And there in the wood.... Musings on piglets and pumpkins.

Before...

They're arriving today. Three little pigs.

Last spring we had a tractor come. We needed to get some ground prepared in a hurry for our potatoes. In the confined space we had, the giant wheels of the machine made huge, compacted ditches where nothing will grow. It pulled the clay subsoil to the surface, and generally made a mess At $100 it seemed like a good idea, to save our backs and have the tractor guy do the work, but we were left a little unhappy.

The big machine drove all the way from Margate just to till our plot. It probably did more harm than good for our ground, and we still needed an afternoon of rotary hoeing and a whole day barrowing compost and shovelling and raking the ground into beds. Not really labour saving, ruinous for our soil and big contribution to the greenhouse effect.

So enter the pigs.

Pigs love to dig. I've visited the incredible Agrarian Kitchen and found a lot of inspiration. No treated timber in the garden, minimal soil disturbance, and minimal use of machinery. To start a new plot where a paddock has been they employ pigs rather than tractors. So we're taking tentative steps down that path today.

We had roaring success with a small, no-dig plot of unusual pumpkins and squash last summer, and these beautiful veggies sit patiently on the lounge room floor all winter until we're ready to eat them. So despite harvesting 100kg from a 15m2 area, we have been selfishly hoarding them to eat ourselves (winter is long, and they are delicious!).

We've fenced off a small area where the runoff from the garden travels down a slight slope to a mini wetland where it is filtered by rushes before flowing back to our dam for re-use. To maximise the efficiency of water use, we thought we'd start our porkers there now, then fill the ground they cultivate with pumpkins and squash this summer. We may just grow enough to share without the need to irrigate another plot. While the pumpkins grow the pigs will be moved up the hill to prepare more ground. For fruit trees, broad beans, potatoes....more beautiful food!

From left to right: Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash, Tuffy Acorn Squash and Delicata Squash.
Seedlings of all of these, and more, will be available from us in October, and squash should start appearing
on our stall in February, although they taste better the longer they are stored.

And next winter we'll be able to enjoy some ham with our pumpkins. And share some of this deliciousness with you.

I'll post some pictures of our little piggies tonight when they arrive, I can't wait!

Bruny

There is something magical about the Bruny Island ferry. Perhaps it's moving across water, the leaving of work and home on the other side as you journey toward adventure, nature or solitude.

For me it's a 30 minute journey from my door to the boat that lifts the weight of the mundane from my shoulders and allows me to dream. Every year I travel there with some special friends who worship landscape and food as much as I do. We eat, wander, botanise, swim and think together. We gather sea celery and seaweeds to flavour the fish that we catch, we gnaw on the leaf bases of sagg plants for refreshment during a hike, or gather and painstakingly clean wild rosehips to brew tea. We are aware of the possibility for nourishment the land provides, and I've often imagined the people who trod this soil before me gathering berries and seeds, digging tubers and diving in the icy waters to catch seals or harvest abalone to sustain their families.

Much of what I know of the edible plants from this landscape is theoretical, stuff read in books but rarely put into practice, the reality of eating from the land has never really touched me. But last weekend that changed.

The site of our meal.

David Moyle, the chef at the Stackings at Peppermint Bay, was creating a wild food lunch on Bruny with Penny Clive, an historian, art lover and keen observer of nature, who was bringing an incredible musician to the island to perform, and knew landowners with a deep connection to their place who were happy to host us. David's friend Johnny makes beautiful films, and came with his friend Jeremy to record the journey.

This confluence of talented and generous people led to a magical event on a spectacular piece of coastline. Music, food, people, architecture, film and land were bound together to create something of deep, raw and delicious beauty. Visitors came to eat and listen with us and were open, questioning and involved, and left with sand in their shoes and the scent of smoke in their hair.

At first glance the site shows little promise as a place to find wild food. Open pasture, surrounded by coastline and dry schlerophyll forest. An old farmhouse, a subtly beautiful, newer building, and a working farm with a big mob of sheep. But a day wandering with Penny and David, nibbling and photographing revealed the bounty the land holds. We listed at least 30 edible plants, some native, others introduced, all with culinary potential. To taste the plants that I have known are edible with a chef I admire, and to hear his thoughts on them, their flavours and their potential, and to have Penny take beautiful, detailed photographs of them so we could identify and catalogue what we learnt was, for me, a rare and wonderful experience.

