Well that was very cool first time working with A. and her hives after buying a half suite for me.
Very cool being surrounded by buzzing bees bees, not threatening at all a very peaceful feeling. I can see why there is such reverence for bees by bee keepers.
Spotted the queen as well 🙂 as a bonus
So last week was the 50th Elmore field day was on. For those who are not aware this is the largest and one of the best field days in country Victoria.
When I was growing up the field day was famous for a very farm orientated thing, big tractors, big headers silos and farming stuff. It is still this but now with the rise of hobby farms and small holders in the last 30 years there has been a shift to include items that best fit small holders, horse people and just generally those interested in the country.
It was a great day we wandered around chatting and had a great time she was in awe of the amount of stuff and when she got tired was happy to jump in the backpack I have for carrying her and just enjoy the spectacle. She got to see the sheep being sheared, crops cut and we got to see a friend who is PDC graduate from up that way who was supporting the WWOOF at the event.
On the way up we discussed the countryside passing through the type of country I remember as a kid when I used to go to collect firewood with my father on a Saturday morning.
For me as with taking the kids to my parents place or them realising that roast chicken is a chicken and roast pork is a pig. Seeing how the country functions and that there are other aspects than the bohemian inner city life they lead is important.
As much as Australians pride themselves on the self image of the outback and of them being a rugged country people the reality is that most people’s connection with the land is tenuous at best and mostly just plain broken. The lack of understanding of where our food comes from and how it is produced and who does it leads to a great many of the environmental and social issues that we see.
When we go for the cheapest food we push the farmer to produce the cheapest item to match the imported item or support the duopoly here in Australia. It comes at the cost of the land, farmers are pushed to produce it cheaper and ‘better’ even if damages his future on the land. That is the reality.
So head out of the city and see how your food is produced, visit a field day or if you are lucky enough a real farm. Take your family they will all benefit from it.
After all it is harder to screw over someone you know or at least understand the situation of.
But for me the highlight was just the spending time with my little girl. She will grow up soon and probably won’t want to hear anything from her father at time so getting in now and letting her see that there is more to the world she lives in is important.
Oh and on the way up I spotted some clumping bamboo on a road side. So on the way back i checked it out. It was nice.
Good thick walls be perfect for building and definitely appeared to be clumping type. I mentioned it my friend as it close to where she lives and a good find from foraging point of view for the work she is doing on her place. I also grabbed a root cutting so I will see how that goes. I would like to grow some in a large pot. It is handy to have as a building material like this around for stakes or trellising.
Potted up the root cutting at home that night
Oh and see below for a bit of country ingenuity my daughter thought was funny
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. 🙂
So buy nothing new October has come around again. Last year we did this and enjoyed the process it made us look at our buying habits and how we can reduce our load on the world and save some money at the same time.
Even now it has made me look at things. A store I shop at had some interesting stuff and I had thought hey I could use a couple of things, then thought no I can’t it is buy nothing new October oh well next month.
Then I read this article http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/09/27/how-to-turn-your-garage-into-a-blacksmithing-woodworking-shop/
And it reminded me that with tools(one of the things I was looking at) it is quantity not quality and I have learnt this the hard way a few times. I have quality saws and chisels I was given 20 years ago by my grandfather they are still some of the best tools I have. It is a concern that even people like me who think about this stuff can be drawn into the marketing ploy so easily and it takes something like buy nothing new to get perspective. So far from being a silly stand on soap box and look at me it can make people think. At the end of the day sadly my dollar seems of more value than my vote these days.
As with last year A. and I have looked at exclusions and have come up with two. One is anything I grab at the Elmore field day I am taking my daughter to tomorrow. And the other is a couple of things I will need for a wicking bed skill-share/working bee with the local permaculture group.
On both occasions I am going to be careful and remember to look at anything with a close eye on its environmental effect and long term ness. For the wicking bed I am going to trawl for second hand stuff if I can’t find it I can retreat and grab it new if I have to get it last minute for the get together.
And I had my eye on one of those dynamo torches at that store in question then I remember the last one I bought failed after on 12 months. Probably best to wait in hindsight and buy something of better quality.
Oh and that wheel barrow I fixed last year in buy nothing new in October 2012. Still going strong.
So now the equinox is gone and daylight savings will not start till the end of the week I am finding I am up at 5am and it is light enough to see and move around the garden in.
