Grass Roots Bimonthly Magazine Australia

Sustainability and self-reliance no matter where you are!

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No 277 Jun/Jul 2023

Print Post Approved 100009760

• Blockbuster Bantam • Pesto • Foil Deer & Rabbits • Organic Roses • Knit A Beanie • Heritage Breeds Farm • Winter Recipes

Lamb, Lavender, & Bushfoods

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XXXXXXXXXX Contents By xxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, xxx.

18.

People 6. Chin Chin Farm Sonia Whiteman 18. A Lifestyle Block MaryAnne Gaylor 46. De-Teching Rachel Hore 66. The Way Things Were Ian & Normajean Gasking & Colin Lewis 68. Creating Friendships & Genuine Connections The WWOOF Office

June–July 2023

58.

16. Creative Gardening Kellie Floyd 22. Lilly Pillies Jan Scott 27. Chocolate Pudding Tree Julia Schafer 54. Latin Plant Names Jess Adams

Farmstock & Pets 10. Traditional Breeds Judy Barnet

Garden

32. When Poultry are Sick Megg Miller

14. Roses Without Chemicals The GR Team

33. Bantam with Big Eggs Megg Miller G R A S S

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30.

Contents

68.

Cover story!

Chin Chin Farm Page 6.

Practical DIY 24. Revamped Table Janet Hall-Frith 56. Flood Damaged Gardens Pam Thoday 58. Rabbit-Proof Plants Angela Fry

Craft 30. Beaut Beanie Nerida Thomas 31. Easy Knitting Gwen Deem 48. Upcycled Craft for Kids Pam Thoday

Environment 26. Biodegradable – the Terminology Nightmare Biotuff Team 62. Deer – Friend or Foe? Greg Siepen

53.

70. Dream Big with SolVa Diana Gosper

Regulars 5.

Food 51. Pssts Pesto Gail Foster 52. Vegan GF Winter Dahl Theresa Daley 53. Filling Winter Fare Kate Downham

Gumnut Gossip

By Megg Miller

35. Livestock Health 36. Eco News 37. Feedback Link-up Feedback 49. Kids Page

Cover Photo

50. In The Kitchen

Stu & Sonia. Photo supplied.

72. What’s On

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the Taungurung People of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land on which we live and publish Grass Roots. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

We welcome and respect the great diversity of our community and the strength and agility it provides, including differences of ability, belief, gender identity, outlook and sexuality.

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73. Sow This 74. Round The Market Place 75. Recent Releases 76. Down Home on the Farm

By Suni Miller 78. Grassifieds 81. Breeder Listing 81. Club Directory

from the editor

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Gumnut

Gossip

By Megg Miller OAM

Rugged up and ready for winter?

Got the broad beans in and snow peas up? Mother nature is giving us a preparatory winter run right now and it’s a salient reminder that By xxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, xxx. chilly winds and driving rain will be par for the course very soon. I don’t mind working weekends during deadlines when it’s cold and miserable but sunny ones? Nooo, I want to be out gardening. At least winter weather offers the opportunity for guilt-free time indoors and reading.

When you read MaryAnne Gaylor’s article about her gardening and lifestyle efforts on her block in Boyanup, WA, you are bound to be blown away and impressed.

MaryAnne has created an environment and a life that many people dream of: a simple lifestyle where reliance on outside inputs are low, a close relationship with nature in its many forms and a carbon footprint that’s low compared with many other people.

MaryAnne has continued the reforesting work of previous owners with the result that her block has become a safe place for native birds and fauna. In addition, she has planted easy to manage dwarf fruit trees, grows her own vegies and loves her friendly poultry. This hard worker repairs, reuses, repurposes and recycles and I can guarantee you will be itching to put on your garden gloves and start working after you’re read ‘A Lifestyle Block’.

It’s good to self-examine occasionally and check your goals and decide whether a bit more effort in the garden, the craft room, even the kitchen could elicit more satisfying results. MaryAnne has set a high benchmark.

The Queensland Garden Expo held at Nambour in early July is an

event where lots of info is shared.

No doubt many northern readers visit and while I can’t say absolutely that I will be attending, there’s a strong chance I will be present and speaking. Check the event details closer to the date and come along and say hello. It would be fantastic to have real face time with you.

If feral pests are a headache you may be interested in Greg Siepen’s article about deer, deterring them and protecting trees and fencing.

Rabbits, too, cause grief to many landowners, Angela Fry continues highlighting the measures she and hubby Mark have implemented, the focus this issue on rabbit proof plants. Very helpful.

When a parcel arrived recently we thought Santa may have had the seasons mixed up, but the sender was Fryderica from Bankstown and the contents an array of colourful carry bags. This crafty reader repurposes cushion covers and pillowcases into handy carry bags, hand sewing them as she watches telly. We’re very grateful for Fryderica’s thoughtfulness, check out her letter in feedback.

Do your feet get itchy when you read the regular WWOOFing story? What wonderful opportunities are available if you’re keen to learn about farming and can visit WWOOF hosts. Long lasting friendships develop and when hosts like Tracy in her story on page 68 mention WWOOFers’ parents coming to stay you know what a rich cultural as well as work exchange the WWOOF system is.

Pop some scones in the oven, heat up the soup and settle for an enjoyable read in front of the heater. There are lots of stories to engage and inspire you. T

Edited by Megg Miller and Jessamy Miller.

Published by Grass Roots Publishing, Box 117, Seymour 3661. Ph: 03-5792-4000. Email: greenliving1973@gmail.com Office hours: 9am–5pm Mon to Thurs. For display advertising, contact Clive Lochner, email: grassroots@clivelochner.com, Ph: 0413-743-251. PO Box 7477 Bondi Beach, NSW 2026. For classifieds see page 78.

We take great care in selecting and verifying all material that appears in the magazine, but do not necessarily share the views expressed in letters and articles, nor do we accept responsibility for the accuracy of statements made by contributors.

Printing by Ive Group, Silverwater, NSW, and distribution by Are Direct, Frenchs Forest, NSW. ©2023 by Grass Roots. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

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Chin Chin Farm

By Sonia Whiteman, Chintin, Vic.

This couple has found the right balance of activities and products along with the satisfaction of improving their soil and natural environment.

My husband, Stuart, and I own a 160 acre property about one hour’s drive from Melbourne. On it we produce lavender, lamb, honey and bushfoods and also run workshops.

We sell our lavender mainly as essential oil and dried buds, but we also make teas, hand creams, room sprays and soaps. Our lamb is sold at Woodend Market and Tallarook Farmers’ Market once a month through our lamb boxes, plus some is made into smallgoods. We flavour our honey as a way of differentiating it, so we have smoked honey, coffee honey, saltbush honey, lemon myrtle honey and, of course, a lavender honey. Our bushfoods are used in our meat rubs and teas.

We have recently started to run workshops here, bringing people onto the farm and running activities with local artists, teaching people new skills. While we have lunch we tell them about what we do and why we do it, and spread the word about the motivation for regenerative farming, looking after the land and the techniques involved.

This year we will open the lavender field for ‘U pick’ and we are planting a range of wildflowers for the same purpose.

History

We bought our property about 10 years ago. Stuart and I both grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Templestowe at a time when you’d get home, grab your BMX and disappear until dinner time and your parents didn’t know where you were. You were busy making ramps for your BMX bike or building bridges across dams and the like.

We have two boys, Max and Tom,

and in the city we were nervous about letting them outside the front gate by themselves!

We started thinking about farms and ended up with one that has 24 hectares of native woodland that the boys could explore. Overall, however, the land was in very poor condition. What we saw as green was just really 100% capeweed and onion grass, but being the rookies that we were we thought that was great. It was beautiful and green and lush compared to living in the city.

After the purchase, we brought the boys up and drove around the perimeter so we all knew where the boundaries were. After telling the boys to go out and explore, we found them still standing at the car.

We said to them, ‘What are you doing?’ And they said, ‘Oh, are we actually allowed to do stuff?’ And we said, ‘Yes, of course, you can’t get lost so you’ll be fine.’

From that moment onwards we knew we’d made the right decision.

That first summer, Stu and I were cleaning out the old shed and the boys came back from a walk and they were wet from top to toe, sloshing around with gumboots full of water. We said, ‘Where have you been?’ And you know, kids have that look on their face of ‘Holy crap, here it comes. We’re about to get into trouble,’ and they nervously said, ‘Well, we wanted to know how deep the dam was so we walked through it.’ Stu and I were like, ‘Awesome, this is why we bought this place!’

From then on we started farming with a dozen sheep and didn’t do too much with it other than try to remediate the land itself. We quickG R A S S

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ly realised the whole place was rundown so we spread some lime and a little chicken manure.

About four years ago we realised how much we love it here and decided to look around for an appropriate enterprise. We soon worked out that 160 acres is not enough for a real sheep business so we investigated alternative crops. We researched options that would grow in bad soil and that don’t need much water, and I said to Stu, ‘Bingo, let’s try lavender.’

Stu has always loved lavender more than me, so we decided to plant a test plot and we also found an organically minded agronomist to assist us. We had to deal with the infestation of capeweed, and the soil was high in acidity, so we used a calcium-magnesium-phosphorus blend to modify the acidity and more chook manure to provide fertility.

Lavender

Don’t let anyone tell you that lavender is easy to grow! It might be if you only have a few plants in the garden, but lavender farming is much more complex. We learnt that even though lavender can grow in poor conditions, it does much better (as most plants do) in good conditions.

We started by applying the minerals and manure along with worm castings to the soil and rotary hoeing it. After a few weeks for incorporation, we planted the lavender with a product from a company called Soilcharge which stimulates root growth and soil bioactivity.

Last was the application of weed mat. We found the lavender grew well, but the weed mat was not enough to control weed growth so

we are replacing it with mulch that we source from the council.

Raising the pH and improving the biology of the soil has been effective and the capeweed has been out-competed. We trialled a planting of legumes in between the rows last year and that has worked well.

The legumes provide nitrogen to the soil and their roots bring up nutrients and moisture from lower down in the profile. In addition, the lavender field looks absolutely beautiful.

In autumn and winter we let the sheep in to graze. Sometimes the whole flock is in for a limited time or if there is little feed, we allow just a few to chew down the weeds, but out they go before they start on the plants. You have to be watchful or they will prune the plants too much. harvest

We harvest in December or January, depending on the weather, and in two different ways – hand and machine. Hand harvesting is done with a scythe and each bunch is held together with an elastic band, then taken to the drying room (a 6m container) where it is hung upside down in the dark until dry.

The buds are stripped and cleaned using a number of sieves. Lavender buds can be used to perfume a room and ours are food grade so suitable

for cooking. They hold their colour, stay purple and look magnificent.

The mechanical system uses a modified tea harvester. It is mounted on a little trolley and pushed along the row cutting the flowers off. They are then taken immediately to the still for oil production.

The plants are fertilised in autumn and while some farmers prune them then as well, we wait until spring. In autumn, we want our plants to prepare for winter, casting their roots deeper into the soil. When they are pruned, they start thinking they need to grow again instead of going dormant.

Sometimes retaining the stubble can also help them survive a heavy frost and even once a fall of snow.

Pruning starts in August and has been done by hand, but we are planning to use the harvester to prune.

Between pruning and harvest, not much work is required apart from some fertiliser also in spring. We don’t have irrigation so if plants get too dry we flood irrigate them using the ute and fire-fighting trailer. The same system is used on the native plants when they are young and establishing.

We’re planting more lavender out the front, which will become our visitor patch, where visitors can easily learn about the farm and G R A S S

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pick their own lavender. A different variety will be used, one much bigger and showier so people can take gorgeous photos.

Lavender Products

We have won awards for our lavender essential oil and also developed a product called Relax and Retain for our son when he was doing year 12 which includes rosemary essential oil. Rosemary is for memory retention and the lavender and rosemary blend is good for anxiety and tension. We do a salve with our beeswax and lavender, as well as a hand cream, sleep balm, room spray and yoga mat spray. The lavender also goes into one of our honeys, two tea blends, a hand soap and a meat rub with our bushfoods.

Interestingly, we made the tea blend initially with strawberry gum and lemon myrtle, which worked, but seemed to be missing something and when we added the lavender it gained a floral note rounding out the flavour profile.

Sheep

We now run a flock of 150 Aussie White breed sheep which started with 12 first-cross Aussie Whites. The breed is modern and ideal for Australian conditions. The sheep shed the fibre they grow and

Bees

so no shearing is required. We have had them for about seven years and the flock has just grown as we have kept the ewe lambs from each year.

I think the meat is superb and we constantly get brilliant feedback from our customers at market. At first, our butcher was a bit perplexed because he said, ‘Oh, I prefer my chops with a big layer of fat on them and these look a bit too lean.’

They have fantastic intramuscular fat so he just needed to get used to it. The flock is easy to look after and does not require much effort.

We manage the sheep organically so at times we give them supplements of seaweed meal, dolomite, copper and even garlic.

Aussie Whites will lamb three times in two years, and we leave the ram in with the flock and never wean the lambs, so they get a good feed from mum and less stress. We love looking after our lambs, love having them here, and will always have that flock, but I don’t think we’re going to become huge lamb farmers.

BushFoods

Most of our woodland is messmate eucalypt which does not flower every year, so when we harvested the lavender we thought ‘Oh my goodness, what are our bees going to do?’ We started to search

for what else we could grow whose leaves, rather than the flowers, could be used in the still in the off season.

We turned to bushfoods because we love to cook, they’re better adapted to the Australian environment, and the leaves could be used and the flowers left for the bees.

Now we have strawberry gum, lemon myrtle, anise myrtle, Australian native thyme, Australian native oregano and river mint. This year we are planting sea parsley, sea celery and native basil. Recently I added some lilly pilly and also raspberry wattle, whose resin and flowers taste like raspberry, so that’s really exciting.

We have saltbush and wattle but not for the sheep! The saltbush is used as a bushfood, and both are fire retardant, so they line the property to help minimise damage to other crops in the event of a bushfire.

In planting, we’ve had hits and misses, finding the pH adjustment and Soilcharge products help enormously with poor development.

I have also found an effective Australian native fertiliser tablet and we now know to dig the planting holes much deeper and add gypsum to soften the clay barrier.

We prepare the bushfoods using a dehydrator, then pulverise or flake them.

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My husband Stuart and our eldest son Tom both love honey and are fascinated by bees, and when we had all the lavender we thought, why not start an apiary? Tom has been our chief apiarist, and when we started we found we couldn’t get into some markets with our honey because there were already honey producers there and the markets didn’t want too many people selling the same product. So we started flavouring the honey to make it into a different product.

The boys attended a beekeeping course, and we obtained our first nucleus hive six years ago. Now we have nine hives spread throughout the property. We don’t migrate the hives as we prefer to plant more abundantly for them and reduce the kilometres our honey travels.

We have our own honey extraction equipment and the honey is bottled in its natural state without heating. The bees seem to do well on our farm plants, the bush nearby and the clover, capeweed and dandelion from time to time.

Our saltbush honey tastes like salted caramel which is popular.

We also get apple wood from DV Cider nearby which we use to make smoked honey and they use it drizzled over cheese on their platters at their restaurant.

Overall I guess you could say that our approach is food and flavour from the ground up – if you look after the land the rest will come. Our experience here has shown that when we look after our soil first and the plants second, everything else is healthy. We also love to learn and living this way we learn something new every day.

We managed to have a mini break about a week ago, going away when the land was dry as a chip and on our return it was so green, which was so rewarding and shows the value of organics.

Chin Chin Farm, 673 Chintin Rd, Chintin, Macedon Ranges, Vic. Ph: 0411-401-969. Website: www.chinchin farm.com.au. T

XXXXXXXXXX Traditional Breeds By xxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, xxx.

By Judy Barnet, Glenlyon Dam, Qld.

Judy has spent a life devoted to rare and heritage farm animals.

I am a Director for the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia and it is my absolute passion to teach people about the beautiful breeds of domestic livestock available.

When I decided I wanted to milk cows for a living I was very lucky to learn from one of the best dairy farmers in Queensland, well, the best, actually. One thing the Bourke family taught me that I love to pass onto people is that it costs the same to keep and milk a good pedigree cow as it does any old cow, but the benefits are so much greater, you know the output. Plus if you sell cattle at a sale I guarantee you will get a much higher price for a line of a breed than a bunch of crossbreds.

I combine my love of rare breeds with my Airbnb farmstay and it has really paid off. People enjoy seeing the different animals and I hope that in some small way it may influence them in their life or their children’s.

In fact, a few of my guests are now members of the Rare Breeds Trust.

Tom, Lottie, Judy and Dear Richie with the big cow at Highfields Pioneer Village.

I also write a weekly column for our local paper – the Warwick & Stanthorpe Today, ‘Tales from Traprock Flats’, which also features my partner, Dear Richie. We do have a bit of a Dad and Dave farm. This is a voluntary job and

I do it so the people now living in retirement homes that came off farms have something to read about farming and maybe a laugh. Most local papers have very little farming content these days.

I am a longtime member of the Highfields Pioneer Village, near Toowoomba, and for many years in the pre-covid days I took a half a dozen cows for milking, 20 sheep for shearing and display, a sow and litter plus assorted poultry to its annual Easter Vintage Festival.

Those were the good old days.

Judy’s background

Dreams are free and that’s how it started. Back in 1986 I was a spring chicken of around 21 years of age.

I had grown up in New Zealand and moved to Papua New Guinea with my parents, where I completed schooling and found an office job as well as doing voluntary work for the RSPCA. I guess I should mention that at one stage our family G R A S S

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had 16 dogs, all considered by the RSPCA as unable to be rehomed, with various problems such as one eye, three legs, well, you get the picture. From PNG I arrived in Australia with Mum and Dad, settling on the Sunshine Coast in Qld, and I soon found an office job in Brisbane. Always being a bookworm, the one hour train trip each way didn’t worry me.

Once I discovered Grass Roots the dream grew and grew, taking on a life of its own. I won’t bore you by rambling on about the 37 odd years in between, but today I consider myself incredibly lucky and grateful that I now have 160 acres on the reaches of Glenlyon Dam, four hours south-west of Brisbane in the Darling Downs and just an hour from Tenterfield, NSW. RAre breed Farm

I moved here in 2014 after 15 years of milking cows, contract rearing dairy calves, working in a piggery and continuing part-time office work in Warwick. I had a small Ayrshire Stud for quite a few years as well as Large Black pigs.

Here at ‘Tilba Tilba’ at Glenlyon Dam I built up my Large Black pig stud to a dozen sows. I sold most of my dairy cows before leaving Warwick – the country out here is quite poor, they call it traprock country, and it’s certainly not suited

to dairy cows, but I also had some beautiful old type of Shorthorn cows. As well, I had a flock of Dorset Down sheep purchased from one of the oldest studs in Australia by accident at the Warwick sheep sale, which was one of my main reasons for buying a bigger property. I also had a few Southdowns of the original type; it is a breed I have always loved. And poultry – I had bred and shown different breeds of poultry since the early 1990s.

It sounds like living the dream – I guess I was, with a lot of hard work, but it all came crashing down when my partner of 17 years became very ill with bipolar disorder. He ended up in hospital for four months, leaving me sole owner of a new farm with a big mortgage in an area where I knew no one.

I had an admin job in a lime mine 45 minutes from home so this enabled me to keep going – just. I didn’t know the country, and there were challenges with the sheep.

Living on the land is not all beer and skittles; the hard times are what make you grow and learn.

Anyway, learn I did and I was once again incredibly lucky to meet a new soulmate, Dear Richie.

Together we plodded along, building up the sheep flock, leasing a bit of land for the Shorthorn cattle and breeding beautiful Large Black pigs. Then the drought came and

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that rocked me to the core. My commitment to the animals meant there was never a skinny animal on our property, if I couldn’t feed them they would have to be sold.

The pigs were sold to a fantastic guy in Victoria who continues on with them today, and who also donated to me a full semi load of beautiful hay for which I am forever grateful. The cows, except a couple of weaners, were sold to friends, and the sheep culled down to a nucleus flock.

After the drought came the floods which filled Glenlyon Dam. It was a amazing sight. As an irrigation dam for the cotton farmers downstream, a lot of the time it was just like a river at our place. We are at the head of the dam so the water just kept flowing through.

We built the numbers back up bit by bit and then covid arrived.

It brought a few little hardships, being on the border and not being able to get to work, but every cloud has a silver lining and just a week before covid we had taken on two young English WWOOFers, Tom and Lottie. The usual stay is three weeks but instead they stayed 10 months. During that time my contract at work came to an end and I didn’t know where I would get work as we are quite remote, being an hour from the small town of Stanthorpe.

We decided to renovate a cottage on our farm next to the main house.

When I say ‘we’ it was mostly Tom and Lottie that did the work. I also worked as a contractor for the local waste facility so nothing new was purchased for the cottage. My years of attending farm clearing sales as well as working at the tip had resulted in my being a borderline hoarder, but this turned out to be an advantage. The cottage became an Airbnb and it has been the best thing I have done in my life (except meeting Dear Richie).

Next I bought a half-renovated rat-infested bus named Kermit.

Parked at the edge of the dam, it has been a character building experience not to mention very costly to renovate Kermit to Airbnb standard. I recently met some carpentry angels who have been bringing Kermit up to the next level. I often wish I could live in Kermit these days, watch the swans sailing by and the silver fish jumping out of the water, look at the stars through the windows at night and see the full moon rising up above the water.

Our Present Situation

Our farm is 160 acres of undulating gentle to medium hill country with flats going down to Glenlyon Dam. The dam is currently 98% full at time of writing and is host to around 100 black swans up my end, plus pelicans, various ducks and

The cottage has been renovated for Airbnb.

waterfowl as well as Murray cod, perch, water rats and turtles. I have a book written about the birds of Glenlyon with a count of over 100.

The country here is traprock – suitable for goats and sheep but most farmers have changed over to cattle as they are less labour intensive.

We’re currently running 150 sheep; a Southdown stud, a Babydoll stud, a small Shropshire stud and a small English Leicester stud. I also have Dorset Horn, Dorset Down, Border Leicester, Damara and Texel sheep just to show people the different breeds that are available.

I run around 30 goats, a couple of Saanens for milking and the rest bred up from ferals, which I alternate putting a Kalahari Red buck over and a milking buck (British Alpine or Saanen).

I only have a couple of Shorthorn cattle that I have artificially inseminated plus a couple of crossbreds.

I support other stud pig breeders and buy pigs from them to use for events then finish them off for our own freezer.

When it comes to poultry there are 50 free range guinea fowl; Australorp bantams, which I have bred for 30 years; a few Modern Game and a pen of mixed breeds just to show people the different breeds available. Plus some Muscovy ducks – the best ever for B and Bs plus they don’t for some reason head off to the dam never to be seen again.