It was a beautiful thing to stand among people as they ate and share with them the stories of the plants they were eating. Hobart's tea queen Varuni gathered plants from among the tussocks and she and other willing hands picked them over to make an infusion to accompany the meal. Others watched David shuck oysters and talked of the difference between the native Angasi oyster and the farmed, now feral, Pacific oyster that now dominates the shorelines of our estuaries.

I learned so much about cooking. David chose to season with kelp, smoke, herbs and seawater. The memory of the smoky, succulent wallaby haunch, slow roasted over coals and scented with smoke from aromatic native herbs still lingers, the land and sea provided incredible flavours, we needed nothing more.

We gathered beach herbs from a frozen shore. Sand, seashells and plants
alike, all encrusted with tiny, white shards of frost which seemed to enhance
the briny tang of the herbs.

The remains of the salad.
Samphire, dune spinach, sea celery,
wild turnip leaf, scotch thistle root.

Unearthing kelp-wrapped abalone from their roasting bed.

The makings of the salad.

For me this was a truly humbling experience. One day of harvesting with my friend and colleague Sam, armed with steel tools, clad in merino and down, and wearing protective gloves left me exhausted. Blisters and chilblains on my hands, aching arms and a weary spine bought to mind the people who depended on this landscape for the entirety of their existence without these luxuries. Their strength, resilience, knowledge of and connection to the land are at the front of my mind today, along with thoughts of past Europeans new to these shores, trying to feed their families in, what to them must have seemed, a barren and hostile land.

A big thank you to Penny, David, the land owners, Johnny, Jeremy, the musicians whose magic I caught whispers of as I sliced abalone outside, and the warm and beautiful people who came, ate and spoke with us.

Succulent, sea-brined, slow grilled wallaby haunch. Delicious.

This is one of my favourite types of work. If you would like help identifying native plants and weeds on your land and finding out their uses we are available to consult and catalogue them with you. Please get in touch to find out about availability and rates please email us at provtas@gmail.com .  You can also find us at Farm Gate Market on the second and fourth Sunday of each month with plants and produce. 

A grey day

Today I can't see the mountain. Cold, steel-grey clouds hover in front of her, shrinking my view to next doors ugly shed, and making the Stringybark trees at the top of our hill look like scrawny, menacing ghosts with afros.

The wind isn't strong, but it still drives the incessant drizzle under the hood of my raincoat and into my eyes. I can't feel my fingers but there are hundreds of tiny greens and flowers yet to be picked. Trouble is, many of the flowers we're meant to be gathering have been damaged by the rain, and slugs have been feasting on the greens. But we can't stop, the order has to be picked before it's time to meet the school bus.

The crosne we'd nurtured all summer, and had been counting on as a big autumn crop, were mostly eaten by mice, this after our potatoes were terribly affected by blight and what was meant to be a good source of cash flow for the garden, and a staple food for our family, was reduced to a few tubers we had to scrounge from the earth. Some expensive lucerne I'd bought for mulch was laden with weedy grass seeds turning every bed I'd mulched into a nightmare. I'm struggling to work out how I can look after the garden and nursery plants, harvest, pack and deliver, run market stalls, do the book work and take care of the family.

Days like this I think really hard about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, if I should be doing it at all, or just find a nice cosy, warm salon and start cutting hair again.....

Is my concept of a small garden that feeds my family and a few others, and is a testing ground for unusual crops, a mistake? Is it possible for us to turn 5 acres of less than ideal soil into a business, while sticking to my perhaps impossible, idealistic gardening philosophies? Things get quiet in winter too, people aren't as keen to be gardening, and we are grateful for the hardy souls who brave the weather to come to market.

All of these worries weigh me down on the cold, grey, dreary days.

But then then cloud lifts and our majestic mountain reveals herself. And if we're really lucky she'll be wearing a veil of snow.

And the worry lifts from my shoulders.

I met last week with a woman who has a food growing, community building vision, and the incredible insight and energy she needs to implement it. I spoke with another friend who is off to tour food growing farms and gardens in the States and offer her labour in exchange for experience. I am surrounded by encouraging friends and family, incredible fellow stallholders and customers (and a lot of wonderful friends in the virtual worlds of twitter, facebook and instagram). I really believe that we can achieve something here, albeit more slowly than we'd like, and perhaps with some compromises.