For those who do not know the best times to pick elderflowers is early morning and dusk. The perfume of the flowers is at its best and the flavour as well. Although I have picked them at other times and the flavour seems fine I try to go by this tradition.
This morning I found myself awake and wandered out on the front porch and noticed the elderflowers had ripened and there would be enough to make a batch of elderflower cordial.
I started the kettle up and went out and picked about 30 flower heads and quickly put a batch together to start the infusing process. The cordial is great mixed simply with iced cold water or soda water it is a light refreshing drink in the heat of summer or a favourite is to add a shot Gin to the mix and then you have a great little mixer to sit back and enjoy looking at your garden in the evening.
So the mix was done in a few minutes and then it was the daily chores of cats and chickens and then off to work.
There is something satisfying to me that I can do this before heading off to my corporate day time job. It somehow makes me feel more alive, even though most of my day will tied to this work culture just a little bit of me is still out there enjoying the path less trodden.
Elderflower Cordial
This amount makes 6 litres of syrup. You only need about 1 – 2 cm per glass.
Put all the ingredients in a clean bucket, cover it with a tea towel and stir it every day with a sterilised spoon so that the sugar dissolves with time. I cut the lemons in half, squeeze them out and throw the peels in as well. After one week, sieve it through a cloth and fill it up into bottles.
That`s all. Have fun.
The original recipe I got from my family is to use cold water but as the elderflowers have natural yeast (handy for making champagne) that ferments I try to kill this off with hot water. It saves the bottles exploding or getting a hard liquor version of syrup.
A trick to fix the cloth in place over the bucket is to take enough twine to almost go around the bucket then tie both ends to rubber bands. That way I can easily remove the string no nots nothing to worry about and makes sure the towel or cloth stays in place.
We had major storms last night here in Melbourne. These are starting to get all the more common and while our place survived without any apparent damage a lot of places where hit pretty hard. We lost power for an hour and some places lost roofs and had trees fall on power lines etc and are still out of action.
I did a look around our garden and it stood up pretty well. The trees in the food forest are starting to work to shelter each other and this was shown by the few fruit I lost off the plums and other fruits. When I checked the neighbour’s tree while checking up on their chickens (they are away) I saw the effect of lone tree in the wind. Lots of fruit lost so the harvest off that tree is going to be far from spectacular let alone when we get another 4 -5 days of this weather which is forecast.
As I said my garden stood up well and I am happy with the way it is going and will continue to build on it.
One of the effects of climate change will be greater variability in the weather. If it is hotter or colder but consistent then you can work around it. But the reality is we are going to have great climate variability and this is harder to work with
More storms, late frosts, thunderstorms, heatwaves and out of season heat/cool events. To me this reinforces that we are all going to need to work towards a higher level of self reliance and to build systems that can operate under these stresses.
It will have some challenges. A classic method of passively reducing energy input is to have deciduous or even evergreen trees around to shade a building summer and or shield it from the wind in winter. Harder to deal with when you have storms that can tear down trees and large branches. If these become not one in 30 year events but every year it is going to need to be planned for.
My food forest will be kept low at the back and I use fruit trees that are low and not big enough to cause any damage if they come down. Being on a slope I am hoping that I will get a cooling effect dropping down to my house in summer and warming in winter even if only a little bit it will help.
The shade sail has made a huge difference and allows us to drop it in winter for the best effect of light and heat and then put it up for effect in summer and is an easier safety issue to manage than large trees.
In addition I have smaller trees in large pots I can move around in summer to shade things and act as heat sinks, then move the away in winter. I also have lot trees acting to reduce some of the heat load hitting the house.
The protecting effect of the food forest on all layers and addition of perennials will aid us in great resilience in our food production. We will still have annuals.
Lots of annuals but the forest can act as can be bedrock of our production.
The changes in weather patterns will have an effect on the rest of what we all do as well. The power was off for an hour that was the third 1 hour plus outage in our area in the last 3 months due to weather and one of those was 12 hours. Friends in the USA 20 miles out of city of a hundred thousand lost power for a week last year in mid winter of 20 below.
So while we are in no way preppers as well as helping our budget and to be more sustainable we are adding a wood fired cooking stove to the house to heat it and also to cook. In outage it also will be handy.
I plant to dry as much of my food as I can this year and can/bottle as well. Freezers need power and while it is a very good thing to have I have seen my parents loose a full freezer of food not a good thing to have happen. Think it can’t happen. 98% of the power lines in Victoria are above ground. Poles and lines are very susceptible to big storms and high winds and that is not even thinking about the higher rates of bush fires.
