Connections + strings of sausages

Yesterday was one of my favourite sort of days. A drive in the country, to a stunning property in the hills, to spend the day with inspiring people and learn new skills.

A day of nurturing connections between people - and between people and the land that provides our food.

Just the day before heading to Boonderoo Farm, I read this article by Dan Barber, who talks about how a bucket of flour led him on a path of realisation that everything on our planet in interconnected and that we really need to give more thought to the foods that we choose to eat.

In his words, "We think we've done enough by choosing the coveted items if they're local, if they're organic, and if we can shake the hand of the farmers that grew them - but that's not enough".

Dan points out that the way we eat in rich countries with a relatively short history of agriculture, such as America and Australia, has no connection with ecological reality. Most of the population eat a very small range of foods, often out of season, that does not reflect the variety of agricultural produce that comes from a sustainable farming system.

A farmer cannot simply grow endless crops of the one coveted item of produce. It simply doesn't work that way. To maintain a healthy agricultural system - to avoid soil depletion and outbreaks of pests and pathogens - the farmer must nurture a complex network of relationships. There needs to be an understanding of the ecology of the underlying natural system.

"The techniques used in our industrial food system can be characterized by disconnection, a systematic unhitching. Everything is relegated to its own silo: vegetables over here, and animals there, and grain somewhere else. All the component parts are kept apart. And because they’re unhitched from each other, unsurprisingly, they're unhitched from any kind of food culture."

Australians and Americans have never not yet been forced to develop a cuisine that supports sustainable food production systems. 

This is what I'm passionate about. Reversing that disconnection from ecological reality. I want people to really understand that humans are just another species of the earth's biodiversity.

We need to nurture connections.
To learn from each other.
To appreciate where the food on our plate came from, what was required to grow it and how it ended up in our shopping basket.
To know who made the clothes on our back, how the fibre was grown and the fabric manufactured.
To always, always consider the complex ecology of the natural world that provides us with clean air, water and food.

And that is why I headed to Boonderoo Farm...

I met a bunch of great people and together we learned how to make sausages. Beautiful, gourmet, preservative-free sausages with goat meat from an animal raised right here on the farm and venison from a deer shot on the next-door neighbour's property.

A lot of work and passion went into these sausages. It feels good to eat food like this. It's the same reason I make my own bread, grow my own veggies, am perfectly happy to eat no tomatoes and lots of kale in winter, preserve the summer abundance, don't eat meat every day, and buy whole animal carcasses not just the prime cuts.

50kg of beautiful sausages.

Thank-you Thomas, Gabi and Felix for an excellent day. Looking forward to attending the next workshop...

Cumquat marmalade

Cumquat marmalade is my favourite, so I usually try to make a few jars each year. Can you even buy cumquat marmalade from the supermarket? I've certainly never seen a cumquat in the produce section of the supermarket - you have grow them yourself or know someone who grows them - so it somehow makes this marmalade all the more special I think.

As usual, making the marmalade involved consulting numerous cookbooks for a recipe. So, based on the combined wisdom of Cookery the Australian Way, The PWMU (Presbyterian Women's Missionary Union) Cookbook, Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion and In The Kitchen by Allan Campion & Michele Curtis (if I could only have one cookbook, this would be the one), this is the method I used. (Which has resulted in near perfect marmalade in my personal opinion.)

Cumquat Marmalade

Start with a large bowl of cumquats.

Slice the skin off 4 sides and the top and bottom of each cumquat leaving the centre pith and pips behind (I decided this was easier than halving or quartering them and then cutting out the pith and pips as most of the recipes seem to suggest).

Weigh the skins and note this down (I had 800g). Place in a large saucepan and add cold water until just covered. Leave to soak overnight.
Place the cubes of leftover flesh & pips in a separate bowl and also cover with water (this is to extract the pectin from the pips so the marmalade will set). Leave to soak overnight.

The next day, strain the liquid from the flesh & pips and add this liquid to the skins. For good measure (to really make sure I had maximum pectin!), I then put the flesh & pips in a sieve and placed it in the saucepan so it was just sitting in the liquid but not spilling out.

