Increments

Posted on July 13, 2014 by anthonypickering

There is always more to do in the hippy household and less time.

Just to add to my time (and with number 3 a week away) I have enrolled in a diploma of ‘Organic Farming’ to fill my time.

In the end all you can do is what you can do. I want to be able to have some flexibility with my kids and know in their teens I am going to need to be around a lot more. I can also see a time with the way things are going that having a business is going to be important to ensure some of my children at least have a place to work.

Despite the lack of posts we are still working towards self-sufficiency more now than before and it is well worth while reminding myself of the increments get done each day.

This weekend has been busy.

I picked up a second hand bath and built a new garden bed. I am very much into the ‘obtain a yield’ principle at the moment.

While we are not perfect from an environmental point of view it has been a long time since we bought salad greens, eggs or many veggies.

We still get some veg from farmers markets and my parents but each plant, each garden bed, each bath used as wicking bed brings us a little closer to being independent. One more dollar or set of dollars, one more increment to move towards other goals.

It is the same with cooking from scratch or drying my own nettle tea rather than buying it each little amount adds up and allows you to do the next step. For us the cash saved from foraging wood for the fire, and heating with it will hopefully allow us to put PV solar on by the end of the year.

Each day you pick up new skills. Who would have thought 12 months ago that I would be able to quickly whip up a bee feeder to make sure our third hive will be ok over winter. (again we have not paid for honey in the last 12 months and have traded it for a number of other things over time) each day pickup new skills and work on you and ours resilience.

But mostly enjoy 🙂

Oh and I must admit to being a bit chuffed so far my perennial basil has been producing both leaves and flowers with no heating or costs. Just a nice spot sheltered spot. No greenhouse gases and full flavour, kids loved it for dinner in the spag bol

Looks like the bugs of winter…

Posted on May 4, 2014 by anthonypickering

So I had hoped to post a long post tonight as it has been a great day with my oldest turning five. She is a great kid and I am delighted and saddened at the same time at how fast she has grown and what a real little person she has become. My little girl is growing up to be a wonderful empathetic, happy little person who loves all around her but she is growing up so fast…

My parents came down and dropped of a big box of quinces to process next week and on top my usual bottled quinces for winter I have a few idea’s including bletting some of them in my freezer to try them and a cordial a good friend Libby at libby-cooks has been talking about (if I can con it out off her 🙂 )

But now I feel like the proverbial. We have already had a run of bugs in the house and as winter kicks in it appears one more has decided to come our way from the biohazards that are our crèche children.

So instead of a long post I am brewing an early batch of elderberry syrup. This is a medicated brew rather than a eating syrup and is proactive measure to keep you healthy and fight virus’s.

Recipe is below. In addition I am drinking a couple of hot lemon and honey drinks as below.

Hopefully I can short circuit this one and do a post on the soups I have been making on my new stove this week.

Hot Lemon Honey and Spice Tea

Juice of a lemon (or half a lemon to taste)
Table spoon of raw honey
½ teaspoon of dried ginger
½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
Hot water to a cup

Nothing much mix it all together and drink hot. Very effective.

Elderberry Syrup

1 cup of fresh or frozen elderberry or 1/3 of cup of dried
2 tablespoons of ground ginger or fresh
1 teaspoon of cloves (about ½ if you are using ground cloves)
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
3.5 cups of water
1 cup of honey

Put all ingrediants except the honey in a pot and simmer till it reduces by about a third to a half. Once this has happened pass it through a fine sieve and use the back of spoon to make sure you get as much liquid as possible add a half a cup of boiling water to help push the last of it through and use the back of the spoon again.

When tepid add the cup of honey and stir in (don’t add the honey when to hot) bottle in a sterilised bottle and keep in the fridge I have around a ½ a shot glass a day in winter (starting now) as a proactive and if I am feeling fluey I have it every 4 hours or so.

Should last a month or so in the fridge so make up a batch at a time rather than to much at once.

A New Easter

Posted on April 21, 2014 by anthonypickering

As I sit here eating left overs I would have to say the urban hippie household has had a great Easter.

