Antipodean Thanksgiving

Having lived in Australia my whole life (apart from a handful of weeks spent elsewhere), I feel that I've had a surprising amount of exposure to the cultural phenomenon of American Thanksgiving - almost all of it via Hollywood.

Being an incurable sweet-tooth, the thing that always caught my eye on the Thanksgiving table was pumpkin pie. Imagine that: pumpkin for dessert! (Yet another perfectly healthy vegetable corrupted by sugar! I like that concept a lot).

So this year, on the fourth Thursday in May (i.e. six months before ... or is it six months after Thanksgiving in the USA?) I decided to have a little antipodean Thanksgiving celebration - with pumpkin pie, naturally:

My pumpkin pie didn't look as pretty as the one in my cookbook, and it tasted disturbingly like hot cross buns. Not that there's anything wrong with hot cross buns, mind you - it's just that I expected something different. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, hot cross buns and pumpkin pie are both, in essence, excuses for adding large amounts of sugar and spice to a starchy base.

My verdict? The pumpkin pie was very nice, and I'm pleased to have finally tried it. But I've decided I prefer my pumpkin roasted, or turned into soup or gnocchi. Mm-mmm.

Incidentally, this date strikes me as rather late in autumn for a harvest festival (which is what Thanksgiving traditionally is, or was). For example, our pumpkins were harvested (due to the onset of frosts) over a month ago. The Canadian date for Thanksgiving (the second Monday in October) seems to be more in alignment with the actual harvest period. 

Aha! Now that I've spent 30 seconds Googling the history of Thanksgiving in the USA, I've learned (according to Mayflower History) that:

"The Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving began at some unknown date between September 21 and November 9, most likely in very early October.  The date of Thanksgiving was probably set by Lincoln to somewhat correlate with the anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod, which occurred on November 21, 1620 (by our modern Gregorian calendar--it was November 11 to the Pilgrims who used the Julian calendar)."

Note to self: I must organise a fair dinkum harvest festival next year, possibly involving the consumption of home brew, by the light of the full moon ...

May 2010: donuts, sauerkraut, mycelium, garlic

I've been trying to write a blog post about what I didn't learn at university (where I studied agricultural science). But it turns out that there is so much I didn't learn, that my post got completely out of hand, and my brain short-circuited.

So, while that post sits on the back burner until I can wrangle it into manageable instalments (or something), I thought I'd post a few tid-bits about how May 2010 is coming along so far.  

The autumn frosts keep coming, which doesn't seem to bother the chervil at all:

The comfort food also keeps coming, which is starting to take a toll on my waistline, but that's just too bad. This week I tried my hand at making donuts. They were very nice:

I feel like a strange cross between Sarah Connor and Martha Stewart. In Terminator 2, Sarah Connor can see TEOTWAWKI coming, and she responds by frantically trying to warn people. The authorities respond to Sarah's warnings by locking her up in a mental institution, where she lets off steam by doing chin-ups.

I, too, see TEOTWAWKI coming (courtesy of Peak Everything, climate change, environmental disasters, overpopulation, economic collapse, etc), and, like Sarah Connor, I've been frantically trying to warn people ... but they basically ignore me. I have to admit, being ignored is better than being locked up in a nut house, but it's still stressful, seeing the end of civilization looming, and feeling utterly powerless to do anything about it (beyond taking measures to save oneself from the worst effects of the collapse).

I can't do chin-ups (like Sarah Connor), so I let off steam by baking instead (like Martha Stewart). I find baking very meditative, and it has the added bonus of producing delicious comfort food, which makes me feel very happy (for, oh, at least 5 minutes).

Still on the food front, I decided to have a go at making sauerkraut. I've never actually tasted sauerkraut ... in fact I've never even seen sauerkraut, except in photos, so making it seemed a little bit daunting.

Everything I've read makes sauerkraut sound totally foolproof, but nevertheless I decided to follow an extra-foolproof recipe, which uses fresh yogurt whey to inoculate the cabbage with lactobacillus bacteria. (By all accounts, fresh cabbage generally brings its own lactobacillus to the party, but when it comes to microorganisms, I prefer to err on the side of caution).

My large jar of shredded, pounded, salted cabbage has had three days of fermentation on the bench now, and the mixture is expanding, as the recipe said to expect. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the finished product.

The mushroom-growing experiment I mentioned previously is coming along very nicely: we now have a fairy ring of mycelium! So far it's only a very small fairy ring, immediately surrounding one of the mushrooms I placed in a tub of compost, but from small fairy rings, big fairy rings grow. (Mycelium networks can grow to acres in size - like this one in Oregon, which has spread over more than two thousand acres. Amazing).

Here's my mycelium:

We recently planted four containers with garlic - 60 cloves in all. We planted them closer together than is normally recommended, following the general principle espoused by gardening elder John Jeavons (author of "How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine"). Only time will tell if they manage to bulb up successfully, but they're coming along nicely so far:

 

Life advice from a 16 year old? Thanks, but no thanks.

Australians everywhere wet their pants yesterday in excitement at the homecoming of 16 year old sailor, Jessica Watson, who (in case you've been living under a rock) has just completed a solo round-the-world voyage on a 10.4m sloop.

She was greeted in Sydney by thousands of people, including the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who called her "our newest hero".

Jessica's response to this hero's welcome focused heavily on the concept of dreams:

"I'm an ordinary girl who believed in her dream ... You don't have to be someone special to achieve something amazing. You've just got to have a dream, believe in it and work hard."

Jessica clearly had no shortage of belief fueling her dream: on top of her own, she also had the belief of her parents (who both gave up their day jobs to help her achieve her dream), as well as the belief of adventurer, Don McIntyre, who provided Jessica with her yacht, "Ella's Pink Lady".

Don McIntyre owns a 600 tonne icebreaker (complete with a helicopter) - so, for him, purchasing a life-size pink sloop for a teenage girl is probably roughly equivalent to an ordinary parent purchasing a Barbie Dream Boat for an ordinary girl. But Jessica Watson would have us believe that she, too, is "an ordinary girl". I beg to differ.

A 1-foot Barbie Dream Boat with plastic accessories?

ORDINARY 

A 34-foot sloop with state of the art communication and navigation equipment?

NOT ORDINARY

 (Forgive the image quality. I couldn't make it to Sydney Harbour yesterday to take a non-copyrighted photo, so I had to draw a picture instead. Unfortunately, my illustration makes Ella's Pink Lady look a bit ... ordinary).

I can't help but wonder what the dreams of Jessica's three siblings are? (She has one older sister, and a younger sister and brother). How many dreams can one family possibly accommodate, when just one of those dreams is a full time job for the dreamer's mother and father?

I don't doubt that Jessica worked very hard at realising her dream. But I think Jessica would do well to realise that she's an extraordinarily lucky young woman: lucky to have been born in an affluent country at an affluent time; lucky to have supportive parents; lucky to have the physical and mental ability to do what she dreamed of.

