CIBO REVEALED!

Today in Italian I learned that the word 'cibo ' means 'food'. Just food. So all those sort of Italian vibes that you get when you walk past (or into) one of the hundreds of cafes in Australia called 'Cibo' is all from a little word that means food. A bit of a let-down isn't it?! I thought it must mean something wonderfully suave and decadent with inuendos exuding from it but no! Food! No scenes of rustic, unshaven Italian men all dishevelled and sexy looking; no knowing looks or carefully dressed hunks sporting that careless air, looking back over their shoulder at the camera. Shame. Food; that's all. Heart-breaking....


Other useful things we learned today were lots and lots of names for different fruit and vegetables. Now you can see right away that I am going to fit into Italy , just ever so perfectly, with the know-how to talk about my chooks plus name lots of things I will find growing in food gardens everywhere! I am still waiting for Ian's promised lists of these things in French, and already I am learning them in Italian after only a couple of months or so !!

A LUCKY 21st BIRTHDAY

I have just read a lovely post on Lucky's Duck Farm about her trip out to her sister's place, over a hundred km from Burra, to celebrate a 21st birthday. Lots of photos of the countryside out that way and a couple of the facilities too.

The best bit was this photo of the dinner - all cooked for 100 people in camp ovens by the dad and friends.

Steamed Caterpillar Anyone?

I've found the last few months really tough, first with the exhaustion and morning sickness that comes with early pregnancy (I'm due again in October with a girl!) and lately with baby Peter's recurring ear infections and consequent sleepless nights. Although I would love to spend a lot more time in my garden, it always seems to be on the end of a long list of other chores. I think part of the problem is that I really enjoy spending time in the garden and my mother always taught me that you are only allowed to play outside when all of your homework is done. Somehow this means I spend all of my time doing the jobs I don't like to do and deny myself the ones I really love.


Lucky for me, a wonderful thing happened on Saturday. Husband Chris looked at the knee high clover in our front yard and announced his disgust at the messy looking garden. In my mind, this classified gardening as a "chore" and I allowed myself to put it at the top of the list for a day! An enormous amount of energy sprung into me from nowhere and I spent the whole day weeding, planting cuttings and cleaning up in the garden. It was wonderful to find plants under the clover that were doing well despite the lack of attention. I even had a self seeded broccoli that appeared amongst some bulbs by the back veranda post and was ready to harvest. My hat is also off to my chillies, capsicum and parsley that have all thrived on my neglect. It was the best day I've had in ages! (It was perhaps a bit much for my pregnant body because I could hardly walk on Sunday but it was worth it!)


While cooking the self seeded broccoli for dinner last night, I was all skippety-do about the day and imagined what I could put on this post about it. I had washed and cut the broccoli but some how failed to notice a family of caterpillars living in there. It wasn't until they were steamed (along with several other veggies) and on the table that I noticed them. Chris was very brave and still ate his veggies and even tasted the broccoli! I can't imagine where they were hiding in it and how I could have missed them when I washed and cut it. I've got more broccoli growing (that I planted). Is there anything I should be doing to stop the caterpillars now? Does anyone know where they were hiding while I washed it?

TRUE-BLUE AUSSIE FARMERS

The other day I was listening to 'The Country Hour' radio programme, which I do as often as I can. It is Australia's longest running radio show and is all about what is happening in rural Australia from the state to the whole country. It is on every weekday from noon to 1pm on AM 639.

I know I often go on about agriculture in a negative kind of way but really, the old fashioned Australian family farm is very much still the mainstream farming method in Australia and I do feel for the farmers with all the problems associated with making a living from the land. When I have a problem with my garden I often think - thank heavens I don't have to make a living out of this! I don't have anything against farmers - I know a few - and they are decent people with problems to overcome, like the rest of us. It is corporate agriculture that is the cancer of the century.

The piece I was listening to was about the plight of some wheat farmers in Western Australia who, because of the drought, had not only had 3 failed years but had no money left to buy seed to have another go this year. It seems that a whole lot of other farmers, from all over WA (and maybe Australia - I am not sure) pulled together and provided enough seed for 70 farmers to sow this year. The dear old bloke on the radio who was a recipient of this kindness was almost in tears of gratitude, as this seed would have cost him $10,000. I was almost in tears just listening to him - I stopped what I was doing and sat on a stool at the kitchen bench and thought about this while he was talking.

Australian farmers don't get any subsidies from anyone, they are on their own, and to be eligible for drought assistance takes a lot of hardship. But here in Australia farmers are there helping each other out, and isn't that good. I hear it all the time on this radio show - contact this person if you can spare some hay for cattle in such-and-such an area, is a common one. Isn't that what life should be all about - communities and people helping each other out through the bad times.

Sure, maybe they are trying to farm where it is no longer viable and maybe they should be growing in more sustainable ways and so on but, when we hear such doom and gloom every day, it is nice to know that there are still a lot of decent people around and that the feeling of connection city Australians have with the true-blue Aussie farmer is something we should all cherish.

