community food

This afternoon we went to friends for the birthday of their five year old daughter. We yacked while the children ate lots of pink food and ran round. Most unexpectedly, we came home with a crayfish (caught further south, but still local), which Favourite Handyman is cooking as I type.

When we arrived home, I found five tomato seedlings on my doorstep. These are from my neighbour Margaret. I lent a closer neighbour my Kings Seed catalogue after we talked about heirloom tomatoes one day. She lent the catalogue to Margaret which is how we came to talk about gardening together one day on the way home from the school run.

So now I have some new heirloom tomatoes to try. I know another person in my area a little, all due to the connections made through food growing.

Collectivism

I object to being labelled as selfish when I voted for freedom and personal responsibility. It bothers me that people do not see the bondage socialism brings/represents - I struggle when thinking people like yourself are so clearly pro-left. I wonder if I'm missing something.

The quote (slightly paraphrased for clarity of meaning outside the original longer paragraph) is from an email from a friend this morning. I know she reads here and hope she won't mind that I've copied her words as the prompt for responding to her thoughts here. They feed into some other related topics which I want to thrash out myself.

I come from a working class and small farmer background. I also come from a solidly national voting background on both sides. I remember as a small child in pyjamas waiting in total silence as we watched the news at six o'clock to find out if Dad, a freezing worker, would go back to work the next day. The strikes sometimes lasted many weeks and they were not empowering for my father. He has often said that there is nothing wrong with capitalism, just that he is on the wrong end of it. My maternal grandfather was a big fan of Robert Muldoon. He owns all of his books. I do believe that he is also quite proud of how the farming industry responded to the dramatic changes when the sector was deregulated in the 1980s.

I grew up Roman Catholic, one of a tiny handful of Catholic children in my class each year. There was no Catholic school in the area at the time and so we were all at the local state school.

Ideas about the deserving and undeserving poor were clearly stated as I grew up. The underserving also seemed to include those late to Mass. I cannot tell you how completely undeserving I am these days.

What is freedom? Freedom to have sex with multiple partners? Freedom to abort in the second trimester? Freedom as a GP to charge as much as one wishes? Freedom to educate ones child wherever one wants? Freedom of speech? The freedom of a decent wage? Freedom to use high or low energy efficiency cars and other appliances?

What exactly is insurance? Is it only a private concept, paid for by ourselves as individuals to protect us against everything which might go wrong and cost money? Is it something which is partly or fully paid for in taxes so that a family or individual might not be ruined by the misfortune of an accident which stops the person from working for a time.

Health care. Who should bear responsibility for our health? Is the collective use of taxes to support our population into the best health possible, irrespective of the person's ability to pay, a moral and financial priority?

Whose children are they? Should our education system be geared to provide the best possible opportunities for all children, regardless of their home resource? Can this be done in a way which also respects and supports those who wish to opt out of institutional education provision and teach their children themselves?

These are just some of the questions which I find relevant to my decisions when I participate in my democracy, our democracy. I am sure there are more which I haven't yet remembered tonight. Where I come from cannot but inform my position, but it is not a position of received assumptions.

I am going to leave my responses to these questions for a separate post later this week when I have had more time to reflect. Going back to the original quote, where the idea of bondage to socialism is raised, I would for the moment suggest that we are in bondage to something. Whether we are in bondage to fate, to God (I realise the believers will consider us all to be so regardless of choice whereas others will see this as the same as bondage to fate - I mean that if we are governed by the teaching of a God, then that is a form of bondage), to an earthly master or to the thrall of marketing images in a consumer society, all of these things are indeed a form of bondage. It is not a matter of not being in bondage as human beings, but how and to whom we are in bondage.

We all must bear personal responsibility for our lives and for our decisions and for our responses to the decisions of others. It is true that ideas about personal responsibility differ and can be shaped by political ideology. I am very wary of the idea that any political landscape prevents personal responsibility.

More another time. Please feel very welcome to post comments on this post. Anything which sharpens our ideas on what we want to give and receive in our democracy has to be good.

Finding room

Grandparents day at Fionn's school was yesterday. After a mad flurry of cleaning and tidying, my parents arrived on Tuesday evening to a house that was cleaner and tidier than usual. I couldn't make any grander claims. The grandparents' event was much enjoyed by all and a lovely community thing I think.

