I thought I would share this article on my blog as I wasn’t just running late for deadline, I totally missed it. It was written on 20th December 2019.
I am running a bit late this month with deadline upon me. I spent all day working in the café with food; baking, cleaning up and baking again. My grandmother always said that a good cook cleans up their mess. I am not sure they teach this at chef school but it works for me. I get overwhelmed when I am surrounded by dirty dishes. I am overwhelmed by lots of things these days, and trying to stay a little organised keeps me sane in these crazy times.
My main source of stress comes from thinking about the future of our food sources and the impact of drought on our environment.
Now more than ever we must eat local and support our farmers and producers. I think about this often, in fact even as a young child I was fascinated by my grandmother’s vegetable garden, by our pigs, who ate our scraps, by our chooks and ducks, and by the dairy in Krambach where we took our buckets to fill up with milk. We would get a spoon and eat the cream from the top of the bucket. This was what growing up in the country meant to me. Just today while I was cracking quite a few dozen eggs, as I admired the dark yellow beautifully formed yolks, I thought about where these beautiful eggs came from. I thought about the healthy chickens wandering happily with their friends, going about their business, and kicking dirt with their feet. Our eggs come from Idlewilde farm in Elands. Like much of our produce, they don’t travel far. During the recent bushfires, this farm was almost lost. These guys were already struggling with the drought and then the fires hit. Unfortunately there are many more stories like this. Our dairy source is threatened as dairy farmers are unable to feed their cattle, there is no water, many of the paddocks are burnt. Cows that were once milked will become the beef on our table. This doesn’t seem right to me. I grew up on this land, and we just didn’t eat the dairy cow.
Last week I met Joe, he had been cleaning up on his farm at Cappara after losing everything, including his bee hives. I gave him a beer and he told me that he hoped they would return eventually. He was positive but tired. Farmers have been battling the drought for a long time, and they work hard. Emotionally they are drained. Our food sources are threatened, so what will we eat? It worries me. We are not the food bowl we were a few years ago so how will we survive into the future? I hope that it will rain, but if the rain doesn’t come, we may all be eating imported food. Let’s support our farmers and producers when we can. I understand that our local food is a bit scarce at the moment, but farmers are a resilient bunch, hopefully they will rebuild.
I will continue to support local producers as long as they have food, and as consumers you can shop at farmers markets along with many local butchers and fruit and vegetable shops that source local produce. Dine in establishments that support local.
Eat well, eat local.
Feature photo by Les Mulder of The Edible Forest Wherrol Flat
Just Bent 