Our new Facebook page!

We’ve just started a new Happy Earth Facebook page – so if you’re on Facebook, like us at http://www.facebook.com/ourHappyEarth! As well as notifying you about new posts we put up on this website, our Facebook page will be updated with additional snippets of inspiring info about sustainable living and growing good food.

We love being inspired by the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/MilkwoodFarm. Do you have a favourite Facebook page that inspires you on your adventure in sustainable living?

Zucchini Slice

Zucchini and squash are the gifts of summer – and indeed they are now in abundance! Zucchini and squash are one of the fastest growing and most productive summer veggies, making them great for beginner and experienced gardeners alike. If you haven’t planted any yet, it’s not too late, pop some in the garden now!

A friend of ours passed on a recipe for zucchini slice – and it was so delicious we just had to share it with you!

Ingredients (serves 4-6 people):

• 2 large zucchini, grated
• 4 carrots, grated 
• 2 onions, finely diced
• 1 and a 1/2 cups of grated cheese
• 7 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup self raising flour
• salt and pepper to season

Steps:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl
2. Place in large baking tray or slice/cake tin (we used a 23cm square silicon baking tray that’s 4cm deep)
3. Bake at 180 degrees for 35-45 minutes or until golden brown on top 

What’s your favourite way to use zucchini and summer squash?

2011 highlights, 2012 dreams

The thing we love most about sustainable living and permaculture gardening is there’s always something new to learn. Always some fascinating new area to dabble in, to research, to discover, to have a go at, and open up new and exciting possibilities for connecting to the simple joys of life. Learning about top bar bee keeping and getting our first swarm of bees was a real highlight for us this year. Watching them come in and out of their hive, legs loaded with bundles of bright yellow or orange pollen is a true delight.

Dabbling in publishing and having the opportunity to produce our Grow Local Illawarra Edible Garden Guide in partnership with the local Councils was such a wonderful highlight of 2011 for us. Who knows, maybe one day a book will follow...

As for 2012, well a precious new little one will be joining us on our adventure in urban sustainability, as we journey together from a couple to a family. We now produce enough food now in our little suburban food forest for a third mouth to enjoy! We also dream of doing a little eco renovation of the back part of our house, transforming a poorly designed unusable space with solar passive design and innovative building techniques...

With a lovely visit today from the wonderfully amazing permaculture visionaries, educators and farmers Nick and Kirsten from Milkwood (pictured below in our garden), we’re also now inspired to get into growing edible mushrooms down the back of our garden. Their upcoming Milkwood Permaculture mushroom workshops sound just brilliant!

What are your dreams for 2012?

Summer rainbows and Christmas wishes

It’s been a summer of rain in our part of the world, scattered with those magic moments where rainbows shine spectacularly behind the Illawarra escarpment...

Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and festive season scattered with your own moments of magic!

Blue tongue lizards – our backyard buddies

Four years ago blue tongue lizards were a sight unseen in our suburban garden of lawn, the odd palm and in-ground swimming pool surrounded by concrete. It took two years for our garden to become attractive to these gorgeous reptiles, and as our food forest has come to life they’ve come to make our garden their home. This time of year they’re often out and about sunning themselves – and we’re so pleased they’re here!  

Removing all the lawn and replacing it with ground covers and shrubs is one of the most important ways we’ve helped create a habitat for local bluey’s to enjoy. Gardening organically, without pesticides and herbicides is a great way to encourage our reptilian friends. We also have a few rocks in various places around our garden - they especially love our handbuilt rock retaining wall. Our blue tongues also love sunning themselves on the mosaic path we made from the driveway we ripped up. Here on the path they are within easy reach of vegetation to hide in, compared to when it was a large barren driveway surrounded by lawn!

We also leave a few small pieces of broken terracotta pipes tucked into corners of the garden for them to shelter in.

Blue tongues are great at eating snails in an organic garden – that is when they’re not too blissed out sunning themselves!

Do you have blue tongues in your garden?

Free Illawarra Edible Garden Guide

Following a fantastic ‘launch’ yesterday attended by over 250 people in Wollongong, the Illawarra Edible Garden Guide is now here for all to see!

You can now download a free PDF version by clicking on the cover icon on the right hand side of our homepage. If you live in the Illawarra, you can also pick up a free hardcopy from the admin buildings of Wollongong, Shellharbour or Kiama Councils. We’ve created the guide in partnership with the three local Councils, through the Illawarra Biodiversity and Local Food Strategy for Climate Change project, which has funding support from the NSW Environmental Trust. There’s also a brilliant new Grow Local: Illawarra Native Garden Guide, which is a wonderful ‘sister’ booklet to the food guide.

