spring's simple pleasures

Leah -  I've been up north in our home town Bellingen for the past three weeks and the other day I got a call from Summer to say that our broccoli had sprouted divine little broccoli heads - we proceeded to make high pitch noises and jump in excitement! I have to say I'm almost missing our garden as much I'm missing the people in it. 

Summer- I have in fact being doing a lot of excited squeaks and flapping of arms. I blame the intoxicating feeling of spring's first warm days and the chance to be outside again without five different woolen layers. The turning of the seasons is one of my favorite things to witness. The transition times that gently remind us to look about and notice what is going on around us. The Lorrikeets' return to the garden made me stop what I was doing and soon I was discovering the first of the jasmine tumbling over the fence. Its a time that seems to invite reflection, watching the subtle changes in our surroundings that happen day by day without much fuss to shift into the next period of growth. Its quite amazing watching people's reaction to the change, people shaking out the winter stillness and beginning to initiate new ideas and actions that have been sprouting in our minds over cozy fires and shared winter soups, and letting old stuff go in the process. I'm actually in the middle of packing up the house and will be saying good bye to our little garden and home that's been our little center of creativity. So there will be no spring planting to continue this time, which makes me a bit sad,  but each day I have a satisfying sense of abundance as I harvest the broccoli and kale, beans, carrot and silver beet, and think of spreading the compost over the beds before I leave to nourish the soil that has fed us for the last 4 months. 

 

Beet Kvass

Harvesting our very own beetroot was joyous, and to be completely honest a little anticlimactic at first - we had been expecting the monster beets you see in the shiny isles of the IGA, but instead we pulled up small, grubby mini things. Much to our excitement their taste made up for their small stature. We used the leaves, which we learnt have a higher nutritional value than the actual beetroot, in salads, juiced some of the beetroots and used the remainder for beet kvass.

Beet kvass is a traditional Russian and Ukrainian probiotic drink that has been used as a nourishing tonic for a fair old while. It is loaded with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and is known for it's liver cleansing properties. It also contains betaine hydrochloride which aids in the production of stomach acids, which inturn helps reduce heartburn. It is most certainly an acquired taste (think straight beetroot juice combined with sauerkraut) but mixed in with fresh juices or salad dressings adds an earthy tang. We used a mixture of recipes including one here and from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions.

Ingredients:
3 medium organic beets
2 teaspoons sea salt (use 4 teaspoons if you’re omitting the whey)
Filtered water
1/4 cup whey* (optional)
1/4 of a cabbage

Directions:
Wash your beets and cut them into small chunks. chop your cabbage into think slices. Place your beets, water, cabbage and whey in a sealable 2ltr glass jar. Add the salt and stir well, then cover and leave at room temperature for 2 days (if you’re using whey) or 1-2 weeks (if you’re omitting the whey). Give the mixture a good stir every day or two. When you're happy with the taste, strain out the cabbage and beets and you're good to go!

House of the worms

After a couple of weeks, we began to realise that even with our wizz-bang compost, we still had green waste coming out our ears. We began to look for another source to process our scraps, to avoid overwhelming the micro-organisms of the compost and ending up simply with a smelly rotting food pile. And so we decided to try our hand at worm farming.
We had the novel experience of buying a pack of worms off the shelf at CERES to bring home. Creating the worm house/palace/temple/abode took a surprisingly short amount of effort and time, and after one delicious autumn afternoon's work we were tucking the new family members into their composty bed.  They are the worlds easiest/cheapest pets, content to simply live in the corner of the garden munching on our kitchen scraps, although they may kick up a fuss if asked to eat citrus, meat, onions or teabags. You may not receive the same amount of emotional devotion as from your fluffy animal friends, but these guys are a very efficient addition to the household. Watering the veggies with some of their juice or fertilising the newly planted seedlings with some of their castings is overwhelmingly satisfying.

House of the Worms Construction Guide

Materials used: 2 styrofoam boxes and lid
                         1 hessian sack
                         A block of peat compost (or some other equivalent)
                         500-1000 worms (depending on amount of green waste produced)
                         Damp newspaper.

