It’s raining, it’s pouring, this old girl is…..

I have been waiting for a rainy day, for weeks, so that I can stay inside and deal with the autumn abundance. As much as I love being in the garden, there’s nothing that makes me happier than a day in the kitchen but I cannot bear to be inside if the weather is fine!

The morning was misty, with clouds hanging on the hills, as we rowed and chatted and enjoyed the simple pleasure of being on the water in a beautiful rowing boat we helped to build. I never cease to be thankful for the day I found my home and moved to Cygnet, literally at the bottom of the world.

The minute we finished our rowing, it started to pour with rain. As usual we headed to The Lotus Eaters’ Cafe for coffee after which we all headed back to our various homes. I skipped in through the door singing with joy at finally having nothing better to do than cook and preserve and steep and brew and ferment.

Not a bad effort for one afternoon…. but I have lots of apples to box up for storage and plums to stew yet! I hope it rains solidly again soon!

Carrot and ginger pickle begins its fermenting after a kg of carrots, a large knob of ginger and a tablespoon of salt (collected at a salt pan near the Coorong) have been pounded to release the juices.	I add a bit of the liquid from a previous batch of fermented radishes, to the carrots.
Then I start hand grinding 1/2 kg sprouted spelt, to make bread	I think of it as upper body exercise as I use right arm, then left, then stand one way then another! Periodic rests are important so that the stones don’t overheat the grains.
Meanwhile I make a marinade for some pork (from a friend) I have decided to roast for dinner on this chilly afternoon. I LOVE Tommy German mustard…. so flavoursome.	I love the view from my kitchen window. The milk from these cows can be bought at the local butcher, who lives just out of view of this photo.
Next it is time to start dealing with some of the quinces. These first, barely ripe ones, with plenty of pectin, are destined to be quince paste.	A box of radishes on my doorstep, from a neighbour,  means I need to do more pickling!
Half a kg of blackcurrants from the community garden and 10 blackcurrant leaves + a bit of sugar, covered in a bottle of Brandy will make cassis for sipping by the fire over winter.	I bought a huge, organic celery from the market, removed some babies from the sides, put them in water for a couple of weeks and now they are ready to plant out.

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….

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.

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

Somewhere over the rainbow….and other snippets

 

That little green house across the cow paddock from me is definitely basking in gold, at the end of the rainbow….	….and it came down in my gum trees; can you see it? It was a glorious sight, after the rain.
The Dover Bay Mussels people were at the market as usual. You can’t beat $5 / kg!! So we had mussels for dinner….	….wonderfully delicious and easy after my hectic Cygnet Market stall.
My stall takes up most of the Town Hall stage now and I have a love / hate relationship with it!	Photos taken during a quiet moment but often the whole stage is full of people!
Unpacking deliveries at home, repackaging bulk stuff and then packing for the market is a never ending job. I still enjoy opening the boxes though!	Some of the goodies….
I must admit that I do make bloody good sourdough bread! Left is wholemeal wheat and right is spelt and quinoa…..	Then there’s all the garden produce. This was a scrumptious meal of freshly picked broad beans, leeks, garlic and herbs (all from my garden) on sourdough toast.

At The End Of The Rainbow

© Kathy Lesley

After a terrible rainstorm
In the sky, I saw a rainbow.
All the bright, beautiful colors made me feel so warm
As they dipped down so low.

I thought back to that legend of old
Sitting on my grandfather's knee.
"At the end of the rainbow is a pot of gold,"
He would say to me.

Every time I would see a rainbow
In that big, beautiful sky so bold
I would cross my fingers and make a vow,
"I would be the one to find that pot of gold."

So one day I bid my family and friends good-bye
As I started on my journey, following that rainbow.
I walked away quickly, knowing if I lingered I would cry.
I left to find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But as I travelled so far and so long,
I could not find the end of that elusive rainbow.
Feeling very sad, I began to hear a song;
A song from my childhood so sweet and low.

By the song I was sold.
No more did I need to roam.
In all that time I was searching for that pot of gold,
It was with my family and friends, at home.

Source: At The End Of The Rainbow, Home Poem

The best 3 minutes of my day… or maybe even my week!

Enjoy and share!

Portable Vegetable Garden Structures at Golden Valley Farm

Alex is our local market gardener…. with a difference! He used to be a chef at Parliament House in Canberra, has studied all kinds of interesting things at uni. and has gone into this market garden idea with his eyes wide open and with a plan to make the business work, for his young family.

