There is a Season.. There be a Reason

A sad event happened here a few weeks ago. One of our two chickens, Tundra, cuddled into the nesting box, went to sleep and never woke up. Having productive animals in your back yard can give you many joys but when one of them dies it really tugs at your heart. There were a few signs that something wasn't quite right but we had treated the most likely culprit and she had seemed to improve. Thus it was quite a shock and something we hadn't expected to need to face for quite a while yet as both of our girls were just coming up on 12 months old.

As with all events like this, even if you're not quite ready yet the living need to be considered. Natas our remaining girl was pining badly. She spent her day calling out for her flock, if she wasn't at our feet she just wasn't happy. As much as I like my girls I can't spend my day wandering around the back yard with a chicken at my feet. I gave it a week or so to ensure that whatever made Tundra sick wasn't going to cause Natas problems but the decision had been made, some new girls needed to be found.

There was some internal debate as to how to handle this. Natas being an ISA is a bit of a bully and to make it a bit more complex I really wanted to add two girls to the flock. Having to scramble to find replacement chickens with no time to research really isn't the best practice. Needless to say the problem with adding two of course is that they will have grown up together and just might gang up on Natas. I briefly considered adding one and then another a bit later but that just seemed to ask for trouble. It took me a few days but I decided the benefits of adding two, younger girls, were significantly more than the possible risks.

Thus the Lavender Girls, Violet and Winny, came into our henhouse. They are young, quick and a bit on the flighty side. Which, is all good when you are putting them in with a bossy little boots who is known for using her beak to underline any point of order. I looked around for a bit and simply couldn't find anyone with young chickens who was answering their email. Then somone posted on ALS about looking for chickens and a lady I know who breeds Lavender Araucana commented that she had girls up for sale. It's always a relief when you can buy from people you know and they came to me healthy and flock wise.

Let's just say Natas didn't approve of their existence and was more than happy to express it. It took a week before they actually spent any time on the floor of the coop.. Yep, they spent 7 days flying from the night perches to a large off the ground perch during the day, then trying to sleep on the roof of the hen house at night. Due to our fox problems I couldn't leave them on the roof so we had a nightly struggle to move them onto the night perches.


Thankfully now at two weeks things are settling down nicely. Natas is still slowly chasing them away from the various food piles we scatter across the floor but not with the vehemence she once was. At this point it's just part of the process that she eats a bit, moves toward their pile they move away and find another pile. She has stopped calling out for her flock so I think she is really starting to accept that they are going to be her future pals. It will be interesting to see just how long it takes before the partition can be taken out of the night box but at least with it there the Lavender girls are putting themselves onto the night perch and Natas, who is a lot easier to handle, is the only one we have to move.

I expect we are still a few weeks away from them really being an integrated flock but at least at this point I can start to see what it might look like.

Energy Futures Seminar Series 2010 - University of Melbourne

For those of us interested in where academic thinking is at with regard to energy issues this set of public lectures, organised and held at the University of Melbourne - Energy Research Institute, are a must see.

Future of the Grid: Integrating Energy Supply
The Future of Cities in the Low Carbon Economy
The Future of Transport in the Low Carbon Economy
The Future of Nuclear Energy in Australia
The Future of Clean Coal

Use The Food - Crusty Whole Wheat Italian Bread

What can I say but my wheat flours have languished in the bottom of my freezer too long. Basically since I first worked with spelt that is pretty much all I have used. It is so much easier on my digestion that I have been supremely unmotivated to work with wheat. As these things go when you are using lots and lots of a certain type of flour you tend to run low. Normally I would just reorder at this point but since I still have a whole lot of wheat sitting there I decided that it must get used first.

You will also notice this one uses commercial yeast rather than sourdough. Again it's an ingredient that has been sitting in the freezer way toooooooo long. Honestly this can of yeast is definitely over 3 years old and probably closer to 4. Keeping yeast in the freezer extends it's life but if it doesn't get used soon that yeast is going to be food waste.

