"Having solar power, getting a hybrid car or reducing your air travel is great, but the main game is food - contributing up to 30% of our personal carbon footprint" Peter Kearney
I found the following entry on Cityfoodgrowers blog and thought it well worth copying here.
"Anecdotal evidence from studies in a number of developed countries over the last three years indicates that our food choices contribute up to 30% of our personal carbon footprint. Although the science around measuring food carbon footprint has a way to go, you can appreciate how this footprint is possible when you look at the results of a very comprehensive study done for Ceres Community farm in Melbourne, Australia during 2008. The study examined all the contents of a normal family shopping basket for one week and found the contents had travelled 70,000 kilometres. That’s one family for one week!
For most people, their food carbon footprint is higher than any other personal source such as, energy or travel. So having solar power, getting a hybrid car or reducing your air travel is great, but the main game is food and yet where is the conversation about the impact of our food choices on global warming?"
Peter Kearney – http://www.cityfoodgrowers.com/
Good News from L'Abruzzese Pasta
They do indeed use Laucke's flour (Strathalbyn) in their pasta products Yay! - Available at The Singing Cricket Food Co-op, Willunga, and Foodland, Seaford. (They do other grains such as spelt but that is not grown in SA.)
The Sleepover
Having 7 teenagers over for a sleep-over last Saturday night had me baking muffins as we had no snacks in the house apart from rice cakes. Little did I realise that these teenagers only eat junk food, if anything at all; and bring their own lemonade, tim tams, chips, BBQ shapes and milky ways.
They did eat moderate helpings of a BBQ roast dinner, and muffins for breakfast, I guess that not all teenagers have insaitiable appetites. Maybe they self catered because they were worried that "local diet" meant lots of lettuce leaves?
The Evil Weevils
I want to share a success story with you about our olive trees. They had been eaten badly by a bunch of evil weevils, to the point where 2 of the 4 were looking very sad, almost dead, with maybe 2 badly munched leaves left. I sought advice from Perry's Orchard where we purchased the trees. He immediately recommended a nasty chemical spray, or some sort of mechanical barrier like a cuff on the trunk, as the critters climb the trunk at night to chew the leaves. We refused the spray (as we live in an EcoVillage - but would have refused anyway) so he suggested the cuff or to go out with a torch at night and pick off the bugs as they are nocturnal, but easily disturbed and will drop to the ground and hide in the mulch. The cuff idea wouldn't be too successful as they could climb the tree stakes and the deck palings, so we did the nightly rituals. I was very sceptical, especially as they were so "easily disturbed".
Well if you have a weevil problem, take heart because - our weevils were pretty easy to catch, not even disturbed by our wind up torch noise! We went nightly for about two weeks, it is really a job for 2 people, one to hold the torch, one to hold the collection jar and lid, (they do try to climb out, and can climb glass sides well - not sure how effective the cuffs would have been). The first night we collected 6 weevils, many of which were on one poor tree. At the end of two weeks (with 1 week hiatus while we were in Byron) we found none. It was so satisfying to deplete the population of evil weevils in such a short period of time. Even more satisfying was seeing one of the most effected trees start to send out beautiful new leaves all along it's trunk around the full moon.
Yesterday I gave the end tree that I was pretty sure was dead, a last supper bucket of water with fish emulsion and seaweed and a couple of drops of rescue remedy. As a last resort I gave the poor tree a bit of Reiki, and lo and behold, I saw a tiny leaf about 1/2 way up it's trunk. I will keep giving it TLC, and hope it survives through the summer.
Left the most healthy of the olive trees
Below part of the dead weevil collection
Below right the miraculous new leaf
Left the abundant new growth Local Diet = Healthy Diet ?
This leads me to some musings I was having as I walked on the beach, I have been thinking that this new diet is not that healthy because we are eating so much meat, dairy, and wheat, whereas prior to January 1st, I was trying to minimize all of these components. Then again, I wonder if that is offset by the nutrient levels in our food? As we are eating foods with fewer hours/days spent in refridgerated transport, on supermarket shelves, and in cans, perhaps we are eating even more healthily than before? I felt a bit better with that thought, and started to wonder about the other hidden benefits of this diet that will be revealed during this year.
Information Overload
Looking back over the last month, there is quite a lot of information and I am wondering about keeping an easily navigable database. I am not sure how this would work, or how it could be linked to the Blog. I will look into a spread sheet link or something. Any suggestions are most welcome.
Dinner Tonight
Tonight will be a pasta treat with cheese sauce and home grown tomatoes (that have finally ripened) and basil. I planted most of my vegies on the south of the house to protect them from the harsh north winds and ferocious summer sun - they do survive well in the heat waves of 40C plus but don't ripen so readily. Next year I will plant the tomatoes and basil on the north, the lettuces and coriander on the south, and see how they go.
L'Abruzesse spaghetti, Paris Creek cheese, garden tomato and basil.
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