Kitchen Garden.

 

    The kitchen garden is very large, at least as large as a traditional walled garden and is situated on a slope facing north east. All along the bottom is a hedge of rose apples - a variety of Australian native often used for bush tucker. In the corner there is a large and luxurious Poultry Palace - luxurious for the chickens that live there, that is. While working in the garden one becomes enchanted by the little birds twittering and flying from place to place and the background noises of contented happy chickens. From the bottom and right to the top is a long flight of steps. On the top step is a lovely seat from where one can sit and enjoy the rows of vegetables and flowers radiating out on either side. The combination of order and abundance, combined with all the sweet smelling and joyfully growing things is quite intoxicating.

     The garden has been Rosie's special focus for two years, with Peter's help - she is very experienced. It is a favourite place for guests to enjoy working and learning. The key to attracting birds is to provide safe refuges up above the ground with the aid of hedges, small food trees and arbours. Birds go with gardens like kisses with squeezes - they want to be with humans who are digging and mulching and growing food - not to mention the bonus of the odd worm, grass hoppers and aphids. All the things that commercial agriculture finds so difficult to provide. These are all the things that get in the way of tractor driven agriculture - the old walled garden had no entrance for tractors. There is a gorgeous book, wonderfully evocative of the ambience of all this, called The Secret Garden. We recommend it for children and those wanting to bring heart back to their food growing - it is one of the very great classics.

     Every type of vegetable is grown here as we have almost no climatic limitations. Most things can be grown at any time of the year. Thirty years of accumulated animal manure, compost and mulch gives perfect soil for both food varieties and flowers. Roses bloom amid lettuces in the true ideal of the French Potager. We have plenty of water from the creek and do not suffer any frosts.
     Our own timber has been used to create terraces to improve drainage. Overhead, wooden trellises support climbing plants to provide shelter and dappled shade and to attract the birds which are such an important element in keeping the garden free of insects. The garden is so abundant that there is plenty of surplus for the pickles, sauces, chutneys, pestos, jams, quiches and herb breads that we sell in the Farmer's Market.

     We rely on the abundant bird population to keep us free of insects but in any case we do not attempt to grow vegetables for direct sale so we are not bothered by holes and blemishes - nor are we bounded here by bureaucratic legislation. We either eat, ourselves, or value-add to everything we produce and what is left over goes to the hens and the pigs.
     The garden is the ideal place to begin to experience and understand the practical synthesis of the parts and how these parts then make a whole, as it is closely connected, by necessity, to the kitchen, the stables and the workshop.
     The workshop provides timber products and sawdust for animal bedding which in turn becomes manure. Also wood chips for the paths and steps. Dry, friable, broken down sawdust mixed with chicken manure is used extensively for mulch. The stable people deliver the manure as it is needed. The hens are close by so that surplus green stuff can go straight to the chickens and chicken manure can be easily carried by hand back to the garden.
     We always pick for the garden, never for the kitchen (herbs in pots are grown close to the kitchen for that last minute addition to a special dish) and the gardeners are in charge of this job - that means that we pick and tidy up as things are ready and at their peak and the Kitchen integrates this in to what we all eat on a daily basis.

Click on any of the Thumbnails below to see a larger Picture.

The Secret Garden	Terraces and Rose Apples	The Rose Apple Walk
Rosie Digging	The Garden Steps	Planting Seedlings
Garden, seen from the North	Ned, Picking Vegetables	Garden, seen from South
Garden Harvest	Peter, meditating on the seat	Garden Harvest
Ooooops!	All things sweet smelling	Abundance!

 

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