The reason the yeast has been allowed to sit this long is twofold. I have a mental block about commercial yeast. I started cooking bread with commercial yeast and due to the fact I was a noob with no knowledgeable backup my results where inconsistent to say the least. I won't say I produced bricks because it was all edible but let's just say that the results were toward the dense side. I moved to sourdough, learned a lot about bread and the way it works from a group of highly knowledgeable people and my results improved massively... so although I know it isn't rational part of me doesn't like working with commercial yeast. The second reason is although it's not a huge issue commercial yeast isn't the greatest for my digestion.

The thing is that in a pinch I don't hesitate to buy wheat breads with commercial yeast. It all of a sudden became clear to me that by and large it was just excuses. Since using commercial yeast takes the start to finish bread making process to around 2 hrs it didn't make sense to be buying something that I really should have been making myself when I didn't have time to make sourdough.

I am not going to say this bread was a revelation for me, it wasn't. Commercial yeast breads are only ever likely to be a compromise for me in terms of taste, but I did it. The result was as good as the expensive brands I buy from the store so I guess I will get to the bottom of that can of yeast eventually.

Crusty Whole Wheat Italian Bread

1 C water
2 tsp raw sugar
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt
210g white wheat flour
210g whole wheat flour
2 tsp active dry yeast
2tsp olive oil (optional but useful if you need the bread to keep for more than a few hours)

• In body temperature water put yeast, sugar and ginger. Stand for 5 min until yeast is foamy (this is extremely important if you are working with older yeast that may or may not be still active)
• In your mixer bowl add your flours and salt then your wet mix. Allow the mixer to kneed for 5 minutes, or until satiny and smooth.
• Put your dough into an oiled bowl and leave to rise until doubled in bulk, aprox 1 hr
• Hand kneed down dough, and halve.
• Shape each loaf.
• Place on baking sheet seam side down and leave to rise for another 45min (until doubled)
• Heat oven to 250C.
  
• When oven is at temperature slash loves, spray with water then sprinkle with some whole wheat flour.
• Put loaves in the oven and reduce temperature to 200C cook for 15-20min or until loaves are browned and crisp

Diversity in a box - Completed

**Sorry about that little pre-release yesterday it seems I was having one of those challenged days.


I don't know about anyone else but I honestly don't aspire to a neat garden. Lines and rows are good if you are farming but really unless you need to be able to harvest a lot of one type of plant quickly I feel they a totally over rated. Problem is I am not all that visually imaginative. Give me a pile of seedlings and regardless of my general feelings on the topic everything ends up vaguely lined up and sorta straight. For someone that believes in a diverse ecologies being more stable than a few different species, showing people around my garden at times is almost embarrassing.

The problem of course was I am human and humans find it extraordinarily difficult to be in any way random. We like patterns.. we like patterns so much that the first thing we do with any novel stimuli is try and match it up to past experience.. to find a pattern. In cases where we can't find one we are often tempted to make one up. That's the reason why garden designers that are looking to create natural looking landscapes use weird and wonderful techniques to attempt to inject randomness into their designs.

One of my favourite was, I think, attributed to Edna Walling. It is said that she was creating large native style bush gardens she walked around the space with a sack of potatoes and human randomly threw them around. Where they landed is where the trees were planted then the other plantings were arranged around that. One of the reasons this really appeals to me is that it reminds me that the only way for most of us to be even close to random is to give up as much control as we can and give space for chance.

It was to this end I created my diversity box. It's in this reused icecream container that I collect all my close to code seed as well as the tiny seed for that season such as lettuce and chamomile. Unlike my normal careful germination method, in cell trays the seed in this box just gets randomly throw in various areas before rain. It's conversely interesting and frustrating, have I ever mentioned I am just a biiitttt of a control freak, to watch what comes up.

So, What's in the box at the moment?
Beetroot Early wonder
Plantain
Scorzonera
Collards, Georgia Southern
Clary Sage
Mini Broccoli
Broccoli Shogun
Kohl Rabi, White Vienna
Carrot, Lubyana
Spring Onion
Carrot 3 Colour Purple
Swede, Champion Purple Top
Turnip, Milan White

For someone like me this box is a challenge. It's a lesson in loosening the grip, of accepting, and celebrating the results no matter how unexpected they may be.