Yesterday I popped down to the garden centre to buy some spinach seedlings for Dad. Somehow I ended up buying a marjoram plant (my second lot of marjoram seed has failed to prosper and I can't wait forever to make marjoram toppings for our pizzas) and six cavolo nero plants. I love this name for what is also known as 'palm tree cabbage' and as 'lacinato kale'. My seeds still haven't arrived from Koanga so these fairly well established seedlings are very welcome. It's great to see our local garden centre branching out in the range of seedlings it offers.

Of course I only wondered afterwards where exactly I would put the cavolo nero. The idea was to put winter greens where the chook house currently is in Febuary. But I do need to home some more greens well before then. I guess the edges of the potatoes where I planned to put herbs and beans may also have to fit in some brassicas after all.

I bought the latest Organics NZ magazine this afternoon. I read the article on herbs for hormonal health with some interest. It is written by Sandra Clair who is the owner of the highly regarded herbal tea and creams business Artemis. She mentions in the Organics NZ article that calendula is a very good balancing herb for women. Which could mean almost anything and why I wonder about making this myself when I have yet to use any of our calendula for making eczema cream in the last two years I don't know. But indeed I do wonder. So I bought one of her teas at the health food shop today and maybe one day I'll get to experiment with my own concoctions.

I've started another bread experiment (yesterday) after reading up a link on on of Joanna's recent posts. I hope this no knead bread lark is forgiving as I forgot to go home and make it this afternoon and it is now going to wait until tomorrow before I do the final steps. I'm interested in the recommendation to use standard (weak gluten) flour rather than bread grade. From one angle, standard grade bread is cheaper than bread grade. From another, I could use this recipe for making bread from low gluten flours like the ones I've found from a grower called Terrace Farm.

I should go and be a parent now.

Onion weed

I gathered an armful of onion weed this morning and cleaned and prepared it (like spring onions, chop off roots and about half of the green part, rest to be used) and put it in the roasting tray with some huge winter carrots from my Dad's garden and some celery from my garden. I drizzled them with oil and let it cook at 150 celsius for about 60 minutes. The roasting tray was quite full and the veges wet from being cleaned so they half steamed and half roasted. Then I whizzed the mix up in the food processor and wondered what I might do with it next.

Next I played round with broccoli pesto after seeing a recipe online which I didn't actually follow because I have banned myself from the computer for all but 20 minutes in the evening. But mine was similar except I used parsley for the non-broccoli green.

Tonight I cooked pasta and then sauteed some anchovies in a pan and added the onion weed/celery/carrots mixture and a bit of tomato sauce. I mixed that with the cooked pasta and then topped each plate with the broccoli pesto. It tasted nice. Not likely to win any awards and certainly not restaurant fare on aesthetics, but "Thank you Mummy, I like this" from the boy who was very doubtful throughout the cooking part did very nicely for applause.

We got our first egg on Saturday and then two yesterday and two today. The run is too wet for them though - increased vulnerability to disease. So we will stake the run into the ground and add plastic to keep it dry. We are now talking about building the glasshouse this summer and making that their winter home while I plant winter veges into the current run spot. Then swap over in summer so the glasshouse can grow tomatoes.

I gave my Dad two sub arctic oregon tomato seedlings which I had grown on Saturday. Mum and Dad were over to watch Fionn's final in the rugby league. Hoki dared to beat us once this season and they paid for that on Saturday. Those little 5 and 6 year old boys and girls in Fionn's team thrashed Hoki soundly. I never thought I'd be a sporting girl, but Saturday was full on excitement. Well well well.

Back to gardening. I also gave Dad some of my pumpkin and zucchini seeds. The climate in his garden is quite different to here and it will be interesting to compare results. My neighbour was talking about the article on heirloom tomato varieties and health benefits in the weekend but didn't know where she could buy seeds or plants. I lent her my Kings Seeds catalogue. Spreading the word on genuine food diversity one friend at a time.

Yesterday was the local Lions fertiliser fundraiser. I joined the queue for sheep manure, blood and bone and powedered sheep manure. I didn't want superphosphate, but happy to put the other things on my garden.

chook love

I love the chooks. They are nameless but loved. We let them out into the run this afternoon (I was too impatient to wait two days) and they clearly enjoyed that and we all stood mesmerized by chooks pecking grass and straw...

