For three weeks I’ll be visiting as many places as possible. I want to meet as many people as I can, I want to talk sustainability, food, philosophy, music and hamburgers. I’ll be sharing a dinner meal, sharing ideas and creating new memories. I’ll be giving talks and signing books. Best of all I get to meet you all! And let me tell you…I can’t wait to see you all! It’s been a long time coming.

Here are the cities I’ll be dropping by. Some events are still being finalised so I’ll post more details as they get confirmed. Contact me at info@wholelarderlove.com

Friday 31 May – San Francisco, CA
Saturday 1 June – San Francisco, CA
Sunday 2 June – Portland, OR
Monday 3 June – Portland, OR
Tuesday 4 June – San Antonio, TX
Wednesday 5 June – Austin, TX
Thursday 6 June – Birmingham, AL
Friday 7 June – Louisville, KY
Saturday 8 June – Chicago, IL
Sunday 9 June – Chicago, IL
Monday 10 June – New York, NY
Tuesday 11 June – New York, NY
Wednesday 12 June – New York, NY
Thursday 13 June – Philadelphia, PA
Friday 14 June – Rehoboth Beach, DE
Saturday 15 June – Chester, VT
Sunday 16 June – Boston, MA
Monday 17 June – Somerville, MA
Tuesday 18 June – Los Angeles, CA
Wednesday 19 June – Los Angeles, CA

Fuck. How the hell do I answer a question like that? My four year old has nailed me with a question that I’m still asking myself as an adult. We’re driving out of the forest, our baskets devoid of mushrooms our hearts a rather deflated. I’m not sure where the question came from, maybe it derived from our existential philosophical conversation walking the paths searching for wild mushrooms, which in fact is just me talking to myself with the odd effort to include a random kid in conversation. I’m often overcome with what my kids ask me, so stumped am I that I end up asking myself the questions my kids are asking me. Often I reply by simply asking them for time to think about the question until I can come up with an answer. This answer to this question however,  was no where to be found, like the mushrooms we’d just been searching  for, it was a mystery.

As far as I’ve experienced, existing simply invites more questions. I’m aware that I’m only around for a short time, I’ll blaze as brightly as I can, then my light will fade away to be lost forever. We all face the same reality, the difference is in how we blaze.

My hands dig deep into the frigid soil, the tips of my fingers ache cold, deep into from the flesh into the bone. My garden is in a state of chaos, it’s being ripped, dug out and transported to the new house by order of the landlord. The soil I’ve worked, the soil that has provided us such valuable asset is now just something that has housed things to exist, which in turn feeds us so we continue to exist. As I work the soil I feel for the wide head of parsnip, the round bulbous of beetroot, the whte stalk of fresh leek, everything must be harvested, and in turn cease to exist.

As I pull out one specimen after another I feel the question from my four year old daughter resonating in my thought.  I exist because I’m fed, I’m fed because I grow, because I work for my nutrients. It makes sense. It’s a simple cycle of energy out….energy in.

Later that week I run a workshop sharing the skills of my everyday live with those keen to learn. We discuss, we share ideas and concepts, techniques and concerns. It’s not just a skills sharing its a stew of thoughts, ideas and attitudes. We walk the forest paths searching for this years elusive mushrooms and no matter how much I assure people that they are safe to eat, there is always a few that feel apprehension. Eating food that’s grown wild and natural is something foreign for most of us and invariably intimidating. We do however, put absolute faith in food that we can select off a shelf and place in a shopping trolly based on the picture on the packet or the television commercial we saw on the item on last nights television. The reality is that the wild food is better for us, even though there is often apprehension that it may poison us. The irony is that the food we eat from the supermarket is probably making us unhealthy and in many cases slowly killing us. It’s just less obvious than a poison mushroom. It’s slow and discrete.

I have yet to answer my daughters question. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to answer it in full. While I work on a suitable answer I’ll plant more seed, I’ll continue to walk the forest for mushrooms, the fields for rabbit and pass on what ever skills I can to those who’ll listen. Maybe that’s all it is for me to exist.

Busy days passed, preparation and hard work the order of the day. Before we knew it the first student of my workshop had arrived, then another, followed by even more. My nerves kicked in, what if they didn’t like me? What if they didn’t like the way I taught? What if the stables weren’t comfortable enough? It was too late now. This was it. My workshops where go.

The idea behind the workshops was skills sharing. I’ve learnt a good deal over the years and I’m keen the share the skills in the hope that a snowball effect may happen.

