‘Eggy bake’ is a common meal in our house and one of our all-time favorites – named by the kids.

Eggy bake – this version with grated cheese on top from local cheesery. Typically we eat it plain. Rarely we have leftovers.

 

Another household favourite is pumpkin soup (veggie soup really) using all freshly harvested vegetables – pumpkin, Choko, potato, herbs, turmeric, ginger, garlic chives, mustard spinach, and many other veggies and greens we find.

 

I think our 4yo will discover one day that usually pumpkin soup is orange, not green, but both these meals are great ways to get him to enjoy lots of freshly-plucked organic greens.

 

Weeping rosemary hanging over the terrace wall gets plucked for most meals.

Anyway, I started typing up a recipe for the book I am working on, The Good Life Guide and realized that this meal was far more than the recipe could communicate. A simplicity of just listing the recipe ingredients and steps seemed somehow to diminish the inherent qualities of the food.

 

Tulsi leaves and seeds also end up in most salads, soups, curries, and bakes.

 

 For me it is the rich tapestry of connections that are cultivated through this food that brings it’s true quality to light – the connections with the seasons, with our local environment, with the soil, with neighbors, with friends, with each other in our family, with our play, with our home education, and our workplace.

 

Garlic chives and their flowers have an amazingly powerful garlic flavour.

Here is my first attempt to describe the eggy-bake process…

 

1. Send the kids up to collect the eggs from the chook house we built using timber our neighbour harvested in his woodlot and a gift of reclaimed iron sheeting. We have an eclectic mix of rare breed chickens that the children look after. The eggs are all different shapes and sizes – but all have superbly orange yolks because they free-range often.

 

2. Wander around the garden with a handmade basket collecting a wonderful array of herbs, flowers, and leafy greens (and purples). I take a leaf from this and a leaf from that so I don’t harm the plant and can come back again day after day for more. It’s a peaceful way to garden and harvest.
   
   I collect things like soft pumpkin leaves and shoots, sweet potato leaves and shoots, mustard spinach, any brassica flowers, and soft flower stalks, many varieties of kale, welsh onion leaves, the bolting shoots from coriander/cilantro, tulsi leaves, garlic chives and garlic chive flowers, Brazilian spinach … there are so many things to collect, even pea leaves, bean leaves, beetroot leaves, young chia leaves, young amaranth leaves, weeds – chickweed, dandelion leaves. The more diverse the selection, the more diverse the nutrients in the food.

   The magnificent red mustard spinach is making its way into every meal in these cooler months.

   I love this time in the garden, watching the birds, noticing things – new shoots on trees, self-seeding veggies, subtle changes, and simple beauty. I think about what I can add to the garden to increase diversity or adapt to the changing season.

   Brassica flowers are a wonderful treat. I often snack on them in the garden.

   
   I notice where I need to add some more compost or mulch. The compost is made from the chicken bedding, and the Azolla we harvested by hand from the lake. The mulch is often chopped and drop materials, but we do also go and pick up some local bales of grass straw that another neighbour orders in bulk for us all to use. The kids love to ride in the trailer with the bales slowly back along the little internal road within the ecovillage with the wind in their hair, singing in the breeze,  watching for hawks and kangaroos.
   
   I could ask the kids to harvest the greens too because they know where all the great greens are at any moment – the garden is their playground – and sometimes I do, but I just love this time in the garden pottering for a few minutes.

 

There’s always a surprise somewhere in the garden.

 

3. Ask my children to whiz it all together in the food processor with a bit of fresh milk from the neighbour and handmade ricotta from another neighbour.

 

4. Cook it in a solar cooker (for a lunchtime meal) or a solar-powered electric oven (for dinner).

 

5. Duck out to the garden again just before the eggy bake is ready and collect some salad greens. I like to wrap little bits of eggy bake in a leaf.

   Fresh mixed salad with self-seeding tomatoes and lots of perennial greens, edible weeds and edible flowers.

    
6. Sometimes I go the extra bit and drizzle a salad with homemade dressing – shaking together a little organic olive oil made just down the valley (sourced from the local organic food store), with some homemade kombucha vinegar (using a SKOBY dropped off by a neighbour, a chopped up garlic clove hand-delivered from a friend in Tasmania (traded for limes), and some herbs and spices from the garden like rosemary, oregano, thyme, or chilli, ginger and lemongrass. Even simpler, I grab a lime, lemon, or grapefruit and squeeze it over the salad. Delicious just like that!