Simmer the skins for 30 mins until soft and translucent (then remove the sieve). Add an amount of sugar equal to the weight of the skins (in my case, 800g). Simmer for approx 20-30 mins until the marmalade reaches setting point (testing a small blob on a cold saucer).

Pour into sterilised jars. (Makes about 4 jars.)

Tomatoes

Firstly, no I didn't grow these. They're from our local farmers market - $20 for an 18kg of big beautiful romas grown in nearby Shepparton. At that price, I'm completely happy to give over my garden beds to other veg that are easier to grow in our cooler climate. I do have a few cherry tomatoes and other salad varieties growing but they're not even close to being ready to pick yet.

This is the first time I've managed to deal with the whole box of tomatoes in one day. Because this year I kept things simple. No blanching, peeling, onions, herbs. Just chopped tomatoes, cooked until soft, put through the mouli, bottled and sterilised.

So I now have 15 litres of beautiful tomato passata, from local tomatoes bought direct from the grower (courtesy of my wonderful neighbour Jenny), in recycled jars, with no additives. And that's a whole lot better than cans of tomatoes from the supermarket that have travelled halfway around the world from Italy (and who knows from where or how far the steel for the cans, or the trees or ink for the labels, has come).

Happy days!

Next up... these little guys, which have travelled all of 300 metres from Jenny's garden to our house. I do love living here!

We grew peaches!!

Can you tell how excited I am?

I've never really grown fruit before (not counting tomatoes and other things masquerading as vegetables). Fruit takes rather serious commitment and patience. A bit different to poking a handful of beans in the ground.

When we planted our small bare-rooted trees a few years ago, the prospect of harvesting fruit from them felt like something that might possibly happen in the far distant future. We diligently weeded, mulched and watered. We studied the branches of the peaches and nectarines almost daily in Spring to check for the new buds and endeavoured to apply the spray for leaf curl 'within one week prior to bud-burst'. And apparently we've succeeded in sufficiently nurturing them, oh yes!

Our trees are still just a couple of years old, not even as tall as me. So was pretty excited when I realised that we actually had a decent crop of peaches and nectarines coming along nicely.

 So we're all busily devouring lovely big, juicy peaches at the moment. There are 38 yellow ones and 27 white ones to be exact. There's also 50 or so bright red nectarines that should be ready to pick in the next couple of weeks. Happy days!

We're also enjoying all things green from the veggie patch. Tomatoes look to be at least a month away yet though. Summer, where have you gone?

I just need to keep the girls from wreaking too much havoc...

Grow Vitamins at your Kitchen Door

Stecher-Traung Lithograph Corporation, 1939-45 

Herbert Bayer, 1943, NYC WPA War Services

James Montgomery Flagg, 1918, National War Garden Commission

Frederic G. Cooper, 1917, U.S. Food Administration

I love these vintage posters encouraging citizens to contribute to the WWI and WWII war efforts by growing their own backyard produce and not wasting food. At the time, food rationing was in effect, giving the extra incentive to give gardening a go. But the posters also have quite a positive vibe. More posters HERE.

And really, the messages in these posters are just as relevant today, just with different motivations... reducing fuel use and carbon emissions, access to ripe freshly-picked produce with the highest nutrient content, supporting your local economy and contributing to future food security.

'Urban gardens for healthy families - Grow vitamins at your kitchen door'
'Sow the seeds of sustainability - Grow your own or buy local'
'Every garden contributes to a greener world'

What do you think?!

Walnuts & sourdough

Have you noticed how work never feels like work when you're doing it in the company of friends? Even doing the dishes can be enjoyable if there's someone to have a good chat to while you wash!

This is the third time we've headed into the hills of this beautiful part of Gippsland, near Dargo, to help our  friends harvest their annual walnut crop. Good company, fresh mountain air and delicious food and wine accompanied the good old-fashioned labour of harvesting, washing, drying, grading and bagging the nuts.

I also had a chance to bake my first ever wood-fired sourdough loaves. Ooh I love the way the hot pizza oven gives the bread that extra oomph as it rises! Yum.