I may no longer be a spring chicken but it’s a very satisfying life here.

Volunteer Opportunity

I am still Secretary and Treasurer for the Qld Branch of the Australian Pig Breeders Association as I haven’t been able to find anyone to take on this job. If anyone has an hour a month please let me know. I consider every breed of pig we have in Australia to be rare now, there are very few registered breeders so if you are considering purchasing a pig or two, please consider buying from a registered breeder.

The benefits are many, including disease-free status, follow-up care and advice to name a few.

Find Judy on Facebook, Glenlyon Dam Holiday Cottage, or email: ewe2@ bigpond.com, ph: 0422-938-865. T

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Roses Without Chemicals By the GR Team.

Last issue we shared the colourful Silkies Rose Farm at Clonbinane in Victoria.

Dedicated operators Diana and Graham Sargeant along with son Ben are committed to organic and biodynamic methods of growing and protecting their plants. ‘Our aim is to grow plants with high levels of vigour rather than trying to make them grow fast. We use and recommend complete organic fertiliser with added trace elements and humates. This creates the natural balance needed for better colour, length of flowering season and longer vase life,’ Diana said.

‘There is really no one single secret to beautiful healthy roses, we’ve found you have to work with nature and put management time in. You definitely don’t need to use harsh chemicals, even if pests or diseases occur, you can solve the problem naturally and this is going to be better for you as well as the environment. If I was really pressed for a secret to success I’d

have to say ensuring the nutrition is balanced and adequate,’ Diana said.

Pruning Tips

With winter here many readers will be thinking about pruning and the Sargeants recommend waiting until July when the roses have lost all their foliage. At Silkies Rose Farm there is a general rule: summer prune one-third of the bush and winter prune two-thirds. Old and damaged wood along with spindly branches should be removed.

Graham advises that you should take old wood out on at least onethird of the plant and highlights that you can prune down to the bud union/base. Don’t forget too that you need to cut on an angle to allow moisture to run off.

‘Don’t ever think you will harm your rose by pruning it, put gloves and protective gear on and enjoy the experience of pruning your plants so they can get on with their job of producing magnificent healthy foliage and masses of flowers,’ Diana said.

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She advocates that all rose bushes and climbers should be dead headed and trimmed constantly during their flowering season. In fact, she adds that if any time during the season your rose isn’t performing as you expected, give it a trim, then a dose of organic fertiliser and a deep soaking with water and turn your back on it. Within weeks you’ll find it has rejuvenated and is flowering again, in fact, you will find the response amazing.

An essential part of the pruning routine is to follow cutting back with the application of seaweed solution over the plant or Eco Rose organic spray.

Year Round Care

Although roses are very hardy and long living, a good start is valuable. Generally it’s less stressful for the plant if you start with bare-rooted roses, which are discussed further on. With existing bushes, after pruning and an application of seaweed solution, optimum results will be

obtained from monthly seaweed treatment, increasing to fortnightly when bushes are flowering heavily. The value of seaweed is that it stimulates plant growth and flowering, reduces stress and enhances root development. Roses also benefit from mulching. Lucerne, pea straw or even a good pine bark will keep the root area cool in summer, reduce water loss and help deter weed growth. A bare area of around 10cm should be left around the trunk.

Eco Management

The Sargeants decided early on that an organic approach would be better for their health and would provide the standard of product that they wanted to be associated with.

Aside from bringing in quality organic soil, they needed products that were reliable and worked well and could be used by anyone, not just commercial operators.

That they were introduced to the Organic Crop Protectants (OCP) Eco range proved a blessing. The time saved treating pests, diseases and weeds has been able to be used more constructively on areas like breeding or developing new roses.

The Eco range includes an oil to control sap sucking insects, neem to manage sucking and chewing insects, a fungicide for well-known

fungi like black spot, rust and powdery mildew, and a product called Eco-shield for snail, slug and slater control.

Other products include seaweed; a liquid fertiliser made from recycled marine growth called Ecoaminogro for better growth for all plants as well as roses; a soil wetter and moisture attractant called Ecohydrate, and Slasher, a weed control spray based on plant oils that’s fast acting and non residual.

The OCP Eco Organic Garden range is available from garden centres, hardware stores, online or from Silkies Rose Farm.

Favourite Treatment

An ongoing maintenance program is carried out regularly with the roses and involves application of a simple, safe and economical spray. In a large bucket place 1 /4 cup Eco-fungicide, 1 heaped teaspoon Eco-seaweed powder and then add 1/4 cup Eco-oil while filling with water. Mix well together and spray leaves to run-off stage.

Apply monthly or more often if pests or disease occurs or during critical periods.

Seaweed Boost

For a growth boost, dissolve 1 heaped teaspoon Eco-seaweed in water in a 9lt watering can. Apply G R A S S

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to foliage or soil. Combine Ecoseaweed with Eco-aminogro in water for a powerful rapidly absorbed liquid fertiliser when needed.

Bare-rooted Roses

Winter is the time to order bare-rooted roses; jump online and be inspired by the comprehensive range carried by Silkies Rose Farm.

You need to get your sites chosen and prepared ahead, the hole for planting being wide, rough edged and deep enough that the bud union will sit just above ground level.

Don’t be tempted to add fertiliser or animal manure to the hole, they’re appropriate later on, instead well rotted compost is recommended.

With the hole dug, you need to consider staking because it’s best done at planting.

The Sargeants believe staking of standard roses is necessary to ensure longevity. Bamboo stakes are inadequate; steel stakes are Graham and Diana’s choice. They recommend 1.80m long steel stakes for mature plant support, especially in windy areas.

Once bare-rooted roses are collected or arrive, the damp packaging and plastic should be removed and the sticks and roots placed in a seaweed solution for up to 24 hours prior to planting.

When ready to plant, shape fri-

able soil in base of hole in a mound and fan the roots out over this.

Backfill, tamp soil around stem and give two buckets of water then apply seaweed solution. Don’t let roots dry out, but equally don’t over water. Fertilise once foliage appears.

Enquiries Welcome

If you’re a keen grower you might like to access the Sargeants’ monthly blog, it features specific roses, helpful hints and Graham’s ‘Dad’ jokes. Go to https://rosesalesonline.com.au/rose-rambler/.

Details can also be found on the range of bare rooted and potted roses for sale and on OCP Eco products. Enquiries are welcome via email: info@rosesalesonline. com.au or ph: 0418-337-765. A visit is an awesome experience, Fri to Mon, 9–4pm or by appointment.

Silkies Rose Farm, 550 McDonald’s Rd, Clonbinane, 3659 (just off the Hume Highway). T

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Creative Gardening XXXXXXXXXX By Floyd,xxxxxxxxx, Melbourne,xxx.

Vic.

By Kellie xxxxxxxxx,

Gardening with kids is a beautiful activity that offers numerous benefits, from improving their physical, emotional, and cognitive development to teaching them about nature, responsibility, and patience.

Here’s a fun and creative activity to try with your little ones: making eggshell planters. Not only is it an enjoyable way to watch seeds grow, but it also provides a subtle lesson on the importance of soil health,

recycling and composting. Here’s how you can create your own eggshell planters.

What you’ll need

• empty eggshells (we used ones from our backyard chickens) • soil (we used some from our backyard) • seeds of your choice (we used mung beans and alfalfa, but you could use chia seeds, lentils or many more) • toilet roll holders or egg cups • spray bottle or watering can • permanent markers and/or craft eyes how to make

Adding the faces. Left to Right: William, Tihan, Xavier and Harriet.

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After using the eggs in some delicious dish, carefully clean the shells’ insides with water to remove the membrane, then let them dry.

Let the kids get creative by drawing funny faces on the eggshells with permanent markers, and

glue on some googly eyes if you like. We cracked a couple of our eggs, so it may be worth having a few extras on hand.

Cut toilet paper rolls into 2cm loops and decorate them to match the eggshells. Use these as a stand for the eggshells.

Use a small spoon (great for coordination) to scoop in the soil until it’s three-quarters full.

Carefully add your chosen seeds to the eggshells.

Sprinkle a small amount of soil over the top of the seeds so that they’re slightly covered.

Using a spray bottle or watering can, water the seeds until the soil is moist. Be careful not to overwater, as the eggshells have no drainage, and excess water may cause the seeds to rot.

Keep the eggshell planters in a sunny location where the kids can easily water and watch the seeds sprout and grow (the kitchen window was perfect in our house).

Once your plants start outgrowing the eggshells, you can plant them directly into your backyard veggie patch. The eggshells will break down and provide valuable nutrients to the soil.

This gardening craft is a fun and engaging way to introduce kids to the joys of gardening and the importance of sustainable living.

It’s an opportunity to spend quality time together, create memories and cultivate a love for the natural world that will stay with them for years. T

Adding the dirt.

Then putting in the seed.

They are ready says Harriet.

GR back copies $8 each posted.

See page 82 to order

G R A S S

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A Lifestyle Block XXXXXXXXXX

By MaryAnne Gaylor, Boyanup, WA. By xxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx, xxx.

MaryAnne has utilised her generous sized block to create a wildlife refuge and a productive food garden, and is delighted with the results.

Over time I have transformed my block to provide a safe haven for wildlife like quendas (southern brown bandicoots), lizards, butterflies, possums, visiting waterfowl, beneficial insects, birds, and my poultry. I have a half-hectare block of land one street over from a main highway in a little town in WA’s glorious south-west.

I live in a weatherboard house with a verandah along three sides and a carport re-purposed into an outside room with an added storeroom built across the former entrance. I’ve just turned 75. The spirit is very willing, but the body is getting tired. getting established

I bought the property 25 years ago and I am still renovating the house and establishing the land as a habitat and multipurpose garden.

The block is roughly 120m long by 40m wide, and flat until about halfway in, where it slopes down to the dry creek bed and then slopes up to the back fence, creating a little valley.

It’s part of a natural wetland and in the cooler months, there is a natural rainwater runoff from the town creates a watercourse through the little valley, which feeds into the river nearby. The original owners built a bridge across the middle as the winter stream can become a raging river 12m wide on the odd occasion.

The previous owner planted many trees. Some have blown down, providing mulch, firewood and stand-alone cut pieces of trunk to create internal fencing. You’ve heard of Stonehenge. In the middle of my block there is Treetrunkhenge.

Upcycled corrugated iron vegetable cubes.

The previous owner shared with me an interest in permaculture and planted a diverse mix of timber trees, a now huge white mulberry, fruit trees, native trees, exotics and several mountain ash trees, which may grow above 90m high in the future. Now 29 years old, they are halfway there and the black cockatoos, pink and grey galahs, white cockatoos and another 48 species of birds thank her for starting the ball rolling on a completely cleared block of land.

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I thank her for the cooler temperature in the middle of the block in my ‘forest’, but the big fellas shed bark twice a year as they grow, and drop twigs, branches and huge limbs over everything else, so it’s a lot of work to collect it all.

I turn some into firewood, and collect long, good-sized branches or limbs to build fences and edging around beds, stacking them on top of each other horizontally. Much of the collected material has to be burnt in the permitted bonfire months.

Treetrunkhenge area, including two bath frog ponds and part of the Chooky Poo Hilton.

On the other side of my street there is suburbia and what a contrast: houses and duplexes on suburban-size blocks with human inhabitants. Over the years most have had wandering cats, barking and wandering dogs, noise and other pollutants, and with lawns or weedy front yards.

As the third owner here, I’ve improved the basic little house, with renovations, alterations, additions such as double-glazed windows, roller shutters over windows, ceiling insulation, solar rooftop panels (perhaps battery storage in future), and a brand new and very different kitchen and bathroom.

The bath is now one of three bath frog ponds. When the single toilet died, its base became a plant holder in the back garden, and I enjoy the new ‘raised’ toilet in the new bathroom. Good for the

View from up the back looking towards the house, showing some of the planted bushland.

bionic knees which replaced the old ones. Climbing geraniums grow out of an old washing machine and across a metal spring bed-frame, while Lebanese cucumbers grow in a laundry trough by the poultry pen.

The house has mains water, and sewerage was connected in 2003.

A bore was installed in 2003 with 170m of underground 40mm tubing, utilising nine outlets with 18 taps to take water all over the block. I closed off the outlet under the lemon scented gum when the tree dropped a massive limb on it, breaking off the tap. I’ve just replaced the bore’s pump.

Opportunities

My chosen lifestyle has provided so many different opportunities.

I have lowered my carbon footprint and I support local businesses, continually try to reduce my amount of ‘stuff’.

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I’ve removed all the lawn and replanted to provide habitat for other living creatures to create a safe haven and a place for interdependence.

The garden changes and evolves.

I used to have six rotating vegetable patches. Rabbits visit occasionally, wild ones, black ones, white ones, so I have cut scrounged roofing iron sheets into pieces about 50cm long, and punched holes in the edges to join 4 pieces with tie wire to create cube-shaped gardens on the ground.

I rake up truckloads of leaves, tear newspaper into strips, rip up plain cardboard, paper bags and add anything else on offer for compost.

I create layers of these materials around each fruit tree, add chicken manure pellets, all purpose fertiliser and blood and bone. A similar mix goes in the metal cubes. I feed the worms that gather with vegetable

Wide shot of large cacti and succulents in front and side garden areas by the house.

and fruit scraps, and the fruit trees thrive.

In the cubes I add a 20–30cm layer of my own ‘good’ soil on top and then sow seeds for vegetables, using companion plants, adding white, yellow and purple flowering plants to encourage pollinators and grow herbs at the base around the cubes from dug up bits with roots.

I grow basil and tomato seeds together in a cube with spring onions and chives nearby. Ducks and chickens help to aerate the soil as they rummage for worms and bugs.

To avoid going shopping, which I hate, I stock up one to two years in advance with everything I need.

I had 200-plus toilet rolls in the storeroom when covid arrived on our doorstep.

I repair, reuse, repurpose and recycle. The stainless steel bowl from a washing machine became a pot for a dwarf pear tree.

Nine dedicated lizard, bird, butterfly and bee-friendly drinkers sit on top of old fenceposts wired together or on top of slabs of trunk from cut-down trees, stacked on top

of each other. A convection microwave oven’s turntable was ‘glued’ to the flat end of an old fence post with a big pot plant saucer fitted snugly on top of it.

I keep clothes until they die; old clothes become ‘wearing out on the block clothes’. I am not interested in fashion, I mostly source what I need from op shops.

To create a garden inexpensively I make new plants from cuttings, strikes, leaf propagation, layering, divisions and collected saved seeds.

I regularly dig up and create multiple new plants from one bought plant if I build up the soil at its base for roots to grow. The plants are used for food, companion planting, enjoyment, habitat and to be waterwise with species like succulents.

I grow small and huge succulents and cacti (some are taller than the house) from pieces sourced from existing plants.

There’s a mix of groundcovers, small, medium and tall shrubs, exotics, cottage garden plants, herbs and vegetables, often planted together, and dwarf fruit trees provide easy G R A S S

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access for my old bones.

To provide for the many different environments and interdependence I have a total of seven ponds in use: three repurposed baths, three children’s paddling pools and a big liner pond that holds about 5000lt.

After the first year I had to start all over again with the liner pond because of a rich bloom of algae.

I counted the buckets of water I removed and gave many plants a drink. It’s been naturally crystal clear for 24 years.

All ponds are regularly topped up with bore water, and I have to remove leaves from the big pond as the biggest bay tree in the southern hemisphere grows by the side of it.

The chooks need clean water containers everywhere. Ducks turn every water container into mud within seconds, including their paddling pools, cleaning their bills when rummaging for worms and bugs, and all the muddy water is reused on plants.

Two former smaller liner pools have become bog gardens.

I’ve been vegan for 20 years but provide a home for poultry whom

Indian Runner ducks, standing on tiptoe, rummaging in an above ground bath frog pond.

I neither eat nor exploit. My geese were here for 20 years. Pekin bantams have been the chickens of choice over the years and my five year old Indian Runner ducks are delightful pets. I erected 50mm x 50mm weldmesh to a height of 1.1m alongside maybe 90m of the existing post and wire fencing to keep them on site and to prevent the ducks from swimming onto the neighbouring properties. They have a great time and wild waterfowl from the nearby river will often visit during the months when water runs through the properties. Some wild ducks have even produced offspring here.

All poultry are run free range, with plenty of shade and cover. They are protected at night by a totally enclosed 10m x 3m homemade pen with ‘rooms’ known as Chooky Poo Hilton, which were created from old roofing iron and Colorbond fencing sheets with repurposed weldmeshenclosed areas at each end, where plants also grow.

Another totally enclosed pen is nearer the house that can be used if a tree falls onto the bigger pen.

I use internal weldmesh fencing and gates to close off the various very developed garden areas at times. The chooks also have access to back garden areas behind and to the side of the house, which are heavily planted with a variety of plants. This is an area of about 1200m2, enclosed by Colorbond fencing with various access gates, that is known as Compound MaryAnne. It was originally created to be a safe area from wandering cats. It’s very private and provides security too.

It all works so well, with occasional dramas, like the visit from a beautiful brown goshawk in the big pen saying hello to the two ducks who were in one of their two children’s paddling pools that are in use during the warm months of the year. I heard a new duck call that day.

I intend to leave here in a box. T G R A S S

21 R O O T S

Indian Runner ducks having a lovely time rummaging in the wide stream area. They have a great time swimming on the water.

XXXXXXXXXX Lilly Pillies ByByxxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx,Qld. xxx.

Jan Scott, Ormiston,

Use berries from this native tree in cooking or enjoy them raw.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Australian native plant, the lilly pilly.

When we bought our house 11 years ago its small back garden was bordered on three sides by mature lilly pillies. Pretty evergreen foliage, yes, and they were shady trees which attracted many beautiful birds. But I wanted space for herbs and vegetables so my mission became to grub out as many lilly pillies as I could. Twelve trees were aggressively attacked and I kept

some branches and trunks for stakes and edgings.

But now for the love. My remaining six lilly pillies produce edible berries which I’ve come to appreciate, as do the birds!

THE BENEFITS

The orangey-red small berries appear in summer after clusters of pretty fluffy white flowers have studded the trees. Aboriginal people refer to the berries as ‘medicine berries’ and think they help to prevent colds and infections. Scientists agree the berries are very high in vitamin C. A few years ago, I began to use the prolific berries (not just rake them up for the compost). They have a tart but spicy flavour and I now use them in multiple ways.

Lots of my berries are seedless, but any seeds are easily pushed out from the berries. I add the washed berries to our muesli, I cook them in cakes and loaves and muffins, I add them to salad dressings, I make jam and chutney with them, I combine them with bananas for a delicious fruit loaf. I haven’t tried making lilly pilly gin yet …

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HOW TO GROW THEM

Here in the subtropics lilly pillies love our climate. I have to prune my trees because of space, but that new red-brown foliage is so pretty. There are over 60 varieties of lilly pillies so it’s worth finding a size and variety that suits your garden. The Acmena type have more upright foliage and smaller leaves while the Syzygium is sometimes troubled by psyllids, a native pest that causes pimply foliage. Not all will produce berries, so make sure yours do if that matters to you.

All lilly pillies love well-drained soil, but don’t seem to need much additional watering, fertilising or mulching. Mine certainly don’t get special treatment.

TO HARVEST THE BERRIES

Because my trees are so mature and tall, I wait till the ripe berries fall on my pavers and into the mulch. Bending and stooping for them is only a small problem, and it means there are still scores of berries left for our beneficial wildlife.

Now perhaps you might understand my love-hate relationship with lilly pillies. T

aUthors: Are you Aware of Copyright?

At GR, we occasionally recieve submissions that unintentionally breach copyright laws.

Copyright laws make it illegal to copy or disseminate any form of original work. This includes articles and photos from newspapers and books, including recipe books. It is not sufficient to quote the source, the written permission of the author or publisher must be gained before we can republish it.

Copyright law also covers information that is readily available on the internet, such as facts, botanical details, recipes, patterns and digital photographs.

Where such information is used for inspiration or as part of research, it must be reinterpreted and reworded to create an entirely new and original work.

Infringement penalties can be quite high, so if submitting work to a magazine like GR, please ensure it is your original work, or that you have the copyright owner’s written permission to republish.

Thank you!

Revamped Table

By Janet Hall-Frith, Kyogle, NSW.

This well-made picnic table may have been an heirloom, but came up a treat after Janet restored it.

My husband Michael received a bequest from his late Aunt Olive in the shape of a timber slatted table with metal legs and three similar chairs, all painted in mission brown.

They have sat in our gazebo for a few years and we used them for morning teas, lunches and so on.

I enquired the age of the set from Michael’s mother Bernice as they originally belonged to her parents.

Aunt Olive was Bernice’s sister. It turns out that they are approximately 40 to 50 years old. How amazing.

They are such solid and well-made pieces of timber furniture and after this restoration project should last quite a few more years and maybe be handed down to the next generation sometime in the future.

I removed the old screws and laid the slats on a table in the order I removed them from the legs and sanded them with my lovely little electric sander which saves a lot of effort compared with using sandpaper. Then I chose the paint I wanted to use and wouldn’t you know it I had quite a lot left over from a previous project which I didn’t want to waste and it was a lovely bright orange. That would do nicely. I gave the slats three coats before I was completely happy with the finish, allowing it to dry thoroughly between coats.

Next step was to sand back the metal legs which was a little more tricky than the timber slats, so I used my little sander but had to finish off with sandpaper around the hard-to-reach places, which took much more time, but I wanted this to be a good job so I persevered.

I then chose to use black gloss spray paint; again, I had some left

Janet is as proud as punch with her finished table.

The table before restoration was an uninspiring brown colour.

over from a previous project. I gave the legs two coats of the spray paint.

I bought some new screws in the same design as the old ones and my hubby very gladly lent me a hand to get it all back together and get the screws and nuts inserted and tightened.

Finally the finished article. I am very pleased with the outcome; you could say I am as pleased as punch. It’s cheery and still sturdy and ready for a cuppa or two to be had and has been saved from going to landfill. The only thing now is I have three of the chairs to restore; I can see that I am going to be busy in the near future! T

The slats were all removed.

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Sanding of slats.

Ready for painting.

Three coats were applied.

Metal legs before restoration.

Sanding has begun.

Painting of legs completed.

Side view.

The finished table.

Ready for use; a job well done.

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Biodegradable – the Terminology Nightmare By the Biotuff Team.

Biotuff, a company making biodegradable bin bags, among other ecofriendly products, is pushing back against unclear marketing.

The term biodegradable is quickly becoming tarnished within the ecofriendly field. With so much confusion, many shoppers are left worrying if their choice of products is less environmentally friendly than they first thought.

‘Not all biodegradable products are created equally; unfortunately some contain additives toxic to our environment,’ Nadia Crighton from Biotuff said. ‘This is completely counterproductive to the ecofriendly population, leaving consumers confused.’