    

   Fresh greens, snowpeas. tomatoes, citrus and garlic

    

7. Ask the children to set the table. Often they gather a little posy of edible flowers and lemon myrtle leaves and make a beautiful arrangement.
8. Sit down together and enjoy, discussing the particular flavours and textures that we like in today’s version. You see, they are always different – and that’s the beauty of it too. 

 

It sounds quite complicated, but really it’s ultimately simple. All the ingredients are all just here around us, it’s seasonal, it connects us with our neighbours and friends, and our local environment,  we all help to make it happen, we all enjoy it immensely because of the heart and soul that we know has gone into every part.  And, from start to finish, cooking from scratch, it usually takes us around 30 minutes to prepare and cook as long as we keep it thin in the glass cooking trays.

 

Brazilian Spinach has leaves all year round for harvest.

This is slow food, but it’s not slow, quite rapid actually. With three children – two of them boys with huge appetites – preparing good food quickly seems to be the best approach, as well as getting them involved in the process.

 

Keep in mind too that I typically garden for about 10 minutes a day to maintain this garden – not a huge commitment, but an enormous benefit to our health and to the education of my children.

 

Some other reasons I love this way of cooking:

• this is community food
• it’s package free – the natural packaging of the eggs goes back to the soil. The milk comes in re-used bottles.
• it’s part of nutrient cycles in the garden and is waste-free
• it is so satisfying and just makes me smile so deeply when I sit down to share this meal

What’s a simple meal you cook from scratch?  What does it mean to you?

The post Good Food: Good Life: My recipe for simple eggy bake straight from the garden. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

The inspiration…

My son, Hugh, was inspired to find a simpler and better way to extract worms from a worm farm. He was selling worm tower kits at the local market and was getting tired of the long process of separating the worms from the castings. He knew there had to be a better way …

Hugh’s method of collecting worms had us harvesting an abundance of worms so rapidly.

The typical method – too slow for Hugh

We had taught Hugh the typical method of separating worms, but he found it was fiddly and took too long. The standard method is up-ending a worm farm on a table or other smooth surface and mounding it up like a volcano. The worms move away from the heat and light towards the centre. Bit by bit you gently scrape away the castings, wait, scrape some more etc… and you are eventually left with a bundle of worms in the middle.

The typical method of separating castings from worms. Mound it up, scrape it off …. repeat a few times…

This method is still good for collecting the castings for your garden since you are rescuing most of the worms to put back into the farm. If however you are particularly wanting to extract bundles of worms for whatever reason – to feed to chickens, for fishing bait, for a micro-enterprise as Hugh was doing – I’ve not come across a simpler way.

Hugh’s ingenious idea…

You’re not going to believe how remarkably simple this method is, and just how effective it is. I love that Hugh brought his creative thinking to a challenge he was facing and found a solution. This method he has developed is a standout – it revolutionises the process, making it so easy and convenient. Essentially, he decided it would be much easier to entice the worms to come to him. Check it out how he does this in our short 3 minute youtube clip (link above).

Please share….

Please share our little video and spread Hugh’s positive idea. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/moraggambleourpermaculturelife to get notice of each new movie I make. You can also subscribe to this blog so you get notice of each article and film.

The post Ingeniously Simple Idea to Harvest Compost Worms By 8 Year Old Boy: Film #14 with Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

1. Feed soil life.
2. Protect soil life and structure.

As you know healthy soil = healthy plants = nourishing food = good health.  Plants in sterile soil perform poorly. Unhealthy plants are more prone to pest and disease problems, just as unhealthy food leaves us more prone to disease and malnourishment.

So what are superb soils? They feel crumbly and moist. They smell earthy. Their structure is open allowing movement of air, water and nutrients to plant roots. They are full of diverse and abundant life.

You may have read the previous soil post about soils in June: 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Soil and Grow Better Food http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/5-simple-ways-to-improve-your-soil-and.html. In that post I recommended to:

1. Open the Soil
2. Feed the Soil
3. Add Organic Matter to the Soil
4. Mulch the Soil
5. Water Deeply

This is exactly what we need to be doing. I wanted to add some extra information here about why.

Did you know most plants have root extenders …..?!