We think the 47 page booklet looks pretty fantastic – many thanks to the talented Bettina for her amazing graphic design work! It’s packed with photos not only from our garden, but other gardens in the Illawarra including some of our fantastic local community gardens. Though the focus is Illawarra specific, no matter where you live, we hope you find it an inspiring taste of growing food in the suburbs! 

Chocolate pudding fruit

With a name like this, how could one resist growing this delightful subtropical fruit tree? Native to Mexico and the forested lowlands of Central America, the Chocolate pudding fruit is a lush evergreen tree (Diospyros digna) that’s also known as Black Sapote. It’s closely related to the persimmon and it’s green fruits look similar to a persimmon being rounded and about the size of an apple. We have one Chocolate Pudding fruit tree growing in our backyard, and another in a large pot. 

The flesh of the Chocolate Pudding fruit is rich and dark, like a chocolate mousse. The texture is also like a chocolate mousse, and the flavour is sweet, but quite mild. As they’re flavour is mild, we most enjoy eating them mixed with yogurt and honey, or blended into fruit smoothies. In Mexico apparently they enjoy mixing them with orange juice, or fresh passionfruits to enhance the flavour.

Chocolate Pudding fruits are grown commercially in northern Queensland but like with many subtropical fruits you rarely find them in the supermarket as they don’t transport or store so well. The green fruits are picked from August – December, when the calyx (the cap on the top – like with a tomato) has started to turn upward at the edges, and the fruit is still hard but of mature size.  Off the tree the fruits will then darken slightly in colour and progressively soften over a few days to a week or two. At the ripe stage fruits should be very soft and squishy, and you should be able to press the skin easily with your fingers and leave an indent.

For more info about this interesting fruit tree that grow really well in the Illawarra, check out our Chocolate Pudding fruit tree profile. 

October in our suburban food forest garden

Harvesting an abundance of garlic....

Delighting in mulberries....

Admiring our beautiful bees...

Listening to frogs frolicking...

Watching spring seedlings unfold...

What did you enjoy in October in your garden?

Launching our Illawarra Edible Garden Guide!

We’re super excited that the launch of the ‘Grow Local Illawarra Edible Garden Guide’ that we’ve been working on is happening on 23 November! The guide is all about growing food in backyards, schools, community gardens and other small urban spaces. It has a special focus on growing in the Illawarra, and is full of ideas and tips on what grows best in our climate, designing a veggie patch, starting a food forest, soil building and more. The climate of the Illawarra is really similar to coastal climates up to the mid north coast of NSW, so if you live in those areas you might also find it really useful. Regardless of where you live, we hope it will be an inspiring taste of growing food in the suburbs!

Below is a special sneak peak from the section focusing on food plants that grow well in the Illawarra:

A special thanks to those of you who helped out by commenting on our posts about ‘top ten’ lists for fruit, veg and herbs earlier this year!

We’ve been creating the guide as part of the Illawarra Biodiversity and Local Food Strategy for Climate Change project, a join sustainability project involving Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama Councils working together with funding from the NSW Government’s Environmental Trust. It’s really fantastic of the Councils and the Trust to fund this guide, as it means free printed copies will be available to Illawarra residents, and a PDF version will be available for free download by all on the Council websites, and our website.

This Grow Local Edible Garden Guide will also have a ‘sister’ guide, the Grow Local Native Garden Guide, which we’re also super excited about also seeing launched on the 23 Nov. It’s full of ideas about using local native plants in the garden, rather than ‘natives’ that may be from the other side of our huge country!

Everyone is welcome to the launch of these guides, which is happening as part of the food and biodiversity celebrations from 2:30pm – 6pm on Wednesday 23 November at the old courthouse on Cliff Road in Wollongong. You can pick up your free copy of the guides, check out great stalls about food growing and local biodiversity, join in some interactive workshops, learn about the Living Classroom School Kitchen gardens and more. By coming along you can also go in the draw to win an instant ‘backyard food garden’ or ‘native garden.’

Check out the poster for more details. Hope to see you there!

Catching bees in 8 easy steps!

 

Step 1 - Read books, watch Youtube clips.

Step 2 - Find swarm. Entice someone who’s caught bees before to give you a hand.

Step 3 - Suit up and place box under swarm. Say a prayer.

Step 4 - Cut branch or brush bee swarm into box.

Step 5 - Seal for transportation. 

