Produce!

Ive been collecting ingredients all week for this weekends retreat. Today it all came alive with the arrival of fresh and delightful produce. I bought everything from the local organic store in Balnarring 'Oh My Goodness'. This is quite a special shop that specialises in local and chemical free produce over certified organic from too far away. Many of the farms are in organic conversion, and just down the road. This is reflected in the prices. The lettuces, herbs, zucchinis, beets, spinach, apples, avocadoes, cauli's are all local. Obviously the mangoes are a special treat from the sunshine state. I got some incredible looking roma tomatoes and in my excitement I bought ten mangoes! Because its finally time for exciting luscious fruit, and I wanted everyone that is coming this weekend the chance to roll and enjoy. I am going to make a raw mango lime cashew cheesecake tomorrow night for desert...

Farmers Markets on the Peninsula

Balnarring Racecourse Community Market - Balnarring Racecourse-Coolart Road Balnarring - 3rd Saturday of month, Oct - Apr 8.00am-1.00pm - Tel: (03) 5971 9308

Highland Farmers Market - Dromana Estate, 555 Old Moorooduc Rd, Tuerong - 4th Sunday of month, Jan - Nov 10.00am onwards

Mornington Farmers Market - Mirvac Lifestyle Centre, Bungower Rd (behind Bunnings) Mornington - 2nd Saturday of month - Tel: (03) 5664 0096

Mt Eliza'a Farmers' Market - Mt Eliza Way and Village Green - 4th Sunday of every month 8am-12.30pm - Tel: 0429 398 684

Pearcedale Farmers Market - Pearcedale Community Centre, Baxter Tooradin Rd, Pearcedale - 3rd Saturday of month, All year, 8.00am-1.00pm - Tel: (03) 5978 6620

Red Hill Farmers Market - Red Hill Consolidated School, Arthurs Seat Road, Red Hill, - 4th Saturday of the month - Tel: 0412 895 901

Seaford Farmers Market - Broughton Street Reserve, Broughton St, Seaford - 3rd Sunday of month, 8.00am-1.00pm

Tyabb Farmers Market - Tyabb Packing House, Tyabb Rd, Tyabb, 4th Sunday of month - Tel: (03)9566 0096

Face your Food

Watch bigger and slower version here, i really like watching people eating backwards.
You can make and upload your own video of you eating too...
Read more about Fair Food

Heburn Relocalisation Network

The Hepburn Relocalisation Network is a community group based in Hepburn and Daylesford in Central Victoria, Australia. We recognise the urgent realities of peak oil and climate change and are responding by raising awareness about how these issues affect our community, and how we can respond to these realities with a plan for the future.

for more on HRN and details of projects and upcoming events

garden notes for relocalisation

Patrick Jones is is a writer, artist and permaculturalist currently undertaking doctoral studies in the areas of poetics and ecology at UWS in the Writing and Society Research Group.
He lives With his family in the Hepburn/Daylesford area and.
Together, as the Artist as Family, we are making the transition to food, water and energy sustainability as part of the Hepburn Relocalisation Network (HRN).

Garden notes for relocalisation
The development of a Family Food Garden

Artist as Family and Permapoesis

My adventure to the farmers market

Amazingly I have never been to the farmers market at the Collingwood childrens Farm. It's actually kind of unbelievable if I stop to think about it, but i guess it's not really 'on my way' and I usually don't have extra leisure market time (for some strange reaso?n), and usually I just pop along to Ceres and get my weekly friendly little vegetables. It was a really nice experience to go to the farmers market today though in terms of your weekly veggie shop in can't replace Ceres, what it does have though is extra special fancy farm fresh artisan craft foods. I tasted the softest juiciest oranges I've ever had in my life, bought rock hard beautiful green avocados grown in northen Victoria, sampled delicious dips, olive oils, kiwi fruits and wished that I had a car so I could buy a mushroom growing kit! It was very very exciting to see so many local producers embracing slow food, low food miles and chemical free/conscious/organic/biodynamic farming. Harray for food! And for sunshine!

Wild fennel and whitebean dip!