Not everyone is so lucky.

The day before Jessica exhorted everyone to "have a dream" and "believe in it", the body of another young woman - Nona Belomesoff - was found in a creek bed South West of Sydney. Nona was allegedly murdered by a man who knew about her dream, and took advantage of it.

According to the murdered girl's father, Nona "loved animals and saw this [meeting with her alleged murderer] as an opportunity to follow her dream. ... He said he could get her a job ... Nona said if she didn't go she would lose her job and this job was her dream. So she went, and that was the last time we saw her."

Sometimes, hard work and belief simply aren't enough to make a dream come true.  

"Extraordinary environmental campaigners" or greedy old fat cats?

What do the following men share in common:

Gerry Harvey (retail mogul)
Bob Hawke (former Prime Minister) 
Michael Jeffery (former governor-general)
Alan Jones (shock jock)
John Messara (thoroughbred breeder) and
John Singleton (advertising mogul)?

For starters, they've all got the hots for fast horses. And, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, they all helped to drive "one of Australia's most extraordinary environmental campaigns" - resulting in what is believed to be "the first time the NSW Government has rejected a mining lease after granting an exploration licence". (This means the shelving of the proposed $3.6 billion Bickham coal mine, which would have threatened the water supply of dozens of horse studs and vineyards).

The Upper House Greens' MP Lee Rhiannon says that this decision by the NSW government will "have wider significance if it is the start of a genuine shift by the Government to sustainable clean energy ... The Greens do hope that it signals a new direction ... that the Government is finally considering impacts on local communities, the natural environment and climate change implications."

Yeah, right.

The environment might well cheer the government's decision (if only it could!), but the reality is that the environment just got lucky on this occasion, because, for once, its needs happened to coincide with the desires of one of the most elite boys' clubs in Australia.

Was the government thinking about the environment while weighing up the pros and cons of this coal mine? Are you kidding? As Major Michael Jeffery pointed out in his speech at the Melbourne Cup* in 2005: "throughout Australia, racing's annual contribution to the national economy is almost $4 billion."

[* for any non-Australians who might be reading this, the Melbourne Cup is an Australian horse race known as "the race that stops a nation"].

Hmmm ... which to protect? A $3.6 billion coal mine ... or the $4 billion-a-year racing industry (which has Alan "The Parrot" Jones squawking on its behalf)? It's no surprise that the government decided to kiss the collective arse of the racing industry. Let's not pretend they've done something benevolent for the environment.

Incidentally, I'm sure it's no coincidence that the government chose to announce its decision on Scone Cup Day (which just happens to be "the richest country racing day on the national calendar").

How long will the Hunter region stay safe from open-cut coal mines? My guess is: for as long as the punters keep forking out billions of dollars every year in betting on the ponies. The horse racing industry doesn't produce anything of intrinsic value (certainly not to the tune of $4 billion per year in Australia): it is an industry built on gambling.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of the horse racing industry: spare a thought for the 70% of all thoroughbred foals born in Australia who never make it to the racetrack, and usually end their relatively short lives by being turned into dog food. (A 2008 report by the RSPCA found that 80% of the horses sent to slaughter showed signs of neglect).

Spare a thought, too, for the problem gamblers who can't truly afford the financial support they give to the horse racing industry.

When the world economy tanks, thereby forcing ordinary gamblers to stop forking out money at the betting shop, the coal industry will get whatever land it wants - because very few people in NSW are showing any signs of giving up coal-fired electricity.

We are, collectively, well on the way to getting the environment we deserve.

Every spore is sacred, every spore is good ...

When I was reading about mushrooms recently I learned about spore printing, whereby you place an opened mushroom, gills down, onto a piece of paper. Over the course of about 24 hours, enough spores fall out of the mushroom to create a print. Then, if you really know your spores, you can examine them to identify the precise parent mushroom species.

I imagined that the spores would be hard to see. Not so!

We picked our latest mushroom from the garden yesterday. I placed it on a piece of paper towel to catch the spores, and 24 hours later, I had my very first mushroom spore print:

These spores will be buried in some nice moist compost and kept in a gloomy place, to see if we can get some casings growing, and, in due course, more mushies. Fingers crossed!

Reading about growing mushrooms from spores on the internet, I'm left with the distinct impression that it's practically impossible to do, without a laboratory full of experts. We shall see. It certainly makes one wonder where the mushrooms in the backyard came from. Goodness only knows how nature ever coped before men in lab coats with sterile glassware arrived on the scene!

*****

The title of my post was, of course, inspired by Monty Python:

 

How Joseph Pilates saved my neck

 Me doing a Pilates "mermaid" on the sunny deck of the 

not-quite-finished strawbale cottage

Pilates in the sunshine is one of Louis's favourite things, too

*****

When it comes to running, I'm more wombat than cheetah. I can trundle along and cover a reasonable amount of ground if I have to - but, Baby, I was not born to run.

Nevertheless, several years ago I used to go for a 3.5km jog most mornings - and all too often, by mid afternoon, I'd have a headache so bad that I had to either lie down or risk falling over.

The headache situation became ridiculous in fairly short order, so I went to the local physiotherapist and described the exact nature of my headaches to her. She listened and nodded, and told me that she was going to attempt to reproduce my headache.

Hmmmm ... OK...

She stuck her thumb into the right side of my neck just under the base of my skull, and bang! Instant headache. This came as no surprise to her - the pain I had described was being caused by muscle tension interfering with a particular nerve in my neck.

Then she got me to demonstrate my walking and jogging for her, and her immediate response was: "Gee, your legs are very different lengths, aren't they?"

What? Really? My legs are different lengths?

She measured my legs from hip to ankle, and sure enough, the right one was almost an inch shorter than the left.

You might be wondering how on Earth I could not have noticed such a large discrepancy in my legs ... but my legs have always just been my legs, and I simply have no experience of what it's like to have legs of equal length.

The physio loosened up my neck for me, gave me a few neck stretches to do, and strongly recommended Pilates. I was so impressed with her diagnosis of my problem that I figured her recommendation of Pilates was probably good advice. In fact, it was one of the best pieces of advice I think I've ever received.


Brooke Siler's amazing "Pilates Body"

I went to the nearest bookshop and was lucky enough to stumble upon Brooke Siler's excellent book: The Pilates Body - "the ultimate at-home guide to strengthening, lengthening and toning your body - without machines".

I just can't praise Siler's book too highly, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

Siler's book is chock-a-block with clear photographs showing each stage of each exercise. The accompanying text is detailed and precise, so it allows you to get started with Pilates in the time it takes to read the introductory chapter - with no expensive equipment or classes necessary.


Pilates - yoga for inflexible atheists?

