Fresh Produce

It’s all about the food!

When the end of each day comes, Rachel and I, we want to be in our Garden. We dont mind being knackered, the fatigue of a good days work is a simple pleasure for us. In the rain or scorching heat, the quiet moment amongst the fruits of honest labours – it fills our cup! It’s energizing, encouraging and lets a little hope grow. We’re hoping that theres a kind of legacy to all this, that it’s a positive one, that it’s contagious and tasty to our families, friends and community.

Fresh honest garden produce – the lifeblood of HUMBLE HOUSE!

 

Have you ever…. seen a rotary plow??

Posted on: Saturday, October 20,2012

It’s been a few days since I had time to post. sorry!

At least I can update you all on the state of our garden, explain how we are doing things, and where we’re at generally.

Check out this green manure crop!

Our spring turned warm really smartly quick this year, and the beans just grew a bit crazy!  How the heck do we turn all this stuff under!? I reckon we’re talking maybe 6-7 tonne/acre dry matter! Underneath the beans there is wheat and spinach and a good amount of thistle too, but not like we planted that…

We dont have a mower or mulcher to cut down this crop, or a crop roller, so I had to break out the my BIG scythe blade to do the job. I dont often get a chance to use it, – if you look close, I’ve only nearly cracked a smile, but it might be a grimace, thinking of the work ahead. Beans make an obvious choice for a green manure crop. For starters, we know they make HUGE BIOMASS! and they are legume plants (not that it helps on a lot of organic soil, which already have too much organic nitrogen from manure inputs), the stems are fleshy and the leaves full of a gelatinous sap that sandy soils need and love as the plants break down. the Wheat we use because its cheap and the fibre in the leaves takes a little longer to break down. underneath these beans the stems are just starting to dry off, which will help recircle (yes, i did say recircle) Carbon back into this equation, which in turn will help the sappy, moisture rich beans decompose in optimum fashion. The thistles = silica and offer a hint that we worked our soil too wet last season.

              

                             

Normally I just use the scythe to harvest fresh compost material, and it’s a hard tool to beat for that job! but the beans are thick and top heavy, they fell like buttered toast! It was all down in twenty minutes!

At this point, I thought – “Bugger. what now?”

A rotary hoe would just clog up, offset disc wouldn’t penetrate that carpet, spade?? HA! Not likely. Even my reciprocating spader, which makes a meal of really tough situations would never deal with this lot. Anyhow, as far as green manures go, it would be enough to leave it as is at this point, utilising an in-situ mulch, there are enough roots under the surface to texture and aerate the soil (it’s nearly 60/40 above and below with wheat plants), but I’m greedy and want it all! that green stuff is full of sugar/protein/minerals/enzymes/biology/life! all good stuff! Bring on the ROTARY PLOW!

A rotary plow, a soil auger that moves through dirt horizontally. lifts and fractures dirt gently, buries everything!!

I got a reversible version of this for my walking tractor, which means it has two augers, one for each direction, they flip over at the end of the row, otherwise you’d spend all day going in circles.. The really amazing thing about these is they leave no ‘hard-pan’ like a rotary hoe, use very minimal horsepower for a 10-12 inch deep cut, and if you hit a stump or stone, it just kinda skips around the obstacle. Very safe! I got stuck right in. Prior to starting the machine, I sprayed out some biology foods and humates to help the breakdown process along. Heres the proof in pictures.

All DONE! If there is only 5% of the crop on top with that much bulk gone under,

🙂

The Rotary plow made such short work of this bean crop, I drove it straight into another ‘bean-green-manure’ crop without cutting it down first, check this out! More leaf up on top, but amazing anyhow! What other machine walks into a standing 1.2m high crop and buries it?

I’d have to give a huge thumbs-up to these implements! It’s great to know that some of the tools available to smallfarm growers are actually top rate kit! For once there is a tool for the job that we don’t have to bodge together from old junk made for larger farms. And goodness knows, some days, smallfarmers need all the advantages we can muster!

The beans disappeared within ten days, I ran my spader through the soil again after liming and compost, and we have perfectly friable worked and manured dirt. Well, as far as I can manage!! Today I planted corn and melons into the soil above, cant wait to see those come up!

If anyone wants more info on the BERTA FRANCO ROTARY PLOW, then try Terry Evans at Vin Rowe Machinery, he’s got loads of experience in walking tractor outfits. Give him a call 0438 231362 Tell him I sent you!

Thanks for sticking with us!

Wade.

I’ll leave you with a simple picture, Not inspiring to most, but one a farmer is proud of,

Promise. Legacy. Vigour. Health.

 

Subtract dirt, divide buds, multiply crowns, it all adds up to a robust Rhubarb economy..

Posted on: Friday, July 27,2012

Rhubarb is one of those under-rated old fashioned plants and produce. When I moved to the Limestone coast SA from the Kimberley in my early 20’s I had never even heard of rhubarb. Then my mum cooked it up a couple of times with just water – and the sour fruit was edible but not that enjoyable. But still – I planted a patch. I loved the fact that it was almost an instant fruit. I had planted about 30 fruit trees and knew it would be at least 3 years before I saw my first harvests. So I planted rhubarb, strawberries and raspberries, as well as watermelon, rockmelon and honeydew & champagne melon so I could have fruit while I waited.

My first rhubarb were crowns gained from my good gardening friend Sue. She is an inspiration – running a fantastic garden on sandy poor soil and harsh water – she still managed to grow healthy happy plants in abundance. Through Sue, I found the rhubarb had more uses than to just eat. Its leaves were a great deterrent to the pesky insects that loved my other produce. There are many great recipes for sprays – but I loved to just lay the leaves around the produce having the most problems.

