In the next few posts about food security I'd like to write about what we grow for our own fresh food needs, and how we grow food for storage and drying. When you grow food in the backyard, you have to increase your skill level in several directions because everything you grow will have to be harvested at the correct time, processed in a certain way such as cooking, preserving, drying, and then stored safely, either in the fridge, freezer, in a jar, a bag or hanging in a braid/plait. Growing the food is just one part of this. You will let yourself down if you know how to grow great fruit and vegetables but don't know how to process and store it correctly.

Even though we have four seasons, we generally have cold crops and warm crops. We're currently in our warm season now so let's do that first.

Food to grow in warm seasons

FRESH: In the warm seasons the obvious category for fresh food is salad and all the vegetables that can go into a decent salad. We change from year to year but usually grow: tomatoes, cucumbers, beetroot, radishes, capsicums/peppers, chilli, mushrooms, green beans, snake beans, Madagascar beans, corn, eggplant and various herbs. We grow lettuce until it starts to get bitter. As soon as the hot weather sets in, or if we have a hot day out of the blue, the lettuce will go bitter. When it does, we start buying our lettuce.  I grow various types of sprouts in the kitchen and yesterday put a bag of freshly grown mung bean shoots in the fridge.

We also grow daikon, Asian greens, Welsh onions, silverbeet/chard, sweet potato and zucchini. We sometimes have a crop of potatoes in at this time of year but we don't this year. We're just about to plant up a few pumpkin seedlings in the compost heap. The rest of the garden is starting to dry off now but those pumpkins will, hopefully, grow over summer and give us a dozen or so pumpkins to store for the next year.



FREEZER: Don't forget your freezer - you don't have to worry about the acid level of the vegetables you put up if you freeze them. Learn to blanch first, there are very few vegetables that will freeze well long term if they're not blanched. Frozen vegetables include beans, peas, chard and spinach. onions, Corn, capsicums/peppers, chillis and tomatoes don't have to be blanched, and tomatoes, if you want to use them in soups and stews after freezing - freeze them whole and store in a plastic bag. They'll be mushy when thawed.

DRYING: Although I don't have a dehydrator, I do sometimes dry food and store it. Usually it's beans because they're easy to grow, full of protein and they store well. You can grow borlotti beans, lazy housewife beans, haricot beans, or ask your supplier which beans they have for drying. It's simply a matter of growing them as instructed and letting them dry out. You can let them dry on the vine, but the plant will not produce more pods if you do that. Pick the beans as they mature and place them undercover to dry out. When they're completely dry, strip all the beans from the pods and add them to your jar.

ODDS AND ENDS: If you're in a warm climate, try growing some pigeon peas, they're a really useful crop. They're high in nitrogen, love hot weather and the chickens will eat the fresh young green leaves and the green peas.  You can harvest the peas green or brown. If they're green just steam or boil them, if they're brown and dry, store them in a jar for use later. One tree will give you at least one or two kilos/2 - 5lbs of peas. You use them in the same way you use lentils or split peas, they make an excellent pea soup. The leaves of pigeon peas can be cut back and used as mulch. Sunflowers are also a good crop during the warmer months. They're great for snacks and the chooks love them. Ginger and tumeric are easy to grow in a warmer garden. Just buy some organic ginger and tumeric from the green grocer, break it up and plant it. Sweet potatoes are also easy to grow. They need to shoot first, as soon as they do, plant them. And don't forget your herbs. Whichever herbs you use, they need to be planted in the warmer seasons. Make sure you dry some herbs to store in the cupboard too. I have some bunches of thyme drying out now that are almost ready to put into a jar. In a warm climate, pineapples are the ultimate in recycled fruit. Simply remove the top off a good, sweet pineapple, remove the bottom leaves and let the head dry out for a week or so. Plant the head into enriched soil full of organic matter in an area of the garden that you don't need for the next three years. In the first 18 months the head will grow a pineapple (see the photo above), then it's ripe, harvest it and leave the plant in. Fertilise with comfrey tea and in the following year, another pineapple will grow. Pull the plant out after the second pineapple. If you live in a warm to hot climate, you can keep pineapples growing like this, simply by using the heads, for years.

Tomorrow we'll talk about colder crops and later in the week we'll talk about extending your seasons by creating microclimates.

