Letters from Wetville

Tristram Stuart's Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (London, 2009, Penguin) is an excellent book.It has sobering (shocking) and powerful statistics and stories at both micro and macro level. For me, I found it empowering that I could do so much about waste/landfill/emissions/blah blah blah at home, from home, without being dependent on local recycling facilities or needing to spend any additional money. Since starting Waste , I have scrutinised my food use more closely. We've had shepherd's pie, oat bread from porridge and leftovers quiche several times and I know I've room to improve further. Ehile I was reading the book, I refrained from commenting in depth here, thinking I needed the perspective of having read the entire book. Now I have read the entire book, I partly forget much of what I wanted to say and partly am overwhelmed by how much is in the book versus how close it is to bedtime. A few things which stuck out at the time of reading and now: 1. C...

Our new chook run is complete. Favourite Handyman made it with 2 by 2 lengths of wood grown and milled locally and by reusing the wire mesh and plastic from the old poultry palace. The structure is much much stronger and the loveliest thing is that we can now see the chooks easily from the stody and kitcehn windows and of course from most parts of the back section. The structure is clad in wire mesh but the plastic is over the roof only. We have filled it with our last three bags of wood shavings from the high school wood room and they have a built in roost. It is great to know that they are warm and dry tonight without any risk of entangling themselves in bird netting (they roosted on the bamboo rafters of the temporary shelter for four nights, with a risk of getting themselves caught in the netting which lay upon them as they roosted. Of course they now have unlimited access to their laying hutch and I'm looking forward to full egg production again. They have had extended periods...

Last Thursday was a little windy in Wetville. Not far from us a wind speed of 113 kph was recorded. Which is why when I got home from work on Thursday afternoon, the poultry palace was collapsed to one side and our five chooks were wandering free. I had left our car with Favourite Handyman who wouldn't be home until after dark and there was no one around who I could ask to help me make emergency chook arrangements in the hideous, wet, very cold and windy weather. I put them inside the temporary shelter. I walked around outside, got very cold, went inside, thought more, went searching outside again, repeated this pattern umpteen times and then some more after that. Before dark, I moved the temporary shelter over to the big tree, under the tree hut, where it appeared to be less windy. Later on, I went out for a couple of hours of communal knitting (and gorgeous baking) and got back home soon after eleven pm. Looking out the study window, I noticed a chook. Hmmmm. Chooks should ...

Today I cooked a jointed shoulder of lamb. I had this at my aunt and uncle's place in the weekend but didn't know what it was called. This is the food of my childhood but mostly Mum taught me to bake rather than cook, so as I return to more meat cooking again, there is a learning curve. Jonesy the butcher obliged as usual. I wonder if one of his grandchildren would marry one of my kids. I wondered that with our excellent mechanic too. He asked me some questions, worked out what I wanted and took me to the boning room to check and jointed it on the spot. I checked on Nigella's lamb tips as I wanted some seasoning. Plain roast meat is a trifle too bland for me. I chopped up rosemary and garlic and mixed it in olive oil and smeared that down the sides of the chops and then salted the layer of fat on the top of the roast. Nigella likes meat (or lamb and chicken at least) done fast and hot. I am supremely confident that this is because she is so rich that someone else c...

For the last few months I have been reading Rhonda Jean's blog Down to Earth . I really appreciate the wealth of knowledge which she shares in her blog but I also felt that posts were often padded out to make sure to provide a post every weekday, every week. Down to Earth has a proper dedicated audience, not like mine with my bro and sis, some friends from my nappy days (UK and NZ) and some fellow gardeners (er three). But then I do have some weird thing where I never tell my local friends about my blog and apart from my sister I haven't told any family. Just imagine, if I didn't have 'blog' and 'real life' in two separate compartments, I might have three more readers each and every week. Or month. But this post has prompted me to respond here. It talks a lot about the benefits of home making and the rewards of a life based around home rather than the shopping mall. Given that I don't have the love of a beautiful house sufficient to make it clean...

Some of the things I noticed or achieved today... The seeds of romanesco fennel which I sowed last month have germinated. Much better prospects so far than last year's attempt. I have yellow freesias out. The Dublin Bay rose has buds, as does my clematis. The blackbirds are swooping, diving, digging and feasting on my tiny seedlings in the punga raised bed. Tomorrow I will have the car and can buy some bird netting and assemble it. Should help keep the food for my family. I shifted more mushroon compost and sowed coriander, sorrel, pak choi and radishes. I sowed tomato and chilli seeds and have them in punnets on the kitchen window sill. I transplanted a strawberry, a borage plant and the leeks I bought in the weekend. I harvested more kale and began digging up one end of the old chook run in readiness for planting out my Maori potatoes. I gave some of the kale to my lovely neighbour Brenda who really liked the taste when I gave her some last week. Brenda and her husband have a...

This weekend I took the children north to see my Grandad who isn't well. On the way to and from seeing Grandad, Grandma and lots of aunties/uncles/cousins, we spent some time in Nelson, my childhood home town. On Friday night we stayed in a backpackers in The Wood, a lovely area very close to Nelson's central city area. When I was sixteen and had to choose a local history topic for my sixth form history assignment, I chose the Italian community of Nelson, who from memory arrived in three waves: the 1890s, the 1920s and the 1950s. Lots but not all came from the village of Sorrento. I got to interview lots of people for this project and it was probably the spark for my love for history and particularly of oral histories which give dignity to the lives and experiences and family stories of the elderly people in any community. The Italian community was centred on the area of Nelson known as The Wood, a sunny place with a fabulous micro climate for growing food and this was whe...