Rohan Anderson's Blog, page 11

making something out of nothing

It started as an idea. The idea was to share a skill set with people that were interested in learning them. Skills from the old ways, when people worked for their food, when times may have seemed tougher and requiring more hard work, but folk were more content and healthier in both mind and spirit.

The wind picked up to 50km per hour gusts today, blowing the fine stable dirt around like a tumble dryer. Dirt has a way of getting into every nook and cranny, and by the end of the day I had a face like a coal miner. My denim on denim get up was coated with this fine dirt and saw dust, making me resemble some portly rodeo rider slash woodcutter. I felt as sore as a rodeo rider by the end of the day, but gee did I feel comforted by the fact that all the beds that we’d been working on over the last few weeks have finally been installed.

Keeping with the daily approach of using and re-using, we fashioned the beds from heat treated transport pellets and the legs from off cuts from tree lined streets and the supports for the legs even came from the bonfire pile! Taking recycling and re-purposing to a new level. But who cares? The beds are functional, sturdy and will keep people comfortable for a few nights whilst visiting the workshops. I’m guessing after a few days of me blabbering on about skinning rabbits, dispatching chooks and walking the forest for mushrooms will have people so tired they’d probably be able to crash on the stable floor!

We’ve tried as much as possible to set the workshops up with minimal impact but there is always some thing that is unavoidable, like using a petrol chainsaw, a cordless drill etc. But the reality of living in 2013, these things are part of our lives. They’re not completely necessary, but useful. I guess after my last post I want to reiterate that I’m not promoting a life lived in a cave eating grubs and dressed in rabbit fur for all of us, in fact far from it. What I do advocate is a life making choices that can have a reduction in negative impact on the environment. The old basics, reduce, recycle, re-use.

 

I’ve never announced that my way of living is perfect. Everything I do i.e. grow veg, forage, eat less meat, hunt etc is available to most people, even the city dwellers, as I lived that life quite comfortably living in a city. And where there isn’t an opportunity to perform these tasks then there is always an option to be a smart consumer. It’s all up to us. Even as confronting, different or uncomfortable it may appear to the normal modern life, at least you’d be contributing to a better world for generations down the track. Instead of throwing hands in the air like you just don’t care, maybe the option of looking at positive alternatives is better than doing nothing.

 

For more details and info regarding the workshops, please visit here. Be quick, they’re filling up fast!

 

All photos thanks to Kate.

Dear God, What Have We Done?

I venture into the forest near home in search of something that should be fairly common this time of year. Each time I return home empty handed. I’m so despondent with the situation, yet I continue to head out every few weeks. It’s mid April and I’m yet to find a mushroom for the pot (well thats not technically true, I did pick a basket of the little beauties whilst on Bruny Island). Locally speaking it’s still dry as a dead dingo’s donger. And thats a concern.

 

It’s been a dry summer, and one of the hottest on records. In fact I can’t remember a summer in recent years that hasn’t set some sort of heat record. The river is down lower than ever, many of the dams are dry, or close to it, and the forest’s gravel roads bellow with dust behind the truck. By now you’d expect a few good dumps of rain with the big storms at the end of summer, but we’ve had bugger all.

 

The climate is changing, that is a certainty. I know there are non-believers out there, but the science is hardly worth arguing against. Since the industrial revolution the spike has been warming, the oceans and rivers becoming more polluted and our forests dwindling. As a species we’re not slowing down in regards to our use of natural resources. Even as far back as the colonisation of the Americas, we’ve been in plunder mode. At that time Europe had been stripped of timber resources and the new world offered endless supplies of timber, but nothing natural is endless, but it can be managed. We don’t manage our timber resources as well as we could, but it’s one of the greatest renewable resources available. Stick to the simplest of rules. You chop one down you plant another. But we are consuming our resources faster than they can be produced, and in regards to the finite natural resources, we’re looking down the barrel of a loaded gun.