I don't want machines on our land. I won't use poison on slugs or rats. I dream of growing grain to feed our chickens rather than feeding them with sacks of stuff from who knows where, so that I can take our glorious weed fed eggs to market on a regular basis. I want more people and less machines to grow good food with minimal inputs. I want to experiment with crops to find those that produce delicious, appetizing food while resisting pests and diseases and requiring minimal water and nutrient. I want to collect and grow weird, fantastical, exciting edible plants and watch brilliant chefs weave magic with them. I want to be in a position to employ like minded people for a good wage, and to learn with them.

Some days it all seems too hard, but then I think of the menacing smells of peroxide and hairspray, do a kale tasting with my four year old in the garden, while the seven year old steals carrots, wipes them on her clothes and eats them on the spot, and feel I thankful at how life has evolved.

Roosters for tea

We hope to sell more eggs, and as a byproduct of this (as we want to hatch all of our layers here under broody mother hens) there will always be baby roosters. Conventional hatcheries employ specialist chicken sexers to sort the baby boys from girls upon hatching and dispatch the male chicks straight away. I've seen a horrendous video of how this was done in one factory farm, but I don't know how it's done here in Australian farms.

Anyhow, to our surplus boys.

This year I realised I could tell male from female chicks early. This gave us the chance to harvest the male birds before they became too chewy. Our first spring clutch this year had a poor hatch, only 5 chicks, but among them were only 2 boys. Yesterday they met their end. It was heart wrenching, it always is, a little bit gory, a little bit fascinating for the kids to watch the gutting of the birds and identify all of the organs and their functions, and ultimately delicious. As I write, the bones of the birds we roasted last night are in the stock pot for soup, and some tasty scraps of flesh I gleaned from the frames will be cooked in a little of the stock with carrots, spuds and herbs, and used to make pies for lunch.

I got a little carried away with instagram, recording and sharing our day. So here is a little photo log of a tasty rooster cull. Please don't judge me by my photography, it's all snapped with my phone in the middle of a busy afternoon!

Very mixed feelings about preparing dinner. Local, tasty & sad.

Mise en pluck. I experimented with dry plucking versus scalding.
The dry plucked bird had more supple skin, easier to loosen and slip herb butter underneath,
but some disconcerting, black feather stumps remained. 

Feet & gizzards to make stock for gravy. Hearts (yum!) & livers for buttery, sagey entree.

Mexican tarragon, Spanish thyme to flavour Dutch Barnevelder teen rooster.
Very cosmopolitan dinner.

And there's these from the garden....
Apart from butter, bread and salt, dinner is all from here!

Except for this....!

Rooster liver & crispy sage.

And the rest of him... Peace can return to the chook run.

We'll be at Farm Gate Market this Sunday, the 26th of February, and at MoMa on Saturday the 3rd of March.

Grey Saltbush

Growing around the driftwood base of my Mum's letterbox is a magnificent Tasmanian native plant. It grows like the clappers, it's drought hardy, fire retardant, very beautiful and, perhaps its most important attribute to me, it's edible.

Grey Saltbush, or Atriplex cinerea, is in the goosefoot family, Chenopdiaceae, along with lots of other valuable edibles; silverbeet, beetroot, quinoa and spinach. Even closer edible allies share its genus, Atriplex, which includes orach and fat hen.

I can't find many references to Aboriginal uses of it, please tell us if you know any more, but in the early days of white settlement it was depended upon as a vegetable. From what I can gather of its history of use, there was a terrible famine in Tasmania when supply ships failed to arrive. Grey Saltbush took on great importance as a famine food. It was eaten boiled, and it is still recommended today that it be cooked before eating.

The most delicious use it has been put to in my kitchen was to as a covering for a leg of lamb. I'd put the lamb in too hot an oven, and placed a bunch of saltbush on top of it to protect it while it cooked. A great example of nescesity being the mother of invention, we threw away the sprigs on top that were burnt, and underneath found the most delicious leaves that had soaked up a little lamb fat, and had become like crispy, lambey, vegetabley potato crisps.

