A picture of home | by Mariella

I am currently on business in Munich, so I`m writing to you from a keypad that requires a little more concentration than usual! I`m only here for a week and it`s autumn here which means that the streets are lined with bright yellow leaves. When people ask me where i come from and what my home is like, this is what comes to mind, I try to communicate it to them, but there`s nothing like home!

Companion planting | by Mariella

Plants don’t grow in isolation, they grow together! This is obvious, right? But what I find so interesting is that plants do not always make good neighbours. Some vegetables, when planted together, turn out sweeter, stronger, seemingly immune to attack from pests. But when you get the combination wrong, plants seem to experience stunted growth and are weak or more susceptible to attack from harmful bugs and disease.

Companion planting takes into account: the proximity of plants which have adverse or beneficial effects on one another, planting of plants which are beneficial to the soil and plants which attract friendly insects or act as natural pesticides and herbicides in strategic places in your garden.

Comfrey is every gardener’s ally.  Its leaves are extremely high in potassium, nitrogen, calcium and other nutrients, making it the best natural fertilizer. Just remember not to eat any part on the plant though; this is food for your garden, not for you! Mix the leaves with boiling water and let the ‘tea’ rot for a month or so. It smells grizzly but the plants love it!

I would recommend getting a book on the subject if you are starting your own vegetable patch as it helps when you haven’t had the opportunity to observe which plants make good bedfellows!

There are some plants, especially herbs which attract helpful insects into your garden, doing the job of pest control for you. The flowers of angelica, borage, mint, buckwheat, Californian poppy, carrot, chamomile, chives, coriander, crimson clover, dill, Echinacea, fennel, garlic, golden rod, lavender, lemon balm, marigold, marjoram, mustard, nasturtium, parsley, rocket, rose scented geranium, rosemary, sage, sunflower, tansy, thyme, yarrow will attract insects like bees, dragonflies, damselflies, spiders, ladybirds – which can eat a whopping 400 aphids a day, lacewings, praying mantises into your garden. 

It’s so rewarding to hear the buzz of your little helpers already at work in your garden when you get there first thing in the morning. They've been awake and productive for hours, they love my garden and I love them, it’s companionable! 

Did you know that borage makes strawberries sweeter? And that fennel should not be planted near beans, tomatoes, kohlrabi or coriander, but it’s great as a flea repellent when scrunched in your hand and rubbed into your dog’s coat? Rows of wood ash in your beds will deter slugs. Garlic and parsley grown near Roses will help keep them pest free.

No one knows why it works, chalk it up to one plant liking the way another plant smells, but it comes from generations of observant farmers and if you’re going to take the time and effort to plant something in the ground and will it to live through hard work and love, you may as well surround it with buddies, so that together, they don’t get bugged!

Why compost toilets are a good idea! / Mariella

Now that we’ve gotten to know each other better, I’d like to tell you about my toilet! When my husband and I spoke about the design for our house, we felt very strongly about not having a flush toilet. If you take into consideration that the average toilet uses about six litres per flush and the average family member may use the bathroom five times a day. That comes to ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty litres of water down the drain per annum. In a water strapped South Africa, this is possibly going to become a problem! Toilets use more water than anything else in the home, including washing machines.

We took this very seriously and opted for a compost toilet. We built a temporary structure for it while we decide on the final design of the out house and because we couldn't find a locally produced complete unit which had good reviews, we made our own! It’s basic, you have two boxes, made from plywood, same size, ours are roughly one meter square, with a toilet seat on top, which we made so that it seals nicely and a hooded chimney pipe for ventilation. It’s only for number two and you tip a couple cups of saw dust in after every use. Toilet paper goes in too. Every couple of months we throw some good bacteria in and once the box is full, we seal it up and use the other one. Once box number two is full, box number one should be completely worked through and benign. It takes about a year to fill a box and once it’s ready, you throw it out into a corner of the garden and leave it there for another six months and then it can be used in your flower beds. I was terrified to see what would come out of that box, but once we tipped it out, it didn’t look any different from the soil around it. One square meter of fuss to deal with per year, instead of ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty litres of water which needs cleaning! 

And it’s outside with a great view of the sunset and the birds that fly overhead to and from the coast every day!

