Peddle, gather, cook, bottle (food activity alphabetised by return)

Our community has a local benefit concert and fundraiser for the survivors of the fires this coming Sunday and I spent the early part of the week thinking what I could contribute that didn't mean burning cash or burning carbon. We both have no work at present, which makes us time-rich and extremely productive in all manner of non-capitalist activity, while at the same time shitting ourselves with mounting bills.

I borrowed Meg's bike, which has a handy detachable front basket, and trawled the town for street fruit. I asked the local librarian, Janet, if I could harvest the rhubarb from the small community garden at the back of the library and she happily agreed, and I found some feral apples and pears ripe and delicious. I also noted other varieties of apples, nectarines and pears that would be ripe over the next few weeks and noted that many of the feral trees which had a substantial build up of humus at their base had disease-free apples. I cooked all the fruit together and added local honey.

I then peddled to O's to exchange some of our old glass jars for his larger, uniformed, black-lidded ones. I stayed for lunch, talked about brewing beer and gathered more apples and a branch of red-flowering eucalypt for my gal on the way home.

These small bottled gifts are for the organisers of the event – friends – folk who have worked hard over the past few weeks to organise the forthcoming day. As a child my folks had a successful cottage industry manufacturing jellies, mustards, chutneys and jams and this week I felt the spirit of that familial activity return.

Compost & Cos

Today I killed Bill. She wasn't getting better with the garlic water and we couldn't justify the expense of a vet, nor the fantasy of industrial pharmaceuticals. I killed her as part of redressing the compost area, which looked like this at about 5pm. 

At 4.30pm I brought the black and white bins, full of kitchen scraps, back from Ben's cafe, laid Billy to rest at the base of the right-hand bay, tore up several cardboard boxes and placed them over her. I then wet down this elegiac layer and heaped on Ben's scraps, straw from the coup and Meg's day's weeding material, before covering up both bays to cook the compost.

The bay on the left (above), that I last turned here for Hamish Morgan – who today sent more reference humus: Katherine Gibson's 'The End of Capitalism' – is almost ready for use on the garden.

I picked our finest cos lettuce (above right) and returned Ben's bins, proudly presenting the first exchange of our casual gift-ecology.