The fantastic Michelle and Jo took a bunch to a feast at Tarremah school where they dried and ground it and used it to season and flavour bread. Ben Shewry at Attica uses it in a dish I'm dying to try, 'Potato cooked in the earth it was grown'. And a couple of fantastic Southern Tasmanian chefs weave it into their menus from time to time.

We have this plant available as tubestock for your garden, and if you're lucky (or ask nicely!) Mum might bring a bunch or two to MoMa this Saturday the 18th of February and to Farm Gate on Sunday the 26th.

Cats, and why I really don't like them.

It's frog season here, natural insect control, environmental barometer, lullaby and cute distraction.

I've been waiting for the inspiration to write a stream of consciousness post. For passion to strike so that I can write something heartfelt, perhaps entertaining, maybe interesting to people other than me....

We've been so busy lately, markets, supplying chefs, digging, propagating, planting, weeding, family stuff and quite a bit of playing too, that finding room in my mind for more than just a perfunctory plant listing has felt impossible.

But, tonight I'm fired up!

A huge, EVIL, black cat was just sitting on my back doorstep. I hate cats. So bad.

I have young chickens in my garden and I like to think that my choice in animals should not be affected by other peoples. My chickens will not jump a fence and kill somebody elses cat (no matter how much I wish they could...).

We deliberately leave room in our garden for wildlife. Apart from the fact that we love native birds and animals, they deliver an economic benefit in the form of pest control. Birds love insects, bluetongues eat snails and if you have bandicoots on your land, an optimal population of these critters will cultivate your entire soil surface over a 20 year period, all the while controlling corbie grubs and looking cute.

'Our' river.

Jewel beetle. Beautiful part of a balanced landscape.

Cats will directly affect populations of native creatures by killing and eating them. Consider that a house cat is recommended to be fed 150g per day, and a blue wren weighs 8 grams. A feral cat must need to take thousands of tiny lives to keep itself alive. But here is the bit that makes me really MAD, and frightened. A less understood, but terrible aspect of feral cats is toxoplasmosis. 

Toxoplasmosis is a disease caused by parasitic protozoa. It is carried by cats, spread by their faeces, harboured in earthworms, and is known to be dangerous to pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems. Feral cats spread the disease to native animals for whom it can be fatal. Where I live we have regular encounters with pademelons in daylight. These animals are nocturnal, but toxoplasmosis causes blindness, loss of coordination, and the animals soon lose a sense of night and day, and eventually weaken and die. One such animal was recently attacked by a neighbour's dog in my paddock, unable to hop away. I had the choice of furthering its suffering by trying to catch it, taking it to a vet to be euthenased, or leaving it to die in the bushes.

What I'd like to see, at least, is legislation controlling cats, at least equal to that involved with dogs. I'd like, at best, to see compulsory desexing, dusk to dawn, curfews and people being obliged to keep cats within their own boundaries, particularly in rural areas and adjacent to bushland.

What does all this have to do with plants, growing food and all the things I usually rant about?

Here, I'm hoping to tread lightly. To share my ideals of using land thoughtfully, valuing natural areas, looking after biodiversity, both in native and economic species.

So, please allow me my rant, and we'll get back to writing about a beautiful, edible plant next time.....

True free range (from the moment it hatched) chick.
Totally at the mercy of predators.
Its mother can protect it from hawks, cats are another matter.
We learned a few years ago we can only keep large breeds here.
Bantams all get taken by cats.

Native hens, also at the mercy of cats. Our local family hatch
up to 14 chicks and they usually dwindle to 2-3 survivors
when cats are about.

We'll be down at Farm Gate Market, with the best of our plants and produce this Sunday, the 12th of February, from 9-1, and at MoMa on Sunday the 19th of Feb. Hope to see you there!!

Mitsuba

Mitsuba, or Japanese parsley (Cryptotaenia japonica) is one of the many Japanese herbs we're regularly plucking from the garden.

It's a perennial plant that will thrive for four to five years, and will self seed if it's happy. We grow it outside here, on the flanks of Mount Welly at 300m, with all the frost, snow and wind that brings. It often dies down in the depths of winter here, and re-appears in spring. It's looking happy in a well composted, but not well watered corner of the garden through this hot weather. It's worthy of a place in the veggie plot for picking in generous quantities, or in the ornamental garden to enjoy the delicate white flowers and pretty foliage. It will thrive in a sheltered position, with well composted soil, in sun or part shade.