 

I know most people that read here already give a shit. And in many cases people care more than I do and thus live a life far more extremely sustainably than I do. The problem isn’t with you the reader, the problem is with the people who aren’t reading. The masses. And they make up the majority of the western world. The more I live the simple life where I have to work for my food, the more I become removed from the modern world. This has allowed me to view the modern world as an outsider. I see what people eat, what they put in their shopping carts and I scratch my head. In a very real way, the problems we are having with climate change are directly linked to what people are putting in their shopping carts and ultimately into their digestive system, and it’s killing them twice. Firstly, with health problems. Never before have humans had to deal with such a huge scale of health problems. The likes of morbid obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, all of them are caused by what we eat and our lives that now are far more sedimentary than ever before. The food is killing us off secondly because of the way it’s produced. It’s carbon emissions wrapped up and made palatable. Every bit of food that you buy thats packed in plastic, pre-cooked, snap frozen, has been treated with fungicide, herbicide, insecticide or has had synthetic additives added has a carbon footprint. Every single piece of food. Even the ‘fresh’ food, it’s often travelled thousands of miles.

 

The processed food is the worst. Lets take a look at a tin of pre-processed chunky soup.

The raw materials, the vegetables at some point have been treated or in contact with synthetic agricultural chemicals. Those chemicals require the use of finite resources to create them, not to mention how harmful they are the the human body and often leave residual in the soil and natural environment.

 

The raw materials are transported, this requires energy, resulting in carbon emissions.

 

The raw materials are then cooked and processed, this requires energy, resulting in carbon emissions.

 

Additives and preservatives are added to the soup. Synthetic chemicals that then enter your digestive system. But surely the person that consumed them has a background in Chemistry so has a full understanding of what they’re consuming.

 

The processed food is then packed in tin or plastic, either way it’s put into a vessel that will more often than not end up as land fill, not to mention the energy required to make the vessel resulting in yet more emissions.

 

Then the can is painted with some logo and information convincing you how good it is for you, reminding you of that fresh country soup your great aunty used to make.

 

The can is then transported to a storage facility (DC – Distribution Centre) where it is selected to go to the supermarket it’s needed.

 

Off into a truck, driven many miles. Carbon emissions blah blah. This is getting boring now.

 

The punter, buys the can of soup, it’s popped in a ‘green reusable bag’ even worse than plastic bags and driven to it’s new home.

 

When the moment is right, the can is opened, the contents tipped into a bowl and it’s popped into a microwave. Energy … yawn.

 

SO whats wrong with all this?

 

Well I want my fucking mushrooms! And the climate is all screwed up because of the can of soup and so it been a rainless summer and it’s autumn and still I have no AUTUMN mushrooms. It’s natures way of telling us things are seriously wrong! And it’s all because of that can of soup … well not just one can of soup, all the cans of soup, and the the microwave, the flash car, the big house with all the stuff in it … etc. I hope I’m making sense here. It’s not the literal can of soup, it’s a metaphor for all the things in our western culture that we can live without if we just simplified.

 

So are we stuffed? Most definitely. Is there something we can do? Most definitely. We can start by growing the veg for the soup in our backyard, and secondly cook the bloody soup from scratch, yourself. If you don’t know how to ask someone to show you. By growing your own vegetables for the soup you’re cutting out heaps of carbon emissions, those as a result of the ag chemical production, chemical transport and application, raw material transport, processing, packaging etc. The next thing to do is live with less, buy second hand, recycle, just be smart about what you consume. It’s not like we all should crawl into caves again, just find some sort of balance in life. Grow your own, buy local and live with less. All makes a difference.

 

But I fear that it’s more important to watch hours of television and simply zone out like a mindless zombie and not give a shit. That’s the option for most people in the western world. I know that will have people offended and complaining, but that’s the facts. Mark my words, this planet of ours is hurting, and will continue to hurt because we as humans are unstoppable in our hunger for resources. And there isn’t a government in the world, nor a single person that has the power to change the way people live their lives. And so the resource appetite will continue until the air is poisonous, the rivers are beyond repair, our climate is so far from where it should be that food production for the masses will be increasingly hard to keep up with and wars will be fought over clean water and food. The basics of human survival. So why instead don’t we just concern ourselves with those basics (where possible) in our very day life right now?

