Out and about.

A few weeks ago I spent a wonderful sunny autumn day visiting small scale organic farms in the Daylesford Macedon Region thanks to an event organised by Daylesford Macedon Produce as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.  On the tour we visited four different organic farms and saw how they each ran their businesses. For me it was an interesting and inspiring experience whereby I took away something from each of the places we visited.

First stop was Angelica Organics- Aneglica is famous for its garlic. But what I learnt- It is possible to grow a sustaining vegie and produce business on just FIVE acres of land and even commerically grown cucumbers and zucchini end up a little worse for wear with mildew by the end of the growing season. I have to say the garlic was beautiful and I am looking forward to popping a few cloves in the ground to enjoy next summer.

green house for heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers

Next stop on the road was Mt Franklin organics. This farm was run by Florian Hofinger an Austrian and former chef at some of Melbourne's five star hotel. Florian is using 2 acres to grow a whole range of herbs and vegies for the local farmers market circuit. 

the vegetable beds- artichokes and asparagus in foreground

herb: borage or starflower

The farm here is run on solar. This was a decision primarily made on the basis of the practicalities and cost of having the mains power connected- but just proved a practical example that living off the mains is possible. It isn't however so practical in terms of running a cool store- meaning without one its necessary to get produce to market quickly!

The next stop was Captains Creek, a winery and mixed farm. I was particularly interested in the way livestock (sheep, cows) were raised in a mixed farm environment with the winery, orchard and nut groves. The sheep help out fertilising and weeding in different areas of the farm and winery at different times of the year. Apparently throughout the worst of the drought - when other people were needing to bring in expensive additional feeds the sheep here were munching on chestnuts.

The last stop for the day was Daylesford Organics- how AMAZINGLY cool are these chook trailers.

The way the system works is that the trailers are moved to whatever part of the farm needs a little weeding and fertlizing (in the case a new orchard area). The area is fenced of with electrified mesh and the chooks are placed under the guard of friendly Marema pooches....

The chooks use the trailers as laying and sleeping quarters. The floors are wire so poop from the inevitable early morning poop fest drops straight to the ground. Each day the trailer is pushed along a few metres to spread out the poop. Once the trailer has travelled the length of the pen the chooks are locked into the trailer one evening, hooked up to the back of the truck and driven off to the next area. I was also interested in the presence of a number of roosters- which I am told we sold as one day chicks supposedly of the opposite sex. Lucky for them, egg production, whilst a lucrative offshoot is not the only source of income for the farm so they are allowed to stay and enjoy an idyllic life happily foraging amongst there girls. According to Brendon the owner it helps keep the girls happy and content.

 Looking at all the different farming systems on the day was really inspirational and really made me question the way large scale conventional farming works. We are taught that this is the only practical and economically sound way of doing things- but it gets to a point where we might get so big and compartmentalised that the efficiencies really start to hit a brick wall. Expensive fertilisers and practises that degrade the soil can only last so long and I hope that people will begin to see the value smaller scale sustainable farming can bring.

Sharing the love.

One of the best things about seed saving and growing your own- is that if it works you will likely end up with more plants than you can possibly use.

Last spring I was extra organised and started off my seed growing early in the spring. I grow my seeds in old strawberry and tomato punnets. The lid creates a greenhouse effect to keep the soil nice and warm- (an absolute must to germinate summer seeds like tomato and capsicums). I keep the punnets in a tray and move them between the sunny north verrandah (by day) and infront of the heater (by night). The result was plenty of plants to share.

Here are some pics from my friend Ruths garden....

Other plants made their way to work where we held an Oxfam 'Gather to Grow' fundraiser. For a gold coin my colleagues scored themselves some of my favourite 'yellow' capsicums!

Its all about the beans.

Its been a while since February's last post - and before you know it- its March. Despite the absence of posting, my challenge has been more or less met- with something out of the backyard on a daily basis.The eggs came and went as a welcome contribution- and today I found out why- Spazz has gone back to her moult. The tomatoes are still struggling on- and hopefully the warm weather this week will help them along. I am pleased to say three of the guerrilla capsicums survived the picking raid and grew, so I am looking forward to a stir fry with the first one today! The first of the eggplants have also been picked and eaten along with the last of the jalapeno peppers. But whats really been keeping up the challenge are the beans!  steamed beans- meat and three veg style, steamed beans in salads, stir fried beans and beans in Thai curry.  One of my favourite seasonal recipes is this Chinese style Jill Duplex recipe for wok-fried green beans with chili pork. This recipe works just as well with free range chicken mince and it can also be slightly re-worked into a Chinese chili eggplant dish or a combo of beans and eggplant! The only trick with the egg-plant is to slice it into matchsticks and fry up  in small batches first in oil (I use peanut). This allows the oil to soak into the eggplant -not exactly healthy  but delicious. The egg plant is just set aside and mixed in later. I grow 'lebanese' eggplants as they lend themselves to Asian style cooking.

