Author Archives: anthonypickering

Didn’t plan it so going to have to wing it.

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Last year a friend gave me some amazing Sicilian basil. Big leaves perfect on a slice of bread as it had a milder flavour and was large enough that two or three leaves covered a slice of A. sourdough.

Teamed up with good cheese it was awesome.

So at the end of summer it died back to a few twigs but a lot of seeds. I put the poor sad pot at the back door with plans to put a bag over it to collect the seeds for next year. But each time I walked past less seeds where there and I forgot or got busy. It would have taken me 5 minutes to do it but didn’t…

It is a luxury in this time we are in that I don’t have to stress about it as I can always go online and find some or ask the friend again. In the future we may not be so lucky in which case I would hope I am more disciplined or one of my neighbours is. Seed saving is a skill I am more intermittent at than good at. I is a skill that I have said I will work on this year along with better propagation techniques.

But I did have an idea that sad forlorn pot was still! There maybe, just maybe some of the seeds in it?

So I am going to do a bit of an experiment. I covered the pot with a light dusting of good potting mix and chucked it in a tub it allow the water to wick up. It went into my new propagation hot house. What is the worst that could happen? Some weeds grow? Chickens can eat those.

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It got me thinking that now is the time to work on skills and experiment now, build for a future where at the very least everything we do will become much more expensive and learning very unusual skills harder as $200 flight to another city to do a course becomes a $500 train trip or $1000 plan ride.

It is a reason my garden beds are mostly made with recycled blue stone blocks or bricks they will last forever and can be reused over and over again with little to no additional fossil inputs.

So as i have said before go out there and skill up, But I add to that go out there and experiment as well!

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Are we all making it easier to do nothing at all?

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So I have been quiet again… nothing new there … (or NO news there 🙂 )

And have been contemplating why?

I had a think on father’s day as sick number 2 child was sleeping in the sun next to me and came to the conclusion I have been my own worst enemy in a number of ways recently. I have been looking at what I have been doing and going well that is not blog worthy, that is not environmental ‘enough’ and worst of all comparing. I think that other person is doing everything so much better than me. Look they are living in a yurt made of their own hair and fuelling it with their own dried dung while living entirely of raw foraged food…

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Perfection is a dangerous, dangerous thing. It can easily paralyse us and make us look at what we are doing and says I can’t compete with that and simply give up. It is something those of us interested in a better world need to consider. Often near enough is a damn side better than not at all!

I think looking back on it that has been an issue with me over the last 6 or so months. Recently however I have had a couple of the shining examples that have held themselves out as the saviours of various parts of the world and I have been comparing myself to start to look not so perfect after all.

They don’t look bad, not even poor, quite good actually but not perfect.

It has made me consider that we all do what we can and judging yourself to harshly is counterproductive. I lost sight of why I am doing what “I” do and lost my own direction. So I am going to get back on the horse and live by the old motto below.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are, when you can!

Now amusingly as we speak of full circles. Sunday was father’s day and strangely enough I had a ground hog moment when I realised that last father’s day I worked on my mini seed raising hot house and again I did the same thing this year. 

The unit last year worked ok but had a few serious faults and lead to some losses so I wanted to do something a bit different and easier to use this year.

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So it has had an upgrade with recycled windows replacing the builders plastic and it now has much better access as the two windows at the front are hinged which will mean I can see everything and easily access the seedlings to manage them and check on them (which is a major cause of failure last year).

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I have moved it so it is not in the way but close enough and easy to get to keep an eye on it.(we live in this house it can’t just be my green playground)

I was lucky and have been harvesting the hard wast for a while and it made of repurposed material,  an old shelf I found, some old shower screens for the ends, and windows I picked up as hard rubbish, even the boards are from a pallet I found. Only some of the screws are new.

In the end I like making stuff up from what others in our society perceive as no longer useful the environmental aspect is important but anyone using a cheap commercial mini hot house from Aldi or Bunning’s is still doing more for the environment than those who poo poo the purchases of such items on environmental grounds and do nothing.

Again do what you can with what you have! If I worked out all the environmental background noise of my cordless drill I used to build my mini hot house if I had only bought one for occasional use then the cheap plastic seed raising hot houses looks very good in comparison (no Congo gorilla parts for a start in the battery components or slave child labour to mine those materials)

To me not wasting that is the primary driver. Not spending $60 or $100 is a good thing as it allows me to utilise that money in a far more environmentally effective ways in the rest of my life style.