Plants in real soil – superb alive soils – are supported by the web of life in the soil, in particular, fungus. Did you know that 90% of plants rely on fungus to access most of the nutrients and moisture they need – the fungal filaments are like root extensions. They go finer, further and deeper than roots could ever go.  So plants and fungus live in symbiosis – a mutually supportive relationship – and plants in this relationship are stronger and more resilient.

Why gardening in the ground is so important…

This plant-fungus relationship is why I recommend, wherever possible, to grow food in the ground and work to improve the aliveness of soils. (Understandably this not as easily achieved in balcony gardens and areas of soil contamination). The importance of connecting with soil life also explains why raised garden beds that are disconnected from actual soil can limit the vitality of your garden soils and plants.

How to create soil aliveness?

The base of the soil food web is organic matter.  More organic matter = more soil life. The two main things that support beneficial bacterial and fungal growth in the soil are: organic matter and protection from the elements, this also supports the flourishing of the entire soil food web.

What damages good soil?

• tillage damages the fungi – it severs the fungal threads
• fungicides and pesticides kill the good fungus, bacterias and bugs
• lack of organic matter – no food for soil life
• no soil protection – over-exposure to sun, rain and wind kills soil life

5 Simple Strategies to Feed and Protect Soils

Here are some natural and simple ways to feed soil life, protect soil structure and tend the soil:

1. Activate your soil with compost. 
I have a range of compost systems on the go, but I really love the simplicity and portability of the movable compost bins. I take them to an area that need a real boost, compost there for a while, attracting a zone of soil aliveness, then moving the bin on to another spot, but leaving the compost there to spread out, mulch over and make a new garden. There are also a number of herbs you can add into a compost to activate it. Read about these here: http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/improve-your-soil-with-herbs.html

Movable compost bin and worm tower – creating soil life hot spots.

2. Add compost worms to your garden ecosystem.
One way to do this is by installing simple worm towers throughout your garden, taking the benefits of worms and worm castings directly into your garden soil. It creates nutrient rich zones, and zones of soil aliveness. Visit my previous post about worm towers:
http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/a-quick-and-super-easy-way-to-turn-food.html and another which links to  the 7 minute film showing you how to do it.
http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/film-5-how-to-make-worm-tower.html

3. Add organic matter, compost and leafy greens to garden beds – in a no-till way.
Making no-dig gardens feeds and protects soils and creates a great environment for your soil life to thrive. This helps so much to support a thriving vegetable garden. By using the no-dig garden method rather than digging it into the soil protects the soil structure. Visit my previous post to see how to make a no-dig garden:
http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/morags-simple-successful-no-dig-garden.html

4. Plant deep rooted plants
I plant comfrey around the edge of the garden and beside the compost. The thick penetrating roots accumulate nutrients from deep in the soil and bring them to the surface. You can then use comfrey leaves as an excellent compost activator, to make a potent homemade comfrey fertiliser (http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/film-3-how-to-make-comfrey-tea-with.html), to add organic matter and nutrients into the soil layer while making a no-dig garden, or just to chop and drop. Also fruit trees with comfrey nearby seem to do better.

Comfrey

5. Regularly chop and drop organic matter.
I am often wandering around the garden, chopping back surplus growth and tossing it around trees and garden beds to feed and protect soil life. It’s amazing how quickly it breaks down and gets taken into the soil. Because having enough organic matter is so vital, I actually grow plants especially for this purpose such as the comfrey, Queensland arrowroot, lemongrass and pigeon pea – but many other plants can be used too, such as the abundant mulberry or pumpkin leaves.

Old pumpkin vines as chop and drop mulch.

In and around the veggie garden I mostly use mulch – a seedfree grass hay that is easy to work with around the little plants.

Thick layers of mulch get drawn rapidly into our soils.

I also recommend using cover crops (living mulch) to cover bare soils, open soils, add organic matter and renew areas.

DEFINITIONS: 

Bacteria – single celled organisms that are the most abundant microbes in the soil. 

Fungal filaments – the fine white threads called mycelium you can see in healthy soil. We need this mycorrhizal fungi (symbiotic relationship between the plant and fungus) – 90% of plants rely on it. It increases plant strength, increases water uptake, absorbs minerals & nutrients and in addition stores 1/3 of soil carbon.

(Interestingly, mycorrhizal fungi does not form relationships with the Cruciferae family (eg mustard, broccoli), Chenopodiaceae (eg spinach, beets) and Proteaceae (banksia, macadamia). Fungal numbers drop in the soil with these plants, same as when the soil is left bare and exposed.)