With the sad passing of the matriarch of our family my grandmother last year this was the first year where we mixed new and old traditions. Making new traditions or reviving old traditions is becoming more and more important. Our culture has had 50 years of traditions being ‘reinvented’ every couple of years to keep the market going and keep the economy ‘healthy’. Buy your traditions is the motto of the defining western culture 😦

For us every Good Friday was at my grandmother’s house. A traditional German fare of pickled foods, heavy casseroles and my Oma’s famous ‘vegetarian’ chicken stock dumpling soup 🙂

This year I hosted my immediate family and we had by any rule of thumb a feast. Wild salmon, smoked salmon, local fast growing sustainable fish and squid crumbed and fried. A few old favourites such as the herring salad my mother resurrected from grandmothers recipe and fish casserole.

And an old favourite with a small twist my potato salad with wasabi and the crunch of fresh cucumber.

For desert pavlova from my parents pasture eggs with cream and berries.

We tried to make the event as sustainable as we could. Potatoes and veg where from the local farmers market, local olive oil to fry, pole and line caught tuna for the casserole, local fish such as bream, trevally and local shark (quick growing and sustainable in the way it caught here) we had wild salmon (frozen and transported but wild caught) the only down side was the smoked salmon and gravlax that came from somewhere in Europe and was probably farmed.

But with the feast and the over cater gene I got from my grandmother comes left overs. Which is what we had for the next day. We try to waste as little as we can in our house.

Sunday was again family with a Croatian feast with A.’s family cabbage salad, potatoes, pork and beef cheeks. Baked cheeses, polenta and lemon meringue for dinner. None of which I am sure of where it came and if it was local or sustainable or anything else but you need to be careful to make sure that you are leading. People can be non-Newtonian liquids forcing your views on them is not going to work unless you lead by example. My local dinner was pretty damn fine and you can taste how fresh the just caught local fish. Fish most people have not eaten not because they are no good but because they are not exotic enough or are ‘not in fashion’

After the big lunch we all grazed in the evening feeling stuffed and I got a little insight into how not to waste things. A’s mother had some of the left over polenta with milk for dinner which all the grandkids proceeded to try and all loved. We have to relearn such uses. Nothing should go to waste.

We need to remind ourselves that feasts should be just that. Something special, a time to eat those things that we only have once in a while. One of problems with the middle class of which arguably most permaculture people are from (whether they choose to believe that or not) is that most western middle class folk eat better than kings of bygone eras. To that end we will be living off left overs and the last of my parents and my garden for a few weeks. Seasonal food to balance out the feast.

But enough comments. I hope you all had a brilliant Easter and are living of the left overs of your feasts J post some left over recipes if you can be interested to see what people do with their recipes. Below is the recipe for fish casserole we eat each Easter and the potato salad with wasabi and cucumber.

OH And as a bonus for me J I planted out some of my winter brassica’s just an hour or so in the garden to weed and plant and bit of pruning but it was very nice 🙂 need to get out there a bit more don’t I 🙂

Fish Casserole

Potato’s for 3 layers in your container parboiled and sliced
Two 2 gram tines of tuna (you are looking for skipjack tuna pole and line caught. Aldi sells a good one) alternatively my mother has used baked fresh fish in place of tinned fish
6 – 8 hardboiled eggs sliced
Mustard sauce as below
Cheese to top.

Mustard Sauce.

80 grams of plain flour
80 grams of butter
900 ml of milk
Mustard to taste (you need to use a bit I used a small whole jar of German mustard)
Salt and pepper to taste.

Method: Fry off the butter and flour to make roux or paste. Make sure you fry off the flour long enough to make sure you remove the flour flavour. Add a little bit of milk and mix to make paste and then add a bit more as you got to make smooth white sauce and mustard and salt and pepper to taste.

To put together the casserole put a layer of potatoes on the bottom of a casserole dish, a layer of the tuna, then add sauce to cover. Ad the eggs and another layer of potato and tun then more sauce then a final layer of potato and the last of the sauce to cover then add the cheese to top.

Cover and cook for a while remember most of the ingredients are already cooked so it is just combining and warming it thought. At the end take of the lid and let the cheese brown off.

Freezes well and tastes better next day 🙂

Potato Salad.