But as I don’t get to make stuff in my challenging white collar job it is kind of cool to make it myself which is as good a reason as any.

As you can see I still need to seal a few gaps and add some latches but it is a working unit now and will be for a number of years if I look after it.

Even without those steps I can now start to plant up some seeds and get into the doing what I can part for the coming spring.

A quick question. When was the last time you read about a complete failure on a blog by the blog poster? Something I need to rectify myself on this site from now on. I screw up recipes and other projects all the time and learn from them.

Expect to see some failures documented in the future. 🙂

A Minor Visit by Jack Frost

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Well we had a minor visit by Jack Frost.

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All this after I told my father we don’t get frost anymore here. Mother Nature must laugh at me some times.But it has been to long since we had this part of the natural cycle so I am enjoying this.

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Looking like a beautiful day in the land of the urban hippie so of to get into it.

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For those of you who don’t already know I have a Facebook page and this gets updated by my wordpress account but I also do post a fair few more small updates and photos there. So if you have Facebook please like. The link is down the side of this page.

Of Loss, memory, legacy and gifts beyond value.

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Again I have been absent; again I have what I believe to be a good reason to have been absent.

At the end of the day life is life and the blog is a part not all of my life.

The last couple of months have been pretty tough for me. The matriarch of our family passed away. My Oma and one of the most wonderful people I have ever been lucky enough to have known. It has left me with a far bigger hole in my soul than I could ever have imagined and as such my thoughts have not been on the little things like this blog but on dealing with the loss but also the legacy of my grandmother.

Add to this, in this ‘lucky country’ there has been the usual frenzy of fear mongering about the job situation and the economy. The problem with this fear mongering has been it offers no solutions. It only offers a very negative view of the world and as the name indicates generates a sense of fear.

Society Says; Don’t have a job you will destitute, don’t rely on the government safety net they are taking it out from under the most vulnerable. It is a great way to keep people complaint and on edge. Makes them much better workers and willing to give up there all ‘for the dream’.

Even I have found myself thinking of this in the last few weeks, it percolated into me while I was busy off dealing with the grief and loss in my mind.

At the end though a few things have reminded me of the real situation and have allowed me to look at things with the legacy of my grandparents world view and the way they dealt with and lived with the world. My grandparents knew what was important. They lived through a world war, knew hunger, travelled to the far side of the world to a place they probably knew less about than I know about Mars in the easy knowledge age we call the internet.

One of the photos’s that always strikes me at events like my grandmother’s funeral is a photo of my grandparents standing side by side near the Bonegilla transit centre. In one hand they each held a small suitcase in the other the hand of one of their two daughters. This was it. All they had in a place so far from family and friends.

It is very confronting image and yet a very positive one for me, they made a choice for a new life and tough choice made for the sake of their children and their future.  

My grandmother had some money on her arrival. She worked on the transit ship to Australia as a teacher earning a few pounds to help with the new life.

And it was hard. Share crop working on a farm with two small children, my mother talks of grandmother canning/bottling beans and fruit and anything else they could lay their hands on, growing gardens, milking cows they lived a frugal life but one with their kids and their children in a place of peace after a time of trouble.

Even when they moved to near where I was born to allow their children a better standard of education they lived frugally, nothing wasted, again gardens, they had some land. My grandfather a wheel write by trade built the house they lived in first one half then the other. They grew more comfortable both had good jobs they were still frugal, never cheap but always frugal. The effects of the post war period in Germany had a huge impact on my grandmother. Trying to feed two small children in such a time affected her deeply and the even when I was a teenager my grandmother still had a year’s worth of canned and dry goods in the cupboard. She would cycle these forward, nothing ever went out of date and she just did this.

Such hardship is not a common way of life now, or is it? Unlike my grandparents who could work as accepted refuges in this country, current refugees don’t have that luxury they live on $6 a day after expenses a lot of the time. Single parents have their safety net ripped out from under them, expected to do the impossible and find work and manage children, a task we as two parent two income family find hard at times.

True a lot of it is caused by a lack of skills of outsourcing our requirements or thinking a job will buy them the dream. Don’t get me wrong my grandparents where very, very keen for all their children and grandchildren to have educations, jobs, careers. Make your way into the world be independent. But after what they lived through they knew that you had to rely on yourself as well. Like it or not you cannot isolate yourself from the world.

