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AUGUST 2009 JACKIE FRENCH NEWS

In this month's news:

• How Backyard Chooks Can Save the World
• Wombat news
• Most Recent Books
• Most Recent Awards
• Schedule
• The August garden
• A few recipes
  • Death in the Kitchen Biscuits
  • Three delicious ways with Jerusalem artichokes

Backyard Chooks Can Save the World

Four eggs this morning!

One of them is small and round – a bantam egg from Dulcie. Dulcie is what you might call a ‘bit of everything’ chook, her ancestors were crossbred for hundreds of generations in backyard chook pens. She’s one half Australorp bantam plus a bit of Rhode Island Red and white Leghorn. She’s also fourteen years old, and only lays in winter, which is when the rest of our elderly mob of chooks stop laying.

The other eggs have come from our gorgeous new chooks. Mike bought them up from the coast for us last week. I discovered a big tin of chocolate walnut biscuits, so they had those with the rest of their tucker the next day. I reckon that’s what did it - two eggs the next day, and more every day since.
Backyard chooks are one of the best things you can do to reduce global warming, pollution, exhaustion of our natural resources and noise from trucks rumbling through the city. They’ll also give you endless fun watching them establish their pecking order. And just watching chooks scratch happily around under the lavender makes the stress flow out of you like someone has pulled out the plug. (The fact that I love chooks, of course, doesn’t mean that I am in the least biased.)

I’m serious about backyard chooks saving the world. According to a possibly unreliable source, leftover food accounts for about 15% of Britain’s contribution to global warming (I haven’t been able to find any survey of Australian habits). When your leftovers go into the rubbish, the rubbish ends up as land fill... and in the landfill all that leftover lasagne and stake bread and squishy salad rots, creating methane that seeps out into the atmosphere.

Even backyard composting scraps can produce methane.

Not to mention that one of the world’s biggest sources of methane comes from burping cows … plus a little more from their rear ends too, though it’s the burps that really do it. I’m serious – ruminants such as cows produce large amount of methane.
Chooks don’t. Eat backyard chooks or their eggs instead of cows. This will also mean that your protein doesn’t have to be flown from Indonesia (where many of our frozen and fast food chickens come from) or trucked from abattoirs a thousand kilometres away. You won’t be responsible for the animals’ pain and suffering either.

No more food scraps, because they get quickly turned into chook food. No more rotting heaps of manure – including chook manure – because with a bit of time and motion planning and attention to hygiene you’ll make sure your chook manure is regularly removed from under the perches or scraped from the chook run and mixed with garden waste to feed your fruit trees and vegies.

Plus if you use that manure to grow beans, peas or lentils you’ll be growing extra protein, so will have even less need for a cow burger. Add backyard potatoes, tea, coffee, carrots, cinnamon and a hundred other good things to eat and you’ll be reducing your impact on the planet even more.

You’ll also be richer. Even if you’re time poor and can’t do it yourself, you may find that paying someone one day a fortnight to grow your fruit and vegies and clean out your chook house doesn’t cost anything at all – the savings in grocery bills cover the cost of the wages – and if you throw in a bit of bartering of the resultant produce, well, you’re on a real winner!

End of lecture. It’s just that chook keeping makes such a lot of sense.

And I really like chooks.

Wombat News

Mothball wombat is outside, demanding breakfast.  I stopped feeding her oats and carrots more than ten years ago, when she officially became a ‘wild’ wombat instead of a hand reared one. But it seems her behaviour hasn’t changed much since Diary of a Wombat in which she plays the starring role.

A few months ago we were given a little wombat called Bruiser.  The aim is to teach him to survive and hopefully head off into the bush. The trouble is that when I try to feed him, Mothball puffs herself up to her sumo wrestler wombat size and Bruiser scuttles back into Mothball’s old hole under our bedroom, scared out of his wits.

So now I feed Mothball first, then put feed in Bruiser’s dish.

Today though Mothball waited till I’d filled her dish then followed me over to Bruiser’s. She paused, urinated in Bruiser’s dish, then wandered back to her own food.

Wombats don’t do nice. Especially Mothball.

Recent Books

Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior came out last month! It’s the first in the new series, A School for Heroes, and it’s totally hilarious, made even more so by Andrea Potter’s fabulous drawings of the Ghastly Greedle, Gloria the Gorgeous, and many other ‘heroic’ characters. I think I like Andrea’s Dr. Mussels and his fearsome bananas best of all.

For Boojum Bark, student hero and werewolf, there’s a lot to discover.