People are advised to read the fine print and research their chosen brands. ‘Many consumers purchasing biodegradable products assume they are 100% safe for our environment – and rightly so,’ Nadia said.

‘However, this is simply not the case.

Consumers must educate themselves on the additional additives that are also bad for our environment.’ national slow down

Last year, the National Plastics Plan moved quickly to phase out plastic packing products with additive fragmentable technology that does not meet relevant compostable standards (AS4736-2006 and AS5810-2010). By 2025 it aims to ensure 100% of all packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable, with 70% of all plastic packaging set to be recycled or composted.

‘Unfortunately, with the council kerbside collection of Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) deadline now being pushed back for all Australian businesses and homes from 2023 to 2030, this goal could be seriously stalled,’ Nadia said.

‘Communities need to push their local council and become advocates

for compostable kerbside collections in their local areas.’

Education vital

Education around biodegradable terminology is vital as marketing can sow confusion. Some ‘biodegradable’ products are not made from renewable resources and are in fact traditional plastic. Yes, they break down into smaller pieces, but these do not completely decompose. Such biodegradable plastics are often labelled inaccurately when they are made from fossil fuels and create microplastics. They can also readily contaminate other plastic recycling systems. These plastics are known as oxo-degradable plastic.

Even though the Australian Government is phasing them out, consumers should be aware of the dangers of misleading information on packaging.

‘Many countries are now in a rush to ban these products as they are very misleading to consumers.

However, it is recommended people become savvy about this type of marketing so they can make the right choice of ecofriendly products until the bans take effect.’

With plastic a multi-billion dollar industry, marketing trickery is expected to continue. The key is to support businesses that only make biodegradable products from

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plant-based materials. In addition, consumers need to look for products containing biodegradable/compostable polymers with no additives.

This is the key to ensuring biodegradable/compostable plastics are environmentally safe.

‘Confirming that the product is compostable is a good way to ensure it contains no nasty additions and is biodegradable,’ Nadia said.

Check if the product has compostable proprietary resins, compostable raw materials, or compostable polymers. This can be as easy as hopping onto the business’s website and ensuring that the product is 100% biodegradable and only contains plant-based materials that can be easily broken down. When a product is compostable, you can be assured it is 100% biodegradable as well.

‘Biodegradable plastics do not have the certifications and standards that compostable products require.

‘Always check for the certification standards on your biodegradable/compostable products.

This is a great way to ensure the ecofriendly products you invest in stack up to your standards.’

Biotuff also recommends always keeping a close eye out for the two certification logos pictured.

Biotuff website: biotuff.com.au. T

Chocolate Pudding Grows on Trees

By Julia Schafer, Boyland, Qld.

Grow your own healthy desserts with this less common fruit.

When we moved into our house in the beautiful Scenic Rim at the base of Mount Tamborine, I searched the whole property to find established fruit trees, hoping that like many Queensland homes that there might be a mango, avocado or macadamia tree. The previous owners had planted a lemonade tree which I was excited to see was prolific with large juicy fruit, although planted just a little close to the house for the size of the tree.

I also found a lime, mandarin and orange tree behind a towering mock orange hedge and so totally shaded and stunted. As they were well established the root systems were not going to survive being dug up and moved so I have just left them for now.

I spied some huge palms that resembled bananas in a grove but they turned out to be giant birds of paradise. What a disappointment!

On the fenceline was a sprawling tree that I recognised immediately by the shape of its leaves, a mulberry! Yippee, I had always wanted a mulberry. We quickly pruned it back to a manageable size and waited for mulberry season. Once I saw the myriad of flowers appearing and the swarms of native bees I got more and more excited at the prospect of large dark purple fruit, potential pies, jams and topping for ice cream. But as each and every flower dropped to the ground without producing fruit I felt more dejected. I searched the net and was disappointed to discover it was a fruitless mulberry planted for its privacy screening and nothing else. Argh!

After all this disappointment I turned my attention to the beautiful shade tree with glossy green leaves that seemed to be purpose-

fully planted in the fenced off area which houses the water tanks. I had no idea what it was, but was hopeful that it was edible. I searched the ground under the tree for pips, seeds, shells, wanting, hoping, to find a trace of what might be something to give me a clue. I looked up into the highest branches and spied a glimpse of two round fruit!

Yippee! But what were they?

They resembled a tamarillo but were more round, like a persimmon,

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but not quite. I posted a picture on a local gardening Facebook group and the answer came back. It was a black sapote, otherwise know as the chocolate pudding fruit tree. Sounds interesting, I thought.

I researched to find out about the fruit, when to harvest it and how to use it. A species native to Mexico, Central America and Columbia, it loves the warmer parts of Queensland and friends who had previously lived in Townsville

knew all about it. They were so excited when they heard we had one and shared some delicious recipes with me.

The first fruit I harvested was a disappointment, apparently I picked it too early and it took weeks before it attained an olive green colour and was slightly soft. When I cut it open it smelt of rotten vegetation which is exactly what it was at that point! The telling sign that a fruit is ready for harvest is when the calyx (the top knot that comes between the fruit and the stem) shrivels and lifts. The test being you can feed a sheet of paper or business card underneath the calyx easily. Armed with this knowledge I went and per-

formed this test to the fruit I could reach and discerned that they were not quite ready.

The next fruit I harvested fell to the ground of its own accord. I placed it on the window sill and within five days it was soft to the touch and had started to turn olive green. Unfortunately it was close, but not close enough, and the fruit wasn’t even sweet, though looking decidedly like chocolate pudding.

At this point I was ready to get rid of the tree and replace it with something that we could use, but then I spied a huge fruit, up too high for me to reach so I asked my son to climb a ladder and see if he could pick it for me.

The fruit was the size of a baseball and weighed a whopping 500g!

I placed it on its side in the windowsill and within three days it had turned olive green with a metallic look about it. The side it was lying on had flattened and so we opened it up. It looked like chocolate pudding, it scooped out with the consistency of chocolate pudding and it tasted sweet! Yippee! Some websites had warned that it really doesn’t have a chocolate taste and suggested to mix the pulp with a teaspoon of cacao, which I did and wow, yum, we have a winner!

I’ve since learnt to recognise when my fruits are ready to harvest, know the right colour olive to look for to open them up and have become adept at transforming this interesting fruit into ice cream, ice blocks for smoothies and to replace beetroot in my now famous chocolate pudding fruit cake which I am happy to share with you.

Chocolate Pudding Fruit Cake

100g dark chocolate 180g butter 3 medium free range eggs 300g brown sugar 300g chocolate pudding fruit pulp 1 tsp vanilla extract 30g cacao powder 100g plain flour 11/2 tsp baking powder 100g almond meal 1 /4 tsp salt Preheat the oven to 180°C and line one square 20 x 20cm cake tin.

Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler or microwave on high for 30 seconds, give it a stir and microwave another 15 seconds until melted.

In a separate bowl lightly whisk together the eggs and sugar.

Slowly add the chocolate pudding fruit, melted chocolate and vanilla into the egg mixture. Beat until just combined.

Sift the cocoa, flour and baking powder, add this and the almond meal and salt to the batter. Fold until just combined, do not overmix.

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Pour into the cake tin and bake for 35–45 minutes, or until the cake just springs back when pressed.

Leave to cool and serve like a brownie with ice cream or a dollop of double cream.

If you don’t have a black sapote growing at home, you may find them at the markets, but if you are happening to pass through Canungra in the beautiful Scenic Rim anytime in the next few months

send me a message on Instagram as our tree’s branches are bending with the weight of this amazing fruit.

Julia Schafer is passionate about sustainable living. See her on Instagram @lighter_foot_prints. T

BY KATE DOWNHAM • Fermenting • Preserving • Cheesemaking • Bacon • Charcuterie • Seasonal Home Cooking

Available online, or order a copy through your local bookshop

More than one thousand GMO-free heritage variety seeds 30 Olivers Rd, Winnaleah 7265

Ph: 03-6354-2464

www.rangeviewseeds.com.au G R A S S

www.TheNourishingHearthfire.com 29 R O O T S

Beaut Beanie

By Nerida Thomas, Walcha, NSW.

Thank you for the wonderful magazine I have been reading for over 30 years. The beanie pattern I would like to share is very easy to knit and comfortable to wear.

I make these in the local football colours and gay pride colours and other colours and sell them in a local shop. I knit all year round to keep up with demand. We live in cold climate country.

Beanie Pattern

You need 4mm needles and 150g 8 ply wool. Leave 35cm tail on wool.

Cast on 136 stitches.

Row 1: K2, P2, K2, P2 to end.

Row 2: K2, P2, K2, P2 to end.

Repeat these rows for 20cm.

Row 3: K10, K2tog, K10, K2tog to end.

Every alternate row purl.

Row 4: K9, K2tog, K9, K2tog to end.

Row 5: K8, K2tog, K8, K2tog to end.

Continue decreasing in this manner until you do K1, K2tog, K1, K2tog.

Next Row: P. Next Row: K2tog right across.

Extra Row: P. Cut wool leaving 35cm tail and thread it through the remaining G R A S S

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stitches. Use bottom tail to sew the bottom half of the beanie and tip tail to sew the top half.

Variations

The pictured beanie is sized for women. If you want a turn up on it do K2, P2, K2 for an extra 5cm. For larger sizes add 8 stitches for each 2.5cm. Once you knit one you can work out whatever size you want.

You can knit these in one colour or a couple of stripes or use your leftover wool from other projects as in this example. The stripy ones are popular with ladies, and in darker colours for men. T

Easy Knitting

By Gwen Deem, Murwullimbah, NSW.

Anyone can make these simple knits and they are ideal for using up yarn left from other projects.

My husband and friends call me a knitaholic and that’s fine with me as I do love to knit. I sell my knitting and all the money goes to the Fred Hollows Foundation, which helps treat and prevent blindness.

My mum taught me to knit when I was only four years old. Mum was a really good knitter, but never learnt to follow knitting patterns.

Consequently the little jumpers she made for her many grandchildren would not fit over their heads. So the task to unpick the necks and make them bigger fell to me once I could read the pattern.

There are some items that don’t need a detailed pattern and can be easily finished in a short time. And they look good.

This scarf is a good seller and very simple to knit as it’s all in garter stitch (the easiest) and there are no increases or decreases. Ideal for a beginner. It measures 13cm wide by 30cm long.

Materials

You need the long needles in size 5.5mm or 6mm, and 8-ply yarn.

Tension is not important as long as you use the right needles and yarn.

I knit this scarf in different yarns, but I find buyers prefer a natural yarn like wool or alpaca rather than acrylic.

Acrylic is the cheapest yarn and can be washed in the washing machine whereas the more expensive natural yarns must be handwashed. However acrylic releases plastic microfibres when being washed.

SCARF Pattern

In garter stitch cast on 185 stitches. Then the whole scarf is knitted in garter stitch.

The scarf takes 22 rows before casting off. A useful tip is to check as you finish each row to make sure the end stitch is taut and not loose.

This gives neat edges.

I usually fringe each end but it’s not essential.

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To make the fringe, use 4 strands of yarn in 28cm lengths.

This scarf is a great way to use up lengths of leftover yarn because it makes interesting horizontal stripes.

Beanie Pattern

For a matching beanie, cast on 85 stitches and rib in 1 plain, 1 pearl for 8 rows. Then garter stitch for 18cm or length required.

To start shaping, follow each decrease row with a row of garter stitch.

The first decrease row: knit 10, knit 2 together, and repeat that to the end of the row. Then decrease in alternate rows with one stitch less at each decrease.

When there are 12 stitches on the needle leave a long length of yarn then cut it off and thread it through the stitches. Pull the yarn firmly and make a few stitches to secure it, and sew the seam. T

When Poultry are Sick

By Megg Miller, Euroa, Vic. What do you do when faced with poultry that are not well? Perhaps this should be reworded to what signs alert you to a fowl that is ill? Unless it’s a respiratory infection with moist nostrils, bubbles in eyes and gurgling or bad scouring, it’s hard to discern when poultry are not well. Being prey creatures it’s not in their interest to advertise their vulnerability.

Obvious serious conditions are best referred to the vet. Treatment may fix the problem or the bird may need to be euthanased to stop an outbreak of an unwanted disease.

Many times birds just don’t look right. They may be mopey, disinterested in the treat you’ve bought, standing on their own or hiding in the nest. Often the hens that lay until the start of winter moult extremely quickly and display the behaviour described. Mopey or unwell birds are quickly picked on so remove to a hospital pen for observation.

Check the Patient

Check over your bird before settling it into the new pen. Does it feel fat, fit and normal or so thin the breast bone has no flesh on it? Fat birds often go purple in the comb when handled, a sign there may be heart problems. A bird may be thin because it’s been kept away from food, is very stressed due to late, fast moulting or is suffering compacted crop and not absorbing feed or has a wasting disease.

Examine eyes and nostrils, the latter should be dry and free of odour, and open the beak and check the mouth. Cheesy deposits may occasionally be found, an indicator usually that the gut is not operating properly.

Check the vent area too, if feathers under it have lumps of faeces adhering or are soiled badly cut the messy parts off. Take the opportunity to check for the presence of lice

or mites, they favour under the vent and can be observed moving on the skin (glasses an advantage!) Dust if present.

Don’t attempt to worm the bird, it may be too weak to cope with a purging. You could safely put a small crushed clove of garlic in drinking water, it may tackle worms mildly and will have a beneficial effect on the system.

Do keep track of the state of the faeces, the colour, consistency and frequency. This is useful info if a visit to the vet becomes necessary and faeces play a role in identifying some poultry diseases.

Assuming your bird has nothing serious, a quiet period and a build up in condition may expedite a return to the flock.

Encourage Eating

When a bird’s appetite is poor it can be hard to tempt them to eat, so it’s important to actively encourage eating. By nature fowls are motivated by the sound and presence of fellow flock members eating, our efforts therefore have to be considered and creative.

A popular recovery treat is thin bread slathered in yoghurt and cut up into tiny squares. Sprinkled with aviary bird seed, the pieces are hard to resist. Just gently pushing the beak or bill into the yoghurt G R A S S

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often encourages birds to sample the offering.

At my place cooked spaghetti cut into short lengths proves irresistible. Again a little yoghurt added increases interest and benefits the gut. If scouring is occurring, mixing in some slippery elm powder with the yoghurt along with some eye-catching seeds will help a return to normal faeces. Cooked rice is another well received and tempting recovery item that helps clog the system.

Don’t overlook greens; finely diced lettuce or other salad greens dotted with cut up grapes or watermelon tempt pecks from the most miserable patients. When recovery is on its way I introduce pots of young grass or greens. Old split buckets are filled with soil and planted with poultry greens and kept on hold until required. Handy with birds like turkeys and geese and with the collection I have a fresh bucket can be introduced every couple of days.

Success and Recovery

Only return sidelined birds to the flock when fully recovered and able to cope with any bullying.

What of malingerers? They become household pets with antics so entertaining you forgive them for their demand for special attention. T

Bantam with Big Eggs

By Megg Miller, Euroa, Vic.

If fresh eggs and economics are priorities, try Leghorn bantams, they are highly efficient backyard layers.

If you’re thinking about getting poultry, now may be the time to act.

With the big supermarkets aiming to offer only free-range eggs in the foreseeable future, you can be sure there will be periods over winter when eggs are in short supply.

Having a few fowls will be an asset as well as lots of fun.

The rewards are greater if you can source purebred pullets because your support of breeders helps keep the range of sustainable breeds going. While you may not get the terrific first-up egg output that a Hy-Line or ISA can achieve, you can usually count on five years of reasonable egg output. That’s more than double what you may get from the commercial layers.

One breed that should appeal is the Leghorn bantam. Don’t be put off by stories from the past of flighty pullets sailing over every fence and behaving excitably. Such behaviour suggests poorly managed birds that rarely saw a human.

Leghorn bantams are very active, but they’re curious too and will want to know who you are and what you’re doing. They will respond to your presence and voice. They’re also very smart and are capable of soon working out that you’re good for treats. A reward works very well when interacting with and training these bantams. egg size

The Leghorn bantams are renowned for high egg lay and owners often exhibit the eggs in egg plate competitions at shows. There is an upper limit for bantam exhibitions eggs, 42.5g and eggs that are larger don’t usually get a look.

The svelte, feminine and economical White Leghorn.

Bantam Leghorn eggs don’t usually do well because they exceed the weight limit. This might not please the exhibitors, but it’s good news for those wanting a decent sized egg. It’s not unusual for the eggs to weight 50g, an impressive weight.

Keep in mind that it’s only a few decades ago that a large standard egg was 58–60g, and produced by hens more than double the size of the bantam.

There are other breeds that are good layers, Anconas, Australian Langshans and even some lines of bantam Light Sussex, but egg weight is usually lower.

The Black Leghorn also has an G R A S S

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excellent reputation for laying and there are other attractive colour varieties like the Blue, Brown and Buff that are not far behind in productivity.

Heat tolerance

One of the advantages of keeping a breed that originated in the Mediterranean area is its ability to cope with high temperatures. The name Leghorn was the English pronunciation given to local fowls from Livorno on the west side of Italy that were despatched to America in the 1830s. These fowls were named after the port from which they were loaded.

The large comb and wattles the breed carries allow additional heat loss during hot weather and when dipped in water during drinking, provide a cooling effect. It’s not known if the size of the comb and wattles was deliberately selected for or an adaptive response over centuries to hot local conditions. low broodiness

Another desirable feature with Leghorns is the low incidence of broodiness. It’s rare for one of them to go broody and should it occur it’s likely to be short and half hearted.

While this is better for egg production, it means that if you want to breed some youngsters you will need to use an incubator or a clucky hen from another breed.

You will notice from the accompanying photos that Leghorns have lovely large, white, almond-shaped earlobes. The colour is important.

Generally white-lobed fowl have a low incidence of broodiness and they’re likely to lay white or creamshelled eggs. Members of this breed lay large well-shaped white eggs.

Black Leghorns are generally top layers.

Contented chooks

Leghorns are happiest if they’re able to get out and scratch and range around. This doesn’t mean they are not suitable for backyards, but thought needs to be put in to creating an environment that engages them and keeps them busy.

An outdoor ladder perch is great for jumping up and down, as is a pole with mini perches or platforms attached that they can jump between and watch the world.

Hanging grass, corncobs or whole fruit offer distractions and a box for dust bathing is obligatory. A bucket of weeds or fallen leaves are other cheap and easy boredom busters.

Spacious quarters suit best and birds won’t say no to a reasonably high perch. If adding in other breeds, try and get birds of similar size and even appearance to reduce bullying.

You could expect the bantams to eat around 80–90g daily, a little less if some kitchen waste is recycled

Brown Leghorn.

with them. Of course if they are going outside and spending the day in cold windy weather, they will eat considerably more.

A good laying ration is important to support the high egg lay.

Remember that hens need adequate protein for egg lay and a good carbohydrate intake to meet energy needs. Providing ad lib shell grit makes sense because the demand for calcium for the large eggshell may be greater than available from feed. And don’t forget the greens – not that the hens will let you, they love this supplementary part of the diet and we love the rich orange yolks that result.

Where do you find Leghorn bantams? There is a national club that advertises on the Breeder/Club page G R A S S

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Blue Leghorn.

Buff Leghorn.

and there are state groups in Qld and Vic. As well, Leghorns are popular show birds and so if you can locate a local poultry club, one of the members is likely to breed Leghorn bantams or know someone who does. T

Livestock Health &

Management

Information you need but haven’t known where to ask

Tom too Old?

We’re very fond of our turkey tom Henry and don’t want to get rid of him. However, he is nearly five years old and some visitors recently suggested he might be too old for fertility and offspring. He’s sprightly, he’s not so heavy that he might have trouble mating or likely to do damage to the hens and his legs and feet are in good condition.

He’s had an easy life and been well looked after and successfully fathered nine poults last year.

Can we introduce a young tom as an insurance measure without initiating turkey world war III and would dear old Henry be likely to come off second best? If we decide to use him for another season is

there anything we can do to boost his performance and the viability of any poults?

Our whole family says a big thank you.

Jane, Steve & Family, Kangaroo Valley, NSW. Henry’s good health suggests he’s probably fine to carry out conjugal rights with the hens provided there aren’t too many to service.

You may need to encourage him to pace himself by ensuring he’s not tasked with mating several hens on the one day. Confine him with one hen that is crouching for him and relocate other hens to a nearby yard. If they too decide to crouch, restriction to one hen daily should allow semen production to keep up with his mating. Having to service several within hours may be too demanding, leading to poor quality semen.

Boost fertility by putting all the turkeys on a breeder ration, starting a couple of weeks before you estimate hens will be interested in mating.

Alternatively, try a water based breeding supplement like

Bellbreeder from Bellsouth Poultry Equipment, ph: 03-8787-8189.

Dust Henry too with a product like Pestene or sulphur powder to ensure he is free of ectoparasites as the presence of these can affect fertility.

With regard to a new young gobbler, there are likely to be terrible fights and the males will become more interested in controlling each other than in courting and mating.

You may be better waiting until the hormone levels have dropped near Christmas or run two little flocks so each male has a hen or two. Turkeys can be bloody minded and nasty during the breeding season.

Hens usually lay two clutches, several months apart; this will allow time for the girls to set and hopefully hatch young. If no poults appear, scrutinise the broken out yolk for signs of a fertile germinal disc.

Premature death may be occurring.

This might be when you think seriously of obtaining a new gobbler so hens are mated and hopefully lay viable fertile eggs for the second clutch, usually around early December or late January, depending on geographic location. T

Australasian Poultry If you need information about poultry, check out this magazine.

Read about ducks, geese, turkeys & pure breeds of fowl, housing, health and management.

A must for poultry lovers.

Price $7.80, available at newsagents bimonthly.

Ph: 03-5792-4000 to subscribe.

G R A S S

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eco news Recording Shark Egg Cases

Eco News Science Needs You!

Could you become a citizen scientist? If you enjoy time in the bush or along the coast, your observation and photographic skills are needed to help enhance the conservation and research efforts of our scientific experts. Here are some options.

Native Plant Pics

Although Australia is regarded as one of the richest areas in the world for native species, many lack photographic representation. Some may be depicted by drawings or paintings or just a single photo, others have no visual record. This is where we may all be able to help.

A survey of 33 major online databases of plant photos were surveyed to determine the extent of photographic records of native plant species. Undertaken by UNSW Sydney and the Australian Institute of Botanical Science, senior author of the study Associate Professor Will Cornwell spoke of the consequences that could result from a

​lack of detailed photos.

‘Many plant species that are difficult to identify in the wild may go extinct if scientists cannot properly identify them with the help of photos,’ Cornwell said.

