The hose and the skein of autumn

Autumn is that season when we may have the last of our summer vegetables still ripening while the nuts are starting to fall, but, as the days shorten and cool, the first of the new season’s leaves are emerging too. It is a glorious season for the home gardener and one I think a lot of people let slip by, unappreciated.

Life is like a skein of wool; keep it whole and you remain cosy and protected. The more you unravel it, the more you have to deal with the consequences but also the more opportunities it reveals. And so it is with the food garden in autumn!

I find the hurly burly of the spring garden stressful. I never seem to get ahead. Christmas looms, in a flash the grass is as high as an elephant's eye and seeds need to be constantly sown and seedlings tended to ensure a long summer vegetable harvest.

As I stand with the hose this dry autumn day, I am relaxed. Dew makes everything look fresh, flashes of red of the last of the tiny, wild strawberries and regular ones too are dotted about, enticing the gardener to wander further, nibbling here and there as I water. Fully ripe, the deep red, delicious, Chilean guava fruits are so abundant that I put the hose down in order to gorge on them before moving on.

I am careful not to stand on any self-sown chicory plants which colour the paths with their brilliant greens, reds and various markings, all of which are being constantly and gently harvested to add to my salads. Soon, their bitterness will recede with the cold of winter and larger leaves can be picked. Chicories are the beauty queens of the winter garden in Europe but are vastly under-valued here, despite my almost daily exclamations of delight to whoever will listen! I especially love the French “endive” (also called witlof by the English, but which is far superior in France than anywhere else), and the French “chicoree frise” which wear vast bonnets in the fields of France and emerges sweet and crisp but which I love, even without its blanched leaves, if picked young from your own garden.

While I wait for the very last of my bean pods to crisp up, brassicas such as broccoli, purple sprouting broccoli and red cabbages are growing in pots in my greenhouse, ready for transplanting to the resulting nitrogen rich bed. I am not watering these old bean plants now, so I turn the nozzle off and fossick through the dilapidated mass, searching for brown, crisp, dry pods, plump and ripe with dried beans inside. Leaving them to hang there too long results in insects burrowing in and having a feast. I put the half dozen pods in my pocket to add to my inside stash later and pick up the hose again.

Next is my winter greens bed, planted out a few weeks ago and looking fabulous, despite the encroaching shade from the lower angle of the sun and the frosty hollow that it occupies. Winter leaves are thoroughly adaptable to shade, frost and even snow, bouncing back up and throwing off the weight of ice in the hardest and coldest winter weather. The trick is to get them well advanced before mid-May when the short day length, the soft light and cold nights reduce their capacity to grow without big solar panels to capture every second of good light to make growth, not just survive.

This bed was well prepared with compost and deep hay. Consequently, it needs very little watering and I have started picking a few leaves from the lettuce, mizuna and wasabi greens already. I pick and nibble and leave the hose for now. The tomatoes also have needed very little water, with this deep hay method, despite it being warm and terribly dry for months. I have never had so many huge, luscious, delicious tomatoes and the plants are still deep green and healthy in mid-April which is incredible.

I water an unmulched area of kale and coriander and celtuce. Why did I not include this patch in my deep hay experiment? Goodness, I don’t know and now wish I had! It is much easier to plant into a mulched garden than to mulch it later. Oh well, I water it well and move on….

I find it is important to be constantly planting parsley or risk the cook’s nightmare of running out in winter, when it is too late to sow more! This seems to be an excellent year for parsley as not only have I planted consecutive crops but also it has self sown in thick patches which are growing dark green and fabulously; much better than those I planted.

Just about back where I started, I water the walking onions a friend gave me recently, which have now shot out wonderfully and look strong enough to get to a good size before mid May. Lots of fennel are coming up around the edges of the deep hay so I water them too. The Tasmanian purple garlic are in and should emerge soon but I won’t water them until they do.

Walking past the main herb garden I stop to nibble on the flowers of the garlic chives and put some in my pocket too, to add to my salad for lunch. They are crunchy and sweet and very garlicky; almost enough to make my eyes water! While I water them, even though they don’t ask for it, I notice the red-ribbed dock is again coming up from its summer hibernation. In a frosty, winter garden it shines like a beacon to me when I am at the kitchen sink. Even if I never ate it, I would still love it.