Please add to this by telling us what you're growing and how you process and store it.

A short note to everyone who created a Google account so you could comment here. If you have a blog, please put a link to your blog up on your Google page. When I was looking for people to link to this week, I chose quite a number of you who have a Google account, the link takes me to your Circles pages but no further.  If you include a link I'll probably get around to linking to you for the Weekend Readings.  Thanks :- )

We planted our garlic in March and true to form, it was ready for harvesting in late September. We bought our garlic from Green Harvest, a hard-necked variety called Glenlarge - it is suited to warmer weather and it's the best garlic we've grown so far.  Hanno said the larger cloves, generally from the outside of the garlic bulb, produce the biggest and heaviest bulbs. You can still plant the smaller bulbs but they won't grow as big as the others, so don't think you've done anything wrong. We grew ours over our colder months and hopefully this crop will see us through until next September.  I've already put aside the biggest and best bulbs for planting in March.

Garlic is one of the easiest plants to grow in the vegetable patch. You plant them, 6 - 8 inches apart, in a sunny site and add plenty of organic matter to the soil pre-planting. Break the bulb apart and plant the cloves pointy end upwards, down to about the first knuckle on your finger**, water in with seaweed tea. Depending on your climate, the green shoots will appear two to four weeks after planting.  When the green shoots appear, start fertilising every month with a foliar spray of comfrey tea or seaweed and fish concentrate. Keep watering regularly if it doesn't rain but don't over-water them, too much water will rot them in the ground. As the time for harvest approaches, ease off the watering. They're ready to harvest when the green tops start turning brown and shrivelling up. Don't pull the garlic out of the ground, dig them out with a spade to loosen the soil.

** Added later: I just read this again and wanted to clarify this first knuckle planting. What I mean is that you push your fore finger into the planting soil to the level of your first knuckle. Place the clove, pointy side up, in the hole and cover with soil. The point of the clove should be just below the surface of the soil.

When you harvest, treat them gently because they must be in excellent condition to store them for a long time. Place the crop on a table for a couple of days, undercover, and remove clumps of dirt and any obvious material that would prevent them from drying out - you'll clean them properly a bit later. Divide the harvest up into bunches and hang them to dry out for about three weeks, depending on your climate. If it's humid it may take a bit longer.

Every time you handle the garlic, be gentle and don't drop them. When they've dried out, take down all the bunches and lay them out on a table where you can work on them for a while. You'll need a small pair of scissors - I use an old pair of embroidery scissors because I can cut in around the root without cutting into the garlic flesh. 

Take the first garlic and remove all the dirt, then rub it with your fingers to remove the outer loose papery skin. You don't want to take all the paper off because it protects the bulb while it's in storage. Cut the top off about an inch or so above the bulb. This will help the paper stay on the garlic. Cut the roots off the bottom and generally tidy the bulb up as much as you can without removing too much of the paper. When you're happy with that one, go on to the next.

Don't break the garlic bulb up, they will store better as whole garlics. Store them in a dark, dry space, not the fridge, it's too humid. The place you choose to store your garlic will have the biggest effect on how long it lasts. I have mine in a wire basket at the bottom of my pantry alongside the potatoes and onions. You could also hang them in a mesh bag or plait/braid them and hang them in a cool dry place.

If you don't get a year out of your garlic, it might we worth your while to experiment with two separate crops using two different varieties - an early and a late garlic.  No matter what you use though, take the opportunity to use some of your garlic fresh on the day you pick it. Fresh garlic has a more subtle flavour than older garlic. I used two fresh whole garlics cut through the middle and baked with some roast lamb. It was so delicious and definitely worth growing for the wide variety of health benefits and recipes you can make with it.

I didn't tell you when it happened, but a couple of weeks back, our strange hen-rooster died. She was the black chook that over the course of a year, grew one white feather, rooster tail feathers and a red collar. I don't think she ever laid an egg during her six years with us. When she died we were left with two New Hampshires, one Rhode Island Red, one black Australorp, one lavender Araucana, one Old English Game hen and a Plymouth Rock. We needed to build up our flock again.

Chickens are a vital part of our setup here. They supply us with more than enough fresh eggs, high nitrogen manure for the garden and compost heap and they're the best form of backyard entertainment going. I can't imagine us ever being without chickens.