I've convinced Favourite Handyman on my scheme to create a large garden bed by the poultry palace building site by having the chooks there for a few months and then finishing off any digging they haven't done myself. I'll put potatoes there in late October and create a herb border all the way round it. The garden bed will be 5 x 2 metres which is the sort of gutsy sized garden bed I want/need rather than just itsy bits around the edges of the section. We're talking about modifications to the poultry palace now that it is up and running. Not that it means much here without any photos. Couldn't find my wallet this evening either. Obviously cleaning the kitchen today wasn't sufficient effort to organise my chaotic physical surrounds.

I've made no progress on the yeast-free eating front. Today I even started making bread again. I tried a new recipe - sweet rye bread. I didn't have aniseed which I gather is the key taste in the recipe but it was still good. Nice with hummus. It is supposed to be great with strong cheese but we've run out of that until Wednesday. It uses treacle which must be good. I need to start my use up the cupboard project again. Stuff just creeps in there and sits unused if I'm not very vigilant.

Happy fortieth birthday to my friend and childminder Robyn, whose party I've just come home from. Robyn's friends and family have already raised $2500 tonight towards the next Watoto project. She makes a huge positive difference to many lives, including mine, here in our small town as well as on the other side of the world.

The meat raffle

I won it. That brings my raffle winnings to two over the past 2.5 years we've lived in smallwettown. The previous win was of a year's membership to the local toy library. Our town is big on raffles. I began by never buying any. But the more I get involved in life here, mostly just by living here longer, the more I find I have a personal connection to the organisation selling, or the actual person behind the raffle desk. Lately I've bought a lot of raffles because I've got strong emotional links to a few groups who've been fundraising very intensely.

Here are a few pics from smallwettown last week:

Last week I lived in small-wet-nearly-blown-off-this-planet-town. The volunteer firefighters worked for 17 hours continuously and the next day busloads of people turned up in the worst hit areas to pitch in and help clean up. Friends without power prompted me to question whether I did want to store a year's worth of food in an electric freezer.

I found out today that only Solid Energy is ceasing residential coal sales after 2010. The other private coal mines will carry on supplying coal.

I was going to start a new dinner project/challenge tonight, based on finding my copy of the World Food Cafe recipe book and choosing a gorgeous South American bean dish to post about and then offer up the challenge that several of us try it out and report back.

But that kind of presumes I could find the book. And that I didn't come home at 5.30pm and tip cans of baked beans and corn in a pan and bread in the toaster and call that dinner. It was dinner. Most appropriately named. I even swirled balsamic vinegar on top of the beans. Bit posh aye? no? oh well. ...

So in the absence of
a) the aforementioned recipe book
b) the bill from the panelbeater so I even know if we should be eating this week
c) any opportunity for me to garden today

... then lets talk about another food option. Please post in the comments all your tricks with a can or two of baked beans. I have another flash option you know. Sometimes I add frozen peas as well as tinned or frozen corn to the beans in the pot/pan. Do tell me yours. I can never have too many baked bean tricks up my sleeve or down my gumboot.

Today my community is

... sitting at the local supermarket selling raffle tickets for my son's school for an hour. Noticing how quite a few people are wearing home made jerseys. Bewing wowed at the generosity of so many people regarding the raffle. Enjoying exchanging smiles with people who passed but did not buy a ticket. Noticing how the supermarket is one place where people of all ages come together, even if they don't all talk.

... receiving a birthday invitation from my lovely friend and childminder Robyn for her fortieth. Reading that she doesn't want presents or cards but if we wish, she would love some support for the Watoto project. Robyn and her husband and a larger group from their church travelled to Uganda last year and built a classroom for this project which changes the lives of orphaned children. Involvement in this project also changed the lives of many people here in our small town. Now they are planning a second trip in 2009. I am very proud of Robyn's commitment and achievements and grateful that my children have her as part of their community also. We'll be buying some bricks and rolling up to her party later next month.

... learning that Robyn can't look after my children tomorrow when I am at work and being able to find alternative care within twenty minutes from two lovely friends.

... Organising a playdate at our house for my son with another mum who has a pile of other commitments every Thursday. Seeing how excited the two boys are at this prospect.