 

This is what goes through my mind looking for mushrooms in the forest. Dear God, what have we done to have ourselves in this state where we ‘need’ everything done for us. Why do we have to work for money and not for food for our families. Why? Sometimes I wonder if it would be a good idea to scrap everything and just start all over. Before that happens I’ll pick some veg and make a soup.

island providing life

The wet sand snuck in between my toes, the cold salty water of Adventure Bay lapped against my naked ankles, I was back on the island, my internal smile grinning from ear to ear, my external face all serious and in full tilt ‘adventure mode’. It was a good feeling to be back. It’s not a feeling of home, of comfort, of reliability, it’s a feeling of adventure. It’s still wild here, anywhere where the ocean rules supreme is wild, but here, it’s also wild on land. The people are free (some slightly wild) and life is slow. Maybe thats just my vision, through visitors eyes. But I see what I see, I am after all just a sponge. Aren’t we all?

We’d come back to the island to visit Kate’s father,  a resident now of a handful of years but not quite a local. Being back on the island has me going wild again. Before we’d driven onto the ferry, I’d walked the beach, cracked open an oyster and devoured it raw off the rock, where the pacific oyster grows freely, escapees from the many oyster leases in the bay. My mouth fills with the taste of ocean. It transports me back to my childhood beach holidays, not that I ate oysters then, but the taste of fresh oyster peeled and shucked from off the rocks, has a surreal way of  bringing flashbacks of mouthfuls of salt water being dumped whilst boogie boarding the surf at Anglesea as a prepubescent ratbag.

The fish fed us well. Simply cooked, mostly eaten with fingers. The taste of each species different from the previous, and giving us plenty to bullshit about. Sometimes we’d add some coriander, some chilli, garlic or ginger. Sometimes just grilled with a dash of olive oil and a flash of salt. Either way, this was fish we’d caught, hours earlier, off the little boat, with our two hands. This is the only time we really eat fish, other than the trout and eel I catch in fresh water. The difference is the range of flavour and texture. It’s just magic. A total experience, just like the brochure of life said.

There was one day remaining,  my last chance to be out amongst it all. I was determined to make the most of the day fishing for tucker. An early hour had me up and ready, down where I’d left the boat on the beach a few days earlier. I packed everything needed, and took another look at the swell, it was big. Maybe I should have stayed on land, maybe a few hours more and the wind might calm. But the fish. The pan, empty. Dinner.

I made the call and packed the small tinny, waded out into the cold mornings water and started the motor. I got past the break no problems, it was the big swell behind it that was the challenge. The boat rode high then dropped hard often with the loud slap of aluminium haul hitting cold salt water. I passed a few boats with four or five blokes in them, all looking at me with a mixture of concern or bewilderment, but nonetheless we waved as we passed. I figured just getting on the other side of the bay would see the conditions much calmer, so preservere I did. Low and behold the waves subsided the further I got from Quiet Corner (how ironic). I dropped the lure and trawled  as I went, a strike here and there garnished a few more Australian Salmon and a nice Barracuda. Enough for a feed so I pulled up to a rocky bay where the water looked calmer.

I sat alone, eating my lunch looking out at the rough water and dark clouds above. So menacing was the view, I shuddered with the thought of being caught out there. A human is nothing but fish food as soon as they step foot in the sea, and this day was a clear reminder of that, hence my life jacket tightly secured over my chest. The waves lapped the rocky bay as I munched on my tucker. I couldn’t wait to be back out there, I was drawn to the water, to the chance of catching some fine specimen. But I sat alone for a while longer, pondering. I wondered what other blokes my age were doing at that moment. Probably in an office, building a house, fixing a car, or watching the football. I was pretty happy to be doing none of those things. I was sitting next to a dead albatross, eating a salad roll in a place called Adventure Bay. It was a good day.

I fished a few more runs with the lure and finally talked myself into chugging the coastline of the bay and heading back to return the boat to its beach home, and me to the kitchen to cook the fish and enjoy it with fine company of the Berry family. I didn’t catch the big one, I didn’t fill the esky with fish nor did I fish for glory, but I filled the pan with fish and fed us some fine fresh seafood. We eat mostly seafood when we visit the beach, and we eat mostly vegetables back home. We eat what’s around us. Not dissimilar to a life lead for thousands of years. Kinda makes sense don’t you think? To eat whats around you. Not whats packed, processed and shipped from thousands of miles away. Food for thought. Fish for thought.