1 kg of potatoes cooked till just cooked (not over cooked) an important thing for both the casserole above and the salad is to start the cooking from cold water and bring to the boil it is a trick I learnt making chowder as it stops the potatoes starch breaking down incorrectly.
Mayonnaise (as A. is pregnant I used kewpie mayonnaise) about a cup
One cucumber deseeded and sliced into 5mm squares.
Salt and pepper to taste
Wasabi paste to taste.

Cut up the potatoes once warm but not hot mix through the ingredients and serve and room temperature. Needs an hour or so of sitting time to combine the flavours.

Real Food Again

Posted on April 7, 2014 by anthonypickering

So we have been to New Zealand for a holiday (more on that later) and have had builders working on our house for the last 2 week (much more on that latter!) so we have been living in an apartment a bit closer to town.

I cooked while we were there but it was very basic based on what I could get and make at the nearby ALDI or local takeaway.

So when we moved back in on Friday we went to the local fish and chip and decided that was it for a while. Enough we need real food.

Having to work all evening Saturday complicated this but we had, had enough.

Having access to my kitchen, larder and garden made this easier.

I had a pumpkin, sweet potato and some pears from my parents just staring at me as I opened up the fridge.

Some bacon off cuts from the freezer and soup cried out at me.

It was interesting adding the pears as it made it a little sweeter but also added a greater depth level in the flavour that I had read about but you have to taste to understand. A little cultured sour cream and mmmmm J and the soup was very filling.

It is interesting to. I have noticed in the last few months that nutrient rich foods are making us less hungry. We get our tortillas for Mexican from a place in South Kensington who uses corn fresh ground on the premises.

A pack is enough to feed us to stuff point but other brands just don’t seem to fill us up I wonder if food, real food, nutrient dense food makes us less hungry. Or perhaps a better way to look at it is the calorie rich, nutrient poor food is leaving us craving these nutrients and leaving us hungry as our bodies seek the nutrients despite the calories and we can only get these through eating a lot more?

Either way for the next months we are eating a lot more of these nutrient dense foods. I have hit my parents place as our garden needs some love courtesy of the madness leading up to our trip and the work on the house. On the upside I am seeing the lots of nettle coming up J nutrient dense, low energy weeds are the best tonic for all in regards to our society. Now if we could just stop the council spraying them.

Recipe for Pear, Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup.

Half a butternut pumpkin or equivalent
A very large sweet potato (or a few small ones)
2 pears cored but with skin on
2 bay leaves
2 sticks of celery sliced
2 carrots sliced
1 onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic
Teaspoon of curry powder of choice (I used a Jaffna Sri Lankan style one)
100 – 200gram of bacon off cuts or ham or prosciutto ends)
Salt and pepper to taste.
Olive oil
Optional but recommended cultured sour cream to server.

Method

I used a pressure cooker but this can be done in a pot if required the cooking time just goes from 15 minutes to about 45 minutes.

Sweat down the carrots, onion, celery and garlic in a little olive oil for about 5 minutes. Ensuring they don’t brown add the bacon pieces and bay leaves and let them sweat for a further 2 -3 minutes until you can smell the bay leaves.

Add the other ingredients excluding the sour cream.

Cover with cold water and bring to the boil and simmer or to pressure in a pressure cooker. (15 minutes for a pressure cooker or 45 for a normal pot)

Remove from the heat and allow to cool remove the bacon and bay leaves and use a stick blender to blend. Shred the bacon and add back in and reheat until it is simmering. Simmer for 5 -10 minutes. Season with more salt or pepper to taste.

Server with sour cream and crusty bread.

Freezes very well but don’t add the sour cream when freezing.

Sourdough Starter Pasta and User up Pasta Sauce

Posted on January 21, 2014 by anthonypickering

It is a busy time of year we harvested, honey and have been madly preserving and drying fruit from the back yard. Getting vegies in and keeping stuff alive in the heat (a break down on how that went soon)

But no matter how busy it is we are always up for a visit by a friend. It has been a long while since we caught up with this particular friend and it was great to see her. Time flew in her company and a bottle of wine and good food was had.