For people who have no idea what Pilates is, I often describe it as yoga minus the spirituality. I don't have much experience with yoga, but I have found that I can't spend 5 minutes researching yoga without coming across references to "spiritual energy" and other kinds of mysticism.

Another point of difference between yoga and Pilates: I've read that, while Joseph Pilates' exercises were strongly influenced by yoga, yoga is more about stretch, while Pilates is more about strength. 

I enjoy thinking of Pilates as yoga for atheists - but apparently some Christians approve of Pilates because, unlike yoga, it is "spiritually neutral". Yet, they warn, "there are reasons for Christians to exercise discernment when deciding whether to participate in Pilates exercises", because some Pilates instructors "drink deep from the New Age well"(!)

On the other hand, some long-term devotees of Pilates are appalled by suggestions that Pilates lacks spirituality. According to them, "Pilates has been practically messianic in its spirit and still is for those who understand it. Joe was trying to change the world! We, his followers, were referred to as his disciples."

I'm not convinced that Joseph Pilates' "disciples" help their cause by making Pilates sound like some sort of religious cult. But even I have been tempted, on occasion, to refer to the Pilates exercise program as miraculous. In my experience, it's really that good.  


Why I love Pilates

When I first took a look at the Matwork exercises in Brooke Siler's book, I thought: "Easy."

Wrong!

It turned out that I couldn't do even the most basic exercises without resorting to the Siler-approved cheats (she calls them "modifications") for all the poor blobs who are too weak to hold our legs off the floor for a count of 100, or are too inflexible to circle our legs in the air without bending at the knee.

So, the exercises are challenging enough for beginners to be ... challenging. And yet they're easy enough to be achievable with just a few sessions' worth of honest effort.

And once you master a Pilates exercise, my experience is that your body retains a remarkable muscle memory of that exercise, meaning that you'll never find it as hard in the future as you found it the first time you attempted it.

I haven't dedicated a large amount of time to Pilates by any stretch of the imagination: I usually spend about 10 minutes per session, several times a week, doing the first five exercises in the Pilates Mat Program. I don't find it onerous or time consuming - on the contrary, I always feel much better for having done it.

But sometimes, I don't do Pilates for a while - and then I really notice it, because my back starts feeling like a rusty old gate when I get up in the morning. So, back to the mat I go, and the problem can usually be resolved in a couple of minutes with a quick warm-up and a "rollover" or three:

As Joseph Pilates said: "Physical fitness can neither be achieved by wishful thinking nor outright purchase". But if you're willing to invest some time and effort, the rewards can be amazing.

For proof, just take a look at Joe Pilates at the age of 82:

"In 10 sessions, you will feel the difference,
In 20 sessions, you will see the difference,
In 30 sessions, you’ll have an entirely new body" Joseph H. Pilates

Childless and elderly: not as terrifying as you might think

There was an extraordinary headline in the Sydney Morning Herald online today (on Mothers' Day, of all days): Anglicans argue for fewer kids.
The article says, in part:

The Anglican Church wants Australians to have fewer children and has urged the federal government to scrap the baby bonus and cut immigration levels.

The General Synod of the Anglican Church has issued a warning that current rates of population growth are unsustainable and potentially out of step with church doctrine - including the eighth commandment 'thou shall not steal'.

In a significant intervention, the Anglican Public Affairs Commission has also warned concerned Christians that remaining silent "is little different from supporting further overpopulation and ecological degradation".

Wow. You know that things are really changing when (some) Christians start viewing unbridled reproduction as a sin. A sin!

This latest Anglican advice is, sadly, in stark contrast to the Catholic advice which remains, in essence, Go forth and multiply! For example, earlier this year the president of the Vatican bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, declared that the true cause of the global economic crisis is the decline in the birth rate.

For the record, I'm an atheist - but I'm more than happy to join with the Anglicans in not remaining silent on the subject of overpopulation. Hence, today I've decided to explain just one of the reasons why I'm very comfortable with my decision not to have children. 

When I mention being childless by choice, one of the first questions most people ask me is: "But ... who will look after you when you're old?".

My answer is: I will look after myself, or (to paraphrase Yossarian) I'll die in the attempt.

 (Incidentally, do people really have children with their own geriatric care in mind? If so, it strikes me as ironic that childless women are so often labelled as selfish - as well as bitter, unnatural, and evil - for not having children. Go figure.)

I was sharply reminded of just how precious good health and physical independence are in 2004, when I spent 15 days in Westmead hospital as a result of shattering my right knee in a motorbike accident, and ending up with a raging infection.

The hospital bed opposite mine was occupied by a frail old lady with a broken arm, and mild dementia. Her name was Philomena. Philomena and I actually shared the same birthday, albeit 52 years apart.

As incredible as this might sound, more than once while she was in hospital, Philomena missed out on meals because there was no one to help her eat them. (Myself and my neighbour, Margaret, would gladly have fed Philomena, if only we'd been physically able to move out of our own beds -- Maragret was under traction with a broken pelvis, thanks to a moron who ran over her while she was cycling in a designated bicycle lane).

Can you imagine? A frail 81 year old lady going without food in an Australian hospital in 2004. (It is pertinent to note that Philomena had a daughter who visited her regularly - but not at meal times).

Margaret and I kicked up a stink, ensuring that, at the very least, someone woke Philomena up at meal times, removed the fiddly seals from her drinks, and cut up her food for her. But even then she ate so laboriously that she often wasn't able to finish her meal before the kitchen staff came and took her plate away.

Looking across the room at that helpless old lady, I decided to make damn sure that I'd take real steps to keep myself fit and healthy into old age. This is one of the reasons that I haul myself out of bed to walk five miles (8km), five mornings a week. (Another reason I do it is because I actually love my morning walk - but it can be hard to remember that at 6:30 on a frosty morning, when I'd much rather go back to sleep).

How to avoid falling over and breaking your arm when you're 81

Some health problems result from sheer bad luck - but, bad luck aside, most people know perfectly well how to become (or remain) relatively fit and healthy. (It's implementing the knowledge that's the hard part).  

For anyone who's hopelessly unfit, balance training can be a really good place to start. The kind of balance skills that can save you from a potentially fatal fall when you're elderly are as simple as "changing direction to walk backward or sideways, changing speed, walking on a plank and stepping over small obstacles". It's really that simple!

Maintaining high levels of bone density is another very good idea for a healthy old age. So, eat calcium-rich foods and do strength training, and weight-bearing exercise. For me, that includes Pilates, push-ups, and my regular morning walk.

Keep your brain healthy by "doing puzzles, reading, writing, and learning new things".

Maintain your cardiovascular fitness with regular aerobic exercise. Once again, brisk walking will do. Digging in the garden is good, too!

I know several obese, chronically-unfit mothers who will be lucky to make it to old age. I know other mothers whose children have died or been permanently disabled in terrible accidents. I know yet others who have become estranged from their adult children for various reasons.