Step 6 - Open new hive, unseal the box, and tip the bees into hive - branch, queen and all.

Step 7 – Gently shake bees off branch 

Step 8 – Cross your fingers that the queen is in the hive, and that the bees take to their new home!

We’ve been waiting for a call about a swarm of bees needing a new home, and this week it finally came (thanks for the call Mark)! So off we bravely trotted to Cringila, the suburb at the heart of backyard food production in the Illawarra, first time swarm catchers with a ‘how to’ list in our hot little hands. Luckily another experienced local bee keeper joined in the fun and we helped each other catch two swarms, one for each of us, just before the sun was setting - thanks Suri!

Inspired by the art of natural topbar bee keeping advocated by the Barefoot Bee Keeper we built a top bar hive a while back and hope the bees like their new home! They seem to be settling in well, and haven’t flown away, which would have happened if we didn’t catch the queen. 

We’re really looking forward to looking after these beautiful, productive creatures, and hope you will enjoy our occasional topbar bee keeping posts! Have you had any experience keeping bees?

Inspiration for 2012 – The Permaculture Diary

In a world that can seem full of gloom and doom, we all need good doses of inspiration and uplifting stories from the heart. The wonderful Permaculture Diaries, created by the passionate Michele Margolis have provided us with much inspiration over the years, and the 2012 edition is as jammed packed as ever with stories of positive permaculture projects happening across Australia and beyond.

Stories about Permaculture farms, natural bee keeping, community gardening, school gardens, WWOOFing and food foraging in the cities are shared from people passionate about growing food and creating community. We especially love the local features of the Port Kembla Laneway community garden, Cringila primary school and Warrawong high school...and even our wedding in the veggie patch!

There’s a great sample page of the diary, and on-line site for ordering. We’re not making any money from sharing news about this diary with you, we just love it and thought you might too!

Berry nice kitchen delights

Ahh spring ... how we love your berry goodness! This week the mulberries started ripening, strawberries started glistening like red jewels, and those native Atherton raspberries are STILL fruiting (do they ever stop?!?).

Our favourite way to enjoy these garden delights is blended up with other fruity goodness in smoothies...that is if they make it to the kitchen! But isn’t half the fun of berry picking one for the mouth and one for the basket?

If there’s still some left over they may find their way into some baked goodies... 

How do you best enjoy these garden treats?

Giving and reusing on Freecycle

This week we discovered the brilliancy of Freecyle, an on-line network where you can give away things you no longer need or ask if anyone has something to give away that you’d like.

Through Freecycle Illawarra this week, we found new homes for our sturdy handmade bathtub worm farm and our spare bee hive. We weren’t really using them, and we're inspired to give them away to someone who would put them to good use. And we met some lovely people who came to pick up the goodies!

Freecycle’s slogan is ‘changing the world one gift at a time.’ There’s 1000’s of groups all around the world. Have you had any experience with Freecycle networks? 

A summer babe and signs of spring

Delicate apricot flowers bursting into life,

Bunches of bananas unfolding,

Eggs a plenty,

And excited whispers blow in the wind of a summer babe on the way...

What signs of spring does your garden bring?

Making a yummy carrot dip

Inspired by some gorgeous carrots we dug out of the garden this morning, today we enjoyed making (and eating!) a yummy carrot dip.

Ingredients

• 750g carrots, peeled and sliced into thin circles
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil (plus extra for cooking carrots)
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder (or use chilli powder if you like it spicy)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Steps

1. Spread carrots on tray and drizzle with olive oil, mixing it through so all carrots are covered. Roast in the over (at 160 degrees fan forced) until they soften, mixing them up half way through (we find it works quicker in our oven to put them under the grill – they’re done in 20 minutes)
2. Leave to cool for 5 minutes, then pop them in a food processor
3. Add the garlic, olive oil, cumin, curry or chilli powder and lemon juice. Process until completely blended (this dip is texturous, it won’t go completely smooth like hummus)
4. Add salt and pepper to taste
5. Enjoy with crackers or raw vegie dip sticks (like bits of broccoli or celery)

Do you have a favourite dip recipe? We’d love to hear how you make it.

A secret nest of eggs

Our two gorgeous silkie chooks tend to go off the lay in the winter, and an egg is an unexpected surprise. Our new rescued chook Rosie lays eggs which are slightly rounder and lighter in colour than the silkie eggs, and she too has pretty much gone off laying for the winter – or so we thought!

You could imagine our surprise when we found this secret stash of eggs Rosie has been laying in a sweet, secret little nest she made tucked into the vegetation outside the chicken house! A dozen eggs all up were stashed away in Rosies secret nesting place!