The kids had a great time number one son was enamoured and spent the whole time showing off ‘for the lady’ and number one daughter was still talking about her well into the next day. She makes a great aunt for our kids such a wealth of experiences in her life to share with them in the future.

Opportunities like this are great and you want to make good food to go with it but not be completely tied up and spend all your time in the kitchen so for me a good slow cooked pasta sauce over some homemade pasta is the deal. It started with a simple starter of onigiri with blanched green shiso and toasted sesame seed (recipe later in the week) and as it is that time of year simple fresh Satsuma plums for desert. Yep life is hard.

The pasta is something I have made before it is a great user up of excess sourdough starter which happens when our busy life doesn’t always allow us to get bread made but the starter needs a feed.(the other option is the chooks love it 🙂 )

The pasta dries beautifully and is really filling and yet strangely light. It is not good pasta to fold through ingredients as it tends to break up this is a drop of good pasta sauce on the top and cheese pasta. As you would expect it is little sour which adds a lovely extra level to the food.

The pasta sauce I started around lunch time and cooked long and slow it is a user up sauce. I had a end of salami I froze when we went away and some keep the ham skin both where added with fresh herbs and good wine and cooked for 2 -3 hours. The extra ingredients again add a depth of flavour to the sauce.

While this may seem complex it is simple to make with lots of down time to get on with what else needs to be done.

To me nothing epitomises what I want from life more than good time spent with family and friends and well cooked food to go with this. If everyone did this just a little it would make a hell of difference to us all 🙂

Enjoy the week ahead everyone.:)

Sourdough Pasta

1 Cup of sourdough starter
3 cups of flour
6 egg yolks
A little water as required

So add the flour to the sourdough start and eggs and mix through and roll into a ball (you may need to add a little water to get it to bind). Once in a ball put the covered bowl in a warm spot for 8 to 24 hours to rise.

Once the rising time is over roll flat and as thin as you like and cut into strips (as you like). Add to boiling salted water and when it rises to the top check to see if it is cooked. Drain and try not to stir to much as it breaks it up.

User up Pasta Sauce

One bottle of passata (750 ml or so)
2 cups of red wine
Onion finely sliced
4-5 cloves of garlic crushed
500 grams of ground organic beef or pork
3 small carrots
3 sticks of celery
4 -5 bay leaves
Parsley
Oregano
2 table spoons of molasses or sugar if you have no molasses
Salt and pepper to taste
Piece of Salami or cured sausage
Ham skin or bacon rind or some bacon bon or some ham anything really

Fry the onion till translucent then add beef/pork then garlic and herbs. Drop in the carrot and celery and herbs for a minute or two to sweat. Add in the passata sauce, wine, salt, pepper and molasses, ham bits and cured sausage.

Cook at a low heat for an hour or two or so. I serve only the ground beef and sauce but you can server it all if you want. I top with fresh grated Italian parmesan of course. This well worth the money and food miles 🙂

Here comes the heat !

Posted on January 12, 2014 by anthonypickering

We have some heat on the way. Our summer has been quite mild and I have not had any requirement to water the tree’s or really do more than basic management of the plants.

Tomorrow our summer starts in earnest. We are expecting a hot week with a 2 or 3 days over 40 degrees Celsius which is not unexpected in our summers but after such a mild summer such a jump will be hard on everything.

So this afternoon after some friends left I did some preparation.

The most important thing was to get the potted plants into the shade and some water to allow them to wick up moisture. I had some kiddie pools and an old bath so I put these under the shade cloth and filled them up to a level then put the pots in. I will monitor these.

The wicking beds have handled the few hot days well but with no rain for a while they were getting down so I checked and filled all of the reservoirs till they overflowed. These will be fine now.

I also did a deep water of all of the tree’s and any potted plants that I couldn’t move such as the bay tree. It is quite amazing how many tree’s we have onsite here now. My friend visiting today thinks I have the correct number of tree’s but I am missing an acre or so of land to go with them 🙂

So far I have 34 trees on the block and space and plans for more.

As you can imagine it takes time to do that many deep waters. Each tree received about to 10 to 15 minutes of water which adds up to around 4 hours in total for each of the two hoses we have. There is little point in just doing a short water on trees as you end up causing the tree to develop shallow rooting and make them susceptible to any dry spells. Better a good water once every 1 – 2 weeks if required than a short water every second day.