Out near the front door, the quince is laden with enticing, big, yellow globes, attracting attention from every visitor, to some of whom I give one or two…. if they are drooling! Many artichokes and cardoons are now shooting and growing like the wind. Also by the front door are my saffron bulbs which are in full production of the earthy saffron filaments I adore. Last night I put my own fresh saffron into my tagine dinner. How exciting, even though I only had 9 threads. I did add a pinch of bought saffron but I am sure mine tasted better :-)

There is much more, like the Cape Gooseberry jungle in my greenhouse, with fruits that have not stopped for nearly 2 years, the new goji berry by the fence, the limes ripening on the front verandah, the lemon which I am protecting this winter with a courtyard of hay bales around it, the sweet potato experiment and the tamarillo about to burst out through the top of the greenhouse and I am not sure what to do about it…… and so on and so on.

As I sit here in the dawn at my computer, with the imaginary hose in my hand, it is such a joy to wander vicariously through my garden, unravelling the skein of garden food, friends who have given me plants and life’s images from where I first had vegetable experiences in far off countries. Life is short; get there fast then take it slow. I am there and really enjoying the slow life of autumn in the food 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

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.

Daniele Mazet Delpeuch

I have just listened to an interview with this wonderful woman. Down to earth and hailing from her ancestors’ country home in the Perigord she still cooks on an open fire one day, with her grandmother's pots and pans, and in top kitchens the next. Always her food reflects the seasons, the markets and her love for excellent ingredients, cooked simply.

She spent 2 years cooking for the French President and another year cooking for scientists in Antarctica. She uses cooking as an avenue to adventure. There is now a movie about her, called Haute Cuisine. I can’t wait to see it but it could not be better than this interview with the real woman.

Do listen here; its a real treat. Thanks Theresa for the link.

Hobart Farmgate Market takes to the streets

It sounds to me like this will make the Farmgate Market into a true, French style market, with stalls in a closed-off street. I so wish the Huon Council had some initiative and, instead of just a few new carparks behind the Town Hall, a whole market precinct could be developed, incorporating designs from the 21st century for function and ambience and the community.

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!

What do you do with Sprouting Garlic?

You'd think after 53 years I would have changed a bit.... well I guess in some ways I have but I tell you what, I still keep far too many home-grown garlic heads for eating. Here I am, by myself, and yet I have a shelf full of left-over garlic in my sauna (ok, that's another story... but its well insulated, dark and dry!). I eat heaps of garlic; barely a day would go by without some garlic consumed but I always overestimate how much I am going to be able to eat before they start to sprout, or maybe I think that THIS year they really won't sprout because I have read about a better way of lifting and storing them.

So, the gist is, everyone who grows too much garlic finds it sprouting in the cupboard at one time or other in the year and, desperate not to waste a single clove that grew in the garden for so many months, suddenly needs recipes using heads, not cloves, of garlic!

When I was in France I was invited to a neighbour's house for dinner and was served home made garlic soup. I loved it so much I asked for the recipe, which was kindly written down for me, in French. The thing is, French women know how to cook. They don't need many directions or quantities in their recipes and so it was that this garlic soup recipe sat in my care, untested, and in French for a couple of years..... until now!

Last week I had a bucket full of sprouting garlic, a recipe to translate and a plan: test out the soup , make up a bag with 4 heads of garlic, a sprig of thyme and a copy of Marie-Sylvie's recipe and sell them at the market! Hey presto, I sold them all on Sunday and am still enjoying the soup I made to test it out.... not sure if my friends are noticing I am literally consuming a head of garlic per day though!!

Well, here it is.... It is beautiful, surprisingly simple and not at all overpowered by an intense garlic taste. I even had an email from one happy customer who wrote to me via the email address on my price tags.... and called the soup she had just made and eaten, sensational. Nice.

Thanks Marie-Sylvie..... bon appetit.

SOUPE A L’AIL (Marie-Sylvie, Pindrat, Sept 2008) Ingrédients : Ail - environ 1 tête par personne Pommes de terre - 1 moyenne par personne Farine Thym 1 petit bouquet de thym Sel et poivre Crème fraîche (petit pot) Eplucher l’ail, le couper en tranches fines et faire revenir doucement dans huile ou graisse de canard, il ne faut pas qu’il roussisse. Eplucher et couper les pommes de terre en lamelle ou morceaux pas trop gros. Les ajouter à l’ail. Saupoudrer de farine. Ajouter la branche de thym Saler et poivrer Mettre environ 1 litre d’eau pour 4 personnes Laisser cuire 25 / 30 mn Mixer, ajouter la crème fraîche et servez très chaud dans une soupière où vous aurez préalablement mis des croûtons frottés à l’ail.