I then bought some rhubarb from a local nursery. It was nice and vigorous – but it was green stemmed, and when stewed up or in a pie looked kinda gross! So I was then on the hunt for some bright red ‘old fashioned’ rhubarb. Finally another friend Lindy had split her crowns in her garden and was selling some at the local market shop . I bought the 10 plants she had for sale.

Fast forward another year, and I realized I still didn’t have enough rhubarb because of 2 new recipes. Rhubarb cake was introduced to me from Wades mother Beth. Gorgeously moist and with 6 cups of raw rhubarb per cake it was a healthy scrumptious way of getting fruit into even the non-fruit kind of man (not Wade, no hassle there!).

When we tried adding Rhubarb to my Strawberry Jam, instantly I knew it was a match made in heaven! As good as Strawberry Jam is – when it is made with pure strawberry fruit without the fillers that most jams are made with – this jam is sickly super sweet (I know! what a delicious problem!) Add rhubarb and it takes away the sickliness and replaces it with a creaminess which is all morning sunshine! With our strawberry patch increasing from 200 plants to 1200 plants this year – I new my rhubarb patch wasn’t going to cut it!

I went back to Lindy and got another 2 crowns which I took home and had no idea what to do with them. I went on the google hunt and every site had conflicting information. I didn’t have time to spare – I needed to get them into the ground. So I’m writing about what did work; as they are now re-shooting and poking through the mulch so I know I didn’t kill them!!

I had been waiting all winter for my rhubarb to go dormant so I could shift them. Also all the sites said the crowns had to be at least 5 years old. Well I didn’t abide by either of these rules. If the crown  still had leaves on it I pulled all the stalks off like you do when you harvest them – and the last couple of stalks I just cut the leaf off to stop any extra respiration loss. Then I used a Broadfork to loosen up and get deep under the huge fleshy taproots. Once we had teased them up, I used a sharp kitchen knife to cut each crown into pieces making sure there was a bud or two and some root on each piece, then quickly before they dried out, went and replanted them in soil that was very rich in organic matter thanks to all the sheep manure, rock minerals and worms that we’d had put in 6 months before. I watered the crowns in with Seasol and a pinch of salt per watering can – a gardening magazine had said that this will replicate the facts and ecology that rhubarb is happiest found grown near the seaside! I did the same for the crowns that had gone dormant too. A few smaller plants I just replanted the whole plant and didn’t divide it – after all we were moving the whole rhubarb plot to the other side of the house!

Fast forward 2 weeks and it is beautiful seeing the jewel red stalks, glossy green leaves poking through the sandy coloured mulch. I would recommend for anyone to try dividing their rhubarb – or getting some crowns from a friend. The price at nurseries for a rhubarb crown varied from $6 to $15 – which is a good deal considering they fruit nearly forever. But they are so easy to divide yourself – give it a go! There aren’t too many ways to lose!

And make sure you play around with rhubarb in the kitchen. My mother ferments rhubarb into a sometimes exploding home-brew! OK, so don’t blow up the kitchen, just don’t be content with the traditional, acidic stewed fruit. If it’s all we know, it’s that there are much tastier ways to love this fruit! While moving the rhubarb crowns,  we used the last red stalks – the prunings – and made a rhubarb/passionfruit stew with pear chunks, and then made pies out of them. A gorgeous pink/red coloured filling – and extremely, indecently delicious! Good for the soul! We all have memories made from rhubarb, choose the right recipe!

Happy transplanting,

Rachel

All our honest-to-goodness rhubarb recipes:

Find Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam here

and a Sugar-free ‘Strawbarb’ Jam

Mulberry-Rhubarb Jam is pretty good!

You don’t always appreciate what you have, until it’s gone…

Posted on: Thursday, June 21,2012

I picked a fresh rocket/mizuna/spinach/lettuce/parsly mix last night, after nearly a whole month of no salad, and the food finally felt alive again! This made me smile…. I’ll let you know why.

A month ago there was a problem with the gate, and my flock of 50 sheep grazing next door – within an hour of being away, almost EVERYTHING was reduced to stalk or pulled out roots and all. Their favourites seemed to be the fennel, kale, coriander, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage and even chillies! There was little they missed or didn’t trample. I was reduced to tears, gutted, mourning all the effort that those plants represented. And so it took a few days before I ventured out and planted again.

Glad I did because now the new crops are ready to harvest. No-way near as much as last year though, but at least enough for my family and other family members. Last year I tried hard to have veges all year round, especially the staples of lettuce/carrots/pumpkin/potatoes/spinach and on the whole, succeeded! So this year I planted 5 times as many as last season, and was hoping to supply my local families with veges all winter, until “that incident” a month ago….BUT it makes me appreciate things more. And the kids are learning to appreciate our garden too!

Sometimes I don’t think they notice what I do (- and ask me to get a normal job), but in the last weeks I’ve been getting comments like – “those carrots in the fridge are DISGUSTING mum! What is wrong with them?”

“well honey, they are from the shops, the sheep ate ours”. I think when the next planting of carrots are ready, they might eat 2 months worth – and it’ll make all the work more than worthwhile.

All of these plantings have been a very steep learning curve, because I grew up in the Kimberley (northern WA) and although we were farmers, my parents didn’t have time for a vege patch. And the growing season so short to spare time in a garden wasn’t a real option. Which makes all these vegetable adventure possibilities so exciting!

You can get a lot of love back from growing your own food, sometimes these setbacks make everything we then harvest taste sweeter!

Kind regards,
Rachel