 

Thank YOU!

I often get overwhelmed by the response on this blog. I have to say a big big thank you to everyone for a beautiful show of human kindness yesterday, it almost brought a tear to my eye….I’m pretty sure it was just me cutting the onions though…..arh arh. Your support has been fantastic. We have got a great response for veg boxes this week and the veg will be picked out of the rich volcanic soil on Friday as usual and delievered by our mate Arn on Saturday (as we’re away visiting family down south).

Some people have asked for a blog banner…..so super mega clever Kate went and made a gif banner for WLL veg boxes…..

Steal it from here….

Oh and here is the link you’ll need to send the gif to

http://wholelarderlove.com/generalsto...

HOW THE VEG BOX SYSTEM WORKS.

 

help wanted

For the last few months, every Saturday morning at 5am my alarm goes ding. It’s veg box delivery day. It’s become a weekly ritual of sorts. A ritual that encompasses my whole view on food production and distribution. The food we supply is grown down the road from our place in rich volcanic soil, totally organic (certified for 30 years) and it’s pulled out of the patch the day before we deliver it to city people. A far cry from what’s available at the big supermarkets, but I don’t need harp on about that western world problem right now, we have our own problems to contend with.

So on Saturday before the sun rises from it’s slumber, we load the boxes of vegetables from the farm and head down to the big smoke. We talk to the veg eating customers as we hand over the produce, we love hearing about all the meals that have been enjoyed over the previous weeks with the fresh vegetables and fruit.

 

After the three drop of point in the city we head back west to complete the final drop off to a handful of townies in Ballarat then home to rest with a cuppa then continue the daily chores before a well deserved rest, and no doubt heavy slumber.

 

When I lay my head down, shoulders and back a little challenged by the days activities, I can’t help but contemplate the purpose of what we’re doing. On the western Highway heading to the city we’re often passed by oncoming 16 wheeler trucks marked with the big brands of supermarket chains heading back to the country to deliver food, often driving food back to where the primary produce was raised. We have a 7ft trailer, they have semi trailers shipping endless pallets of stuff, destined for the shop floor. We are just a miniscule dint in the food delivery system, not even a bee’s dick. We have no intention of competing, and we run on the smell of an oily rag. In fact if we can’t generate more orders for veg boxes I regret the inevitability of continuing the venture all together.

 

Last week we hardly filled the trailer, and just covered our running costs. I’m stubborn in the belief that the vegetables and fruit are so organically good that they don’t need any advertising. I assumed word of mouth would be enough, but I now wonder how valid my assumption was. I often cook with this veg and we love it’s possibilities for family meals. I’d love to see other families tucking into this real food also, but I think I’m going to have to ask for some help. So if you know any family or friends that would like to order, even joining forces and a few mates sharing one box for the week. Any help would be grand. There is an alternative to the supermarkets, it’s families like us delivering it to you on a Saturday morning with a hired trailer and a bombed out old Jeep.

a house is not a home

The sun drops over the western paddocks gliding with ease, from pleasantly warm afternoons, into cool and crisp evenings. The days shorten, as the sun exits earlier, and the moon appears brighter. Bright too are the hordes of unknown constellations filling the night sky, which most nights, of late, have been devoid of clouds, exposing a celestial vista of brilliantly dotted suns. It has a way of putting a man back in his place. The seasons have shifted.

Around dusk we walk the surrounding land picking up fallen sticks and pine cones, kindling for the evenings fire. Its probably not a necessity to light a fire but it sure does wonders for the soul, especially after busy days when you feel you’ve worked hard all the waking hours but achieved very little. I’m not sure why, but it’s the evenings when I complain to myself about what I failed to achieve that day. There is always something needing to be done the following day. Planning the oncoming day is best done in the company of a crackling fire and a glass of pinot.