For a start he and his wife bought the perfect piece of land just a 30 minute walk from the main street of Cygnet, in Golden Valley; gently sloping, north-facing, with good soil, 2 spring fed dams and quite a distance from any native bush (so very few animal problems).

They built a pretty, little house and turned a tiny little shed into a 1/2 glass, 1/2 solid, seedling house. Then Alex baled up the hay cut from his land in summer and put the bales side by side and end to end to make a rectangle of covered grass, using up all the bales. In spring he removed the bales, hoed the soil and began to sow the seeds of his new life.

He and I have a similar philosophy about organic food production; which includes NOT using massive amounts of plastic for poly tunnels. But rather, using what you have in the way of climate to produce seasonal, organic food.

Sometimes, at this time of year, young seedlings need a bit of extra warmth to get going because the soil is already very cold. So, Alex has made some movable cloches, sized to fit his beds. On his blog Golden Valley Farm you can find all the instructions to make your own.

As he mentions in his post, the plastic can be removed in summer and the frame fitted with netting to keep off the cabbage moths, or shade cloth to protect young seedlings from the heat.

 

So, when you see a beaming Alex at his stall at the Cygnet Market, remember he is the most genuinely organic farmer around and that he was up before dawn, picking vegetables for you to buy.

Never, ever think that his prices are more than his produce is worth!!

Buying Meat in Tasmania

I hesitate, with my fingers hovering above the keyboard, thinking how to launch into this post about meat. You see, meat is a very emotive topic, worldwide, these days. Animal welfare, human health, peak oil, river contamination, water usage etc etc etc etc, are all hot topics. There is not just one answer; there are complexities, often not realised and sometimes misunderstood, by people in different countries and even within countries.
In South Australia I ate only feral meat. There are a lot of non-native animals there, that have become established in the wild. They cause massive erosion, eat vegetation down to the bare, hot, dry, rocky soil and destroy food and habitat for wild animals. So, shooters were allowed licenses to hunt them. The animals included goats, deer, rabbits, pigs and even camel. When a shop started up selling this feral meat, shot on the hoof, I was probably their first customer and shopped there exclusively from then on. In doing so, I was saving the terribly fragile, semi-arid landscape (mostly of the Flinders Ranges and north) and the native animals that call it home.
Here, in rural, southern Tasmania there are wild rabbits and that’s about all. Neither of the butchers in Cygnet sell local or organic meat!!! So, a quandary existed for me when I moved here and I mostly ate locally shot wallaby because at least it was local and wasn’t from a an animal factory. Since then I have met some wonderful people who raise meat for eating and I am comfortable saying that for this part of Australia, where pasture, water and space are plentiful and the farms and abattoir close by, that this is how I now choose to eat meat. Let me introduce you….
Beef…


Gerard and Deb produce everything organically. Here, this means REAL organics and includes care of the land that is not farmed, as well as the land that is. You won’t find their cattle in feed lots; they live their lives entirely on the farm. These are REAL people, with a passion for excellent quality, organic food, whether it be meat or vegetables.

Gerard has sown his pastures with herbs and grasses and all things that keep his cattle healthy. When other farms in the area have short, dry grass, Nicholls Rivulet Organic Farm still has knee high, green pasture.
The rest of the world would die for meat like this at the prices that Gerard sells it for. You can contact him direct or find him at the Cygnet Market, 1st and 3rd Sundays.

Check them out on Facebook too.

Hogget, Mutton and Some Piglets
Next is man who raises a few animals, usually sheep and pigs, for his own meat and to sell to locals. His name is Bud and he was originally from Texas, about a million years ago.
We are incredibly lucky to have him in our community, offering us free range, ethically reared meat with old fashioned flavour. Slaughtered at the Cradoc Abattoir, only minutes from Bud’s home, these animals have had no stress. There they are hung for 1 – 2 weeks. Bud will provide you with any cuts you desire and his meat is available most of the year.
If you have only eaten shop bought lamb until now, you are in for a real treat. I eat Bud’s meat with my eyes closed, savouring the wonderful flavour and texture. Not just for the slow cooker, the loin chops grill beautifully too and you’ll get all the bones, for stock, as well as any offal.
Right now he also has a family of piglets for sale, the likes of which you probably won’t have seen before as they are striped. Ready to go straight away, to be further raised or eaten as suckling pig, don’t miss out!!
Give Bud a call any time on (03)6295 1580 or send him an email: driver.bud@gmail.com
The thing about Gerard and Bud is that they use the land they have in the old fashioned way; no over-grazing, no artificial feeding, no irrigation, no chemicals, just living off the land and sharing the proceeds.
I am so lucky to be able to call these farmers and their families, my friends. This is how life is meant to be.