• Why does Princess Princess Sunshine Caresse von Pewke get so upset when he sniffs her bum?
• What does the mysterious Yesterday want with the school garbage?
• And where do flying pigs get their little jumpers?

Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior is a big, big book. Andy why not? If kids can find a two and a half hour movie fascinating, why not a book that takes them that long to read? It’s crammed full of universes, where Rabbits are almost as deadly as budgies,  and fairies bite and zombie spaghetti may be the most fearsome weapon of them all.

The Night They Stormed Eureka takes a fresh look at the history we thought we knew.
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels at the Eureka Stockade in 1854 have succeeded in making Australia a republic?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, with the Puddlehams, who run the best cook shop on the diggings and dream of a hotel with velvet seats, ten thousand miners who dream of gold and rebellion, and Professor Shamus O’Blivion, who tries not to dream at all.

And coming October 1…..

Baby Wombat’s Week. At last – the sequel to Diary of a Wombat.
What is even funnier – and stroppier – than a wombat?
Her baby. This is a book for children of any age …  and for their harried mothers, too.

New Awards

Both The Shaggy Gully Times and Pharaoh have been short-listed for the YABBA (Young Australians Best Book Award). Many, many thanks to everyone who nominated them… and enormous hugs to all who vote for them.

A Rose for the Anzac Boys was short listed for the CBCA awards this year, and The Camel who Crossed Australia and How High can a Kangaroo Hop? have also been made CBCANotable Books for 2009.

Schedule for 2009

I’m afraid I won’t be able to manage much more than the list below. Much as I’d love to, I’m simply not able to get to all the events out there, and have to be a little bit pragmatic – choosing those with at least 200 in the audience, which means I can speak to more people in the time I have available.

Please forgive me if I can’t come to your town, school or event – it doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I wish I were Superwoman and could do them all – and respond to every request for help or mentoring too and give detailed answers to every kid who emails for material for projects.

The August Garden

The air is sweet, the snails are on the move, and you’re eyeing the seedlings in the nursery.
Don’t do it just yet. A frost may well jump on you in two weeks’ time. (At least it probably will in my garden, at any rate). I’m planting shallots instead, and potatoes, because they won’t start to sprout till the soil is warm, not just the air.

What to plant

Vegetables:
Cold climate: Potatoes, onions, peas, spinach, turnips, broad beans.
Temperate and sub-tropical climate: IF (and only if) the soil feels warm to sit on, plant: beans, beetroot, carrots, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, eggplant, corn, lettuce, silver beet, spring onions, parsnips, tomatoes, zucchini, capsicum, chilli and melons. If it's still a bit chilly, stick to potatoes and onions.
Tropical: Beans, capsicum, sweet potato in well-drained areas, zucchini and melons where they'll mature before summer humidity zaps them.
Flowers:
Whatever is in the nursery! If I listed all the possibilities I'd go on for pages – the favourites are petunias, impatiens, zinnias, marigolds, alyssum and calendulas, but try a few new ones this year too.  Do look at 'flowering times' on the packet or punnet though, to see if they only bloom for a month or two, like sunflowers, or all through summer like petunias.

Some Gardening Questions
Note:  Please don’t send me gardening questions. Most times I’m unable to answer them and they make a pile of slowly composting letters on the dining table. Not to mention the emails…

How can I stop my cat scratching up the seedlings?
Cats love fresh earth. Try a no-dig garden, or cover your seedlings with bird netting to catch their claws. (They won’t try it again.)
Lion droppings also work. First find your lion.

How do I keep the dog out of the shrubbery?
Dogs use urine to mark their territory. You can mark it yourself instead, if your bladder is large enough or you use a chamber pot. Pretend you are a wolf: a bigger, fiercer carnivore than any dog around. Just don’t tell the neighbours that I told you to do it.

What’s killing my lemon tree?
Probably the cold; or lack of water; or it’s starving to death. If the tree is rocking, it’s root rot. Give the poor thing some companions to shelter it, and some mulch to cosset and feed it. Try a native lime instead.

How do I stop my mother weeding the garden? (She pulls out my favourite seedlings.)
Ask her to sit down with a cup of tea under the roses, instead, and throw breadcrumbs for the birds. They’ll do the weeding for you, with any luck.

How do I know if my garden’s healthy?

• If there are at least six earthworms to every spadeful of soil.
• If there are lots of things flowering at any time during the year – and there are lots of small insects buzzing round the flowers.
• If your garden is host to lizards, birds, frogs and other species.
• If your soil always has organic matter decomposing on it.
• If there’s no bare soil to be seen – just leaves and flowers and fruiting abundance.
• if it makes you, your visitors, passing kids, birds and animals feel like the world is full of joy.

