Food & sustenance

We all need and enjoy food, even our food needs food. From establishing a backyard garden to a large food forest we can help guide you towards achieving some degree of food security.

Growing vegetables, fruit and nuts is a low cost, high yield activity that can be carried out at almost any scale and with careful consideration takes very little effort. Locally grown, chemical free food is a key component to health and vitality.


Working with rhubarb

Working with rhubarb

Melisa made this fantastic rhubarb crumble.
I'm not sure what else went into it but it looks as good as it tastes.

It seems rhubarb just grows. All I did when we got here was divide up the one plant into 3 or 4 pieces, replant and cover with straw. Now it's ready to harvest.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb
Plum Wine

Plum Wine

With an excess of plums and apparently to much spare time, I decided to try and make wine. The process is reasonably simple, so I have high hopes.
No doubt as other fruit come ready I'll be experimenting with other flavours.
January 30, 2010
  Plums  wine  fermentation 
olmec
Process
Blackberries

Blackberries

Wild blackberries are a bit of a curse round here, growing rampantly wherever they can. However at this time of year they redeem themselves somewhat by offering up sweet berries.
In addition to the thorny wild plants, we have a thornless variety in the garden that produces larger, more accessible berries.
February 16, 2010
  Blackberries  weed  fruit 
olmec
More...
Peaches

Peaches

Our crop of peaches came ready unexpectedly early. Thanks to the wet season they are sensationally juicy.

As with the plums we have more than we know what to do with and so jam making was in order.
February 15, 2010
  Peach  Jam  Preserve  Fruit 
melisa
Recipe
Drying Fruit

Drying Fruit

Another way of dealing with surplus fruit is to dry them in the sun for use over winter.

Use a simple wooden frame with fine mesh / gauze stretched over and then place the cut fruit and put the whole contraption out in the sun.
February 17, 2010
  Fruit  Drying  Preserve  Summer 
olmec
Read more
Vegetable Dinner

Vegetable Dinner

Fresh vegetables from the garden are quickly and easily converted to a tasty meal.
Part 1 - Mashed potato, beetroot, onion and basil
Part 2 - Steamed beetroot and silverbeet leaves and beans
Part 3 - Salad of carrot, peas, radish, pepper and feta
February 23, 2010
  Vegetable  Food  Cooking 
olmec
Drying Plums

Drying Plums

The plum harvest has started and we are using every technique to preserve and offset some of the bounty.
Drying is one easy, low tech way to save fruit for another day. I made some trays with fine wire mesh that can be hung in the sun.
January 02, 2011
  plums  drying  preserving 
olmec
Got 'matos precious?

Got 'matos precious?

Our tomatoes are out of control, a huge improvement over last year.

We have a bunch of different varieties but the most prolific by far are the roma. Last year a lot of these ended up in the compost and subsequently sprung up all over the garden. Unable to bring myself to pull them out we are now drowning in tomatoes.
February 19, 2011
  tomato  preserve  stew 
olmec
Processing
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