An advantage of photographs is that they preserve characteristics such as flower colour, which may fade in samples, plus they provide additional information like bark appearance and orientation of leaves, as well as ecological context.

With digital photography so accessible now, we are all capable of contributing to this important project. In the last year nearly 10% of previously unphotographed species have been photographed and uploaded by citizen scientists and identified by experts. Using an online platform like iNaturalist allows photos to be identified by experts and data to be shared with aggregators like the Atlas of Living Australia and Global Biodiversity Information Facility and used in conservation and research.

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‘Egg cases are important for understanding the basic biology of oviparous chondrichthyans as well as revealing valuable information such as where different species live and where their nurseries are located,’ said Helen O’Neill, biologist with CSIRO Australian National Fish Collection. Oviparous species are those whose eggs hatch outside of the mother and chondrichthyans are cartilaginous fish.

The CSIRO is asking citizen scientists to help find and record egg cases that are washed up on Australian coastlines and beaches.

This will help scientists discover what egg cases of different chondrichthyans look like. This may include egg cases from catsharks, skate, horn sharks, carpetsharks and chimaera, washed ashore or sighted during diving.

Egg cases found on beaches rarely contain live embryos, whose incubation times range from a few months up to three years, depending on the species.

The Great Eggcase Hunt, which is an initiative of UK-based charity The Shark Trust, has been launched in partnership with CSIRO to help provide new data for scientists studying the taxonomy and distribution of oviparous chondrichthyans.

Record any sightings via The Shark Trust citizen science mobile phone app or through the project website: www.sharktrust.org.

Aussie bird count

This year’s Aussie Bird Count will be held from 16–22 October.

Anyone can participate; it involves spending 20 minutes standing or sitting in one spot, such as your backyard or the local park, and noting down the birds that you see.

You will need to count the number of each species you spot within the 20 minute period. Do as many session as you like. The Aussie Bird Count app has a handy field guide to help you identify birds. For more information, head online to website: aussiebirdcount.org.au. T

FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK Dear GR People,

Every family has its repertoire of dishes that are quick to make but delicious for those times when it’s already getting late and everyone is starving, eg those in GR 276 ‘In the Kitchen’. French toast was one of our family’s standbys too, except we made a savoury version.

Years later when running a B & B I adapted Mum’s recipe as a savoury breakfast dish and it was very popular.

Here’s my recipe which Alan and I now enjoy for a quick tea every now and again.

Savoury French Toast for One

3 pieces French stick cut diagonally about 2cm thick 1 lge free range egg an equal quantity of milk salt and pepper 1 /2–1 spring onion, depending on the size of the spring onion olive oil and/or bacon fat for frying Place the pieces of bread in a shallow container just big enough to contain them.

About 15 minutes before you want to serve the French toast add the egg, milk, salt, pepper and bits of spring onion to a food processor and whizz until the spring onion is very finely cut and the mixture is pale green.

Pour the egg mixture over the pieces of bread, turning a couple of times to ensure that the liquid absorbs evenly.

The bread will be soggy.

Heat the oil and add the bread.

Cook till just browning, then turn. I cook it twice a side. You need to watch it as it burns easily.

We served ours with bacon, cooking the French toast in the bacon fat, to which I’d added some olive oil. You need enough fat to generously cover the base of the pan, but not too much or the French toast will be greasy.

Homemade chutney was its other accompaniment. As I’m sure everyone knows, bread freezes well. Because we made this dish most mornings, I used to buy a French stick, cut the whole loaf into 2cm pieces, package them in threes, wrap and freeze. No waste and always there to use.

For those preferring a sweet version we omitted the pepper and the spring onion, adding a pinch of cinnamon instead and cooking it in a mix of butter and canola oil.

This was served with slices of pear cut lengthwise and cooked very gently in butter till just softening and heated through. To serve we sprinkled the French toast with cinnamon sugar and added a dollop of Greek yoghurt. This sweet version is delicious too. Other fruits which worked well were slices of apples or nectarines when in season with a small drizzle of local honey.

Being new to Midway Point we joined the local Garden Club in the hope of learning what plants do well here. In late March our President David hosted a tomato tasting get-together. We all brought along samples of the varieties of our tomatoes we thought had the best flavour, cutting them up for a tasting. Interestingly everyone agreed that a tiny sweet bite tasted best, while last year’s G R A S S

winner seemed less flavoursome this year, suggesting that flavour must somehow be effected by the season.

Over afternoon tea we chatted about what we all do with our tomatoes and David showed us his frozen tomato passata – stored in ziplock bags. Here’s his incredibly simple recipe. When my husband came in from the garden with a small bucket full of rather tatty end of season tomatoes yesterday, I thought I’d give it a go. As I don’t have a mouli I gave my cooked tomatoes a whirl with a stick blender then used a large sieve to remove the skins, which worked well.

While this isn’t a traditional passata recipe, if you are making a smallish amount it’s very successful.

Give it a go if you too have some scruffy end of season tomatoes to use up.

Roasted Tomato Passata

about 2kg tomatoes 4 med onions 6 cloves garlic 1 tbsp coarse salt 1–2 tbsp brown sugar black pepper to taste 2 tbsp olive oil Wash then roughly chop the tomatoes, removing any bruises or bits where slugs have chomped.

Skin and roughly chop the onions.

Flatten the garlic cloves then skin and roughly chop.

Mix in everything else then tip into a large baking dish.

Bake for 90 minutes at 180°C or 160°C fan forced.

Pass the mix through a mouli, discarding the skins.

Cool the purée for a while then package in ziplock bags in amounts to suit your future uses. Freeze.

Margaret & Alan Morgan, Midway Point, Tas.

Got something useful to share? Email your letters to Grass Roots at: greenliving1973@gmail.com

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FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK Dear Megg, Suni & GR Family,

My health continues to improve, I’m on once a year visits to the outpatients clinic now plus this year I’ve apparently got an MRI booked as well, I’m less than two weeks away from the fifth anniversary of the surgery to remove my cancer so life is getting back to normal now.

The knitting is still going along with some crocheting, I’ve made myself a list of projects to use up as much of my wool stash as I can. I’ve spent a few days winding skeins of wool into balls to get them ready and once those ones are used, I’ll do some more winding ready for the next batch of projects.

I’ve got myself a goals book, with lots of pictures in it to remind me of what I want to achieve during the year – using the wool is on the list, as is cooking more healthy meals (that’s going well), trying new crafts, saving money for a few adventures, replacing some furniture. The decluttering is going apace, I’ve gotten rid of most of the plants that haven’t thrived in my pot plant garden and will scrub the pots out and find some more suitable plants.

I’m booked in for the Herb and Chilli Festival, the Sheep and Wool Show weekend and a couple of concerts for later in the year and those are just a few on the list.

I haven’t gotten back to going for walks again yet, I’m finding that the activity required to declutter, water and weed my plants, take the compost out and other activities tend to wear me out easily, but I still try to work through them and I’ve lost weight in the past few months, so that’s okay with me.

I’ve had to get new glasses to help the blurry vision caused by a cataract. I need a referral to get it removed; they don’t have an eye specialist at the hospital, so I’ll see what the GP says. Once that’s fixed everything will be a lot easier, but in the meantime I’m managing well enough, life goes on and I make the most of it.

I caught up with a lot of old friends going back over 40 years recently, had a couple of lovely days, lots of talking and laughing and so many fond memories, and some sadness when we remembered friends who weren’t with us any more. I’m hoping to catch up with some of them again soon, nice things happen sometimes (many times) and that was one of the nicest.

One thing that came out of that weekend was an invitation to join the craft group some of the people are going to, so I’ll start going on Tuesday and work on some projects with friends. As well as my wool stash I have a lot of bits and pieces of fabric, lace and heaven knows what else to use up, so I can try all sorts of crafty things, and I’ve seen an ad for a second craft group that meets elsewhere as well, and they have a makers’ market every once in a while, so I could have a stall there to sell some of the items I’ve made.

The boys are all doing well, Chris has been promoted to manager at work, he’s still at the some company after almost 20 years, Bryan is his usual self, although he’s been more helpful than usual lately and Ben is still G R A S S

smiling all the time. However, one of his daily carers lost his job recently after he confessed to leaving Ben locked in the car while he wandered off and did some personal business. The lady who let me know said I was very calm about it, I told her I wasn’t calm at all inside, but sharing my feelings would be inappropriate, plus I know they leave a report on why he’d lost his job, so he’ll never get another job working with disabled people (and hopefully children) again. Gosh, it was not something I wanted to hear, Ben can’t talk and therefore can’t ask for help, and if he’d been able to get out of the car he’d have taken off and they were on a major road. The carer should have either taken Ben with him or conducted his business in his own time, there’s no excuse for leaving anyone locked in a car – same goes for furry four-legged people!

I don’t get angry often, but I was when I heard that and I’m glad Ben was okay, they had the doctor and a councillor check him out, so at least the people who work at his house and those at the agency that run it have done the right thing.

Time for me to finish up for now, I hope everyone in the flooded areas and the fire areas is safe and trying to get back to normal, and I was sad to read recently that Pam Cole had passed away, she was an amazing lady and I’ll miss her.

Dear Feedback,

Vicki Judd & the Boys, Boronia, Vic.

I have a vague memory that some time ago Roberino suggested that stock could profitably share space with solar panels. Well it appears that some small studies have been done with this. Sheep and solar panels sharing a field in California. I had no idea they grew sheep in California – but that is irrelevant.

It was a great success – the sheep loved it. The panels provide shade, and the sheep like the shade so much in the heat of the day that they spend 70% of their time there. Being much more relaxed they were healthier. The panels continue to provide electricity so good news all round. Cattle would be too big and clumsy and the panels would have to be so high that the extra cost would make the electricity generated unprofitable.

Ceri Masiulanis, Warrandyte, Vic.

Want to connect with other GR readers online? Go to our Facebook page and ‘like’ us.

You’ll get our updates and you can even leave a comment. Go to: www.facebook.com/GrassRootsAust

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FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK Dear Readers,

I was interested to read in GR 276 a letter from Elaine from Mornington in Southern Victoria commenting on an observed decline in the number of bees in her neighbourhood. Many beekeepers in Southern Victoria also noted the spring–summer season as one of the worst they have known, with cold and wet spring weather keeping bees in their boxes and hollows.

Nevertheless, in our part of the world we saw multiple swarms and I caught two myself from baited boxes at two different locations. Through feeding and disease control beekeepers can prop up the health of our colonies, but the impacts of unseasonal weather provide an insight into wider impacts that are unfolding from climate change. It really is time to curtail our more outrageous indulgences such as flying and driving unnecessarily, as well as the interminable building renovations many continue to pursue.

Dear GR Readers,

Patrick Hockey, Clunes, Vic.

I am sharing this information on a petition on bees from Save the Bees Australia, I think it’s important.

Gail Foster, Blackmans Bay, Tas.

The petition states: Community Voice Central Coast and Save The Bees Australia demand an immediate halt to the poisoning of millions of native Australian bees through fipronil that is currently occurring in NSW under government orders.

Australia’s unique bee populations are already under threat from habitat loss, pesticide usage and effects of natural disasters. Fipronil is known to kill native bees for up to three years – this can destroy the livelihoods of our local beekeepers and spell financial ruin for their families.

The local community petitions the following: The immediate halting and removal of fipronil baiting in NSW Red Zones.

A judicial enquiry into the relationship between government, industry funded lobby groups, and organisations representing chemical company interests, who have authority and sway over government policies related to bees.

Even native stingless bees and other nectar-feeding insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals that may visit the dead, and sprayed bee nests may get contaminated and die from fipronil poisoning.

This poison has already been banned in the UK and Europe because it kills bees. Yet the fipronil rollout has been approved by our national regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority

G R A S S

(APVMA) who in fact receives funds from agrichemical companies.

Australia has around 1650 species of native bees that we know of, out of which three are currently recognised by the federal government as critically endangered.

Land clearing, bushfires and pesticide programs including the present fipronil baiting programs have already caused local extinction of the Green Carpenter bee species in Victoria.

There are alternatives that other countries are using – we need to invest in them now.

Native Australian stingless bees are powerful pollinators and have long been referred to as a ‘plan bee’ for crop pollination — a backstop against the loss or decline of European honeybee populations. Our bees deserve more than just being sprayed with the most toxic substances out there.

Find this petition at: www.change.org/p/halt-the-poisoning-of-native-australian-bees-through-fipronil-baiting.

Dear Gardeners,

I’m pleased with myself, I made up white oil from an old recipe I found and you might want to try it too. I poured a cup of cooking oil and one and a half cups of water into a wide mouthed jug and mixed it all up together with an egg beater. A blender is faster and easier but I don’t have one. So I beat the mixture until it looked creamy. Dilute with 50 parts water for spraying. Use for controlling sucking and chewing insects like aphids, scale, mealy bug and citrus leaf miner.

Dear GR,

Tom Wise, Coffs Harbour, NSW.

Readers may be interested to know that the tender young leaves of purslane, Portulaca oleracea, can be added to salads. Not everyone will take to it because they may not like the texture or taste of the gluey gel that is secreted by the plant. I’m fine with it. I only use young leaves and give them a good wash first. Something a bit different and a resource many of us have.

Jade, Mansfield, Vic.

Don’t forget to write the contact details you want published in the mag at the bottom of your letter!

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FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK Dear Megg, Suni & Team,

We’ve just had a couple of lovely weeks with Mum staying and helping in the garden. She was horrified we just threw banana skins into the green bin and got busy showing us how to use them. Aside from chopping up small and using as a mulch around the garden plants, mum swears by a liquid fertiliser she makes up.

She chops the skins into small pieces and puts them into a bucket and covers them with water, leaving the contents to ‘brew’ for a few days. She gives it a stir daily.

After the banana skins have been scooped out Mum uses the liquid as a fertiliser. As banana skins are full of minerals the enriched water should give pot plants a boost and help get seedlings off to a good start.

Hope this is useful to others.

Dear GR Readers,

Sage Roberts, Wyong, NSW.

I was pleasantly surprised to see my letter in print, GR 276. It’s a shame I don’t have a camera to photograph my environment bags!

Reading the Feedback, I’ve noticed that some ‘mature’ folks having problems tending their gardens as it’s hard to bend, etc. Well, I’ve got a solution I’ve implemented in my back and front yards and it didn’t cost me a cent!

I’ve picked up some large polystyrene boxes from the greengrocer, cut the bottom, put them on the grass (on balconies it’s okay too, but don’t cut the bottom), fill up to one-third with any compost material, peels, grass etc, then 5cm of soil, repeat. When the box is full you can plant. You can do two, three or more boxes if you have enough compost material and soil, if not, build it up gradually. Five boxes and you can do all your gardening standing up! Additional bonus is that the box produces surprise plants! I had an avocado sapling, plus tomatoes, parsley, flowers and choko spring up! In a few months you can disassemble the boxes, and will have the most healthy beautiful soil, full of worms! Now you can start again.

While living in Japan we adopted many of their beautiful customs. In winter, especially on cold winter days, people cook okonomiyaki, a vegie pancake. Use any vegies, like cabbage, carrot, onion, parsley, potato, and grate coarsely. You can use many other vegies, whatever you have on hand, or add bacon or chilli.

Add eggs, as few or as many as you want, and any kind of flour, a little or a lot, and salt.

Mix, create patties, and make a hole in the midG R A S S

dle so you don’t need to guess whether it’s cooked all through. The texture is like a hashbrown on the outside.

You can eat them dipped in sugar or honey (sweet) or dipped in soya sauce (savoury). Nothing better on cold rainy day than okonomiyaki! Bon appetit!

I am enclosing some more of my handmade bags so all of you hard-working staff can have some, give them to your friends, relatives, or people that visit your busy office.

A good project to get the kids involved in is a net fruit and vegie bag.

You can just hang them in the pantry with veg or fruit in them and they are strong enough to carry 10kg!

I use curtains ($2 from Salvos) or net pieces (50c each); as I don’t have a sewing machine I stitch them by hand while watching TV. With sewing machine it will take literally five minutes! They don’t take any room to store!

I also wash my dishes with a 50cm x 50cm piece of lace – no smelly dishclothes or sponges! Just rinse, it’s fresh smelling always!

Also great for bathroom sinks or tiles. No need to use any chemicals – just the lace, rinse and it’s ready for next job!

Gift idea: 1 lace bag – put in a dishcloth (same lace), some soap or anything you want and you have practical a Christmas stocking that lasts for ever! Happy sewing!

Fryderica Apollonov, Bankstown, NSW.

Please keep letters brief, clearly written and relevant to self-sufficiency topics. Letters pushing barrows (religious, political or other) will not be published.

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FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK Dear Feedback,

Thank you for the most recent issue of Grass Roots, which I am greatly enjoying. A lovely lady named Sue sent me some runner bean seeds in response to my Feedback letter but didn’t include a return address, so I am saying thank you here – thank you Sue, if you would like any seeds from me in exchange, please let me know your address and I will send you some. I have daikon radish, tokyo bekana, red Russian kale, buttercup pumpkin, painted mountain corn, and (soon) lazy housewife beans and maybe some others.

If anyone has the white seeded runner bean seeds or Siberian pea tree seeds please let me know and I am happy to do a trade or send some money in the post.

Kate Downham, PO Box 115, Deloraine, Tas 7304.

Email: katedownham@permies.com Hi Megg, Emma & Suni,

I hope all is going well with all of you in the GR office.

It’s a glorious day here in Oldina and I just dug up the most enormous potato. No one else I know would appreciate my excitement but I know you will.

Angela Fry, Oldina, Tas.

Dear GR Friends,

Recently GR 271 came my way – another good read.

Thanks to all who take the time to write and share, and of course big thanks to Megg and the team!

Julia Schafer’s article on snake beans brought back memories of my NT garden. These beans are a favourite in Asian cuisine, and I used to make a delicious curry which the cattle station team devoured.

Take chopped onions, sliced carrot and snake beans cut or snapped into inch-long pieces, sauté in oil of choice.

Add coconut cream and curry spices (use curry powder or paste if you don’t make your own mix), garlic and salt to taste. Excellent with rice and steamed Asian greens!

Pam Thoday’s pantry setup has great suggestions for an efficient and easy-to-use space in which to store preserves and bulk supplies. As the cost of living goes up, it only makes sense to buy bulk direct from the farmer and invest in organised long-term storage.

Old fridges make great airtight storage for bulk grains and other vittles, if set up in a dry shed or shipping container.

Slippery elm powder was mentioned on page 42. It truly is a marvellous herb. Unfortunately, due to ravages of Dutch elm disease and over-exploitation of surviving trees, slippery elm powder is not really a sustainable herb unless you grow your own. The good news is that marsh mallow root powder is the perfect substitute for the vast majority of the time. Mallow is easy to grow and prepare. Just make sure you have the correct one – Althaea officinalis is the correct medicinal one.

I grow my own, and many herbalists are using mallow instead of slippery elm whenever possible.

Emma J was asking for green tomato recipes in Feedback. Here is a tasty idea: thickly slice green tomatoes and dip into seasoned breadcrumbs. Fry in olive oil or melted butter until both sides are golden. Larger tomatoes are much easier to work with than cherry tomatoes in this recipe.

In closing, here’s an idea for Suni’s succulents: small pots can be put on their side in an old wooden pallet standing vertically. The pallet slats will form shelves for the lip of each pot, creating a vertical garden. Depending on the exact type of pallet used, you may need to add strips of wood in strategic places to help support the pots.

As the majority of succulents don’t need regular watering, a quick spray with the hose from time to time should suffice. Glazed or painted pots are better than unsealed terracotta.

Keep warm this winter! Cheerio!

Sally Danen, Waratah, Tas.

Want to answer someone’s Feedback letter?

Email Grass Roots at: greenliving1973@gmail.com.

G R A S S

41 R O O T S

FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK Dear Readers,

If you are looking for a tasty slice for morning tea that is easy to make, the following may fit the bill.

My family all enjoy it and it disappears quickly at garden club meetings.

Quick Banana Date Slice

125g butter 1 cup raw sugar 1 egg 2 /3 cup mashed banana (about 2 med sized bananas) 1 /2 cup coconut 3 /4 cup chopped dates 1 /2 cup coconut flour 1 /2 cup wholemeal plain flour 1 /2 cup wholemeal SR flour Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease and line a slice pan with baking paper.

Cream butter and sugar with a wooden spoon or food processor, add egg and beat well.

Add mashed banana then rest of ingredients, mixing well with a knife or spatula.

Pour into slice pan and bake for 25–30 minutes. Test centre with a skewer after 20 minutes, if it comes out clean then the slice is cooked.

Allow to cool, delicious fresh as is and it can be warmed up for desert if a few days old.

Dear GR Staff,

Lucy Robertson.

Many thanks for a great magazine. I look forward to receiving my copy and enjoy reading it from cover to cover. Because I live on a property of 60 acres with many animals I pick up lots of good tips on how best to care for them.

I’m giving a subscription to my daughter for her birthday. She’s a school teacher, loves to get her hands dirty with gardening and a few chickens. I know she will love this gift!

Hello Grass Roots Knitters,

Josie Nixon, Tully, Qld.

Still reading this great magazine and getting hints. I’m now seeking help from knitters. I’m seeking the pattern for a Baby Surprise Jacket. So is there anyone that could share one with me for baby and adult? I like to knit for charities and I will cover the costs for postage and copying. I’d be very grateful for some help.

over the larger ‘stuck on’ bugs with the thicker paste that is left in the bottom. It will surprise you how you only have to ‘paint brush’ them away. No scrubbing or hard work.

I don’t know why this mixture dissolves them, but it does. Hope you find my information helpful.

Happy GR reading.

Fellow Readers,

I didn’t believe this would work when told about it, but it does. Squeaky hinges can drive you spare, well they drive me mad. I was told by a mate to rub the hinge and parts with a slice of cucumber. No more squeaking!

Dear GR Team,

G R A S S

Ted Fowler, Swan Hill, Vic.

So sorry I’ve had to ring this through but I have a broken wrist and so can’t manage lots of simple tasks.

Mending socks – I find it far easier to cut the end off once the toe has gone through and zigzag across with the sewing machine rather than darning.

Another tip is getting full value from toothpaste, creams and salves that come in a tube by cutting the end off and squeezing the tube firmly so I get to use every last drop. It’s surprising how much is there.

Janice Horsfield, Tallangatta, Vic.

Joane Yearle, 27 The Bucketts Way, Wards River, NSW 2422.

Dear GR Readers,

I’ve just easily taken off three months’ worth of bugs stuck on the front of my car. Very hard to wash off. But here’s a solution that makes this job easy.

You make a paste with water and bicarb soda to a runny consistency of thick cream.

Paint this runny thickened mixture on bugs with an old paintbrush. Straight away smaller bugs dissolve. Go back

Mark.