Mudbrick Palace Back to Basics - Week 12, Yr 2

Sowing seed or Planting -

Harvesting

• 674g zucchini
• 1728g squash
  
• 901g Potatoes
• 455g Tomatoes
  

Observing

• The first round winter seedlings are ready for potting up
  
• Basil does better with a whole lot of water and food
• The Early Long Eggplant is actively flowering and ready for polination
  
• The mini Lebanese eggplant has put out a couple of flowers but nothing to allow much change of pollination

Planning for The Future -

• Menu Plan
• Weekly work plan
• juggling garden plan to fit in late peas
  

Working for the Future -

• Planted out another round of Leafy seeds
  

Building Community -

• Bought our weekly produce from local farm stalls
• 
  

Learn a new Skill -

• Re familiarising myself with commercial yeast

Participant Posts -
Remote Treechanger, Saturday Feb 10th

Diversity in a Box

Sorry, cya later

Propagation Workshop - Birdsland Environmental Education Centre, Tecoma

(Click to enbiggen)

Come along to a edible plants propagation workshop!
Learn how to propagate from seeds and cuttings and meet others involved in local food production.

Presenter is Mike Rosenfield.

When: Saturday, February 27th, 9am-12pm

Where: Birdsland Environmental Education Centre
Birdsland Reserve, McNicol Rd, Belgrave

Cost: $5

Please RSVP to Michelle Jones on 0409 52 6862 as there are limited spots available and if it is a Total Fire Ban day the workshop will be relocated.

Awwwwww

Some one thinks I'm special.

That picture, it's love. What do you mean it looks like a memory card?.....
It's love I tell you.

You see I got my birthday present early.

My camera's memory card had gone from being able to take over 500 photo's to 26 about a month ago. Sure it was a bit annoying, I am used to be able to snap away and not have to be conservative but I looked at it seriously and I convinced myself that I could cope with that. It was just as many as I used to get with film so even though it was an inconvenience I decided that I would work round it until money was flowing a little easier.

Then 2 days ago I went to take photo's of the Chooks and it would only take 6 before the confounded thing reported it was full.

Ahhhhh!

I mentioned to A that I thought I was going to have to give in on buying the card. Honestly only being able to take 6 shots in a row was going to be a quick path to insanity. I can cope with a lot of things but this one was getting ready to do my head in. I am sure you all have some idea of how many photo's you need to take before you get the perfect kookaburra to put up on the blog....

*so, back to being loved.*

After dinner my generous man slipped into his mysterious man cave, walked towards me smiling and handed me a box telling me "Happy Birthday". Now as that momentous event doesn't actually occur for a few weeks I was a bit confused. I looked down at it and smiled really, really big.

Some time in the last month he had actually gone out and got me an new card.

*see,that's love right there*

Then to top it all off to save me vast psychological pain, he gave it to me even though it's not my birthday yet.

Thus today after receiving a pink and blue bunny card, a new frame actually big enough for my planting calendar and my new memory card I am feeling just a little spoilt and a whole lot special.

Use The Food - Zucchini and Chickpea Fritters

Yep, just in case you don't have enough zucchini recipes here is another one.

Vegan, Dairy free and full of taste these little beauties ensure that eating through that pile of squash and zucchini is not a chore. Paired with a good Tamarind Chutney or Riata, for those that don't need to be dairy free, these fritters make a wonderful light meal. For those that may be feeding children you might want to kick the chilli back a bit as they are quite spicy and in your face for young palettes.

Originally adapted from this Zucchini and Chickpea Pancake recipe. Cooked at fritter size as it makes serving sooooooo much easier, tailored to our garden and pantry.



Zucchini and Chickpea Fritters
Serves 3

2 Large Zucchini (appox 6 c), shredded finely
2 Squash blossom (optional)
1/8 C fresh Parsley leaf, chopped
1 C Chickpea Flour (Besan Flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp chilli flakes
1/2 tsp tandoori curry powder

1-2 hours before cooking finely shred, or grate, zucchini into a large bowl. Add chopped parsley.

In a small bowl thoroughly mix together the chickpea flour, salt and spices. Immediately add to the zucchini bowl. Coat the zucchini with the powder as evenly as possible. Leave to rest.

When ready to cook mix any extra moisture back into the zucchini batter. Bring an oiled frypan up to medium-high.

With a soup spoon scoop the mix out of the bowl and plop it into the pan. Use the back of the spoon to spread out the mixture to a reasonably even depth. Cook each side until golden.