Wild fennel foraged from the train tracks around Daylesford made into a fine fine blend with white beans and fetta.

Mount Zero

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Mount Zero are farmers market regulars for many years. Their farm is certified biodynamic and located out near the Grampians in west victoria. The Mount Zero core principals are regionalism, sustainability and quality, all very very good things.
They produce amazing olives, olive oil, tapenade,
beetroot and orange relish, and dukkah as well as supporting and distributing produce from neighbourjnh farms. I bought a huge jar of Gordal green olives, locally grown biodynamic chickpeas and pink lake salt. The salt is hand harvested from a natural salt lake in Dimboola, north west Victoria. The mount zero man (I'm sorry I don't know your name!) told me that he goes up there himself with a shovel and collects it. I've been buying this salt sometimes but it's so wonderful to learn more about it, move over Himalayan crystal salt we've got a new food mile friend!

50km from the Mount Zero Olive grove, in Western Victoria is a large pink salt lake.  The lake is fed by natural salt aquifers and each summer dries to reveal a bed of salmon pink salt.  Mount Zero and the lake's traditional owners, the Barengi Gadjin Land Council, have been working together to hand harvest a small amount of salt from the lake each year.

Raw? Organic? Local?

Carob powder is always roasted unless it's special raw carob powder. It's very hard to get so fine, and high temperatures are part of how they grind it so fine. That's one reason why you'll see that really raw carob powder is quite coarse compared to the normal stuff. Sheryl

Carob, the future?

I love carob.
I like it even more than chocolate.
I think you can get Australian grown?

Macarob, a south Australian carob farm, they appear to have been growing carob trees since early 80s but have sold out of all their carob? I think there's something going on here. More investigation needed.

Article on carob bean by the owner of Macarob
The process of breaking up the pod and separating the seed and kibble requires a regional processing facility. The pods are passed through a slow revving hammer mill with the output going to shaker/blower screens to separate out the seed and the kibble. Production must currently be exported as there is no local processing facility. It is estimated that a throughput of at least several hundred tonnes would be required for a viable processing operation for gum production.
Carob powder is made by gentle roasting and grinding. Carob syrup is made by dissolving the sugars and flavour and then concentrating the mixture to a syrup.
Australia currently imports about 1000 tonnes of carob gum per year at about A$5.00 / kg. However, the price fluctuates widely and in 1995 the price rose to A$32.00 /kg. Australia also imports about 60 tonnes of carob powder with a wholesale value of about $2.00 /kg. The cost of establishing a carob orchard is estimated at about $7500 per hectare with no return for at least 10 years. However, once the trees reach full bearing, returns should be about $10 000 per hectare.



fruit is a brown, leathery pod about 10 to 30 cm (4 to 12 in) long and contains a syrupy to biscuity flesh of an agreeable sweet taste, in which lie a number of seeds. The pods are edible and are often used for livestock feed

"The carob fruit, typically produced on female and hermaphrodite trees older than 6 years, is valued for a range of products derived from the seed and the pod. From the seeds, the endosperm is extracted for a galactomannan, which forms an edible gum (termed 'carob bean gum' or 'locust bean gum', LBG) and has become a valuable natural food additive. Carob powder, made by grinding the roasted pod, is used for the human food industry (with cocoa products and syrups). Ripe pods also have potential as a high energy stock feed. The gum is used extensively in Australia as an thickening or binding agent, particularly for canned pet food products. A study undertaken by Race, Curtis and Booth (RIRDC 1998) reveals that current imports valued at AU$10million/year. The current Australian demand for 'pet food' and 'technical' grade gum is estimated at 1200 tonnes/year, with a further 200 tonnes/year of the higher quality 'food' grade gum. Assuming a modern plant was built in Australia, the current Australian demand for carob gum could be met with approximately 2250 tonnes of carob seed (seed value at $ l600/tonne). This equates to 5405 ha of trees (at 104 trees/ha) with medium rainfall and low technology management (yielding 40 kg tree); or 1080 ha of trees (at 208 trees/ha) with supplementary irrigation and fertilising (yielding 100 kg/tree). As such, carob could be a commercial tree crop for landholders in the Murray Valley region.
From this article

The carob industry tries to go mainstream Article of ABC's Landline. The plot thickens...