The food patch, currently in a metamorphic state, is looking a little shabby, rest assured it’s very much productive. The many variety of beans, both climbing and bush, are now full of pods ripe with green beans, but we don’t eat them now, they’re a staple for winter. As are the pumpkins that still grow, resilient for now but soon to be defeated with the first frosts of Autumn. Their bounty, however, will be enjoyed for many months, as will the carrots, kale, spinach, beetroot, parsnip, potato, onion and celery…

This garden, as beautiful as it is to us, is set to be completely demolished in the coming months. A requirement of our rental agreement. There is an element of frustration with this predicament, as I planned to be in this house longer than a year, but that is the unpredictable nature of being a poor man tied to a rental agreement. I dream that one day I may have enough money to purchase the right block of land and own it outright. To build for the future with permanency guaranteed. I see so much good land being used inappropriately or not being used at all, it’s often a heartbreaker but I must persevere.

When the time comes to vacate, I’ll have to rip up all that work I put into setting up the patch, then move to the new place and start turning the soil to yet again, set up another renters garden. My new landlords have assured me that we will have longevity in our lease, which is very comforting. Thankfully we’re moving in early winter when the garden isn’t so full of produce, and I’ve been working hard to bolster of stores in the larder to accommodate any shortfall in food supply.

While we still live here we decided to make the most of the current place, and decided to spend a few nights in the cabin. Just me and my girls, back yard camping for school holidays. No theme parks or indoor play centres, just a smoke house sitting by the veg patch, campfire dinners and plenty of warm blankets. We had a ball.

The wind howled through the trees in the evenings and the morning the early light snuck in through the cracks in the roof. The girls wished they could live in the cabin, and I wished I’d made it bigger. We enjoyed the experience and thats what matters. I hope the kids remember this place, for what it’s worth it’s been a hectic challenging year for us all. I’m hoping we settle more at the next home.

An Unprejudiced Palate

Autumn not only brings the beauty of the deciduous trees to life, it also hails in the busiest time of the year for larder stocking. The kitchen is a hive of activity, the stove often on with large pots bubbling and boiling above the flame. Steam fills the room, as does bowls of discarded fruit peel, and empty bags of sugar and vinegar. A large fowelers pot sits bubbling away, stocked with jars of pears, apples, plums and nectarines all being preserved for winter baking and fruity treats.

Tomatoes are sliced, salted and dried in a warm ventilated oven, then carefully placed in jars filled with chilli and olive oil. Crushed tomatoes are decanted into long thin jars as passata for winter stews and anything that requires that taste of summer to bring it to the fore.

Old variety pears site in wooden crates, finishing off the ripening process before they’re either bottled or sneakily eaten by small marauding children.

Pumpkins sit in odd places for the lack of storage space. Here they’ll store cool and dry, by the time winter comes they’ll become a regular feed. From soup to pizza, risotto to simply roasted, pumpkins are a mainstay of our winter diet. Soon the beans will be stored, they too are a winter staple as they dry well in the pod and store cleanly in large jars waiting to be included in the weekly chilli bean stew. And chilli is dried for cooking or made into a hot salsa picante to dress the mornings bacon and eggs, roast vegetables and anything else that demands the kick of chilli sauce.

The kitchen shelves, the deep freezer and the outside larder fill up with pretty jars of stuff and things, all different colours and shapes, all edible, all delicious, all made by hand. Not made by craftsmen, or people of the food industry, but people like you and me … it’s us folks.

 

What was once a dream is now not just a reality, it’s a life well lived. Most evenings end the day with a “I’m knackered”….or….”Yeah I’m stuffed too” as we fall into bed spent. Where I used to lie in bed and worry about work politics or money, I now merely drift off, barely able to last a few pages of a book before I concede that tiredness has got the better of me.

When I first read ‘The Unprejudiced Palate’ I smiled with hope at the end of most pages. Now I feel like Angelo and I could be friends sharing our daily stories of cooking and living the good life. It’s a life thats often sort after by many, and often it’s dismissed as something of a romantic notion. But for me it’s something thats within reach for anyone. All thats required is determination to make it happen. Do I have it? Well I’m trying my best and as a result I’m enjoying life like I never imagined.

My larder is full of food that is free of chemicals, factories hands and machines, it’s local, it’s branded with low carbon miles. But best of all, it’s just simply real food. Stuff that’s grown in my yard, in my friends orchard, on trees that surround abandoned settlements, picked wild from the ground or bartered with friends.