Introducing our new girls: two blue Australorps and two blue laced Barnevelders. They're gangly pre-teens right now, although one looks like she might be laying, but they'll grow into beautiful birds that we'll enjoy watching for many years.

Early yesterday morning Hanno put some big boxes in the boot of our car and we set off towards Brisbane. We picked up our girls at Samford (there will be more on that later), put four little chickens in the boxes and travelled back home again. I was hoping for a couple of silver laced Wyandottes as well, but they're still small chicks and at the moment they'd make a tasty meal for the pythons that live here. We'll pick them up when they're a bit bigger. Now we have the happy task of getting to know these little ladies who will spend their lives with us eating lots of grain and fresh vegetables in our backyard.

Wiki defines food security as: the availability of food and one's access to it. 

Food security is being able to access enough food to feed yourself and your family. The lower your income, the more you're at risk of not being food secure and while you would think the higher one's income is the less likely they'd be threatened, that's not the case. If there was a food emergency, war, national disaster or weather catastrophe, the rich and the poor would suffer. The people who would have the least concern are those who produced their own food or prepared enough food to live through the disaster. No matter what group you fall into, planning for food security is an important task that we should all take seriously, particularly those of us who are homemakers, mothers, fathers or caregivers. If one of your responsibilities is to provide food for yourself and others, you need to think about this.

When thinking about your own personal food security, the first thing you have to know is how many people are you feeding on a regular basis and, if there was a food shortage in the shops for any reason, would that number of people change. None of us know whether we'll be lucky enough to never experience food shortages so you'll have to work on guesstimates and the likelihood of you having to provide for more people.  I look at it this way. We have Kerry, Sunny, Jamie, Jens and Cathy living within a 15 minute drive from us. If something happened to the food chain, I know we'd pool our resources. Don't think about food only. You also have to consider water, for drinking and personal hygiene. We are fortunate to have tanks that hold 15,000 litres of fresh rain water, but a catastrophe could happen at any time and if it happened during a dry season, we wouldn't have very much water in the tanks. So not only should you consider what would happen if disaster strikes and you're fully prepared with ample water and food, you also need to think about what happens if you're not so fully resourced when the disaster happens.

I doubt it's possible to write a guide that would suit the wide variations in lifestyle, climate and ability of the people who read here. All I can do is to write about what we do, it will be similar for many of you, and encourage you to think about your own situation and work out a plan.


We've all seen it. On trips to the supermarket to stock up, more and more food is being imported from foreign countries. When food comes from a place far away I believe there are two main problems. One, you have no idea how that food was grown and even if our laws prohibit certain practises, our laws don't apply in any other country. Two, we have no control over the food until we buy it. The supply of food could stop at any moment and for a variety of reasons such as weather problems - either drought or floods, war,  or political reasons.


Our solution to both those problems is to grow as much fresh food as we can here and get whatever else we need from local markets. Of the products that come from from further away - olive oil, salt, rice, spices etc, we keep backups. It's worthwhile to work out where all your food comes from so you have something to work with when any of your products are in short supply or stop. We can buy local beef, chicken, pork and fish. Our lamb comes from Victoria. If the supply chain was compromised, we'd stop eating lamb.


We get our milk from the local dairy, and from that milk I've taught myself to make cheese. I don't make cheese often because we have many local cheese makers, but I know how to do it if I need to. In an emergency situation, if there was a problem keeping up the supply of milk, or if the power went off and we couldn't store it, I'd make cheese. That's one of the things you need to think about too - what could you live without? We could live without lamb long-term, but not milk, therefore I've made sure that I could make cheese. We also have backups in the cupboard in the form of powdered milk, condensed milk and evaporated milk.


Today I've written about emergency food supplies. I know there are many of you who have huge food stocks in case of an emergency. I would use my stockpile as our emergency food, along with any food we had growing at that time and what was in the freezer. I tend to think of emergency food in terms of the nutrients they contain. So instead of thinking I have 50 jars of beans, I think of the food pyramid instead and make sure I have protein, carbohydrates and fats - the ingredients to make nourishing food. It's not enough to have the ingredients though, you also have to know how to cook it and you'll need somewhere to cook if the gas and electricity are out - so have means to start a fire and cook on it.