Varieties of carob

Eating locally?

Can we harvest Australian seaweed? Is it nutritious, digestible, where is the best source?
Can we grow hemp in Victoria, does someone already do it? Does anyone know a source of raw whole hempseed that hasn't been irradiated/deactivated?
Is Victoria a good place to live? Where else? Is it important to commit to staying still? Not travelling? Have we got everything we need? What is a need?

Sustainable Cuisine

Positively impact your health and the health of the planet by eating minimally processed, vegan cuisine. Support local economies: purchase seasonal, & organic farmer direct. Grow it yourself, forage, compost!!
Check out rawpermaculture.org

Read more about Bruce Horowitz, raw food chef and permaculture designer and teacher. This whole thing keeps getting more and more interesting, everything really is interconnected.

What I made for potluck

--
Carrot, kale and coriander soup
-
2 small branches of purple curly kale from Louis and Rachel's garden
4 sprigs of coriander from my garden, self seeded from last year
couple of mint leaves from my garden
8 or so small carrots from Ceres organic markets
1/4 avocado, organic Queensland
juice of 1/2 lemon from my tree
tsp of cold pressed hemp oil, from pure Delight Queensland
pinch of pink lake salt, packaged by mount zero Victorian company

Raw sushi
-
similar to what I blogged a few days ago, but cauli instead of parsnip (parsnips still win...), and I left out the garden lettuce, because it was too hot and I wanted to simplify my jumping around
1/2 Cauliflower from Ceres organic markets
2 tbs soaked biodynamic Australian almonds
1 tsp ume su, umeboshi plum vinegar from japan
1 tsp agave nectar from Mexico?
pinch pink lake salt from mount zero
Purple cabbage sauerkraut that I made at home with cabbage from Ceres
carrots from Ceres
mung bean sprouts I grew at home with dried beans I bought from Ceres, pretty sure they were Australian
1/2 avocado, organic Queensland
organic nori sheets from japan?

Voilà! Just like that eh?

I also picked yellow nasturtium and orange calendula flowers in case a garnishing moment came up.

My-friend--pa-paya-

I just bought a whole yellow paw paw, it was conventional and came at least 16,000 kilometres from Queensland, and cost me $2.66. It was amazing and delicious and exciting and so wonderful. I love papaya, it is one of my greatest friends. I am much happier now, I ate almost all of it in one go.

Is it possible?

This morning I am thinking about the food miles connundrum, it's always there in the back of my mind. I prepare most of my own food (including condiments and pickles) and eat mostly locally grown fresh vegetables (including weeds, and greens from my own backyard) but I also eat some biodynamic/organic products (olive oil, almonds, chia, hemp) from around the country (Australia is huge) and superfoods from South America (coconut oil, maca, cacao). Is it sustainable or even truly nutritious to import food into our lives?
Is it possible to live a vibrant super-well existance on a high quality organic plant based diet in Australia and only eat foods grown here?
Is Queensland too far away from Melbourne? In the last few months I have cut down on the amount of superfoods from far away and have started honouring them more when I use them. My food preparation has become simpler, with less ingredients and more simple raw foods, I have started researching Indigenous Australian superfoods and am interested in entering the food miles discussion again, I'm considering whether I should try and aim to only eat local / Australian foods. Is there a benefit to imposing rules? Should it be more than a gentle consideration. Is organic more important no matter where it comes from? Is vegan? Is raw? Is local? In my experience of navigating true wellness and nutrition, strict ideas are never particulary useful and there needs to be a strong element of instinct and choosing in the moment what feels most congruous. I want to know what you think and feel about this topic. I would also love links to people and blogs that have experimented with low food mile diets, particulary if they have done it here. I'm really curious whether a mostly vegan diet is viable and truly sustaining in our local context.

When I was in Alice Springs I bought amazing dates that were locally grown 60kms out of Alice. Does anyone know where you can source australian grown dates in Melbourne?