If I was asked what I was cooking with, many years ago, I’d have a stag in the headlights moment. I often re-heated factory food in an oven, open store bought sauces and added them to out of season vegetables and badly raised animals. I’d often microwave processed pasta meals and crumbed chicken. I made a decision to leave that behind, head for the hills and life a life like something you’d imagine to see in rural Spain, where food is appreciated for it’s seasonality and cultural importance, it’s also grown in the back paddock.

Anyway, enough talk. It’s late. I’m stuffed. Good night.

 

 

 

tradition

My back strained as I bent over the sink, washing a years worth of dust off the old long necks, one dark glass bottle after another. The task seemed endless and the tips of my fingers felt rather prune like. It was a task I couldn’t avoid. The annual passata making day had come around once again and I needed as many  clean bottles as I could get my hands on. I’d lost a few in the boiling process last year, and because I don’t drink beer, I hadn’t replaced my cache of broken bottles. I was short a few dozen bottles, but it passata day, I’d have to make do with what I had in store.

 

Passata is crushed tomatoes, nothing more nothing less. It’s been a staple in Italian kitchens for countless generations, and much of my cooking relies on it as the base for slow cooked stews, pasta sauces and breakfast beans.

The Romas are picked ripe, at the end of the growing season, crushed then bottled to ensure the kitchen is in supply throughout the oncoming year. Its liquid summer thats stored in dark glass bottles.

 

Each year we source boxes of tomatoes on a wholesale level. Growing that many tomatoes myself is not feasible, and it’s too risky. If I have a poor tomato growing season, like I’ve had this year, then I’d be stuffed. So I rely on getting the red gems from commercial growers when the fruit is at it’s peak. Each year they’ve come from a different supplier, but the sauce remains the same. In fact thats what I love about this food chore. Its the same every year. The fine details of the process that is.

 

This year my children and I were the only people that had been at all our passata days. Everyone else was new. Each year  we’ve welcomed new members into our passata family and to date not one year has had the same people.

 

As I attached the hand crank tomato machine to the outside table I looked over this most basic of engineering feat with wonder. It had been there every year, it works for just one day a year. It’s basic form and solid construction works like a draught horse, it’s hardy and reliable. It’s beauty is in it’s simplicity, a handful of parts that once assembled, transform into something that makes crushing tomatoes an easy task, so much so that you can crush a few hundred kilo in a days work.

 

We worked well into the afternoon, keeping hydrated with Ray’s home made wine, and a few crisp lagers. The process is the same every year, we decant the red sauce into the bottles, caps are secured with a mallet then placed in 44 gallon drums filled with water to be boiled well into the night. In the morning the sealed bottles of tomato are stacked in the larder for a year of storage with the inevitability that one day that bottle is plucked from the shelf, poured into a pot to form the basis of a hearty meal.

 

 

I cleaned the machine away, stacked the full sauce bottles in the larder and looked at my efforts and smiled with a little bit of pride. Each bottle represents a meal, and there’s almost 100 bottles. Like a squirrel storing provisions for the oncoming winter, we too now have our pile of acorns.

 

 

 

 

 

My back strained as I bent over the sink, washing a years...

My back strained as I bent over the sink, washing a years worth of dust off the old long necks, one dark glass bottle after another. The task seemed endless and the tips of my fingers felt rather prune like. It was a task I couldn’t avoid. The annual passata making day had come around once again and I needed as many  clean bottles as I could get my hands on. I’d lost a few in the boiling process last year, and because I don’t drink beer, I hadn’t replaced my cache of broken bottles. I was short a few dozen bottles, but it passata day, I’d have to make do with what I had in store.

 

Passata is crushed tomatoes, nothing more nothing less. It’s been a staple in Italian kitchens for countless generations, and much of my cooking relies on it as the base for slow cooked stews, pasta sauces and breakfast beans.

The Romas are picked ripe, at the end of the growing season, crushed then bottled to ensure the kitchen is in supply throughout the oncoming year. Its liquid summer thats stored in dark glass bottles.