Nobody knows for sure what the future will bring. So why not plan to take care of yourself when you're old, rather than hoping or expecting that your children will be there to do it for you?

And for anyone who might be examining the issue of whether or not to have any children at all: don't let the mothers of the world scare you into reproducing!

Old age doesn't have to be a time of helpless dependence and infirmity - just ask this 76 year old marathon runner:

Image source: Rancho Spenardo

Australian farmers: victims, or perpetrators?

The Age ran an article yesterday under the headline "Farmers' voice needs to be loud and proud to bridge the city-country divide". The article was written by Deborah Bain, a Victorian wool grower who established Farm Day - "an annual event in which a city family is matched to a farm family for a day of fun, friendship and understanding".

Bain's article focused on the "rural-urban divide" - which I agree is both real and problematic in Australia. But Bain lost me when she stated that Australian farmers are "among the best producers in the world - from an environmental and animal welfare position."

Surely, she can't be serious? Just scroll down to see some photos from past Farm Days of Australian farming practices, and tell me if you honestly believe that this is the kind of environmentalism and animal welfare that Aussie farmers should be "loud and proud" about:

(Edited 8 May 2010: I have acquiesced to Deborah Bain's request to remove the Farm Day images from this post. The image above is from Wikimedia Commons).

Earlier in her article, Bain was complaining that "the consumer" is "easily manipulated by negative claims about farming practices." Maybe Bain needs to think a bit harder about why people make negative claims about Australian farming practices.

Personally, I can't think of a positive word to say about the farmers near where I live (and this is not to say that I think farmers further afield are generally any better - although there are certainly notable exceptions, such as Hazelcombe and Milkwood farms).

Our local farmers' "management" practices give me the impression that they are, by and large, unobservant people who consistently act in ways that are harmful to their land and their animals.

Are times tough for farmers? Yes! But that's an integral part of the big picture: farmers experiencing severe stress (which is often exacerbated by the degraded state of their land) make decisions based on perceived necessity, not on grounds of animal or environmental welfare.

For example, take this piece of formal advice from Angus Australia regarding drought management for beef producers: "Be careful that the decision [to provide maintenance feed] is made on a rational examination of costs and returns". The implied message is: let your cattle go hungry if it's "rational" to do so.

My home is surrounded by severely over-grazed, compacted, weed-infested farms. The animals (mostly sheep and cattle) are treated like mobile lumps of unfeeling protein. For example, the sheep are typically shorn in winter (which is stressful for them). Black steers are left in paddocks on scorching hot days without a stick of shade (which is stressful for them). These ordinary farming practices are a cruel parody of "animal welfare".

And then there are the agricultural abominations of factory farming, live sheep exports, and mulesing. (I have zero sympathy for farmers who mules their sheep, which is a cruel practice. If you "have to" flay lambs in order to prevent flystrike, then you're farming the wrong animals in the wrong place. Either move your farm, or grow something better suited to your environment - but don't tell me it's "animal welfare").

When I was 16 I did some work experience with a vet in rural NSW. During that time I learned that being a country vet was all about sex and death. The vet's job is basically to keep animals healthy enough to be reproduced, and/or killed, profitably. (Incidentally, I had the memorable experience of collecting a jar of bull semen that week - and let me tell you, that stuff doesn't come from a supermarket shelf!)

I understand and accept that farming livestock involves certain "practicalities" - typically culminating in the slaughter of the animal. So why can't farming spokespeople like Deborah Bain just acknowledge this fact, and stop pretending that farming is about animal welfare? Or, better yet, why can't they stop talking about animal welfare, and start practising it?

As for the common refrain that (to quote one of the people who commented on Bain's article): "The vast majority of today's farmers are extremely conscious of environmental issues - after all, our land is our income source."

Well, yes, that may indeed be the case. But being conscious of an issue is not the same thing as addressing that issue satisfactorily. After all, the vast majority of alcoholics are "extremely conscious" of alcohol - but that hardly means they handle alcohol responsibly.

And finally: earning income from a piece of land doesn't automatically make your land management practices good and/or sustainable. Heck, my great grandfather was a Welsh coal miner, and look what happened to his land-based income source. The Earth owes nobody an income.

As Jared Diamond observed in his book Collapse, Australian farmers have been "mining" the Australian landscape for generations - to the extent that "many problems that could eventually become crippling in other First World countries and already are so in some Third World countries - such as overgrazing, salinization, soil erosion, water shortages, and man-made droughts - have already become severe in Australia" (p.379).

Below are were some photos from Deborah Bain's pet project, Farm Day. These agricultural scenes don't look like shining examples of animal welfare and environmental sustainability to me. Rather, they look like the mining of Australia.

(Edited 8 May 2010: Deborah Bain was upset about me using Farm Day images in this post, so I have replaced those images with links to the original images on the Farm Day website, and I've added some alternative images from other sources below). 

A barren, overgrazed paddock:
(Image removed at request of Deborah Bain.
See original image on FarmDay website.)

Cute children in a barren, overgrazed paddock:
(Image removed at request of Deborah Bain.
See original image on FarmDay website.)

More cute children in yet another overgrazed paddock:
(Image removed at request of Deborah Bain.
See original image on FarmDay website.)

Heavy machinery - totally unsustainable in the long term. Apparently this farmer hasn't embraced the looming reality of Peak Oil yet:
(Image removed at request of Deborah Bain.
See original image on FarmDay website.)

*****

Below are a few Australian farming images to replace the ones that Deborah Bain didn't want me to share with you ...

Livestock transport: the journey to the abattoir (or to the dock, for sheep unfortunate enough to be shipped alive to the Middle East) is typically stressful for livestock.

Image source: Live Export Shame


Native fauna and flora: I have never met a sheep farmer who doesn't regard the kangaroo as an enemy. Australian farmers are generally so tightly bound to their traditional British farming roots that they still (after more than 200 years) generally treat the native Australian flora and fauna as foes to be destroyed and replaced. I have witnessed a typical kangaroo cull on a typical Aussie farm, whereby hundreds of roos are shot, and left to rot on the ground. This is not animal welfare, nor is it a clever and sustainable way to live in the Australian environment.

The image below is from the roo cull in Belconnen in 2008. These roos were buried in a large pit.

   
Image source: Kangaroo protection coalition


Factory farming: most chickens in Australia spend the majority of their lives in cramped cages that don't even allow birds the simple "luxury" of stretching their wings. Most pigs are treated just as cruelly. Most people wouldn't dream of treating a budgerigar or a dog in such a horrible way.

 
Image source: No caged eggs 


Exacerbating the problems of drought: "There is a huge amount of dust in the air from the dry conditions and farmers ploughing the soil when it is dry, hoping for some follow up rain".