Makes me wonder though when I grew up we had candles and torches ready now our neighbours have said they had to burn the decorative table candles for light when it was off all night 6 weeks ago. We had some solar desk lights and a bunch of candles, not very expensive to keep and very handy.
I suppose we had all better get used to being a bit more prepared and resilient on ourselves and those around us hadn’t we? Appears our government is going to do little to reduce the effect of climate change so we had all better start dealing with it and it s effects ourselves.
We often look at harvesting as autumn pass time. Laying down goods for winter.
To me this is a lot less important in the temperate location I live as there is regular growth in all but the worst of mid winter and even then greens are available, but there are times during the whole year when a particular food comes around.
Some like asparagus are enjoyed as part of the cycle some like mushrooms are both enjoyed and stored for the rest of the year.
Elderflowers are one of these. They are only around for a short period of time but to me they are well worth putting down a store of for as long as they last.
I have a number of sources but there is one in our court that I get to and hit pretty hard in the flower season knowing that this will impact on the berries I get. I do this as my experience is that this one tree is flogged by the birds and few elderberries are left for me to pick. My source of elderberries is up country and well worth the trip to collect them when I need to get them.
Elder has some great properties. The flowers and berries when properly prepared have antiviral properties and this year I had elderberry syrup each day over winter and avoided the usual bout of illness.
So the first batch of the season went straight into the dryer. Elderflower fresh or dried with a little honey makes a great tea and if you are feeling a bit like something is coming on it is seems to help to avoid it turning into something serious. This will keep me going till the berries are out and I can make up a new batch of elderberry syrup.
The second batch I will pick tomorrow morning and make 4 -5 litres of elderflower cordial. Then onto the good stuff the champagne J
All through the season this year I will really be focusing in on these little harvests getting the larder ready and keeping things stocked. Each year I try to get a bit further off the stupid go round and this is great example of that.
Elder flowers are also easy to find in most places so start to have a look around and learn to identify them from a good resource. Start to work out where your own larder and medicine cabinet are to be found before you actually need them.
Good luck foraging.
“Wow, well yes that is a pig, that is a bit confronting…” this was the words that a friend that had come along for my wife’s 40th stated as she saw me lift the suckling pig rotating over the coals onto the cutting board.
It was my wife’s 40th birthday and too many it was both a revelation and a bit confronting to see where their meal really came from.In the end everyone handled it well particularly our 4 year old who is well aware of where her meat comes from.
My wife and I had run around for a couple of days madly cooking up a storm, rather than outsource it we decided that we would make it ourselves. It ended up being a lot cheaper and allowed us to control the process and to a greater degree the ingredients.
To people it was like “you made all of that” and yes we did. My parents helped. We organized what we could in advance. Baked the quinces, blood plum crumble, rhubarb crumble and nectarine pie. We purchased the veggies from our local farmer’s market stall holders, the birds and meat from our local butcher and what we had grown ourselves we used first. The rolls from our local family bakery down the road. The cake from the local lady who runs the Greek deli. As with so much else in our country we had to buy some things from the duopoly supermarkets but we kept that to a very small minimum.
We tried to do the permie thing of slowing water down but with the money getting it into the smaller businesses that are family run, letting it drip down into the society growing people and the local community not just letting it run away like a flood gouging our society an then being stored in huge dams that destroy much of what was once there beneath it.
Yes I could have outsourced it, it would have cost me a bit more been a lot easier but there is value in cooking a meal for those you value enough to invite to such an event.
Yes we cheated, some party pies and some crackers (cheese from the local cheese maker and the quince and pear from my mum) and small goods from the local family run Mediterranean supermarket. We did what we could and didn’t lose any sleep over what we couldn’t.
I think for some the idea of catering for 60-70 with a whole suckling pig is just a bit big to start with and that is fine. Start small make one course but give it a try and even if you can’t do it go and get what you can from a local supplier. Do what you can.
You are inviting those nearest and dearest to you, most of them are statistically are likely to work for a smaller business in this country so if you just outsource it or go to the big two for everything then you are to a degree having a party at their expense where they are invited along.
At the end of the day we had a great time, kids ran around and had a ball, 15 kids sang happy birthday to my wife which she thought was just the cutest happy birthday she had heard. We spoke to friends we ate, yes we ate and all in all we have a great time.