Maybe people might change the way they view food, by the experience of killing an animal mights open up minds to the the processes of getting that food to the table, the damage done to the environment from conventional food production systems, and the ethical dilemma of animal treatment.

I was as prepared as I could be. I wasn’t however prepared for the people. The diversity of people, the love from people and the determination of people to make changes, to challenge themselves.

I’ve come away from the weekend not as the teacher, but as the student. I’ve learnt a great deal this past weekend. So much so that I guess I need to take a few walks in the forest to be alone and to think. My cynical mind has been recharged by the people that visited me this weekend, they came to learn skills from me, but left teaching me a good lesson in humanity. I’ve shed a few tears secretly these last few days, my arms an array of goosebumbs. I’m inspired by positivity alone. Just by sharing what I take as normal practice, I’ve received a shot of inspiration. I feel I now have purpose. To share is to inspire. And I’m inspired. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Kate, Dan, Damo for images

It’s at this time of the season that I harvest the last round of potatoes that have been secretly growing under the crust of the earth, as they store energy into the bulbs that we in turn harvest and recharge our selves with.

Potatoes seem to soften hard soil, so much so that when you pull tubers out the soil breaks easily. They also draw on what goodness was in the dirt, so it needs to be recharged with a compost and a different crop the following season. Rotating the crop is a well aged tradition, something taught to me and knowledge I will pass onto who ever is interested.

I stacked the potatoes in the wooden tray, my mind a buzz with ideas of what to do with them. Cooking with food I’ve grown, and ultimately picked from the back garden still gets me excited, I assume it always will. There is something intrinsically fulfilling about providing for yourself and your family.

Growing your own food though and cooking with raw ingredients seems to be a pastime of minority. Not long after I was pulling tubers from the dry soil, was I walking the isle of a small supermarket on an errand to source some baking powder. Not being familiar with the location of said item, I walked most isles, gazing with interest with the ‘food’ items on offer. From instant risotto to frozen dinners. Isles of canned items, packaged meals, powdered sauces and meal enhancers. Half the food here would be unrecognisable to someone from the pre war era. Most of it seemed unnecessary.

The staples are still there, the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder. All available for us to make what we produce ourselves a complementary success. I’m glad I can still get the staples, but I wondered if the shop could be a lot smaller, if it wasn’t so full of all the other ‘food’. But then again I reminded myself that I’m a bit unnaturally natural. My potatoes grown without chemical assistance, back yard reared, practically zero food miles and full of flavour and texture too boot. The alternative was at the supermarket where the washed variety grown in South Australia, and shipped over here with a high carbon expense.

I guess at some point we’ve all tired of hearing about the true cost of food. But I wonder what our future generations will think of our affluent lifestyle. The food most of the western population eats these days, and how it effected the environment and the health of the human population. I wonder if the system will change, why it will change and what will be the catalyst for change.

As I tuck into a simple meal of creamy mash topped with chorizo, I can’t help but wonder if it will once again be normal to be natural.

My home has shifted. Once I felt at home in a city house, now I feel home when I’m here.

I find it interesting how much we change as humans as we age. We’re all different in what we believe in, dream for, lust for, aspire for. But we’re all humans, we all face the same unavoidable fate. We all leave a mark on the world, both spiritually and physically. For some unplanned reason, my mind has changed over the last decade. I’ve been questioning why I do what I do, and how I live. The outcome is, I’ve made changes based on the beliefs I’ve formed, and thus I live a life of simplicity. I don’t do things I don’t want to do, I’m not interested in growing business and making more money, quite the opposite. I’m quite happy just being able to pay the rent and utilities and fend for myself and the kids.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about this very thing. An approach to life that surely must have some mental and emotional health benefits. The idea is that you rid yourself of things in your life that you can actually survive without. A car loan, an extra house, a credit line. Removing these debts frees up your time and money which means you can actually concentrate on real living. I know how I ended up being in debt all those years ago. It’s simply that I wanted stuff, stuff that would make my life better. But it doesn’t. Not in the slightest.

My current lifestyle doesn’t allow for idleness. I’m the busiest I’ve ever been. But I do things on my own terms, I do what I believe is right, not what’s expected of me. I don’t have an allocated lunch break, instead I’m free to eat when I’m hungry. I sleep when I’m tired, and I fill my days with tasks that need to be done, each task either contributing to food stores or homes comforts i.e. firewood collecting or cleaning. My greatest achievements are seemingly diminutive. A good crop of beans, a basket of found chestnuts and a cap filled with the first wild mushrooms of autumn. Food is such an integral part of all of our lives, and when you start to play a significant role in its preparation you can taste the result.