Text and image source: Wikimedia Commons


"Dust storm covers the city of Wagga Wagga reducing visibility to 2 kilometres. The dust storm was caused by strong winds moving though south-eastern Australia whipping up valuable top soil from drought affected paddocks" .

Text and image source: Wikimedia Commons

Mushrooms, past and present

The first mushroom I ever ate that didn't come from a supermarket shelf was this one:



This mushroom was truly the size of a dinner plate, and it was quite unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

The year was 1998, the finder was Colin (pictured), and the place was central Wales. I was in Wales visiting a pen friend - Tim - whom I'd been corresponding with since we were both 13 years old (remember snail mail??)

Anyway ... Tim had friends who lived in a country house that made me feel like I'd fallen into a fairy tale. It was quaint and beautiful, and the surrounding landscape was preposterously green and lush compared with my own brown and sunburnt country. This is where the giant mushroom came from:



Back then, I simply couldn't imagine being able to step outside to pick some field mushrooms from my own garden. But a few days ago, I experienced that very pleasure - right here in Dorothea Mackellar's land of droughts and flooding rains.



Prior to this little crop of dark-gilled beauties, the only mushrooms (or toadstools) we've seen around here have either had white gills (and therefore shouldn't be eaten), or else have been so bizarre-looking that you wouldn't dream of putting one in your mouth. For example, I named this magnificent toadstool "poo on sticks" (because, as I've mentioned before, I'm not very creative when it comes to naming things):



Finally, before anyone goes out picking and eating wild mushrooms for the first time, it's customary to have the bejeezus scared out of you by horror stories about mushroom-picking jaunts gone horribly, horribly wrong. These misadventures often result in entire families needing emergency liver transplants a week or so after eating the wrong type of mushroom.

For example, here is a suitably scary story about how the deathcap mushroom is "on the move", poisoning unsuspecting mushroomers in Australia.

The general advice is: be absolutely certain about what you're eating, and never accept mushrooms from a stranger!

Taking a closer look at ... leftover Gyprock

The shed received a much-needed clean-out today. With the straw bale cottage being built over the past six months or so, the shed has accumulated piles of fittings and fixtures, bits and pieces, odds, ends, and off-cuts.

I'm a pack rat from way back, so I find it very hard to throw anything away - because you just never know when it might come in handy! (I come from a family where things like string and rubber bands were always saved for re-use. And I was honestly surprised the day I learned that most people don't unwrap presents carefully in order to save the wrapping paper for another occasion).

So ... what to do with the many off-cuts of Gyprock plasterboard which have been piling up neatly (but uselessly) against a wall in the shed?

On pondering this question, my mind wandered back to an image on page 76 of Peter Bennett's book "Organic Gardening (6th Edition)". The image is really quite memorable: it shows a lady with neatly coiffed hair and a generous bosom, wearing a tight pink t-shirt, blue flares, and red sandals. Here she is:



Anyway, the significant part of the image is not the lady herself, but rather, what she's doing, which is: dressing the soil with gypsum.

What is gypsum?

Gypsum is a soft mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula CaSO4·2H2O (thanks Wikipedia).

Among gardeners, gypsum is renowned for its ability to break up clay, making it more workable and improving its drainage. And according to Peter Bennett (whose photo I borrowed, above):

Being moderately water soluble, gypsum readily dissociates into free calcium ions and sulphate ions thereby supplying two major plants nutrients in a very readily available form. [...]

There can be no doubt whatever that many of the so-called "superphosphate responses" in crops have nothing whatsoever to do with the phosphate content of "super" but are purely sulphur responses arising from the sulphate radical of the gypsum which is the "other half" of superphosphate.

What's Gyprock made of? Gypsum!

So, why not compost the scraps of Gyprock, and put them in the garden? I wasn't 100% sure if this was a good idea, so I consulted Google, and discovered this discussion over in the Gardening Australia Online Forum.

Someone on the forum simply wanted to know if it was safe to use leftover plasterboard in their garden - but, as far as I can tell, there's no such thing as a simple answer on a gardening forum.

Some people were sure it was fine, while others thought it was a very bad idea. One person believed that using plasterboard in the garden would be dangerous because (he claimed) plasterboard is allowed to contain up to 100mg/kg of lead under Australian standards, which is (he wrote) "a very high concentration of lead".

Hmmm. What to think?

My next move was to check the manufacturer's MSDS (material safety data sheet). You can find CSR's MSDS for GYPROCK Plasterboard here.

The MSDS contained no unpleasant surprises.

It stated that Gyprock is >95% gypsum, and 4-9% paper lining (don't ask me about CSR's arithmetic or how they can fit >95% + 9% of material into a product. I dunno).

The worst risk they mention in relation to Gyprock is that "repeated exposure may cause skin dryness", and, if you get hungry enough to eat the stuff, you may experience "abdominal discomfort."

The "Hazardous Decomposition Products" listed are: "None".

So what about the risk of lead contamination?

I work in the chocolate industry, where lead contamination is a very serious issue. For example, did you know that commercial cocoa powders quite commonly contain 0.2ppm of lead? That's twice the concentration considered safe by the US FDA for children to consume.

So, if more than 0.1ppm of lead is considered to be unsafe for children to consume, then a concentration of 100mg/kg (that's the same as 100ppm) in plasterboard is astronomical ... isn't it?

Well, yes and no.

First there's the fact that most plasterboard probably doesn't contain anything like that amount of lead. Even if the standards do technically allow such high levels (and I'm not convinced that they do) I can find no evidence to suggest that the average piece of Gyprock actually contains any lead whatsoever.

Then there's the fact that it's not at all uncommon for commercial fertilisers to contain all kinds of heavy metals and other nasties - including lead, cadmium, and even arsenic. This is because fertilizer often consists of various industrial by-products from environmentally dubious industries such as mining. (I nearly fell over when I read the small print on a bag of citrus fertiliser once about ten years ago, and I've never touched the stuff since then).

The third thing to keep in mind is that a particular lead level in soil doesn't produce anything near that level of lead in plants grown in that soil.

Carl J. Rosen of the University of Minnesota wrote an informative article on the subject of Lead in the Home Garden and Urban Soil Environment.

He explains that surface agricultural soil in the USA contains an average lead concentration of 10ppm, and that dangerous exposure to lead comes from two major sources:

1) lead-based paint, and
2) auto emissions.

Furthermore, Rosen explains:

The most serious source of exposure to soil lead is through direct ingestion (eating) of contaminated soil or dust. In general, plants do not absorb or accumulate lead. However, in soils testing high in lead, it is possible for some lead to be taken up. Studies have shown that lead does not readily accumulate in the fruiting parts of vegetable and fruit crops (e.g., corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, strawberries, apples). Higher concentrations are more likely to be found in leafy vegetables (e.g., lettuce) and on the surface of root crops (e.g., carrots).