So, what to do if you live in a built up area and can’t realistically consider a compost toilet overlooking your neighbours’ kids’ jungle gym?

If you want to save water and you haven’t replaced your toilet with a dual-flush model yet, do it now! By doing this you can reduce water consumption by a whopping 20% or more. But something that you can do today would be to take an old 2 litre plastic bottle, fill it with water and put it inside the cistern of your toilet and save 2 liters per flush.

Another water tip: This is the easiest and cheapest way to reduce water loss. Turn the taps off when brushing your teeth! This will save you about fifteen litres for every single minute the tap is turned off.

All very serious stuff I know, but these are little ways in which we can actively take nature conservation into our own hands and it’s a great opportunity to inform our children about water saving.

                                                                                                           

We are building our own home! | by Mariella

Living in a tipi for two years (see “Lessons from a tipi” post) helped me realize what I want out of a home. I no longer take any comforts for granted. And I've rediscovered some of them, like doors that close! And lock!!

Going back to simple living brought us to the decision to take the building of a more sheltered more permanent home into our own hands. My husband built our home himself, alone mostly, on the deck we built for the tipi.

We took certain things into account when working on the design of our home.

-We built the deck in a natural clearing in the forest, so only a few saplings were taking out and many were redirected. It was essential for us to not destroy the forest in favour of building a home which overlooks it!

- There was a big Cheesewood tree next to the clearing and we designed the pitch of the room to accommodate the tree so that none of the larger branches had to be removed.

-Living in the tipi brought us into a closer relationship with our natural surroundings and that was something that we didn't want to lose. We wanted to incorporate outside living as much as possible and we kept the living room area as an outside space so that you have to step outside to get to the kitchen, this keeps us close to lunar cycles, the stars, what the little birds are doing. It also means that if you don’t cover your food, those same little birds finish off your breakfast for you!

- Our outside shower ruined me for ever having an indoor shower again! We’ve kept our shower outside, it’s nestled into the trees and it’s so lovely!

- We designed the electrical system to easily switch over to solar. We’ve kept our power needs simple and low impact.

- Big houses are great, but the bigger they are, the more time you spend inside, and the bigger your impact on natural resources, we’ve made our home as small as possible.

- There is so much stuff in the world that we really don’t need to buy anything new ever again! We’ve upcycled as many building materials as possible which means that when I walk through my son’s door, I think of my brother-in-law, when I walk into my daughter’s room, I’m reminded of our friend, Marty, and his wood workshop filled with beautiful driftwood, reclaimed yellow wood planks, antique wooden treasures. There isn’t an area in our home devoid of personality!

- It doesn’t make economical or ecological sense to design a house built from materials which are not found in the area. The Garden Route is covered in forest and plantation, so we obviously used mostly wood. This was an educational process in itself as we would find ourselves having to explain to suppliers why we didn’t want old-growth forest woods like Meranti and Balao and that there are many gums and other South African plantation woods to choose from.   

- We designed for our family and we had fun with it. We made a trap door which leads from our kids’ rooms to the passage (which isn’t built yet!) and painted a road with parking bays on our son’s floor!

They say that building your own home is much like painting a work of art, you never finish it, you just decide, at some point, that you’re going to stop now! We are half way. And the next building frenzy is set to start sometime soon. It’s an exciting process and we had a hand and a say in everything, no funny surprises! As a result I’ve gotten into carpentry and actually made our kitchen counter and work surface. It’s a great feeling and definitely a lesson in focus, clarity and patience!

A little advice on food label reading | by Mariella

There’s an old Greek proverb which states, ‘In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king’.

 I beg to differ.

‘In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is mad’, Patrick Woodroffe, makes a heap more sense to me. Once you open your eyes to something, it cannot be unseen. And if those around you have yet to see it, then your discovery casts you apart.

Take labels for example, once you learn how to read food labels on packaging, never again can you conceive of purchasing an item without ferreting through the disorienting bulk of fine print on the back to find the actual list of ingredients to make sure that it doesn’t come with any unwanted buddies and hidden agendas. And once you take the time to google one of those ingredients, it spirals down into this pit of unfathomably harmful side effects; you’d think the ‘they’ are out to dwindle our numbers with all this dodgy stuff hitching a ride along with our daily staples!