Garlic Soup Translated from Marie-Sylvie’s recipe, Pindrat, France 2008 1 head of garlic / person 1 potato / person Flour a sprig of thyme Salt and pepper Crème fraiche or: cream mixed with sour cream Peel the garlic, finely slice, fry very gently in oil or duck fat. Do not brown. Peel and dice the potato and add to the oil. Sprinkle in some flour, add the thyme, salt and pepper. Slowly add water; about 1 litre for 4 people. Simmer 25 – 30 mins. Puree then add the cream mixture to taste. Serve very hot perhaps with croutons. (I shredded a slice of my sourdough bread into my bowl of soup.... perfect)

The impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on the global food chain

Here is the translation of part of an article appearing on Kokopelli's website. I thank the people at La Vie Verte for translating it from French and for publishing it on their website. I hope I do not overstep any lines by copying all of the translation here.....

“Seven weeks after the tsumani of 11 March 2011, the situation of the reactors of the nuclear plant of Fukushima-Daiichi is deteriorating inexorably. On April 28, TEPCO announced that the ambient radioactivity was about 1220 milisievert/hour, which corresponds to practically 10 million times the dose of artificial radioactivity admissible in France (1 milisievert/year).

“In the US, plutonium 238 and plutonium 239 appeared from 18 March onwards: in California and Hawaii, and were respectively 43 times and 11 times higher than the maximum level recorded during the past 20 years. In March, drinking water in San Francisco contained 181 times the admissible dose of iodine 131. On April 4, rainwater in Boise, Idaho contained 80 times the admissible dose of iodine 131, as well as cesium 137.

“All these radioactive isotopes have been deposited in Europe, and if we are not finding them it is because we are not looking for them.

“Before the end of 2011, all the soil on the planet will be inexorably contaminated by daily and permanent radiation of the Fukushima reactors. The same goes for the oceans and the water tables. That is when the radioactive isotopes from Fukushima will begin the long process of bio-accumulation by moving up the various levels of the food chain. In 2012, the whole of the planetary food chain will be radioactive and therefore hyper-toxic for human health.”

“The safe limit of radioactivity is a huge scientific scam. Let’s recall that, according to experts in endocrinology, there is no such thing as a safe limit of radioactive contamination and furthermore, low levels of contamination can be the most dangerous for the human fetus than contaminations from large doses.”

“What to do? First of all, set up techniques for decontaminating soils. After Chernobyl, the sale of cheese was banned in Austria; however, we soon observed that cheese produced by organic farmers which had been using zeolites were exempt of radioactivity. All volcanic rocks from the family of zeolites have the reputation of being able to block heavy metals and radioactive particles. The first line of defense in the face of heavy metals and radioactivity is a microbial life in the soils and the presence of humus and minerals which are vital to the harmonious nutrition of soils. This first line of defense is absent from the majority of European soils which are dead, sterilized, oxidized and whose food products do nothing but generate in the human body free radicals which promote degeneration.

“There are also techniques for decontamination using mushrooms or plants to “fix” radioactivity. It is not easy to transform a garden or field into a mushroom plot. It is much easier to plant sunflowers or hemp/cannabis. Some studies have highlighted the fact that these two plants were used with success after the Chernobyl disaster.
The question remains how to recycle these plants after decontamination. We could suggest organizing pick-ups and sending them to the Elysee (presidential palace in France) or to the headquarters of EDF or Areva.”

More than ever, I say to Australians grow organic food / buy local and avoid all imported foods.... and for heaven's sakes SAVE your seeds!

Will this be on your TV news, tonight?

The news on Australian TV is always full of fighting, politics, catastrophes, murder, rape, theft and car accidents. It would make an alien, tuning in from another planet, think that planet earth is a place to be avoided at all cost! The horrors of the day are followed by sport, a special section on finance and then weather. Daily intake of all this must affect the viewers' thinking too, making us accept that this really is the news we need to know, when actually there are so many other pieces of information that really are newsworthy.

I am surprised that all the TV stations do the same kind of news, in the same way, day after day, and that none of them, not even the ABC, does something a fraction more intelligent and offer some things we really should all know about.