Know where you can forage for food too. In most areas there are local foods growing that are there for the picking. Here where I live avocados, macadamias and mangos are often grown in parks or along the street. I know that at certain times of the year, I can go and pick them. I know there are wild apple trees and blackberries growing on the outskirts of Armidale. I live 15 minutes away from the Pacific Ocean. We have fishing lines. These are the things you should think about in your own area - what is available for the taking? If you don't know, ask around. One day, it might save your life.


I hope this has encouraged you to think about your emergency food supplies and if you have none, to start thinking about who you need to feed and how to do it in an emergency. If an emergency doesn't happen, you can keep the food rotating by using it as you would your stockpiled food. Keep adding to it at the back and take it from the front. Later in the week I want to write about day-to-day food, about growing food to eat fresh, and how to store food to eat later.  I'd love to know what you're doing with your emergency food. Do you have any, what is it, where is it and how do you rotate it so it doesn't go off after a few years?

What a week we've had here. So busy, but productive and exciting as well. Our vegetable garden is starting to wind down with the early hot weather arriving so we've been trying to do a bit of seasonal work here in addition to our normal work. We hope to get another three or four chickens as two of our old girls died recently and we have another two the same age, and therefore not laying. If you know of anyone from Gympie to Brisbane who has some laced Wyandottes, Barnevelders or bantam sussex, I'd love you to pass on their contact number to me. Thanks.


Again, thanks for the support during the week. I hope I don't sound smug saying that I wasn't surprised that you were there to help me deal with the haters. I know the vast majority of us here are focused on a more positive life experience. If you want to continue commenting here, all you need to do is to get a google account such as a gmail account, and you'll be able to use that account to log into all google's various programs, such as this blog.  Google "google account" for more details. You can also comment using your LiveJournal, Wordpress, Typepad, OpenID or AIM password. When you have one of these accounts, simply choose the account from the drop down menu under my comment box and make your comment. I think you only have to do that once because the system will remember you. :- )

I hope you have time to relax after the week's work. I'll see you next week!

A good eater

The skipping girl
The wooden cottage

Thank you all for the support and love shown here and in so many emails yesterday. I've said it before but I feel I'm surrounded by true friends here. Don't worry for me, I'm disappointed more than upset about those kinds of comments. ; - ) I still haven't had the time to sit and think about food storage so I have this recipe to share that is a firm favourite here, as well as a handy tip. 

This is another one of those really simple-to-make cakes, just like the whole orange cake. You just put all the ingredients in the food processor and process it. This time it's buttermilk banana cake.  I modified my old banana cake recipe for the food processor and it works very well indeed. This cake will stay moist for three days. We finished ours off on the fourth day and it was just starting to feel a bit old. I should have cut it in half and frozen a portion because we didn't have any visitors during that time to help us polish it off. I'll remember to do that next time.

I used three of Fiona's beautiful blue eggs.

Method

1. Put the first four ingredients into the processor and process for one minute. 
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and process for 30 seconds. 
3. Transfer the batter into the prepared cake tin - I used a round one but you could use a bar tin.
4. Bake at 170C or 340F for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean and dry.  Don't over bake. A moist cake will be taken out just at the right moment. As soon as you can smell the cake baking, start checking with your toothpick.
5. Cool on a cake rack and add icing - I just mixed a small amount of butter with icing sugar and butter milk.

Cut the corner off the pea packet.

               Thread the pea packet through the bottle top and fold the plastic around the sides.

I haven't had a break from writing yet to think about the next post on food security. It will come, hopefully this week, but in the meantime I thought I would bring you up to date on what's been happening here at home lately.

Before I get into that, I have to tell you that I'm not allowing anonymous comments anymore. I don't mind constructive criticism but when I get comments about my hairdo and glasses (from an anonymous "stylist" LOL), well, it made me realise that life's too short to even read anything from people who only want to criticise. I've also had hate comments in the past. Strange that I've never had criticism from anyone who left the link to their own blog or website, hmmmm. I want to share and be a part of my community here and those comments get in the way of that. The lovely Tania over at Ivy's Nest has had a similar problem and all she was doing was writing about her new house cow. There are some very unhappy people out there who want to make others as miserable as they are.  I'm sorry it's come to this but getting an ID doesn't take long and it's simple to do. I've kept anonymous comments going for the past six years but now it's time to get an ID if you want to comment here.