Conspiracy theories aside, label reading is an art. And the more you read labels, the more you begin to wonder,’ Are they trying to trick me?’ My husband discovered my favourite blatantly deceitful label to date on the back of a popular chip brand. It listed the flavourants and then in brackets said (MSG free), and further down the list, somewhere below where you stop reading because there’s no MSG so it must be safe, it says ‘anti-caking agent (monosodium glutamate)’ Now this does make one wonder somewhat about the motives of the manufacturers! 

When reading labels you’ll generally find a dizzying array of lists, columns and possibly foreign languages. ‘Nutritional information’ is very different from ‘Ingredients’, but many people see this and think that this is what they are looking for. 

It’s not. 

The nutritional information listed is a breakdown of the macro and micro nutrients present per 100 gms. It does not tell you what they put in the food. You’ll generally find the list of ingredients in much smaller text and hidden at a funny angle at the bottom, side or on the lid, in a corner listed in order of quantity, from most to least. This makes it easier to find the dodgy stuff which often comes in small lethal doses and can be found at the bottom of the list, so I just start reading from the bottom up!

The conclusions I have reached? Assume the worst and if you find something you can’t pronounce, google it before you purchase it. The down side is that you may find your shopping list instantly edited! But you’ll adjust. It just takes a little time and a lot of faith that the attention you are paying to the details will make all the difference in the larger picture of health for you and your family. 

Our first Market day! | by Mariella

There is nothing quite like putting time and effort into a project you truly believe in and then having it not only turn out well, but exceeding your expectations! 

Our first market day was a huge success! People came! Many! Most of the stalls had sold out by half time, and for a sleepy coastal town, that’s a bonus! We had twenty three handpicked stalls and most stall holders made a great effort to present beautifully. 

A family affair, it's so cool when your kids get involved and help out!

My son and his friend Julia a midst the flowers, the sunflower with the giant 'heart' is his

Our children’s art exhibition started with space for one hundred entries and ended with two hundred and forty! Old Nick Village looked so festive and it really did feel like a real small village farmer’s market. I feel like a proud mama watching my baby take its first steps! Plett’s local radio station broadcasted for the day and, of course, my business partner elected me to be the interviewee! What luck!

Rhian Berning from EcoAtlas

Yum goodies from O' My Goodness

You know when you’re nervous but take your time and really attempt to transcend the nerves and zone into what you are trying to explain? That was me, I was doing ok, stumbling a little at the beginning, but doing ok, and this is when my dear sweet considerate husband started to pull funny faces at me! To burst out laughing on live radio is a definite muscle relaxant! And for this to be the only notable stress factor is a good indicator, we had a great day!

We received many congratulations throughout the day, but now the real work begins! To keep a ball rolling is tougher than to muster the first kick, but it’s all about quality products in the end, and we feel confident that we have a strong mix of local, naturally grown, ethical products. We plan to do a lot of education around this market to try to inform shoppers about making the right choices when buying food for their families, no small feat but it’s achievable in a small town, wish me luck!  

Green Sunday on my mind! | by Mariella

The reason why you didn’t hear from me last week was because I had nothing to say! I was in ‘do’ mode, with a week to go before our food Market opens and so so much to finalise, the only thinking I’ve been doing has been the full-steam-ahead-toward deadline kind. But one strategically placed day can disarm that crazy autopilot and that day was yesterday.

If I could have taken a colouring in pencil and coloured yesterday in on the calendar, it would have been green. Green kept making cameo appearances! It started with green juice. Green juice made to order! My husband and I had two different needs, he’s got ‘The cough’ that’s going around and I had a homemade rusk episode yesterday which would be of no consequence if I weren’t in the process of doing away with an insulin intolerance issue.

I juiced lettuce, nasturtium leaves (good for sore throat and coughs), mint, whole lemon (try it, just juice the whole thing, you won’t regret it!), ginger, Californian poppy petals (we have so many!) green beans (breaks down insulin), coriander (good to get Mercury out of the body).

I poured enough for myself and then juiced a bunch of pears (alkalizes) for my husband and mixed the balance of the super greens mix in with that. Mine was great until I had a sip of his! My son loved his too, which was a big surprise as it was still a mean mix.