Climate change, pollution, peak oil, carbon dioxide levels, deforestation, the environment.... all these are regular items on the news but the focus is always on disagreements between politicians, punctuated by snapshots of smoke stacks, logging trucks and dead fish in a river somewhere. Every now and then a scientist is shown, and we hear 3 words he says before moving on to 5 minutes of financial graphs, as if that is more important than reality!

Did you know there is going to be a Seed Treaty meeting in Bali next week? It is titled: Peasants’ Right to Seeds: A Solution to the Food, Climate and Biodiversity Crises.

Have you ever heard of La Via Campesina? Of course people reading this blog probably have but is it not something that should be on our news? Should not everyone know about the plight of the earth, its links to Big-Ag and the truth about what is happening to  traditional farmers all over the world, and consequently to all of us and our food??

Surely any solutions to these crises should be on the TV and other media's news! Representing 200 million people, this is not just a few irate men gathering on the side of a dusty street, this is a serious and very important meeting, to you, to me and the earth in general.

Here is the rest of the article....and I am looking forward to seeing these farmers interviewed by the media of Australia .... what a joke! And why are there no small scale farmers from Australia going to this conference and available for interviews?

Seed farmers from all over the world, members of La Via Campesina, a global peasants' movement consisting of 150 member organizations in 70 countries and representing over 200 million peasants and rural workers, will participate in the Fourth Regular Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (GB4ITPGFRA) that will be held in Nusa Dua, Bali, on 14-18 March 2011. During a series of meetings, seminars and events, they will represent seed farmers from all over the world who are the backbone of food production and the main creators and defenders of biodiversity.

A Ministerial Meeting on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Food Security will be held on March 11. In response to this meeting, the Indonesia Peasant Union SPI and La Via Campesina declare that large-scale industrial agriculture and monoculture production are the root cause of today’s biodiversity, food and climate crises. If we continue with "business as usual", hunger will increase and peasants will be further marginalized and impoverished. The farmers' movement demands a radical change in direction in the current agricultural free-market policies.

The experience of small peasants around the world shows that agro-ecological farming and local food markets are the most powerful answer to the current multiple crises. Agro-ecological farming has proven to be very adaptive to the impact of climate change. It captures greenhouse gases in the soil and consumes far less fuel than industrial agriculture, which is a large contributor to climate change. Furthermore, agro-ecological farming guarantees the food production for peasant families and can feed urban as well as rural communities. Regarding genetic resources, small peasants have the capacity to develop new varieties that are more pest resistant and better adapted to the changing climate.

Seeds farmers from Madagascar, France, India, Mexico, El Salvador, Chile, Thailand and Indonesia are available for interviews from March 7 to 18.

Thanks Deb, for sending me the email about this. I wish you were going!

A meadow in a vase

I asked what I could bring... she hesitated then said "Flowers.... from your garden, please".

So, while the dew was still holding on and the morning air crisp with a touch of autumn, I took my flower-picking basket and the secateurs out into the garden.

The first thing I saw through my flower eyes was a stand of tall leek stalks, in full bloom. Snip, snip, snip as 3 of the balls fell into my hand. Next, the vivid blue of chicory flowers, on long, waving stems. More snips. Out through the Pickle gate to the long, narrow bed next to my window.... lavenders, 3 or 4 kinds, all looking magnificent for a basket of tall stemmed flowers.

Then I had to make a decision.... was this going to be a rainbow of yellows and reds and blues and pinks or would a more natural, autumnal feel be better? I glanced around and realised that the rainbow flowers all had short stems and I was doing long stems.... it would have to be the natural look of the meadow, highlighted with the lavenders and such..... I think it turned out beautifully.

 

Into my mind sprang a comment made by a visitor yesterday "You have let parts of this garden get away from you." I was shocked, dismayed and a little annoyed "No! I have let parts of this garden come to me." I replied. And come it has. In France it is common to let a patch of your land relax and become a meadow, cutting it only once the seeds have dropped and the old life finished. Look at these photos, see what I saw this morning and tell me if you think it would look better as a flat, green, mown canvas or as this painting of life and haven for insects, birds..... and Pickle's lost ball!

My seat by the pond.

Organic Sharecroppers Collectives

At last something positive to write about, to get excited about, to feel passionate about, in this crazy world of disasters and media madness.

All who read this blog probably know or know of people who would love to get out there in the fields and grow food, organically and ethically, but they do not have the land / money / time to be without an income etc. Moreover, we all know how backward is the thinking of many of our so called leaders, when it comes to promoting the reduction of chemicals in agriculture and in our daily lives. It seems that the effort required to do good in a community is being constantly multiplied by red tape, by stupidity and by a lack of foresight in our "leaders".