Since plants do not take up large quantities of soil lead, the lead levels in soil considered safe for plants will be much higher than soil lead levels where eating of soil is a concern (pica). Generally, it has been considered safe to use garden produce grown in soils with total lead levels less than 300 ppm.

We live in a toxic world where even breast milk is almost universally tainted with toxic chemicals. Sad but true (and just one more reason why I'll be remaining childless by choice).

If I had to choose between having a fertile garden with a few grams of lead in it, or an un-fertile and unproductive garden, I'd take the fertile garden every time.

So, it looks like my scraps of Gyprock will be going into the compost - and I'll be sure to let you know if I die of lead poisoning any time soon.

Remembering the first ANZAC day

I remember trying to explain the concept of "ANZAC day" to a Swiss friend once. He was incredulous that we Aussies had turned a hopelessly botched attack on Turkey into a national holiday.

Personally, I am amazed that the Turks welcome so many Aussie war tourists on ANZAC day every year. As Martin Flanagan observed in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Imagine if the descendants of the Japanese pilots who bombed Darwin held an emotional service beneath the Japanese flag on the shores of Darwin Harbour each year".

In essence, ANZAC day is a day of remembering, so today I'm remembering my great grandmother's brother, Vivian, and his mate, Norman - both of whom had the misfortune of being among the first men to hit the beach at Gallipoli on that first ANZAC day in 1915.

It's a shame that we, as a nation, only seem to remember this dreadful stuff for one day each year.

*****

The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 3 August 1914.

Less than four weeks later (on 29 August), two young miners from Broken Hill in NSW signed up with the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) in Adelaide. Both men gave their home address as the New Wentworth Hotel, Broken Hill. Their names were Norman Ernest Davis and Vivian Clarence Bence. Vivian (pictured below) was my great, great uncle.



Who knows what Norman and Vivian were thinking when they enlisted for "Service Abroad"? It seems likely that even Adelaide would have been an exciting place compared with Broken Hill. But, whatever it was they were thinking, they couldn't possibly have imagined what they'd just signed up for.

On their attestation papers, in response to the question about previous military service, both Norman and Vivian list membership of the Orange Rifle Club as their only relevant experience.

Both men were assigned to the 10th Battalion (B Company). They sailed from Adelaide on the HMAT Ascanius on 20 October 1914.

The 10th Battalion's official war diary from that very first ANZAC day reads, in part:

At 3 am on Sunday 25th April B+D Coy & HQ=Bn staff, Signallers and scouts left the PRINCE OF WALES to the cutters life boats to be towed to within about 50 yards of the shore by steam boats.

Absolute silence was maintained by all men and boats & directly the boats were cast off by the steamers and quietly rowed towards the shore dawn was just breaking 04.15 no sound was heard except the splashing of the oars, we thought that our landing was to be affected quite unopposed, but when our boats were within 30 yards of the beach a rifle was fired from the hill in front of us above the beach, right in front where we were heading for, almost immediately heavy rifle and machine gun fire was opened upon us, we had to row another 15 yards or so before we reached water shallow enough to get out of our boats, this was at about 04.15

We got out of our boats into about 3’ of water & landed on a stony bottom the stones were round & slimy & many Officers and men slipped on them & fell into the water, but all bravely & silently made all hast to reach the beach, under a perfect hail of bullets, many men fixed their bayonets before reaching the shore. I ordered men to lie down, fix bayonets & remove packs. This was done in a couple of minutes. The men of the 9th 10th & 11th Bn were all mixed up on the beach, but there was no time to reorganise so ordered all to advance.

The men sprang to their feet at once & with a cheer charged up the hill held by the Turks and drove them off it. Following up their success by firing on the quickly retreating foe. Shortly after this, the two Companies A & B, off the torpedo Destroyer reached the beach, they were subjected to heavy Shrapnel and Machine Gun fire, these companies pushed on quickly and soon joined us in a general advance.

By about 08.30 we were about a mile inland & were holding by hill and ridge in front of it, we then pushed on to SHRAPNEL HILL & I reported to the Brigadier Col Macfagan, he was anxious for us to push on to the west ridge but as the enemy just then developed a strong counter attack he decided that we should "dig in" on the forward slope of SHRAPNEL RIDGE N/E.

The ANZACS "dug in" at Gallipoli for the remainder of 1915.

Vivian's military record has just one entry pertaining to the time he spent on the Gallipoli Peninsula: on 4 September 1915, he was punished for "Not complying with an order. Absent from duty".

Perhaps, after more than four months of risking his life for King and country, Vivian decided to take what is colloquially known these days as "a mental health day". Or maybe he had just received the news that his mate, Norman, had died 4 days earlier.

Norman was shot in the head at Gallipoli on 18 August 1915. He was taken to the Canadian Hospital on the island of Lemnos where he died thirteen days later, of septic meningitis and a compound fracture of the skull.

Norman Ernest Davis died on 31 August 1915 - one year and 2 days after enlisting.

Norman's effects were recorded and returned to his father in Orange. They consisted of: "Cuff links. Wrist watch (damaged). Body belt. Razor."

Uncle Vivian survived Gallipoli, and was subsequently sent to the Western Front. He survived the Western Front too, and eventually returned to outback Australia - which probably never seemed quite so boring again.

Here's to the memories of:

No.840, Private V.C. Bence, 10th Battalion, and his mate
No.825, Private N.E. Davis, 10th Battalion.

Lest we forget.



Private N.E Davis, died 31/8/15.
Buried: Portianos Cemetery, Mudros West, Lemnos island, Greece.
Source: http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au

Pumpkin Season

We had our first frost last week, which hit our pumpkin vine pretty hard - although it has sprouted new leaves near one of the less ripe pumpkins, so I've decided to leave that one on the vine, in the hope that it will continue to ripen for a little while longer.

I have read over at the Pumpkin Nook that pumpkins can be ripened off the vine by placing them in warm sunshine for a period of days, or even weeks. But as with tomatoes (and just about any other fruit you could mention), it seems logical that ripening on the plant will give by far the best result.

This year's pumpkin vine is a Queensland Blue that sprang out of the old compost heap. The vine only produced 4 mature pumpkins, but from an investment of 1 little pumpkin seed, and no water except what fell from the sky, I'm delighted with the outcome. Here I am with my first pumpkin of the season (the label "Pumpkin Bumpkin" springs to mind) ...



Given that each pumpkin is about the size of a slightly deflated basketball, they can do a remarkably good job of hiding. I knew there was a fourth pumpkin in there somewhere, but it took me a while to find it ...



The flavour and texture of this pumpkin was lovely, but it wasn't as sweet as it might have been. I guess that's my punishment for allowing it to be so severely overgrown and shaded from the sun during its ripening phase.

This pumpkin weighed in at just over 4kg. A few hundred grams of it went into making some fresh pumpkin gnocchi (yum!). The next half-kilo or so will go into a pumpkin pie (because I have a special talent for turning perfectly wholesome vegetables into sweet and heavenly comfort food).