So what does one do with all these lovely eggs? Well we tested them in water to see if they were still ok (fresh eggs should sink and old ones rise due to gas created within them) and they all seemed to pass the test.

So we cracked them one by one, inspected them and gave them the sniff test, and decided they were good enough to make a yummy egg and potato bake. Many thanks to Rosie for providing us with all these beautiful eggs in the winter!

Have you ever found a secret stash of eggs your chooks have kept tucked away?

Your top ten bushtucker plants for urban spaces?

Ok, we promise this will be the last of the ‘top ten’ posts! But recently we’ve been thinking about native edible plants, and which are most suitable for urban gardens here in the Illawarra. So far we’re thinking our ‘top ten’ recommendations would be:

1. Macadamia - Macadamia spp.
2. Atherton Raspberry - Rubus fraxinifolius
3. Davidson's Plum - Davidsonia pruriens
4. Warrigal Greens - Tetragonia tetragonoides
5. Lemon Myrtle - Syzygium anisatum
6. Finger Lime - Microcitrus australasica
7. Aniseed Myrtle - Backhousia citriodora
8. Midyim Berry- Austromyrtus dulcis
9. Small-leaf Tamarind - Diploglotis campbelli
10. Black apple - Pouteria australis

How about you? Have you experimented much with growing native edible plants? We’d love to include Bunya Pines in our top ten, as Bunya nuts are such a delicious bushtucker, but the trees grow SO big and produce massive spikey seed pods that can be quite lethal, so they’re probably not well suited for small urban gardens! 

Monster cauliflowers

On this rainy Sunday afternoon went searching for cauliflowers in the veggie bed and found three monsters calling out to be harvested!

Weighing over a kilo each, it’s been a busy afternoon cooking up cauliflower soup and cauliflower, haloumi and potato curry...and the fridge is still full of cauliflower!  Whats your favourite way to use cauliflower? Have you discovered any monster veg in your garden of late?

Your top ten vegetable and herbs for urban spaces?

Well you thought it was tough narrowing it down to your top ten fruit trees – how about your top ten vegetables and herbs? Not ten herbs and ten veg, just ten in total! Impossible we cry! But we’re giving it a shot – will you join us in sharing your top ten recommendations? Our criteria is that they’re easy to grow in the Illawarra climate and good for beginner gardeners, are tasty and well liked by most people and give generous harvests. So, at first we’re thinking:

1. Zucchini 
2. Potato
3. Cherry Tomato
4. Parsley
5. Garlic
6. Silverbeet 
7. Asparagus
8. Lettuce
9. Cabbage
10. Rosemary

How about you?

P.S – If you live in the Illawarra, Shellharbour Council has just started advertising a free backyard chook keeping workshop with the wonderful chook expert Jill Cockram – places book out fast so get in quick!

Your top ten fruit trees for urban spaces?

We’re really excited to have recently been asked to write a guide to growing food in urban areas (backyards, schools, community gardens and apartment gardens) in the Illawarra. The guide will be published as part of the Illawarra Biodiversity and Local Food Strategy for Climate Change project, a joint sustainability project involving Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama Councils working together with funding from the NSW Government’s Environmental Trust.

It will have sections on designing and maintaining veggie gardens and food forests, as well as lots of gardening hints and tips, and lovely stories and photos of people growing food locally in all sorts of different places.  

As part of the guide we’re creating a ‘top ten’ list of fruit trees, herbs and veggies to grow in urban environments. And we’d love you’re help! If you had to recommend ten fruit trees for growing on the coast in a subtropical/temperate climate, what would they be? So far our top ten, based on being relatively easy to grow and producing abundant harvests would probably be:

1. Citrus (all types!)
2. Banana (Williams Cavendish)
3. Pawpaw
4. Peach
5. Hawaiian Guava
6. Cherimoya
7. Jaboticaba
8. Persimmon
9. Mulberry
10. Olive

Looking forward to hearing what your top ten would be!

UPDATE - Sooo....in trying to take into account everyone's super helpful comments, and realising that it's probably a bit cheeky to include the whole citrus family as one fruit tree (though that certainly helped us fit more in our top ten!), our revised top ten list is, in no particular order:

1. Orange
2. Mandarin
3. Banana (Williams Cavendish)
4. Pawpaw
5. Macadamia
6. Hawaiian Guava
7. Cherimoya
8. Passionfruit
9. Persimmon
10. Mulberry

Thanks so much for your help everyone!