My food is simple. It is made by hand. It’s grown. It’s hunted and it’s fished. When I look at a dish it has traces of effort layered all over it. The mushrooms I picked, the sourdough bread I made, the garlic and thyme I grew.

I know I’m at an extreme end of the scale and that most people living in the city couldn’t do everything I do. But there is always something all of us can do to live better and reduce food print. Maybe I should list them?

I’ve been humming this song in my head a lot lately. The line that gets me is, “inaction is a weapon of mass destruction”

There is however a charm to this slow down in nature, it comes in the form of the fruit of summer. It hangs ripe and full, like a mothers bosom, nurturing and comforting. It fills you with not only wonder for the beauty of nature, but puts you at ease with the knowledge that the larder is stocked, we will survive.

It’s a lifestyle I’ve grown accustomed to. There is no doubt that its not mainstream to live like this in this age, but its the way people have lived for generations, utilising summer’s warmth to grow food for a crisp winter. Now it’s the time to pickle and preserve.

As winter rears its frigid head, I long for hot stews and warming dishs. Mornings with eggs and home cured bacon, improved with a dash of that hot salsa picante, a chilli sauce that’s hot and smokey and makes everything ok. I love growing chilli in the warm months. Even in our tepid climate we can successfully grow them in pots, bathtubs and anything that has good drainage and retains the warmth of a summers day.

Nurturing many varieties gives me a bit of culinary choice, some are hot and some not so much. Some work well as a garnish, some in cooking and all of them help make a nice chilli sauce, my salsa picante. It’s a mix up brew of all my chillies, but it always has the addition of smokey chipotle or mulato chilli giving it that distinctive mexican vibe. This season I’ve likely made over four litres of this powerful conduction. It will warm my meals over winter with summer chilli heat. Its exciting to have it bottled at the ready for those fresh eggs and smokey bacon on my sourdough. My life is now made exciting by home made chilli sauce. No longer rock and roll. But pretty stoked.

The wind picked up to 50km per hour gusts today, blowing the fine stable dirt around like a tumble dryer. Dirt has a way of getting into every nook and cranny, and by the end of the day I had a face like a coal miner. My denim on denim get up was coated with this fine dirt and saw dust, making me resemble some portly rodeo rider slash woodcutter. I felt as sore as a rodeo rider by the end of the day, but gee did I feel comforted by the fact that all the beds that we’d been working on over the last few weeks have finally been installed.

Keeping with the daily approach of using and re-using, we fashioned the beds from heat treated transport pellets and the legs from off cuts from tree lined streets and the supports for the legs even came from the bonfire pile! Taking recycling and re-purposing to a new level. But who cares? The beds are functional, sturdy and will keep people comfortable for a few nights whilst visiting the workshops. I’m guessing after a few days of me blabbering on about skinning rabbits, dispatching chooks and walking the forest for mushrooms will have people so tired they’d probably be able to crash on the stable floor!

We’ve tried as much as possible to set the workshops up with minimal impact but there is always some thing that is unavoidable, like using a petrol chainsaw, a cordless drill etc. But the reality of living in 2013, these things are part of our lives. They’re not completely necessary, but useful. I guess after my last post I want to reiterate that I’m not promoting a life lived in a cave eating grubs and dressed in rabbit fur for all of us, in fact far from it. What I do advocate is a life making choices that can have a reduction in negative impact on the environment. The old basics, reduce, recycle, re-use.

I’ve never announced that my way of living is perfect. Everything I do i.e. grow veg, forage, eat less meat, hunt etc is available to most people, even the city dwellers, as I lived that life quite comfortably living in a city. And where there isn’t an opportunity to perform these tasks then there is always an option to be a smart consumer. It’s all up to us. Even as confronting, different or uncomfortable it may appear to the normal modern life, at least you’d be contributing to a better world for generations down the track. Instead of throwing hands in the air like you just don’t care, maybe the option of looking at positive alternatives is better than doing nothing.

For more details and info regarding the workshops, please visit here. Be quick, they’re filling up fast!

All photos thanks to Kate.

It’s been a dry summer, and one of the hottest on records. In fact I can’t remember a summer in recent years that hasn’t set some sort of heat record. The river is down lower than ever, many of the dams are dry, or close to it, and the forest’s gravel roads bellow with dust behind the truck. By now you’d expect a few good dumps of rain with the big storms at the end of summer, but we’ve had bugger all.

