End of an Era

 

Four years ago I started writing for Earth Garden, a magazine I have been reading for nearly thirty years, since I started my first food garden in the inhospitable red sand garden of a little old house in Broken Hill. It had always been a dream of mine, to write for Earth Garden. It took me a long time to raise the courage to try it, but I have now had four years of articles published there, with the very sweet editor, Alan. And after fifty years of publication the magazine is now closing down. Alan and Judith have been financial councillors for the First Nations people of the Kimberley region for some years now, and they are going to devote themselves full time to that project. It's kind of hard to be mad at them about that, but I will miss the magazine. It has been a long-time companion for learning about everything garden and homestead and low-tech living. And it was the first and only place I have ever been published!

My very last article for Earth Garden is about the parts of vegetables that are often thrown away but are actually edible. How to harvest more food, in fact, from the same space, just by eating all the parts of the plant that are edible.

Celery leaves, for instance, are very edible, good for stock, and can be dried and crumbled up to add celery flavour to soups and stews when you have run out of celery.

Pea and broad bean leaves are edible, and I put them in salads and stir fries. Broccoli leaves are also good in a stir fry, as are broccoli flowers. Turnip and radish leaves are wonderful chopped into soups, and radish seed pods are hot and crunchy.

Have you tried roasting parsley root, sauteeing garlic greens or stir frying baby pumpkin leaves? Well, just know that you can, if you want to:)

I have very much enjoyed writing in Earth Garden about many of the things I also write about in this space - eating weeds, visible mending, propagating plants. My magazine gig is ending, but I'll continue chatting here about living a quiet life in a small, unregarded corner of the world, knowing that thousands of Earth Garden readers are also doing the same, tending their gardens, planting seeds, making their patches beautiful and magical and productive. Earth Garden was there for me at a time when I needed some help as a young adult - I had no idea about gardening, or doing practical things, or cooking or preserving. I had a degree in English Literature, but it didn't prepare me for the practicalities of life so much! 

I am very grateful to have this small corner of the internet to talk about living small but living very well on very little money. And I am also very grateful to have such a lovely community of readers who teach me so much and who are also very kind:)

So here's a fond farewell to Earth Garden, and its wonderful publishers, and here's to me finding another writing gig somewhere...