The Desert Echo

changes

June 15, 2014 No Comments

I‘m lying between garden beds in the sun. I’ve spent the day weeding, whilst the boys got on with the bar roof, it’s been so long since I’ve been in a veggie garden even the stinging nettles and snapping roots of thistle can’t get take away the buzz. Being in the woods has made me realise how a well managed Australian Permaculture gardening is like a well managed woodland, a healthy mix of plants of all ages, things self seed when the time is right, survive if they have the sun or die off if there is not enough, the forester knows when to intervene or not. Bens veggie patch is very English beds of one thing spaced for sun earth between.

It’s all rather idyllic, fluffy white clouds and white chickens slumbering in the sun. I’m preparing the beds for their summer occupants, everything but the weeds in their English rows. Under the soil there are treasures: tiny self seeded potatoes, a frog that leaps from the dirt to give me a heartattack.

An email from Dylan’s mum has interrupted our fantasy, we knew it was coming one day but we are reminded that reality awaits us back home. The house is being sold, nobslipping back into the same old routine, we have decisions to make, big ones, I guess it’s a good thing. Where is home? This is our chance to rent a house in the country, just the two of us after years of 6 or 7, are we ready? We’ll be returning home with the change in our pocket, it’s time to take stock.

An orange butterfly floats into view. We must be mindful, look to the future, whilst still glorying in the present. For now there is sun, the sound of hammering and a row of leeks waiting for a weed.

Ingredients

15 rhubarb stalks, diced
2 granny smith apples, diced
1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 butter pat, cubed
3 cups spelt flour

I thought it might be fun to add some simple recipes I’ve tried backpacking. They will often contain harvested ingredients, be very simple and sometimes even only require a campfire or camping stove. This one we used a woodfire oven, but it can easily modified so you cook the rhubarb in a pot over the fire with the addition of some water and the crumble toasted separated in a pan and sprinkled on top.

Rhubarb crumble

Mix the rhubarb, apples and sugar together in a baking dish. Bake for 30 minutes at 180C, or until soft.

Meanwhile use your hands to combine the butter, sugar and flour until it is like breadcrumbs, but more on the lumpy side.

Cover top of cooked rhubarb mixture with crumble and bake for a further 30 minutes, until browned.

Serve with ice cream!

Craft + woodwork, Eco building, Garden, Permaculture design, Travel

extraction

June 14, 2014 4 Comments

I was standing ankle deep in mud with oversized bright orange overpants, bright blue raincoat and a green bike cap, I looked like the lovechild of Mario brothers and an oompa loompa. It was raining and we were putting chains around logs, attached to a pulley around a tree attached to Ben in a 4wd. We slogged up the hill guiding the logs out of the way of stumps and ruts, throwing a fluoro vest in the air when we hit a snag, Paul throwing up a yellow hardhat further down the road for Ben to see in his rear view. It sounds awful, but it was actually kind of fun. For a day that is, we had our hats off to Paul and Millar who did this all winter.

Up and down we went, by the end the logs had dug themselves a trench and as Paul said it looked like we were just taking a log for a walk. It would have been a sight to see, mud from head to foot. At the end of the day we had 16 logs at the top of the hill and we were relieved to know that today was shower day. The day the fire was stoked and the apprentices invited in to Ben’s house for a shower and a meal.

It was nice to see the house in the flesh, actually lived in. Ben was running an experiment, that being letting the house age without maintenance to see what would happen. He said that things that use to annoy him because they were mistakes are now his favourite parts because they remind him of the people who helped him build the house. An Australian who had never done a tenon joint before (it wasn’t that good, but it didn’t fall apart), the squeak upstairs because some other fellows put all the joins in the same place, did they ever build their own house? It was a lovely attitude to have.

Clean and ravenous, a feast was delivered. Every dish had something from the woodland. I never knew how delicious crispy chard stalks with capers could be, I vowed never to throw out the stalks again. Then out came more delicious cider and Millar returned with tales from the welsh border. Then my rhubarb pie fresh from garden to oven to table was devoured, a nice comforting meal after a long day.

Travel

LDN

June 13, 2014 No Comments

We hurtled down the hills on our bikes, then I less impressively crawled up them. We were on our way to the station, it was taking longer than expected, we were going to miss our train. We arrived with seconds to spare, locked our bikes and were confronted by a queue for tickets, we waited with nervous energy from the ride, then when we got to the front were told we had to use the ticket machine. Luckily after all that our train was 5 minutes late and we found ourselves whisked away from the woods to London.

It was Dylan’s early birthday treat, a surprise west end show, the book of Mormon written by the creators of South park. The tickets were cheaper than the exorbitant train tickets!

A grey sky and the place was packed with tourists. It was funny to pass places that were familiar from 7 years ago with my mother, oh yeah there’s old big Ben again, I guess I should have a photo everyone else is. Dylan saw the queen in a car window, she didn’t spare a wave for her antipodean subjects.

The show itself was a hoot, Dylan loved it which was a relief, you never know with musicals. Then it was rushing off to catch the train again.

It was fun, but with the grey day, the expensive food and the rushing I began feeling nostalgia for the sunny relaxed days I spent with my mum in London, it had been more rose coloured then. I gulped back a throat full of homesickness, that was for the people not the place. When we arrived back in our woodland, after a train ride seated on the floor, it was almost a kind of homecoming, familiar faces and a pretty place.

Craft + woodwork, Eco building, Garden, Permaculture design, Travel

organic pool

June 12, 2014 1 Comment

“His middle name isn’t really ‘Pagan’, it’s for marketing.” Ben laughed looking at the DVD for organic pools by David ‘Pagan’ Butler. Not even hippies are immune to advertising tricks. Pagan or not Ben’s organic pool was a stunning oasis. As we worked on battening his curving bar structure the water glistened invitingly. Paul kept checking the temperature 61F, it was a beautiful sunny day, just three of us on a roof.

The curving structure was going to have a green roof, nestled into the hill, disappearing. Straight trees are always sort after, but here Ben found a use for the bananas, it was beautiful.

As the sun sank low over the trees the pool became a little less inviting, but we had promised ourselves a swim, and no matter how frigid the water we were going to do it! (we were due for a wash) I jumped, head going under, it was about the temperature of the Antarctic waters of the Victorian coast, so really nothing new, but it wasn’t a hot Australian summers day. Paul and I surreptitiously washed when Ben was looking the other way, we didn’t wan him to think we might be encouraging an algae bloom.

Once we numbed it was lovely with the stones and the irises around us, the occasional newt blinking up at us. Chickens enjoyed the last rays of sun next door and an old oak was lit up in Golden light.