COOKING WHAT YOU REAP

Do you need a recipe for using all those pumpkins ? I have just put one on the recipe link from the Cook and the Chef. Looks great.

I have spent a couple of hours weeding and doing a couple of jobs in the chook yard. I have had 30 bales of peastraw delivered from the Magill Grain Store and, next Wed. when my garden group comes, we are going to make some serious compost bays with some of the straw. We collected about 10 bags of assorted manures on Mothers' Day on our drive back from Sunningdale Farm and some of this will go into the compost heaps too. Mountains of dry stuff - bark, leaves etc - has been collected by (a now cashed up) Hugh (sailor son) and put through the mulcher (by me) and is filling up about 6 or 8 old manure bags. This will be added along with the 1/2 composted kitchen scraps in the plastic bin and all those weeds I dug up today, plus more (if the chooks don't eat them all first). I may also include the last compost heap that didn't do very well over summer because it was so dry and I preferred to water the garden than the compost then. By spring this should be done and will give the summer vegies a good start. I am determined to make as much compost as I can using mostly what I have at hand plus manure.

To me organic does not just mean "without chemicals", where natural ingredients are used in place of synthetic ones. It encompasses a whole other dimension of reducing our dependence on inputs from elsewhere so that, overall, we leave this life at least having tried to break even, rather than being responsible for consuming huge amounts and therefore leaving the world with a massive loss, which once we are gone we can never repay.

Consequently, our place seems to be full of and surrounded by things that might be useful one day and we can't bring ourselves to throw away. Hard rubbish collections mean we gather more stuff and get rid of very little. Even our sons come home with all sorts of things which is quite surprising, if you knew them. Alex came home last time with suitcase and inside was a tag with Prof. Paul Davies name and address ! Hugh somehow fitted a vinyl reclining chair into his small car and, I must say, it is very comfortable and rather good in the rumpus room. My main weakness is the old carpet underlay made of coconut fibre ; as a weed suppressant nothing beats it as it lasts for about 18 months before beginning to rot away and in 2 years has turned the worst weeds into compost.

Seedsaving is central to this theme and I hope it will take us all another step closer to clearing some of our debt. If everyone saved seed from at least one thing per season, we would be rich indeed. Let this be our first season of commitment to our seedsaver title.
I think this blog idea fits very nicely into the sustainable lifstyle as we can exchange ideas and have fun for the cost of quite a small amount of electricity. Blog on.