And as a side note people looked at my garden and many said they got inspiration from it they browsed chatted made new friends.
We used to celebrate this way. Something special now I see people eating out every day we are so wealthy we can feast by times gone past standards every day.
They out, outsource their meals to restaurants or to large conglomerates (see people doing the birthday party at MacDonald’s).
The feasting is supposed to be a special occasion thing to celebrate a milestone, the harvest, the birth of child a wedding, a religious milestone. Hopefully people will head back this way. We cannot continue to feast each day. It does not at all help the world, the poor get poorer the world gets more waste but for us it is just as corrosive. It makes us unhealthy, it becomes the norm, the gray, it ends up having no value. It makes our minds as fat as our bodies. A feast is an event and should be something to look forward to. Very different from celebrating the day to day with our friends, family and neighbors with a simple meal.
Go out and plan a feast for an event. Do what you can yourself and see if the feast is so very different from your normal day to day? If it is not then we you may need to get back to some peaks and troughs to enjoying things simple and really enjoying the feasts.
Our bees on our lavender
Must be spring
Oh and the good old mucking out of the chicken run … Fragrant but not so pleasant 🙂
Much happening, more to come on that later. But for now off to enjoy the beautiful day.
Man what a busy week. After restarting blogging here and realizing that I was paralyzed by own my thought pattern I have found that the process of just getting into the blog has led to a burst in energy here doing the real stuff here in urban hippie land.
We have a function here in a week or so and (more on that next week) add to that A. has finally run out of patience at not being able to get into the car port for the last 12 months.
I have so many projects where I have all the parts and have just been in a state of ennui it will be a while before I need purchase anything which is a great situation to be in.
This weekends projects have been to get the back yard into a safe state for non-urban hippy children and adults. Our kids are not helicopter parented and they know about nails in old pallets and to stay away from the stinging nettle. Not all kids have had that well a developed level of self-preservation J or have made as many mistakes …
So the back yard was cleared up and looking pretty swish. Unlike other times I have made sure that it has not been a quick cleanup. Where possible I have finished projects rather than just dumping the items in the area where the shed will be moved to as a hidey spot. If I couldn’t I have grouped them into projects to be worked on later.
A number of things done will be posted in the week to come. Such as extending a chicken run getting the front garden bed started but the big one was the side path and clearing up the 1.5 cubic meters of road base that I have had in the drive way for the last year or so and was threating to get me into trouble with the non-hippie wife.
While cleaning up I found a large amount of snails and slugs and the girls have been very happy to help my getting rid of them 🙂
As you know I am great collector (read hoarder) of things and hold a great believe in the idea of not buying something new if you have something that will fill its place.
The side of the house in the coolest and least sunny part of the site. I store my mushroom logs there and have wasabi and other shade loving plants. It also provided access to the back of the house and it has been a bit of disaster with a lot of water coming down and a lot of weeds needing to be managed.
So the first order of the day was to get down some weed proof material. I could have purchased weed mat but I had a lot, and I mean a lot of the bags that I get my organic chicken food in. So why not utilize them? Why buy more stuff made from petro chemicals when I already have it here and have to purchase it for what I need?
So I laid them in an overlapping pattern and then piled on the blue metal road base and when I ran out of bags grabbed dome the old ripped tent tunnel cover I had that was not water tight enough for a wicking bed and used that. By the end of the weekend the base is down and the rest of the phase will be to compact it and then a thin layer of sand, and then lay second had bricks that I have been collecting (and using for garden beds) finally as nature abhors a vacuum I will supper seed the brick gaps with a mixture of herb seeds, roman chamomile and lots of dandelion seeds mixed with sand. Those spots in high usage area’s will remain clear the rest will produce for the bees and for us. As I go through the phases I will explain each one and why I am doing it this way.
Phase one is the road base, and it was chosen is for two reasons.
One. We have quite reactive soil and I have seen what it has done to concrete slabs in the back shed and the road base has a bit more flex in it. In a worst case scenario the bricks can be pulled up re-laid if they get too moved.
The second is embodied energy. While the breaking up and transporting the basalt for the road base is intensive it pales in comparison to the amount of energy for concrete. Don’t get me wrong we use concrete and will continue to. For some jobs it is the best and most effective product but where possible we limit its use.
I also got a wicking bed in a bath ready to go and this will hopefully be completed by the end of the week.
Time to get some sleep… need to go to work to get a rest tomorrow.
I am NOT an urban hippie 