Let's Get This Harvest Started

Woohoo, we are getting to that time of year.

The time of year when you start looking at the garden and really convince yourself that maybe, just maybe, you did good. When you manage to convince yourself that you will actually eat a reasonable amount of garden tomatoes. The time when you become convinced you just might get swamped enough with zucchini that by the end of the season you will be grateful that the frost killed it off.

Succession planting has really worked in my favour with a couple of crops this year. Due to all the rain we have gratefully received I am having fungal problems with one of my zucchini. Early in the season I was having what looked like fungal problems with both my first and second plantings of tomatoes too.

Thankfully the tomatoes seem to have successfully grown through their trial by nature so I am not all that concerned at this point but it did have me wondering if I wasn't rotating my crops often enough. Then I realised that I was seeing exactly the same symptoms in ground I was absolutely sure had never seen any solanaceae before. I had to stop worrying at that point and just hope that my trusty heirlooms would cope with what seemed to be less than ideal conditions. At this point the main advantage that succession has given me is just as the first lot of tomatoes have matured and started to ripen the second round is bearing fruit. The potential for large amounts of green tomato chutney here is real but if I have timed it right, and we have a reasonably gentle change of season, I could have tomatoes ripening into the beginning of April. We will see, either way I will have learned a little more about my climate.

Now with the Zucchini this isn't the normal end of season fungal problem, sooty mould, it's one I have never seen before. Somehow it seems, either due to the amount of moisture or maybe I got a bit frisky with the secateurs, the top of one of my main Zucchini leaders had a split. Needless to say with the continued moisture this season the split has been the entry point and thriving space for a slimy mould. Sadly based on the last 24 hours, it seems to be struggling hard even when the weather is mild, I am probably going to have to yank this plant soon but as it has given me great mounds of Zucchini up to this point I will give it a little time to find a way to recover.

My early season succession planting means that just as this one has succumbed to disease I have two more Zucchini just starting to produce. Very seldom does life work out this well.. but when it does, it's sweet.

Now I just need to find a space to start planting out the winter veg as I only have about 4 weeks until the first of those must be in the ground. One of these days I will actually do a full year garden plan so I don't get quite so confounded by the Summer -> Autumn changeover.

Sowing seed or Planting -

Harvesting

• 866g zucchini
• 100g squash
  
• 160g Rattlesnake Beans
• 430g Tomatoes
  

Observing

• Many of the second round tomatoes have started setting fruit
  
• Intermittent infestation of white cabbage butterfly on the tomatoes, not too bad though
• The top mini pumpkin has started setting fruit
• The from seed cucumber that germinated now has set out it's first true leaf
• 
  

Maintenance

• Made a cabbage butterfly protection veil out of seconhand terralines from the op shop to give the new seedlings a chance.
  
• Weeding
• Picking out the bird and caterpillar damaged green tomatoes
• Playing with kitty litter trays as a form of wicking system
  

Planning for The Future -

• Menu Plan
• Weekly work plan

Working for the Future -

• Made strawberry,raspberry and mint icecream
• Found a couple of local new roadside stalls

Building Community -

• Continued contributing to the vision statement
• Bought our weekly produce from local farm stalls

Learn a new Skill -

• How to thread my overlocker in the right order so it actually works.. and that I can use good quality machine embroidery cotton in it if I wish rather than poly cotton which is not my preference.
  

Remembering to Say Thank You

They are two such simple words but they really mean a lot to people. When receiving them, to me, they are a wrapped up appreciation of the fact that I have added a little ease to someone's journey that wasn't already there. Being who I am that knowledge is something that helps me feel happy.

I had what I expect was the standard training of my generation, forever being reminded to say thank you. Honestly I thought all that training had stuck, that I was doing a good job of expressing my gratitude to the people in my life. The problem was that training had stuck but I realised that I didn't actually learn what I thought I had.

I thought I learned to express my appreciation of people and their many and varied contributions to my life. My behaviour though said what I actually learned was to express my appreciation when I was "given" "or "allowed access to" an "item". Thank You was usually only offered for tangible things, only when someone had obviously put themselves to inconvenience to provide me with something. The more challenging thing to learn was that using "Thank You" for me wasn't actually linked to appreciation at all, it was simply an automated response to a set of social cues.