Want to connect with other GR readers online? Go to our Facebook page and ‘like’ us.

You’ll get our updates and you can even leave a comment. Go to: www.facebook.com/GrassRootsAust

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FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK Dear GRs,

to recompense your kindness.

Dear GR,

I have been sowing macadamia seeds like Pumpkin Paddy of the song; ‘Wherever he went through the land, he planted seeds in spoil and sand.’ Score the nut slightly before just burying almost on the surface.

Re pigface; red stemmed native pigface is edible but the coastal pigface fruits are the best eating.

I have given up trying to buy ‘peanut butter bush’ from nurseries. If anyone has some seeds to spare I would be happy

LTR, PO Box 119, East Maitland, NSW 2323.

Somehow I forgot to renew my GR subscription so have had a nice read of two mags while we’ve had days of rain. So many helpful hints – from seed packets as gifts to squeezing spinach into garden spaces. Just enough for a stir fry.

At the commencement of the Global Financial Crisis I planted some quick production fruit trees and vines. Feijoas aka guavas, tamarillos, chokos, pumpkins and melons. The pineapple guava and cherry guava were hard to give away.

These fruits are only delicious when perfectly ripe, like persimmons. Very high in vitamin C. A South African shop near me sells tinned guava and they are so delicious because they know how to prepare them. So great to see the articles about these highly productive fruits.

I found this very old sewing work basket in a junk shop. It had been hand kitted out in 1930s green silk with compartments for threads, cottons, etc.

The lid had been hand quilted inside with the same fabric for holding pins and needles.

Upon removing all the linings I realised it had been handmade by a girl of about 12 as a school project.

The base board cut, the basket and lid woven and interior lined – but not with the 1930s G R A S S

Depression green silk. The basket dated from 1900ish. The green lining was a refit. In the 1920s square sewing baskets came in.

What skills our grandparents had! The ‘work basket’ has been refitted and tizzied with tassels and is now ready for a new generation.

As my fingers are less nimble these days for delving in to compartments, I left them out.

Dear GR,

Wendy, ARCADIA VALE, NSW.

A little gardening tip. Save the water you cook vegies in and let it cool then water your pot plants with it, works wonders, especially on ferns.

Dear Megg & Co,

Nerida Thomas, Walcha, NSW.

I always enjoy the poultry articles and was most interested to read about the Australian Pit Game.

One of my friends had a bantam hen from this breed and raved about it. I gather the hen was one of the friendliest little fowls she has kept and was a very reliable broody, protective but not savage as some game hens get. I know of a young primary school boy who has a pet Pit and she is very quiet and a constant companion to him. There are numerous breeds most readers won’t be familiar with, thanks for introducing us to this one.

Geraldine Dixon, Brocklehurst, NSW.

Don’t forget to write the contact details you want published in the mag at the bottom of your letter!

43 R O O T S

FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK

of water lasts about 2 hours, but at least it keeps snails, birds and cats away from the seedlings growing inside the net cage. The sheer number of fans thrown out at the local rubbish tip is disappointing but this is a great way to get a second use from a fan cover, should last for years. I have Brussels sprouts seeds sown under this fan cage.

The photos show the fan cover right way up and in operation, and then the underside of the fan cover cage.

I’m hoping readers will be encouraged to try this and my other inventions.

Dear GR Readers,

Dear Grass Roots,

I have been busy in the garden again, trying to keep snails off my new crops without poisons, and I have come up with a new invention that also waters the emerging seeds. It’s a water pipe frame about 1m long made from 90mm downpipe.

I pour water and/or worm juice into the T-piece, it holds 19lt of water and takes about four hours to empty through 16 drippers underneath the two white pipes. The water pipe frame sits on a wooden frame covered with plastic gutter guard mesh, so snails, birds and cats can’t get to the newly emerging seedlings. I have sown the soil area underneath to carrots and onions, interesting to see how long it takes for the seeds to break through the soil, with constant moisture. The water frame also shades during the hot summer days.

This is my other fun idea which also stops snails from getting to my plants, it’s made from a fan cover and some mice/snake mesh and 2 x 1 timber. The bottle has five drippers underneath attached to a four way conduit hub, the 2lt G R A S S

Peter Howarth, Gunnedah, NSW.

I have always been an advocate of selling seeds on Local Seeds, an online marketplace for local seed savers. I wouldn’t anymore. I lost my phone after being completely flooded out last year and months later contacted Local Seeds with my new phone number and email address. A couple of months after this I again contacted Local Seeds to get $70 from my Local Seeds account transferred to my bank account.

I was told it wasn’t possible, I could be a scammer. We continued to go back and forwards, only to revert back to the request for me to retrieve a reset password on my lost phone. I explained I had taken the old phone to the Optus store, but because some time had elapsed, the data was no longer there. This scenario just went backwards and forwards, I was even asked to take the phone to Telstra, the person didn’t appear to listen to what I said as I’d already said I was with Optus.

The interactions got worse, and although Local Seeds happily accepted my new phone number and email they got stuck on the identity issue and who I was or wasn’t.

There didn’t seem a will to find a solution and so the $70 stayed with Local Seed at a time when I could have used the money to help get back on my feet again. This is just one person’s experience, but keep it in mind.

Mari, NSW.

Want to answer someone’s Feedback letter?

Email Grass Roots at: greenliving1973@gmail.com.

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FEEDBACK LINK-UP FEEDBACK

Hello Grass Roots People,

In the last issue, GR 276, there were a number of zucchini recipes on page 51 including what I thought was a great idea using bread slices as a base for tartlets in a muffin tray. I realised you could fill these with almost anything you want along with the beaten egg mix and topped with cheese.

These ones were a hit with the kids and just had some chopped up capsicum, mushroom and onion. I will be making them again for sure.

Dear Feedback,

Jas Maree, Goulburn Ovens, Vic.

The Human Trilogy.

In 1959 as a young man I visited Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. It was an interesting and unique experience.

Ten years later in 1969 my wife and I together with our very young children returned. I had been offered a four year contract in the banking industry. It was fulfilling work for me in helping to establish rural development in a country where the financial system of the Western world was completely foreign. On the other hand, the ways of the indigenous culture were just as foreign to us.

I was not inclined to have domestic help as I felt the concept of having servants was one with which I was not comfortable. However, my work colleagues put forward a compelling argument that by employing local help I would be helping them financially to improve their way of life.

New friends of ours were ‘going south’ and wondered if we would employ Scala, their Papuan domestic helper (I’m still not comfortable with the word servant). We did, G R A S S

and Scala turned out to be part of our family. He adored our two year old daughter and her wish was his command.

One night, long into the early hours, a knock came to the door. It was Wyra, Scala’s cousin who with Scala and his family lived in a modest hut at the rear of the property.

‘Come quick; Scala is very ill.’ I told him I would get dressed and would be there ASAP. Scala was sitting on his bed and looked like I had never seen him before. He spoke so quietly I could hardly hear.

I asked him what was wrong and said that I would take him to the hospital. I offered this a number of times, but he then said no, men were coming to kill him. I said I would phone the police and they would come with their guns to protect him. He then said, ‘No, this would be no good because the police bullets would just go through them and do no harm.’

It was then that the penny dropped. He was not being attacked by humans but by spirits. He then went on to say that his uncle was coming up from their village and his powers were greater than those of his spiritual assailants.

He would tie rope around the hut and sit on the roof and his power would protect Scala.

Some days later Scala was back to his old self. The curse or ‘pouri-pouri’ as it is known had lifted and been defeated.

As I reflected on this event it brought back to me that we are not just body and soul (mind and personality), but also have a spirit. We are a tripod being, and when one of the three legs is missing we have difficulty standing. I coined the phrase, ‘We are spiritual beings with a physical dimension. Not a physical being with a spiritual dimension.’ It’s only when we reflect on this that life as we know it starts to make sense.

In the Western world we think we are so self-sufficient that we have lost touch with our spiritual self. We would do well to reach out to our spiritual uncle.

Dear GR,

Ken, NSW.

I’m writing in about pesky Moths, one or two always seem to chew through a woollie or scarf over summer, despite hanging moth repellent packs in the wardrobe and lavender sachets in drawers.

I read recently that a candle cut up into pieces and placed in drawers etc and even among stored clothes will deter these moths. Has anyone heard of this? Has anyone tried it? I don’t like the smell of mothballs and don’t like the commercial chemical-based products. Please share your experiences in Feedback.

Clare Crawford, Kurrajong, NSW.

Don’t forget to write the contact details you want published in the mag at the bottom of your letter!

45 R O O T S

De-Teching

By Rachel Hore, Dean Park, NSW.

Rachel asked herself whether her smart phone was really making her happy, and has found multiple benefits to doing without it.

‘Mum, I want a phone!’ my eldest girl stated. A moment I had been dreading. I knew it was coming. As a teenager I had also begged and pleaded with my mother for a phone. I listed all the reasons my daughter couldn’t have one. She

was too young; it would stifle her natural creativity and she would become addicted.

‘But Mum, you have a phone, and you use it… quite a lot.’

I had become aware that over the pandemic my smartphone had

become a crutch. I hate being a hypocrite. I had recently been reading and listening about people who were ‘de-teching’; getting rid of their smartphone and re-finding themselves. I felt like it was about time for me to do something similar. There are, however, challenges, to giving up your smartphone in the modern world. Our lives have become so intertwined with technology that it becomes quite a process to disengage.

It was difficult, I still haven’t entirely conquered it, but here are some of the obstacles I faced and solutions I have found for them.

Communication

I had given up social media before this, when I became disheartened with the shallowness of it all and chasing likes and hearts. I wanted a more solid foundation for friendships and a more meaningful relationship with family.

One activity I started doing was writing letters again. It was a great feeling to put pen to paper and share all the news with my family members. My children have also joined in and my four-year-old writes letters in her little beginning writing and then I ask her what it says and interpret the message for the person. My family have become really involved in this, and we get lots of letters back with little drawings and family stories which we can keep and treasure always.

I also seek out the company of other mums at library events and church groups. Having recently moved I am still making friends, but it sometimes just feels comforting to be in the space of other mums.

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Finding Information

This was the thing I enjoyed the most about the smartphone. It was like having the information of the world at your fingertips.

Without the phone, I went back to my original love, the library.

Giving up my smartphone provided more time to read. I am devouring nonfiction (I loved history) and fiction at the rate I did when I was younger. I had made the excuse to myself that as a busy mum I just didn’t have the time, but that wasn’t the case. It was whenever I had free time I was scanning on my phone.

Now my free time is taken up reading and jotting notes in my diary for things to try later.

Be Prepared to Deal with Stuff

I mentioned before that I had been using the smartphone as a crutch and that was the case. Once I gave it up, all the emotions that I had been holding back began to resurface. Feelings about the pandemic and anxieties about the future were no longer being suppressed. I had to find other ways to deal with my feelings of anxiety and sadness. It is hard to be physically present all the time when you have spent so much time immersing yourself in an online world.

Whenever my feelings started overwhelming me, I would go outside in the garden, without shoes and just feel the earth under my feet and the sky overhead. I would plan a trip out with my family and walk one of the trails near my home.

Recently I grew some corn, and I found it helpful to go outside and listen to the rustling sound it made as the wind blew. I became more aware of mother nature and her calming, soothing ability and allowed myself to fully enter the experience.

Finding Your way Around

Not having a smart phone with a handy online map has been a learning experience for me. Being in Sydney means that having a smartphone can be vitally important to find my way to some areas. I have

decided to mainly stick locally or go to places which I can learn by route.

For someone who used to love to drive and explore all over it has been difficult for me, but has also helped me appreciate and explore interesting places in my local suburb that I might not have discovered earlier. We are lucky enough to have playgrounds, a little corner store and many walking trails nearby. What else as a family do I need?

Pioneers didn’t very often leave their homestead except for trading purposes. I think a lot can be learned about our needs versus actual wants by how people used to live.

The Reconnect

I found being always mentally present with my family very rewardG R A S S

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ing. I enjoy playing boardgames and cards with them and the funny, little insightful comments they make. I enjoy getting to know about their hopes and dreams as we go on walks together and chat about our day. I like to sing songs and listen to the radio as I get my chores done and play toys with my littlest ones.

I feel more at peace with myself and less stressed as I am not being bombarded with bad news all day.

Instead, I can curl up with a drink, and my Grass Roots magazine and enjoy reading the articles and the letters in Feedback and feel a part of the greater community. I feel closer to becoming a whole person again and I can be content that I am modelling behaviour that hopefully my children will take on board. T

Upcycled Craft for Kids

By Pam Thoday, Wartook, Tas.

It’s amazing what can be transformed by craft! Here are some fun upcycles that featured at the local agricultural show.

These two craft entries for the local country show were made by my daughter. The first used a bulk ice cream tub donated by a shop that we use to store grains for muesli.

She then added some pieces cut from hessian sacks that had been chewed by mice, fraying the edges. This was coated in a layer of PVA glue. While still wet, she added pictures from the newspaper, bows made from the frayed edge, pieces of oaten hay from the goat feed and a couple of heads of wheat. All of these were liberally coated in PVA glue.

The scoop is a little oversized for the container, but ideal in our big bins for mixing wheat and goat blend grains. It is a cut-down 3lt milk container, and was much easier to cut as it is more flexible than PET plastic.

Lay the bottle on its thinner edge with the handle facing upwards.

Mark a diagonal line up both sides and join them across with a straight line on the upper and base planes.

Pierce the plastic with the sharp point of scissors and cut, or use a craft knife.

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She then bound the handle with bailing twine and covered it with silicone for a smooth finish.

Finally, her decorated bottle, inspired by a magic Persian lamp, was made by using clear craft glue to attach glitter, beads, diamontes, sequins and scrapbooking embellishments. This was a time-consuming process as each strand needed to dry with the bottle lying on its side before the next row was added, or the beads would slip along the glass.

Hope this inspires other GR readers to get crafting. T

KIDS PAGE

wet weather fun Teddy Bears' Picnic July 10 is Teddy Bears’ Picnic Day. If it’s raining outside, why not make a picnic in the lounge for your teddy bears. In fact, you could invite all your other stuffed or special toys as well.

You will need: l picnic rug l pillows l stuffed toys and special toys l tea cup and saucer and side plate l snacks Lay out the rug on the floor and set up the pillows around the edge. Allow toys to choose which pillow they want to lounge against. Give each teddy or toy a cup of tea and offer them sandwiches. If you want, you could look up the song Teddy Bears’ Picnic online and play it to the toys.

More fun for toys: they may also like to play board games, charades, have a rope tug of war or a ring or beanbag toss game.

Make a Picnic Basket You will need:

20cm square piece of paper strip of paper for the handle l colouring pencils, textas or paint l scissors and stapler First, decorate the square of paper and the handle however you would like, using pencils, textas or paint. Allow paper to dry if paint was used.

Next, carefully using scissors, cut 7cm into the centre of each corner. Now, pull the sides together, overlapping the corners in front of the centre. Staple. Repeat on all four sides. Staple on the handle. You now have a cute picnic basket. l l

Cucumber Sandwiches

Make a Tent To make a tent you need a rug or two, a couch, a few hard backed chairs and some clothes pegs.

Arrange the rug over the chairs and couch to make the tent and put another rug on the floor if you need to make it comfortable inside. Add cushions, pillows and a torch.

If the weather is warmer you can also make a tent outside by tying a rope between two trees and laying a sheet or blanket across it.

G R A S S

Cucumber sandwiches are a very elegant snack to serve at a picnic, and apparently are much loved by royal types such as princes and princesses.

4 slices soft brown or wholemeal bread, thinly sliced 2 tbsp butter 2 tbsp cream cheese 1 small cucumber salt & pepper 2 tbsp dill, chives or mint, chopped finely Spread butter on 2 slices of bread, and cream cheese on the other 2 slices.

Thinly slice the cucumber into rounds.

Lay the cucumber on the butter side of the 2 slices of bread. Add a little salt and pepper if you wish.

Sprinkle over some dill, chives or mint. Top the sandwiches with the 2 cream cheese slices of bread.

Cut into triangles.

If you want, you could cut off the crusts, but be sure to give them to the chooks so you don’t waste them! Serve sandwiches on a fancy plate, with a doily if you have one.

Enjoy! T

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In the Kitchen In the depths of winter, it’s the heartier healthier dishes that really fulfil the soul.

Vegie soup

1 lge brown onion, chopped 2 garlic cloves, crushed 2 celery sticks, diced 2 tbsp olive oil 2 carrots, sliced 2 potatoes, peeled, large dice 300g sweet potato, peeled, diced 1 cup cauliflower florets 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped 2 cups vegie stock 400g can diced tomatoes 100g red lentils, rinsed, drained 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice 1 /4 cup fresh parsley, chopped Place the onion, garlic and celery in a large heavy-based saucepan with olive oil and sauté, stirring, until lightly coloured.

Add the carrot, potato, sweet potato, cauliflower, rosemary, stock, diced tomatoes, lentils and 2 cups of water. Stir well to combine.

Cook on a medium heat for 30–40 minutes or until vegetables are tender and lentils are cooked.

Stir the lemon juice into soup.

Season. Serve soup sprinkled with parsley. Serves 4. broc & spinach quiche

1 tbsp olive oil 1 head broccoli, cut into florets 1 sml onion, finely chopped 3 cups chopped fresh spinach 3 garlic cloves, crushed 2 pieces frozen shortcrust pastry, thawed 4 eggs 1 /2 cup milk 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped salt and black pepper 180g fetta, crumbled 1 /2 cup vintage cheddar cheese Preheat oven to 180ºC. Using a large frypan heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add broccoli and onion to the pan and

cook and stir until crisp and tender.

Stir in spinach and garlic, cook, stirring, for 4–5 minutes longer or until spinach is wilted.

Grease a 22cm fluted loose-bottomed tart pan. Roll out pastry, line pan with pastry, line with baking paper and fill with pastry weights, then bake for 25 minutes or until pastry is dry. Remove from oven.

In a small bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, rosemary, salt and pepper. Stir in fetta. Pour mixture over the vegetables. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese.

Bake 30–35 minutes or until a knife inserted near the centre comes out clean. Let stand 15 minutes before cutting. mac, veg and cheese

250g wholemeal pasta 1 /2 head cauliflower, cut into small florets 1 cup broccoli florets 1 zucchini, diced 1 carrot, diced 2 tbsp olive oil 1 onion, finely chopped 2 tbsp plain flour 11/2 cups milk of choice salt and black pepper 1 cup cheddar cheese, grated 1 /3 cup breadcrumbs 1 /3 cup Parmesan cheese, grated Cook pasta in a large pot according to packet instruction. In the last 5–6 minutes of cooking, add the cauliflower and broccoli florets and zucchini and carrot to the pot of boiling pasta. Drain and set aside.

Heat the oil in a saucepan and sauté onions for 4–5 minutes until soft and translucent.

Add the flour to the pan and cook for 2 minutes, stirring. Gradually start adding the milk while stirring. Warm the milk first to get a smoother sauce. Bring the sauce to G R A S S

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the boil, then remove from the heat.

Season with salt and pepper and stir in grated cheese.

Combine the pasta, vegies and sauce.

Mix the breadcrumbs and Parmesan in a separate bowl.

Put pasta, vegies and sauce in an oven-proof dish, sprinkle with breadcrumb mixture and place under the grill for 5–10 minutes until golden and crunchy. Serves 4.

GF rhubarb muffins

185ml rice malt syrup 150g butter, softened 1 tsp vanilla essence 2 eggs 2 thin rhubarb stalks, trimmed 1 cup gluten-free SR flour 1 cup almond meal Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 12-hole muffin pan and line with large paper pattie pans.

Using a stand or hand mixer, beat syrup, butter and vanilla until thick and pale. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Finely chop 1 rhubarb stalk.

Fold into batter along with flour and almond meal.

Spoon batter into prepared pattie pans in muffin tray. Halve remaining rhubarb stalk lengthways, then cut into 8cm pieces. Press these into the mixture in the pattie pans to top the muffin.

Bake muffins for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool slightly before serving. Makes 12. T

greens until you have enough to use. The original recipe uses pine nuts but I add whatever I have.

I have successfully used walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts. I now have hazelnuts from a backyard tree so can grow everything except the oil.

Basic Recipe

combination with basil. I always use virgin olive oil, but you may substitute an oil of your choice, cold pressed for preference. It is best to use fresh greens but I have used greens from the freezer. Freeze

2 cups of basil or other greens 2 lge garlic cloves (or more to taste) 1 /3 cup of pine nuts or other nuts – roast nuts for added flavour 1 /2 – 2/3 cup of olive oil 1 /2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese salt and black pepper to taste Combine greens, garlic and nuts in a food processor or mortar and pestle. Slowly dribble in olive oil until the mix is smooth. Add cheese quickly and stir.

Create a cheese-free version by leaving out cheese and adding more nuts. Add a squeeze of lemon juice or a little preserved lemon if desired.

Use fresh or store in portion sizes in the freezer. Consider freezing some in an ice cube tray for a quick dose of instant summer zest.

Enjoy! T

Italian parsley.

Rocket.

Vietnamese mint.

Hazelnuts.

Pssst Pesto

By Gail Foster, Blackmans Bay, Tas. Pesto is an easy solution to the perennial ‘what to eat next’ challenge. Stir through pasta, dollop onto a baked potato, add to a soup or casserole that needs an extra zing; the solution is as easy as a walk to your freezer for your homemade supply. For summer munching, stir through a dip or add to salad.

Pesto is highly nutritious and super healthy. Make a bulk supply and wash, chop and blend while ingredients are in season. Take a portion out in mid-winter for an easy serve of green goodness.

Greens that I have tried from my garden in the temperate climate of southern Tasmania are parsley (Italian or common curly leaf), rocket, arugula (heritage form of rocket), coriander, basil (grown inside in a pot), land cress and Vietnamese mint, baby spinach and kale leaves. I have a friend who makes pesto from nasturtium leaves but I have not tried this.

Pesto originated in Genoa, Italy, and the word pesto means to pound or crush. Traditionally, basil and olive oil were used. You may substitute any of the greens I’ve mentioned, either alone or in

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Vegan GF Winter Dahl

By Theresa Daley, Garden Island Creek, Tas.

Cumin and coriander are good for digestion while cinnamon is warming and turmeric is anti-inflammatory – enjoy the benefits in this nourishing dish.

The weather is cooling and according to Ayurvedic wisdom we should eat foods that are easier to digest because our digestive fire isn’t as strong, it follows the arc and strength of the sun. Given that cooler weather also means more time indoors and less time involved in outdoor work and activities, food that is nourishing, yet easy to digest is just the thing, and this is where a good dahl reigns supreme. I was taught to make it by an Indian friend of mine, who is one of the best cooks in the world because she is an Indian mother.

