I was at the fifth annual Carbon Farming Conference & Expo, run by the Carbon Farmers of Australia, who have been working hard to get carbon farming on the national agenda. I was lucky enough to meet Michael and Louisa Kiely, the hard working team behind the Carbon Farmers, who have spent a great deal of their own time, energy and money putting the case to government that farmers should be recognised and rewarded for their sustainable farming practices.

The central idea of “carbon farming” is that by taking carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil through various farming techniques, we can address many of the major risks currently facing humanity such as climate change, food security, and loss of soil fertility. Carbon is essential for soil fertility and is involved in many cycles and processes in the soil and the atmosphere.

This is a big idea, but one that is rapidly gaining momentum in political and scientific circles. This conference was particularly exciting and timely because the landmark Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) legislation has just been passed by the Federal parliament as part of the Clean Energy Futures package. This legislation not only formally recognises the good science behind the notion of carbon farming, but also lays out a mechanism by  which farmers and landholders will be paid for the carbon they sequester–a truly innovative concept.

In a nutshell what I plan to summarise with coming blog entries goes as follows: globally we are facing potential risks such as climate change, food security, loss of topsoil, decreasing soil fertility, water shortages and declining human health – thinking of them as risks rather than problems makes redundant the argument about whether climate change is real…regardless of the truth (which none of us can know, not being able to predict the future), it is nevertheless good global risk management to address these risks.

These risk factors have increased in the last 100 years due partly to declining carbon levels in the soil, while at the same time carbon levels in the air have increased.  Soil has the capacity to act as a huge sink in which carbon can be stored. Putting carbon back into the soil decreases CO2 levels in the air, with the co-benefits of increasing fertility, building and retaining topsoil, improving water security, and decreasing pest and disease pressure.

In fact, many farmers have changed the way they farm in recent years because they have learnt by experience that increasing soil carbon improves their farm and improves their bottom line. For them, reducing atmospheric carbon levels is the co-benefit.

Over the two days of the conference we heard evidence and opinion from a range of scientists, politicians, and experts about various aspects of this innovative new field including new technologies, local and global movements recognising the importance of soil, and the intricacies of how the new legislation will work. I will present this mountain of fascinating information in a simplified form.

We also heard from experienced farmers, all leaders in this field, who already have years of experience in how to actually practice carbon farming at the grassroots level (pun intended). Many of these techniques are already well known to organic, biodynamic, and biological farmers; however, to the mainstream these techniques are still untested and possibly threatening. The new CFI legislation means that putting these techniques into practice can now translate into potential new income streams for all farmers, so it seems timely to start bringing discussion of these “radical” techniques into the open, so nobody is left behind.

If you’re interested in learning about new income streams for farmers, or concerned about climate change, food security, peak oil, declining soil fertility, water conservation, or any related sustainability ideas, I invite you to read, share, and comment on this series of blogs. It’s ALL about carbon…

We started the audit with a farm walk, showing Plamen (the inspector) the whole farm, including all the orchards and our boundaries; we have the Mt Alexander Regional Park on the east border (as you can see in the photo above), open farm land to the south, a disused quarry to the north and a mix of open pasture and a small patch of conventional orchard to the west.

Some of the things he asked about while we were walking around included how we control our weeds, the weed mat we’ve used in the new orchard and the types of ground cover plants we have in the orchards. Before we planted the new orchard (including this happy baby plum tree), we sowed a green manure crop, and we’ve been happy to see the amount of clover and herbs that have come up. These plants help to provide the trees with free nitrogen from the air, and other minerals that the plants mine from the ground.

Plamen had a good look at the trees that form a buffer zone between us and our neighbours, and the signs erected at our borders to alert visitors to our organic status. We explained that we prune the trees in the buffer zone differently to trees elsewhere on the property, to make them bushy and leafy as you can see in the photo below, to create an effective spray buffer. We don’t have a fence, just several rows of this variety of plums (President), which are NOT certified organic because of the spray drift. They’re kept completely separate from all our other fruit, and sold separately through the conventional wholesale market.