I haiku. Do you?

One of my all time favourite books is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, and one of the main characters in that book, Bobby Shaftoe, is a compulsive composer of haiku.

We are never told why Shaftoe is so captivated by this particular form of Japanese poetry - but, really, what's not to love about it?

Haiku is a structurally simple form of poetry that anyone can write - and quickly. (I remember being set the task of writing haiku in primary school, whereas we were never asked to write, say, a sonnet, an ode, or an epic narrative poem).

Of course, writing haiku well is another matter entirely. But it's intriguing to me that even the most basic attempt at haiku seems to create a very particular type of head-space, whereby your brain filters out large volumes of extraneous fluff in an attempt to capture the very essence of whatever it is you're trying to describe. After all, haiku is nothing if not economical, and that linguistic economy produces a mental state that feels (to me) very much like meditation.

So, below are three autumnal haiku, inspired by yesterday's outing to a currently under-utilized quarter-acre block of land known as "the creek block" (I'm not very creative when it comes to naming segments of land).

If you need a mental break some time soon, I urge you: write a haiku. It will be fun. I promise.

Incidentally, the word haiku is both singular and plural, and the structure is:

5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables.


Haiku on hops
=============
Dry autumn lantern,
Brown, and golden, and bitter.
Hint of summer beer.




Haiku on mowing
===============
Roaring blade on wheels
chews up grass, fuel, and time.
Neat lawn, quiet life.

(Does fuel have one syllable or two? How about oil? Apparently, I'm not the first person to ponder this thorny issue).




Haiku on pitchfork
==================
Bent tines, worn handle.
Lost, and sorely missed. Now found,
in the neighbours' yard.

The "bleeding heart" turns to stone

Last week I had a nightmare in which I was holding my heart in my hands and wringing it out into a plastic bucket.

As my heart's blood finished dripping into the bucket, I jolted awake, close to panic, and was left wondering for a few minutes if I was actually having a heart attack. (The experience even came complete with genuine chest pain - which, thankfully, went away as my heart rate returned to normal).

This dream - the first one I've remembered for a long time - nagged at me for the rest of the day. What exactly was my subconscious mind telling me?

I went to Google for a dream analysis, and learned that I was probably either:

a) falling in love [not likely: love never felt this bad],
b) experiencing an emotional hurt of some kind, or
c) attempting to get to the heart of some matter.

Bleeding hearts can also represent desperation, despair, extreme sadness and sympathy.

Funnily enough, I've been known as a "bleeding heart" for most of my life. (According to Wiktionary, a bleeding heart is "a person considered to be over-sympathetic to the supposed plight of the underprivileged or exploited").

Here's the thing: it's fairly easy to be sympathetic to all sorts of people (e.g. "the underprivileged") when resources are abundant, and energy is cheap. Under such circumstances, fairness seems, well, only fair. And charity is both affordable and heart-warming.

When the super-abundance of cheap energy dwindles, though, and global financial crises snowball, charity becomes more and more difficult to afford.

But does charity ever become categorically unaffordable? If so, how do you know when (and what) to stop giving?

Mother Teresa famously implored people to love their neighbours, and to "give until it hurts" - which brings me to the subject of my neighbours, who also happen to be my tenants ...

In 2006, via a series of complicated circumstances, I rented my house (a charmless, 4-bedroom renovator's delight - pictured below) to a family with 5 young children. The father was known to me as a hard worker, and at that point the family of seven was living in a one-bedroom unit. (The housing in our town consists mostly of one- and two-bedroom worker's cottages, built around 1920. Houses with more than 3 bedrooms are as rare as hen's teeth around here).



I figured that the family needed a break, and I was in a position to give them one. They were very happy to be able to move into a (relatively) large house in a quiet street, and for a couple of years they were very good tenants.

Then, in 2009, the father was caught growing dope (but that's a whole other story) and he was sent away for several months of court-ordered rehab (or to prison, depending on which version of the story happens to be true).

Fast-forward to 2010:

The carpet in the dining room has not been worn out so much as composted - with the help of copious quantities of spilled food and drink, and a very relaxed approach to cleaning. In fact, the tenants informed us just this week that the dining room carpet had become so smelly that they removed it and threw it away. (They're now in the process of ruining the un-polished floorboards that had been protected by the carpet).

Most of the balusters on the stairway are broken and missing.

The baby gate we lent them when they moved in was destroyed and thrown away (whereas an identical baby gate, purchased at the same time, is still in daily use with our dogs, and is still in perfect working order).

The laminated particle-board kitchen bench has been utterly destroyed by a leak that the tenants didn't bother to either fix, catch the water from in a bucket, or tell us about.

The front door is coming off its hinges, and is being dragged over the carpet - helping to complete the destruction of both the door and the carpet.

The eldest boy has kicked a hole in his bedroom wall.

A window was broken. (The tenants had it repaired within a week - resulting in late rent that month).

Another window was broken. (The tenants decided to repair it themselves - with cardboard and sticky tape).

The list goes on, and on, but you get the picture.

As Lang was leaving the house the other day after replacing the leaking kitchen tap, he noticed the tenants' seven year old daughter writing on the wall.

"Did you say anything to her?", I asked.

"What could I have said that would have made a difference?", he replied. "She tells her own mother to fuck off, and the wall was already covered in writing anyway."

We've bent over backwards to let this large and "underprivileged" family stay in the house - while we live in a corrugated iron shed with no windows and no running water.

So.

My heart has been wrung out, and the writing is on the wall.

Their lease won't be renewed next February, and as a result of having made this decision, I feel both mean and happy.

In praise of fresh, flaky, home made croissants

If you enjoy baking, and you enjoy eating croissants, then home made croissants are definitely worth the effort. Here are some I prepared earlier:



This croissant recipe comes from Tamara Milstein's "The House Book of Bread". As Milstein says, croissants are not really difficult to make, but getting the dough perfect takes time - so the first hint is: start making the dough the day before you want to eat your crispy crescents.

I've made this recipe with and without the recommended chilling periods. The chilling substantially increases the flakiness, but the un-chilled version is still delicious, and much quicker to make ... just not very flaky ... which probably defeats the whole purpose of croissants.

For any experienced bread bakers reading this: the recipe below is basically a slightly sweet, milky bread dough, laminated with layers of butter. If you have your own favourite bread dough recipe, you might prefer to use that instead (for example, I've seen croissant recipes that are based on mulitgrain dough, and sour dough).