First we punched holes (5cent diameter or slightly smaller) into the base of one of the boxes. This will sit on top of the second box and is where the worms will live. We lined the base of this box with the hessian sack, then filled it with the peat compost and worms. The holes allow the worm juice to drain into the lower box, while the hessian sack stops the worms and soil from falling through. The damp newspaper was laid over the top to help keep the worms warm. The lower box has one slightly larger hole in the base to drain the fluid. Place a bucket under here to catch the worm juice!

Seven Sisters Festival - Sacred food.

In late March Summer, our beautiful friend Emily and I went to Seven Sisters Festival at Mount Martha for the most amazing three days of music, spoken word, delicious food, workshops and dancing, all in celebration of the feminine. The site is an old scout camp in a pine forest nestled on a hill just near the ocean.
We packed up the car on the Friday and made our way out, slowly letting the tendrils of whatever had been going on in each of our lives fall loose for the weekend.We spent the next three days going from one incredible workshop to the next. I sat in on workshops about birth, Chinese medicine, permaculture, deep ecology and Ayurvedic cooking. 

There was one workshop in particular that had a big impact on Summer and I. It was called 'Spirituality - growing food'. The workshop was run by a woman called Robin Koster-Carlyon who lived and worked for four years in the Peruvian Andes, researching the Andean cosmic vision and its connection to food production. Robin spoke about the way in which the whole design of the Incan communities was based around the worship of their gods and in particular their gods of fertility and harvest. The way of growing, harvesting and consuming of food was considered a very spiritual activity, connecting each individual to the soil, the water and the plant life around them. They saw the simple connection between the health of the soil, the health of the food and the health of the people consuming it. Healthy, dynamic earth meant healthy grounded communities and vice versa, a cyclical relationship. From her experience as a farmer Robyn also spoke about the simple idea that if you are caring for your soil, ensuring that it has as much nutrients and vitality as possible - this will transfer to your food. It made me think about what a great opportunity food gives us to check in and create a spiritual practice that is also grounded and practical within day to day life.

 It made us think about what we consumed each day as food. We came to the realisation that, when shopping at large supermarkets such as Coles and Woolworths and even smaller shops such as IGA, we had very little knowledge of how our food is grown except that some of it was 'organic'. We resolved to try to shop only at small local stores and community gardens and markets. To be fully conscious of where our food was grown and hopefully how and by whom. 4 months on, and we haven't bought veggies, dairy products, grains, flour, bread and even toiletries from anywhere that doesn't support a local business and where we can be conscious of where these products have travelled from. Our passion for our little veggie garden also grew ten fold.  Its inspiring, and gets us excited about cooking/eating each day. 

 

Leah and Summer

Comunity Gardens

I work and volunteer at an amazing midwifery clinic called MAMA (Midwives and Mothers Australia) and recently Summer and I got to work setting up a community herb garden that clients and midwives can use to make up medicinal teas for anything from oversupply of milk to upset stomachs.  

Someone before us had already started by making big wicking beds out of old pallets so we begun by topping them up with some compost and soil.Wicking beds, put simply are garden beds that have a waterproof lining which holds a reservoir of water that is drawn up to the surface of the bed. They are perfect for places like Melbourne where the Summers a hot and dry and water evaporates really quickly.

From http://www.urbanfoodgarden.org/main/wicking-beds/wicking-beds.htm

 

And in went the herbs. Goat's rue (Galega officinalis) and fennel which can be helpful to increse milk supply, Spearmint helpful for decreasing milk supply and many other wonderful herbs.

-A little side note from Summer - The first time I heard of a midwife, it was as a healer woman in historical communities. Supporting women during their birthing being only part of their role, along with nurturing people using their knowledge of the plants and other resources about them. I was quite young at the time, and thought this title sounded a bit like some kind of awesome witch. My view of midwifery has obviously changed quite a bit as I've got older, but planting these herbs took me back to my first discovery of midwives as care givers. It was a perfect balance to the healthcare system we both are now studying in, to be learning about an older knowledge base, that utilises and integrates the natural resources aroud us into our health.

The next few photo's are from a permablitz at a local community garden where we got stuck into weeding and winter pruning in the food forest, shared a delicious meal and went to a great composting workshop.
It was a cold but beautiful day of sharing of knowledge, skills and inspiration. It was really great to connect up with other people that have an incredible wealth of knowledge about growing food in our area.