 

Each year we source boxes of tomatoes on a wholesale level. Growing that many tomatoes myself is not feasible, and it’s too risky. If I have a poor tomato growing season, like I’ve had this year, then I’d be stuffed. So I rely on getting the red gems from commercial growers when the fruit is at it’s peak. Each year they’ve come from a different supplier, but the sauce remains the same. In fact thats what I love about this food chore. Its the same every year. The fine details of the process that is.

 

This year my children and I were the only people that had been at all our passata days. Everyone else was new. Each year  we’ve welcomed new members into our passata family and to date not one year has had the same people.

 

As I attached the hand crank tomato machine to the outside table I looked over this most basic of engineering feat with wonder. It had been there every year, it works for just one day a year. It’s basic form and solid construction works like a draught horse, it’s hardy and reliable. It’s beauty is in it’s simplicity, a handful of parts that once assembled, transform into something that makes crushing tomatoes an easy task, so much so that you can crush a few hundred kilo in a days work.

 

We worked well into the afternoon, keeping hydrated with Ray’s home made wine, and a few crisp lagers. The process is the same every year, we decant the red sauce into the bottles, caps are secured with a mallet then placed in 44 gallon drums filled with water to be boiled well into the night. In the morning the sealed bottles of tomato are stacked in the larder for a year of storage with the inevitability that one day that bottle is plucked from the shelf, poured into a pot to form the basis of a hearty meal.

 

 

I cleaned the machine away, stacked the full sauce bottles in the larder and looked at my efforts and smiled with a little bit of pride. Each bottle represents a meal, and there’s almost 100 bottles. Like a squirrel storing provisions for the oncoming winter, we too now have our pile of acorns.

 

 

 

 

 

autumn calling

My boots kick up small clouds of dust as I walk across the dry paddock, it’s been so long since we’ve had rain. It surprises me how the stock have survived this long summer, eating nothing much more than just the dry grass. Poor bastards, covered in thick wool all summer, it can’t be pleasant.

The autumnal colours make the fields look as fake as a hollywood picture, but they’re real. The early evening hits the golden hour, the tones and colours are accentuated to extreme as the sun releases its final rays for the day.

I approached the old homestead with caution, the long dry grass is often visited by copperheads on warm days such as today, and as much as I respect snakes I’m not keen on being bitten on the ankle. I’ve spotted quite a few this summer, enough to be vigilant when traipsing through their territory.

The sun was still high by the time I reached the dilapidated house, and it was warm enough that I’d worked up a sweat. I was on a reconnaissance mission of sorts. At the rear of the old place is one of the largest walnut trees I’ve ever seen, not to mention the large chestnut too. The walnut is pushing 100 years of age, its base is as wide as a car and its branches spread outward like elongated fingers, shading the ground below it with dense foliage. It’s a truly beautiful site. The kind of feature that would make me buy the land just for the sake of the tree.

Finding a well established walnut tree or chestnut is a real coup for me. Both types of nuts I love to eat as a snack, but more importantly they often end up in lot of my cooking. I love using walnut in pesto and in salads and chestnut in stuffing for hunted game. And walnuts are especially a favourite as they store well for a year if dried properly.

It’s probably a bit early to foraging for walnuts (and far too early for chestnuts). Traditionally I forage for them closer to easter, but like all food that I forage, I tend to keep an eye on its progress during the season as nature is unpredictable, she’s a beast that doesn’t run by a strict calendar. And it’s been a dry summer, so I figured the nuts might drop early this year, and my hunch turned out to be right. Standing below the tree I spotted walnuts everywhere. The soft flesh had even rotted off a few exposing the hard shell of the nut.

I cracked a few open, all disappointingly shrivelled or rotten. There is plenty of nuts still on the tree, maybe over the next few weeks might get my hands on some better nuts. I guess I’m a little too eager. Just like I’ll check on the wild apples and chestnuts.

Hopefully they too will provide some tucker for the home kitchen and larder. If not I’ll rely on something else. Thats the flexibility I need to have. Nothing seems to be a certainty. Like the birds of prey that glide on the warm winds, I too need to fly on the wind that is provided. Not to work against, it but to embrace it. For now I’ll accept the gift of a bunch of apples and be on my way, forever keeping an eye out for the next new tree that will provide another bounty.