In between all this I was going to make our yoghurt for the week but when I poured the milk into the pot it had already turned sour. I considered throwing it out but then remembered a friend telling me she had made Paneer, an Indian cheese prepared much like you would prepare haloumi, out of sour milk and it had worked well.

 Normally you bring the milk to the boil and add lemon juice to it and then wait for it to separate but it just separated on its own.

I waited for it to separate completely, removed it from the heat and poured it into a pillow case over the sink.

The whey drained through and once the cheese inside had cooled enough for me to handle; I left it in the pillow case and kneaded all the whey out of it.

I put it in the sink and then placed a heavy pot full of water on top of it to compact it nicely and left it to drain.

It came out solid and perfect and it was so easy to make. It also freezes very well.

When making it with fresh milk I usually keep the whey and freeze it in ice trays. It can be used in smoothies, added to cooking rice or in any sauce to add flavour. Millet cooked in whey is so yummy.

I then worked on the table for my market stall as I too shall have products to sell. My partner found an old wooden crate and as I am getting into carpentry, I volunteered to up-cycle it and design a table top for it which ended up Green! With the help of my coughing husband, I finished in time to head to the Harkerville Lookout to celebrate National braai day with family! 

Harkerville is a forest reserve on the cliffs looking out over the ocean. There are several single track cycle routes through dense indigenous forests and many hiking trails that zigzag along the coast. It’s a magical place. And as we passed under the boom I felt something happen in my system that I could only liken to the process of photosynthesis, the trees receive energy from the sun and I felt my body’s answer to being in the presence of green lush trees as a deep internal setting to let go of the static electricity I’d generated around myself all week and at the same time received this beautiful transfer of life force from the trees! 
I felt so clearly that this was the optimal state for my body to operate from, that ‘relaxation’ is not a luxury but the natural default setting of our bodies. We ran down to the coast and up a rocky staircase before lunch, a mere three kilometres but I can feel those steps load and clear! To be surrounded by all that green was what I needed to recharge for the week that lies ahead of me! The next time you feel the need to ‘Go pick tomatoes’ (see ‘The Ultimate in Stress management’ post) make them green! It’s the new black!   

A little on broad beans | by Mariella

      

Harvesting food from my own garden is such a rewarding experience. It calls to the hunter gatherer in me. It’s so satisfying to return to the kitchen with enough food to make dinner. It’s like harvesting effort, and it’s so simple, you put the time and work in and you get food out.

Last night’s food started out as little green shoots in a row of 5 litre bottles. Because we have a cutworm problem in our garden, we put bottles over all of our seedlings until they are strong and their stems are thick enough to not be cut down in their infancy by these voracious nocturnal predators!

If left unchecked, cutworm can level all of your seedlings and your hard work in one night. If you run out of 5 litre bottles, cutting any bottles up into rings and using those works just as well for cutworm, but because we have snails as well, we use the bottles. A few still get in but it's controllable 

Yesterday we had our first harvest of broad beans. The plants have come up in what I refer to as our mega area, a space in the garden where everything we put in the ground grows to at least double the size! Our broad bean plants are standing at just over a meter and are heavy with new beans.

We love broad beans best fried lightly in butter with a bit of salt. But yesterday we had them with Swiss Chard out the garden and some roasted sunflower seed and they were yum! My mother-in-law makes a delicious broad bean and pea soup.  

Not everyone is familiar with broad beans, they are easy to grow but not available in most supermarkets. The next time you see them I would strongly recommend trying them out. Because they are still green they take 5 minutes to prepare, they are a good source of fibre, Protein, Phosphorus, Copper and Manganese and are truly delicious!

My visit to a Chinese Doctor / Mariella

As a result of several tedious health issues that have arisen over the last year, I am currently undergoing operation fix-me-up. I have lined up some therapies I resonate with and it all looks rather promising. Today I went to a Chinese doctor.

I completely overlooked the fact that a Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Doctor uses needles, long sharp needles, and that this could possibly constitute a problematic situation as I have an aversion to needles, even the small unimpressive kind, let alone the Kung Fu Panda variety that lay in store for me on the other side of the wall. This all slowly settled over me as I dutifully filled in my form in the waiting room. His receptionist interrupted my roost to escape through the bathroom window to inform me that I could go in. I was trapped and not about to make a scene, so off I went, like an animal…to the slaughter!

