It reaches into every corner of human existence, not just our food, and needs careful consideration as humans divorce themselves more and more from reality.

Make the connections and do least harm.