Bittner and Twisted

It's apple harvest time.  And it brought to mind the Black Barn Farm in Stanley, Victoria and their U-Pick at Europa Gully orchards last year. (How awesome were the apple doughnuts?) While I was waiting for directions to the apple rows I was asked by a 5 year old what I liked   Whoa those are tough questions.  I told her I like food.  And fire and I like cooking food and I like gardening and I also like talking.  Once I start I can’t stop - talking that is.  I especially like talking about food.  Talking about food with people and helping them on their food journey.   I was visiting Black Barn Farm for the last day of their pick your own apple season.  I had some plans for the fruit.  Yes I’d keep some fresh as the pink lady apples are a perfect size for school lunches.  Then some to make Apple Strudel.  I need to practice my skills.  Lastly I was going to try and preserve them.  Some were going up in ...

Should we be learning life skills instead of skills for jobs right now?  Because let’s face it, those of the population who have a job are lucky, those on the government support system are challenged by the change in their circumstances and the people who have no financial support will need our empathy and help for a longer period of time.  How long is anyone's guess? So what sort of skills could you learn in this course?   A couple of fundamental skills - how to live in a shared house and how to grow, source, preserve, prepare and cook your own food.  Basic needs are sorted.   Next you'll learn to start a micro business.   Well not a business as such, more a trading system.   You’ll understand what resources you have at hand, to value them and barter, trade or maybe even exchange for cash. The next skill will be learning to get over ourselves.  That it is ok to wear second hand clothes, to buy from an op shop, to repair tho...

Sunday morning at a bookshop?   It seems like an age ago, in fact it was the Queens Birthday last year.   The town was quiet as all souls are searching the wine regions for the spirits of the party.  A book launch was the order of the day.   (It beat cleaning nine years of cafe off the walls of Derailleur).   With a prod from my wife to get out of bed and fire up the coffee machine and a casual comment that there was a talk going on in town about tomatoes.  I’m in I say. Karen Sutherland was promoting the book, Tomato , she co-authored and self published with Penny Woodward and Janice Sutton.  Karen was talking at Booktique in Wangaratta.   I arrived 3 minutes late and she was already in full flight. Talking about the need to talk about soils.  No really she wanted to talk about soils but there were other things to talk about first.   Like Heirloom refers to vegetables and Heritage refers to fruit trees, and F1 hybrids - you can’t...