International Permaculture Day this Sunday at Hilton Harvest

You may have noticed that we spend a lot of time at our community garden, Hilton Harvest. We love it and work hard at it. Yesterday Davina and I moved part of our orchard to make way for a new fence. We had a bobcat and an expert helping us and it was so satisfying. I thought it would be such a back breaking job but throw in a machine and some fossil fuel and the job is done by 11am!

This Sunday we are moving our asparagus patch for the same reason. Everyone is welcome to the Busy Bees and usually there is a good spread of cake to share. AND this time it's International Permaculture Day!

The Permies are holding some workshops in the morning and are then coming for a tour of the Hilton Harvest and the chookship (our earthship style chicken house - totally delux accommodation!). So come to the garden at 12.30ish and have a tour! The day winds up at FERN with a gig from some wicked local groups including the Formidable Vegetable Sound System who sing exclusively (I think) about the principles of permaculture! We saw them on the weekend at Fairbridge and it was awes. So get grubby!

Sugar!

While other mummy blogs are espousing the virtues of a sugar free diet, this one will share with you how to unashamedly love it! Call me old fashioned but I love the traditional baking trifector: flour, butter and sugar. Not very trendy I know, and I do love a little quinoa occasionally but on the whole I'm not into superfoods. Superfoods are for supermums and I'm not one of those. Hence this post about sugar and its use, specifically in lilly pillie jelly.

Quin and I were visiting friends on the bike the other day and he insisted on stopping to pick some lilly pillies to munch on. These are cute little fruit that grow on beautiful big trees that are common in old Hilton gardens. They are native to the east coast of Australia but do very well here. The texture is weird and slightly astringent. They are free and bountiful and so we eat them! We've done jelly and cordial before and both taste a bit like different forms of fairy floss. What's not to love?

Quin remember how much he wanted to raise some funds for his next Lego Movie Lego set and suggested we pick enough to make some jelly to sell to unsuspecting family and friends. Not wanting to quash his entrepreneurial spirit, I agreed to help him. Four o'clock in the afternoon - a perfect time to start a batch of jelly and I knew I'd 'get it done in twice the time' with Quin helping (as my Mum would say to us as a kid's with a smile and wink to Dad!). So, enthusiastically taking his life in his own hands he balanced on the fence and on the bike and we quickly picked 1.5 kgs. Perfect.

The recipe is from my favorite preserves book, A Year in a Bottle by Sally Wise. The recipes are simple and never fail. This one is:
1.5 kgs lilly pillies
water
juice of one lemon
sugar

Boil lilly pillies in enough water to just cover them with lemon juice, then cook gently for 30 mins.

Strain through a colander, then through a sieve lined with muslin.

For each cup of liquid add a cup of sugar, stir until sugar is dissolved and then bring to a rolling boil.

When setting point is reached (ie test with a few drops on a saucer in the fridge - if it sets when cooled, its set) pour into sterile jars and seal. The jelly is beautifully clear and smooth and very fairy flossy.

Animal magic

A few weeks ago we went camping to Sandy Cape near Jurien Bay north of Perth. We also call it Sandy Crack because it's sandy and it gets in your crack. Also Windy Crack because it's windy. As sandy and windy as it is, it is also beautiful. During the pack up for camping I sometimes wonder if it is all worth it; all the gear and food, ice, surf skis, kids, a dog and a two and a half our drive just to hang out on a beach. And of course when we are there all set up on said beach it is abundantly clear to me how important it is to get in to nature. Because nature is magic.

Quincey had a particularly magic experience when we found this little fella (a Southern Spiny Tailed Gecko) by our campsite. Ads lifted up some of our gear and found him under it. Quincey ran over and squatted near him to say hello. We all told Quincey to not go too close or the gecko will be scared away, but actually the opposite happened. The gecko slowly crept up to Quin and sheltered in his shade. Quincey edged back and the gecko crept closer. How wonderful and magic and tender and special. A boy's close encounter with a wild animal. You can't script that or buy that. You don't even witness it very often.

Of course after their tender moments together we explained to Quin that, no, we could not take him home. So Quin cried and then sulked in the car for an hour. But I think it was worth it and that we will all remember it.

Sour crop chook

Our restful Sunday afternoon suddenly went in to first aid mode when Ads noticed one of our chooks was acting weird. She was bustin' some pretty funky dance moves - something like a cross between a snake and a youthful Young Talent Time hopeful. But she didn't look happy. Her eyes were blinky and her tail was droopy. After an extensive 10 minute Google lit review I diagnosed sour crop. This is when the crop gets full of sour, fermenting, smelly, acidy liquid possibly caused by some kind of fungal infection. You can feel her crop and its enlarged and soft like a balloon - so the computer told me.

The cure was unnerving. We had to make her vomit. The idea of sticking my finger down my chooks throat to release the stinking mess in her crop did not appeal to me. But as luck has it, my sister walked through the door just at this moment. Adam and Sarah are the crisis A-team. While I go all flakey and start dry reaching at the thought of leaky animals, Adam and Sarah hold their nerve. 

The strategy was to maker the chook spew then give her yogurt. Sarah also suggested adding garlic to the yogurt, Tzatziki style. Quin wanted in on the action and made mix under his aunty's watchful eye. 

Now, the vomit bit was pretty gross but not difficult to achieve. In fact Ads just picked her up and she started dripping liquid from her beak. Then he just tipped her like a teapot and more came out. You have to only do it for a few seconds at a time so they can breath. Good to know. Sarah gently pressed her crop to get the last of the liquid out. It didn't seem to distress her at all - I imagine it would have been a relief. Poor spew girl. We let her have a little run then spoon fed her the yogurt/garlic mix. We probably only got about a a teaspoon down her.

