Isn’t it interesting that if you wait long enough what you do becomes trendy. For 26 years we have created a wholistic garden & farm, ‘Garden Quality Farming” in balance with its surroundings. Although it is a commercial orchard it is also a system that embraces the whole and provides opportunities to learn the many skills that have been lost through the generations. A successful example of such a lifestyle is rare let alone so close to a major city & costs the public purse nothing.
Whether its educational farm tours that show the overall diversity & balances that can be achieved on any scale to the home orchard , vegetable & herb gardens or natural fibre gardens its all here.
Here everything has its place under the cosmos and everything interacts with everything else creating a wholistic system. To achieve such a system takes planning, work and definitely does not happen overnight or in fact after several years. Once the quality environment starts to click into place you can then consider the quality food & lifestyle benefits.
When you live a lifestyle in harmony with nature you can enjoy your surroundings. What for example is the value of watching a fledgling wattle bird learning to fly or finding a koala in a tree you planted as a 6 inch seedling or walk through the clouds of the common brown butterflies in summer or simply observing the seasons as they pass by.
When it comes to food you can boast regular ‘meals that money can’t buy’ everything from the gardens including the wood to cook it. Just as a typical example we can start with goose liver pate- with homemade bread, roast goose or rooster stuffed with fruit and herbs depending on the season, mixed roasted vegetables including carrots, parsnips. salify, garlic, beetroot, onions fresh greens, chestnut puree (Speciality of the house) followed by a desert with berries, fruits nuts either fresh or preserved to choose from and the time and company to enjoy it.
To create a lifestyle based on quality environment, food/flavour, lifestyle you need to first jump into the slow lane so you can enjoy it and then creatively take what ever bit of earth you have be it large or small and get it into balance and harmony because nowhere else in the world will food taste the same as it does from your soil, climate under your human care.
Never forget agriculture (& therefore gardening) at its most basic level is the solar gift and work is love in action.