Our garlic just after harvest.

We've been very busy here these past few weeks. We decluttered our wardrobes and gave the charity shop a few bags of clothes. We also gave away, to a local family via Gumtree, a large cupboard we had no need of. When that went, we reorganised the living room. Hanno cleaned and reorganised the pantry yesterday. As usual, Hanno is always working along side me keeping our home maintenance on target. We're a great team. We harvested our year's garlic crop a couple of week's ago, they've been drying out since then. Yesterday I cleaned them up and now they're safely stored away. I'll write up a post about growing and storing garlic soon. It's easy to grow and worthwhile having your own crop because organic garlic is expensive and a lot of the other garlic is from China. :- |

We also replaced our seating out on the front verandah and got rid of the very old (antique) cane lounge and chairs. Now we're luxuriating on a new-to-us cane lounge we bought on Gumtree for a fraction of the new price. It's so comfortable out there now I go and sit there as much as I can. It's a great place to read and knit and it's where Hanno and I have our morning tea. Do you have a special place to sit and read?

I'm still clicking away on the needles. Right now I'm knitting a Miss Marple scarf in organic cotton, in Diligence, a dark grey, for my friend Kathleen. She is visiting her family in Texas soon and seeing as it's almost winter there, I thought a nice scarf would help keep her warm.  This organic cotton is beautifully warm without being scratchy. My other project is for Johnathan, my nephew Danny's little boy. Johnathan turned one last week. Happy birthday Jono! His cardigan is also organic cotton, in Mercy, a pale blue. I just love knitting that EcoYarns cotton. It's my favourite of all the yarns.

We had to replace some of our fences lately. A few weeks ago we had a local company come in and replace the side fence at the front of the house and later, the old chook fence. The front fence had been up for almost 15 years and had become rickety and unsafe. The chook fence had needed replacing for many years. In the past, Hanno would have done that sort of maintenance but it's too much for him now so we got the locals in. Still, it was an expensive exercise and we had to save up till have had enough to have it done.

Today we're having family lunch at Daisy's Place, our favourite local restaurant. It is our birthday gift to Sunny to take her, Kerry, her mum Sunja, Jamie and his cousin Jooa to lunch. I love Sunny like a daughter and I'm so thankful she is part of my family. It will be a real pleasure to celebrate her birthday with her mum here. Although we celebrate Sunny's birthday on 8 October, the day she was born, in Korea, it's the custom to celebrate on a different day each year, according to the full moon. They have many beautiful customs in Korea. I've been reading quite a bit about Korea lately, a country with thousands of years of traditions that are so different to our own.

I think our garden is nearing the end of its 2013 season. The chickens got in there yesterday and ate about half the new seedlings Hanno planted the day before. We still have a lot growing, and will continue harvesting for a while, but I doubt we'll plant too much more this year. I think it's going to be a long hot summer.

So, that's a bit of what's been happening in here. I hope everything is going well for you at home too. I send warm wishes to you.

When I was a young girl it was common for suburban backyards to have a vegetable garden and fruit trees; my grandma grew peaches in her backyard and my parents grew plums. They all lived in Sydney. Occasionally there would be a flock of chickens kept for eggs and meat, and maybe a meat rabbits or pigeons. I was born in the late 1940s so the second world war was still a fresh memory and the majority of people had lived through the Great Depression. People were much more self-reliant then; they had to be. There were still shortages in food after the war, and for many people, providing for themselves was just a continuation of what they'd always done. These were the days before supermarkets, people shopped for food either every day or every second day and very little food was wasted. Now, if something happened in the food chain that supplies supermarkets, most people wouldn't know how to feed themselves. Sudden unemployment also has the potential to impact on food security. We should all be learning as much as we can about our food, where it comes from, and if that source of food stopped, how we could replace it.

Climate change, peak oil, water shortages and population increases have all played a part in increasing the price of food. Unemployment, natural disasters, wars and terrorist attacks also impact on food security. No one knows what the future holds but I can't see any imminent improvements in the weather, oil prices, water supplies or population figures. I think things will get worse before they get better; but food security is something we should all be dealing with now. I have no doubt that eventually we'll learn how to live in a more sustainable way. We have no choice. The trick will be to live well during the transition and not, when food becomes much more expensive, get dragged into the changes, resenting every step along the way.