INGREDIENTS (makes 8 croissants)

400g (2 2/3 cups) bread flour
30g (1 rounded Tbspn) brown sugar
2 tspn instant yeast
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup hot water
---
170g butter for laminating


METHOD

Here are the basic steps, which I'll expand below:

1) Make dough as for bread
2) CHILL dough in fridge for 2 hours
3) LAMINATE dough with half of butter
4) Repeat step 2 -> CHILL
5) Repeat step 3 -> LAMINATE
6) Repeat step 2 -> CHILL
7) Form croissants
8) Allow croissants to rise for about an hour
9) Glaze croissants with milk
10) Bake for about 10 minutes at 220C (425F)

1) To make the dough: combine and knead first 5 ingredients. (If any bread-making beginners happen to be reading this, feel free to ask if you need help with making basic bread dough).

2), 4), 6) CHILL:
Allow the dough to chill in the fridge for 2 hours or longer (or cheat like I do and put it in the freezer for a shorter time). The idea is to keep the dough nice and cold so that it doesn't melt the butter, but you don't want the dough to dry out or become un-rollable, so keep it covered, and don't let it freeze solid.

3), 5) LAMINATE:
The idea with lamination is to get thin, alternating layers of dough and butter happening.
So: take the chilled dough, and roll it into a rectangle roughly 45cm x 20cm.
Cover two-thirds of the rectangle with half of the butter. (Milstein suggests slicing the butter very thinly with a vegetable peeler. I just ended up with melted butter all over my hands when I tried that, so instead I spread softened butter over the dough, and that worked fine - although I suspect the pastry purists would disapprove).
Fold the top (un-buttered) third of dough down onto the middle (buttered) third; then fold the bottom (buttered) third of dough up onto the folded-down third. (You should now have a square-ish bundle of alternating dough and butter layers).
If your dough and butter is still chilled, roll the bundle into a rectangle once again, and fold the dough into thirds again (without adding any more butter at this stage). If you used soft butter to laminate the dough, then return the lot to the fridge for its chilling period prior to rolling. (And if these instructions are completely incomprehensible, give me a shout and I'll put together an illustrated version ... or something).

7) FORM CROISSANTS:
Roll the thoroughly chilled and laminated dough into a rectangle roughly 60cm x 25cm (it should be about 5mm thick).
Slice the dough into four 15cm x 25cm strips.
Slice each strip in half diagonally, so that you get eight long triangles.
Firmly roll each triangle up, starting at the base.
Bend each roll into a crescent shape, and place them onto a baking tray.

9) GLAZE WITH MILK
I glaze the croissants immediately after step 7 by rolling them in a shallow bowl of cold milk. This works well for a cheat like me, but every recipe I've seen says to let the croissants rise for about an hour, and then brush with milk shortly before baking.

10) BAKE
Milstein's recipe says to bake the croissants for 10 minutes at 240C (465F), but my first batch burnt on the bottoms within 7 minutes at that temperature.
With our oven, I've found that 10 minutes at 220C (425F) works perfectly.

Ozymandias - every Doomer's favourite poem

I first came across "Ozymandias" as a character in John Christopher's post-apocalyptic trilogy for young people: The Tripods.

I still remember the first time I lost myself in those fantastic books. I was staying at my aunt and uncle's place in the country for the school holidays. My aunt and uncle were both school teachers, and they had a library that would enrapture any bookish child.

I was utterly captivated by the trilogy's young heroes (Will, Henry, and Beanpole) whose adventures are sparked by the words of a mysterious Vagrant who calls himself Ozymandias.

Many years passed before I realised that Ozymandias is, in fact, the title of a "real" (and quite famous) sonnet by a real (and quite famous) poet - Percy Bysshe Shelley. Anyway, it's not hard to see why Ozymandias is a poem beloved of so many writers who concern themselves with the subject of collapse:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Addicted to Growth

Do you know what fractional reserve banking is? If you don't, you really should.

If you do understand fractional reserve banking - and its consequences - then you understand that our civilization is hooked on an economic growth cycle that can't be broken without destroying the very economy that our comfy, greedy civilization is built upon.

We, as a civilization, are addicted to debt. We're also addicted to debt's alter ego: economic growth.

You can't repay debt without economic growth, and you can't grow the economy on thin air. Economic growth is based on having more stuff to sell, and more (or wealthier) people to sell it to - which is achieved via all kinds of activities, ranging from pulling energy and minerals out of the ground, to importing new consumers from foreign countries. Unfortunately, most of the things we "make money" from are unsustainable in the long term.

Anyone who sits down and really thinks about it can understand that perpetual growth on a finite planet simply isn't possible. If your body kept growing and growing and growing, it would eventually collapse and die. Similarly, if the human population keeps growing, eventually the ecosystems that sustain us will collapse and die. (Whether the planet can sustainably support 1 billion people or 1 trillion people is beside the point. The point is: there are physical limits to growth, beyond which life-supporting systems cannot survive). Obviously, the growth has to stop at some point in time - and when it does, it's going to be very, very ugly.

Fractional reserve banking is a form of black magic: it is the system that conveniently allows banks to reach into thin air and bring previously non-existent money into existence. The banks then lend that money to their customers, with a handsome interest rate attached to the loan. That debt is paid back via economic growth.

If you've ever borrowed a 5- or 6-figure sum of money (to buy something like a new car or a house), I'll bet you 50 magic bucks that you never saw that money as cash. You never held that money in your hands, did you? Why not? Because, thanks to the magic of fractional reserve banking, most of that money doesn't really exist.

Do you know what a "cash reserve ratio" is? It's the minimum reserve of cash that each bank must physically hold in relation to customer deposits and notes. So, if you deposit your hard-earned pay of $1,000 into a bank with a cash reserve ratio of 10%, then the bank is only obliged to keep $100 of cold hard cash on hand to cover your deposit. It's free to lend the remaining $900 (your $900) to whomsoever it pleases - and, at a much higher interest rate than you receive on your deposit.

Do you know what the cash reserve ratio for Australian banks is? It's 0%. Yes: zero percent. In other words, an Australian bank is not obliged to hang onto a single dollar in cash to cover your deposit.

The really tricky part comes next. When you transfer your borrowed money to the seller of your new house or car, the money almost inevitably goes into the seller's bank account, which means the bank can lend that same money out again ... and again ... and again. That is the magic of fractional reserve banking! And that is why we can't collectively choose to simply hop off the debt/growth merry-go-round. If we did, the banks would collapse, and they'd take our economy down with them.

But if we don't remove ourselves from the debt/growth cycle, then sooner or later, our life-supporting ecosystems will collapse. Hence, we find ourselves in a sticky Catch-22 situation: stuffed if we do, and even more stuffed if we don't.

If everyone went to the bank today to convert their money into cash, the banks would all collapse before morning tea time. When that happens, it's called a run on the bank, and a run on the bank is a scary prospect for anyone who cares about their money. The current global financial crisis has witnessed numerous runs on banks, including the one that sent Bear Stearns down the toilet.

I'm taking steps to reduce my debt, and to make my life as sustainable and self-sufficient as possible.

What are you doing?