This is a bit of a catch-up roundup, with some links I found a while ago and some more recent. Please feel free to suggest more articles I should read in the comments!
- A really good (newly!) local blog I discovered recently is Inner Pickle. They live on an acre in the Illawarra and have a lot in common with my family, so I’m finding it really interesting following their journey. We’re actually going to meet up with them soon, too, which should be fun.
- Jenna leaves a shop assistant scratching his head and possibly calling Social Services, after telling him she needed a baby monitor that could handle the elements for her old shed up the hill (but not telling him it was for lambs!).
- I still haven’t done it yet, but I’m very keen to try out NellyMary’s idea about using a trivet when roasting meat. It’s a base of things like onions, herbs, garlic, carrot peelings, greens from the garden, etc that the meat sits on while it cooks, giving a real flavour boost.
- The bulb orders from my garden club recently came in. Spring bulbs are not just a pretty face – they take up lots of water-soluble nutrients in early spring before other plants are actively growing, and release those nutrients when they die back in summer and rot down. They can be useful planted under fruit trees in a forest garden. Thanks to Anna for this info!
- I’m thinking of the fun things you could do with the egg-bot, a robot for printing on eggs and other spherical objects. It could make the most awesome Easter eggs!
- You can do that? Some towns in Maine, USA have decided to exempt locally-produced and sold food from state and federal licensing and inspection regulations. Buyers and sellers sign an agreement waiving any liability for the consumption of that food. This allows small-scale local production of things like raw milk, meat, eggs, cheese, etc without the prohibitive costs of dealing with ridiculous state and federal compliance requirements. Awesome!
What good stuff have you been reading lately?
Comments
4 responses to “Weekly Roundup – Trivets and Egg-Bots”
Hi there,
Like the idea of local producers being able to sell food without over regulation – is great to encourage us all to assume some personal liability. There is so much disincentive for small producers to get off the ground, all the while the big supermarkets keep reaping it in.
Great blog will be lurking in future.
@Brendan: Thanks for dropping by! Yes, the big players love more regulation. They have the economies of scale to be able to spread the expense across their large volumes, and it keeps newcomers and small players out of the game.
There has to be a sensible compromise to support the little guy. I’d like to see new laws that allow producers to sell direct (i.e. not through retailers, but direct to customers) with a lot less regulation, as long as their advertising and labels clearly state that they’re regulated under the “lightweight” small-producer laws. Most of the shortcuts and deception that regulation is supposed to protect us from only comes about because producers are so big and so far removed from consumers – a small producer doesn’t want to risk harming his friends and neighbours, and won’t take chances with safety.
Hi there Darren, I just listened to your interview with Gavin…absolutely loved it and found it very interesting….
Once you use a herb & veg trivet from the garden…you won’t do anything else….I quite often cut a whole bulb of garlic and add that too…and don’t peel those onions either..there’s no need to…and the strained stock in the pan for the gravy……..well you will just have to do it, to experience the flavour….one of your lovely meat chickens would be nice sitting on one of my trivets….lovely full flavour to enjoy.
Oh! would you ever consider selling a meat chicken or bartering some goods for one? just asking……keep up the good work, I will get some jam melon seeds to you soon.
@nellymary: Sadly it’s not legal to supply people with processed home-grown chickens, only live ones. I can certainly help you if you wanted to process a chicken you own, though. The trivet sounds mouth-watering, and I think my chickens are getting a little nervous :-). Glad you enjoyed the podcast!