The packing shed, the spray shed and the coolroom all came under scrutiny next, with lots of questions about the contents of each shed, cleaning schedules, cleaning materials and our harvest, storage and packing systems. We showed Plamen our packaging materials, and explained how we transport fruit to our various markets. An explanations of the contents of the spray shed took a while, as each input that we use on the orchard (such as lime sulphur, calcium, fish hydrolysate, kelp and humic acid) must be individually checked to make sure it’s an organically allowable input. We must supply details of each farm input so NASAA can be sure we’re not introducing any contamination into the farm.

Once the outdoor infrastructure had been inspected, we retired to the warm kitchen for a cuppa and to do the paperwork.

First, we went through our updated Organic Management Plan, which is sent to us prior to the audit, and is our chance to let NASAA know of any changes we’ve made to the farm since our last audit. This year we told them about having planted the new orchard containing 1,000 apricot, peach, nectarine and plum trees, as well as a minor change to the way we input harvest records into our accounting program.

We supplied information about the size of our harvest (broken down by type of fruit), and the value of the crop this season, and provided examples of our harvest record book (see right) and our marketing records.Whenever we pick (most days during the fruit season), we record the date, variety, number of kilograms and which orchard it came from. Once the fruit has been packed we also record the number of first grade, second grade and third grade fruit.

Once packed, the fruit then goes off to a variety of markets – the wholesale market in Melbourne, our various weekend markets or sent off by courier for the online sales, all of which get recorded on our different sales records and then recorded into our financial software.

NASAA needs to test that the producer can track their produce from the point of sale, right back through the system to harvest. It’s important to be able to prove that we are not selling more of any one type of fruit than we are growing, as that would raise the question of where the extra fruit had come from. This is one of the ways the certifying bodies prevent misuse of the certification system; otherwise it would be possible to use the cover of organic certification to sell conventional produce as organic.

All certified organic products in Australia must carry the logo of the certifier (here’s our label), and the use of these logos is also strictly controlled. As a shopper buying anything organic, check for the logo and the word “certified”–anyone can label something as “organic”, but only producers and manufacturers that have been through the rigourious certification process can use a “certfiied organic” label.

Clearly organic certification in Australia is a comprehensive exercise, and is one which can give us all confidence in the organic produce that we buy!

Part of the Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability’s job is to write a “State of the Environment” report; the Raising Women’s Voices tour (which is part of the Victorian Government’s Rural Women Leading Change (RWLC) Program) is to ensure that rural women’s voices are included in the report.

Meeting with the Commissioner was a good opportunity to share some of the difficulties the Harcourt farming community has faced in the last decade. Every year of that decade

Flood in a Harcourt orchard, 2007

has held at least one (and usually more) strong environmental challenge, including drought, severely reduced water allocations, bird plagues, frost, hail and too much rain at the wrong times. The number of orchardists has also declined in that time, with only 20 remaining, on approximately 400 ha of orchard. This continues a trend since the heyday of 1918, when there were 120 growers and 910 ha of orchard.

Greengage, one of 12 plum varieties we grow

It was also a terrific chance to talk about the resilience we are striving for at Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens, in trying to improve the soil with our organic farming methods, as well as seeking diversity in all aspects of our business – from growing more than 80 varieties (spreading our harvest period, income and risk) to the importance of having secure off-farm income.

As a member of the RWLC Loddon Mallee Reference Group, Katie was also asked to co-chair a dinner held at Castlemaine in Kate’s honour, where the Commissioner shared her “Science, Policy, People” framework for action, heard stories about climate action in our community, and engaged in conversation about how governments might form policy that more accurately reflect the action that people on the ground are taking.

Katie with Mt Alexander Shire Mayor Janet Cropley, and Dr Kate Auty

The dinner was well attended by a range of women from farms, commercial and service sectors, media, local and state governments, education and health services, environment, primary industry, planning and community development and the arts – a most diverse and dynamic group of women.

A member of Kate’s team will be revisiting the region later in the year to make a number of case studies, including Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens, for inclusion in the report.