The Doctor before me didn’t seem inclined to do me any harm. He was rather friendly. I sat down and gave him my list of woes, among them; years of bad stress management and a ganglion,a very painful cyst formed from the tissue that lines a joint or tendon, on my wrist. He listened, checked my hand,  my pulse, my tongue, said I shouldn't eat chicken (interesting as I hadn’t mentioned my blood group, which apparently doesn't handle chicken very well at all). He then asked me to lie on the bed and attached a bunch of strange suction cup thingies on my back and left the room, they got hotter and hotter. 

I started to think about how I had to collect my daughter from a soccer match in twenty minutes and it suddenly seemed like I may be a little late! He came back a while later, removed the cups and horror of horrors, the ominous sound of something being removed from sterile packaging rang in my ears! He rubbed my shoulder and without so much as an ‘On Guard’,stabbed me with a needle! If that weren't enough to completely finish me off, he wiggled it around a little.

Whoever says that acupuncture doesn’t hurt, needs to have their nerve endings checked!

     

He did this twice, and then he asked if the ganglion was in my right wrist. I thought for a moment about making a run for it, in my bra, with needles poking out of my back to the car, or maybe just directing him to the wrong wrist, the one that isn’t already sore. I reminded myself that I was a consenting adult and was the one who had made the appointment, I lifted my right hand. 

He stabbed that needle right through the ganglion! He then wiggled it around and asked if it hurt. It felt like a mini epidural going all the way up my arm and you will never understand how one feels unless you’ve had one. ‘Yes’, I said. He then left me there, like a pinned moth, for whatever needed to happen, to happen. I have to say, once those needles were in, they didn’t hurt too much.

When he returned again I informed him that I had to get to school to pick up my daughter and he said,’Yes, yes, almost finished’. What followed reminded me of those Kung Fu movies where the Ninja, clad in black, steps out of the shadows undetected, and snaps the soldiers neck without a sound. It honestly felt as if he had decided that my head was a liability and the source of all my problems and it had to go! I felt my spine stretch all the way from my neck to my coccyx; he then confidently coaxed the kind of neck snapping, vertebrae crunching sounds out of my neck that you would expect to hear before the baddy drops to the ground, and then attempted to remove my head once more. ‘This no massage’, he said,’ This is ….(A name I couldn't possibly pronounce), this open all Meridian’.  

By the time I left everything hurt, I was so rattled that I forgot my medicine behind and almost got lost on the way to the school where my daughter and her friends were the only ones left. But now, a couple of hours later, I feel fantastic, like my meridians are open! I shall have to google the implications of having open Meridians but it all sounds favourable! I have not, however, had the courage to move my wrist yet! It’s swollen and blue, and I have no idea if that’s good or bad!      

Thank you India! / Mariella

I remember when I first heard “Thank you India”, by Alanis Moressette. It was one of many little hooks sunk into me, pulling at me impatiently. It took me another fifteen years to get to India. 

The White Temple, Jodhpur

It was for work and a little play and because we only had three weeks, we elected to stay in one area. This area was Rajastan, the land of kings, a desert realm of ancient palaces and home to the descendants of the warrior clans. My husband goes once a year and I hid behind him for a few days after we landed, I was terrified! The systems by which the nation conducts its daily business stupefied me! But then something started to happen, something in that head wiggle wiggled its way into me! The tight grimy streets began to carve themselves into the fibre of my being and the character of the people engraved itself into my sense of humour, my smile, my faith in humanity. How so many people can live in a country struggling under the weight of itself and still smile, laugh, sing, dance in the streets, haggle you out of every Rupee in your wallet, rejoice, pray, carry on in faith, embrace you and include you amazed me.

Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur

Here are a few facts about Rajastan:

-Taps drip and so do toilets, the only thing to consider is where they drip from!

-Hooters hoot.

-Shops are open between 10:00/11:00 am and 8:00/9:00 pm.

-Cows will eat trash more readily than old papads.

-The solid line in the middle of the road is treated more as a serving suggestion than a road rule.

-Indians have rocks, will build walls. They have been built everywhere and for no apparent reason, there are high walls, like the wall of China, climbing vast mountain ranges and disappearing into the distance, there are low walls criss-crossing through the sparse dry forests and between villages. India is held together by walls.

