Foodtopia Dreaming Episode 3 Oldies but goodies

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It felt like I was riding on air as I travelled back home after visiting the Urban Farm.  Seeing the veggie rows forming was a sign of hope.  And possibilities. And a future. That's what happens when you garden - growing food or flowers, it doesn't matter.  You are practicing mindfullness.  Being in the present while preparing your body and your land for the future.

I think of the produce already growing in my garden at home in North East Victoria in April.  Raddish and rocket, my go to crops.  So quick to grow - 40-60 days to harvest.  They are perfect market garden crops.  Then the pick and come again spinach and salad mix.  The test with the silverbeet stalk that has regrownfrom last year - an experiement that seems to be working.  Winter is brasica time so my Kale is already in.  Beetroot?  None in but the most under rated vegetable.  You can pickle or preserve it's root, grate it fresh, eat the leaves fresh and saute the stalks with some onion, currants and red wine vinegar and olive oil.  maybe some local goats feta and walnuts - perfect.

Cycling home I detour via the nursing home to visit a relative Uncle Bertie.  Walking into his room and seeing frustration all over his face just knocks you over.  Knowing that he was a farmer in a past life, a man who could make anything with his hands and the scraps lying around the farm, I tell him about the plots.  His eyes light up, then follow the sun beams to the window and the distance.  "What are you thinking?" I ask.

Of the 150 different veggies and herbs and fruits and nuts we had growing around the farm house before the fire hit.

You know we diddn't really need to go to the supermarket.  The rest of the farm gave us some cash, we diddn't really need the work or the money though.  We were self suffient he says.  Tears drying up as the talk of food covers the loss of land.  We chat more before I leave to go to the supermarket.

I ride home via the housing estates and through the retirement village and drop in on my Mum.  Everything is well.  I get an update on her small plot in a raised bed way down the back of the village behind the maintenance shed and the caravan parking area.  She tells me what she has growing. She gives me some perpetual leek bulbs - watch where you plant them as they will take over!  Sure Mum, Thanks.

Riding out I imagine what a retirerment home or a nursing home would look like if they were sustainable, like Uncle Bertie's farm.  There wouldn't be the pristene lawns and maniqured hedges and trees in my vision.  There'd be wicking beds in the back patios that you can tend in a wheel chair, olive trees and lemon trees, a cumbquat, manderin and orange - all dwarf of course.  Out the front, not a blade of grass in sight.  Rows of veggetables, lettuce, tomatoes and zucchini.  Pumpkins traillling over the fence and herb pots either side of the front door.  Now thats a start.

Movable wicking beds that line the expanse of un-utilised concrete driveways.  Residents coming outside their front door everyday to tend their plot and talk to neighbours.  Weeding the social isolation out of the residents lives one day at a time.

School kids coming to visit and farm, to engage with the oldies, hear their stories and help them grow.  The young people take away seedling trays that the retirement village social enterprise have grown.  Planting these seedlings out in their school plots or selling some at the school farm gate.  Helping Principla Sandy with her vision of a school farm come to reality.

The young people take away more.  A connection with other generations.  Learn compation and empathy.  It's not forced on them.  It just happens by being around older people.  Connections form and visits are looked forward to.  Vists become more than the seeds, seedlings or vegetable exchange. 

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