Now, if I was a child that would be ok, but I am not.

The way people contribute to my life has got immensely more complex and none of them are obligated in any way to do so. The small gifts of time and service that people offered me every day, eased my journey but passed by unacknowledged. They have added value to my life. As such they deserve to be offered true appreciation, not at best empty words.

Even worse because I wasn't expressing my appreciation to them I was at my very core taking them for granted. I was devaluing their gifts' contribution to my life by not accepting them with gratitude and expressing my appreciation. While not adding my appreciation to their life, of course made them less likely to feel like doing so again I was robbing myself in another way too.

Just as importantly that lack of appreciation leached away many opportunities to experience the abundance of my everyday. By not acknowledging those instances as something to value it was very hard to see my life's wealth.

When was the last time you
Thanked the cashier for being efficient and pleasant when serving you?
Thanked your partner?
Thanked your kids?
Thanked your closest friends?
Thanked a random person who did something helpful?

Do you remember to appreciate, and say Thank You, to those who act to make your day easier?

Use the Food : Borlotti Bean and Zucchini Dip

Ahh, yes we are back to dip again.

I have to say I looked at this recipe after I lucked on someone selling fresh Borlotti Beans (yes, my life is wonderful) and loved it immediately. Any recipe, at this time of year that uses 250g of zucchini is to be commended. That is before I even realised it was going to also use a bit, of the rather awesome amount, of sumac in my cupboard.

Personally I am not sure if the person who originally wrote the recipe was a bit more generous with the oil than the recipe suggests or just processed an awful lot longer than I was willing to but the taste was a lot more dip than hummus to me.. and well both family and guests thought it was perfect just the way it was.

As always there were adjustments, although in this case they were extremely minor.

Borlotti Bean and Zucchini Dip
approx 500g

150 g fresh Borlotti Beans
4 sage leaves
285g fresh zucchini
1 sm red salad onion, chopped
1 tbsp unhulled tahini
10ml olive oil
1tsp sumac
Juice of half a lemon
Salt and Pepper to taste

Cook the Borlotti Beans with the sage leaves until soft. Add a small amount of salt and leave the beans to sit for 5 min or so.

Drain Beans, removing sage leaves, and wait until cool.

In the mean time slice up the zucchini evenly. Saute in a splash of oil over a high heat until tender without being mushy. By this point you should see nice browning on a couple of the sides.

Put together all the ingredients, including salt and pepper for seasoning, into the food processor and process until it is the consistency you prefer, in my case chunky with a bit of texture.

Spoon into a serving bowl and garnish with olive oil and an extra 1/4 tsp of sumac if you wish.

Growing Challenge - Joined Again

Well I took a year off the growing challenge out at One Green Generation last year. I decided because my focus was on growing community rather growing the garden that I didn't want to give myself extra pressure. Needless to say when the veggie garden takes a mental back seat so very often does it's level of productivity.

This year I have decided I need to refocus and reporting back to the growing challenge fortnightly should be just what I need to remember to actually make entries into my garden activities calendar. I have been doing a reasonable amount of planning and planting but without actively recording I find it extremely difficult to remember if I have anything to talk about.. so activities calendar here I come.

Honestly the Evangelist side of this challenge isn't a problem for me. Working as part of a group trying to pull a community garden out of nowhere should count for something.. Oh, that and the fact I am not sure anyone who expresses any type of mild interest in growing walks away from my place empty handed. In some ways I may not have pushed people to grow that weren't already thinking about it.. but I sure have been a motivating enabler on many, many occasions so that they ended up with something in the ground.

The Extreme part is a little more challenging, not because I don't save seed, I do but because I am actually not too sure I am growing much this season I haven't in the past. I tend to be a bit of a seed hoarder. No really, thus I made a pact with myself that for the next 6 months I won't buy any new seed.

How I have decided to tackle this is to save seed from varieties I haven't saved before. Although it's a bit against the spirit of this part of the challenge, rather than a learning exercise in regard to how to save certain types of seed I am using it as motivation to build my seedbank so I can distribute it out to unsuspecting people at the local mid winter Lantern Pde.