A parsley relative, with broad, mild flavoured leaves, to me it tastes like a gentle blend of parsley and celery, a lot of my books mention notes of chervil as well. The subtle flavour and texture of the young leaves makes it easy to find a place for in the kitchen. I like to pick newly unfurled leaves to use raw in salads, and older ones dropped into a hot broth just before serving or shredded in an omelette. I've also read that the seeds are commonly used as sprouts in Japan, whole leaves or bundles of stems for tempura, or leaves used to garnish and flavour chawan mushi.

We've got loads of healthy seedlings of this gem coming to Farm Gate Market this Sunday, the 29th of January, along with shisho, perhaps some small shungiku seedlings and a few wasabi plants for your Japanese kitchen garden, not to mention the rest of our ever expanding collection of edible plants. Come and see us from 9-1, and meet my special friend, colleague and inspiration, Sam from midday.

Last Farm Gate for the year

Globe artichokes, basil and shiso.

It's that time of year. The soil is still damp around here, it's getting late, but not too late, to plant those summer annuals like tomatoes and basil. The garlic needs harvesting, and it's our best crop ever this year. This season's young chickens need to be moved to a run where they can have a little more space, the grass needs cutting before the fire season sets in, the Scotch thistles are about to flower (ouch!) and to top it all off it's almost Christmas!

It feels a little wrong to me to promote anything for Christmas gifts, as so often it becomes a storm of junk with something like $500 million being spent in Australia on gifts that are unwanted. But, with two garden fairies here, Christmas is loads of fun and it is beautifully nostalgic trying to give them the joys that we remember from our childhoods. And an unwanted plant is easily passed over the fence to a green thumbed neighbour.... 

I reckon I'll find myself at Salamanca early on Saturday to pick out the last few things we need, including some gorgeous scarves my fantastic mother in law sells from a project she visits in Luang Prabang that supports women to work in traditional handicrafts (she can tell you more about this wonderful project), or some ceramics from the gorgeous Alex and Marion. And our friends at Harvest Feast will be there on Christmas eve with healthy, delicious food, including local, organic berries and Pigeon hole bread.

At Farm Gate Market this weekend it's our last market before Christmas, a great place to find gifts and food, made or grown by the hands that sell them to you. There will be herbal teas, gorgeous soaps, jams galore, wine, cheese, ham, honey, vegetables, Dorper lamb and Boer goat and, I'm led to believe, a certain red and white clad bloke, with a big beard, will be coming to wreak havock among the small people...

Yesterday Sam and I picked out some plants that we think would make lovely Christmas gifts, including some gorgeous French alpine strawberries in flower, nice purple sage plants and wasabi for those with a cool, damp patch in the garden. I've also printed up some gift vouchers for anyone who can't decide. We're planning on putting together some little boxes of plants, like tea garden plants, a beginners herb garden, or a bush tucker selection. We'll also bring down some pretty plants in ceramic pots ready to go on the  kitchen doorstep.

Angelica archangelica. A joy to have in the kitchen
and the garden.

Sea celery. Perennial herb native to Tas with earthy
parsley flavour. These will be in our bush foods pack
or as single plants in small tubes or larger pots. 

Dianthus plumarius. Hardy perennial with edible,
clovey-sweet petals. Very ornamental.
These will be in our edible blooms packs
or as single plants in small tubes or larger pots.

Hope to see you there, this Sunday the 18th from 9am - 1pm. We'll next be at market on the 8th of January. Have a fantastic Christmas!

Purple sage, variegated lemon thyme and wasabi.

Shungiku

Shungiku
Chop Suey Greens
Tung Ho
Garland Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum coronarium
Glebonis coronaria.

So many names, all for one fabulous plant!

This is a great plant. For me it ticks all of the boxes.

Ornamental. So pretty! Who can resist those yellow flowers?

Tasty. The leaves and ray petals of this plant are delicious. The leaves have a savoury/floral flavour. They are best added at the end of cooking, or with warm broth poured over raw leaves to wilt them, or young leaves are great raw in salads or included in sushi. The flowers can be made into a pickle, eaten raw as a garnish, or used as a tea.