February's harvest



February is a big month in the garden and thanks to a surprise egg from Spazz which has been followed up thick and fast with a daily lay, I am confident I am going to meet my challenge (all homegrown items listed in green).

Kicking off last week I started with roast lamb with the first of the climbing beans steamed on the side.

On Sunday I cooked more apricot chicken (chillies and thyme) AND my famous baked cheesecake with fresh berries (and eggs)

Monday I created my own version of chicken larb gai  (Thai basil, chillies).

Tuesday was Valentine's Day with cheap and cheerful Vietnamese at Footscray's Sapa Hills.

Wednesday: Apricot chicken leftovers.

Thursday: Special fried rice- I use left over roast meat dice and an add with capsicum, peas, spring onions and fresh eggs.

Friday was the Great Debate at the Sustainable Living Festival and a quick bite at Flora in Flinders Street.

The perils of a guerilla garden

Behind my house there is a dead-end laneway. Abandoned and unloved- who could resist the temptation of taking over for a bit of guerrilla gardening. I have been growing plants there for a number of years now- I have been using old tyres (no one will steal them) but the jury is out if they are safe to use due to potential toxic leachate so I currently re-thinking this strategy. Over past summers I planted zucchini (with limited success), pumpkin (with no success- not enough morning sun?) beans, capsicums and  feral tomatoes. Very early in the spring I planted out surplus raspberry runners.Following my bumper seed saving and sowing I was left with some surplus capsicum which I chucked in the tyres. Its also worth noting that I had previously topped up the tyre garden with some newly composted chook poo -so I was secretly chuffed when the plants not only grew and survived but out- budded and fruited the plants actually growing in my garden. Sadly when I popped out last weekend - ALL of the dozen or so baby caps were gone- extra sadly was they weren't even ripe. I am convinced it wasn't kids or vandals (they would have just chucked them on the ground)- and I have had a sneaking suspicion its not the first time- tomatoes and raspberries have also gone but it was hard to pin the blame on a human with those- there's always birds and rats an an escaped guinea pig (who happily ran the gauntlet of the local cats and survived out there for a week or so before we reunited him with his owners)- but anyway the capsicums were well and truly picked and taken. I have a put a sign up suggesting that who ever it (I have my suspicions) might like to join the cause by helping to water an nurture the plants. There's still more baby caps so will be interesting to see how it goes!

Curry gets creative.

One of the things I feel truly blessed about, living here in the inner west of Melbourne, is being able to shop at the wonderful Queen Vic Market. As a rule I avoid buying fresh food (meat & veg) from either Coles of Woolies. It used to just be about the price, but now its more to do with ideology. Recent media coverage of unsustainable $1 per litre milk and 'the war of fruit and veg prices' makes me wonder what kind of an agricultural industry we could maintain in Australia if the big 2 totally monopolised the market. Following on from my weekend away- I was faced with the challenge of coming home to an empty fridge as its impractical to go to the market during the week. I needed to come up with some creative menu items. My starting point was various bits of left over steak in the freezer and some pre-cut potatoes left over from when my friend had been a bit ambitious around her menu planning during the weekend down at the Peninsula . Searching through my recipe book of Age mag cuttings and Curtis Stone 'feed your family' brochures (what was I saying about Coles) I came across a recipe 'Spicy Lamb and Sweet Potato Curry' (Neil Perry). This recipe had caught my eye as it uses fresh turmeric.(one of my purchases from my annual free loaders trip to the Melbourne Flower and garden festival.

My very first piece of home grown turmeric!

 I figured with a little imagination (sweet potatoes/ potatoes - no one will know the difference? beef/lamb?) a successful exploratory dig in the turmeric pot, home grown chillies and kaffir lime leaves from my friends tree (these store well in a tupperware container at the bottom of the fridge and/or in the freezer) and a trip to the new Asian supermarket up the road, I could pull it all together with the following result- fresh and delicious!

Tomato salsa

Its been a while since I posted on the blog and this has largely been due to my lack of inspiration from the garden. A string of warm weather and 2 weeks absence from my weekly Vic Market shop have limited my creativity in the kitchen. As far as my challenge goes its been about as exciting as 'tomatoes' with the salad to accompany chops on the BBQ.  The highlight of this period was spending the long weekend with friends down at Somers on the Mornington Peninsula. The weather was calm and balmy, so on Friday night G took a net and torch down to the beach and caught a bag full of garfish. The fish were carefully cut down the centre, gutted and backbones removed, flattened with a mallet to break down the smaller bones and simply pan fried with salt and pepper. I served this with a simple tomato salsa; fresh tomatoes, a few slices of red onion, generous amount of salt and freshly ground pepper, topped with home grown basil. Combined with the sweet, fresh flavours of the fish it was the perfect summer meal.