The day when chips aint chips

Peak oil means more expensive food for those who can least afford it. The family farms of rural India, Africa, South America and even Tasmania are being taken over by multinational agri-businesses, in the name of providing food for the world. However, the International Year of the Family Farm 2014 has ideas on how to retain food production in every local community, doing away with expensive methods of agriculture and the cancer of food miles.

Imagine a food system which exposes energy usage at every stage of production, taxing or raising costs depending on energy used to produce the food.

So, growing your own food, lets say potatoes, in your own community, using local resources, would become the cheapest food. In your own home and local take-aways and restaurants this potato may be turned into chips for very little extra cost.

Processed, packaged food would incur extra costs for every potato grown in oil and chemical laden agricultural systems, every food mile travelled from producer of the raw potato to processing factory, every energy unit used to process the potato into, for example, a bag of frozen chips, including the production of the plastic bag and its own transport and energy costs and every energy unit used to then transport, store and display it in the supermarket.

Suddenly the true cost of chips is revealed.

I can imagine a system in Australia which stamps every item with an energy rating, such as that currently used for washing machines, fridges and cars etc. Affluent Australian supermarket shoppers often want to do something positive for the earth and the farmers but do not have the information or are not prepared to put in the time to explore all the issues. This energy rating system would be a clear and uniform way to compare foods.

The insidious creep of huge, energy-guzzling agri-business into the farthest corners of the globe’s farming areas is tearing the earth and communities apart and removing the ability of people to provide good, clean, traditional foods for themselves.

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.

Taste, Memory…. a personal look at food biodiversity

David is an amazing bloke who I met through Kitchen Gardeners International, on my Voyage of the Vegetable Vagabond in 2008. He works tirelessly and enthusiastically in growing incredible food and educating people about the why, what and how. He lives in Maine, USA. I will be buying this book and relishing every morsel of it.

 
Publication Date: October 25, 2012
Taste, Memory traces the experiences of a modern-day explorer, one who doesn't discover new lands and new cultures, but who rediscovers our common food heritage and then works to bring it back to our gardens and tables for all to appreciate and enjoy.

From a cantankerous old pear tree to a strawberry that's too delicate to ship to distant markets, David Buchanan has grown out and evaluated thousands of varieties of fruits, grains, herbs, flowers, and vegetables, capturing not only their flavors, but their fascinating stories and their place in the local harvest.

What we grow is just as important as where we grow it, and a resilient food system depends on the ongoing search for regionally adapted varieties. Local food at its best differs in both kind and quality from commodity crops that are shipped around the globe. If everyone were to grow the same apples or tomatoes, for example, then we would miss out on the full palate of tastes available to us, as well as the sense that local food can reflect a particular people, place, and culture.

Profiling his own efforts as a young garden-farmer who is still finding his own place in the world (using leased gardens and orchard space), Buchanan also writes about some of the most important people who are working to defend and promote biodiversity and meaning in our food system. From gardeners and cooks to environmentalists and food activists - all of these people are preserving the best of our traditional foods and ensuring that they will be around for future generations to enjoy.

Taste, Memory takes readers on a beautifully written personal journey into what food diversity really means, and why it matters now more than ever.

Editorial Reviews

"Taste, Memory may well be the most beautiful book ever written about food biodiversity and how it has 'landed' on earth, in our mouths and in our hearts. Once you have read and digested David's book, you will never again regard this two-word phrase as an abstraction, but as a vital element of our common food heritage, one that continues to nourish and enrich our lives."--from the foreword by Gary Paul Nabhan

About the Author

David Buchanan planted his first gardens in central Washington State more than 20 years ago, after learning about the heritage food movement through the Seed Savers Exchange. He has worked for farms, ranches, and nurseries; operated a landscape design company specializing in native plant restoration; managed an educational farm for a community non-profit; and helped found the Portland, Maine, chapter of Slow Food USA.

