Cape Town had a cold front last week (I know you're thinking "it's winter, of course you had a cold front" but we've had the mildest winter I can remember and most of it hasn't felt like winter at all...) which promted mom to light the coal stove in the kitchen. This is such a treat and all of our cooking and baking happens as it would have a hundred years ago with temperatures at the mercy of whoever takes responsibility for stoking the fire.
The house is divinely warm and we all spend most of our time crammed around the kitchen table. I still have to venture outside to feed the chickens and on one such morning the gardening bug bit. Hard. I dug the seed box out of the garage and finally put to use some of the toilet roll inners that I'd forced the family to collect for me for months! I only planted a small seed tray but it's got some basics that I can't wait to get into the veggie boxes once the threat of cold fronts has passed... the tray has pride of place next to the stove but gets moved around the kitchen during the day so as to catch as much sunlight through the skylight as possible.
For some time already I have been intrigued by the concept of self sufficiency. It only takes one meal in a nice restaurant for me to head down this path even more enthusiastically… Went to one of Cape Town’s finest for my birthday (his treat) and I realized there’s something very wrong with the way we live: Starters were from R85-110 and the line fish I decided on was R158! Let me not get onto the bottle of wine… Had a cheap bottle in another reputable joint for mom’s birthday - I really liked it so went out the next day to buy a couple of bottles for the house. We paid R105 (remember I said cheapie!) on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning I picked up a bottle whilst doing grocery shopping for R42… I understand that restaurants have margins to make, etc. but I feel like we’re being taken for a bit of a ride!
The cost of living makes me cringe. We’re probably not great examples but I’ve looked around at the people I associate with and we’re all in the same boat. We shop at woolies often, eat out a couple of times a week, are guilty of picking up ready made meals for work lunches which come with a mountain of extra packaging, each drive our own cars without hesitation, have wardrobes big enough to clothe an underprivileged school, etc.
Let me not get onto the topic of Eskom or any other para-statal on which we find ourselves dependent. As for grocery store chains, we’ve become completely dependent on the convenience of having what we want, when we want it and where we want it (I never have to drive more than 5 minutes to get to either a convenience store or mega grocery store). This comes at quite a price. We think we’re getting a good deal when we grab a ‘special’ but explore a little further and you’ll see we’ve got something horribly wrong! If I grab salad ingredients for two from woolies it’ll set me back at least R100. That same R100 can buy an entire boot-full of fresh produce at the Epping Market.
Some of the ideas I’ve been thrashing out in my head are:
Solar geysers. This is twofold: firstly, Eskom has increased my electricity bill much more than the 24% they advertised (apparently I’m a high consumption domestic user). Second, I think it important to reduce my carbon footprint. For now, Eskom’s electricity is ‘dirty’ belching out tons of carbon every time I switch on a light. Until we’ve got cleaner sources, I’d like to boycott their service.
We’ve installed a closed-combustion fireplace and burn wood which is carbon neutral and the ash is very useful in the garden – some of it is used to deter snails and the rest goes into the compost heap. Ash is nutrient rich and a waste product which makes it free.
Rain water storage tanks. This is something I haven’t convinced the sponsor to install yet (he says my building project has run out of funds…) I checked out the calculations for how much water you can collect and was stunned: for every 100m2 of roof, you get 1000l of water per 1mm of rain that falls. Given a house of about 500m2 of roof that’s 5000l in a flash! Our area gets about 2000mm of rain a year there’s more than enough water available to be stored. We just need to store it!
Growing our own veggies. Given the abundance of water, favorable soil, sunshine, etc. in Cape Town there really is no excuse not to try your hand at growing some! I’ve been messing around in the garden for a couple of years now and cannot honestly say that I’ve grown enough to feed a family but as I get better at it, I’ve got more produce and much more variety! The things that have worked really well are beans (lazy housewife), carrots, beetroot, onions, lettuce and tomatoes. The gem squash and marrows were not quite as successful but we did get to eat some :-) The potatoes and sweet potatoes were sublime but I’ve realized I have to plant many more this year.
For the veggies I can’t grow, it is my intention to buy in season and preserve or freeze until needed. This works in a number of ways: the carbon footprint is reduced as I’m not buying imported produce, local is lekker, and my money goes 50% further.
Growing fruit. This requires much more patience than the veggies (a couple of weeks to harvest) as the trees have to mature. We planted 24 trees last year and had to take the fruit off last summer to give the trees a chance to establish themselves. Some of them are big enough to produce fruit this year but some of them need to still use all of their energy to grow sturdy branches. You may be thinking that you don’t have the space for an orchard so this doesn’t apply to you… Not so! If you have space for a pot you can plant a citrus tree. It’ll stay compact but if you look after it it’ll spoil you back with plenty of juicy fruit.
Apart from Bananas which form much of the sponsor’s staple diet and have to be available at all times, I try to buy fruit from the Epping Market. It’s dirt cheap. 8kg of 1st grade guavas cost me R30 the other day. Boxes of apples or pears are the same. The beauty here is that you’re buying fresh produce. Most fruit can be preserved in some way: freezing, jam, canning, etc. not forgetting how delicious fresh fruit salad is!