]]> http://www.mafg.com.au/blog/2011/02/environmental-sustainability/feed/ 0 http://www.mafg.com.au/blog/2011/01/from-the-chookhouse-to-the-table/ http://www.mafg.com.au/blog/2011/01/from-the-chookhouse-to-the-table/#comments Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:31:34 +0000 Katie http://www.mafg.com.au/blog/?p=288 Continue reading →]]> For a carnivore, learning how to kill your own meat is a very real way to gain appreciation of the food that goes into your mouth. Animals are a crucial part of any permaculture system, having a role in recycling waste food, providing nutrients, contributing to pest control and (when managed properly) having a positive effect on the landscape. They also contribute an important  protein source to our diet, and raising, feeding and slaughtering your own animals is certainly the most ethical way to eat meat.

Led by Laura, who was tired of working with factory farmed chicken in the restaurant trade, we recently embarked on a very personal “farmyard to table” journey. One of Laura’s goals while wwoofing in Australia was to learn how to slaughter meat for herself, so she bought some 6 week old roosters at the Castlemaine Farmers Market. They were penned next to the rest of our flock so they had company, under a beautiful shady cypress tree with a shed for shelter, and fed a plentiful diet of rain-damaged cherries and other fruit, local biodynamic wheat, household scraps and grass and weeds from around the farm.

When the boys were big enough, slaughter day arrived. Laura and Hugh had researched and constructed a killing cone to facilitate a low-stress experience for the roosters. They were upended in the cone, their heads pulled down to expose the neck, and the heads removed with one quick and decisive stroke, using a very sharp knife. The cone contained the flapping and involuntary movement, and allowed free drainage of the blood. Everyone that was home attended the slaughter and those that felt comfortable to do so killed a chicken – a challenging but worthwhile experience.

Slaughter day was one of the many rainy days we’ve had recently, so we set up a table in the shed for plucking and gutting. The birds were dipped briefly in hot water to loosen the feathers, then in cold water so they didn’t cook! The water might have been a bit hot at the start, because the first bird we dipped did not pluck easily, and the skin tore when pulling the feathers out, but the others were all ok. There were five of us on the job and five birds, so we took one each. Hugh and Laura showed the rest of us how to remove the feet and gut the birds – it seems difficult until you do it, but is actually quite easy.The birds were then rinsed, and put in the chiller to rest. Having put many, many hours into menu planning, Laura then embarked on three days of cooking, culminating in the most AMAZING dinner. Here’s the menu:To do justice to the occasion we surprised Laura with our black-tie glam.The food was, quite simply, amazing. First course, made with the chicken tenders (the part under the chicken breast), was poulet en pappillotte. When these divine little parcels were pierced the most heavenly scent was released, and the julienned cabbage, leek, carrot, capsicum and ginger in the parcel with the chicken were tender and delicious. A wonderful dish that started the evening with a tantalizing taste of what was to come.

The creamy mushroom soup for second course was a simple soup made from the most tasty chicken stock I’ve ever tried, with the addition only of cream, mushrooms and a little crunchy bacon. It was accompanied by crispy toast with a most delicious pate made from the chickens’ livers.

The next dish was a thoughtful blend of flavours and textures that came together to make a perfect dish! Chicken confit (the tenderest, most tasty chicken that had been slow cooked in butter) was combined with bitter rocket, crunchy fennel, sweet orange segments and a balsamic dressing. It was a taste sensation!

The fourth course was, I think, my favourite. A seared chicken breast sat on top of a bed of chicories (radicchio, treviso and little gem lettuces), topped with a poached egg, roasted parsnip and beet slices, and a bagna cauda sauce, made with anchovies, garlic and butter. This was such a delicious blend of flavours that I must admit to licking the plate, and had to be restrained from licking everyone else’s plates as well! Though each dish was quite small we were starting at this point to feel extremely well fed…but we moved on…

The last of the savoury dishes was a masterpiece. One of the roosters was older than the others, and consequently had a darker and gamier meat. Laura made a feature of the extra flavour of the meat by cooking it with brown butter and marjoram, and using it to stuff pierogie – Polish dumplings made to a recipe handed down in her family from her Polish grandmother. The pierogie were presented on a smear of herbed sour cream and accompanied by caramelized onion, Lambert cherries, toasted almonds and a balsamic reduction.  This was extraordinary food!

One of Laura’s aims was to incorporate chicken into each course, and her creative solution for the dessert course was to use crispy honey chicken skin as a garnish for her white nectarine jello confection that included ginger, coconut, orange cream and tuille – a beautifully moulded thin biscuit on the side. This sweet but light concoction was offset with an orange reduction and a cherry reduction (“why use one sauce when you can use two?”) and was the perfect way to finish a perfect meal.