The biggest advantage that my grandparents had was community and now the biggest problem I would point is as the complete lack of community. For the most part people no longer help out their neighbours or their community. A lot don’t even help out their family. This is great if you want to sell a product or a service. Less so if you want to be free of the fear that the media is peddling.

And it impacts on all aspects of life, even the much vaulted permaculture folk. I see few if any offers to teach skills to people like refugees or those on newstart. Skills that by their own admission have the power to do great good in the world. We feel we need to get a value for our time and for ‘our’ skills and knowledge. We make islands of one and other even here in the lucky country.

So the legacy that I got from grandparents is to be a part of society, even if you don’t agree with everything about it. Be self sufficient, have good skills, build community and work with it be that your neighbours, your friends or family. Work hard and be careful with that bit of money that you sell yourself for each day. It is after all a part of you that you sell each day.

And the gifts. More than can be numbered

Let start with all of the above. My grandparents showed me how they did it with the lives they lived, how you make your own path and walk it with pride. They taught me skills I use now to look after my own family and probably the most important thing they taught me how to look at the world and realise how much potential is there and how lucky I am to be here.

The fear that I and others feel from time to time is reasonable given the complete lack of positive news often seen in the media. But it is not reasonable to sit back be afraid and do nothing about it.

Today is the start of 44th year on the planet. So as I sit here with my fingers still stinging from the 4 stock pots full of nettles I just processed I am going to try to move forward and use the memory of my beloved Oma to remind me of where I need to go and how lucky I am to have had her as a guide. All I can do is try to live up to her memory and try to pass on these things to my children.

A Big Pot of Organised Goodness

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So as with most people our weeks are very busy. Both of us work and the kids are in full time crèche life is busy but with winter and with the sick season on its way we still like to ensure that we eat well at a decent price without breaking the world during winter.

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One of the solutions we have found is to put together a big pot of soup for the week. The kids get a good lunch at crèche and A. and I often eat leftovers from meals and lots of fruit and veg during the day so hearty soup, salad and sandwiches works well in a busy rush home and get the kids ready for bed evening.

We have a good number of soups we regularly do. One that is always a favourite is the leek and potato soup with parmesan rind. Pretty damn good, kids love it we love it but not really a great source of the mix of vegetables that promotes immune system and general health over winter (damn).

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Two others that we make regularly are pumpkin/vegetable soup and minestrone. A big pot of one of these two soups would be made most weeks for us and we would get 2 -3 nights worth of meals with sandwiches and salads from it.

Both soups are great as they use lots of in season vegetables and use what is local and are very easy to make and are both very cheap. The can be made quickly and easily even with kids running around and organising a week night .

I am lucky I have access to good veggies I grow and from my parents and farmers markets we also use cheap off cuts of meats, these tends to be a very small amount often coming from things like prosciutto rind, de skinned sausages, bacon and off cuts of ham from our local boutique smoke house vendor. So as I said even on a budget these are easy to make and generally pretty good for you.

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Easy Minestrone (big soup)

Ingredients

  • Meat as discussed above
  • Large onion diced
  • 3 Carrots cut into 5mm pieces
  • 3 sticks of celery cut into 5mm pieces
  • 4 -5 gloves of garlic crushed
  • 3 bay leaves
  • Big handful of fresh picked parsley
  • Springs of thyme
  • 1.5 litres of stock (I typically use chicken stock)
  • Dash of white wine optional)
  • Good handful of short pasta (I tend to use wholemeal or spelt pasta but any will do)
  • ¼ of a cup of passatta sauce
  • Can of white or borlotti beans, or frozen peas or some green beans.

A lot of my soups, stews and casseroles start with a mirepoix which is a French term for a mix of the carrot, onion and celery which is sweated down in a pot with a little olive oil. The only real trick is to not turn up the heat to high and to leave the lid on when sweating the vegetables. Under no circumstances do you want to let the vegetables brown at all. I tend to leave it for around 15 minutes and about ½ way through I throw in the garlic and bay leaves and herbs. Once the base has been sweated add the stock, wine and the passatta sauce and bring to the boil then simmer for 20 – 30 minutes (good time to get the kids bathed and in their PJ’s)

After the simmer time add the pasta for another 10 minutes at a simmer then add the beans and simmer for another 5 minutes (if you use fresh green beans add them with the pasta)

Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with fresh herbs, some grated parmesan (or not) and drop of good olive oil. Freezes exceptionally well as lunches.