Doesn’t your wombat eat the lettuces?
No, she prefers grass and weeds. But she devastates carnations.

Why is my fruit falling?
Maybe it’s too ripe. Maybe it’s been infected by fruit fly or codling moth, or damaged by frost. (And damage to the core will cause fruit to drop.) Maybe it’s too dry, too windy, or the birds have been partying up there with their boots on. Plant more trees to make up for fallen fruit, and introduce some chooks, geese or wombats to eat the fallen fruit to cure your pest problem.

How do I explain the mess my garden is in to the neighbours?
Offer them a basket of fruit ... a bunch of flowers ... or a cup of tea while you watch the honeyeaters eat all your thrips (while their thrips are demolishing the blossom next door).

Why doesn’t my garden look like yours?
You just haven’t planted enough.  Add a few groves to your garden! Fill up every crevice – and let time and your plants do the rest.

It all sounds very nice but it wouldn’t work in my garden…
Ha! Have you tried? And if the things I write about don’t work for you, use them as a basis to work out what will …

How do I kill ...?
Don’t. Spend your energy growing things, not killing things, even weeds. That’s the secret of wilderness gardening.

A Few Recipes

Death in the Kitchen Biscuits
Note: these are extremely good, and despite the name, no one who has eaten them has carked it yet.
I thought I'd invented these biscuits, but a friend ate one – and then a few more – and said his Mum called them 'death in the kitchen'. So like most good inventions they've probably been invented 1,000 times.

Makes:                     about 80 biscuits.
Ease of making:       Moderate
Time taken:              About an hour to mix and cook several batches.

They keep for up to a month in a sealed container. Better still, use several small containers so they are exposed to air as little as possible.

Ingredients
Don't worry if you can't get all the nuts and seeds listed; substitute other nuts or seeds or sultanas.
125 gm butter
1 and 1/8 cups Self Raising flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp vanilla
½ cup rolled oats
2 packets crystallised cherries, chopped
¼ cup sunflower kernels
2 packets chopped dried apricots (you can buy them pre-chopped)
1 cup white or dark choc chips
¼  cup pumpkin seeds (the edible hull-less kind)
½  cup your favourite nuts, chopped

Cream butter and sugar well. Mix in egg. Now gently mix in everything else.
Preheat and oven to 200º C. Grease and flour a tray or use baking paper. Place spoonfuls of the mix on the tray; press down lightly with a fork. Bake for ten minutes or till light – not dark or mid – brown. Remove from oven. They'll still be soft but will become crisp as they cool.
If cooking two batches at once, the lower batch will take a little longer to cook.

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

This looks creamy, though no cream is added.
Serves:                   3-4
Ease of making:    Simple
Time taken:           15 minutes, of which 10 is for cooking

Ingredients:
1 large potato, peeled
1 cup of Jerusalem artichokes, unpeeled
1 or 2 large red onions, roughly chopped
4 cups chicken stock.

Boil for ten minutes. Purée with a blender. Reheat.

Chips
Don't peel. Slice thinly. Heat extra virgin olive oil in a pan; add the slices; fry till brown. Serve hot – they'll turn soggy when cold. If you need to keep the artichoke slices before cooking, brush them with lemon juice to stop them going brown, or soak in water with added lemon juice but make sure you dry them properly before putting them in hot oil as they will spit and jump if they are still wet.

Baked
Rub with a VERY little olive oil. Bake in your hottest oven for about 15 minutes. Eat hot.

Jerusalem Artichoke and Celery Soup
Note: this is a richer soup than the one above

Ingredients:
4 stalks celery
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
2 large red onions, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled
4 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
½ a bunch of parsley
4 cups chicken stock
4 tbsps cream
20 Jerusalem artichokes, chopped

Sauté the veg except the parsley in the olive oil on a low heat till the onion is transparent.  Add the stock; boil ten minutes. Add the parsley. Blend till smooth.  Reheat to serve; add the cream just before serving.

Mashed Jerusalem Artichokes
Ingredients:
20 Jerusalem artichokes, chopped
2 large potatoes, peeled and sliced
2 heaped tbsps butter
½ cup cream
Water
Optional: finely chopped chives,

Boil the potatoes and artichokes till soft. Drain. Place on a low heat and add the butter. Mash well with a potato masher. Add the cream and stir on a low heat till the mixture thickens again – about a minute. Add the chives at the same time as the cream. Serve hot.

For more information from Jackie, please go to her website: www.jackiefrench.com

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