Pumpkins in the Trees and Six Tonnes of Horse Manure

Hello dear readers,

And welcome to anyone who’s new here!

Here in the Hunter Valley NSW Australia, we are two weeks into Autumn and just like that, the days are shorter.

There is a crispness to the mornings and a coolness in the evening that almost warrants long sleeved shirts.

The garden has shifted gears. Almost as if it knows it’s on limited sunshine from here on in and producing as much as possible.

The tomatoes are pumping bucket loads.

Little pops of saved sunshine.

Bursting with taste and goodness.

Beetroot, chilli, carrots, eggplants require daily harvests.

Pumpkins are growing in an array of shapes and sizes. At this stage they are so inter-pollinated, it’s hard to distinguish what variety they originated from.

There are massive Kent shaped ones that are the colour of a Butternut. Butternut shaped Kents. Great Queensland Blues and little tiny Queensland Blues. Some shaped more like squash.

They are hanging from fences, up trees, across a trellis. They seem to grow right in front of your eyes. What was a tiny flowered bud at the beginning of the week is a football sized lump at the end.

A few years ago at an event hosted by the Local Land Service (Thank you Lori McKern!), with Matthew Evans as the key note speaker, my pumpkins were on the menu. Chef had roasted them with miso and pine nuts. I’m thinking we will need a similar event to get through this year’s crop.

This year’s hero is the Okra. I planted six seeds gifted at our Local Crop Swap. Dutifully they all grew up into straight plants on a single stem about 90cm tall.

From the stem sprouts the most beautiful bud that releases into a stunning yellow flower with a purple centre. This in turn folds into a cone that slips off to gently reveal the tiny fairy cap shaped Okra beneath. Within days, the fairy cap elongates into a longer tapered pod.

Okra or “Lady Fingers” often receives hate for it’s slimy interior, but honestly once you cook, it dissipates.

I’ve been cooking them in the pan with tomatoes, salt and pepper, chilli, cumin, onion and serving alongside a couple of eggs for my breakfast.

[Sidenote: if you live in the Upper Hunter, you can get pasture range eggs from Pat Collins in Muswellbrook produced by Hunter Natural Eggs - they are the closest I’ve tasted to our own eggs in Ireland].

The marigolds and cosmos flowers are towering above my head, masses of purple, pink, white and yellow.

My foray into growing dahlia has commenced and I’ve been suitably impressed by their show enough that I will be increasing my holdings next year. Explosions of intricate petals.

Autumn has spurred me full on into seed saving mode. There is a table in our kitchen specifically dedicated to the collection. Jars and jars lined up full of multicoloured maize, paper bags full of basil flower stems, envelopes of various favourite tomato seeds. Some collected from the garden, some from friends’, some from a meal and a savoured flavour at a table in a restaurant.

If someone asked if I have a vice, this is it. I can’t seem to let seeds go to waste. I find it hard to even put them into the compost.

So much potential.

So much stored DNA.

Every year I save, the next year’s seed holds the resilience of the previous year, the ability to survive in this environment.

Seed stewardship. Stewards of the seed. Seed Custodian. Seed Guardian. I’m happy to be labelled as that.

Speaking of labels, this week I received a text from a friend addressing me as Mrs Poo.

I’ve been called a lot of things, but that’s a first.

She was referring to a post I made on Instagram where I said “After 30 years in the bloodstock, advertising and marketing industries, being awarded Farmer of the Year in Ireland, I never dreamed I’d end up driving a truck picking up horse manure”.

I was referring to our new business - Circular Organics and the day I’d had.

I’d been up at 4am driving racehorses to the racetrack then later driving the 1989 Mitsubishi skip truck to pick up 6 tonnes of horse sh**te.

I was collecting stable waste from Annabel and Rob Archibald who have stables in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Scone. We’ve teamed up with Annabel and Rob to collect a mix of wood shavings, horse manure and hay.

Driving it out to the Circular Organics farm where it’s unloaded, mixed with food waste from Newcastle hospitality and over a period of eight weeks, transformed into beautiful, rich compost.

Nothing fancy, just turning, sunshine and rain. Alongside nature.

Millie Bernasconi, a journalist from the ABC picked up on the story and joined Andrew (fellow business owner in Circular Organics) and I on the bin run on Thursday night. She came along in the truck as we drove about the town after 9pm collecting food waste to be delivered back to the farm that week.

Taking what others consider waste and turning it into something that literally sustains life.

Good soil makes the best food.

Soil that isn’t propped up with synthetic fertilisers and chemicals.

Allowing nature to do her thing and balance out her own solutions.

Isn’t it funny to think how life leads you in particular directions?

I’m grateful to my parents and early life being raised on a farm.

Understanding the seasons. Animal welfare. Growth and death.

I’m grateful to the beautiful direction I was given in the bloodstock industry, firstly with Neale Lavis and his family at Strathallan Stud, to Inglis Bloodstock & Racetrack Magazine in Sydney (I’m looking at you Pete) and then for Coolmore Stud in Ireland with the master of marketing Richard Henry.

I’m thankful for the experience of creating my own advertising agency in Australia.

The sometimes stressful but ultimately incredibly rewarding experience of starting a farming business from scratch with no financial backing in Ireland that ended up winning International awards and exporting eggs to Dubai.

I’m grateful to be able to tie all of these past experiences into one lovely knot at Circular Organics.

It feels more important than ever to take care of our environment.

Plumes of black smoke rising on a screen in a country on the other side of the world. Watching unimaginable chemicals seeping into the ocean.

But all we can do is concentrate on the road in front of us.

Our own backyard. Our own community. Our own four walls.

I’m just over here making soil and saving seeds.

Kylie x

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