Pumpkin/Vegetable Soup.

This one takes a bit longer so best made on a Sunday or while making Mondays dinner and just get better as you reheat it.

For me the only difference between pumpkin and vegetable soup is that in pumpkin I use a lot more of the pumpkin where as in a vegetable soup I will use a greater mix of vegetables. The Veggie soup is great as a way touse up any leftover veggies you might have hanging around and again freezes well.

Ingredients

  • A piece of ham, bacon or smoked hock.
  • 2 Large onion sliced
  • 3 Carrots cut into 5mm pieces
  • 3 sticks of celery cut into 5mm pieces
  • 4 -5 gloves of garlic crushed
  • 3 bay leaves
  • Big handful of fresh picked parsley
  • 2 kg of pumpkin cubed
  • 750 grams of potatoes
  • 2 teaspoons of a good garam masala
  • 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder
  • Fresh ground pepper
  • Salt to taste

As with the other soup above this one starts with a mirepoix which is a French term for a mix of the carrot, onion and celery which is sweated down in a pot with a little olive oil. The only real trick is to not turn up the heat to high and to leave the lid on when sweating the vegetables. Under no circumstances do you want to let the vegetables to brown at all. I tend to leave it for around 15 minutes and about ½ way through I throw in the garlic and bay leaves and herbs. Once the base has finished add the cubed pumpkin and potato add water to just cover the veg and bring to the boil. Add a good amount of salt the garam masala, pepper and turmeric. Add your piece of ham, bacon or hock and simmer till the potatoes and pumpkin are soft.

Stick blend it til your desired consistency. Serve with sour cream or yogurt. I like to add in some fried sliced chorizo on top as well .

The kids love a good cheese toastie to go with it this and I have a few ways to make it and one of our favourite is to use the Lebanese flat bread, fill with grated cheddar cheese and a little mustard, butter both sides and put in a press grill. Comes out crispy and cheese filled for the kids (and big kids) to dip into the soup.

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Happy International Permaculture Day (IPD)

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I suppose I should post that I did something amazing on this day? Got my garden ready, visited some shining example of how someone has gone there already. Built something made something?

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But no it was just another day for the urban hippie family. Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday party and we had good gaggle of local kids and their parents along. They ate, drank had a good time. Kids painted and ran around the back yard eyed of ducks and chickens and the bee hives. Parents and a few relatives commented on what I was doing and suggested they would like to try some of the ideas. So from that point of view some good came out of it. But basically the best thing was local people enjoying time with local people.

So today started a little quiet with A. needing a bit of a sleep in and my plans to do something for IPD didn’t quite work out but that is ok.

I got to watch the kids doing some painting , then go to their swimming class and then the rest of the day spent visiting family up country. All in all very enjoyable day. I came back with another couple of boxes of quinces from family and really need to get bottling this week. But that is about as far as a concrete outcome I could come up with.

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It got me thinking about the IPD. A lot of people are blogging or commenting on the things they are doing. But shouldn’t IPD be every day? Permaculture being Permanent Culture then IPD should be like any other day. Getting up and doing the little things, feeding the chickens and ducks playing with the kids, time spent with community and family discussing ideas (as I did with one of my cousins) watching and observing making small changes. Interacting with family and the local community? Spending time with my kids in the garden (after all my kids are a primary driver of why I do this stuff)

So all in all I am happy with my IPD and could not think of a better way to spend it. Don’t get me wrong the ideas people have the events they have run are great and it is obvious that such a day is more for those outside the fold rather than in and very important at this junction in time.

So for me the day is like any birthday I have had in the last 20 years or New Year’s. It is a good chance to look at what has been done and needs to be done a time to get some inspiration and some perspective.

At the end of the day (pun intended) Permaculture will know when it has succeeded in getting permaculture to the masses. When we don’t need to celebrate an IPD as it would be like celebrating a Monday.

Is barter more ethical than buy?

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Is barter more ethical than buy?

It is an interesting question and perhaps a little more complex than I thought initially.

On a first look the answer is yes. Barter is good as people do not exchange funds they trade an item or  service in our case alternative medicine for some goods or services we have such as our duck eggs.

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It is a win win for those involved we get looked after and it helps to offset the feed bill for our ducks and chickens. The alternative practitioner gets the duck eggs he needs as some members of his family are allergic to chicken eggs. They are fresh guaranteed organic and better value (or so he tells me than the ones he gets through commercial elements)

Add to that our ducks have a much better life than most commercial fowl and raised in what I look at as pretty sustainable way.

