KITCHEN GARDEN DAY IN ADELAIDE

  It is the day of the year when kitchen gardeners all over the world gather in local groups to celebrate growing their own food. The Hills and Plains Seedsavers group and friends gathered at Deb and Quentin's idyllic organic farm in the Adelaide hills for a shared lunch of seasonal food cooked by each of us from food grown in our gardens or nearby. Naturally, the ingredients used were winter things, like spinach and other greens, broccoli, celery, citrus etc plus preserves from last summer but the range of dishes was amazing. First, though, was a tour of the place and Deb is always so generous with her time and knowledge. At every turn there is something beautiful like Deb's woven fences or this glass bird bath....and Amelia's hair!

 

After the walk and the lunch, in the sun which shone with warmth for the first time in weeks, we got down to the serious business of the newest Olympic KG Day sport..... Squash-Tossing! Last summer, I thought "These beautiful, hard old summer squash must be good for something..." and I couldn't bear to feed them to the chooks and today they found their use! Along with some wind fall lemons they became the centre of a fierce competition between 3 teams, to throw the most items into the wooden box.....

 

You can see the intense concentration on the Veggie Gnome's face, below, and then the cheers from the rest of the team....but the men at right could see their lead slipping away.....

 

....so Quentin and Olly consulted a book of rules, below left.... but the team in red were clearly superior and managed to double the score of the other 2 teams who played off for silver and bronze in cold, late-afternoon conditions.

It was a lovely day and what was especially nice for me personally was that gathered there today were not only quite a few of the original members of our seedsavers group but 7 new people, who had independently joined over the last few months, as a result of finding us on this blog. So, kitchen gardening is once again becoming mainstream here and it is great to see so many young faces now becoming a part of our group. I feel that at last people are taking responsibility for their impact on the earth, they are learning how to grow food for themselves, how to cook it and how to preserve it and as a consequence, are helping to also preserve all that is vitally important for a healthy future for themselves and the earth we share.

Thanks, Roger D for starting Kitchen Gardeners International and for nominating one day annually to be the day people all over the world celebrate growing at least some of their food by gathering to share their produce and share their time and share their love of a simpler, richer life.

There are more photos in our KG Day album photos link.

For a list of other blogs of people celebrating KG Day as day revolves around the world go to KGI Kitchen Garden Day.