ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE ON OUR DOORSTEP

I have spent some considerable time on this blog going on about our water problems here in South Australia which have been highlighted by, but not caused by, the recent drought. I was hoping to put it out of my mind for a few months over winter but we are having a very dry winter and today, as I got out of my car after returning from the market, with some lovely stories to tell, I saw that once again, my fennel is drooping. It is July and the soil should be saturated but no, down where these old fennel have their deep roots, it is as dry as a desert.

Still, this is not enough to bring the fire back into my belly about this whole water issue...but....oh yes, there is a big but....there was a meeting of all the political leaders of Australia, yesterday, in Canberra, the unknown capital of Australia, and the hot topic was water. It should have seen some practical solutions going into place; after all we have had this problem surfacing and resurfacing like a festering wound for over 30 years, gradually sapping the life out of our food production areas in favour of mining and manufacturing. It should have actually been an update on progress made, but again it was a talk-fest and a re-shuffling of money into projects for many years into the future which will no doubt be another government's problem to implement. It was a bickering session between state governments and involved the quoting of laws and rules and even of the constitution itself but nowhere was there anything....anything concrete for South Australia. A $600,000,000 injection of funds from federal to SA state funds was claimed as a win for us....but the project?? The details?? The solutions?? The extra water?? Not a bloody thing; just another feasibility study into pumping water to the farmers of the Lower Lakes from Tailem bend but not to the lakes themselves.

This was all on the radio this morning from early morning and is still going now and people - real people, like me, people who can see solutions and are irate and furious, are slowly getting to a point where even old cadgers and normally mild-mannered women are on the radio incensed, almost with murder in their voices, that nothing is being done by those that could do something. Even to this point I could have just turned it off and spent the day in my vegetable garden, illegally watering my fennel, but two words were read out on the news from a recent scientific report that made me stop the car and write them down - our whole lower lakes fresh water system will succumb to ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE if they do not get water by November.

When I think of ecological collapse I think of nuclear disasters like Hiroshima and Chernabol, or massive oil spills like the Exon Valdez, or the melting of polar ice-caps - all places distant in both miles and culture. But this time ecological collapse is less than 100km from my home.



Ecological collapse of an entire river and lake system that I have spent years holidaying on and even teaching sailing on, in tune with the natural wonder of the bird life and the winds and the dozens of intricate channels weaving their reedy magic between little islands. I have canoed there and sailed there and camped there and I have worked there, month after month, for several years, with teenagers, teaching them about my love of it all and how to see it as a way to gain self-confidence and self-respect and to respect life itself. I have wonderful photos and memories of a place that now faces death, through lack of a decent plan.




As the water dries up and recedes from what was once the shore, it eventually causes a phenomenon which I have not read enough about to explain here, but the upshot of it is that the lake bed becomes a sulphuric acid pit and all life is extinguished, with little hope of recovery for thousands of years, if ever, even with the addition of water. So much has the water receded already that crops are being grown, temporarily, where once we used to moor the boats that I used to teach sailing.


OK, you say, get the water to it by November. All very well, even if they let enough water down the river today, which is basically what all the arguing was about between the politicians, it takes months to get here! We are talking about a darn long river that the water has to flow down to get here - the Murray - and it flows so slowly that it would only just make it, maybe, if we opened all the floodgates right now! And these lakes are big - at least 30km across - that's a lot of water. This is because all the available water is 2 or 3 states away - thousands and thousands of slow, meandering waterways away and it might as well be a million miles away for all the collaboration that goes on between the states. Along the way communities take water as allocated by entitlements issued by governments over the last hundred years, until more water has been allocated for irrigation than the sum total of all the water in the river. Now that's smart! Not having any overseeing body, the states just kept on selling licenses. An unsustainable system has turned into a disaster. Even if water was allowed to flow down, all these communtities would have the right to take some and then still there wouldn't be enough to reach these dying lakes.

We can go and buy plastic or steel rainwater tanks and install kilometres of plastic tubes for dripper systems but this is a far bigger problem, as you can now see, than a small city like Adelaide and a few tanks of rainwater can solve. I don't want to write about solutions now or go into any more detail, but ecological disasters on this scale are not something we should be having in Australia. What is equally as distressing is the fact that this will cause many local communities to collapse and affect every single person in South Australia and eventually cost us all heartache as we struggle with the aftermath for generations to come.

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Garlic Scapes

Do you know about garlic scapes?
We were looking at our garlic today and noticing the long curly tops.
I have just been reading on Theresa's blog, Pondering the Myriad Things... all about garlic scapes.

If you check all the comments and one by Amber and follow the links she suggests you could be making yummy pesto or sauce with your garlic trimmings. Apparently you get much bigger bulbs with some varieties of garlic if you trim.

LIFE IN MY KITCHEN

As usual my kitchen bench is edged by bowls of various things that I have picked or gathered from somewhere or are being processed in some way so I thought I would share them with you.

Firstly, taking up the most room are 2 large bowls of olives, being soaked in water that is changed everyday for a while, until they are not so bitter. These are a couple of special varieties of olives a friend gave me which he picked down at McLaren Vale.