Often it is what you have in excess that is swapped so it is way of ensuring that things are not wasted and are shared around to those who need it. Which is something the world can most definitely do with.

And finally as was pointed out to me this morning by friend who was staying for a few days in Melbourne with us while he attended a course.

He noted I was cleaning the duck eggs for the appointment tonight and commented that bartering makes you more accountable for what you are trading. Handing over cash is easy getting cash is easy but it can lead to devaluing of what you do or make or sell. Bartering where the direct value of a product or service you have is based on the quality vs. the quality of the thing you are getting in return makes you really look at it and make sure it is as good as you can make it. Having pride in that item or service

On the flip side you are effectively not paying your dues to society. And this is where it gets tricky. Because in reality you are not paying your taxes to the government it is to society that the taxes go through the medium of the government. We are taxed so that import things like social welfare, infrastructure and really important reforms like the NDIS (national Disability Insurance Scheme) can be payed for.

It also means that people have a job to allow them to buy goods and services that couldn’t be bartered for.

We also pay for a lot of stuff we don’t like, as an example we subsidise already wealthy companies (corporate welfare) and a governments that we often don’t really believe is worth what we are putting in.

So it is a balancing act. I think that swapping items and services is great if done on a sustainable level,

And here is the kicker it is a sustainable level we are talking about. If everyone keeps below the tax free threshold and barters the rest that sounds great for them. For society probably not so great in the medium or long term. And at the end of the day ‘you are the society’ and a sustainable society is what we should all be interested in.

Writers Block… Yep got it that is for sure.

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It is not that I have not had any idea’s or even had tales and items to write about but I just cont seem to get them down in words. A couple of times a day I have a good blog in my head and then when it comes to writing it get caught up in whatever else I let myself get distracted with.

I am now just going to sit down and start writing so if it comes out as junk some days so be it you guys can always unsubscribe if it gets that bad 🙂

The last three weeks have been busy and I will write about them as I can. I went on juice diet for 15 days. The diet is a detox diet based around the fat sick and nearly dead documentary. It was a success with me feeling great at the end of the diet. Lost a good bit of weight and my liver appears to be much happier. I have done this last year and had a similarly good experience in regards to weight loss and keeping it off but also in some other health aspects. I plan to also do a vegan diet in spring to get my body working again.

The thing about this sort of radical diet is that it is not that radical. It is in the modern world but in times not so distant fasting and hunger where a part of our lives we are designed for it. And the type of fasting on vegetables is particularly good for us as is gives us a nutrient burst that for times such as spring  allow us to get our bodies functioning and on track.

I still cooked for my family and it is interesting once you are on this diet how you look at food and how our society deals with food differently.

 I eat a lot of good food (one of the reasons I need to fast, one of the reasons most people need to fast once in a while) and most of it is seasonal and cooked from scratch where possible.

The thing that strikes you is the sheer volume of food available and the amount of advertising that goes with the food. It is everywhere and very pervasive and not eating and being aware of it you almost get to step outside the subliminal side of things and see why people are packing on so much weight.

I still did my gardening, did exercise and walked to and from public for work and I didn’t feel weak at all.

Not sure if I will do this diet later in the year. Think once a year about 12 days would be optimal but I am going to do a 21 day vegan diet in spring. This is both an idea that Chinese medicine and also the paleoarchaeology types who study us from a historical point of view recomentd. For both a good amount of bitter greens and a high nutrient low calorific diet in spring helps the liver get back in shape after a winter of stored food (typically comfort foods for us now)

I did get to add in a bit of urban hippieness into the diet. Green smoothee’s of Kale, dandelion leaf, nightshade leaf, mallow leaf, cleavers, nasturtium and even a few of my precious nettles (although they are being saved for soup, gnocchi and pasta) from my back yard made the diet cheaper and easier this time and allowed me a side line of interest to help keep me going.

I am adding more weeds all the time into our diet and this is working well, the kids love them and in our societies nutrient poor energy rich foods, the weeds being the opposite makes for something we should all be eating more off.

FYI the weed walk with Adam Grubb is on for those in Melbourne in a couple of weeks time. Check out the link and attend if you can it is a great walk well worth the money and time. You will never look at a grassy field the same ever again.