Sweet potato can survive not being watered in Western Australia

I just completed a job that has been left waiting for at least a month: repairing the retic for the sweet potato out the front.

I'm feeling very pleased with myself :) Sweat dripping down my face as I was working  lol... put a tap on the end of the dripperline for easy flushing next time (even a pregnant or new mother could do it ;))

The amazing thing is that the sweet potato has done so well - clearly the best source of carbohydrate for Western Australians. Hands down.

Winter 2012 sweet potato - only part of the harvest!

It does really need water to produce a good yield, but tubers will stay in the ground with no water for at least 6 weeks and leaves will not wilt. The ultimate test of resilience in my book since the last few weeks in Perth have seen some extreme heat - around 40 degree Celsius some days. And no rain.

Double Yolkers: Insects and Sustainability

Chickens just love insects!

I've come to love insects too!

Insects love doing something I think of as 'up-cycling'... take some offal, or worse (!)... and feed it to insects to create high protein, high fat food for chickens.
This is so much better than bought food.
Why? Well, whenever our chickens get a lot of really awesome food... they have twins!! Awesome!!

Double yolker!

Bow before your leader...

My favourite is black soldier fly larvae, an excellent alternative to a worm farm although you can do both!

Ringo the chook hanging out like a junkie near the black soldier fly larvae composting unit (foreground).

Of course, insects can also be fed to other animals and I'd like to suggest... bartered to people with chooks or fish.

I can't get enough of them! Black soldier fly larvae can be cleanly frozen and delivered whenever you visit ;)

The connection between our environment's health and our own

There have been some great articles hitting my computer screen recently - about the connection between microbes and human health.

Last year I posted about sour dough bread - which I'm convinced is healthier for us - and the link between depression and unsustainable agriculture. This post connects a few more ideas.

This article is an interesting one, the lower rates of allergy in Amish communities. Some aspects of diet, environment or lifestyle have been helpful: Amish farm kids remarkably immune to allergies, study finds

It describes the connection between gut health and mental health - particularly autism and the now common disorders of the brain including ADD and dyspraxia:

Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAP syndrome or GAPS)

We've all heard people asking 'is ADD a real problem?'  and people who work with kids responding 'oh yeah!' ... 'if so and so doesn't take their medication he'd be climbing the walls'. My feeling is it might be worth re-framing the 'disorder' into a collection of symptoms. In other words - these kids have a lot of trouble concentrating and have a collection of symptoms which vary from child to child and which are improved by medicating them. The 'medicine' shows us that symptoms can be improved, but it doesn't tell us much about the heart of the problem.

For me, it seems obvious that the rates have gone up dramatically when compared to older generations and that therefore there must be an environmental variable, or several, that have changed dramatically.

The microbes that we live with are one possible explanation:

Environmental biodiversity, human microbiota, and allergy are interrelated

Sadly, I don't think that we understand perfectly the connection between microbes and our own health. We know that intestinal flora provide us with significant assistance in digesting and properly absorbing nutrients from our food... this includes manufacturing B vitamins. Yet biodiversity of microbes also seems to play a role. Even the pH or acidity/alkalinity of your gut likely influences which bacteria will live there - this makes sugar and refined carbohydrates highly suspect!

My personal choice is to play it safe and avoid chemicals and 'new' foods as much as is practical. At home we eat foods that our grandparents might have eaten. Perhaps this includes too much sugar! This link shows you the major foods included in the diet of my American Indian ancestors including Jerusalum artichokes which are known to be helpful for intestinal flora. Happily I'm growing some in the garden and very much looking forward to harvesting them soon.

We don't use commercial cleaners with antibiotics or strong chemicals. We don't regularly eat or drink out of plastic, nor do we cook much in our microwave. The best way to summarise our philosophy is that we try to live the way our grandparents did, plus some technology.

Our environment is worth protecting - both in terms of its intrinsic worth and because we might need something from it later!

Wild Foods

I get really excited when I see lovely fruit growing over the fences of public spaces. In Perth Western Australia I can get lemons almost all year round, oranges in July-August and perhaps most addictively mulberries in October.

I'm so pleased that last year I took the time to make a few notes to remember where and when... most importantly... to go foraging!

You can see the map of one of my 'stomping grounds' (the places I often visit or spend time in) above. I created this very quickly and easily using Google maps. I made a point of listing the name of the food plant and time of year to visit. In the map above you can see the Lillypilly... an unusual fruit to keep it interesting, although for people who have grown up in Perth they will most likely recognise it. You might know the fruit as 'Chinese Apples'.


At the moment I am very much looking forward to making batches of mulberry jam. Last year we had recently returned from our holiday in Europe and I was very happy spending my spare time gardening and walking in the sunshine. I picked a lot of mulberries when I came across them!

