Friday 16 January 2015

Mobility and food (our first week home)

Now we are back home we find not all that much has changed. Just as it was on the road, our home-life is also all about mobility and food; how we move around and how we sustain ourselves.


After such a long time on the back of their parents' bikes, the boys were keen to get their own forms of mobility cranking. Zeph made roadworthy one of our old tip bikes and Woody gave his hand-me-down first bike a thorough going over. Thanks Carly!


We continued to bike and walk as our main forms of mobility. Woody now walks a few kms each day.


We pedalled up to the community garden working bee (blogged here), to contribute to the community gift economy going on there.


We painted up some new signs to be put up at two of the growing number of food gardens in our small town.


We helped Peter install the signs,


and we began to organise some music events that will take place in the Albert St garden to simply celebrate life there.


We biked up to our local food co-op to buy what we couldn't freely obtain and to support a more environmentally aware monetised economy.


We walked, bussed, trained and caught a tram to visit Woody's great grandfather (aged 96) in the metropolis.


 We pushed our wheelbarrow over to Maria's, our neighbour, to collect cockatoo-spoiled apples,


to feed to our girls.


We worked in our annual produce area planting some more food. This row: cayenne peppers as food-medicine for the winter.


We welcomed back Yael and Matt, Akira, Essie and Dante, who so wonderfully tended the house and garden while we were away and planted food for us to come home to. Thank you beautiful family!


We got busy in the kitchen making sauerkraut with cabbages that Matt and Yael had planted with the kids,


we revitalised our five year old sourdough starter and have been making bread daily,


we have made music each night before bed too,


and we have made our version of vegemite: miso paste, tahini, lemon juice, olive oil and garlic. Delish!


It is lovely to be home, and so far we haven't got itchy pedals. After so many months of uncertainty, the comforts of home and community life have been both regenerative and restorative. We thank you, Dear Reader, for accompanying us on our journey in settling back into domestic life, and hope you too have both regeneration and rest cycling around in your neck of the woods.

14 comments:

  1. Oooo, would you share that vegemite recipe?

    Welcome home again. I'm sure that you will miss some parts of being on the road but I'm sure too you must be glad to be home again too.

    Looking forward to more stories of your sustainable lifestyle. Most inspiring. :)

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    1. Hi there RLH, of course, we're totally into sharing... it's actually Sandor Katz's recipe with an extra ingredient, we just do the proportions to taste as none of us are very good at following recipes. But to give you an idea of the proportions, Sandor's recipe goes like this: 1 tablespoon of miso, 2 tablespoons of tahini, juice of half a lemon, 1 finely chopped clove of garlic. Mix together. We add olive oil for easy spreading. We make it in bulk and it lasts a week. Yum! xx

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    2. My grandmother made something she called Anti Cranky!! Its equal parts water, oil and butter, melted. Stir in torulas yeast till its thickness desired ( it gets harder as it cools so beware) and as it's yeast based I call it my home made vegimite! Sometimes I will add garlic or sesame seeds or poppy seeds for variation. Good memories in that stuff!!!

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    3. thanks Michelle, that sounds like a generational gem. yum! thanks for sharing.

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  2. Thank you for your 'what happens next' and affirming sustainability, gifting and low impact living. Welcome home!

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    1. Aw, thanks Lisa. It will be lovely to see you again at the community garden or somewhere equally as pleasant. Thanks for your e-love and support while we've been away. xx

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  3. I'm lovin' watching what's happening next guys --- and did I see right up tharr at the top of the blog that you are doing w.e. visits and learning opportunities for all this year? what a great idea :D xx

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    1. thanks so much Ronnie, and yes we are, starting in April. great to be home in production mode. we've had rare summer rain here, so the garden is pumping and we are a planting... how is your starter going? we feel we left you with an experiment that was perhaps more amusing than practical, but we hope the citrus mould worked. we used fig mould and it worked a treat.

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  4. Love it! Welcome home :-)

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    1. thanks Jodie, look forward to seeing you around the traps. do you know if anyone in Australia is producing organic rooibos tea? we have to stop drinking it shipped from South Africa, it's about our last imported extravagance.

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  5. So good to read this post. I'd been saving the post up so I wasn't hurriedly reading it. Seemed the right thing to do...ahh, and so good.
    If I was a tad closer I'd love to do one of your weekenders!

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    1. That's so kind Chfg, we'll keep blogging and sharing our doingthings so you can dip in whenever you like and we'll try to make it like you were here for the weekend.

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  6. Feeling a nice mix of things- happy that you're home safe and sound, a little wistful that the journey piggy-backing is over, and grateful, that you've shared so much with us. I think that there are important people we all need to watch because they are ahead of us, living and giving a picture of the future in the present. And you are among them. I've loved this brave, moving, inspiring project, many thanks and best wishes for this next chapter.

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    1. thank you nicola, that is so very kind to say so. xx

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