This was the sort of meal that most ordinary mortals might get to experience only a few times in their lifetime, and we felt privileged that Laura provided this experience for us. She assures us it was also a huge treat and a great experience for her!!

To be involved with buying, feeding and slaughtering the animals and then to be present at the dinner was a special experience for our family, along with our wwoofers Melissa, Kirsten and Laura. Laura clearly has a talent for designing and executing beautifully balanced dishes, but she also has a passion to further pursue the connection from farm to table in her future career, which we are going to watch with great interest!

But first I have to share the beautiful photo that Christine, one of our serial farm visitors, shared with us to show the fruits of her labour with our fruit!

Aren’t they gorgeous? From left to right, we have Rainier conserve, Lambert conserve, Rainiers in cognac and Lambert in cognac – wow! It’s so satisfying to see our produce prepared so beautifully – thanks Christine, they look amazing!

So, feeling inspired by Christine’s efforts, the team (Kirsten, Melissa, Laura and myself) got to work on the cherries I had set aside for home use.  We started with modest ambitions of drying some cherries, and did two batches – one in the electric dehydrator and one in the oven (here’s Kirsten a-la Rosie the Riveter about to put a batch in the oven), as we couldn’t use the new home-made solar dehydrator in this weather – more posts to follow! Next was a batch of cherries stewed with star anise, cinammon and cloves, which we bottled.

Then the baking started. Oh, my goodness – dried cherry and oatmeal cookies (so named by our American guests), two types of muffin (cherry and chocolate, and cherry, peach & coconut) and cherry and peach scones. Hmmm, so that was morning tea taken care of.

Then thoughts turned to dessert. Laura got excited about making a cherry tarte tatin, which started with sugar, dotted butter and some fantastic Sam cherries in a frying pan. They simmered away until the liquid reduced to a delicious syrupy consistency.

The pie dough then goes on top of the cherries and into the oven, and once cooked, the tarte is upturned on a plate, and eaten with creme anglaise. Oh yeah…..

For most people, that would have been enough, but we still had to have…cherry pie. Two cherry pies, in fact. Melissa braved the elements to pick some rhubarb to make a rhubarb and cherry sauce to serve with the pies, and Kirsten and Laura got creative with some divine lattice work – note the cherry on top of one pie, and the goat on top of the other, in honour of our friends at Holy Goat cheese.

February is diet month!

It’s a great machine; you roll the cherries down the chute and press the handle, the pips fall into the chamber below and you catch the cherries in a bowl. It makes an arduous job quick and easy. I was extremely fortunate to be given it by one of our regular cherry customers some years ago, and it remains one of my favourite kitchen implements. The packaging is in German – the brand is “Westmark” and it’s called a “kirschomat”.

Cherry ice-cream

We’ve also sampled the delights of cherry ice-cream, having borrowed my brother-in-law’s ice-cream maker – again, absolutely delicious! It was part of a breakfast treat provided by our wonderful wwoofers Laura, Melissa and Kirsten that included pancakes, sweet potato chips, fried bananas, maple syrup and the piece de resistance – bacon ice-cream – a curious idea that makes absolute sense when you eat it!

A few years ago we grew raspberries for pick-your-own, but the harsh weather and a fungal disease called phytophthera got the better of them. In 2008 we planted a patch of the same variety (Bogong) just for the house, using disease-free plantlets, rather than the riskier roots. They’ve struggled along in the heat and dry conditions since then, and suddenly this year have surprised us by producing a delicious summer crop before Christmas – we normally start picking about February! A meditative half hour of picking this evening produced this bowlful. You can see the bonus earwig (another surprise, as our raspberries have never had earwigs before).

After removing the earwigs, the raspberries were then turned into this pie.