The climate is changing, that is a certainty. I know there are non-believers out there, but the science is hardly worth arguing against. Since the industrial revolution the spike has been warming, the oceans and rivers becoming more polluted and our forests dwindling. As a species we’re not slowing down in regards to our use of natural resources. Even as far back as the colonisation of the Americas, we’ve been in plunder mode. At that time Europe had been stripped of timber resources and the new world offered endless supplies of timber, but nothing natural is endless, but it can be managed. We don’t manage our timber resources as well as we could, but it’s one of the greatest renewable resources available. Stick to the simplest of rules. You chop one down you plant another. But we are consuming our resources faster than they can be produced, and in regards to the finite natural resources, we’re looking down the barrel of a loaded gun.

I know most people that read here already give a shit. And in many cases people care more than I do and thus live a life far more extremely sustainably than I do. The problem isn’t with you the reader, the problem is with the people who aren’t reading. The masses. And they make up the majority of the western world. The more I live the simple life where I have to work for my food, the more I become removed from the modern world. This has allowed me to view the modern world as an outsider. I see what people eat, what they put in their shopping carts and I scratch my head. In a very real way, the problems we are having with climate change are directly linked to what people are putting in their shopping carts and ultimately into their digestive system, and it’s killing them twice. Firstly, with health problems. Never before have humans had to deal with such a huge scale of health problems. The likes of morbid obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, all of them are caused by what we eat and our lives that now are far more sedimentary than ever before. The food is killing us off secondly because of the way it’s produced. It’s carbon emissions wrapped up and made palatable. Every bit of food that you buy thats packed in plastic, pre-cooked, snap frozen, has been treated with fungicide, herbicide, insecticide or has had synthetic additives added has a carbon footprint. Every single piece of food. Even the ‘fresh’ food, it’s often travelled thousands of miles.

The processed food is the worst. Lets take a look at a tin of pre-processed chunky soup.

The raw materials, the vegetables at some point have been treated or in contact with synthetic agricultural chemicals. Those chemicals require the use of finite resources to create them, not to mention how harmful they are the the human body and often leave residual in the soil and natural environment.

 
The raw materials are transported, this requires energy, resulting in carbon emissions.

 
The raw materials are then cooked and processed, this requires energy, resulting in carbon emissions.

 
Additives and preservatives are added to the soup. Synthetic chemicals that then enter your digestive system. But surely the person that consumed them has a background in Chemistry so has a full understanding of what they’re consuming.

 
The processed food is then packed in tin or plastic, either way it’s put into a vessel that will more often than not end up as land fill, not to mention the energy required to make the vessel resulting in yet more emissions.

 
Then the can is painted with some logo and information convincing you how good it is for you, reminding you of that fresh country soup your great aunty used to make.

 
The can is then transported to a storage facility (DC – Distribution Centre) where it is selected to go to the supermarket it’s needed.

 
Off into a truck, driven many miles. Carbon emissions blah blah. This is getting boring now.

 
The punter, buys the can of soup, it’s popped in a ‘green reusable bag’ even worse than plastic bags and driven to it’s new home.

 
When the moment is right, the can is opened, the contents tipped into a bowl and it’s popped into a microwave. Energy … yawn.

 
SO whats wrong with all this?

 
Well I want my fucking mushrooms! And the climate is all screwed up because of the can of soup and so it been a rainless summer and it’s autumn and still I have no AUTUMN mushrooms. It’s natures way of telling us things are seriously wrong! And it’s all because of that can of soup … well not just one can of soup, all the cans of soup, and the the microwave, the flash car, the big house with all the stuff in it … etc. I hope I’m making sense here. It’s not the literal can of soup, it’s a metaphor for all the things in our western culture that we can live without if we just simplified.

 
So are we stuffed? Most definitely. Is there something we can do? Most definitely. We can start by growing the veg for the soup in our backyard, and secondly cook the bloody soup from scratch, yourself. If you don’t know how to ask someone to show you. By growing your own vegetables for the soup you’re cutting out heaps of carbon emissions, those as a result of the ag chemical production, chemical transport and application, raw material transport, processing, packaging etc. The next thing to do is live with less, buy second hand, recycle, just be smart about what you consume. It’s not like we all should crawl into caves again, just find some sort of balance in life. Grow your own, buy local and live with less. All makes a difference.