The fresher your ingredients can be the better, including spices. I buy spices such as cumin in bulk and then grind some up for powder.

I use cinnamon sticks and whole caraway seeds. If you have an aversion to garlic and/or onion you can substitute hing (asafoetida) which is a powder made from a large fennel like plant.

This dahl is cost effective, easy and quick to make with very little preparation. red lentil Dahl

4 cup dried red lentils, soaked and well rinsed 1 /2 onion (or hing instead), chopped 1 tsp whole cumin seeds 1 tsp whole coriander seeds 1 cinnamon quill 2 tbsp olive oil or other neutral oil 1 tomato or 1 tbsp tomato paste salt to taste 1 /2 tsp sugar 1 tsp ground cumin 1 /4 tsp ground turmeric 1 or 2 vegies of choice, finely 3/

chopped – carrot, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant or any solid vegie you have on hand.

Soak the lentils in water for an hour or so then rinse well.

Cook the lentils in a saucepan on a medium heat with enough water for them to be swimming, you can add water but not take it out so keep that in mind. A scum will rise to the surface, remove this. You want quite a sloppy consistency at the end of cooking.

In a separate frypan with deepish sides, sauté the chopped onion and the whole spices, the cumin and coriander seeds and the cinnamon quill, in the oil. The oil should be hot but not too hot, you do not want it to burn. When the spices are dancing and you can smell them, and the onion is translucent, add the finely chopped tomato (or tomato paste and a little water), salt and sugar. Mix well and cover with a lid. Mix again and cook until all the ingredients have made a sauce, you may want to add a little water here and there, just a little at a time.

Now add in the powdered spices and mix well, cover and cook for another few minutes.

Add your cooked lentils and mix well. On low to medium heat cook the lentils and spices mix until well combined and infused. This will take a few minutes. Stir well as you cook and use a wooden utensil if possible.

Cover and leave on a low heat for a couple of minutes.

Now add the finely chopped vegies of choice. Keep in mind that carrot will cook more slowly than, say, wombok cabbage, so add in the carrot first.

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Red lentil dahl.

Cook the dahl until the vegies are soft, but not squishy. Serve with freshly steamed rice for a delicious and nutritious meal that is cheap to make and aids digestion. Sprinkle with extra salt if you’d like.

It is a topic of great debate as to whether a dahl should be runny or thicker, if it should be served spicy with chilli, with pickle or not. It is a matter of individual taste and health. The rule of thumb is that if your dahl is more on the runny side it is easier to digest.

You can also cook some pappadums in the toaster for a fat free crunchy treat on the side. If you are thinking you might have some coconut yoghurt it would be wise to eat the dahl at lunch as yoghurt of any kind is difficult to digest.

And remember, dahl loves salt and we all love dahl! T

Filling Winter Fare

By Kate Downham, Deloraine, Tas. Cold weather calls for warming, filling food, or perhaps fuel is more apt. These two handy recipes are easy to make and provide loads of energy to help you through the working day.

I also make these a lot in spring, where the random bits of greenery pulled from the garden complement chorizo from the larder and rice from the store cupboard in a symphony of simple frugal brilliance.

Spanish Rice

This rice makes for a simple one pot meal, great as a side dish to fried eggs or lamb chops. The leftovers are delicious the next day in leftover grain patties.

3 cups (450g) short grain or medium grain rice optional water, for soaking 3 tbsp lard or olive oil 2 med onions, diced 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 150g chorizo, chopped into small

pieces around 1lt bone broth or water a few handfuls of cooking greens (around 300g) salt to taste If using brown rice, soak overnight in enough water to cover rice by 2.5cm.

The next day, drain and rinse the rice, and drain again.

Heat the lard in a heavy-bottomed pot with a tight fitting lid over medium high heat. Add onions and sauté for around 3 minutes, or until tender and fragrant. Stir through the garlic and chorizo for a minute or two, and then stir through the rice. Add enough broth to cover it by 2.5cm, put any slow cooking greens such as mustard greens or kale on top, and bring to the boil with the lid on.

Reduce heat and simmer until rice is cooked, around 40 minutes for soaked brown rice. Add salt to G R A S S

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taste. If you’re using fast-wilting greens such as spinach or rocket, quickly stir these through now before serving.

Serves 4 to 6.

Leftover Grain Patties

This recipe is especially good using leftover Spanish rice and even fried rice. For every 240ml (1 cup) of leftover rice, add 1 beaten egg and 4 tbsp of flour. Mix through well, shape into patties, and fry in a 12mm thick layer of lard or ghee over medium-high heat. Cook on one side until browned in places before flipping over and frying the other side until browned.

Find further delicious recipes in, A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen available from Kate Downham, PO Box 115, Deloraine, Tas 7304.

RRP: $50.00 posted. Website: the nourishinghearthfire.com. T

Latin Plant Names

By Jess Adams, Cygnet, Tas.

A learner’s perspective of the value of a little Latin in the garden.

Knowledge of Latin plant names tends to be the mark of a keen gardener or horticulturalist. While standard schooling has introduced most of us to the concepts of taxonomic classification and binomial names, few of us really run with it or learn how to describe our gardens with precise names.

When it is useful

Through working on a flower farm, I have moved from the camp of ‘that plant there with silver leaves’ to someone making a conscious attempt to memorise a library of plant characteristics, mentally stapled onto their Latin names. (Many thanks to my employers for on-the-

job educational supplements!)

In the process, I have expanded my vocabulary of common names too, which I suppose can be thought of as a ‘first language’ in the gardening world. Though I’m still nowhere near binomial fluency, at least I am on the way.

Of course, Latin names will also hold you in good stead if at some stage you want to engage with gardeners from abroad in an exchange program or otherwise. Common names won’t take you very far.

Latin names come into their own when you have to communicate about plants outside your own mind, such as in a teamwork scenario.

It’s elegant simplicity when anyone

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can say ‘Helichrysum’ and you can understand they mean Helichrysum Bracteantha bracteata, without juggling the common names of strawflower, paper daisy and everlasting daisy.

I will admit that the plot thickens when occasional reclassification of plants enters the picture. For instance, Helichrysum Bracteantha bracteata has had a change of genus and since 1990 is officially Xerochrysum bracteatum. As they say, old habits die hard, and this plant which has been in the Helichrysum genus since 1805 will, for many people, remain a Helichrysum.

Another example is the leafy

Memory Refresher The matryoshka doll of classification is nested within kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. A binomial name is the pairing of genus and species. Then there are subspecies, and ‘cultivar’ at the bottom of the rung if the plant in question is a product of selective breeding. You may also encounter intermediate classification groupings of ‘subfamily’ and ‘subgenus.’

upright succulent long known in the Sedum genus – you might even have the popular ‘Autumn Joy’ cultivar in your own backyard. But after genetic analysis revealed significant differences to the other creeping sedums, this upright grouping was relocated into Hylotelephium, another genus within the Crassulaceae family of succulents. Don’t disappoint a gardener who is proud of their sedums by telling them they have been technically incorrect since 2008. It is somewhat of a shame, because ‘sedum’ was much easier to roll off the tongue.

Government has long been a force for standardisation, and plant-related paperwork is no different. Plant importation or seed purchase are occasions when you’ll want to draw from the Latin lexicon. If you are buying poppy seed, for example, the Icelandic poppy Papaver nudicaule is a safe bet to avoid inadvertently growing opium poppies without a license. Your choice can be further narrowed into cultivars, such as the poetically named F2 hybrid ‘Wind Song’.

So far my examples have been limited to flowers, but of course, Latin names extend beyond. When trying to make sense of shared characteristics between members of the vast plant kingdom, Latin names give you hints of these characteristics or the plant’s place of origin.

Not all Latin names have obvious

meanings, but they are worth trying to decipher.

What they can teach you

The big, happy apple genus of Malus spreads over at least 30 species, ranging from crabapples to flowering trees. Malus floribunda speaks of its flowers before we even get to its common name of ‘flowering crabapple’. Malus prunifolia has a plum-like leaf. Malus orientalis originates from modern-day Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Russia.

In the veggie patch, the nightshade family Solanaceae encompasses potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, chillis and bell peppers – all those being within the Solanum genus. ‘Families’ are such broad groupings, however, that you may not have realised that Cape gooseberry, goji berry, tobacco and petunia are all distant cousins, in G R A S S

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other genera, of the aforementioned vegie staples. This isn’t immediately useful information, but it does shine a spotlight on plant features which may otherwise be overlooked.

Not set in stone

The taxonomic system has been constructed and fiddled with over centuries by what seemed at various points in time to be the best logic – a somewhat arbitrary means – and is now reviewed and reshuffled by genetic testing. But isn’t that the same way all gardens are developed, by what makes sense from the vantage point of the present moment? Expanding your knowledge of Latin plant names encourages you to pay more attention to the similarities and differences between plants, their likes and dislikes, and ultimately become a better student of your garden.

That’s a good thing. T

Flood Damaged Gardens

By Pam Thoday, Wartook, Vic.

Many of us have had our gardens saturated by water in the past few months, Pam has some advice for remediating the soil and saving the plants.

There has been unpredictable weather in many parts of Australia over the past 12 months, with some areas still being impacted by flood waters. While many of us were lucky enough not to be under a metre of water or more, we have still been left with gardens damaged by waterlogging and soil compaction.

As you will have noticed, some plants have a higher tolerance to waterlogged soils than others.

Desert and Mediterranean plants tend not to cope. In most cases the standing water causes their hair roots to rot away, and the impact is noticed when hot weather starts and the plant simply can’t take up water through those roots. Some trees can continue to function for months on stored water and nutrient, but will ultimately die. It is heartbreaking!

Many people I’m in contact with have lost cherry, apricot and plum trees, while some remaining trees are easily stressed by heat, indicating that they have insufficient hair roots.

It may help to prune back stressed trees to reduce the transpiration or loss of water through leaves. Yates sells an anti-rot product that may also assist when sprayed on foliage.

We hoped that some plants would reshoot; a kiwi fruit vine is struggling back, but most were dead when we cut them back or dug them out.

What to do

Review your needs and replant if required. I prefer to buy bare-rooted fruit trees as I can see their root development and they seem to transplant better. We will be making some mounds in the orchard, adding plenty of loam and compost and planting new cherry trees about

20cm above natural ground level.

While their roots will still penetrate the natural soil, a mat of hair roots should sit above the water table despite waterlogging.

When preparing the soil to replant, either dig out the stump or cut at ground level and replant nearby and leave the wood to rot, then make sure to dig over the area to at least two spade depths. If the ground smells anaerobic, or like sulphur, leave it to be exposed to UV light and turn a few times to kill bacteria. If not, or after a week, add new soil, compost and potting mix to raise the level.

In winter, plant into your mounds, making sure any graft unions are well clear of soil level. I recommend mulching well and ensuring that these new trees receive ample water, such as drip irrigation, over that first summer as they will be at a higher risk of drying out. When G R A S S

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adding mulch keep an area clear of the lower bark to discourage root rot. We cut the top and bottom from large 4lt olive oil tins and cut along one side. This wraps around the trunk leaving a gap and can be removed when the tree has grown.

For existing damaged trees, consider digging swales above them to direct water around the main root area. We are planning some largescale earthworks to channel water away from the orchard area in wet winters, with sluice gates that can be added to retain summer rainfall.

Oh the joys of future proofing and its constant modifications! Seaweed emulsion will also assist roots to build immunity to root rot.

In the ornamental garden we removed many dead plants, cutting back those with dead centres in the hope that they will reshoot and bush out. Fortunately we had already propagated many new plants from

our garden and decided to remove some badly damaged plants and start again. This enabled us to raise the most affected garden beds by bringing in layers of soil, potting mix and compost. We replanted about 8cm above ground level and re-mulched the beds ready for summer. It felt crazy watering in the new plants after so many months of rain, but nearly all survived the few very hot weeks.

The only bonus from this is that it has enabled as to reassess our plantings and focus on those that we really need, or change the layout to better suit our needs. Some choices are affected by what we experienced, for example English lavenders mainly survived, while those fairy cultivars from Italian lavender were most affected.

Having removed the plant graveyard, I’m past being depressed and have just ordered a big shipment of subtropical plants which will require further earthworks and soil care to ensure their success.

For those who had serious flooding where water sat for weeks or months, my heart goes out to you!

All that I’ve written still applies but you may consider resiting your plantings in accordance to where you observed water to flow, and making some earthworks to redirect water away from certain areas.

If planting an orchard, be mindful that some plants enjoy periodic flooding, like grapes and berries, some love water as long as they have good drainage, such as citrus and pomme fruit, apples, pears etc, and some hate waterlogging, including cherries, kiwifruit, avocados and apricots. future forecast

We have reviewed our climate change forecast to include the implications of both longer and hotter heat waves and prolonged rain events, as expected from a hotter climate. I have plantings in several different areas to hedge my bets and hope that some areas will survive whatever gets thrown our way.

We built a large greenhouse last

year, so will use some of that space to increase the growing period. We can germinate seeds earlier and plant out more advanced seedlings, and this year I may consider digging up some plants and growing them in large tubs to ensure we get a crop of eggplants and chillis before they are cold affected.

Raised garden beds for herbs and vegetables are generally less likely to be affected by flooding, and aquatic plantings obviously don’t get damaged by water, but are affected by the prolonged cold nights. Many plants only set flowers within a G R A S S

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window of temperature range, so even those not in waterlogged areas will have found production reduced this year with the persistent cold temperatures overnight. For future years, having a removable cover over raised beds would create a cold frame approach and enable plants to grow better when the weather is still cold. This framework, possibly using polypipe arches, could also be used for shadecloth to assist with heat extremes.

Here’s hoping for a better gardening season, and a sunny spring in 2023. T

Rabbit-Proof Plants

By Angela Fry, Oldina, Tas.

Angela shares her top picks for colourful and resilient plants for restoring rabbit damaged gardens. determined bunnies, are appearing throughout the garden where just days ago flowering groundcovers and low growing shrubs were flowering prolifically.

What we have noticed is that the rabbits seem to dislike strongly scented plants including herbs, and this could be a clue to living with rabbits which are trapped within the rabbit and wallaby proof fence of the house yard.

At present there is an ongoing battle at Lovelock Farm between us and the increasing population of rabbits enjoying our garden and lawn. Mark has completed the restoration of the rabbit eroded bank beside the driveway (described in GR 276). Now it is time to assess which plants are surviving and can be successfully used to replant the bank as well as re-establishing other damaged areas of the garden.

Much to our dismay, the magnificent Bidens ferrurifolia ‘Goldmound’ border plants, which were gloriously covered with a mass of bright yellow flowers along many of the garden edges, have been munched down to struggling unidentifiable fine branching stems.

Thankfully, it has been easy to propagate from rescued cuttings, and will be grown on in the hothouse, ready to plant in a future when rabbits are a pest of the past.

Areas of exposed soil, complete with mini mineshafts excavated by

It has always been necessary for us to protect new plantings from being grazed down by wallabies and rabbits who cannot resist the succulent shoots of newly planted tubestock or young plants. They also love freshly dug soil. Avoid the temptation to leave your plants before putting in place a physical barrier such as a plant guard. If you do so, disappointment will surely follow when you return the next day, your hard-earned labour and

Brachyscombe close up.

Protected creeping lasiandra.

Protective Measures

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precious plants will be munched down unrecognisably or dug up.

Plant Guards

To protect plants from animals and strong wind while plants are becoming established, use fluteboard plant guards, secured in place with recyclable bamboo stakes. Our guards and stakes have served their purpose well and have been reused many times over the past 20 years.

When planting out, it is good practice to get into the habit of completing the process one at a time before moving on to the next plant: dig a hole the appropriate size, water the hole, place the plant in, backfill gently with soil, firm down, put the guard in place, hammer in the wooden or bamboo stakes, water in, then move on.

Wire cylinders

As the plant outgrows the fluteboard guard, it is usually safe to remove it when the plant appears

Groundcovers intertwined to successfully stabilise sloping bank.

Groundcover border plant scaevola, with rabbit damage visible between.

strong enough to support itself and the woody growth has become firm.

Some plants need further protection, and a wire surround made from small diameter chicken wire, formed into a cylinder and secured with wire clips works well. This will not deter rabbits from eating the foliage that pushes through the wire, but will prevent it from being totally destroyed, as happened with our lovely daisy-like Brachyscombe augustifolia ‘Mauve Mystique’.

I wonder if a wire topiary shape could be used and kept neatly trimmed by the obliging rabbits?

That could be an experiment for another day.

Medium height pink penstemon.

Strong smelling catmint as a border plant, moggies love it, but rabbits are not attracted.

wire plant baskets

Old plant baskets rescued from a local plant nursery are firmer than chicken wire, and were used to protect groundcovers, such as the bright purple-cerise summer flowering, mat-forming evergreen Heterocentron elegans ‘Trailing Lasiandra’, held in place with tent pegs. Even though the plant can still be nibbled, the firmer wire makes it a little more difficult for the rabbit to dig the soil around the plant and prevents the roots of the plant from being exposed or destroyed.

over the past few weeks within our own garden, there are still plenty of plants which have proven to be resistant to the appetite of those pesky cottontails. As the rabbits’ food sources deplete, these plants may start to have appeal, but a scattering of Dynamic Lifter around the garden beds seems to deter them for a short time.

Groundcovers, Border plants and herbs Mauve Clusters

Rabbit resistant plants

From observations we have made

Scaevola is a perennial groundcover with a mass of purple, fan-shaped flowers for most of

The red penstemon is also effective.

Salvia guaranitica black and blue.

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Groundcover native hibertia.

the year. The foliage is lush and bright green. It grows best in a sunny to partly shaded position, in moist well-drained soil. While these plants have survived the rabbit attack, the area of exposed soil between shows no trace of the pretty pink-flowering Lamium maculatum ‘Pink Pewter’, with its variegated silver green creeping foliage that was growing abundantly up until a couple of weeks ago.

Catmint

Nepeta cataria or catmint has

Medium shrub strongly scented golden diosma behind groundcover pigface.

Hardy and attractive paper daisy.

proved to be a resilient aromatic border plant beside pathways. The leaves have a strong minty smell and this plant has a reputation for attracting and intoxicating cats, but is not appealing to rabbits.

It has mauve flowers along a delicate flower spike, creating a misty show of colour above dark green foliage which can be neatly trimmed as a border. It is easy to prune back hard after flowering, and is simple for the home gardener to propagate.

Hibbertia Pedunculata

Low growing crowea used as border plant.

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Hibbertia pedunculata is a small, Australian native evergreen shrub with a sprawling habit. It is long flowering, from spring to autumn, bearing a mass of bright yellow flowers. Used in our garden as a border plant, the rabbits have not yet touched it. This plant has survived drying out in summer, as well as coping with long, wet and cold winters with occasional frost.

Paper Daisy

Paper daisy (Chrysocephalum baxteri) has lasted for years with

Homemade wire mesh guard surrounding brachyscombe.

Rabbits on the lawn; they have no shame.

very little attention in a very exposed section of garden. Its glossy dark green leaves form a thick mat, which is rarely penetrated by weeds. The white single daisy like flowers are papery and last well when dried. The rabbits have shown no interest in eating either the flowers or the foliage of this reliable groundcover.

Pigface

The pigface variety Carbobrotus glaucescens has proved to be a very reliable and rabbit-proof plant in several areas of our garden. We first used this plant to gain a quick groundcover over a steep sloping section of garden. It spread over the top of the wood mulch, sending down roots and stabilising the mulch from slipping away, in effect self-layering. The vibrant cerise flowers are stunning, when open they turn their heads towards the direction of the sun. As they die off, the dead stems form a type of matting stabilising the ground, and providing ground level trellising for other groundcovers such as native violet, Viola hederacea, a stemless perennial to spread amongst.

Medium size flowering plants and shrubs Golden Diosma

Golden diosma or Coleonema pulchrum is another strongly aromatic

Medium cottage plants felicia and penstemon.

Fishing rod plant at the edge of the pond.

evergreen shrub that does not appeal to rabbits. This dwarf heather-like shrub provides contrast in any garden, with its beautiful golden-green foliage, and when flowering in spring is covered in tiny star shaped mauve or white flowers. It is hardy and can tolerate windy conditions, preferring a sunny location. We have had great success using it alongside the native Crowea exalta ‘Festivale’ as an edging plant beside steps and walkways.

An occasional prune keeps it compact and it is trouble free.

Pond plants

Penstemon

Penstemon is a reliable cottage garden plant, easy to grow from cuttings, flowering in many shades of pink and red growing on upright stems rising from a woody base. It is frost hardy, long flowering and rabbit proof.

Blue Salvia

Black and blue salvia, Salvia guaranitica, one of many varieties of the sage plant, has startling dark blue flowers, and resists rabbits, needing to be pruned back hard at the end of flowering season.

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Lastly, I just couldn’t resist mentioning the angel’s fishing rod, Dierama pulcherrimum, which is very happy to grow beside several of our garden ponds. The rabbits can’t reach the flowers which hover over 1m high. The strappy leaves are too tough for them to eat, and they don’t appear to dig or burrow beneath them. The flowers come in many shades of pink and cerise, and are attached on long, very delicate looking stems, which look like a fishing rod, with the flowers gently swaying and bobbing gently in the breeze. Over time, this plant has spread, but has not become a nuisance weed.

Stay encouraged

If you have become discouraged by the damage caused by rabbits in your garden, I hope this article has given you some hope, suggesting a few rabbit proof species to plant and how to protect them as you continue to enjoy the beauty and colour of your garden.

Angela shared part 1 in GR 276. T

Deer – Friend or Foe?

By Greg Siepen, Kenmore, Qld.

Get up to date with the current situation with deer in Australia, and the realistic options to deal with them.

Recently, I visited two adjoining semi-rural properties on the outskirts of Brisbane. Both owners commented on seeing deer earlier in the morning crossing their properties, but they had opposing views about these creatures.

One owner said she loved how the

deer emerged from her mist-filled gully, majestically looked at her then walked off unhurriedly into the forest. The other owner detested deer because they had damaged her trees and she felt they were exotic animals suited to another continent.

Both views are right of course.

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So how do we resolve these views and manage deer populations across our nation?

Introduced species

Deer were introduced into Australia in the 1800s by acclimatisation societies to provide animals that the newly arrived immigrants could relate to and remind them of their homeland. For many years after their release in the 19th century feral deer gradually built up numbers, but were kept at reasonably low levels by predators, such as wild dogs, foxes and feral cats. Due to concentrated efforts to reduce these type of predators feral deer herds and their ranges have gradually expanded. Consequently, they have reached a tipping point where they are now significantly affecting primary production and the environment.

The following page is a summary of the status of feral deer in each state/territory and how you can prevent and manage deer impacts on your properties.

