The kitchen team in action!
We have done a lot of work since the last PDC. In the last 2 1/2 months we changed the Learning Space to another building, added a kitchen to prepare beautiful garden grown food and have insulated our water heaters. We have added some wind protection in the student chill space and both Learning Space and Student Chill Space are carpeted. The kitchen has a nice bit of vinyl on the floor.
Lucia, Marlon and Tracey
Today we started another PDC course. I (Zaia) make breakfast and morning tea for the students every morning, and we have the lovely Tracey, a Permaculture converted highly trained chef, preparing lunch and dinner. She is helped by Lucia, who just happened to call us a few days ago and was keen to help. My 11 year old son Marlon also helps whenever he is not at school.
There are lots of greens and other beautiful foods in abundance in the garden at the moment, and they are picked and prepared to make wonderful salads and soups. Today for lunch we had a quinoa tabouleh, salad with a beautiful avocado dressing (made by Marlon) and a warming vegetable soup with kale and cayenne pepper as added sides. Tonight we will have a vegetable curry with rice for dinner, with salad from the garden again. For morning tea we had home made Gluten Free chocolate chip cookies and afternoon tea was fruit. We have a mandarin tree fruiting quite abundantly in the garden, which we pick from every day.
Garden abundance!
Strawberries are also fruiting, so for tomorrow’s breakfast I am planning porridge with dates, home grown bananas and strawberries, and yoghurt and cream, with honey on the side. We feel that food is extremely important, after all, a big part of Permaculture is growing your own! We try to use a lot of what we grow, other foods are bought supporting local growers as much as possible. We will refine this process in the future, trying to reduce food mileage as much as possible. Hopefully there will come a time when we will be able to feed students and helpers totally from the property!
The new Learning Space
Day 1 of the PDC and the students are out in the compost area of the garden at the moment, making an 18 day compost. The sun is slowly going down and the air is cooling, but we have another hot dinner to look forward to! The wood fires are lit for their hot showers tonight and there will be a Permaculture DVD to watch after dinner. It is fantastic having another wonderful group of people sharing our space with us for 2 weeks, and we hope we can share information and perhaps even inspire them!
Raking the grass for the 18 day compost
Making the 18 day compost as part of the PDC