... Visiting my elderly cousin Mary and organising to collect her for the school gala on Saturday morning. Sharing with her my news from Muriel-who-I-saw-at-the-supermarket. Muriel is in her seventies and yet until the beginning of this year was showering and otherwise caring for many local elderly people each day. She cared for my cousin Lou daily and was held in enormously high esteem by Mary and Lou. When Lou took seriously ill, Mary rang Muriel who stoppped everything and drove to be with them. She was with Mary and Lou when he died.

A lot of love.

The path to a brave new world?

Truckies have been protesting throughout New Zealand this morning. The single issue cause is the lack of warning about road user charges going up with immediate effect despite an assurance by transport minister Annette King that she would not do that. There are always a larger bunch of pressures which feed into a decision to protest on this scale, and the rising fuel prices which are driving truckies to the wall economically do seem the likely wider issue.

The oil crisis is threatening the livelihoods of truckies (truckdrivers). It is threatening their ability to feed their families and pay their mortgages. Of course they could find a new job, start a vege garden and become low fuel users and committed locavores. Kind of like finding God, but instead of going to church, they will devote themselves to lowering their footprints on this precious earth and reflect each day on the myriad ways in which they can serve the 'God' of the light footprint.

I'm not surprised that there are truckies all over the world protesting. Why should they go gently into the 'new world', give up their wordly possessions and starting sprouting alfalfa to sell on the roadside? Many of us who have an interest in the issues surrounding the increasingly limited supply of oil have indeed made changes. I and most people in my country, not to mention the rest of the world, lean heavily on the services of truckies.

I was pleased to see our democratic right to protest enjoyed and upheld on such an impressive scale throughout New Zealand this morning. Equally the right of citizens in a democratic country, some people have found this protest offensive and said so. I think it is the very tiniest reminder that such a radical change in society as some peak oil enthusiasts predict will not come about by people all finding their environmental 'God' and their peace beads and gently transforming our society.

The pain is not all about big business.

Feeding Melbourne's hungry, using not wasting food

Here is the original link where I found it. It is the best news I have encountered today. It is happening now, not once they can get it going. Now. I love it.


Monday June 30th 2008
It’s a common scenario the world over, especially in developed countries: thousands of people go hungry while tons of unwanted but edible food is heaped into landfills. One organisation in Australia has developed a novel scheme to correct this, one that provides meals for the disadvantaged and is also good for the planet. Marcus Godinho, the man behind it, explains:

It’s shocking to see how much good food gets thrown out. The goods that come to us are usually rejected because they’re close to their "best before" date; incorrectly packaged; weather-damaged; superseded by another line; or don’t fit society’s high standards, for example not complying with a certain size, colour or shape. We have an egg farm that regularly gives us eggs that are too large, too small or are double-yoked because the supermarkets don’t want them.

Apart from staples such as fruit and veg, we sometimes also get magnificent luxury goods, like smoked salmon or beautiful cheeses. Two weeks ago we were given 30,000 chocolate bars because some were heat-affected and had gone a bit pale. This made little difference to the appreciative people we gave them to. Not that you could call chocolate bars healthy, but everybody deserves a treat.

We cook with what we’ve got in the kitchen on any given day. While we’ve got regular boxes of food coming in, our duty chef and the band of volunteers who help him have to be on the ball, and very creative with some of the unexpected ingredients that we’re donated. Not long ago a catering company whose freezer was on the blink gave us 450kg of prawns. We collected them quickly, shelled them and made delicious quiches out of them.

But we don’t produce everything in our kitchen. Sometimes catering companies give us their surplus pre-packed sandwiches and rolls, as well as any freshly squeezed juices they have spare. There was a bar mitzvah over the weekend and the company catering for it dropped off 250kg of leftover lamb chops, wild barramundi and stir-fried chicken.

Lately we have seen an unprecedented rise in the demand for food. There’s the ongoing issue of homelessness (there are 20,000 homeless people in Victoria), but hunger isn’t something only faced by them or by people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. The recent increase in interest rates and the price of petrol and food means there’s a lot of pressure on working households to make ends meet, and some people are struggling to put food on the table.

FareShare is about giving tangible emergency help to members of the community who are going through a tough time, and we get some fantastic support for the work we do. Our operational costs, such as wages, electricity and petrol are funded exclusively from philanthropic and corporate organisations, as well as private individuals.