In summary, each state has a management and/or control plan and strategy with the federal government in the process of designing a national plan. Additionally, in all states and territories, all deer are protected in national parks, as is every other animal. The Parks Service will organise any culling if necessary and penalties apply for any illegal culling or removal by the public.

In terms of feral deer control, all state and territory governments encourage the formation of landholder groups to control feral deer.

However, deer are regarded as a hunting resource in Victoria and

State / Territory

Deer Species

Legal Studies

Control Strategy

Victoria

• Victorian Deer Control Sambar (Cervus unicolor) Strategy Fallow (Dama dama) • Classed as Game (not Red (Cervus elaphus) pest) Hog (Axis porcinus) • Prevent establishment Chital (Axis axis)? of Chital, Rusa, Wapiti, Sika deer in wild • Dept of Env, Lands, Water and Planning

YES • Aligns with invasive plants and animals control policy • Recreational hunting • Legal deer controllers • Regional Deer Control Plans

South Australia

Chital (Axis axis) • SA Management Plan Hog (Axis porcinus) • Declared feral so can Red (Cervus elaphus) be legally controlled and Rusa (Cervus timorensis) culled under Landscape Sambar (Cervus unicolor) South Australia Act Fallow (Dama dama)

YES • Management Plan • Public and private landholders responsible for culling using national welfare code

Tasmania

Fallow (Dama dama)

New South Wales

Sambar (Cervus unicolor) • Declared Game YES Rusa (Cervus timorensis) Animals • Deer Management Red (Cervus elaphus) • Declared Pest Strategy Fallow (Dama dama) • Game Hunting • Public and private Chital (Axis axis) Licence required on public Landowners required to Hog (Axis porcinus) lands control feral deer to reduce environmental impacts

Queensland

• Biosecurity Act 2014 Fallow (Dama dama) YES • Declared pest Red (Cervus elaphus) • Feral Deer • Landholders obligated Management Strategy Rusa (Cervus timorensis) to control feral Fallow and Chital (Axis axis) • Landholders must Red deer when adjacent to take reasonable steps protected area (Class 3). to control feral Rusa & Chital deer (Class 2)

Western Australia

Northern Territory

• Declared feral pest

YES • Wild Fallow Deer Mgt Plan (2022-27) and Strategy • Recreational hunting

• Declared pest • Permit required to Fallow (Dama dama) • Biosecurity & keep these deer in capRed, Wapiti and elk Agriculture Management tivity (Cervus elaphus) • Recreational hunting Rusa (Cervus timorensis) Act (2007) • Declared Feral aniRusa (Cervus timorensis) Sambar (Cervus unicolor) mals

YES • 10 year NRM Plan to reduce the impacts of feral animals

• Draft National Feral Deer Action Plan • Invasive Species Council

• Draft Strategy (2023) • Stop spread of feral deer • Control/eradicate small populations • Protect significant sites • Deer farming addressed under Agriculture Acts

Federal Legislation/Laws

NB: Feral deer are those deer living in a wild state and not being farmed or kept for any other purpose. Permission of the landowner is required on public and private lands before hunting can legally be undertaken.

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Tasmania, but as pest species elsewhere in Australia.

In the Northern Territory two species of deer occur in the wild (Sambar, Rusa) but other feral animals are regarded as more significant in their impacts on the environment such as water buffalo, pigs, banteng cattle and cane toads.

Why are Feral Deer a Problem?

Feral deer listed in the table occur in natural environments, agricultural areas and in and around towns and cities right across Australia. They are hard-hoofed animals that compact the soil and eat native and agricultural plants.

They can damage gardens, orchard trees and revegetation plots.

Feral deer compete with livestock and native animals for water and food. They can damage fences, cause vehicle accidents and some are aggressive to people, pets and livestock (in breeding season especially). They can spread weed seeds and make it harder to manage livestock. Feral deer can damage native vegetation through trampling, ring-barking and antler rubbing, and can degrade natural water areas and aquatic plants and animals with faeces and wallowing.

In some states deer cause damage to rare and threatened plants and habitats. Feral deer also compete with native fauna for food and habitat.

According to the Queensland Government Factsheet: ‘Feral deer are also susceptible to exotic livestock diseases including footand-mouth disease, rinderpest, vesicular stomatitis, rabies and blue tongue’ as well as being susceptible to cattle tick, leptospirosis and ovine and bovine johne’s disease.

So, wild herds of feral deer could play a role in spreading unwanted diseases.

At a federal level, a Senate Committee is investigating whether there should be a national action plan and whether feral deer should be declared a national pest. A draft National Feral Deer Plan is currently being developed involving

If deer occur in your area there are a number of actions that you can take to prevent deer damage on your property.

able for protecting rehabilitating bushlands. Both need to be about 2m high and solidly attached to strong posts. All fencing should be placed at least 2m from the vegetation to stop deer eating and damaging edge trees and shrubs.

Wrapping tree trunks with wire, nailing hard wooden slats around the trunk and fixing iron sheets around tree bases have also been used to protect trees from deer.

Reporting Deer Activity

Removing Deer Shelter

community feedback, focussing on eradicating small, isolated feral populations; prioritising new control tools; and encouraging coordinated control.

Protecting Trees and your property

Report any sightings to the local council or agriculture department.

Assess your boundary fences and keep a look-out for any damage to your trees and vegetation.

Exclusion fencing and removing deer shelter seem to be the most effective methods of preventing damage to your property and vegetation by feral deer.

Fencing the property

Fencing your entire property to exclude deer is a very worthwhile ideal, but fences will need to be around 1.9 to 2.5m high (deer can jump over smaller fences) with strong posts. These fences need to have the mesh taut and pegged into the ground and sometimes an overhang at the top.

According to The Deer Farming Handbook, sheep and cattle fences can be upgraded by adding four or five electrified wires to a height of 2m or the original wire is removed, star-droppers fixed to existing posts and deer netting attached to the new posts. Local deer farm owners can give costs associated with complete property fencing.

Fencing out deer from parts of your property such as horticultural fields or orchards and timber plantations may be a better targeted measure that will fit into your overall budget.

Protecting individual trees

Builder’s reinforcing mesh (reo) has been used to protect small orchards and patches of bushland. Electric fencing is suitG R A S S

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Deer often shelter during the day, especially among lantana bushes (Lantana camara). Removing this exotic weed will help deter deer from your property. Installing fences or other obstacles around trees and shrubs used by deer as shelter may also deter them.

Impacts on Native Species

Feral deer have been reported damaging forests, grasslands and swamplands through grazing of native flora and soil compaction This damage results in changes to vegetation type with negative impacts on native species such as ground-nesting birds.

Surveys have found that in Royal National Park, NSW, 155 species of native plants including trees, shrubs, creepers, ferns, orchids and sedges are grazed by Rusa deer. As a result two endangered and nine vulnerable plant species are under threat in the park. Feral deer can also outcompete wallabies in terms of grazing impacts; in terms of grazing impact, one Rusa is equivalent to about four wallabies.

Deterring Deer!

Evidence suggests that frightening devices such as gas-propelled explosives and strobe lights are ineffective at deterring deer and can greatly disturb neighbours.

Likewise, odour-based chemical repellents are ineffective over large areas and need respraying after rain.

Methods of Control

Many methods of controlling and culling feral deer have been

attempted, but few are economically feasible to private landholders.

Shooting

Shooting must be carried out by trained personnel with appropriate firearms licences with permission of private or public landholders. It is best done as a joint district exercise with landholders and relevant local/ state government departments.

Ground shooting is very labour-intensive and is not very effective when there are large numbers of deer. Shooting from a helicopter is occasionally undertaken in inaccessible areas by government approved people and is quite successful when used with high quality thermal imaging.

Drones fitted with thermal imaging devices can locate herds of feral deer which can be targeted by aerial or ground shooters.

Trapping

Deer traps can be effective where deer regularly visit sites. Usually, traps are left open for days or weeks to habituate the feral deer before the trap door mechanism is set. Trap doors can be activated by phones or trip wires, or the entrance can be a one-way earthen ramp. Shade, water and food need to be provided for humane purposes. Also, trapped deer need to be removed humanely.

A new system is being developed to attract deer to a site so they can be trapped or culled. It’s called the Aggregator and enables deer to access feed while excluding access by native animals, such as kangaroos and possums.

Other Methods?

Guard dogs with electronic collars have been used in small, contained areas, but this method is expensive. Fertility control using darts is costly and requires expert shooters with only a slow decrease in the population over time. Deerspecific contraceptives in targeted water resources (eg troughs) could be investigated. Poisons are not used due to their potential to affect many other species. In addition,

using poisons and contraceptives presents extreme risks to domestic ungulates.

Overall, feral deer numbers are gradually increasing. In some areas they cause a great deal of damage to the natural environment and to agriculture. Even with a national deer management plan individual property owners will still need to G R A S S

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protect their property with suitable fences and perhaps participate in district feral deer control programs.

National Plan, website: federaldeerplan.org.au/the-plan.

The Deer Farming Handbook, Chris Tuckwell, RIRDC Publication No. 03/029, website: /www.deerfarming. com.au/deer-farming-handbook. T

The Way Things Were

By Ian & Normajean Gasking with Colin Lewis, Dugandan, Qld.

We now think of ourselves as environmentally conscious; recycling, growing and preserving our own vegies and fruit, and generally being earth conscious. But in reality, we are just getting back to the way things were. As the saying goes, ‘Yesterday’s luxuries are today’s necessities.’ In the 1950s manufacturers were advertising the luxury of ‘labour saving devices’; washing machines, electric and gas stoves, refrigerators, benchtop appliances like mixers, electric frypans and toasters, plus rotary clotheslines and motor mowers. Luxuries then, now necessities!

Col Lewis recently bought a copy of my book, Australia’s Skills of the Past. In his letter of appreciation

and our subsequent correspondence, he shared that it reminded him of memories from his past. As this was largely in note form, I have fleshed out some details, which I have added in brackets, but not altered the essence of his memories.

Even Col’s address speaks of times past; Shanks Pony Lane. For younger readers, to travel by shanks’ pony means to walk when one can’t afford to travel by horse, car or bike.

Col’s story

When I was a boy my grandfather told me stories of his life. He was a bullocky, carting logs to the railway. Well watered and grazed overnight, his team, 48 strong, was fresh and worked with a will. It was G R A S S

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a long haul with a fully laden jinker of logs to the top of a hill. There was fierce competition at the time with the newfangled motor lorries competing for logging business. The bullock team appreciated the rest break at the top and emptied forth their full bowels and bladders. The road, freshly churned by hard hooves and iron-bound wheels, was immediately turned to a steamy quagmire impossible for motor vehicles with wooden-spoked wheels and smooth solid rubber tyres.

My grandfather, the bullock driver on my father’s side, was wounded in France and badly affected by the horrors he witnessed in the war.

He was given a selection of land upon his return, but the family had

to pretty much fend for themselves as he was isolated and became an alcoholic. He was tough and lived a long life considering how he treated himself.

He had a camp on Coochin Creek, Qld, and almost came to an end several times while in his cups.

He was in a dinghy one moonlight night and seeing the shadow of a tree on the water, thought it was the bank and jumped overboard with the anchor. He went to the bottom and almost drowned.

Another night, he was badly burned when he staggered in to camp with an enormous log for the fire on his shoulder and finished up in the fire with the log on top of him. He blew himself up when he shimmied out on a tree branch to get over the top of a school of mullet and dropped half a plug of gelignite, which caught in the lower branches.

My father and Uncle Alf travelled during the Depression years looking for work. Dad would reminisce about ‘humping his bluey’ (swag) and ‘jumping the rattler’ (illicit rides on trains). They had one pair of socks between them. If they went to a dance they would wear one each and sit cross legged with the foot with the sock up.

As a young bloke, I would often come across groves of fruit and nut trees in the bush seemingly growing wild. Dad said they were old campsites of swagmen from the Depression days. Sometimes the local council planted them to help out with food. There were guava, persimmon, mango, citrus and macadamia trees and different berries. I guess they would all have been removed in later years as they would have been a disease threat to local orchards.

Uncle Alf was captured at Singapore during World War II and died on the Burma-Siam railway along with many of his mates.

Dad remained in the timber industry and bought a sawmill at Landsborough. It had been converted from steam to electricity, still had lots of long flat belts run-

ning everywhere, and was a fairly dangerous place. Over time he built a new modern mill beside it.

On my 14th birthday, instead of going to school, I fronted up at the mill to start my working life. The old man handed me a tin of Log Cabin tobacco and said, ‘There you go, you no longer have to pinch mine and go behind my back to smoke it.’ Mum thought I was at school and had a fit when I arrived home for lunch covered in sawdust with a fag hanging out of my mouth.

Queensland Forestry was strict on conservation even back then in the 1960s. The old man and forestry ranger would walk the block to be felled, pick a tree and chop a blaze with the axe on the direction it was to fall to minimise damage to younger trees around it.

If the contractor falling the trees was doing too much damage, we were told to get rid of him. The same with the dozer driver, if he was knocking over too much young stuff we were told to remove the blade and to rely on the winch only.

My grandfather on Mum’s side was known as Stro. He was a farmer, but had to retire due to a crook heart and did part time work at the post office. He had an enormous garden on a block beside his house in Caloundra. His ancient tools were kept like new, sharpened, painted with linseed oil and wrapped in a hessian bag before being stored away. It was my job to turn the handle on his big grindstone when he was sharpening tools. He was always barefooted, and had enormous gnarled flat feet with nails the didn’t look human. Being a farmer, he stayed home during the war, but was in the Reserves and had several framed photos of himself in uniform on the walls of the house.

My father would scoff and say, ‘All Stro ever done for the war effort was to sell French letters to the Yanks at the brothel door.’ Stro was constantly looking for his cigarette holder that was usually in his mouth or behind his ear.

We would bag ash that the steam trains had dumped between the G R A S S

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tracks on the siding into our sawmill. Sometimes it was still hot and the bag would start smouldering. He would use the coal ash in the garden and for compacted pathways.

Christmas was a huge event with chooks losing their heads and cooking in progress for days before.

The dirty nappies would be boiling in the copper one day and the Christmas ham the next. (Copper is toxic. So the boiled bacteria probably did no more harm than the copper-infused ham!)

He had invented a urinal because the pan in the thunderbox would fill before the dunny truck had done its weekly pickup. He dug a hole and filled it with rocks and coal ash, then stuck a length of four inch (10cm) earthenware pipe into it, and put a privacy wall around it and a block of wood for us male kids to stand on to reach it. It was eye-watering in there on a hot day.

Stro said that the dunny cart was the fastest truck in the world because it has 40 piss tins (pistons) and flies. His last car was an EK Holden that he bought new and would spend hours removing screws, dipping them in Vaseline and then putting them back again.

I just thought of another gelignite and fish incident. I was working on the main roads in Port Hedland and the boss had one eye and one hand. He had a device on his stump that he could screw different tools to, but mainly had a hook so he was called Hooky.

The story goes that he was on the grog and out on a log in the water with a plug of gelly in one hand and a stubby in the other. He lights the fuse from his fag and then throws the stubby into the water. That was how he lost his hand and eye.

Col Lewis.

A UNIQUE READ

Enjoy Ian’s book which highlights pioneer ways. Australia’s Skills of the Past is available from normajean54@gmail.com $50 including postage. Payment for this article will be donated to a charitable cause. T

Creating Friendships & Genuine Connections

By The WWOOF Office, W-Tree, Vic. Tracey has established her own piece of paradise in Mapleton in the Sunshine Coast hinterland while working full-time in mental health services. She purchased 151/2 acres in 2006, relocated a Queenslander that required a lot of renovation, planted roses and olives and rescued some animals along the way.

Tracey planted her pad-

dock-grown roses five years ago, which has allowed her to give joy to her clients by presenting them with fresh cut roses. This has now expanded to around 800 rose bushes of varied varieties. While these have mainly been grown as cut flowers for local floral artists, Tracey also cuts her roses for the dried petals to be used in bath salts

which she makes and has recently held a successful floristry workshop on the farm and has further plans of working with flower essences.

Tracey has planted 55 olive trees on the farm and harvests and pickles the fruit. She is also spending time tending to her three rescue thoroughbreds, rescued chickens and dogs. More recently another old Queenslander has been relocated to the farm and meticulously restored

by Tracey, this is now offered as a B & B. Her values align her to regeneration and restoring her natural world (she has planted around 100 koala trees across the property), quality vegetarian food and wholefoods and sharing kindness.

WWOOFING

Last year a friend told Tracey about WWOOF. Now Tracey is enjoying the opportunity to work alongside others and share skills.

Skill sharing is a two-way street, with WWOOFers passing on fencing and technology skills and Tracey sharing her love of animals, her farm, lifestyle and cooking on to her WWOOFers.

Tracey loves her farm and WWOOFing has enabled her to share her piece of paradise with some lovely French WWOOFers, some of whom have returned for further stays. She enjoys keeping in touch with her WWOOFers after their stay and has even had the parents of one her WWOOFers visit too.

WWOOFers can expect to do weeding, gardening and harvesting during the morning with trips to the beaches or through the hinterland in the afternoon. WWOOFers can expect kindness and a warm G R A S S

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welcome, comfortable accommodation and good quality organic food.

Some WWOOFers have painted name plates for the roses, leaving a tangible reminder of their contribution.

In exchange Tracey provides barbeques and firepits under the stars, movie nights, conversations, laughter and trips through the hinterland and to the beaches of the Sunshine Coast.

If you would like to share your property with WWOOFers, or take the opportunity to volunteer with our Hosts all over Australia please go to our website: www.wwoof. com.au. T G R A S S

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Dream Big with the SolVa

By Diana Gosper, Rainbow Power Company, Nimbin, NSW. Proudly Australian made in our manufacturing warehouse in Nimbin NSW, these are our largest systems ever! The SolVA commercial containerised solar power systems are for extra large projects and those dreaming big!

Rainbow Power Company (RPC) recently completed installation of our first 100kW containerised solar system for Mansfield Estate Eco Retreat in Port Macquarie.

This is a refrigerated shipping container which we fitted out with a 7kW air conditioner insulated and waterproof container housing the major components of a stand-alone off-grid system consisting of: • 96kW SMA 8.0H battery inverters (12 x Sunny Island inverters using a multi cluster box).

• 320kWh BYD LV Flex battery bank (64 x 5kW new technology BYD LV Flex, and this was the entire first shipment into the country and first allocation of that type!)

• 100kW solar array (270 x Trina 370W panels) with plenty of space for even more panels and scope to upgrade, with an expansion planned for the near future to double the size of the current battery capacity.

• 35kVA back-up generator. We design these systems to have three days of autonomy, meaning that in extreme rainy cloudy weather where there is no PV production, the batteries will last for three days before they will need recharging, at which stage if the sun has still not come out you would need to run your generator to bring the batteries back up to charge. We incorporate the right generator into the system and install it with the correct connection type. Safety is our utmost priority and we have all of our accreditations and licences, as well as quite a few awards for outstanding innovation and design.

This client was in a rush and the quote, design and install was finished in record time and is RPC’s biggest install to date, powering the equivalent of a small village. It took a dedicated and hardworking manufacturing and installation team to bring this project together. We hope this will start a trend and it will become the norm for businesses to look for alternative ways to deliver the energy they need. Why keep paying a power bill when you could be investing in your own power G R A S S

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plant? Ethically and environmentally, it just makes sense.

Gee we have really come a long way with our company and what we can offer. When RPC started back in 1987, our customers were happy to run a light or a radio! Now mod cons in off-grid houses are not unusual, in fact they are expected, and even entire villages are run without compromise on the overall quality of life and appliances and items able to be used or charged. Generators are seamlessly integrated into the system to easily transition from solar to backup generator (or grid). Hairdryer, toaster, kettle, air-con, pumps, electric vehicle chargers! Whatever you want to power you can do it now with solar (and with RPC).

The staff of RPC have a combined knowledge of hundreds of years, and are understandably your local authority on solar power and renewable energy: we design high quality solar power systems off grid, on grid and hybrid, plus we specialise in solar battery storage. Our products are made to stand the test of time in harsh, hostile and rural conditions, and our installs are backed by long warranties, plus we are here to stay – 36 years and counting!

No easy feat in this day and age.

Our longevity is the basis for great supplier relations, meaning we are able to compete with the heavy hitters on component prices, and yet remain a local friendly business not putting profits first, putting people and the environment first; check out our many five star reviews from our countless happy customers.

On a last note, now more than ever we value and foster our founding mission; to turn the tide away from environmental destruction and towards environmental harmony. It can be hard to fathom how we navigate the future in such rocky times, but if we follow our main ethos, it really all comes back to the environment, our love for the planet and desire to protect it.

Make a difference by going solar with RPC. Ph: 02-6689-1430, email sales@ rpc.com.au or website: rpc.com.au T

Check out the new Grass Roots website!

• subscribe online • place a Grassified ad • see the latest issue • read past articles • contact the office

www.grassrootsmagazine.com.au

Share your Grass Roots story!

Ever thought of contributing to GR? We love to read practical hands-on stories about Grass Roots living, with topics like farming, gardening, crafting, cooking, building or animal care.

You don’t have to be a professional writer, just a do-er!

Maximum 1500 words. Email us at greenliving1973@gmail.com

what’s on Sheep show

See the best of the breeds at the Sheep Show, when some of the country’s most exciting food, fashion and fibre lovers gather to celebrate the mighty Australian sheep. Feature breed for 2023 is the Poll Dorset. On 14–16 July, Bendigo, Vic. Website: sheepshow.com.

National indigenous art fair

On 2–3 July the National Indigenous Art Fair will showcase creations from First Nations artists, designers and makers from around Australia. Buy ethical, authentic art direct from the artists and experience Indigenous Australian art, design, bushfood and culture.

On 1–2 July, Overseas Passenger Terminal, The Rocks, Sydney.

Website: www.niaf.com.au.

June-July Queensland garden expo

Held in the Sunshine Coast hinterland town of Nambour, from 7–9 July, this three-day expo is Queensland’s premier gardening event with exhibitors, nurseries and gardening experts sharing their knowledge in the three-day program of demonstrations and workshops.

Website: qldgardenexpo.com.au.

NZ Ag Fieldays

Abbey Medieval festival

Discover the brand new Fieldays Sustainability Hub at the National Agricultural Fieldays, over 14–17 June at Mystery Creek Events Centre, Hamilton, New Zealand.

This weekend offers a multitude of rural events and activities to keep the whole family entertained.

Website: www.fieldays.co.nz. T

On 8–9 July, the Abbey Museum welcomes thousands of visitors to a Medieval Festival to experience life in the Middle Ages in Europe and the Middle East, including re-enactors, jousters, performers, food vendors and merchants. Abbeystowe, Caboolture, Qld. Website: www. abbeymedievalfestival.com.