Slow Living :: March

My monthly update of the little ways that I am living more slowly, simply and sustainably. More links to Slow Living updates over at Slow Living Essentials.

MARCH

{nourish} With the arrival of some cooler days, soup is back on the menu - pumpkin, broccoli & zucchini, corn chowder... Best of all the kids love it! Plus it's great to be able to make a big batch and pop some in the freezer.

{prepare} Not so peachy in the preserving department here! I harvested several kilos of peaches from a roadside tree, however my decision to poach the peaches to remove the skins wasn't entirely successful (despite the pretty pictures). The skins slipped off only the perfectly ripe peaches, while the rest weren't at all cooperative. Then, after leaving the covered bowl of peeled peaches in the fridge for a couple of hours, I discovered that all the exposed surfaces had gone brown. Not so pretty! By the end of the day I only ended up with 3 fowlers jars of fruit. Next year I'll be trying a different approach!

{reduce} My revamp of an old daggy bookcase was a great success... in fact I was so inspired that I picked up a few more pieces of 2nd hand furniture to refurbish in the coming months.

{grow} The garden is still providing us with tomatoes, zucchinis, carrots and plenty of greens. The winter veggies are coming along nicely and I've just planted a big patch of garlic. Hubby has also been building some fences so that we'll have several small paddocks to allow us to rotationally graze our small flock of sheep.

{create} It's actually been a pretty crafty month around here!
I made a couple of cushion covers from two fat quarters of the my favourite Bird Textiles print, Vine Leaves in Red. I'm so sad that Bird Textiles have now closed their studio doors and their beautiful products are no longer available.
On my needles a Fluted Cowl is in progress. I'm in love with the Berocco Ultra Alpaca yarn that I'm using - so cozy and soft and the silvery grey colour is really lovely and should go with anything.
Best of all I finally had a go at screenprinting for the handprinted fabric swap, which was so much fun! I can't wait to do some more designing and printing!
There's also a few sewing projects I've started on... more about those soon.

{discover} I've discovered a couple of lovely magazines this month, both with a focus on simple living, sustainabilty, handmade and homemade: The Simple Things, a UK publication, and Good, from New Zealand. I do love curling up with a good magazine!

{enhance} I arranged a produce swap in our little community a couple of weeks ago. In a small community like ours it's such an easy thing to do - send around an email, pop a poster on the community noticeboard, and provide a table on the day. With the abundance of autumn some people brought along whole boxes of tomatoes, pears, and cucumbers to share. I feel very lucky to have access to so much fresh, local-grown food.

{enjoy} Weekend trips with friends (here, here and here) have been a highlight this month. Plus our little overnight trip for our wedding anniversary.

{breathe} Enjoying the early autumn sunshine and warm weather, lighting the fire on the first cool evening, walking barefoot in the garden, a slow coffee and a read at the corner cafe.

Jam season

We're right in the midst of jam and jelly making season around here. Summer berries, apricots and plums have already made their way into jars and all the autumn harvest is still to come.

One of the things I love about country living is that I have supplies of fruits such quinces, cumquats, medlars and rosehips (mostly from friends & neighbours) that make wonderful jams and jellies... yet when is the last time you walked into your local supermaket and were able to buy these? I'm guessing never! What would winter be without a bit of quince jelly on toast?

For some great advice about all the ins and outs of jam making - pectin, setting point, sterilising jars, etc - pop over to this Q&A post over on cityhippyfarmgirl's blog.

Summer berry love

Sigh. Yesterday was the last day of the season at our local pick-your-own berries farm. I love berry season. From the beginning of December we start looking out for the 'open' signs with great anticipation... sometimes it's early in the month but some years the berries don't begin to ripen until just before Christmas. 

I love....

• The sheer idyllic-ness of wandering along the lush green rows, popping ripe sun-warmed raspberries and blueberries straight into my mouth
• That berries are super healthy - high in antioxidants and low in fructose 
• Gobbling handfuls of berries that are less than half the cost you would usually pay at the greengrocer or supermarket
• Accumulating a stash of frozen berries that will last us through the year - we mainly use them in smoothies and on my morning porridge (love my porridge - even in summer!)

