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Tag Archives: Garden

Spring is sprung

Travelling through Exeter in the Southern Highlands on the weekend, the signs are very clear that nature just wants to get growing.

Daffodils herald spring by a gatepost in Exeter

Longer, warmer days mean it’s time to stop dreaming, planning and talking, and get to work. Whilst the established gardens look amazing out the front at Warwick Park in Foxground, the land to the back where my pigs have been busy preparing soil all winter, is a blank canvas waiting for the brush (or the seedlings and tines in this instance!)

The beautiful spring garden at Warwick Park in Foxground

The pigs can’t take all the credit for this fabulous preparation though. My wonderfully clever Andrew has been having fun with a little walk-behind tiller for which he designed and built a bed-forming attachment.

Ready, set, go….planting time!


I also have to confess to meeting Nicko. For months Kerry has talked about Nicko…”Nicko will fix that pipe/fence/bridge.” Then one day two weeks ago I met the amazing Nicko. “How would you like me to go over this with my tractor and tiller?” he said. Now, the pigs have been great, but they are s-l-o-w. So Nicko worked his magic with his mechanical horse, and the cost? “A couple of cauliflowers when they’re ready will do”. Wow. I just love living ’round here.

Taking stock

Running our little fresh produce markets at Berry and Shoalhaven Heads each week for the last 4 months has been a great test of my skills in the kitchen. Although I can do all the basics pretty well, and my family is reasonably well nourished, I don’t consider myself a cook.

Vegetable stock in the making

It makes it so much easier to prepare wholesome, tasty offerings though when you have plenty of great, fresh produce to start with. As our market’s customers know well (PLEASE tell me you need broccoli this week??), what we don’t sell, we have to eat. And customers are unpredictable…one week we sell out of bananas, the next we are googling “101 things to make using bananas”!

French toast and pomegranate

And then there’s The Press. If it was on MasterChef, or Kim Kardashian said it was good to eat, we can’t sell enough of it. But this has all been great for widening the repertoire of ingredients I can do something with. Some of the experiments have gone down well, (like pomegranate served with Classic Yoghurt and maple syrup), and others have been a disaster (seriously…does ANYONE know how to do a turnip justice??).

Fennel and english spinach in the Seven Cedars garden

All this learning has been great for giving me ideas as to what I need to plant lots of as my market gardens get going, (kale, beets, english spinnach, fennel), and what I just mean leave for someone else…to grow and to cook!

My how you’ve grown.

Deciding to move to Gerringong in January 2007, we chose a block with a new-ish house and a backyard that had been completely ‘untouched’. The back fence was hidden in blackberries and lantana, and the lawn was basically remnant dairy paddock grasses barely covering the red clay soil.

23 January 2008

One year later, the food garden had been laid out, and over the years it has been wonderfully productive despite periods of ‘life too busy’ neglect, two new puppies, little boy’s birthday parties and escaped chooks. Lots of failed experiments and bucket loads of learning later, and it’s time to find some more space…

23 January 2012