Hatchet work

STOOLERY

 

Some of my older SCA vegetable research part 1

 

A Profile of the

Carrot

Carrots belong to the species Daucus carota which exhibits great diversity in the form of both its roots and flowers (Brandenburg 1981).

Afghanistan is considered to be the region from which carrots spread to the rest of the world (Banga 1957). Where it spread through Arab expansion (Banga 1957). Recent research indicates that wild carrot subspecies native to Europe influenced the development of European carrots through natural cross-pollination; the main influence appears to be the presence of carrot varieties with fleshy white roots (Brandenburg 1981).

The following description from "Le Menagier de Paris" gives an excellent account of the use of carrots in Medieval France:

“take carrots as many as you wish, and when they are well cleaned and chopped in pieces, cook them like the turnips. (Carrots are red roots which are sold at the Halles in baskets, and each basket costs one blanc.)” “TURNIPS; you remove the head, the tail and other whiskers and roots, then they are peeled, then wash in two or three changes of hot water, very hot, then cook in hot meat stock, pork, beef or mutton. (Le Menager de Paris)”

AERTSEN, Pieter Market Woman with Vegetable Stall
1567. Orange and Red carrots can be seen in this image.
O Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Parsnips and Skirret

Despite some similarities skirret and parsnip are both different vegetables to carrots. It must be noted however that in part of our time period the term pastinaca could refer to parsnips, carrots or Skirret, so try to read with the context and any description in mind. 

Some available Pre-Orange varieties

Dragon (Purple Dragon): Reddish purple exterior with amazing contrasting yellow orange interior. Sweet almost spicy flavour.

Carrot Purple Dragon

Lubyana
Bright yellow Heirloom Carrot from Slovenia similar in size to a Scarlet Nantes but with taller tops. It has a mild and sweet flavour.

Flemish white

Flemish heirloom white carrot first recorded in gardens of the 1500’s May be the same or similar to White Belgian 

Dragon is a stunning carrot to look at and although cooking dulls the reddish purple colour to red brown they still stand out amongst orange carrots both in colour and in taste. Lubyana is also a delicious carrot and has a pale colour the texture is slightly coarser, making this carrot a perfect candidate for stews and casseroles.

I would definitely recommend these varieties for taste and appearance. While the origins of Dragon are unknown it exhibits the colour of medieval carrots, being red ( or purple), While it may not be a variety from this period, it is an older variety which is likely to be descended from the period forms and would prove a good substitute in the garden and Kitchen.

   

Bibliography

     

• Banga O 1957 “Origin of the European cultivated carrot” Euphytica, Issue Volume 6,  Number 1 / February, 1957 Pages 54-63

• Harvey John 1995 “An Elizabethan Seed-List” Garden History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter, 1995), pp. 242-245

• Brandenburg W A 1981 “Possible relationships between wild and cultivated carrots (Daucus carota L.) In the Netherlands”     Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution, Vol 29, No 1, pp 369-375.

• Interactions between wild and cultivated carrots (Daucus carota L.)

In the Netherlands

E.H.M. Wijnheijmerl, W.A. Brandenburg' and S .J. Ter Bor Euphytica 40: 1 47-154 (1989)

• Cook E, Friedman D,  Hinson J Le Menagier de Paris  Le Menagier de Paris Translation from the French edition of Jerome Pichon published in 1846. Footnotes marked JP are by him; those marked JH are by Janet Hinson, the translator; those marked DDF and EGC are by David Friedman and Elizabeth Cook, respectively.

Accessed online http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html

 -Richard Gardiner, Profitable instnuctionsfor the manuring, sowing, and  planting of kitchen gardens, 1599;

Digging up the future

 Overburden :The material overlying a mineral deposit

 

 

Step One in establishing an open cut mine: Remove the overburden

This is awesome! 
Hidden in the stacks Documents recently rediscovered in the NSW State Library may help to to strengthen and renew Aboriginal languages.

Melting?

Sometimes if feel as though I am in Antarctica, standing face into the cold dry wind. Waiting.
watching for the first bulbs of spring. Sometimes I picture the great forests of Nothofagus, fragments and fossils now. On darker nights I can see myself watching for the first flowers of spring. Even in my antarctic dreams I cannot free myself from hope.

A slightly rambling post mainly about the "Green Revolution"

This part of me began one Sunday in church. There was no Sunday school for the kids during the sermon so we sat through the whole thing. Usually I concentrated on making the votive candles blur into stars by squinting. But on this day  my ears perked up when farms were mentioned.   I don't remember the exact context of the sermon, but the image of a poor farmer using poisons so his crop would flourish then having to eat them, despite the risks didn't just stick in my mind, it influenced my beliefs profoundly.
This was in the early 1980's and the green revolution was in full swing, proclaiming an imminent end to world hunger.

  Why was there a perceived need for a new way of doing things?
In the Punjab regions of India and Pakistan increases in yield were historically associated with increases in the amount of land under cultivation (Murgai et al 2001).. Naturally this pattern of continued growth is unsustainable and undesirable. In order to increase yields there are 3 other areas which can be turned to, irrigation,  new plant varieties and irrigation projects.

   And that is just what was done in these regions, irrigation schemes were established, fertilisers were applied and  "improved" or higher yielding varieties of crops were planted.
The result unsurprisingly was an increase in the yield from these regions. 
  But that is not the end of the story at all.
 The situation can be summarised  as follows.....
  In 2001 In the Indian sate of Haryana

• 82% of the geographic area already under cultivation 

•  Fertiliser requirements have increased

• 60% of the geographical area faces soil degradation

•  Since 1985, the water table has risen more than 1m annually, and patches of salinity have started to appear at the farm level.