In the mid-1990s he worked for Arche Noah, an Austrian seed-saving organization, producing seeds to maintain the thousands of varieties of vegetables and grains in their collection.

David helped found and for three years led the Portland, Maine, chapter of Slow Food. He now serves on its national Biodiversity Committee, which evaluates and helps preserve endangered heritage foods from around the country.

In 2008 he managed Turkey Hill Farm in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and continues to maintain gardens there and at two nearby sites. Currently he oversees vegetable and cut flower production for Old Ocean House Farms in Cape Elizabeth, and grows more than 250 varieties of fruit, as well as herbs and heirloom vegetables. He sells nursery plants, organic vegetables, fruit smoothies, and raw cider at the Portland farmers market.

He is a board member of Kitchen Gardeners International.

Late Autumn in my Kitchen

The days are really short now and I so enjoy early evenings in the kitchen, surrounded by the day’s harvest, either from my own garden, the community garden, the weekly Cygnet Organic Market, the new organic grocer in the main street or from friends who have dropped in during the day.
The beauty of freshly harvested vegetables is astonishing and invigorating. Many people adore the tomato season but for me, late autumn brings such a variety of colours and tastes that I can hardly decide what to eat.
There is the deep, rich, intricately patterned red cabbage, which, if teamed with slices of apple and slowly stewed, becomes a sensational vegetable accompaniment, even without any other ingredients.
There are freshly dug potatoes, none better in the world than those grown in Tasmania, where the perfect weather and soil produce unbeatable potatoes, in almost every back yard. I have 10kgs of kennebecs from a neighbour; fluffy white inside and with a skin that bakes crisp and full-flavoured. Many people here prefer pink eyes and Dutch creams. I squeeze open a good sized, baked kennebec and top with lashings of home made yoghurt mixed with crushed garlic and a handful each of mint and chopped spring onions. This time I sprinkled on some of my dukkah too.
As winter weather begins to set in someone comes by and gives me something I have been searching for – red capsicums with thick, meaty flesh and a flavour I have not had since leaving Adelaide 2 years ago. Why was I the lucky recipient? I shared some seeds, about a year ago, in the hope that someone would have success and all I asked in return was one red capsicum. Well, I was given 5 and treasured every mouthful; some fresh and eaten like an apple, others cooked, with no other adornments! Needless to say, the seeds sit on my mantle piece drying out….. I am determined to grow these small, pimento-style capsicums successfully myself next season.
Winter salad greens are a joy to behold and mine include the very dainty frilly mustard, self-sown miners’ lettuce, various little chicories (speckled/ broad leafed/ tall and red), French sorrel, chervil, mint, lettuces, bulls blood beetroot leaves, wild rocket, bok choy, mizuna, nasturtiums, red dock etc etc. I love salads in winter, they beautifully complement and lighten a hot meat stew or a toasted cheese sandwich. But its dark now and I didn’t take any photos!
I came home today to find several bean pods by my back door, in a paper bag. They revealed some magnificent jewels, on opening. If ever there was a magnificent collection of vegetables, it would have to be the bean family.




Sadly, most people discard any fat bean pods left on their vines at the end of the season and they are missing out on a display like no other! The names of beans are quite confusing, sometimes named after the colour of the flowers, sometimes after the pods and sometimes after the mature bean seeds found inside those dry old pods you forgot to pick. Interestingly, today, the purple podded bean revealed ordinary white bean seeds while the others, which all had plain, green pods, revealed 3 very different seed colours and sizes, inside. Never count your beans before they hatch!
Lastly in my kitchen this week are some mini muffins made with apples (from the Cygnet community garden) and orange blossom honey, my favourite honey, from a bee keeper whose bees pollinate the orange groves in South Australia. The native trees that form the basis of honey in Tasmania did not flower well this year, except for the Leatherwood, and I decided to fill the gap with this light, sweet, fragrant and lingering honey that makes me smile with delight. I have added it to the burgeoning list of South Australian things I sell at the Cygnet Market and in my little Garden Shed and Pantry business.
As the cows outside my kitchen window chew their cuds, as interested in me as I am in them and the geese merrily mow my clover paths even in the pouring rain; when the frogs croak from every corner of my garden and the chooks start laying well again; when the nights close in early and morning mists linger across the hills, I feel grateful to be alive and glad I am here at the bottom of the world, in paradise.

