Springtime delights on the Barrier As the equinox approaches here on GBI, blossoms are opening daily, complementing the green beauty, new arrivals amplify the birdsong, there’s a delicious mildness in the air, and the days continue to go by pleasantly, but too swiftly, in their on-retreat-from-the-rest-of-the-world sort of way. What a treat we had when Julia Sich of Tauranga came to the Barrier a few weeks ago to present one of her Edible Weed workshops. After the workshop was publicised in the Barrier Bulletin, it filled up quickly to the 20-person max, and a second one was scheduled for the next day! Forty lucky people! Some plants, like ox tongue (who’d have thought you could eat this!) ... ... , dove’s foot geranium, galensoga, scarlet pimpernel (small amounts only) and others, I’d spent hours weeding in Golden Bay with no idea of their names and certainly not that they’re edible! Some whose names I knew, like speedwell, I had no idea you could eat. And I got comfortable with some I knew were edible but never tried, such as creeping mallow, dock and creeping dock, cleavers and violet, and the dandelion lookalikes hawksbeard and catsear. In addition to Julia's spellbinding succession of plant identifications and revelations – wow, it’s edible! – we learned all sorts of useful tips. Some examples out of many: for a good boost of silica, soak 25 cleavers tips overnight in cold water and drink in the morning; two leaves of the violet plant contain more Vitamin C than an orange; and the leaves of wild strawberries are far more nutritious than the berries! BTW, buttercup, fumaria and spurges are not edible. I was AMAZED that many of the weeds I spent hours trying to purge from the garden (ha!) in Golden Bay for 16 years are actually not only edible but highly nutritious, much more so than the cultivated vegies in the garden! Parts of weeds you’d never expect to eat are also full of nutrition – thistle root for example, whose leaves and stalks are edible as well. And the parts of garden veges many people don’t eat are much more nutritious than those they do! Weeds are also very wise! Where humans have disturbed the environment, they enter as “nature’s plasters”, the first in succession to heal and regreen bare land. I was so intent on taking advantage of this special opportunity to learn more about something very dear to my heart, and not missing one word or plant, that I completely forgot about the camera in my jacket pocket! I caught the group the second day just as they were leaving and managed to get a photo of Julia (in the pretty dress) with Kim, someone we know here. Julia's website and book are packed with valuable information and her website includes a lovely short video: www.juliasedibleweeds.com She even sells packets of weed seeds, which may seem laughable to most people but now makes a lot more sense! What a story we heard from a guy we know! It would be great for Chris Laing’s “True Stories Told Live” evenings! I think he even told it in seven minutes or less! Russell often fishes off Medlands Beach from his small yellow plastic kayak. One day the weather was reasonably fine near Medlands though he saw more stormy conditions to the north. As he headed out, the storm headed in, and he would have turned back except that he couldn’t! He’d hooked a kingfish too long to reel in – they can reach 180 cm – and the kingfish was towing him and his kayak out to sea! Despite his dire situation he was loathe to cut the line and lose the fish! With the waves kicking up and storm clouds lowering, the fish, perhaps tired from pulling all that weight, began to swim serenely alongside the kayak, so Russell was able to head to shore, effortlessly bringing his catch with him! After a rough landing he reeled the big fish in from shore. The day after telling us this story, he arrived at our door with a snapper for us! We got our new island phone book, the Purple Pages, so called because for years the pages were purple! The Okiwi School fundraisers decided to keep the name when they finally acknowledged that the print would be more legible on white paper. The personal listings fill just over five A4 pages, actually less because, in a thoughtful touch, couples with different surnames are given two listings. All landline numbers start with 4290 so only the last three digits are listed in the directory. Did you catch the alignment of five planets in the evening sky, plus three more bonus treats, over the last couple of months? Starting near the western horizon and looking up, in perfect conditions you could see the afterglow of the sun, Venus very near the horizon, then Mercury and Jupiter, sometimes the moon, then a longer gap before Mars and Saturn, and to top it all off, the Milky Way! I doubt if that can be beat! I can’t say we actually saw the entire show, but this lucky Australian photographer did. Just like volunteering at the new organic shop within a few days of arriving in Golden Bay in 1999 (at that time run by a charitable trust), one of the first things we did here was join the North Barrier Coop, which started in the north but has members from all over the island. Once a month the coop orders bulk and packaged food in outers from Ceres Organics. In return for an $800 order every month, the coop can access the extensive Ceres catalogue at wholesale prices, which are so low compared to what we’ve been used to that they continue to take me by surprise. Members enter their orders on a google docs spreadsheet that shows by bright red digits how much or how many more of each item are needed to fill an outer, so people can “shop for bargains” to help everyone get what they want. The food comes on the barge on pallets, Gerald or Caity collect it from the Port Fitzroy wharf, several people get together in their very, very large shed to sort out and weigh, and one way or another each member’s items are delivered to them. Until recent months, we just placed our order and about ten days later thanked whoever brought it to us! That’s changed now, thank goodness! The ordering process changed and I offered to learn the new way of doing it and place the order each month. So now we’re actual cooperators in the coop! Here’s a screenshot of part of an order in progress. Have you been wondering why the post office and gift shop at Claris is called Pigeon Post? In early settlement times of sail-only travel over the Hauraki Gulf, days went by before news and information could be delivered to the mainland. In 1897 some enterprising folk seized a lucrative niche with a bustling messaging service, stamps and all, winging its way back and forth over the Gulf. Messages were written on lightweight paper fittingly known as flimsies. Most requested supplies, others were personal notes and some were from miners staking gold claims. The pigeon post was also literally a lifesaver. In September 1900, a settler's arm was shattered in an accident. A doctor and nurse responded to a pigeongram asking for help, arriving in time to save the man's life. From 1908, an undersea cable linked Port Fitzroy to the Coromandel, and all the pigeons went home to roost. The Hawkes Bay earthquake and thankfully short-lived tsumani alert finally prompted us to pack some “grab & go” bags, a precaution that for years, following every earthquake, rose to great prominence in our intentions – for a day, perhaps, and then was forgotten. If you haven’t already done it, I can tell you it’s a comforting feeling, at least comforting enough! If we have to leave in a hurry, we'll also “grab” more items that we use every day and throw them in. I asked one of the Community Board members how people are notified about evacuation, especially at night. She replied: "There's an excellent civil defence team here and we have an island-wide telephone tree that can be activated and adapted easily. It has key people in all areas lined up to make sure everyone is contacted, including house visits. During a tsunami alert the local fire trucks and police also drive up and down all the roads with sirens and loud hailers giving out the message. The system worked very well during the Kaitoke Fire a couple of years ago.” GBI was featured on a recent episode of Neighbourhood on TV1, but we thought it was bloody awful! After about ten minutes of firewood loading and unloading, most of the rest wasn’t even about the island, but photographing volcanoes in Hawaii, the advantages of making fish chowder the Irish way, and prehistoric flints collected from Kent. Winter greens in grow bags on our deck
0 Comments
|
Archives
August 2021
|