I have noticed I am water the trees less these days and the area up the back that is food forest is quite moist even with no extra watering and it being a bit dry, water loving plants such as mint are thriving. The plums and the nectaries are plump and doing well. The plan is to keep building on the food forest and see how much food this low maintenance gardening can produce.

Even Gibby’s toy barrow got a use for A.’s angelica plant 🙂

I didn’t forget the animals of the urban hippie household either the ducks and bee’s both got some relief from the overhead sun with the back hives getting a piece of some gifted trellising to caste dappled shadow and the ducks pool getting the same.

So now on for the rest of the week. This amount of work will hopefully mean that I wont be under so much pump to keep an eye on it during the week. But I probably will anyway.

Have a good week all 🙂

Half a pig and quick salad

Posted on January 5, 2014 by anthonypickering

So I was lucky enough to be offered a half share in a ‘pig in a box’. This is from a local farmer and you get a pig. All cuts nose to tail no picking the cuts you want the whole hog (pun intended).

From the famers point of view they get to sell the whole pig nothing wasted nothing to worry about no suddenly finding the selves with 402 trotters not selling 🙂

For the buyer the cost is lower and it forces you to realise that this is how we used to eat the whole pig and you have to learn to use the whole thing cuts you have never used before. Some of which for most will be the best cuts.

So I picked it up today and the lady I got it from sells bread to us at a market as well. So she gave me some beautiful heritage carrots a pale yellow colour and some bread the kids liked from a market she ran yesterday.

So the meal was pretty easy when you think about it J

Fried up some chops in the fry pan and then put them in the oven to finish off while I made a simple sauce of mushrooms (from the local farmers market), onion (same market), some organic flour we buy for our sourdough and some good Smokey paprika from a small shop in Ballarat I found on a trip up there.

The carrot served simply cut up skin on and lightly boiled.

I also picked up some zucchini at the farmers market from a lovely older Italian couple we meet there.

These where finely sliced (I used the slicer on my grater) and then tossed with some macadamia oil, vinegar and salt and pepper and a few peppered cashews thrown on top (you guessed it famers market)

So a complete meal in about 35 minutes local and ethical and not that expensive to be honest. The meat was very filling a chop each for the adults and a half for each of the kids. The carrots had an amazing texture and flavour and the gravy made in the pan the chops had been fired in was perfect for the bread to dip into. The salad cut the fattiness beautifully.

Yep our local life is hard 🙂

The salad is a great favourite and once my zucchini come on line we will be making it as often as we can. We have made it with olive oil rather than macadamia (both are good) and have used walnuts, flaked almonds and hazelnuts in it before. Whatever we have been given by family, foraged, bought or happen to have around.

I am not trying to show off here this is just how we aim to eat and I intend to try to keep it this way as the year moves on. It is actually much easier than we realise to serve our families with nutrient dense local foods and the more of us who do this the better for us and the rest of the environment.

Cut the food miles is one thing but in the process you improve the food you are feeding your family as well!

And yes there was some left of for lunch 🙂

2014 a plan … well maybe

Posted on January 5, 2014 by anthonypickering

So another year has rolled by. Which is good because we have a whole new year to work on 🙂

And true to last year the year is already swinging by SO Fast.

I missed posting so far, working out how to clear out a rodent infestation (more on that later) and just life in general.

I don’t really have resolutions for 2014. Just a general sense that I want to improve how things are moving our lives. Improve my impact on the planet and just generally feel better about things.

Now for those trying to avoid a rant you can skip to the bottom for a very nice recipe for Thai Salad 🙂

While this is general a couple of things clarified in my mind for this year.

Drop our energy usage below the 50% for Australians (a Paul Wheaton definition of being green)
Improve the back yard as far as it carrying capacity goes (permaculture Principle 3: Obtain a yield – you cannot work on an empty stomach)
Eat more locally, sustainably and ethically and importantly buy a LOT less from the duopoly in Australia
Feel generally better about our position in life.

The first three are measurable and I will be measuring them over the year.