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G R A S S

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Photo: Qld Garden Expo.

A GR subscription is always welcome! Only $60

Sow this Pea – purple podded

Pisum sativum Sow in full sun in well-drained soil, 2.5–5cm deep and 5–8cm apart.

Space rows 45–60cm apart and provide climbing support. Germinates in 7–10 days; harvest when pods are deep purple and plump, around 65–100 days. Eat shelled and cooked.

Packet 20 seeds, RRP: $4.95.

Seed Freaks. Website: www.seed freaks.com.au. Email: seed freakscentral@gmail.com

Pea – greenfeast

Seed Varieties

Who doesn’t enjoy peas freshly picked from the garden? Be a devil and try purple podded peas for a change and gain extra antioxidants.

Time for sowing beetroot too, perfect for winter salads. You’re not restricted to traditional varieties either, our selection offers you a choice of golden, white or striped beets.

Pisum sativum Greenfeast are traditional sweet juicy peas for shelling and are produced in abundance on dwarf bushes about 90cm high by 15cm wide with white flowers.

Sow direct in soil in a full sun position, 15cm apart. An easy rewarding crop for new and experienced gardeners.

Packet 60 seeds, RRP: $3.95 member, $4.95 non member.

The Diggers Club. Website: www. diggers.com.au. Email: info@diggers. com.au.

Beetroot – Chioggia Beta vulgaris

This variety produces striped beets, red on the outside with alternating rings of red and white. Used just the same as ordinary beetroot, boiled, sliced or baked. Sow in cool seasons in hot climates, year round in cooler climates.

Avoid extreme hot or cold times of year.

Sow 10mm deep, sunny position preferred. Emerges in 7–14 days. Harvest in around 10–12 weeks after sowing.

Packet 50 seeds, RRP: $1.25.

Boondie Seeds. Website: www. boondieseeds.com.au. Email: support @boondieseeds.zendesk.com.

Beetroot – Golden detroit Beta vulgaris

Golden Detroit has orange skin, rich golden interior and dark leaves with attractive coloured stems perfect for salads when small. After soaking, sow seeds direct at 12mm deep and 20–30cm apart. Keep seeds moist, harvest in 58 days.

Packet 150 seeds, RRP: $3.50.

Rangeview Seeds. Website: www.rangeviewseeds.com.au.

Email: sales@rangeviewseeds. com.au.

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Beetroot – White Beta vulgaris

A smooth white round heirloom beet from Holland that has a super sweet beetroot taste without the red staining.

Pre-soak seeds for 2 hours to moisten the hard seed coating, sow directly into soil in a full sun position, 15mm deep, 10cm apart with rows spaced 30cm apart. Germinates at 7–14 days, ready to harvest after 50 days. Can harvest once 4cm diameter, but becomes woody if left to grow larger than 8cm diameter.

Leaves can be harvested at any time.

Packet 75 seeds, RRP: $4.00.

Seeds of Plenty. Website: www.seed sofplenty.com.au. Email: support@ seedsofplenty.com.au.

round the market place

Eco Outdoors

tree rings

Solar ecofarm

If you have no more room to grow outwards, grow up. This vertical planter system is Australian designed, manufactured and owned.

It is fully automated and recirculating so very low maintenance, and ideal for backyard farming.

The Ecofarm is small enough to fit anywhere and has an optional trolley to move it to follow the sun.

Made from UV treated food-grade material, it comes with everything you need to start growing food: nutrient, coconut coir, planters, and solar pump and panel. The planter pot waters internally, so there’s no running water on plants, and it waters evenly through every pot and tier. The design comes in three colours, charcoal, stone white and terracotta. It provides a continual watering and feeding cycle to plants, maximises space, and has an optional bird netting cover.

RRP: $549 for single, $859 for double.

Made by Vertigro Aust, website: vertigroaustralia.com.au.

Flo-tank

The Atlantis Flo-Tank is a lightweight modular tank structural system designed to cleanly capture rainwater at the source and release it in a controlled manner according to soil permeability levels. This modular system allows the construction of underground water reservoirs of unlimited capacity, in multiple shapes and depths, to suit the site. When the outer surface of the tank is wrapped with PVC membranes, watertight underground volumes are created that store water to be used later in irrigation or residential reuse, or even in fire fighting networks. A single Flo-Tank has a capacity of 119lt per unit thanks to a 95% void volume and is 450mm high. Each module can be reinforced with additional internal plates to withstand traffic.

Made from 85% recycled polypropylene.

Single Flo-Tank, RRP: $50.50.

More information: www.atlantiscorporation.com.au. Purchase from website: ecosustainablehouse.com.au.

insulated mug

Tree rings are an easy new way to fertilise trees and shrubs. They provide precision fertiliser placement, optimising the nutrition for trees or shrubs.

The rings maintain their structure for 12 months, slowly breaking down into the soil naturally. They also absorb and retain moisture, releasing water slowly into the soil. To install, simply break ring in half and place around trunk of tree or shrub, making sure it doesn’t actually touch the trunk. Replace after 12 months. Tree rings are made from a locally repurposed blend of nutrients and trace elements. RRP: $4.10.

More info at website: www.treerings. com.au. Purchase online from Urban Revolution Australia, Website: www. urbanrevolution.com.au.

The Klean Kanteen Rise Insulated Mug is perfect for a cuppa outside in the garden, in the car or when camping. It has Climate Lock™ insulation so can be used for hot or cold drinks, coffee, wine, water and more. The tumbler fits in most cupholders and comes with splash-proof lid. Made from certified 90% post-consumer recycled 18/8 stainless steel. Impact-resistant base cap provides added durability and protection. Keeps liquids hot for four hours or chilled for 16 hours. BPA free.

Thin rim for comfortable drinking. Sweat-proof construction protects surfaces, even in humid environments. RRP: $44.95.

Available from Klean Kanteen, website: www. kleankanteen.com.au.

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books the everyday herbbalist Jane Wrigglesworth

This is a comprehensive guide to herbs in Aotearoa/NZ from aloe vera to yarrow, covering everything you need to know to grow them successfully in the garden to ways to use them for health and wellbeing. It contains detailed information on 30 herbs common in NZ and Australia along with usage suggestions for many more. Learn how to make herbal remedies for a range of ailments, as well as beauty preparations and cleaning products.

P/b, 312pp, Allen & Unwin. Ph: 02-8425-0100. Website: www. allenandunwin.com. RRP: $49.99.

Recent Releases the green gardening handbook Nancy Birtwhistle

healthygirl kitchen Danielle Brown

You won’t be able to resist plant-based eating with this mouth-watering cookbook by a popular vegan influencer.

The dishes are colourful, easy to make, nourishing and satisfying. Recipes are also free of refined sugar and come with gluten-free options. Try spicy cosy ramen, hearty lentil bolognaise, holiday shepherds pie, sesame tofu and broccoli or glowing skin salad. On the sweet side, how about mango-mama chia pudding, apple cinnamon baked oatmeal, or the famous chickpea brownies.

H/b, 256pp, Alpha, Penguin Books.

Ph: 1800-338-836. Website: penguin. com.au. RRP: $49.99.

Former Great British Bake Off winner Nancy Birtwhistle’s third book is a guide to gardening and growing at home, with a sustainable, ecofriendly outlook and plenty of passion, knowledge and warmth. No matter the size of your patch, this book will help you make the most of your space for growing. Divided into the four seasons, it is packed with advice on everything from planting, composting, and basic equipment to seasonal recipes and guides to preserving that will help save money and reduce waste.

H/b, 336pp, One Boat, Pan Macmillan. Ph: 02-9285-9100. www. panmacmillan.com.au. RRP: $36.99.

dirty laundry Richard Pink & Roxanne Emery

Adults with ADHD can find it hard to manage aspects of everylife like finances, cleaning and time management, and become overwhelmed with shame.

This book embraces ADHD diversity with love, humour and self-acceptance, and shares simple tips to managing life that actually work with ADHD brains.

It shares 10 characteristics of ADHD, such as losing things, task avoidance, time-blindness, impulsivity and hyperfocus and provides common sense suggestions and strategies. Helpful for people in an ADHD person’s life as well as those with ADHD themselves, this is a positive and uplifting book.

P/b, 160pp, Square Peg, Penguin Books. Ph: 1800-338-836. Website: penguin.com.au. RRP: $36.99.

buzz A Book of Happiness for Bee Lovers Adam Langstroth

This is an attractive hardcover gift book with lavish photos of bees in action accompanied by quotes on bees throughout history, from Aristotle to Alfred Lord Tennyson and even Ray Bradbury. The photos are truly stunning.

H/b, 160pp, Exisle Publishing.

Website: www.exislepublishing. com. Ph: 02-4998-3327. RRP: $32.99.

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DOWN HOME ON THE FARM We are in the depths of winter down here in Victoria, although I’m not sure we actually got an autumn this year, or much of a summer either. No doubt next year will be peak heat and I will be looking back nostalgically to these days of mist, rain and hail. And I can’t complain when the rain washes all the chook poo off the deck.

The winter garden is happy with the weather. I have reduced my headed brassicas down to one bed of broc as after years of poor harvests I have faced the fact that I am rubbish at growing them. Instead, I have gone hard on kale, silverbeet and spinach, three crops that don’t need attentive midwinter watering and so are good doers here. Hopefully I will be close to self-sufficient for winter leaves and we should be able to make the full gamut of green smoothies, which will please one teenager. The chooks will love keeping the vegie beds neat, any greens that poke through the protective wire fence are fair game. I’m not sure how enthusiastic the blokes of the house will be with the festival of hoary greens, but you never know.

We had an exciting dietary adventure recently. David often drops us some frozen meat after he has had the travelling butcher to the farm to attend to excess cattle. We don’t eat much meat and some of us are vegetarian so the freezer started to clog up. I was inspired by a trip to my friend Julia’s house where she made a beef brisket that Marcel enjoyed. Many American style recipes are full of hidden sugar, but Julia is sugar-free and invented her own sauce, which she shared. I decided it would be a perfect base to slow cook David’s beef parts in.

Marcel loves a freezer declutter, got excited and defrosted three mysterious packages for me in prep for this. Needless to say I expected them all to be from the same beast so I could slow cook them together, providing family and friends with a

few meals over the weekend.

As I defrosted them, it became apparent that this was not the case.

The first package of meat looked like the leg of beef I was anticipating, and was slated for browning and then being slowly cooked in wine, tomato and herbs.

The second package of meat looked very different and had some kind of skin on one side. It turned out to be a pork belly. Only Marcel eats pork, and David didn’t keep pigs last time I looked, so this was a left fielder. Maybe a budget buy from David’s butcher? I sent him a text inquiry and put on the oven to roast the pork. The slow cooker was going nicely, we were cooking all the meats here.

I turned to the final package. Teo had recently done biology, including dissection. I called him in for an expert opinion. ‘Does this look like a heart and lungs to you?’

‘Yep definitely,’ he said, going green.

Offal was not on my bingo list for the year. I had already pushed myself out of my cooking comfort zone handling the pork belly, and I didn’t think Marcel was going to G R A S S

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by Suni Miller.

eat lights as well as all the other meats I was cooking for him. It was a hard pass from Teo. Further texts to David ensued, was he trolling me with this grisly parcel?

‘I thought you might put it in the bolognaise,’ he said.

No. No I will not.

Since Julia had been very helpful with the cooking advice, Sparky her dog got a lovely treat that night, while Marcel enjoyed a weekend of organic farm-grown pastured meats.

I made vegie patties for the girls in the family and tried a new recipe; I processed the raw vegies to small chunks in a blender, part cooked these in the oven spread out on a tray along with the beans, which dried them, then mixed everything together with egg and cheese to create patties that weren’t overly wet, but contained buckets of veg. I had been feeling I’d failed my self-sufficiency heritage by not finding a way to prepare the lungs, so watching my elder child fang into vast quantities of vegies was balm to the soul.

Pippi had a birthday recently, big 17. After the lockdown years she felt in party debt, and suggested we could take some friends out to din-

ner. Sounded expensive. Dear me no, I mused, that’s not how we roll! We are DIY type people who have our parties at home and make everything ourselves! We are far too frugal to buy kids dinner out when we can cook something much nicer and healthier, using wholemeal ingredients!

What was I thinking?

Once Pippi had invited all her girlfriends, there seemed more than I’d thought, then she reckoned she had better invite some boys for them to talk to. Suddenly we had a fullblown teen party on our hands. I started to fret. What if 200 unknowns turned up? Or the kids got drunk and vomited into the brassicas? Tripped over the garden stakes? Or put the chooks off the lay?

I hid the contents of the wine cupboard in my wardrobe beforehand, cleared out most of the furniture for a dance floor, and reminded myself I knew their mums if the night ended badly.

Well, it turned out to be the easiest party I have ever held. Pippi was a great host and kept all the platters replenished. The teens chatted and danced and entertained themselves.

They respected our stipulation of no alcohol and there was no drunken behaviour. They loved the homemade pizza and reminisced over the honey joys, and when it was time to go home, a couple of the girls picked up all the rubbish and swept the floor on the way out.

It was much simpler than looking after a party of fractious five year olds I can tell you. I’m not sure it was frugal though, they snacked on a lot of pizza! I might just keep my mouth shut about my DIY chops next time.

Pippi is enjoying her part time job in a gluten-free cafe, which has allowed her some all important pocket money for budgeting practice and occasional fun purchases. I have sometimes wondered if I have brought the kids up to be too frugal. I’ll never forget Pippi watching Grand Designs with me at primary school age. The family building their dream home ran out of the

ready halfway though the process and were bemoaning their finances while at the park with the kids. ‘No wonder they don’t have any money left, they’ve wasted a fortune right there buying ice creams,’ little Pippi said, shaking her head. ‘They could pay a quarter of the price for a pack of icy poles from the supermarket. Or some bananas. They’re just throwing money away.’ She is still a remarkably sensible girl, so it’s nice for her to be able to occasionally buy herself an acai bowl with friends or a frivolous piece of clothing.

I myself had a rush of blood to the head, and wallet, recently.

We moved all our succulents off the deck for their own safety for Pippi’s party, and moving them back gave me a good opportunity to check them all over, do some re-potting and generally take stock.

Consequently, heading off to the Melbourne Flower and Garden Show for my annual outing with my friends, I didn’t even pack a bag. I had enough plants.

I was so good all day, even when Emma bought a three pronged rake thing that looked like a lot of fun and nearly caused multiple head traumas as we walked it through the crowds. I even controlled myself at those stalls of cheap cuttings. I was bemused by the floral displays in the great hall, many of which had spray painted all the leaves with silver and gold or bright colours. Why don’t they just incorporate flowers into the display? Flowers literally come in bright colours. Anyway, it was on the way out, I was waiting G R A S S

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for Emma, and we paused at the unique succulents. I caved! I came out with two adorable and most unusual little plants which I feel sure I could never find anywhere else. Of course, I had to juggle one in each hand all the way home on the tram looking like an oddbod and tipping gravel into Emma’s lap every time we lurched around the corner, but she was busy stopping her spiky rake from bobbing around and penetrating someone’s eye and didn’t notice, luckily. As always it was a great day out; we love bemoaning the sterile show gardens and yearning over the organic and abundant looking ones and generally being overly opinionated.

One sad piece of news was that our dear old ginger cat died. Juan was at least 18 and had a good innings, although he was looking a little skinny at the end, and became known as the zombie cat by my friends. He was a lovely pet to the kids, affectionate and with endless patience. I used to lay baby Teo on the floor and the cat would flop down next to him despite my warning it not to. The baby would invariably grab a handful of cat, but Juan just gently edged away, leaving Teo with a fistful of fur.

He always came back for another cuddle; an optimist. We will miss him greatly, especially the children, who have had him all their lives.

We were lucky to have him. T

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Property For Sale

tasmania

New south wales

SCAMANDER, 25 ha, 3 titles. Owners wishing to retire from their piece of paradise situated in a pristine valley but close to beaches & river.

Two visitor accom, owners’ separate quarters, cafe, 2 commercial kitchens, 2 coolrooms, 80 solar panels, large dam, many fruit trees & berries, substantial infrastructure. Also suit inter-generational living or eco development. Offers over 2.5M. Contact Ann or Denis, ph: 03-63725500 or 0409-048-444 or email: ann@ eurekafarm.net.

Culburra Beach.

Selfsufficient, very quiet, peaceful, sounds of the ocean & wildlife, semi-rural/residential 803m2 block.

Well-maintained 3 b/r house + 1 b/r flat, 3 x shower/toilet. Directly opposite Crookhaven River beach & bush reserve. Set up with 7.2Kw solar batteries & inverter + grid connected.

Town water + rainwater tanks, NBN fibre, phone, LPG gas, solar hot water. Two lge tool sheds + pottery shed. Gardens, good soil. Bush & beach walking, swimming, kayaking, fishing directly across road. Surf beach 10 mins’ walk. Local shops 5 mins’ drive, Jervis Bay 15 mins, Nowra 20 mins, Sydney 2 hrs. See photos right. Offers over $930,000.

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Culburra Beach G R A S S

78 R O O T S

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Property For Sale Victoria

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Maryknoll, 2.8 ac, peaceful haven with 4 b/r home, timber flooring, northern light in lounge & kitchen.

Deck with restful views across the property. Pasture, regenerative bushland & 18 wicking gardens.

Packenham & Bunyip State Park 15 mins away. Contact Vivien, ph 0499891-351.

community share Shoalhaven, nsw, 2500m2. Off grid very comfortable north-facing 3–4 b/r home, as new kitchen, WIP reno bathroom, fully insulated 200mm Besser brickwork, 4.5kW solar & hot water, 6.5kW generator, gas back-up, 30,000lt w/tank, dams, established fruit trees, 1.5 garage & more. See photo right. For more info & photos email: pruesearle@gmail.com.

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PUBLICATIONS THE SEED SAVERS’ HANDBOOK, How to grow, use and propagate over 110 vegies. Save seeds, and save $$.

Bulk discount up to 48.5% $33 incl postage at www.seedsavers.net.

GRASSIFIEDS PLACING AN AD? See page 78 for details These books are A4 size, with 56 pages, illustrated. Buy 1 at $11.95 incl p&p or 2 for $19.95 incl p&p.

Australasian Poultry, PO Box 438, Seymour 3661 or ph: 03-5792-4000.

CLUBS AFFILIATED DONKEY SOCIETIES OF AUSTRALIA. For info on membership, magazines & help go to website: www.donkeysadsa.org, or contact Christine Trotter, ph: 03-5288-7460 or email: cljgypsy20@gmail.com.

SEEDS. Garden seeds of vegies suit­able for dry inland climates. Oldfashioned nonhybrid varieties. Some herbs & insect-attracting flowers.

Seasonal news, com­ ments & enquiries. Check out website: www. raregreenseeds.com.au. Rosemary Stevenson.

Soap Shaker – Australian made.

Reduce your use of detergent plastic bottles. Ecofriendly, recyclable, economical dish washing. Vicki, ph: 0493-297-235. Website: www. soapshakinsisters.com.au.

FOR SALE NEW

Secondhand Books by Ron Edwards, slightly dust marked: 5 copies of The Stock Saddle – Making, Repairing & Counterlining, 206 pages. $15 including postage. PO Box 117, Seymour, Vic 3660. Ph: 03-5792-4000.

DO YOU LIKE CHOOKS OR DUCKS? You need Starting Out With Chickens, & Starting Out With Ducks and Geese.

AUSTRALIAN

LIQUID

SEA

MINERALS improves plant, animal, human health, 70+ different minerals. From just $2. Ph: 0419713-417.

Email: ajproducts@ adam.com.au.

ORGANIC APPLE CIDER VINEGAR. Aged for 3 years in French oak.

Supplement for improved health.

Free delivery Australia-wide for the first 15 orders. Ph: 0419-713-417.

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Maximum 1500 words. Email us at greenliving1973@gmail.com

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BREEDER & Club LISTING Upland Stud

BREEDERs

English Leicester Ewes & Rams for Sale

Promote your pure breed

Brucellosis Tested National Johne’s Program

of stock. Take out a

English Leicester Association Member

year’s listing for $65 or try our special offer of two

Nick & Vanessa Wootton Binbarra Farm Main Ridge, Vic 3928 0431-170-880 Facebook.com/BinbarraFarm/

listings for $25.

Mohair from Angora Goats

FIBRE: fine, lustrous Angora mohair for spinning, weaving & felting projects Contact: Michaela Holroyd Hayrise Farm, Meredith.

0408-527-619 myolddb880@gmail.com

ClubS

Promote your pure breed club or association. Contact us if you want to list your group – it’s only $65 per year.

Hon Sec: Mrs Natalie Cox New Members Welcome Membership $25 leghornclubaus@gmail.com

Show held annually in July – Newsletters

Ph: 0400-229-025 Email: fenaughtylives@hotmail.com

jill.weaver@bigpond.com

www.englishleicester.org.au

mcdonaldbrooks@hotmail.com

Heritage Sheep Australia Saving the breeds that were the foundation of our sheep and wool industry.

For info contact: Colin Chapman Ph: 0417-052-383 www.heritagesheep.org.au

Your club could feature here

Contact Tracy on Ph: 0411-233-469

Membership: Adults $15 & Juniors $10 Secretary: Nick Fenaughty

rarebreedstrust.com.au

www.australianromneyassociation.com

Australian Heritage Turkey Society Inc

Promoting the Australian & Croad Langshan

Lustrous Luxurious Longwool

Sec: Vanessa Wootton Mornington Peninsula, Vic Ph: 0432-289-104

Facebook/Australian Welsh Black Cattle

Langshan Club of Victoria

Association of Australia Inc

Australian Romney Association Sec: Peter McDonald 199 Cooramook School Rd, Grassmere 3281 Ph: 0458-622-436

www.australianwelshblacksociety.com

www.leghornclubaustralia.webs.com

03-6429-3230

The Versatile Money Maker No better wet country breed

A British heritage breed.

Has roamed the Welsh countryside for 1000 years. Easy calving, quiet, long lived, succulent quality meat.

Ph: 0417-210-339 welshblacksociety@gmail.com

Oneofthemostattractive breeds

Contact: Jill Weaver

A Heritage Breed

AUSTRALIAN WELSH BLACK CATTLE SOCIETY INC

The Leghorn Club of Australia (Inc)

breed rare breeds join the rare breeds trust

English Leicester

Romney

www.turkeysaustralia.com.au

Your club could feature here

ANCONA CLUB OF AUSTRALIA INC Enjoy the captivating Ancona, the attractive fowl known for low feed conversion ratio/egg production.

Annual Show, Dubbo, July Contact Secretary: Adrian Saines

Ph: 02-6382-1083 Mob: 0458-885-955 Email: a.p.saines@bigpond.com

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81 R O O T S

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