Next is a bowl of the Chinese Seashells ( I did know their name(s)...but I have forgotten for now; maybe they are Jane and Sean and ....!!). These I dug up with the garden group on Wednesday and they have sort of been cleaned but not fully - and we are going to eat most of them tonight. They are crisp and like quite water chestnuts as they stay crisp even when stir-fried. best raw, I think, in salads or as a snack.

Thirdly is the very poor crop of water-chestnuts that I extracted, very messily, from a pond today. Delicious raw and unpeeled - something you can't get if you don't grow your own.

Next are the limes, mandarins and tangelos from Deb plus some oranges and some different limes from my mother and some lemons from Kathy, the latter being left over from my third batch of limoncello which is still brewing. I am going to make some citrus-y things but I still have a lemon pudding in the fridge - 2 people don't get through food as fast as I want to cook it!

Then there is a small bowl of the pretty lillypillies - a native fruit - which I picked at my mother's today. They are olive-shaped fruits the size of a cherry or so and are like a grape crossed with a pear in flavour and texture! They are high in pectin and people make jam with them. I just eat them raw.

Then there are the last 2 okra seedpods that need to have the seeds removed and allowed to dry fully before storing. Next to them are the rest of the mizuna seeds that I sowed today - all over the asparagus patch...might as well be doing something with that soil while it is bare.

The last thing worth mentioning is the very last piece of the orange and date cake I made yesterday for gardening and I am trying very hard to resist eating it!...I did have a small piece for morning tea with some of the Paris Creek quark that someone mentioned before.

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Now the thing is, you see, a lot of people like their benches to be all clear of stuff and look like nobody actually ever does anything in the kitchen - which they probably don't. But to me that is not the way a kitchen should be - it should be filled with goodies from gardens and bowls of fruit and nuts for nibbling on and herbs hanging to dry and pieces of paper with ideas for recipes and an open recipe book or two and a market shopping list and containers of seed pods and buckets of olives etc etc etc.

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A messy kitchen is good. Fill your life with the joy of food today.....

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AN ALL DAY LOLLIPOP KIND OF WEDNESDAY!

Wednesday is always gardening day but today the enjoyment just went on and on, like an all-day sucker lollipop. In the morning we dug up all the Chinese seashells (funny, isn't it, to be able to grow shells!) and my rogue potatoes and the rest of the strawberry plants that are just too hard to grow here as well as transplanting some self-sown fennel and a big chicory root that just seems to live on and regrow year after year . The weeds and the remains of the warrigal greens went to the chooks, the watering system lines were all neatened up and pinned into place, ready for a (maybe) dry spring. Into the area we planted masses of my cavolo nero kale and a box of leek seedlings. Then morning tea and here are my 4 great garden group friends having devoured more than half of the Date and Orange cake that I made...one of our favourites...

 

 

Maggie and Bob and I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon doing some things for Deb while her hand recovers from a recent operation. First, though, a little peek in the tunnel house....miners' lettuce with such big leaves and  mountain spinach which tastes nicely salty and sort of like very mild warrigal spinach. On the verandah is the pumpkin and squash harvest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the things we did for Deb was to deal with a couple of piles of apple tree prunings and I think, by the end, Bob had turned into a madman with the saw! Quentin was inside all the while, making us pumpkin scones which we devoured hungrily..thanks Quentin, they were great. When you leave Deb's you never go empty-handed...now is citrus time ... and here are some of the mandarins, limes and tangelos I brought home.

While we were working away and laughing a lot, I said I would much rather spend an afternoon doing this than going shopping - which seems to be a popular thing for most women to do these days... This was such a good day spent having a lot of fun with 2 groups of great people, getting on with growing our food and living the good life, what more could anyone want?

INAUGURAL WEBSITE OF THE MONTH

I thought I might write up a website or blog of the month, beginning today.

Bioversity International is a great website about improving lives through biodiversity research. It is very readable and is one of the best sites for learning about what is really affecting the lives of people in Africa, in particular, but also other third world peoples and how small solutions really can work to improve their lives.

Recently their website has been vastly improved and the address has changed to

http://www.bioversityinternational.org/

From the website:
What we do: We undertake scientific research on the sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity - benefiting people in the developing world, being at the centre of our work.

Who we are: We are a non profit organization with offices in 20 countries and working on projects in over 100 countries with about 300 research partners.

We in the more affluent countries often look to huge solutions for what really are lots of small problems, all lumped together in our minds. But if we take a bit more time and really get to the nub of some of these problems we can see a theme running through them, like a polluted river. And this is called the river of money. Foreign companies can make money out of providing so-called assistance to struggling villagers by buying up their land cheaply and employing the people to work at growing massive crops of things that are then sold to us. It sounds logical and no doubt looks good on paper but where, then, do these villagers get their food? Transport is poor and unreliable, especially in the wet season, and yet they are made totally reliant on buying all their food from elsewhere now they have no land of their own. They are paid very little and often end up destitute. The solution is to help them get started growing their own food, like they used to and help them make some additional money by selling some or value-adding in some way so they are not dependant on foreigners for a decent life.