It is the easiest pie in the world to make. Just bake an empty pie shell (I make the pastry in the blender which is very quick – though I was slowed down slightly by a lack of flour and having to wait until Kirsten ground some more on the bicycle flour mill!). Pop the raspberries in a saucepan, add sugar to taste (raspberries are quite tart, so you do need to taste it to make sure it’s sweet enough), then once the mixture has come to the boil, add a few teaspoons of cornflour mixed with cold water. You have to pay attention and keep mixing for a few minutes to make sure the mixture doesn’t go lumpy, then cook for a few minutes until it’s gone clear again and there’s no floury taste left. I didn’t have quite enough raspberries to fill the shell, so I added some bottled apple I had left over from last year to pad it out a bit. Bit of cream on top – yummmm.

Just thought we’d give you an up close and personal look at what we’re dealing with this season. For those of you familiar with our (usually dusty) carpark at the cherry orchard, here’s how it looks at the moment:

It’s really been staggering how much rain we’ve had–we’re up to nearly 1,000mm for the year, compared with our long-term average of 550mm! And it doesn’t look like we’re finished yet, which is going to make opening the farm for pick-your-own this coming weekend a doubtful prospect.

And for the 4WD’ers amongst you, the driveway offers challenges of its own:

The 4WD track.

So, as you can see we’re really hoping that things dry out very soon, not just so that we can pick some ripe undamaged cherries but so that we can open the farm for all our customers.

We really do appreciate how patient and understanding everyone has been, and let’s wish for a dry week–here at least (while the Aussie cricket team in Adelaide are probably praying for rain to save them from an embarrassing innings defeat).

Our driveway trap for the unwary!

Welcome!

The spider wrapped up the earwig incredibly quickly and deftly, spinning it around while cocooning it in web, all the time avoiding the pincers. Every now and then she would retreat to a corner of her web and feed for a while on a fly she had tucked away there – presumably resting and gathering her strength for the ongoing battle. The orchard is full of these spiders (and many other species) – in fact they are one of the markers of a healthy organic orchard, because they’re not getting wiped out by insecticide. While we are aware they work for us eating some of the insects we don’t like, it was a real treat to see it happening up close and personal. While we don’t like earwigs in either the cherries or nectarines, they are actually useful critters in the apples, where they eat woolly aphid for us – so sometimes they’re on the team!

She wins!

Some of his enlightened suggestions including using the millions of acres of lawn in Australia for food production, and providing every kitchen with enough chooks to eat the scraps generated by the kitchen, which would wipe out the need for an industrial egg industry!

A few local producers were invited to have mini-stalls to show off their produce, so Hugh and Kirsten were kept busy giving out cherry samples, and pointing out our web address on our 100% (post-consumer) recycled, re-usable paper bags. I’m pleased to say the cherries (and the bags) were very popular.

We went home with a (signed, of course) copy of this book by Joel – one of many he has written. We chose this one because it describes “enterprise stacking” on his farm, where the land has multiple uses: the pasture-based chickens follow the cows, the rabbits share space with the chickens and everything feeds everything else. This mimics nature in that the space is filled with as many species as possible, which is the most productive (and profitable) farming system you can build.

Joel’s theory is very similar to what I’m learning in my permaculture studies, and is increasingly the way we are thinking about farming ourselves.

On our own farm this week the weather continues to dominate – on top of the 100mm of rain we had last weekend, there was a brief hailstorm (you can see the pea-sized hail stones on the front door mat). Luckily we were on the edge of the storm and have survived without too much damage – you can see a typical hole below in an Anzac peach. We still haven’t finished the thinning in the apples, pears and plums, so we have a chance to get rid of any damaged fruit in those crops. Unfortunately many of the orchardists in the Harcourt Valley weren’t so lucky, and have sustained some really serious damage to their crops.

After the rain this is the typical sort of damage we’re finding in the cherries. Unfortunately cherries split if they are ripe when it rains, and these Supreme were just about perfect to pick on Saturday when we had the major downpour. They didn’t stand a chance! Luckily it’s been very windy since, so many of the cherries have dried out and the cracks are healing, so they’re still edible!

A little river in front of the pump shed

Water running out of the orchard

Ripe cherries, when wet for any length of time, particularly if there is no wind, can split, either around the stem or on the bottom. Luckily most varieties are still green (like these in the photo) and will hopefully not be damaged by the rain.

So the ripe cherries have all been safely picked and we can listen to the rain relatively relaxed, thinking of all the good it’s doing to the peaches, and plums and apples.