SUNDAY IN MY GARDEN

	The broad beans I sowed are all up now. You can see there are still a few stones about but broad beans are like most broads - pretty resilient!
	When I dug a hole in the next bay - the one the chooks have now half cleared - I found that the soil is still powder dry only 6" down, although the surface looks damp (and now I can say this in French! Thanks Ian.) After watering it a bit, I planted Veggie Gnome's artichokes and Bob's horse-radish plants here.
	The double white tree dahlias are looking beautiful and at least 3m high, maybe even 4m. I also have the single pinkish-purplish ones but the whites are my favourites. Amazing how they grow this high and flower and then die back every year. If I were a tree dahlia I think I would not bother growing so tall, just rest at about half way and save my energy for the flowers!
	This humongous (?) mandarin is an only child and no wonder! What on earth was this plant thinking ??
	Veggie Gnome's rhubarb crowns have displaced an attractive arthropodium that needed to be moved into a shadier position - or that was the excuse I told it when I moved it to make way for more food plants! I am hoping these rhubarb plants will flourish here because the soil is lighter than all the other places I have tried to grow rhubarb and failed!
	If I had to be a native plant I would be this pretty little native clover because it loves the cold of winter when it magically appears and flowers and then it rests all summer. Who could ask for more?

MAINTAINING A CONTINUOUS HARVEST

One of the trickiest things to accomplish in the vegetable garden, I think, is a continuous supply of vegetables every day of the year. It seems like it would require substantial forward thinking if you want to grow everything from seed. I have been growing vegetables since I was about 18 but only in recent years have I been able to put the time into thinking about the sowing of seeds regularly enough to provide us with almost everything, almost all of the time. Now, though, I have found that it is really not that hard. (The beautiful garden in this photo belongs to Maggie and Bob and is genuinely the best display of perfection in a vegetable garden I have ever seen! I took this photo on Friday).

One thing I have learned is not to sow too many seeds at once! I get a foam box and either fill it with cubes of soil with the soil blocker or without. Sow one row only and thinly of each of several types of vegetables. Of course you can do this in the garden if you prefer. Label them well with a waterproof marker. Once the seeds have germinated and are ready to plant out they will be close to a month old. So, sow some more of the same or different seeds. If you sow a boxful of seed every month, preferably on the full moon, I reckon you would just about have the right amount for a small family. Maybe, with things like lettuce you should do it every 2 weeks, if you eat a lot of salads. You can adjust it month by month or year by year as you get the hang of it. I often sow a lot more than this, sometimes a whole box of one thing, so I have plenty of seedlings to give away. It is always nice to have extras for friends.

The second thing to take into account is how you are going to make room for it all in the vegetable garden with some coming in and some coming out all the time. I mostly manage this by raising seedlings in the foam boxes which gives space to the garden for the month or so they are germinating and getting big enough to plant out. In winter I can fit lots more into the same garden area because I don't have to worry about only having plants along the dripper lines - I plant things right up to the edges of the paths and in beds rather than rows, often tall things like fennel interspersed with lower stuff like lettuce, that can take a bit of shade even in winter.

The third thing is how to keep enough fertility in the soil to have everything growing well all the time. This is hard, I think. If you are harvesting stuff everyday you are removing all those nutrients all the time. I know some people do it differently but what I usually do is make my own compost and use this often. Add something to the soil each time I plant into it - eg Manutec blood and bone, Alroc rock dust, or some Rapid Raiser (organic pellets made locally from chicken manure).

At the moment this is what I have happening in my garden, more or less :

I am planting out - broccoli, kale, lettuce - several sorts (we eat lots of salads), beetroot, leeks,

I am sowing: see the list in the side bar for what I sowed a couple of weeks ago.

I am harvesting: Asian greens (bok choyish stuff, cabbage, mustards), lettuces, spinachy things, spring onions, kale, celery, last of the capsicums (surely!), parsley, other herbs, a few daikon seed pods, fennel flowers and fronds, nasturtiums (leaves and flowers), sorrel.

I am about to harvest: Chinese sea shells, water chestnuts, sweet potatoes.

I have growing in the garden for harvesting in the future: fennel, lettuce, spinachy things, kales, spring onions, broccoli, celery, Asian greens of various sorts, chicory, peas (sugar snap, Deb's purple), chervil, coriander, mizuna, broccoli, parsnips, carrots, shallots, garlic.

Obviously, as the seasons change you have to sow different things, but if you keep to sowing one box every month, it will be a good start. I hope other people will be able to add their knowledge to this rough guide, in the comments.

FROM ADELAIDE TO DETROIT TO ZAMBIA...WE ALL FEEL THE SAME

I have a very soft spot for Thulasi, out there doing what must be done, while I just sit here and talk about it. Here is an update from Zambia.

....."I was down and out and in desperate need of a pick-me-up, and there’s no better place for that than in the village. In the village, you say? Yes, in the village.

Whyson, my co-worker, says that when outsiders see images of village life or drive through in roaring white land-cruisers, they say, “Oh, these people are suffering.” Yes, one cannot deny that there is a fair bit of suffering in rural Zambia. But what visitors fail to see, Whyson says, “is that these people are living.”There are a lot of lessons to be learned in the village, many of which fall into those “habits of mind” the author described in the Times article. Waking when the sun rose, sweeping the ground, harvesting the maize crop, milking the cows (and making tea with it 5 minutes later), watering the garden, bicycling to see the relatives, greeting everyone we passed, heating water for a bath, and sleeping when the sun set.

I worked very hard alongside my hosts, trying my best to keep up and realizing all along that not only have my muscles atrophied from under-use but so has my mind. The abundant world in which I was raised has actually limited my ability to conceive of what is possible, of what my body is capable of, of the elegance in simplicity...."

"Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will."

Read the rest...

.