Every now and then a shining star rises from the depths of the leadership scrum and uses their power for good. Edouard Chaulet is one such man..... a mayor in southern France, who, 2 years ago, introduced organic food into the canteens of local schools, as documented in the film "Our children will accuse us". He firmly believes that it is the rise of chemicals in our lives and especially in our food, that is causing the horrendous rise in childhood cancers as well as destroying the earth we depend on for life on this planet.

His latest effort is very creative and inspiring. I read about it on La Vie Verte, which is a blog in English about green things that are happening and not happening in France.

Using an innovative social financing scheme pioneered with association Terre de Liens, he has made available a 120-hectare plot of land for organic farmers to rent and farm collectively. The aim: to increase land surface area in the Gard region of France farmed organically to help close the gap between demand and supply.

Terre de Liens, created in 2006 in partnership with bank La Nef, collects savings from citizens and companies to buy farms and then rent them out exclusively to organic farmers.

“The Common Agricultural Policy (of the EU) forces our farmers relentlessly towards large monoculture farms. These big intensive farms destroy the countryside, make the soil sterile and the water undrinkable. We need a diverse and local agriculture, not thousands of tons of cereals!” said Sjoerd Wartena, president of Terre de Liens.

You need to read how the finances are raised and what the deal is, on the Terre de Liens site, but I can see the possibility of this becoming the basis for a very successful model that could be used all over the world. All kinds of thoughts are stimulated in my head by reading about good, creative ideas that someone has succeeded in implementing.

I'd like to set the scene of how food production works in this small community at the bottom of the world..... go and get a coffee, I have a lot to say and I'd love you to stay around and read it! Ok, I have decided to post this first, my head is too full of organising my first ever stall, which I am having at tomorrow's Cygnet Herb and Organic Health Expo (oh gosh, is that what its called? I am not sure but you get the gist!).

Come back soon....

Have you ever scratched a snail's foot?

 

It is getting towards snail season in the southern hemisphere and I was thinking of all those garden snails that are eaten in France. There, people make collections of them and purge them, ready to cook.... so I wondered if I might do the same. I mean, why not? I love shell fish and garden snails are just the land version of sea snails.

I was reading about it on this website and it all seemed quite sensible and do-able until I got to..... Check daily and discard any dead snails. Scratch the snail's foot to check; if it doesn't twitch, the snail is dead. Is this a joke or what?

 

Maybe, I thought, it was written on April Fool's Day or something...

The recipes sound delicious and very French.... maybe one of the blog readers out there, who live in France, can tell us if they regularly go about tickling snails' feet! One farmer I knew of in France said it was not necessary to purge them in water, he just hangs them in nets in the shade for a few days, as its usually done in early spring, and hoses them down from time to time.... Farming can be a gruesome business.

I really want to try this. Please tell us if you have any experience on snail preparation.

(Images from BBC Food and http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/s/snails.asp)

Australian snail farming.... is there anything Australians don't do? http://www.snails.com.au/

Human Health, Starvation and Biodiversity

I have been reading three very interesting pieces of work. One chapter of one book is about gathering winter wild food in France, by Eliot Coleman. What most people would call weeds, are sought out as prized winter food by old time French men, mostly, who explain that nature has provided these foods in winter as it is then that they are filled with the nutrition we need to help our bodies cope with the cold of winter.

This is something I have often thought was more relevant to healthy eating habits than is given credit. If you eat what is grown there, wherever you are right now, it is the right thing for you.... it has experienced the same weather, air, water etc as you have and if your food is thriving in that situation, then, when you eat it, you thrive too. Its no good shipping tomatoes from a place where it is summer, to where it is winter and expecting it to supply what your winter body needs.

The second is on this fascinating blog, simply called Vaviblog which recounts the travels and recent tracing of the footsteps of the prominent Soviet botanist and geneticist, Vavilov, best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants.  As pointed out and written about so beautifully, from this introduction, through every engrossing page...

Agricultural biodiversity is all that stands between the world and starvation. I hope that by giving a voice to Vavilov this web site will help people to understand why that is so and to take steps to safeguard our past … because it is our future.

Here is an excerpt from the blog, where the author comes upon a market under a tree in Ethiopia...