We started seven years ago as One Umbrella. It began when Jewish Aid Australia, which rescued food and distributed it to agencies, joined forces with six people (one of whom was a chef) who used to meet every Saturday morning to make meals for disadvantaged people. Up until this year we worked from a kitchen which we shared with other organisations. This limited our capacity to respond to the high demand for food, the ever-growing offers of surplus goods and an expanding waiting list of volunteers.

But a recent extraordinarily generous donation has meant that we’ve been able to buy our own building, which will give us enormous scope to grow and provide more meals to people in need. Before we moved into our new premises in May, we made 700 meals a day. Now we can make 1500 an hour and plan to produce up to a million meals a year.

We support 55 agencies all over Melbourne and some regional areas with emergency food. They include soup vans, homeless shelters, school breakfast programmes and crisis centres. We’ve got a Cryovac machine that vacuum-seals food, which then just needs heating up. But we’re really inspired by old-time miners’ use of pastry to wrap up their dinners, which we now know as pasties, and would love to use it more often if we could get donors to supply it.

Pastries, pies, sausage rolls – all have distinct advantages for us. They are nutritious (we use lean meat and high fibre) and very portable. Our agencies find them easy to serve as they don’t have to worry about having adequate infrastructure, such as a kitchen and cutlery, or the washing up.

We have four paid staff and 100 volunteers a week to assist us with baking, as well as administration and driving. Some of the volunteers come to us from the corporate sector – there’s a trend among large companies to encourage workers to take time off and volunteer in the community.

Food safety is paramount: we haven’t had a single incidence yet. Donors themselves are protected from legal action under Victoria’s Good Samaritan Act, which is legislation that FareShare was instrumental in bringing about. This gives donors immunity from common law liability for food donated in good condition and good faith. As a result, last financial year, we rescued 140 tons of stuff going to landfill. This year the figure is closer to 280 tons. So not only do we protect the environment, we’re able to use that surplus to feed Melbourne’s homeless and hungry. I think it’s a great achievement.

• Marcus Godinho was speaking to Carmela Ferraro. For more information visit the FareShare website.

Gala Day

Our local primary school has one major fundraiser each year - The Gala. It involves enormous amounts of work and the result is far more than just funds for new equipment for the school. The result is community. Tonight I rang someone called Margaret, a saint wearing ordinary women's clothing, who is coordinating this year's gala. I offered to make a pork dish for the lunch and bring it down in my crock pot. Margaret accepted with enthusiasm. Other people will be making nachos, chicken or beef dishes also in crock pots and white bait sandwiches. That's just the lunch part. The baking room (yes room, not just table) will be full of home made sweet concoctions and will sell out within twenty minutes. I never buy from the baking room as I haven't the stamina for the crowds, but I'm in the (female) minority.

Lots of other activities take place, many for fund raising and quite a few performances from the school students. I come close to crying watching these and that's in years before I had my own child performing. This year we are paid up schoolie parents and The Gala is such a big deal that the South Island grandparents are driving over for the day.

sewing night

Went to sewing class for the first time tonight and had a great time. Got some sewing done as well. I have four friends also doing the class and really enjoyed the company of the other women there who I had not already met. I made some nappy wipes out of my stash of lovely patterned pillowcases which I find irresistible at the Sallies. Mucked up the tension on my machine by the end. It's not a sewing session if I don't do that, it seems. Might buy a Bernina bobbin for next week so I can use the school machines. I will move on to the purple skirt project next week. At some point I want to have a go at replacing a zip with the tutor's guidance. That really would be a useful skill to have.

We also got to yak about book groups (I started one with a friend two years ago but we seem always to get unappealing books this year). We talked about various food coop possibilities and I discovered that my friend Emily has previously done coop orders from Havoc Farm and despite my earlier intention to not buy more meat for a while, I put my hand up.

I also learnt about International Knit in Public Day in June 14, 2008. So we're planning a knit and chat and coffee session (simultaneous) on that day.

We didn't talk about gardening which was a sad omission. I would like to get a local food growing group going so we can share ideas and experiences and tips which relate to our very local growing conditions. I'll get there.

Hypocrisy and community

In my recent posts I have talked about my sense of moral obligation to reduce my ecological footprint and also about my sense of allegiance to local working class people making a living mining coal on the West Coast of New Zealand. I can certainly see that these values can clash.