Most countries have a food security policy and while I think that's a good thing, I like the idea of being responsible for ourselves, being prepared for anything and, if possible, helping others in our communities.

As you know, we changed how we live over a decade ago and have not had one moment's regret. I can't say all of it was easy, but as a whole, the change was fairly trouble-free and straight-forward and I wish we'd done it much earlier. Our decision to simplify life also gave us the chance to learn about our food and water supply and to reduce the risk of food insecurity by learning about small scale food production, cooking, food hygiene, food storage, heirloom seeds, pure breed chickens, aquaponics, bees, water harvesting and many other concepts that make up the huge topic of food security.

Our path took us back to backyard vegetable gardening, chickens and stockpiling - all things we'd done on a small scale in the past and then stopped for some reason. But this isn't the only way to go. Community gardens, allotments, farmers markets, bartering, eating seasonly and locally can all play a big part in a transition towards food security. We still rely on our community to supply things like milk, honey, fruit and vegetables, depending on the season, and we shop at supermarkets for things such as tea, coffee, oil, sugar, salt. Our system is heavily reliant on the work we do for ourselves to produce food but as we age, I can see us becoming more reliant on our community when less comes from our own efforts in our backyard. I hope we can be a bigger part of the community system then and teach others what we know.

I guess the best way to move towards a more sustainable future and food security, is to assess what we can do right now and what we'll be capable of in five or ten years. You may need to learn how to grow some food at home while you're still doing all your shopping in the community. What you learn now can help sustain you and your family in the future. And its not all about growing and buying local food, it's also about cooking from scratch, harvesting water, saving seeds, keeping pure breed chickens and doing it all as cheaply as we can. And if you can do nothing, being okay with that and relying on your family and government to support you. Hopefully your situation will change in the future and you'll be able to do more.

Over the next week or two, I'd like to start off with the two systems of food security I know well - the backyard model and the community model. I'd also like you to discuss what your experience is and hopefully we can all help and learn along the way. I believe this collaborative approach will be the way of the future. I hope we can start right here to reduce vulnerability in our own homes and to work towards sustainability and building resilient and strong communities.

Further Reading

Australia' National Food Plan

Food insecurity in Melbourne'

Giant underground water reserves found in Kenya

Dwindling water supplies in US

Hello everyone. I've been working diligently during the week and made great progress. I'll be back with you on Monday with some posts that I hope you find interesting. In the meantime, have a great weekend and make sure you take time out to relax.  See you soon. :- )

Making raspberry cordial.

I haven't said nearly as much about partial self-sufficiency as I wanted to yet but today I have to post this short note to let you know I won't be back until Friday. I have the first deadline for my book on Thursday so all my brain power is absorbed in delivering the best I can for the book. I'm pleased to tell you that this book and ebook will be available for sale world-wide so hopefully, in March next year, you'll be able to read what I'm writing now.

Next week I want to focus on a subject that every one of us deals with every day: food. Food security is a big issue now and I believe we all need to be as skilled as we can be in regards to our food. I would like us to share our thoughts on the various aspects of food, as well as write about buying, growing and storing it. I have an excellent recipe for moist banana cake and a good freezing hint to share as well.

Enjoy your week. I hope to see you on Friday. : - )

I've been meaning to mention the wonderful comments that come in. I read every one of them and many of them make me smile. I would love to have enough time to respond to every comment but I try stay off the internet as much as possible. It's captivating and I think it robs me of time to do other things. But I do appreciate every comment and that you take the time to write what you're thinking. Whether they be long comments, explaining this and that, or very short ones just saying hello, I feel they're all like a very loud "hello Rhonda, I'm out here living the good life too!" When I read them I know I've connected with other like-minded souls and I know we're not alone. I love that, thank you.

I hope you have a lovely weekend. Take some time out for yourself and relax. The work will still be there when you go back to it.

Finally we have a bread show for enthusiasts that bake at home. There will be plenty of expertise on the day to demonstrate and reveal secrets of not only sourdough baking but cakes, pastries, the whole works.

There are 30 exhibitors and Graham from sourdough.com will be demonstrating. Tickets available here.