 

 

Leah.

compost delights

Living in a house with six people, we create a lot of green waste. Lacking any alternative, these wonderful scraps full of nutrients were being thrown out in plastic bags instead of feeding our new little veggie garden. What a waste! And so the creation of the compost began!
Buckets of dandelion leaves were gathered from our wild back yard, and cow poo from Leah's permaculture friends. Old autumn leaves and a bundle of hay.

The idea is to layer the compost like a lasagna, alternating between nitrogen substances and carbon in order to get the right ratio for decomposition, with a little bit of soil or compost in-between.
So first, we lay damp cardboard down, then on top placed our structure made of chicken wire to keep everything nice and tidy.
Then went the first carbon layer - a combination of straw, leaves and twigs from the backyard.
This was followed by some ready- made compost, then the nitrogen layer of fresh and green dandelion leaves and cow manure.
Then another carbon layer.
The next part was to compress it all by mashing it down with a thick piece of wood, a bit like a giant mortar and pestle. This makes sure there are no air pockets.
This patten continues until the are a few layers to the lasagna.

A beautiful Lasagne Compost! Unfortunately I didn't get any photo's of our creation so I nicked this from someone else, but ours looked very similar to this beauty.

We let it settle for a few days then started to add the kitchen scraps, yippee!

A few weeks on it's giving off heat which means there are lots of happy little microorganisms. Each time we add some greens we sprinkle it with a handful of mulch and let the compost work its magic. This is our very first compost, so it is still a learning experience for us, but so far so good!

Summer.

A forest of food

Last Saturday I met up with my permaculture class at Karen Sutherand's beautiful home in Pascoe Vale. Karen has, over 25 years, turned her garden into an edible forest. We wandered around her garden picking kiwi fruit from vines, cherry guavas of small bushes and sucking the flesh of feijoas.

 Karen has converted her shed roof into a rooftop garden where she keeps her bees and grows strawberries, has turned the nature strip outside her house into a community garden, the majority of her garden is watered using grey water and she has an aquaponics system worth drooling over.

Walking around Karen's garden and seeing the incredible abundance of winter produce was so inspiring. Putting your hands in the soil and being aware of how, where and in what season something grows is the most simple, beautiful way to reconnect to ourselves and to the land. 

An array of fruits from the winter garden.

Geodesic dome chicken tractor!

I've just found this TED talk and found it so inspiring and a perfect addition to this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqhx4Etdvr0&app=desktop

Leah

the winter planting

With the cooler weather well and truly settled in, its time to be planting the winter veggies. We've got little broccoli, carrots, beans, cabbage, kale, asparagus and chive seedings now tucked in among the rocket leaves, silver beet and herbs. Our beetroot is looking luscious and will be soon ready to pull up for eating! Our sprouting trays are also active, with tiny peas, pak choy and rainbow chard seedlings poking up through the soil. 

Winter is a quiet time and I've often associated it with being dormant and restful. A time of dying back and bare branches. Harvest time is over and there is a resting of the soil. Walking around our garden and watching all the growth I've realised its not necessarily so and it can be quite an abundant season. Tomorrow's the winter solstice and our little garden has been a beautiful reminder of the importance of the seasons. 

For the peas we made trellises out of sticks collected from the garden. 

A shack for the seedlings :)
One of our favourite things about this garden has been watering it each day and taking the time out to wander around the garden and see the changes happening.  Going out to the seedlings each day is especially rewarding. I'll never get tired of watching seedlings pop up!

Summer :)

the spiral garden

This is the herb spiral I made after thinking about sacred geometry and the symbolism of the spiral. I thought it would be beautiful to have a garden in the shape of a spiral. Herb spirals are a popular permaculture design that maximise space and allow you to create varying microclimates for different plants. The plants that are higher up have better drainage and require dryer soils where as the ones lower down, such as spearmint, enjoy damper soil.
I loved collecting our veggies and herbs from the spiral, although the chickens worked hard teaching me the nature of impermanence as they were constantly getting in there and removing everything!

For more information here's a link I used http://littlemountainhaven.com/how-to-build-a-herb-spiral/

 First I put down cardboard boxes that had been soaked for a couple of hours over the area. This suppresses the weeds.
Next I placed the bricks in the spiral design, building them up in order to gradually raise the layers. I then placed some gravel in the centre to allow for better drainage.

Then I topped up the spiral with soil.

and planted away. 

Leah :)