 
But I fear that it’s more important to watch hours of television and simply zone out like a mindless zombie and not give a shit. That’s the option for most people in the western world. I know that will have people offended and complaining, but that’s the facts. Mark my words, this planet of ours is hurting, and will continue to hurt because we as humans are unstoppable in our hunger for resources. And there isn’t a government in the world, nor a single person that has the power to change the way people live their lives. And so the resource appetite will continue until the air is poisonous, the rivers are beyond repair, our climate is so far from where it should be that food production for the masses will be increasingly hard to keep up with and wars will be fought over clean water and food. The basics of human survival. So why instead don’t we just concern ourselves with those basics (where possible) in our very day life right now?

 
This is what goes through my mind looking for mushrooms in the forest. Dear God, what have we done to have ourselves in this state where we ‘need’ everything done for us. Why do we have to work for money and not for food for our families. Why? Sometimes I wonder if it would be a good idea to scrap everything and just start all over. Before that happens I’ll pick some veg and make a soup.

We’d come back to the island to visit Kate’s father,  a resident now of a handful of years but not quite a local. Being back on the island has me going wild again. Before we’d driven onto the ferry, I’d walked the beach, cracked open an oyster and devoured it raw off the rock, where the pacific oyster grows freely, escapees from the many oyster leases in the bay. My mouth fills with the taste of ocean. It transports me back to my childhood beach holidays, not that I ate oysters then, but the taste of fresh oyster peeled and shucked from off the rocks, has a surreal way of  bringing flashbacks of mouthfuls of salt water being dumped whilst boogie boarding the surf at Anglesea as a prepubescent ratbag.

The fish fed us well. Simply cooked, mostly eaten with fingers. The taste of each species different from the previous, and giving us plenty to bullshit about. Sometimes we’d add some coriander, some chilli, garlic or ginger. Sometimes just grilled with a dash of olive oil and a flash of salt. Either way, this was fish we’d caught, hours earlier, off the little boat, with our two hands. This is the only time we really eat fish, other than the trout and eel I catch in fresh water. The difference is the range of flavour and texture. It’s just magic. A total experience, just like the brochure of life said.

There was one day remaining,  my last chance to be out amongst it all. I was determined to make the most of the day fishing for tucker. An early hour had me up and ready, down where I’d left the boat on the beach a few days earlier. I packed everything needed, and took another look at the swell, it was big. Maybe I should have stayed on land, maybe a few hours more and the wind might calm. But the fish. The pan, empty. Dinner.

I made the call and packed the small tinny, waded out into the cold mornings water and started the motor. I got past the break no problems, it was the big swell behind it that was the challenge. The boat rode high then dropped hard often with the loud slap of aluminium haul hitting cold salt water. I passed a few boats with four or five blokes in them, all looking at me with a mixture of concern or bewilderment, but nonetheless we waved as we passed. I figured just getting on the other side of the bay would see the conditions much calmer, so preservere I did. Low and behold the waves subsided the further I got from Quiet Corner (how ironic). I dropped the lure and trawled  as I went, a strike here and there garnished a few more Australian Salmon and a nice Barracuda. Enough for a feed so I pulled up to a rocky bay where the water looked calmer.

I sat alone, eating my lunch looking out at the rough water and dark clouds above. So menacing was the view, I shuddered with the thought of being caught out there. A human is nothing but fish food as soon as they step foot in the sea, and this day was a clear reminder of that, hence my life jacket tightly secured over my chest. The waves lapped the rocky bay as I munched on my tucker. I couldn’t wait to be back out there, I was drawn to the water, to the chance of catching some fine specimen. But I sat alone for a while longer, pondering. I wondered what other blokes my age were doing at that moment. Probably in an office, building a house, fixing a car, or watching the football. I was pretty happy to be doing none of those things. I was sitting next to a dead albatross, eating a salad roll in a place called Adventure Bay. It was a good day.

I fished a few more runs with the lure and finally talked myself into chugging the coastline of the bay and heading back to return the boat to its beach home, and me to the kitchen to cook the fish and enjoy it with fine company of the Berry family. I didn’t catch the big one, I didn’t fill the esky with fish nor did I fish for glory, but I filled the pan with fish and fed us some fine fresh seafood. We eat mostly seafood when we visit the beach, and we eat mostly vegetables back home. We eat what’s around us. Not dissimilar to a life lead for thousands of years. Kinda makes sense don’t you think? To eat whats around you. Not whats packed, processed and shipped from thousands of miles away. Food for thought. Fish for thought.

Some people have asked for a blog banner…..so super mega clever Kate went and made a gif banner for WLL veg boxes…..

Steal it from here….

Oh and here is the link you’ll need to send the gif to

http://wholelarderlove.com/generalstore/community-food-shop-info/

HOW THE VEG BOX SYSTEM WORKS.