Pushkar, A view of the Holy lake from my window

Romantic Udaipur, the Venice of the East!

There is an iconic exchange for everyday that we were there, such as the conversation with our auto-rickshaw driver who, after negotiating us through a donga in the middle of the road in the middle of the night said it better in his crackled English than anyone could, ‘Oh my goodness, this is a very mountain road!’, or the gentleman who has known my husband for years, confiding with arms outstretched, ‘this man is like a bother to me!’.

Having gone from the lofty mountain shrines around Pushkar to the Romantic lake temples of Udaipur, I think I found the heart of India in a small home at the base of the mountain upon which Jodhpur’s magnificent Mehrangarh fort stands. The day after we arrived in Jodhpur, we decided to take the road less travelled by. We walked through the streets until contented by how utterly lost we had gotten ourselves! We headed roughly up the road intending to possibly approach the fort from the side and find steps going up. Once the road became a winding path in the shadows between high blue washed buildings we found the last houses built against the rock face itself and here there were children playing. A boy, with large bright eyes yelled, ‘Come, come!’ We followed. 

He led us to a cerulean blue building built from the same stone as the cliff face, which turned out to be his home. We were greeted with many smiles and immediately food came out of the cupboards. We gladly accepted, all the while thinking, eeck, my tummy’s not strong enough for home cooked food in India! They watched us eat without joining us. 

We spend the entire day with this boy and his family in their small home at the base of that overpowering rock, they showed us the small temple they care for, the well they tend, a hole in the solid stone, which took two elephants to empty. We looked through wedding albums and did each other’s hair! Before we left, the boy’s mother, whose name is Kishan, said to me, 

‘You Englishstani, me Hindistani, but blood is same’

I thanked her, and sent her photos after, if it were appropriate to hug her good bye, it would have been a very long hug!

Kishan, on left, and her beautiful family 

On the way to Kishan's house

India is a rising star, and change brings with it shabeens in taxi ranks where there was once no alcohol at all, technology almost as quick as the kids and a direct link to the first world, but walking out of that blue house with a family of farewell waves at my back and a packet of leftovers in my bag, I felt like a desert nomad, stepping out into the setting sun, with my eyes set on the horizon and an ever elusive ancient world to discover.     

I'm starting a market! / Mariella

I am starting a food market in Plettenberg bay. Our first day is on the 26^th September. An auspicious day, according to an astrologer friend. And I’m very excited! We have space for twenty stalls and we already have seventeen! Fresh local produce is our priority, but we also have healthy meat, delicious local cheeses, a bakery on the premises, pickles, preserves, healthy snacks, wholefoods, chocolate and safe cleaning products. The idea was to create a locally stocked super market.

Worldwide trends point toward more sustainable solutions to food production and with growing economic pressures, going local is a logical option. It keeps the money in the community, ensures small scale crop diversity which reduces the need for pesticides, gives local entrepreneurs an opportunity to supply on demand and also ensures that the food you eat is yummy, healthy and fresh!

It’s important to think about where the product comes from, what it’s made from, what its total environmental impact is. It’s great to buy organic fruit but when it comes from across the globe, there’s an enormous carbon footprint to consider. And this is really the point that we are trying to get across, everything you need is right here and if it’s not here yet, once you create the space for it, it will quickly appear!

I’m learning a great many things through this process, for example, cheese makers are very busy people! I’ve also learnt that it’s almost as impossible to get healthy beef off a farm which sells its meat through the usual avenues as it is to buy raw milk. I remember going into a health shop once and asking the lady if she had any for sale, she asked me if I was an undercover policewoman! This is serious stuff; the health of the masses is at stake, steak…either way they’d get their fingers burnt!

It’s helpful to remember that this is very much a cultural thing which can therefore be amended. In Europe, for example, it is considered sacrilegious to use pasteurized milk to make cheese. And most Eastern and African countries consume mostly raw milk. It is just a mindset and based on that alone, maybe it should be a choice?