Cygnet Deep Organic Market

Winter came with a vengeance on Saturday, with temperatures plummeting, rain pelting the windows and a turbulent wind turning the geese’s feathers inside out and upside down. Consequently, Sunday - calm, cold and only with occasional showers, seemed the perfect day to wander down the street to the launch of a true, organic market outside the Town Hall in Cygnet.
Deep Organic means minimum inputs, with those being locally sourced. It means a system of growing magnificent, healthy food by encouraging plant vitality to ward off pests and diseases, in the same way that eating such food helps us ward off human diseases and ills. It does not mean buying organic fertilisers, organic sprays or any organic inputs manufactured thousands of kilometres away and shipped around the world to garden shops.

So it was no surprise that Alex, of Golden Valley Farm, sold out of vegetables before lunch time and that there was a queue of locals, waiting and chatting, for Cam’s incredible breads, croissants, vegetable rolls and baguettes.

What a time of year to begin such an enterprise, coming into winter in southern Tasmania. But Alex’s vegetables and Cam’s breads have gained a reputation this year that will bring locals and visitors out from their warm fires not just for their goodies, but for the camaraderie  that accompanies shoppers and stall holders in marketplaces worldwide.
I have shopped in markets, small and large, through bleak French winters and looked forward to every one of them; rugged up in a thick coat, scarf, hat and gloves. There is a joy to be had; some kind of ancient gene we all have I guess, which has been squashed by the supermarket claiming that making shopping a sterile experience is going to make us happier. How wrong they are! Markets have never seen the boom they are having in the 21st century.
Cygnet Deep Organic Market is looking for more stallholders. Contact Alex for more information.
Cygnet Deep Organic Market: outside the Town Hall (and hopefully soon inside too).  Every Sunday, 10am – 2pm.
It is fabulous to see. It is the future, for all of us.

Golden Valley Farm

When Alex and Gina bought this land a few years ago it was nothing but a paddock; no house, no garden. Now it is the most picturesque of market gardens, nestled in Golden Valley, only a short drive from the Cygnet main street. Alex built the house himself then began building himself a future and an income, from scratch and with very little money.

 

Today the small business is not even 2 years old and yet it feels so right. Alex thinks about how to get by with hardly any inputs in order to maximise what he gets out. Its all organic and worked by hand, because he sees his apple orchard neighbour up the road spending his days sitting on a tractor, dressed in plastic from head to toe and breathing through a massive mask and Alex says that is not for him.

Alex has fine tuned the use of various hoes and he walks his garden beds daily, hoe in hand, swiftly and easily removing even the tiniest weed, constantly sharpening the blade. Everything is planted with the hand held hoe in mind and the paths are the width of a larger hoe. Alex looks healthy and vibrant and loves his work.

  Being new to food gardening he seeks knowledge from near and far but he also experiments with growing times and methods, avoiding the use of plastic poly tunnels and other aids that would complicate things at this stage.

 

 

His rebuilt, old shed has been made into a potting shed by replacing the north-facing walls with windows from the tip shop and half of the roof is glass too. This is my kind of potting shed and I am green with envy..... but I have a plan!

Dotted about the garden are large buckets, each with a stick nailed to an old tin, inside, and watering cans. Into the buckets goes seaweed, collected on one of his delivery runs, and water from his dam. A dash of this seaweed liquid is added to a watering can which is filled up with water. New seedlings are given this tonic once they are a couple of weeks out of the ground, and it helps get them quickly established. A thorough addition of dolomtie, gypsum and garden lime are regularly added as well as home made compost blended with rotted rabbit manure, from a local source.

From the very beginning he has used no chemicals. The paddock has systematically been covered in "sheets" of hay bales, laid side by side and end to end for 2 months or more. Once removed, he tills the section with a small, hand tiller. Here in the photo are 2 sections, one being done with hay and the other with plastic. The hay will have added to the soil life when the bales are removed, whereas the plastic will have killed much of the microbial life in the top 2 cms. It is a lot of work to keep shifting the hay bales and they get very heavy and begin to decompose when the weather is wet, so he reluctantly decided to trial the plastic. A third option he is trialing is woollen carpet but it too has problems.

After hearing all Alex had to say and looking over his beautiful land some of us sat and had a picnic in perfect weather, in a perfect setting.

You will find Alex outside the Cygnet market, 1st and 3rd Sundays from 10 - 2, selling his fabulous vegetables and being a charming fellow!