We did go picking quite a few times this year... the kids are always keen at the start of the season but their enthusiasm waned somewhat... after a number of visits my 5 year old declared 'I hate berry picking, it's sooo boring'. Yep, I'm a mean mum!

Slow Living :: January

My monthly update of the little ways that I am living more slowly, simply and sustainably.

This idea is the inspiration of the lovely Christine over at Slow Living Essentials. Find out more on her original Slow Living Month by Month post.

At the start of this year I identified 4 areas of my life that I wanted to put more effort into: Grow, Create, Play, Breathe. Each of Christine's 9 categories fit into or overlap with mine, except perhaps Breathe - which is all about doing less, being mindful and looking after myself. Hence I'm going to include this as one of the categories as well.

JANUARY

{nourish} I've been making a big effort to cut out sugary snacks from my diet, eat more interesting and wholesome lunches (less sandwiches) and use some new ingredients. I've been trying recipes with quinoa (love this stuff!), I've swapped canola oil for coconut oil (see why here and here) and I'm trying out some low-sugar sweet treats. 

{prepare} We're lucky enough to live in a berry and cherry growing area, so for the past 6 weeks we've been visiting the pick-your-own orchards on a regular basis. I'm guessing we'd now have around 6 or 7kg of rasberries and blueberries in the freezer, a couple of kilos of pitted frozen cherries plus 10 jars of stewed cherries (one each month until the season starts again in December). I've also bottled around 10 litres of tomato passata and pasta sauce.

{reduce} As always, we've picked up a few secondhand bargains from op shops (kids clothes, shoes for hubby), garage sales (a fab Husky vest for hubby) and online trading sites (fencing wire).

{green} We received our electricity bill for the last quarter and were pleased to discover that our 2kw solar system has generated enough electricity to leave us with a $2 credit overall. Yay!

{grow} In the garden: Harvesting cucumbers, beans, basil, parsley, tomatoes (just!), kale, silverbeet and zucchini's. The sweetcorn is coming along nicely as are the potatoes. Just sown are broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, kale, lettuce, beetroot, tat soi, coriander and spring onions. In the paddock: 6 new sheep! Me: I've enrolled in an online course - Cert IV in Web-based Technologies.

{create} My main creative pursuit this month was starting this blog! I've been really enjoying taking more photos of day to day life too. Some sewing and knitting projects in the pipeline but with school holidays going on there hasn't been time for these!

{discover} I've discovered Pinterest and I think I'm addicted! 

{enhance} As part of my Landcare work I've started compiling information for a North East Local Produce Guide - the guide has the aim of supporting local farmers as well as reducing 'food miles'/carbon emissions.

{enjoy} Loved our relaxing family holiday time camping at Lake Cullulleraine near Mildura (as we do every summer). Lots of kids craft activities going on during the holidays. A night out for dinner, just hubby and I, while the kids had a sleep-over at their cousins. The excitement of starting a new school and a new kinder!

{breathe} Enjoying reading books outside in the late afternoon, while guarding the veggie patch from the chooks. Having a  couple of weeks off work and enjoying time without any schedules or routines... and a few afternoon naps. Looking forward to going to the gym each day (my 'me' time). 

Domestic arts in action

Feeling like domestic goddess's!

27kg of tomatoes cooked and bottled... and some gourmet scraps for the chooks.

Myrtleford Produce Market

I love our local farmers market... no fancy cheeses, nashi wine or dozens of varieties of olive oil. Just proper fresh produce.

It's one of the few markets in our region that is on every Saturday during summer and autumn so it becomes our regular shopping venue during these months.

What I also love are all the seasonal veggies you can buy here that you would simply never see in the supermarket - fresh borlotti beans in their lovely spotty pods, zucchinis and squash in all colours and shapes, giant russian garlic, local chestnuts and tomatoes of all varieties.

This area has a significant Italian population so there are always wonderful home-cooked pasta sauces, home-preserved jars of olives and garlic cloves, and home-baked cakes and crostoli to be temped by too.

But today, these are what I particularly came for...

More about that tomorrow!