No Vampires Here

The garlic harvesting and plaiting was a great success! Earlier in the month Robin and I pulled the garlic from the ground. It was very satisfying to see 18kg of garlic come from only 3kg planted.

To develop the flavours fully and ensure the garlic keeps well, the bulbs with stems were laid out in the sun on the ground. Of course with all the rain we've been having up here, this meant moving them in and out of shelter between showers.

As the stems dry out, they turn into a raffia which will use to braid them together.

But before we can do this, we cleaned the garlic up by cutting the roots off and peeling off the outermost layers of dirty skin, revealing the beautiful clean stems and lovely variegated purple heads.

Finally, we sized them up, took eleven each and plaited them up. After much trial and error, we got them into neat double rows. And with 18kg of garlic, we won't be seeing the vampires around here for a while!

Back on the farm : )

Coming back to the farm was a very pleasant experience, with the tremendous job Robin had done in looking after it.
Compared to a mere three weeks ago, the farm looked like a tropical jungle! The warmth and rain has certainly made a difference.
It was a great pleasure to be able to pick Strawberries, Bok Choy, Tatsoi, and Imago Mixed Salad as well as our regular eggs to have for you at the shop last week. And right now the zucchini and cabbage are working hard on their development too!
And of course we've just pulled up all the garlic in readiness for the field day next weekend.
Hope to see you there,

Julian.

Slow Food

Terra Madre (Earth Mother) is an event run by Slow Food. An international organisation devoted to promoting good, clean and fair food. Terra Madre brings together producers, chefs, students, and academics from around the world to discuss these issues. It aims to provide a counter-point to the Fast Food culture.
Overall the event was amazing. There were representatives (7000 in total) from 153 different countries (there were only a handful that weren't here) and the event was run UN style with everybody wearing headsets and speakers being translated into 8 different languages. It was held in a huge venue and there were many representatives that had set up stalls in the central room to sell products from their country and many people were wearing traditional costume. We wondered what we as Australians should be wearing... Perhaps Drizabone coats and hats?
In attending workshops we quickly realised that all the challenges we face in Australia are mirrored in every part of the world. There may be individual nuances, but it was a real eye opener to see how much similarity there was. A sense of global solidarity grew in me. Similarly it was interesting to hear that there wasn't too much new under the sun and that all around the world we are working on similar solutions. I guess the main difference being that in Australia we have easy access to information and so these ideas are readily available to us. Perhaps people from other countries may have been hearing of the solutions/interventions being tried out in various countries for the first time.
For many of us the workshops were quite disappointing. The topics were very interesting, however in reality the speakers rarely stayed on topic and the moderators did nothing to address this, and in fact waded in by providing long winded personal opinions... there were many people moving between workshops to try and find one that they was going to be productive as a result.
Some cultural observations: ministers, officials, NGO leaders, almost anyone that would be considered 'important and expert' had very little of practical interest to say. Preferring to talk to fluff their feathers.
Italian speakers are incredibly waffly and never stick to the topic being discussed.
Producers/farmers from around the world talk about the practical side of things, although some are more to the point and articulate than others.
People from African countries quite understandably use the forum as a way to vocalise the very difficult situation many of them are in. Unfortunately as this was rarely on topic, their comments were rarely addressed by the next speaker and I was left feeling a bit sad and miffed with the event for not being able to address real issues and to utilise the collective expertise.
The most inspiring talk and workshop i attended was by the US youth. Youth is a new category at Terra Madre this year and is aimed at including the next generation into the conversation. At the opening ceremony, Sam a 14 year old, told us of how he and his mates established a great school food garden that is incorporated into the curriculum and the canteen and is now being asked to help in setting them up far afield. later on a workshop that covered practical ways in addressing the difficulty for new farmers to access land and to get internships on farms was very interesting and practical. Great counterpoint to the waffly older 'important and knowledgable' speakers previously mentioned!
The best thing about the event however was the opportunity to network with other people and make personal connections. In particular for me i will get in touch with the young americans that are doing some great things in the States.
There are projects all over the place there that connect people together in innovative ways and act against the things we dislike about the current depersonalised, commodified culture.
Australia looks set to really mushroom on similar projects, so it's great to see how they have done it before so the wheel isn't being reinvented. I think a trip to the States is the next step. hee hee.
Presidia
The event was incredibly colourful with many people connecting with many others. In particular Slow Food helps artisanal producers maintain their traditional products. in one hall was about 200 tradtional producers with the most amazing foods. And of course we got to sample many of the delights. You'll have to come to experience it, but i'll just leave you with a high light which was a sausage made from a pig that is covered by curly wool and really looks like a sheep-pigù1
Salone del Gusto
This was even bigger and was open to the public. Imagine an olympic sized hall with literally one thousand stalls selling and displaying their produce from all over the world, but particularly Italy. You can imagine the popular stalls with people hovering around the ones giving out samples. We felt like pigeons picking up morsels here and there.

Plain Old Farm Hand

Today marks the end of almost three weeks of flying solo here at Imago Forest, while Julian's been away at the Slow Food Conference in Italy. What I've learnt is that trying to keep the garden under control while running the shop once a week is absolutely exhausting. The satisfaction that comes with looking back on the garden as the shadows lengthen and reflecting on a good day's work is quickly tempered by the realisation that there's still a big list of jobs still to do. I guess that's just the way it works: You can spend all day mowing the lawn, but there'll still be plenty of weeding and pruning waiting for you tomorrow, and then there's the fertilising to be done and a few more beds to be planted... But on the plus side, the reason that the garden's been a bit overwhelming is that there's plenty of growth going on. We've got bok choy coming out of our ears, the silverbeet and lettuce are coming along, the potatoes, pumpkins and zucchini's are steadily improving and we've even got some small fruit developing on the trees. I'm off for a well-deserved weekend break to Sydney, but am looking forward to hanging up my farm sitter hat when I get back, and getting stuck into work as a plain old farm hand again.

Post rain

How things can change in a week. This week my prayers were answered when the cold, wet and miserable weather was finally replaced by glorious sunshine (apart from on shop day, when it always rains). The garden seems to have got a bit confused with all this meteorological changeability, with some beds bearing big juicy greens, while others house vegetables that are insisting on going to seed. So this week I've been doing battle on two fronts; trimming down the seeding crops to try to persuade them to grow into something edible, and pulling up those stubborn weeds who have been gatecrashing our veggie beds in ever-increasing numbers. Yesterday, In a break from the trimming and weeding, I began turning over the soil in one of the beds in preparation for planting, and disrupted a whole network of field mice burrows - including a nest of tiny baby mice. I'm not sure if they're good for the garden or not but, feeling a bit guilty about unearthing their home and scaring their parents away, I'm going to try to keep the babies alive while working on the other beds. I've got no idea what to feed them, but I hear mice are keen on peanut butter, so might give that a try - provided our resident red-bellied black snake doesn't get to them first...