Beneficial. Most members of the daisy family have flowers that attract beneficial insects to the garden. Hoverflies, lacewings, bees. It flowers early, and for a really long time.

Healthy. According to one of my very favourite books, it is high in vitamin A and folate, and the flowers contain good levels of vitamin K. It is said to be anti-inflamatory and anti oxidant and the flowers apparently have anti tumour properties. The leaves have been used to treat stomach disorders and eliminate phlegm.

Easy to grow. I planted this once, and from there it has had babies here and there in the garden. It is an annual, but late plantings overwinter and flower early in Spring.

Funky. Here we grow food for fun. New flavours, textures and experiences are all found outside my door. Putting something new on the table always stimulates conversation as well as appetite.

Broad leaf form. Gorgeous barely wilted in a hot broth.

Fine leaf form. Lovely raw in salads.

We supply this plant as seed for you to sow, as plants (I have serrate leaf and large leaved varieties in pots for your garden), or as cut greens and flowers for the kitchen. It will grow seemingly anywhere, but give it good, composted soil (or great potting mix in a good sized pot), plenty of water and a good amount of sun and it will thrive.

Come and see us at Farm Gate this Sunday the 27th of November for your piece of shungiku action!

We'll also have the last of our tomato and tomatillo plants, loads of basil seedling punnets- holy, common, Greek and purple varieties, along with plenty of other herbs and garden goodies.

And some other things that made us happy this week....

Aphid hunter.

Turnips. Snowball, Purple-top-Milan, Des Vertus Marteau, Goldball.

Slugs and snails and puppy dog's tails.

Well, slugs and blackbirds really. And also little boys.

A station wagon worth of market plants. All ready to plant in your edible garden.

Slugs and blackbirds are giving me a run for my money, eating seeds and newly germinated seedlings. At times it feels like an uphill battle. I have my brilliant friend and horticulturalist, Sam, helping me one day a week, but the rest of the time it's pretty much just me against the slugs, birds, escapee chooks and all of the other challenges a gardener faces, together with the usual things I have to fit into a day as the mother of two gorgeous garden fairies.

But a little (big) boy is about to help me win the battle.

I started this thing hoping to grow it slowly, to have a viable business to give me full time work when the littlest garden fairy starts school. But things have been going well. The people of Hobart are giving us great support at the Farm Gate Market, and a couple of amazing chefs have come along for the ride with us, offering support, sharing their amazing knowledge and advice, taking the good with the bad while we get the garden sorted.

So, now we've decided it's time that I gain the help of my partner in crime, the gardening chef.

The gardening chef in action.

For 11 years he's worked at Mures Upper Deck, creating gorgeous dishes with Tassie seafood. As our garden has grown he's started spending long stretches before work wandering the garden seeking out the lushest, most interesting leaves, flowers and veg for his plates. He cultivated, sowed, jealously guarded and nurtured his own patch of salsify, and this patch, I think, gave him his first real taste of fork to fork cooking. He roasted the salsify, blanched and blackened the kale then served them both with a few slices of melting Tallegio cheese. It was good. Bloody good!!

He is neat, organised, disciplined and precise.

I am chaotic and hopefully knowledgeable enough to counter my lack of discipline.

He cooks. Awesomely.

I garden. Rampantly.

He's decided to give up the head chef caper and take up some work in one of our favourite restaurant kitchens where he can be part of weaving magic with the best produce to be found in Tassie, and spend the rest of his time in the mud. With me.

So, between the two of us, some kitchen garden magic will flourish. And, either out for dinner, or at the Farm Gate, we'd love to share the fruits of our labours with you.

Shungiku, or Chop-suey-green flower. We have seeds, plants
and cut greens of this available at market. Tasty!

We'll be at the market this Sunday, the 30th of October, hopefully with the gardening chef and garden fairies in tow, for the Farm Gate's second birthday celebration.

Littlest garden fairy admiring a sundew, Drosera sp. in our 'scrub'.
This is why we want to use the minimum land to produce the maximum food.
To leave room for these important treasures.

The biggest garden fairy gathers and labels our eggs for market.

Calendula officinalis, double form.
Use petals in salads, on cakes or medicinally
in tea or ointment.
We grow it to attract beneficial insects.
And because we like to make posies.

Tiny 'National Two' radishes.