I turned this windfall into jam, jelly or syrup - reserving small quantities of the best perfect fruit to freeze whole for fruit smoothies. Ripe mulberries may need a lot of lemon or store bought pectin (jam setter) to help make a jam, but who wants jam all the time when you can have syrup poured over your yoghurt? Lemon juice and sugar come highly recommended in all cases.

In creating your own wild food map, Google is a great tool to start with and bear in mind that you may be able to build a map with your local community (UK example).

Self Regulation

I'm confronted by the desire to manage myself. I'm talking about cycling to work, catching public transport, reducing waste and composting.  

Last week I found myself wasting chicken food I'd gotten for free, it had gotten too old. Some days I drive to work simply because I have woken up too late to get a park at the train station. Worst of all, last night the aquaponics began overflowing due to a build up of healthy plant roots in the grow bed! Luckily I happened to hear the fish jumping and was able to save them!

So I'm not going to beat myself up, which can lead to becoming less motivated to act rather than more! I've decided to treat it as a challenging game, with sophisticated nuances and interesting players (my friends and family).

I begun searching the blog-o-sphere for wisdom. How to get results, set a good example and be happy with my efforts? This is challenging ... so let's make it interesting!

I know that one of the Permaculture originators, David Holmgren, has had some experience with us flawed humans. Check out the diagram below at 4 o'clock!

Source

The bible is full of observations and suggestions about how we manage ourselves so that we do what we know is right. We have been dealing with these issues for most if not all of human history.

In the professional world, the most productive people are highly organised, apply self-regulation and select how they will spend their time to get the most 'bang for their buck'.

So where does that leave me? I feel the answer includes not 'rushing' around. Rather, embracing the idiom - 'a stitch in time saves nine'. In being conscious of myself I can:

• Reduce over-stimulation by computer or TV
• Get enough sleep
• Wake 15 minutes earlier (or more)
• Generate a routine & spend time at home

A routine you say? Years ago, Mum gave my husband the 'hot tip' that I do better with routine... and can do anything within it. It's true; when I was at high school I did 6 high school subjects, no sweat; while at uni I held down two jobs, did full time uni, helped run the Christian union and had a boyfriend. Whew! But I had a routine! At some stage, I lost the routine and it felt like everything was falling apart, including my confidence.

I feel it all comes down to being calm and clear thinking! This allows for effective decision making and a 'balanced' life. As an adult now, I finally 'get' it and have certainly got my confidence back and feel as though I should be able to do almost anything... so back to the routine.

Being deliberately slow in changing my routine will make it easier (see 9 o'clock), I'll begin by tweaking my schedule as follows:

• The mornings of my days off will be treats for the chickens with blended fruit we haven't eaten or greens 'weeds' from the garden. I should enjoy this process!
• 2 minutes of aquaponics cleaning on a Saturday morning - risk management!
• Bins and composting on Tuesday nights (before rubbish pick up the next day)

I trust I will find myself living with more integrity and that I will be better equipped to make a difference in our world.

Over and out

Systems Thinking: We are all Environmental Managers

I'm lucky enough to work in an exciting field: tree declines in Western Australia.
During the last 6 months I've been able to have numerous discussions with some brilliant minds and this posting will capture some of this thinking.

I've also been reflecting on being a self-taught learner (autodidact) - which I feel is a very valuable thing to be, if I can claim that status? I admire this sentiment from Margaret Mead: "I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw." The way I see it, we must pay attention, put two and two together and remember what we have learnt.

My big boss took me to the window the other day and pointed out the line of dead trees - Tasmanian Blue Gums. They'd simply run out of ground water. Plenty of other vegetation had survived, but these were the thirsty crowd.

I thought about that, suddenly putting two and two together... humans are using water that the trees have historically counted on to get them through droughts, possibly tipping them over the edge.

Water is important. I looked it up - we humans in Western Australia are using up to 50% ground water in our 'tap' water... leaving that much less for the plants. Bearing in mind we don't draw from every aquifer.

Having been interested in environmental matters for some time, it occurred to me that this was the first time I'd taken the 'lack of water' issue seriously - previously I was always thinking about human need/use. I felt ashamed but then began to realise that this is probably true for most environmentalists. I bumped into Jarred, pastor and peace activist, on the train and he couldn't believe that we use so much ground water. It is interesting to see that for most of us, water is 'out of sight and out of mind', but it can be reconstructed as not simply a commodity but life itself for the various ecological communities we live amongst.

Some weeks have passed since I experienced this paradigm shift. I was discussing this with a guest lecturer who I was lucky enough to hear speak on world food security from a plant pathologists point of view. He mentioned coal seam methane extraction and associated fracturing of the aquifers. Certainly, this is a permanent degradation of the previously separate bodies of water and fossil fuels - to farmers' detriment.

I trust that I can remember this lesson and be a systems thinker and not just a consumer.