That aside, I’ve learnt that free range chicken and free range pork often come from the same farm, if you know why please let me know! I’ve also learnt that starting a market is all about dealing with produce, and it is also all about dealing with people! I have learnt so much about making myself understood, which can only happen once I truly grasp what it is I’m trying to say! And do not underestimate this simple truth, we all too often have a sense of how we feel and react on that before we have properly assessed our emotions and motivations.

I am starting this Market with a business partner whom I know quite well, which is very different from very well! But this process has given us the opportunity to concentrate on the job at hand, to compliment one another’s strong points, and communicate clearly, a trait often tossed by the way-side in the face of familiarity. And of course we both have the same vision for our market: healthy body, healthy planet, it’s so simple when you see it like that!         

Wish us luck! We are embarking on an adventure filled with appetizing delicacies and apathetic emails, tasty discoveries and deadline decision making, hidden ingredients, restrictive regulations, entrepreneurs, introspection, produce, press, pressure, and a deep knowing that if and when we get this right, it's going to taste great!    

Home made gluten-free breakfast cereal

I figured out early in life that carbohydrates don’t suit me very well, but somehow I forgot all about that as an adult. There is just something about freshly baked bread when it’s still steaming and how the butter melts on contact and with a bit of cheese and…….You see, it became a soft spot. You can imagine how tough it was to give up carbohydrates again. But six months down the line, the health benefits are like hundreds of new puppies running around my body begging to be let out to play, work, think, create, enjoy, live! I can’t help but pat myself on the back for sticking it out, and encourage myself to leave the room when fresh bread comes out of an oven. 

Not always easy, I can tell you!

When you give up carbs and sugars, breakfast can be the largest hurdle to overcome. Usually I would have made one big smoothie for everyone, packed with dates, honey, banana and other super goodies. I would generally be hungry soon after and the sugar lows came sooner and sooner as the years went on. I found that starting my day with sugar was not working for me.

I have since, with the help of my very ingenious brother-in-law and his wife, also ingenious, come across a fantastically delicious, raw, filling, sustaining breakfast. The only downside is that you need an Oscar or similar food processer.

You mix together                                                                                            

linseeds,

macadamias,

pecan nuts,

walnuts,

almonds,

sunflower seeds,

goji berries,

chia seeds

and any other seeds and nuts you’re partial to in a bowl and send them through the Oscar.

Do this slowly, as the oilier nuts tend to clog up the Oscar.

It’s best to premix the ingredients as the linseeds and chia tend not to crush sufficiently otherwise. I find a ratio of 50% nuts and 50% linseeds works for me, but it depends on you, and your budget.

Once it’s all minced up by the processer, add a third fine desiccated coconut and mix well.

This mix can then be stored in the fridge for about a week at a time.

You can add it to your smoothies, or sprinkle some over yoghurt (see How to Make your own yoghurt) or you can have it the way I like to have it:

Add a spoon of whey powder, dry goat’s milk, sprinkle of stevia, dollop of coconut oil and hot water, stir it all into a smooth porridge and have that with yoghurt. It is so yum and I’m not hungry till lunch time!

Faeries in my garden!

Today I stand before you in awe! I am amazed, overwhelmed, utterly grateful, physically tired! And why? Yesterday I experienced the absolute privilege of having seventeen people and their children descend upon my vegetable garden armed with spades, forks, buckets and other manner of garden tool with intent to put their hearts and backs into doing what ever needed to be done until the sun went down!

You know those moments when you allow yourself to ponder on exactly how, if you had the time/resources, you would extend, alter and improve an area of your life? I’ve had that often, while standing in my vegetable garden. My husband and I have carefully considered things, done what we could and then left the rest of the dream for another day.

When our Permaculture group decided to visit our garden, I thought we could prepare things, adjust things, and change a little here and there in line with permaculture principals (which I am only just learning about). I had no idea that we would tick off every single item on my wish list! Many hands make light work and outside insight is so invaluable. And it’s fun! Who could fault a Sunday filled with fantastic company, great food and shared manual labour? This is the stuff real community living is made of.

Gardening groups are popping up all over the country and you don’t need to know something about permaculture to invite some friends around to work together in your garden. As long as you know that the time will come to work in their gardens too!

After the group left and the garden grew still and sleepy in the late afternoon light I had a moment to just be, in my new garden which suddenly looks more like a farm, and I realized that the spirit of friendship is magically fertile ground which allows for magical things to grow! The proverbial cherry on the top came this morning when I checked the planting guide, and read that fertile time for planting starts today!