I put her in the broody box overnight with a small amount of grain mixed in with her yogurt and clean water. Poor spew girl.

This morning she seems fine, so I've let her out and will keep a close eye on her. Fingers crossed she pulls through!

Olive time

It's olive time again in Perth, so I went out picking today. My favourite verge tree is loaded again after a year off and the owner said no worries to pick from it. I picked 20kg for pickling in just one hour!

This should last us a year (we like olives in our family). I went to the supermarket and checked out how much this would cost me out of interest. The cheapest olives were $4 for 500g. This means my hour's work, plus a couple more for processing, has saved me $160. And they're organic and local produce, unlike the supermarket stuff...

My pickling method is described here, it's pretty simple and easy. When they're ready I don't even jar them up, I just leave the bucket under the kitchen table and scoop some out with a slotted spoon.

Don't be put off by the scummy look, once you rinse the olives they're yummy.

Twilight on the Horizon

After helping out at such an awesome and busy event as Less is More, you'd think I'd be hanging up the gazebo for a bit...but no, between my work, my family and my love of community gardening, we lurch on to the next wonderful event. The next one is the Twilight Fair and its a biggie. Its our annual Hilton Harvest celebration and this will be the fourth one, and no doubt the best!

My sister coordinates it and I'm her right hand woman. Its a really fun thing to do together. Sarah gets all fired up about it around November and makes a crazy mindmap of everything we need to do on the back of her kids pre-primary drawings. This becomes our one, precious planning document for the next four months. Generally, the idea is to sort out funding from the City of Fremantle and LotteryWest (which is usually approved no more than three weeks before the event!) and then con a few friendly locals into coordinating stalls, making flyers, baking, singing and dancing on the day. A few hundred emails later and it all falls in to place. And this is what it looks like; community at its best. Fun, free, wholesome, home.

We are super excited to have Wadumbah Indigenous Dance performing this year. They are also doing workshops with the kids at Hilton Primary School beforehand so they can help in the performance on the night - Its going to be fun! 

We also have kids woodworking, craft activities, an awesome pirate, a whole evening of entertainment with various bands, choirs, dancers, and musicians - event a string quartet! There is a scarecrow competition, an 'ask a gardening expert' table and cargo bike rides plus heaps of lovely food. We love our little event and made a conscious decision to keep it small and local. We only allow local, not-for-profit groups to have stalls so you wont find any coke for sale or any corporate plastic give aways. We run our own washing up stand so there is no plastic disposable cutlery or plates. 

Its great for the community to get together to just have a chance and celebrate. We've decided that our aim is not to raise money (though it does add a few grand to the bank account) but its more about getting people into the garden and into the spirit of things. 

I have to be honest and say that its a whole lot of work and Ads and Quin do suffer for the cause - not to mention my housework or my own garden. But to me, its worth it. We want to raise our boy in a community where people know each other and were there is a place to be outside and be creative. Organizing the fair and being involved in the garden makes me talk to heaps of people I would not otherwise even ever meet. It opens doors and makes life richer. And THAT is worth celebrating! Come along if you're in town!

Book Review - Living the Good Life by Linda Cockburn

I've decided to do the odd book review on the blog which is funny because I read very slowly and I don't really like books. But that means the ones that make it to the blog will be well worth it. I promise to only review books I've read all the way through.

I do like some books. Its novels I don't like. I am too feeble of heart to handle all the emotions. Its hard enough in life to deal with real people (self included), let alone made up ones. I mean, I can handle Bridget Jones's Diary but Captain Corelli's Mandolin; no, Catch 22; forget it. I also think its a waste of my time reading novels where the end of the story is already written. With the non-fiction stuff I'll review here, its about learning what is going on in our world and then feeling empowered to do something about it. We, good people, are the ones who will be writing the end to this story of our troubled world.

So to the review. Living the Good Life by Linda Cockburn (2006) is one of the two books that changed our lives (the second book review is coming...). I read it quite a few years ago now, but still enjoy flicking through it. The book is about a family in Queensland who go for six months without spending any money in order to be kind to the plant, kind to their bodies and to experience all the other beneficial spin offs the 'experiment' might entail. Linda calls it an experiment in 'domestic sustainability' rather than self sufficiency because that ' implies 'going it alone' or turning away from the world'. They provide what the family needs by growing it, using animals, using solar panels and water tanks and bartering (apart from exemptions like the mortgage and medical bills) all on a large suburban block of 2180 square metres. The family had been planning the experiment for a good few years before hand and had established fruit trees and other infrastructure already in place, as well as many skills like bread making, gardening and so on. Linda's partner is a genius at making/fixing/inventing all sorts of things in his 'recycling centre'. 

From me it gets five and a half stars out of five:

• One star because despite the fact this family is 100% amazing they are lovable, fallible and human: 'Caleb ate the last of the chocolate today...I feign disinterest as Caleb ate it while secretly hyperventilating.' I would do that but I was also inspired to think one day I could have a goat of my own too, damn it. 
• The second star is because it is simply beautifully written. 
• The third star is for geeky respect. The book is so well researched with facts about everything from the nutritional information of snails to the effects of volatile organic compounds (VOC's) to the specs on various types of hot water systems. 
• The fourth star is for its humor
• The fifth star is for all the doable tips and recopies
• The half star is because it was a life changer. I love her final comments, 'Your actions will not save the world. Who cares, it was never the goal. It's about doing the things that are within your power to do. That's all you can do. Don't think of it as an obligation, think of it as an adventure.'

Linda also keeps a blog, Living the Good Life and has a facbook page, both well worth checking out.