The Organic Home Garden

As expected, as an adult, I gradually found myself being drawn back to dirt! Well dirt is where it all begins! Whatever source of food you consider; the earth is the origin of all things rich and healthy for you. So the first thing I started to work on after buying our first home was a vegetable garden in our little patch of dirt.

My first attempts were so poor – I am sure there was more protein in the caterpillars than on our dinner plate! I soon realised that I should have paid more attention to what my father was doing out in the garden all those Sunday afternoons. I knew that manure was a big part of growing wonderful veges but all those bugs! How did he avoid huge losses to the creepy crawlies?

FEED THE SOIL!

Well 30 years later I am a little closer to being an accomplished gardener. There are still a few bugs around, but I now understand their place in my little patch of green! I see more wasps and lady bugs now and I know they are helping me out and they need a few caterpillars to keep them in my garden doing their wonderful thing!

The dirt, (well it started as sand in our coastal suburb home) is now crawling with life. Worms and microscopic friends merrily dig through the rich black crumbly soil.

Rich soil means healthy plants!

The yard consumes between 6-12 bales of pea hay, 3 dozen bags worth of manure and compost and 10-15 litres of liquid fish (Seasol etc) every year now. My workforce of subterranean artisans works their magic and produce the most deliciously fertile soil! Out of this soil grows the tastiest food!

One seasons sweet potatos - alongside my size 10 boots!

NEXT TIME: WHY YOU SHOULD START A LITTEL PATCH OF FOOD.

I had been involved in a motor cycle accident (again) which nearly decapitated me and so I had a few weekends at home recovering. My friend Greg was allowed to come and spend some time with me to help me cheer up a little. A few days prior to Greg arriving we had butchered a porker or 2 and had hung a side of pork in the bathroom from a bar in the shower. Dad liked to let the meat “set” before we prepared the cuts and bagged it all up for the freezer. My family were all used to this and did not think twice about it.

Greg arrived in the morning and we spent the day running around working on the farm and generally getting hot and sweaty as 15 year old boys do. Prior to dinner mum informed us we had to get cleaned up and we should have a shower. Being the gracious host I let Greg go first. Now the shower curtain was closed when he entered the bathroom and he had not noticed the presence of ….!

Two minutes after he entered the bathroom we heard a loud and frantic scream! Greg had pulled back the curtain to be confronted by half a pig hanging in front of him. Somehow he could not see the funny side of it! My sister and brother thought it was hilarious and I must confess I had a little chuckle!

Over the years this intimate involvement with our food from seed to pork chop has stuck with us all. My sister is an enthusiastic gardener and her bottled fruit and chutneys are the most delicious I can get my hands on! My brother always has a freezer full of steaks and roasts and the odd piece of goat! As for my backyard – I have removed 70% of the lawn and variety of multicoloured food crops grow in its place!

Next post: Dirt glorious dirt.

My lawn before I started the vege garden.

Food maketh the man!

Well that’s how the old saying goes, I think! The human body is a most wondrous machine. My understanding of this began as a young boy reading the many books my mother supplied us as children. Our house was always full of books and I devoured them as rapidly as my peer’s devoured lollipops. From teeth to intestines my enthusiasm for understanding the ins and outs of the body saw no limit.

Living on a farm of course helped – you definitely get to see the ins and outs of living things! From conception to death the full marvel of life is rolled out before you! In no time at all you see the importance of food and how the quality of that food impacts on the growth and development of all life forms.

My enthusiasm for living things meant that as a student at school the sciences were my passion. The life sciences became a source of even more marvels, more at times than I could ever comprehend. No doubt this is why my later secondary years saw me vying for the “top of the class” in science with my best friends. We battled year by year for the top three positions – I accomplished top only once!

Ultimately I ended up in the classroom sharing my passion with thousands of children. For nearly three decades I have striven to reveal the wonders of life and most of all the importance of good food!

Students were given oppportunity to grow vegetables!

FARMS AND FOOD

Young broccili growing on my sisters farm!

Life on a farm brings you close to your food sources like no other environment can – we planted the seeds and watched the cabbages grow; we were there when the piglets and lambs began their tenuous first steps after birth! We were also there at harvest time!

Now retrieving a few potatoes from the backyard is not all that confronting. However, helping butcher the porkers and cut up the steaks from a hand raised bullock is quite a different story! Farm kids learn very early on not to get too attached to little critters.

Farm life is demanding at the best of times and left little time for weekend trips away or sleepovers as they are called now-a-days. It was much easier to have friends come over and stay with us for the weekend. Such an event drove home to me how different our relationship was with what we ate compared to the average townie.

Next time I will continue with the story of the Body in the Bathroom!