At this point the seed I am looking at saving is

1. Crimson Flowered Snow Pea
2. Burdock (all new to me, currently in flower)
3. Sugar Loaf Cabbage
   
4. Violet Sicilian Cauliflower (just cause every winter Lantern Pde should have cauliflower)
   

In case anyone else is interested in joining I have copied the details of the challenge. Just click on the graphic at the top of the page and sign up.

The Rules

In a nutshell: Grow 3 crops from seed, and plant the seeds in 3 new people.

1. Grow 3 Crops from Seed this Year. I leave the details up to you, but I encourage you to step out of your comfort zone – even seasoned gardeners. If you are still learning, feel free to grow the easy stuff, or seeds you might have grown before. If this is old hat for you, you might try to grow something new – challenge yourself!

2. Plant the Seeds in 3 New People. In other words, inspire 3 new people to grow crops from seed this year. I know for some of you this means really stepping out of your comfort zone. But you can do it. We’ll all support each other – this is how we change the world, one bit at a time! It’s easy. Let your enthusiasm shine through what you do. Be an inspiration and resource to others!

This could be your neighbors, your friends or family, people in your community garden, people in your book group or parents at school… You can wait until someone asks you, or you can strike up a conversation with them. And you don’t have to do it in person! You can write an article in your local newspaper or community newsletter (I’m writing an article in my local garden newsletter), if you have a blog you can write a blog post about how easy and fun and cheap seed starting is, you can volunteer at a local senior center garden, you can inspire your kids to grow with you….

If you’re more experienced, think about teaching a class at your community center, or a community college – you might make a bit of money at the same time! Or you could teach gardening at your kid’s school (maybe help them grow a garden?), teach someone in your community garden, or participate in an online forum – so many easy ways to spread the word.

3. Tell the Stories About Your Seed Planting Here. We all want to hear your stories! So in the periodic updates here, come and tell us how you’re doing, ask questions, talk about your experiences teaching others, your frustrations or thoughts or ideas or whatever. We want to hear them, and take advantage of this awesome community!

Need More? Go Extreme!

For the Optional Advanced or Extreme Edition, add this step as well:

4. Make it Seed to Seed! Grow 3 crops from seed, and save the seed from each of those 3 crops to grow them next year. That means you do have to buy open pollinated seeds (not hybrids), and learn a bit about the crops so that you save the seed well enough that they’ll produce a good quality crop next year. I’ll be continuing to write about saving seeds in the coming months to help out.

Can you swing it? I’m thinking about ways to reward those who participate in the bonus edition. Maybe a special prize*…

Mudbrick Palace Back to Basics - Week 10, Yr 2

Sowing seed or Planting -
Sowing

• Cauliflower Violet Sicilian x 22
• Cauliflower Early Snow x 14
• Cauliflower Green Macerata x 8
• Cauliflower Self Blanche
• Broccoli Green Sprouting x 8
• Broccoli Purple Sprouting x 8
• Broccoli Romanesque x 14
• Broccoli Di Cisilio x 14
• Brussel Sprout x 8
• Rainbow Chard x 22
• Cabbage Sugar Loaf x 28
• Cabbage Jessy Wave
• Summer Savory x 14
• Chamomile x 7
• Chives Lg Leaf x 7
• Kale Red Russian
  

Harvesting

• 500g zucchini
  
• 50g Rattlesnake Beans
• 25g Basil Leaf
  
• 5g Sage Leaf
  

Observing

• Tomato Ripening is still slow but is starting to accelerate
• Much of the Basil has gone to seed
• One of the second round tomatoes has set it's first fruit
• The large amount of rain we have experienced seems to have caused a fungal problem on one of the zucchini, it doesn't seem to be affecting the plant's production at this point.
• Lots of White Cabbage Butterfly around
• The Golden Nugget Pumpkin had definitely set at least a couple of fruit at this point.
• Second Round Middle East Zucchini has harvested it's first fruit
  

Maintenance

• Put up tomato cages for the second round tomato planting
  
• Weeding
• Picking out the bird and caterpillar damaged green tomatoes
• Covered the new seedlings with shade cloth to slow down White Cabbage Butterfly
  

Planning for The Future -

• Menu Plan
• Weekly work plan

Working for the Future -

• Feeding Ginger Beer Plant
  
• Feeding Sourdough Starter

Building Community -

• Took notes and in the process of writeup for the community section of BEC's Vision Statement
  
• Shared a meal with some friends
• Attended Community Harvest Shared Dinner
  

Learn a new Skill -

• N/A

Is This the Best Choice I Can Make For Myself?

