Day 45

The latest garden harvest

Over the past four days I have been immersed in all things foody, gardeny, and sustainable. I attended the Friends of the Earth's Plains to Plate Convergence at Uni SA. http://futureoffoodsa.ning.com/ Which  addressed issues of food security for South Australia. On Wednesday night was the opening forum, with great talks from Graham Brookman and Claire Nettle. During Graham's talk he mentioned that our planet can sustain 3 billion people yet we have 6. My question about that is, does that statistic calculate 3 billion vegans or omnivores? Does it take into account urban dwellers without gardens or rural dwellers with gardens? Or urban dwellers with community gardens? Does it take into account the amount of food dumped when farmers fail to achieve the price they want at market? Or food dumped because it is not the desired shape or size? The comments that Graham made on farmers and their struggle to make ends meet and the lack of young farmers willing to replace those retiring may herald the end of farming as we know it. If we can no longer rely on farmers providing our food we will have to grow our own. Not such a bad thing I muse, but will we get used to not eating wheat, grains, legumes, and meat? Can we live on exclusively what we can grow in our home gardens? I am wondering if there is any research on that?

 During the talks I am munching on some Willunga Almonds and I wonder if I am eating a whole tree's worth of them.  I wonder how many trees worth I would eat in a year? How many trees would I need to plant to feed my family for a year? After the talks we are offered Local fruit on the way out, delicious figs and nectarines from the Food Forest yum.

On the Thursday I went on a bus tour of community and school gardens, I eat some grapes grown at the Ridley Grove Community Garden, and then we move on to the Woodville High School garden where the very well established garden is bursting with food.

 Food security?

For morning tea we are offered a local feast of fruit including banana, & Kiwi fruit, chocolate brownies and chocolate muffins. I am dismayed as i did not bring my own food, having paid for meals for the whole conference, which were supposed to be local foods. I ask about the origins of the food and I'm told questions will be asked of Bliss Organic Cafe' and Organics to Go, who both catered for the event. I avoid the obvious foreign foods, eating watermellon and nectarines that look too small to be commercial and look longingly at the chocolate brownies and muffins! At lunch I am told that the caterers were not answering their phones, but that every measure had been taken to procure local foods. I decide I'd better just eat what is on offer, so I have some delicious vego rolls. I noticed that in the Woodville High Garden and the Fern Avenue Community Gardens there were very healthy banana trees, both with fruit, so I am keen to try growing bananas myself (unfortunately they don't like wind).

Bananas at Woodvill High School Garden

This ingenious worm farm is so cool because it keeps the worms cool in a heat wave, being super insulated as it is an old fridge!

I have never seen such a healthy crop of table grapes, these two photos were taken at the Blackwood Primary School Garden, note the home made individual bird nets, nice purple!

Some inspiring community gardens are:-

Fern Avenue Community Garden 18-20 Fern Ave. Fullarton Thursdays 9.30- 11.30. Working Bees 2nd Sat or Sun of each month. Call 8379 8941 anhinga@internode.on.net

Secateurs Community Gardening Group - Box factory garden - 59 Regent St. South, Adelaide.

8203 7749 Monday to Friday 4pm. - 9pm. Saturday 10am.-3pm.

St Andrews Garden - South Terrace Adelaide. secateurs.cg@gmail.com

The conference is inspiring and there are plenty of opportunities to connect with like minded people and have great conversations about food. There is also a sense of urgency for change, and I find some of the talks very depressing. Especially the ones on genetic engineering and the future of meat.

Fish

There is some heartening news about the Coorong, The Lakes and Coorong Fishery ( They fish cockles, yellow eyed mullet, flounder, and mulloway). are looking to promote sustainable fishing and working towards certification with the Marine Stewardship Council.

 

"They describe themselves as a 'Heritage' Fishery, a 'Wild fishery with a future' and in 1998, following the development of their excellent Environmental Management Plan, they approached WWF to work together towards Marine Stewardship Council Certification. Many of these fishers are third and fourth generation fishers and many of their children are becoming fishers also."

"The Marine Stewardship Council logo is an 'Eco-label' for fish products"

 

"I am a fourth generation fisherman, and my heart and soul is in this area. I want to make sure the environment remains intact for my grandchildren. This captures the essence of our Environmental Management Plan (EMP). The Southern Fishermen's Association is justifiably proud of it's world first EMP initiated by the fishers of this heritage fishery. With a daily presence and intimate knowledge of the Lakes and Coorong and our interdependence on the health of the system, we act as stewards of the resource on behalf of the community, while continually striving for ethical and sustainable ways of doing business."

Garry Hera-Singh President Southern Fishermen's Association.

When buying packaged fish look for the Marine Stewardship Council Logo.  http://www.msc.org/  info@msc.org

Again the food is disappointing for a locavore. On Friday for morning tea along with fruit and nuts, they serve pineapple slices, chocolate brownies, and slice with coconut. Lunch is lentil patties, rice balls, felafel, salads with walnuts. I get over it and just decide to eat everything as I signed up for the meals trusting that they would be local foods. Saturday we have more rice balls, things with coconut, but more information on where things are sourced (I appreciated that). I am starting to realise that the whole "Local" food concept is relative and open to interpretation. I acknowledge that the food was fabulous, I just don't understand why they could not have substituted other local fruits instead of the pineapples and kiwifruits, and had carob instead of chocolate etc. I know continuity of supply must be a big issue for catering, and apparently chocolate brownies is the Bliss signature dish...............

Yesterday we took some friends out to lunch at Lilla's Cafe' in Yankalilla because they claim to source their ingredients locally as much as possible. We chose from the menu items that were written in red, (very handy) and enjoyed fantastic meals, I chose free range chicken curry while Michael chose a free range chicken burger. We wanted to buy some of their Murray River Salt, but it was from Mildura. (I have been trying to source local salt without much luck. Michael is keen to try creating our own by evaporating sea water!) We chose two local wines, one from Port Willunga and one from McLaren Vale, I am a bit vague because I forgot to take notes.

On the way home we dropped in to do some tasting at the micro-brewery Lovely Valley Beverage Factory we tasted a few beers and some ginger beer. Then found out that the hops are sourced from NZ or Victoria! The ginger beer was local though, so we bought a case of 6, as it is the only local soft drink we have found so far. I was determined to find out if there were any local beers so I rang up the Cooper's Brewery  this afternoon to check where their ingredients come from, and  - the hops come from Victoria and the grains come from the West coast of SA, & Yorke Peninsula. They said you can't make beer without hops, so I did a Google search of Beer without hops and found a discussion site for home brewers. I guess we will need to brew our own if we want to drink beer this year - could have seen that one coming......

For a "beer without hops" discussion see http://beermakers.tribe.net/thread/8e2c2b34-8119-41c8-8e21-14190372aa29  - some of the recipies sound tasty, and Wormwood is abundant here.