Chickens, ducks and geese. I mention all three as they all perform very different functions in the urban farmyard. Chickens are the most common and most people know something about them. They’re our primary source of white meat and available everywhere in the world. Their eggs are farmed either free-range or in chicken batteries and are a fantastic source of protein. Try to bake anything and you’ll be reaching for the eggs first! Chickens are scavengers and will eat anything. Including your seedlings, veggies, fruit, etc. in short, they’re a pain in the vegetable garden. They need to be suitably housed. In return for food they’ll provide you with much entertainment, eggs, meat and rich compost. They’re useful for clearing a veggie patch for the next planting (they really know how to clear!). Ducks are snail catching machines! They don’t scratch like chickens do and also won’t kill your plants. They graze on grass and eat every snail they can find. A lesser known use of the duck and my main reason fro including them in my urban farming plan is their superior fly catching skills. The fly problem is more than a problem – it’s more like a plague! We hang those ugly sticky strips in the kitchen (because we absolutely have to!) and make sure that nothing edible is left out for one minute. I’ve banned the fly swatter as it makes me physically ill… Muscovy duck’s fly catching skills are legendary. You’ll know a house with ducks when you visit one – you won’t wee the fly strips or a single fly anywhere! Geese are great for weeding. They’re vegetarians and with their long necks get into the garden to eat the weeds. I don’t know exactly how they identify the weeds but they do. Their eggs are big enough to make scrambled eggs for a whole family and you can eat them too.
A dream of mine is to have a pond for the ducks and geese, big enough to stock it with trout. I’ve done a little research and think it would be quite possible to farm fish on small scale. I decided to look into this after buying some smoked rainbow trout from woolies last Sunday (it’s one of the sponsor’s favorites) and seeing the price per kilo – R395!!! I was aghast. They’re farmed locally now which means we’re not paying for the transport from Norway (although the Norwegian Salmon is exactly the same price… huh?). It was one of those instant ill to the stomach before going on a crusade moments… Much persuading to do to get the pond though so this one will take a while!
I really want a pig. They’re an integral part of a homestead/urban farm. They have a few functions (and if you have the muscovies already there can be no fly problem!): they are the garbage disposal units for your home. They devour all uneaten food from the kitchen as well as processing the compost bucket quicker than any other animal. They efficiently convert inputs into rich compost. They even further process chicken poop - some farmers feed their pigs exclusively on chicken by products (I don’t agree with this as I think you end up with a disease problem but on a small scale and not actually harvesting the poop you shouldn’t have an issue). Pigs are natural ploughs: they clear plots including all roots whilst adding nutrients out of their back ends as they go. Pigs eat sand – this keeps them healthy and at the same time adds biologicals to the soil increasing fertility.
A Dexter Cow. Now this goes even beyond wanting. I need a cow. Dexters are small cows – about half the size of common dairy cows. Cows are useful too: they produce milk which is used in almost everything… think tea and coffee, yogurt for breakfast, cheese sandwiches, baking, sauces, butter, cream, etc. I’ve recently realized that most dairy in South Africa is produced on feedlot. What is this you ask? Don’t cows eat grass? That’s what I thought. Not so unfortunately. Many cows are fed on grain (which I have to add is definitely not what cows were designed to eat!!!) as it fattens them up quicker and makes them produce more milk than they would naturally… if you turn a blind eye on changing the cow’s natural diet this seems ok until you take it a step further and realize that the cows are being fed genetically modified maize which we are yet to determine the fallout from. The scientists say we’re ok but I’m not convinced yet.
Once I have the cow my dream is to make my own butter, cheese, yogurt, etc. I can’t think of anything more delicious or wholesome…
This is my ever evolving list which is growing as we speak through trial and error it’s a way of life, not a solution!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Since starting my green journey a year or so ago I have learned much. The biggest lesson I have learned is that we really don't know all that much! There is a wealth of information on the internet which is the most accessible information - it seems there are many experts on every concieveable topic. This has proved time consuming but very interesting.
I have successfully grow bags and bags of sweet and juicy beans (these get eaten by the handful by everyone who visits so I didn't even bother to cook them!), about 20kg of tomatoes which my Ouma helped me to bottle most of them for sauces and stews (very easy to do and absolutely delicious!). I have struggled with growing potatoes (they died while the tubers were still only the size of marbles) and gem squash (these plants succumbed to leaf mould which I was unable to get rid of)...
I have tried one last planting of gem squash in a brand new bed which I am hoping doesn't have any disease in the soil so we can have some healthy squashes... holding thumbs!
I got my dad to help me make some raised veggie beds. We made boxes that a 1 sqm and 0.4m deep. This box is on legs that have the top of the boxes at 0.8m off the ground. It's a little late for planting beans but I have given it a go anyway - I planted beans in one row at the back of the boxes and planted carrots in the front 3/4 of the boxes. These are year round crops so they should be fine still.
I've been cultivating a few sweet potatoes in my pantry for planting out the vines. This is done by putting the sprouting sweet potato into a bowl of water and topping it up regularly. There are probably 20 vines coming out of each potato which are 50cm long - perfect for planting in my newly prepared beds... This will hopefully happen tomorrow.
I am training my domestic worker to use green techniques in cleaning (she's of the school that uses a whole container of handy andy and domestos a week...) which has been a true challenge but I am hopeful that we'll get this right! I have stopped buying harsh cleaning chemicals which has been met with moans and groans about the new stuff 'not cleaning properly'... However, now that we're following the directions on the pack we're doing much better!