(Singh 2000).
 To increase yields most of the land that could be farmed was being farmed,  fertility, soil structure and water quality have all being negatively impacted and in order to keep yields high or to increase them further investment has being required. The marginal return has diminished reducing the resilience of the system.
 And that is when you start needing to run to stay in the same spot, constantly coming up with new farming methods, plant varieties and finding ways of reducing costs.
What is more the situation must be reversed if yields are not to decrease and that, takes money.

Australia has had similar experience with salinity and water quality in the wheat belts and in cropping areas such as the Lockyer valley.  Salinity resulting from irrigation practises in Australia affects about 16% of the agricultural area, and up tot 67% of the agricultural area has a potential for ‘transient salinity’ which involves temporary build ups of salts within soils.(Rengasamy 2006)
  Essentially our current methods of farming are not sustainable and ultimately reduce the ability of agricultural land to produce sufficient food to feed the world.

  Currently I'm reading up on this and sometime soon will write up a post about this. Be warned this post is also likely to be edited a lot.

References

• Murgai R, Ali M,Byerlee   2001 Productivity Growth and sustainability in post Green Revolution Agriculture: The case of the Indian and Pakistani Punjabs, The world Bank research observer vol 16  no 2  pp199-218.

• Singh R B 2000 Environmental consequences of agricultural development: a case study from the Green Revolution state of Haryana, India,Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 82 (2000) 97–103

•  Rengasamy P 2006 World salinization with emphasis on Australia Journal of Experimental Botany Volume 57, Issue 5 Pp. 1017-1023.

Wind and interviews.

Sitting across from the 2 person panel I am feeling competent and confident that the somewhat small portfolio I have brought with me is going to be adequate. I answer questions, explain my approach to situations and provide examples of my work. I make sure I talk to both members of the panel, making eye contact, they smile and nod, tolerating or agreeing I do not know.
 I manage to avoid saying anything terrible, I even manage to stay on track! Usually I am mister tangent, returning to the original subject sometimes hours or even days later.

And then, 25 minutes later it is over. I have to wait to find out if I am deemed to be suitable, if I will be placed in a pool of teachers or if I will be advised to do more casual work and told to come back again next year.

So I leave the building and walk into a cold wind. It shakes the leaves and reaches toward my bones. The next bus is an hour away and I quickly realise that these are not my walking shoes. 
 

  The occasional public servant walks past wrapped warmly, focused on their destination, often clutching a disposable coffee cup. Icy fingers of wind ruffle my hair as even the windscreen washer decides it's time to call it a day, and those guys are tough!

 The weather is glorious and for a change I am not sweating in my heavy coat, although I leave my tie around my neck like a miniature scarf.
I look around at the tall white gums and the bare Hawthorns, the odd red berry still clinging to the leafless branches.

  As I wait in the sterile bus shelter, flocks of parrots fly past, defying their tropical stereotype, unseen by the drivers below them in the constant stream of traffic.
 I amuse myself taking photos of plants and buildings with my phone and pondering idle questions. Then I remember where I am, and my doubtful self kicks in,  perhaps taking pictures of government offices in the capital might seem suspicious.
So I stop.
 I arrive home and get a phone call,  "are you available for a 4 week period next term?" I am now being considered for a contract, which is very good news indeed.

Black cockatoos

  Past my window

              Black Cockatoos fly

                         Singing of coming rain

More on food security

 This is a link to the AFSA

Australian food sovereignty alliance, rates the three parties on food policy

Cold morning musings

 Pitt street,
cold stone arches over me
cool winds blow through me.
Traffic flows at full ebb, commuters in their shells, couriers
all on journeys I can only guess at, as I sit and wait for my own journey to begin again.














Then I see, just one or two almost lost in the river  of travelers, vegetables, fruit packed tight.

And so I imagine it's journey from Flemington, from the new market to the old.

How many hands does my food pass through before it reaches mine?


When I reach my destination, step through my front door,
I wonder....

Which journey is longer, mine or my foods.

Waiting for the bus to Canberra. Pitt street Central station Sydney

Ok, so I want to know how you came to look at my Blog!!! Leave a comment if you have visited this blog :)  or not :)

Nightstalk..... 

  This is something I am doing to increase peoples awareness of wildlife, in my case in Canberra. Of course I'm just offering my brains and previous experience, the program itself is run by Perth Zoo. I also realize that they rely on sponsorship from a Mining Company, I still think that the potential benefits may be great though.

For more info and to find out how to organize a Night-stalk to invite me along to go to ......

http://www.perthzoo.wa.gov.au/act/night-stalk/

I think this is a really important opportunity, Let me know if you are interested. (I am not affiliated with this program or institution)

I like the legs of this high chair/child's chair, and it's timber darkened with age. There was another chair of a similar sort but painted green.

I 

I also found these Yokes interesting, with a much squarer cut than the type I saw last year at the Emmaville Museum. These and the chairs are from the Tenterfield historical society museum, Tenterfield NSW

Below are pictures of the Yoke from the Emmaville museum, the shape is more rounded and resembles the turned yokes I have seen pictures of. Possibly the  Tenterfield examples may have been made without the use of a lathe, or made by someone who gained their skills/concept of a yoke in a different region. Either way the yokes appear to have found use in mining rather than as is often pictured by milkmaids. 

Shall I lichen Thee to a fence post

Moving forward, and learning to accept that change can be beyond my control and to be ok with that, at least a little ok anyway.  More Importantly, tomorrow I hunt....There are Frogs croaking that I cannot Identify by sound and I have to know...cos it's interesting! I caught a glimpse of one it was chocolate coloured. So camera in hand I will go down to the river.
For now though, here is the old pond,

 

Furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

 

The ancient pond
A frog leaps in
The sound of the water.

 

Matsuo Basho