Yes, I do realise that is a big call, because potato salads can get pretty good. Whether it was the combo of 100% home-grown veggies or the home-made ricotta on top, i don’t care. This is the most rocking potato salad I’ve tasted.
And created by Rose Newberry, who we’re lucky enough to have at Milkwood Farm cooking for students and crew in the summer months… Read More
Yes, you heard that right. Croissants made on sourdough starter (ie no yeast), using white spelt flour. It’s possible! And what is more, they’re ridiculously delish.
Rose made these at Milkwood Farm during a quiet week recently, and they were all things that croissants should be, but better. Especially with plum jam… home-made heaven. Read More
As spring slowly creeps towards us, things are stirring in the market garden… time to introduce our new Market Gardener, and plant field peas!
Enter Michael Hewins, who, after joining us as a very experienced wwoofer for some months last season at Milkwood Farm, has returned to take on the organic market garden as an integrated enterprise. Read More
Labneh is a very easy to make and tasty cheese made of strained yoghurt, that can be stored in a jar of olive oil on the shelf. Cheese meets yoghurt meets olive oil meets extends shelf life (without refrigeration). And darn yummy. I’m in! Read More
Calling all meat eaters who are curious and committed to learning how to cook all parts of an animal in the name of ethics (produce no waste), flavor and, most importantly, adventure: Farmstead Meatsmith are writing a book on how the heck to cook all the tricky bits.
“If the pastured meat on your plate is dry and chewy, it is because it was cooked improperly, wasting the milky grass fat marbling it took the steer two years to develop. The worst of it is that poorly cooked pastured beef will taste no better, if not worse than the factory beef, and there can be no greater insult to the cow’s sacrifice and the farmer’s labor.
If we are going to ensure that pasturing livestock responsibly can endure, we have got to stop burning steaks.” Read More
So it turns out that when we go to the toilet, each of us ‘produces’ nearly 80% of the nutrients we need to grow our food. That’s quite something. If you take hold of that concept, it really does make you ask questions about why the heck we manufacture chemicals (with all the detrimental side-effects of that production) to grow food…
Recently Nick did an interview with Ollie Lavender of Sustainable Solutions Radio about this very subject, following on from his TedX Canberra talk with a similar drift. Have a listen:
Or to summarize the above podcast, fortunately there’s a lot of straight-forward, completely safe and highly doable ways that you can re-cycle your family’s nutrients back though food producing systems. With very little ick factor, even. Starting with the simple act of collecting your wee. Read More
Just a quick note that we’ve scheduled some spring Aquaponics Workshops in Sydney, which are 2 days of intensive aquaponics how-to and why-to with Charlie Bacon (Ecolicious) + Nick Ritar (Milkwood).
While the basics of Aquaponics can be quite simple, there’s a lot of ways to do it in a way that enhances growing conditions for both fish and plants while still adhering to permaculture principles, which ensures you don’t end up with an input-heavy system disguised as a closed-loop one. Which is the kind of knowledge that this workshop is all about… Read More
Yesterday Nick got interviewed about that viral image of Glass Gem Corn, and why the response has been so great: “When you first look at that photo it is beautiful, then there’s a realisation for people where it clicks: “That’s real.”
This is a corn that’s been developed over thousands of years and there’s a level of connection running back through human culture,” he said. Read More
There is nothing quite like a feijoa – they are simply the most amazing fruit. Fragrant, pungent, sweet yet sour, gooey in the middle and grainy round the edges. The original yum in a small green torpedo.
They also tend to appear as a surprise in large quantities when ripe, probably because they’re so darn hard to see on the tree. If you’re planting them, plant them in a high-traffic area, lest you miss their amazingness until it’s too late in the season… Read More
Once you start natural beekeeping you’ll soon be introduced to eating brood honeycomb – comb that has had baby bees (brood) go through it, and now contains honey.
In many traditional cultures, this dark honeycomb is the most sought after – it is riddled with extra enzymes and traces of pollen from the brood rearing process, and tastes altogether different from virgin honeycomb – nutty, strong and complex… Read More