Our renovation on the house will make it significantly more energy efficient so that will help with the drop. Bike gets serviced on the weekend so that will help some more. We decided to drive rather than fly to QLD for a number of reasons one being the environmental effect. The other being you get see the country and experience it.

On the trip we made the effort to shop local. We took local whole foods, cherries from my parents local apples and local ham and sandwich bread on the first day. When we did buy we avoided the fast food joints heading into small towns and hitting local bakeries and IGA. Fruit stalls along the way. We gave the friend looking after our place a local ham, cherries and emptied out our fridge of perishable items.

When I got back I kept this moving. Avoiding the supermarkets. Cheese and yogurt from the local factory, greengrocer fruit and veg. Small family business for as much as I could and only when I had run out of options did I hit the big guys. We will keep this going and it is measurable as we keep a budget of all costs one of the things we spend on I want to decrease the amount of money spent in the big 2 by 50% this year.

The back yard is a work in progress, with the kids around time gets eaten up but this year I want to double the food coming out of the back yard. The wicking beds and forest garden stood up to the heat in our absence really well. Other garden beds did not and are going to need some love. This is going to be the year of the back yard for me. Once the reno are under way the single biggest item I need to look at is the location of the shed and this scheduled to be moved by April until then it will be working in the area’s not impacted by this move. Getting production up and the beds healthy. Runs up for manure from my parents another load of wood chips from the tree surgeon we got the last load are in order.

The last item is not measurable but is by far the most important. It means walking the walk and getting things done or not done. But also means getting the money in order. I don’t want to be riddled with the doubts that come with the financial and social issues around us. This is going to be ongoing. It will mean that I have to do a few more things as there are things that I have learned that I cannot unlearn and the issues I have with plastic bags are not the only ones I have when I look at the disparity in the world and the way I as much as any interact with this. And it is going to require me to continue to remember that enforcing my way on those around me and nearest and dearest to me is not going to lead to the good places. Acceptance of the view and life styles of others is absolutely necessary to fulfil this.

So it is hopefully going to be a blast 🙂 hope you can all come along for the ride.

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

On the first night of the year we started on 2,3 and 4.

We had Thai beef salad as below. Local beans, vegies from the local famers market and our garden. Local organic beef. I even roasted the peanuts from raw so that I could guarantee no palm oil in them.

At the end we feed 3 adults (our neighbour came across) and two kids and each of the adults including the neighbour got lunch as well so good value and tasted good.

Sauce

Juice of two limes
1 tablespoon of coconut sugar (I avoid palm sugar which is recommended as even the certified organic stuff is leading to the deforestation and destruction of tropical forests and the animals in them)
1.5 table spoon of fish sauce
2 Teaspoon of sesame oil
Chilli
2 cloves of garlic crushed
2 tablespoon or so of fresh grated ginger.

Wisk together and then pour half over around 600grams of strips of good organic beef and let it sit for 20 minutes to 2 hours. If you get good grass feed organic beef then this will be enough for 3 adults and two kids as unlike the cheap option at supermarkets it is not pumped with water so you get 600 grams of beef.

Roast a 100 grams of raw peanuts coated in sunflower oil in a 200 degree oven till brown (be careful they burn easily)

Cook a packet of your favourite noodles as per the packets instructions (I used hokkien noodles) and set aside

Blanch 750 grams of green beans and chill to stop them cooking they should be crisp
Finely slice a red onion
Use a vegetable peeler to thinly slice 3 carrots
Finely slice 2 cucumbers (I used Lebanese ones)
Goof bunch of mint
Good mix of coriander, Thai basil, Vietnamese mint etc (whatever I have in my garden)
Kaffir lime leaves finely sliced

After the marinade time fry the beef to your desired level of cooking in a hot pan and set aside for 10 minutes to rest then slice finely.

Mix all of the above including the noodles and the peanuts with the remainder of the sauce add the sliced beef at the end and give another mix.

Serve.

Tastes great as lunch the next day.

Of Lemons and Lemonade

Posted on December 1, 2013 by anthonypickering

As I sit here with the sweet smell of dill and peppermint tea with honey I am even more philosophical than normal at present. I write this post with the backdrop of a friend whose son is very ill and anytime that anything comes up I am off course drawn to the conclusion that my worst day has little comparison to this little boy’s parent’s days. Little can compare to a children’s health so it is easier for me to be philosophical of the bumps in the road that life throws up.