Like everyone I have a whole host of habits. Some of them are unequivocally good for me, others support me emotionally but damage me physically. Then there are the ones that without a doubt my life would be better without.

Last year in many ways was challenging. There were many times where I was a lot closer to just surviving than truly living. On various occasions I lost my sense of partnership, of achievement and joy. Through my own choices I found myself in a place where my sense of self worth was being pushed to the limit. I have to say by the end I was hanging on with two fingers furiously trying to find some space where I could find some peace.

I was lucky, I was handed some space so now I need to find a way to do things better next time. Life is good at finding our weak points so there will always be a next time. The challenge of course is once something is a habit it tends not to be something you make a conscious decision about. The behaviour just comes from the pattern not from a process of thought. The problem of course is the acting of the behaviour no matter how unconscious still impacts our being exactly the same way as it would if we had deliberated over the decision.

I had to find a way to make the unconscious, conscious. Luckily I know my behaviour patterns pretty well so I set myself the task of watching for the first few steps of a couple of the good ones and a couple of the bad ones. In effect those steps are what I use to identify that particular habit.

For the good ones, noticing the fact I am making good decisions for myself makes me happy. Feeling happy is rewarding, strengthening and encourages me to keep trying.

The bad ones, well they now have an extra step. I consciously as myself the question "Is this the best choice I can make for myself?" depending on the situation the answer will be either yes or no. If I am backed into a corner and don't have the emotional wherewithal to use any other coping mechanism the answer is yes. Any other situation the answer is no and I go looking for a better option.

Is it working? Well, when I don't give myself a free pass for an amount of days it certainly has. I think rather than choosing for it not to matter for those days I just need to keep up the asking habit and get a bit more comfortable that it is ok, for good reason, for the answer to be NO.

Do you give yourself credit for your good habits?
How do you tackle change if you find one you don't want any more?

Farmers and Shoppers World-Wide say No ! Monsanto !

Farmers and Shoppers World-Wide say No ! Monsanto !

WHEN : 7 am on Thursday 18th February
WHERE : Hilton on the Park, 192 Wellington Parade East Melbourne (near Fitzroy Gardens)

**********************************************************************************


Monsanto spokesperson Peter O’Keeffe will address the Rural Press Club at the “Hilton on the Park” promoting farmers’ “choice” to grow GM canola and Monsanto’s role in the future of agriculture.

In solidarity with majority world farmers who are fighting for sovereignty against multinational control of their land and patented seed monopoly, we will rally outside the Hilton to say “No! Monsanto !”

Profits, seed monopoly and patenting are Monsanto’s real agenda.

From the cotton fields of Indonesia, where the company was fined $US1.5 million for bribery while trying to influence a GM cotton approval, to India, where over 100,000 people fasted in January against seed monopoly and GM eggplant introduction, world-wide awareness of the threat of GM crops is building. Corporate spin will not convince us that Monsanto’s patented seeds will “feed the world”.

We don’t want unstable, untested GM food products on our plates while GM canola spreads and contaminates our paddocks, in the name of a farcical “choice” which destroys our choice to farm and eat GM free.

Join us for a GM free breakfast rally with speakers and debate.

Rally sponsors : MADGE info@madge.org.au
LASNET lasnet@latinlasnet.org
Friends of the Earth Australia realfood@melbourne.foe.org.au

Inspiration for The Cook

Even though I love cooking I actually don't own that many cook books. I guess I recognised early that I wasn't totally wedded to a specific type of food so buying cookbooks just ensured that I maybe made one or two recipes then put it down never to be used again.

Being an eclectic and seasonal cook means that I don't actually care what the traditional background of a recipe is. I want recipes that use stuff I have a glut of preferably in large amounts. Let's just be honest here the Internet is often my saviour in this regard. Be it Indian, Greek, Tuscan, Aussie or well anything else as long as it doesn't try and put things like english spinach, chard is fine, with ripe tomatoes my world is probably ok.