Protozoa – single cell organisms that eat bacterias and release nitrogen to plants. 

Nematodes – microscopic wormlike creatures, that are the most numerous multi-celled things on Earth and an essential part of healthy soil ecosystems. They are found in every conceivable habitat from the deepest ocean to the highest mountain. They feed on bacteria, fungi, algae, small invertebrates and other nematodes. Gardeners immediately think of root knot nematodes, and cringe in fear when they hear their name mentioned. Having root knot nematodes are an indicator that your soil ecology is out of balance – adding more organic matter, compost and moisture can usually help regain the balance, as well as planting a crop of brassicas that are more resistant to the root knot nematodes – particularly the mustard varieties.

The post The 2 Best Things You Can Do To Simply Create Superb Soils for Superbly Healthy Food appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Grab a cuppa and take a listen. Please leave comments on the Up For a Chat site (and also here on my blog) about the sorts of things you’d like me to speak about when I return to the Wellness Couch for a follow-up conversation about how to get your own simple garden set up.

UC196: Permaculture with Morag Gamble (73:03 mins)
http://thewellnesscouch.com/uc/uc-196-permaculture-with-morag-gamble

Some of the points of conversation include:

• How I came to live a permaculture life
• How to live a simpler, less stressful life and step away from the over-consumerism.
• How the healthier the earth is the healthier we all become
• How living in nature is like a natural meditation.
• How superfoods come from supersoils – the importance of keeping your soils healthy
• How everything has a context for learning – my approach to homeschooling.
• How seeing the world through children’s kids eyes opens up the world tenfold.
• How to reduce waste in our home – food waste and single-use plastics
• The value of growing as much as we can at home & how there’s is more food in most edible gardens than we typically imagine.
• How to think of your garden as one big ecosystem
• How we all have a voice – we can all be part of the change.

The post Permaculture & Healthy Living: Morag Gamble Speaks with Cyndi O’Meara & Friends on the Wellness Couch Podcast appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

image source: www.onegreenplanet.org

• Synthetic fibres shed and accumulate as toxicity in nature. 
• Natural fibres biodegrade and are recycled by nature. (Most of my old clothes end up as mulch, worm food and compost)

Those of you who have read my blog posts before know I focus on food and growing, but today I am moved to write from a different angle. Thanks to the many recent conversations I’ve had with people on this disastrous link between fast fashion, ecological systems disruption and toxicity in our food.

Please join me in thinking about this big issue and next time you are heading out to make a textile purchase. And please me spread the word by sharing this post with your friends and networks.

Think, buy, use, renew and make natural!

Might be time to get those alpacas …. image source: www.goodonyou.org.au

The post Did you know our clothes are poisoning us? More Reasons to Choose Simple Natural Fashion for Earth Care and People Care appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

It’s so easy to make self-watering pots from used milk bottles. They are free and make propagating seeds a breeze. 

Not only do they keep your little seedlings hydrated much longer, by cultivating your own seedlings, you can choose from a much wider selection of food varieties and contribute to the protection of seed diversity.

This is how to do it. (For more details, watch the film.)

All you need is a milk bottle, scissors, sand, compost/potting mix, seeds and water.

Cut in half the bottle and put in an overflow hole in the base to prevent plants from flooding.

Put a few centimetres of sand in the bottom of the base. Turn the top upside down and press into the base.

Fill with compost or good potting mix.

Make impressions in the soil for the seeds. Cover the seeds with soil.

Gently water the seeds in until the water comes out of the overflow.

Make sure to label the seeds.

Film #8: How to Make Self-Watering Pots by Morag Gamble

Learn with Morag in her garden:

If you enjoyed this film and like a hands-on approach to learning, I invite you to join me in my garden at the Permaculture Life Workshop over the next couple of months.

Click here for information and registration for October 29: The Simple and Abundant Garden

The post How To Make Your Own Self-Watering Pot: Film #8 appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Here are a few images from the action today with a year 11 geography group on a 3 day camp (43 students). Wonderful to have our homeschooled kids participating too…

The post Permaculture for teenagers appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Last week I had the pleasure of chatting with Sarah Howells on ABC Radio’s Brisbane Evenings as Permaculture and Simple Living Correspondent about this issue.

Calling in for the interview with Sarah Howells on ABC Radio from my home office at Crystal Waters.