Wild Crop Relatives is just one of the off-shoots of this Bioversity website and has some great stories about saving some of the world's wonderful wild crop relatives for nutritional input and for biodiversity.

There is a whole section on bananas and it is fascinating!

In fact I am so excited about this new, upgraded website I am going to stop writing this and let you discover it for yourself so that I can go now and discover it too.......she is nearly 50 and still liable to enthusiasms....I love that line! If you are not liable to enthusiasms, come and read this stuff with me and share my enthusiasms!

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A Slow Road from Garden to Plate or maybe not!

Back in early Spring Kate gave me 2 romanesco broccoli seedlings. I duly planting them assuming they where a typical broccoli but with a different form. Lime green, with a coral type form, very popular in northern Italy.

They grew and grew and grew, I had to stake one as tumbled out onto the path but no sign of a broccoli head forming. Mean while Kate’s had headed towards seeding and its place was quickly filled with plants that would make a meal sooner. Meanwhile my two where still growing and one needed a bigger stake. Then in late April, excitement plus the smaller one started to set heads not one but many, was it going to seed. The weather must have cooled down just in time. The many small heads provided several harvests and are still producing a harvest now and then. The other one, now much bigger than its companion has finally set a single head, still small but beautiful in its form so maybe I’ll have a nice head to harvest by the end of august, maybe for kitchen garden day/bloggers get together. True slow food but I’m sure it will be worth the wait.

Meanwhile back in January I planted some Franchi romanesco precoce seeds (these are cauliflowers but look the same as romanesco broccoli on the packet) these along with the purple ones(di sicilia vioetto) are doing well , the plants are normal size of cauliflower/broccoli and setting heads (the largest being almost the same size as the spring one). So I’d recommend planting them in January, (the instructions suggest planting in late summer for winter harvest) thus reducing the risk of them going to seed during the hot weather and using up a lot less space.

So are the same, or is there a romanesco broccoli and also a romanesco cauliflower? or is it a matter of translation?

SHOPPING FROM THE GARDEN and HAVING FUN

I was just thinking about what I am picking in my garden and realised that most of it is not available to buy, except Tony Scarfo does grow some - but things like broad bean shoots, watercress, mustard greens, fresh water chestnuts, the Chinese seashells, warrigal greens etc etc are not available at all if you don't grow them. Even at the market a lot of the vegetables don't change from season to season. How boring, how safe, how stupid, actually.

On blogs all over the world people are putting up ideas on what to make with their season's harvest. There is some discussion about red and black and pink and white currants on Patrick's blog and people have put comments about jams and tarts and fruit schnapps and granitas and so on and it is wonderful. Just wonderful.

Recently we had a thing about turnips here, after Deb gave me some and there were so many ideas - I never knew turnips could be such fun! Now I have lots of greens and they are going into everything and can be used creatively in so many ways. I dug up the white sweet potato, the leaves of which I had put into salads all summer long (and maybe that is why my harvest was so meagre - 1 enormous one plus 2 smaller ones!), and I am looking forward to some carrots and parsnips. These are all lovely winter things. Why would I want capsicums in winter?...Anyway I dried the last of mine because they were still green and I don't like them raw much when they are green so I am putting them in stews and they are much nicer that way.

I want to stand up in the shops and say no! Leave all that transported food alone, dear people of the earth, and pick the seasonal stuff not because it is good for the environment (altho' it is) but because it tastes so much better and gives you such variety and so many choices about what to cook. I used to love cooking with my children, right from when they were about 2 years old. Messy? Of course, and time-consuming! But fun and why have children if you can't have some fun with them? Eventually they could do it themselves and it was Hugh's contribution to the family to cook a cake every week, for their lunch boxes, and he got so good at it he put some things into the cooking competitions in the show and won some prizes. Now they both live away from home and love to cook for themselves and friends. Isn't that what it is all about, all this having children?? A proud mother I definitely am and so grateful to have had the opportunity to help them grow into the fine young men they are today.

Every day I go out and pick something from my garden for our meals. Everyday I eat a fair bit just wandering along the rows, picking a leaf or shoot or flower of this and that and noticing the things that are happening there, in the vegetable patch. The birds are all around, the light is always changing, the chooks are chatting away (hoping I will give them something from the garden or the kitchen) and I am there, with my basket and knife, choosing food for the day, every day. It is the only shopping I really enjoy - shopping from the garden.

Where has all the fun gone from people's lives? I am having more fun than is my portion, perhaps....but why aren't other people who could be? I truly believe that living a simple life is more fun and more fulfilling. It gives you time to think about stuff - serious stuff - but also time to be creative and to give of yourself to others and to share time with friends and revel in life. And time to grow - grow food, grow in spirit and grow in the love for the earth and the people you care about. Too much busy-ness stunts your growth, I think. This is the mistake of recent generations, and may be the downfall of future generations. If you only got half as much done in your life would it matter, when all is said and done? Yes, we would be happier, quieter, gentler, more content...and we could concentrate on fixing the earth's problems instead of causing them. And we could have had a lot more fun doing it!

Time is precious. Make some fast and use it slow.
Fun is contagious. Use some time to make some soon.


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