Afrika Burns 2012

Afrika Burns is nothing short of a life affirming experience. It will press your buttons, stretch your imagination, test your survival skills, shift your perspective, work your muscles, boggle your brain, catalyze your creativity and expand your heart. And it isn’t confined to the desert, it sneaks out and hitches a ride back to civilization in your clothes and hair and mind. It sticks to you like dust, like revolution, like memories so good they make the bad memories run and hide! But what is it about this event that reconstitutes the way that some of us see the world?

Is it the humbling empowering baring of the human spirit in every art piece you come across, the rejuvenating wind through your hair as you cycle around the Playa with your buddies on your way to a tea and cake rendezvous, is it the self-governance, radical self-reliance, extreme isolation, the music that coaxes every last step out of your feet, the presence of a thus far mostly conscientious society where you can truly allow your three year old child to get on his bike and ride? It may be the golden light of Lithium Sunsets over the far distant mountains, or just the opportunity to watch them without having to sit in traffic, answer the phone, feed the kids before your story comes on. Whatever the reason may be, this pop-up mirage of a town in the middle of the Tankwa Karoo casts an embarrassingly large shadow over what we see as the developed world. It’s more than just a great party; it’s possibly an ethos to base our future on!

One concept which shines brighter than the others for me is the idea of a Gifting Economy. The first year I went I really didn’t get it! When I gave a baker some over-ripe bananas to make banana bread I made sure that I was there when the bread come out of the oven! So insecure was I about the fairness of our transaction! He just smiled. I was not conditioned to truly believe that if everybody gives, then no body needs. It really is a very simple concept, but it required trust in my fellow human beings that I seemed to not have. I have it now, not everything you expend time and effort on must have a monitory value. It is a place where money is left at the gate, you give into the pool of human need and you receive equally. This is a very ideological notion and possibly may work so well because Afrika Burns only lasts for a week, but, as I’ve said, it’s reaches stretch further than those seven days, it reaches into our relationships with those we go home to, and it’s infectious! It’s neighbourly and once you try it out, it’s a very natural way to go about things! 

Every year I hear the same thing when I get back from Tankwa Town, “Wow! I didn’t make it again this year but I am really going to go next year!” or “Things came up, but next year definitely”. But what I hear is, ‘it all sounds awesome but I’m ill-equipped and terrified’ and that’s ok. It’s not for everyone! You have to be tough, well prepared, well informed and brave!

How to make your own Yoghurt | by Mariella

As I have said, I love making yoghurt (see Bees, honey and Yoghurt). You put two things in a pot and a completely different thing comes out, a thing that is so much more than the sum of its parts! The other reason I like yoghurt is that it is so easy to make. With all the toxic ingredients and additives like thickeners being added to yoghurt, I had no choice but to start making my own and now, there’s no looking back.

First, you want to make sure that the milk you are buying is free from hormones and antibiotics. I only make yoghurt with full cream milk.

-      Pour the milk into a steal pot and bring to the boil, I make yoghurt when I know I’m going to be in the kitchen for a little while! Take the milk off the heat once it’s starts to rise. Allow to cool, testing the temperature with your finger every so often. You need to be able to comfortably keep your finger in the milk for a count of ten.

-      Once the milk has sufficiently cooled, stir in four tablespoons of yoghurt. I keep yoghurt from the previous batch and use that to make the next batch. If I run out for any reason, I purchase a little tub of healthy yoghurt to start up again.

-      Put the lid on the pot and wrap the pot in a thick blanket or place in a hot box, if you have one. Give it about ten hours to colonize, just to be safe.

And voila! Delicious home-made yoghurt in just three steps. Super easy! If you let the milk cool too much, heat it up again as the yoghurt wont take if you allow the milk to get too cold.

Now….my favourite thing to make with my own yoghurt is lassi! Lassi is a traditional Indian drink made with yoghurt and, generally, loads of sugar. I make it with Stevia. Vanilla essence, little water to thin it out to a drinkable consistency, and then top it off with a spoon of lightly roasted desiccated coconut and cinnamon. Try it out and feel free to ask me any questions if you have trouble making it.