I'm still thinking about what is important to me. I'm not a single issue girl and I am trying to thrash out how I will reconcile or attempt to reconcile the implications of my positions on various issues which face my community - personal, small town, national and global. Often what I write on my blog is tentative and part of my journey.

I have treasured and continue to treasure the comments on my blog. They come from people whom I already had connections with and with whom I appreciate the dialogue we continue on this blog. I also value highly the men and women who have found my blog in cyberspace and found it interesting enough that they take the time to read and also to comment. For example, I've learnt a great deal from swapping blog readings with Patrick, Joanna and now Robynn and there are others whom I also value.

I didn't realise that I had anonymous comments enabled - I thought I did not. If your purpose in blog reading is to anonymously pull holes in someone's thoughts, then I'm sure one person got some gratification from calling me a hypocrite in the last 12 or so hours.

I have now changed my blog settings to disable anonymous comments. Not because the poster was wrong on this post. He or she identified correctly the clash between supporting local coal production and reducing my ecological footprint. But because I value the community I write in here in cyberspace and I prefer that those who read and comment are prepared to be part of that community.

Perhaps it would be easier to describe myself as a hypocrite. Then I could accept that I cannot have a pure position on environmental issues without shunning other issues which I currently hold dear. I could give up on thinking carefully because it is too hard.

I have no plans to give up. But yes, hypocrisy is never far from the actions of any of us, if that is what we are looking for.

Do you believe?

A number of people whom I know and respect are strong believers in a Christian God. Their God informs their ethical judgement and through their study of scriptures and reflection on the message of Jesus, they draw strength to live purposefully for the 'good' of those around them.

I also have the privilege to know some people who are strongly committed to the importance of scientific research which indicates a scary degree of global warming in the present and future and to the significance of our declining, or soon to be declining, access to oil. Their understanding of this research and the implications of it for our daily lives informs their actions, both large and small, and their sense of responsibility to minimise the effect of our lives on the environment at personal, community and global levels.

Much as it might horrify scientists who see no place for a God in their lives, I see many similarities in the two sets of beliefs. With food prices rising inexorably, adults everywhere are reigning their non-essential spending in and considering how to limit the damage of inflation on their food budgets. There is an understandable frustration on the part of peak oil enthusiasts that many people aren't seeing 'the bigger picture'. Which reminds me of the edict I've heard in Church that good works alone aren't enough. Faith is essential.

Both Christianity with it's notion of the Second Coming and Peak Oil seem to appeal to our fascination with apocalypses. Like watching gory movies where we don't want the horrible thing to happen but we watch, gripped, anyway.

Perhaps I'm a big softie with no stomach for the tough stuff. I believe in God as hope personified, as my guide, my strength to believe in the wisdom of working for change, for better lives, for redemption from sorrow. I have little time for the notion of a God of fear. I'm also a believer that we need to change our habits and become less wasteful, less reliant on commodities and cash and more connected to the growing of the foods we eat. If there is an apocalypse coming, (I can't help but think of when Dorothy got whisked out of her home in Kansas and dropped into the land of Oz in the musical), then we are wise to live carefully now. But if there is not an apocalypse coming, then I still think we are wise to live carefully now.

Who else is collecting for Plunket then?

Not long ago Rachael was asking for ideas on what makes and creates community. I think about this question frequently but had insufficient operational brain cells at the time I read Rachael's blog post.

Now I can tell you what I think makes community.

We move to a small town. I know no one and neither doe Fionn aged 3. J is heavily involved in the town toy library and is lovely to me. Fionn and I get in the local paper simply for turning up to do our helping at toy library shift on the day the local journalist visits. This year we have a new baby and J has now become the Plunket carseat hire person (as well as doing about 800 unpaid and very useful jobs in our small town) and she is superbly helpful and just lovely to boot.

So I waltz on by past the appeal for Plunket collectors on the supermarket noticeboard with just a twinge of guilt. But when J rings me personally I can't find one single reason whyI should not help such a great woman who is heart and soul behind an organisation which just wants little babies to stay alive and thrive.

So we (I'll be taking Brighid and Fionn for cuteness factor to get people donating generously) will be collecting for Plunket on our street and the neighbouring four small streets this week.

Good chance to see what other people are growing in this climate.