...At last we saw the shiny black seeds of noog piled high, next to other oilseeds such a peppergrass and sesame. Next to the many colors of ground cumin and chile pepper, there were brilliant golden piles of ginger, as well as masses of intact but sinewy ginger roots. One woman hand-roasted and weighed various grades of Ethiopian wild and domesticated coffees right before your eyes, while another sold various colors and textures of sea salt nested in pale brown paper containers, each looking much like a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a sugar cone. There were countless medicinal herbs as well as the crystallized globules of Ethiopian myrrh and “false” frankincense. Surrounding all the herbalists were huge piles of blue Hubbard squash, papayas, onions, Swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, and pomelos...

Elders from Europe, Africa, Asia and indigenous people all over the world know that wild, natural food has all the nutrition they need at the time of picking. It is fact that even something as simple as a cos lettuce has in it vitamins and minerals in different proportions, according to how, where and when it is grown. In winter, for example, it may be bitter and far from this being a disadvantage, we should take that bitterness, as it is a wonderful immunity boost and helps ward off winter ills.

So it is with great joy that I find I am able to gather food at the Cygnet Community Garden, because I garden there.... and yes, I did go on Monday! While my home garden is still very young, I would hate to have to buy vegetables grown away from here. The vitality that local food gives me far outways its identity as a carrot or apple and this is why there is so much more to nutrition than science has yet discovered.

Thirdly is a report from the Settimana della Biodiversità in Rome, organized by Bioversity International, which states that:

Efforts to increase production have so far been based on simplified systems that depend on a few varieties of even fewer crops, which require large amounts of energy-dependent inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. These simplified systems are both vulnerable to shocks and are unsustainable.

“This leads me to the conclusion that we must change paradigm and invest in intensification without simplification,” said Frison. He called on governments and funding organizations to invest in research and development for agriculture, based on this new paradigm.

Amir Abdullah, Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Food Programme (WFP), addressed WFP’s work with chronically hungry people. “One of the causes of malnutrition is the lack of biodiversity. We recognize every day the impact that lack of biodiversity has on the people we work with. For that bottom billion, it’s a matter of life and death.”

These three pieces reflect what surely we already know in our hearts, that human health depends on eating the food that grows naturally where you live and eating as much variety as possible, every day of your life. It is a very cheap, short term aid to send war torn, malnourished nations thousands of kilograms of white rice and other equally processed stomach fillers. It is much harder but more important to see to it that "that bottom billion" has access to land to grow whatever grows naturally in their soils and climates, and with the greatest biodiversity possible, so there will always be food to harvest, no matter what shocks occur.

We all buy spices from far, far away but as a general rule of thumb please, see your soil and your toil as your health insurance. Do whatever you can to reject out of season produce and in-season but grown far away produce. Instead seek out anything that grows wild in your area and in your garden. Plant as wide a diversity of food plants that you can squeeze in, that will grow happily in your conditions.

I don't suppose I will ever stop saying it but that's because simplicity is often the answer that stares us in the face, while we search for complexity.... Saving seeds will sinlgehandedly save the world.

 

Faces of a French Market

WALLS, WINDOWS and DETAILS

I have put together a series of photos depicting the interesting and quirky details of village buildings in south west France. Ranging from windows only as wide as a hand, to beautiful street signs and from wooden beams to door knockers. Coming from a modern country like Australia with no buildings dating back further than the 18oo's, I found it fascinating to wander the ancient streets of France and imagine the lives lived during the history of these buildings, most dating from the 1300's.

These are streets and buildings still functioning today as towns, homes and businesses. Despite the ancient exterior appearance, inside is modern, clean and functional. Rooves are often fitted with TV aerials and satellite dishes but advertising of any sort is rare and finding a particular shop or business can be extraordinarily difficult as addresses are vague and signage almost non-existent.

Market days bring crowds and the streets are bustling but the rest of the week is quiet and perfect for photography. Everything closes for lunch and siesta between 12 and 2 or 3 or even 4 and the villages become ghost-like, with only the restaurants showing any signs of life at all. Pots of plants are everywhere and indicate that people do actually live inside. During winter there was not a lot of colourful plantings but come spring, doorsteps will be edged in pots of geraniums and window boxes will overflow with colour.

Luckily for the visitor, French people have kept their beautiful, old buildings and not demolished them in the name of progress. To their way of thinking it does not matter what a building looks like on the outside, it is what is inside that counts. Renovations are only carried out to stop complete collapse of the walls. So they remain living history; a rare and wonderful thing in this era of cheap and nasty architecture.

Long live the French village.