So with more of hippie view than a not urban hippie I look on a day that may have looked like it would give me lemons but in fact gave me lemonade.

On Thursday morning as we charged around in the morning (as parents with children in crèche and full time jobs tend to do) I asked the innocent question.

‘Honey where did the bike trailer go …’

The previous evening I had run home the kids in the trailer from crèche as A. had something on and had parked it under our car port as I had done for the last 12 month and herded the kids inside. A. saw it at 9:30 when she got home and the next morning all gone…

We did a quick search of the neighborhood but no bike trailer our neighbors had some vandalism on their front lawn but other than that all quiet …

Now for us apart from being worth over $400 it is essentially our second car so we need this with the kids in case we have to do a pickup and the other person has the car. What a PIA …

So I had a couple of choices get annoyed (insurance with the excess and no claim means we would be out of pocket claiming). Instead I decided to just get on, ring my friend who runs a bike store in the city I originally came from and get another (making sure I store the next one in my back yard 🙂 ). So today I did the run up to grab this.

It was a lovely day sun shining kids had a snooze in the car on the way up. Picked up some local fruit and veg, honey and even homemade salami from a stall on the side of the road chatted to the man running it for a while then headed on my way.

Caught up with my friend who runs the bike store and had a long chat with him. This is a family run store and it was good to catch up with my friend we get to chat too little over time as life gets busier.

From there we headed to my god parents who are in there late 80’s and it is ALLWAYS good to catch up with them and the kids to interact with them. We visit them less often than we should but as often as we can. I have been blessed by these people they have seen the worst and best of life and as god parents where an amazing example to me.

Then we headed to my parents via a little place I noted on the way that sold spices.

In place like Ballarart having somewhere that sells spices of this quality was amazing to me but a good sign that the redneck city I grew up in changing for the better. Bike stores and a culture of riding, good food stores, local food well it is a start of change for the better.

The time spent with my parents on their place is always good the kids run around with Pa and Nana we visited my old primary school up the road. It sadly is having the life sucked out of it and will be closed in 3 weeks’ time (a story on that another time).

I commented as I helped pick a half 20 liter a bucket of peas of a row of peas about 20 feet long that my poor little tub of peas was not really in the race. My father pointed out that he has amongst the best soil in the world to grow stuff and 40 plus years of working with it not against it and my own garden would in time would be far more productive than it is now.

We had a simple meal with them bathed the kids and headed back. It took me about an hour to sort out the stuff I had from parents, chutney’s, plants, herbs, broad beans and a ton of peas to be podded.

So from a day where I had no plans to head up least of all to replace an item I would prefer not to replace (or have stolen) we had a great day. A really good day.

Don’t get me wrong I am far from impressed that the trailer was stolen we could do with that cash for work we are doing on making our house more sustainable but getting down in the dumps will not help.

Battening down the hatches looking askance at my neighbors will not help. Letting the system get to me and running back to a second car and locking out the world will not help.

The very likely scenario of the person who took this is that the system is at much at fault as they are, whether it be the needs the money for drugs or just because he needs to keep up with the joneses it is the same the lack of community that allows it and leads to it. Hiding back in the system as the system would like is not the answer. What the answer is I have some ideas but not all.

I can at least be in charge of my own mind and make sure I am in charge of it and try not to allow the system to screw around with it too much.

Hope I can put up a few posts on things I have done and there are a lot rather than this soap box stuff.

Let see how that goes 🙂

This is why you do not get a real post tonight…

Posted on October 9, 2013 by anthonypickering

Sorry all. It is 11pm and I have just finished bottling 6 liters of elderflower cordial after foraging a few items of hard waste I noticed on my walk home for a new wicking bed.

So the photo below will have to do for now. More interesting stuff tomorrow.

And the taste. One of my best batches according to A. 🙂

I am NOT an urban hippie

The rampant ramblings of someone trying to live a greenish life while seeing the world. From Melbourne Australia to the United Kingdom to the Netherlands this is a look at life as lived.

Category Archives: Food