The thing that has amazed me that of any other restriction I have put on my diet seasonal when you happen to want to eat vegetarian seems to be a challenge. I am sure this will change but at least when it comes to the cookbooks I have access to here in my local library the word seasonal really hasn't penetrated the vegetarian cookbook market.

Luckily even though they are not exclusively vegetarian many books on traditional cooking in many different cultures have a good smattering of veg, or veg adaptable, recipes. I am not sure why this part of these cuisines has stayed the same, probably because really you can't do these wonderfully simple meals with substandard produce and still have them shine. Thankfully though, the seasonality part of their traditions have mostly stayed intact.

The thing about these recipes that I absolutely love is they assume you have access to fresh basic ingredients. They give you recipes on how to make egg pasta, pastry, jams and assume you are cooking your beans from scratch. Although I have many of these skills teaching people how to make familiar foods from basic ingredients is always a plus in my book.

Most importantly I find that the actual hands on work time for most recipes tends to be minimal. Depending on what is being cooked there may be a long cook time but the amount of time actually required to pull the meal together and set it in motion tends to be minimal.

The books I have been quite impressed that I have found in my local library are :-

"The Greek Mamma's Kitchen" Rosemary Barron
"Twelve - A Tuscan Cookbook" Tessa Kiros
"My Egyptian Grandmother's Kitchen" Magda Mehdawy
"River Cafe Cookbook - Green" Rose Gray
"Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian" Madhur Jaffrey


What are your favourite seasonal veg or veg friendly cookbooks and resources?

Thinking Winter

Yep, it's around 30C here today and I am thinking winter.

Unusually not because I want the hot weather gone, winter here is long and cold enough. I am thinking winter because last winters seasonal rotation was a rather big FAIL. I harvested a couple of kg of pototoes which of course lasted no time at all, a few turnip and swede, lots and lots of leaf mustard and 2-3 cauliflower , Romanesque and Violet Sicilian, over the entire 3-5 months of winter and early spring. Lets be honest here, if we were relying on the block for food last year we would have starved.

The bright side of that equation is that the reason we did so badly is that I failed to plan ahead. Although in theory that seems easy to fix, in some ways it is actually quite challenging to remember to do that up here. We don't even start to get ripe tomatoes until February. Yep, even my early varieties have only started colouring up this week. Before I even get my first real taste of summer I need to be sowing in seed for winter. For me it seems that is quite a mental hurdle to jump.

Even now I haven't actually got it right. I should have been really concentrating on this from the beginning of January. Instead my first round of seed went in last Friday almost the first week of Feb. To A's delight that probably means that the Brussel Sprout seed I have put in will amount to nothing but chicken food. Luckily most of the other brassicas don't need quite so long so they will probably be fine.

Next year I am going to try to create myself a tradition of New Year Seed Planting. Maybe if I make it a ritual to focus myself back down into the earth after the heady days of celebration I will get more seed into trays earlier. That and actually getting my planting calendar before the new year just might help me improve my winter harvest.

When do you need to start your winter planting?

Mudbrick Palace Back to Basics - Week 9, Year 2

Sowing seed or Planting -
Sowing

• 4 Lettuce Leaf Basil
  

Harvesting

• 1.25 kg Zucchini
• 250g Rattlesnake Beans
• 25g Butterhead lettuce
• 200g Silverbeet
  

Observing

• Beans are getting to the point I am thinking about just letting them go to seed
  
• Some basil is trying hard to go to seed
• The pomegranate was in too much shade so quite a few of the leaves yellowed off
• Last round of cucumber planting has eventuated in one sproutling so far
  

Maintenance

• Hand Watering, watering, watering
• Weeding
• Picking out the bird and caterpillar damaged green tomatoes
  

Planning for The Future -

• Menu Plan
• Weekly work plan
• Reading Your Money or Your Life
  

Working for the Future -

• Ginger Beer Making
• Asian Plum saucing

Building Community -

• Attended BEC Meeting & agreed to work on the community section of the vision statement
  
• Caught up with some of A's family
• Buying some Beautiful local chooks to replace the girl we had pass in her sleep.
  

Learn a new Skill -

• To open ginger beer bottles outside when it's been brewing a week and you get a few hot days.

Participant Posts
Remote Tree Changer Sunday Jan 31st