Here is the podcast, Could You Live Plastic Free?

This is the second of our monthly chats.  The theme this month was Plastic Free July and the ways we can particularly reduce single use plastic.

This conversation went to air on Tuesday 5th July at 8:30pm on 612 ABC Brisbane Evenings. The next interview will be same time on 2 August. I hope you can tune in. If not, I will post the interview as soon it is sent to me.

Recently I wrote a  post about Plastic Free July, including why we need to change and offering some simple things to do:

• 5 Reasons You Should Try the Plastic Diet Too

• How to Make Natural Laundry Powder – save money, reduce waste and chemicals in the home.

Other things to consider:

• Use natural parchment paper to wrap foods in the freezer, or stainless steel latch containers
• Always remember to take your own shopping bags or basket. (or grab a box at the shop if you can – then use it to sheet mulch your garden)
• Get the kids to help you make bags, then also ask them to help remind you.
• Purchase as much unpackaged produce as possible.
• Choose paper packaged products over plastic ones – eg: toilet paper. (then add the paper wrapping into the compost or worm farm)
• Use beeswax clothes over leftovers, or simply a plate over a bowl.

The post Podcast #2: Could You Live Plastic Free – Morag Gamble on ABC Radio with Sarah Howells appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I have comfrey growing in various places throughout the garden – under fruit trees, near the compost, on the edge of the kitchen garden – an a couple in the midst of things like this one.

How to Make Comfrey Tea in under 5 minutes

Step 1: Collect comfrey leaves
Step 2: Tear up leaves into lidded bin
Step 3: Cover with water
Step 4: Wait for 6 weeks
Step 5: Dilute 1:10 with water.

I regularly harvest leaves and turn them into comfrey tea – a simple method using just comfrey and water in a lidded bin.

Comfrey leaves ripped up with water are covered with water then let steep for about 6 weeks – giving them a stir every now and then.

For more information:

If you enjoyed that, take a look at my other short films:

Film #1: Our Permaculture Life: My Permaculture Garden (33 mins)

The post Film #3: How to Make Comfrey Tea with Morag Gamble (4:52mins) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Morag and participants of the Introduction to Permaculture workshop renewing a garden bed at Northey Street City Farm.

The June Garden Guide includes updates from me in the subtropical region, as well as lots of information from writers in cool temperate and mediterranean climate zones.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend checking out PIP Magazine. It’s is the wonderful new Australian permaculture and sustainable living magazine. Issue 5 is currently out.

I am busy writing for the next issue. I contribute the Round the World segment and often an article too.

This is what my June garden guide segment looks like:

Subtropical June Garden Guide

by Morag Gamble of Our Permaculture Life

Comfrey (Photo: Morag Gamble)

 

• salad greens (lettuce, celery, parsley)
• peas (climbing peas, snow peas)
• brassicas (cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, kohl rabi)
• leafy greens (kale, spinach, silverbeet, mustard greens)
• onions (bulb, welsh onion, leeks) and
• root crops (carrot, daikon, beetroot, radish, parsnip, turnip).
• flowers (calendula)

• beans
• nightshades (tomatoes, capsicum, eggplants, potatoes) as well as
• pumpkin, zucchini
• garlic
• okra
• sweet potato

It’s turmeric (Curcuma longa) time. The tops are all browning and the rhizomes are ready to start digging up. A great way to store a turmeric haul is in a tub of moist sand and keep in a protected place (mine goes under the verandah). I just take what I need for the week into the house.  Leave some in the ground for next season.

Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius, Peruvian Ground Apple) is flowering indicating that the roots are forming below – great big sweet, crunchy tubers are swelling up, pushing up great mounds in the soil. Now and when as the tops start dying back, I gently remove the roots from the ground. You’ve got to be careful. If the skin is broken they rot quickly.  It’s a good idea dry them out a bit first before finding a cool storage place for them. They are great eaten fresh, grated into salad, or added to a savoury dish. Making yacon syrup (a suitable sugar alternative for diabetics) may be a good way of preserving this fruit. Leave some of the crowns in the garden ready for next growing season.

 

 

Yacon flower tells us the sweet edible roots are forming (Photo: Maia Raymond – 9yo – my daughter)

Morag holding a yacon harvest from her garden – both the tubers and rhizomes are edible. (Photo: Evan Raymond)

 

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The post June Edible Gardening Guide: What To Do In Your Garden Now. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.