Category Archives: organic

cooking, Eco Thrifty Life, growing food, organic, solar cooking

Fresh, Local, Organic

Leave a comment

Here are a pair of meals I submitted to the Green Urban Living Autumn Challenge. A description of each recipe can be found there. Below are pictures in a more-or-less step-by-step ‘visual recipe’ for each. Enjoy.

The first meal comes almost entirely from our property. (All except the fresh, local cream.) Vegetarian Chili, Fresh raspberries and peaches in cream.

Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 8.02.44 AM

Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.45.21 AM Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.45.28 AM Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.45.41 AM Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.45.50 AM Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.50.13 AM Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 8.00.49 AM

 

The second meal is more local and less directly from our land. Snapper and spuds in cream sauce, sauteed broccoli and corgette, and stewed peaches in raw milk.

Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.46.53 AM Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.47.47 AM  Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.51.27 AM

Screen shot 2014-03-10 at 7.48.23 AM

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Life, food forest, garden, growing food, organic

Harvest Season Permaculture Update

Leave a comment

We have been blessed with a week of light winds and pure sunshine that has topped off our blackboy peaches, put our tomatoes into overdrive, and all of the other good things of early autumn.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.20.34 PM

We are actively saving the stones to plant more of these amazing peaches.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.21.34 PM

Hard to keep up with the tomatoes at this point, and giving away the excess.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.23.49 PM

But eagerly awaiting our first capsicum.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.24.47 PM

The tamarillos got pounded by wind three weeks ago, but are recovering now.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.25.32 PM

These autumn raspberries are fabulous.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.24.19 PM

While strawberries still going after 3+ months.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.25.42 PM

First rock melon on the way.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.24.37 PM

Pumpkins curing before storage.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.25.21 PM

Monty’s Surprise apples will be ready in another month.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.25.54 PM

Big, beautiful broccoli flourishing despite white butterflies.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.26.19 PM

Even a rare chance to harvest seaweed on our coast. It usually does not wash up here.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.22.18 PM

We were invited to have dinner with an interesting European couple who spend six months each year on their farm nearby. They gave us these gorgeous pears.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.20.59 PM

And our dear friend Murray brought us these early Tropicana apples for us to enjoy.

Screen shot 2014-02-25 at 5.21.15 PM

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Life, food forest, garden, growing food, organic, permaculture, tomatoes

Mid-Summer Permaculture Update

Leave a comment

Here are some images of our productive permaculture property during the first and second weeks of January. Highlights include our first apricots, first olives, and first kumara plants.

Beans, tomatoes, plums and apricots.
Our first pumpkins are ready.
Kumara: a new experiment.
Hiding this iron fence with driftwood.
Our first olives forming.
Agapanthus flowering everywhere.
Pears coming along. 
Monty’s Surprise apples. 
Blueberries.
Black Boy peaches. So excited. 
Yum.
A very attractive lettuce. 
Pretty cool mottling. 

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Renovation, garden, organic, weeds

Brains Not Brawn in the Garden

Leave a comment
At the ECO School, we believe in making the highest quality sustainability education affordable. Money should never be a barrier to getting top notch information to people of moderate means, and delivering that information expertly by making it logical, practical, relevant, easy to understand, and teaching to multiple intelligences.
We reach the world through the Web, and we reach out in our community (and those communities where we are invited) by working with teachers in schools, presenting to community groups, running workshops and offering consulting services. Most of our local initiatives are payable 100% in REBS, our local currency, meaning anyone can join that network and attend a workshop “on credit” and “pay” for it later by offering their own talents to the REBS network. And on top of that, all of our workshops and consulting services are designed to help people save money. In most cases, the cost of the education pays for itself in a matter of months, and after that it is all savings. Compare that to the average US or NZ university degree!
By far our most popular and most successful workshop has been “Organic Weed Control: Human Scale Design and Management” aka, “Low-Maintenance / High-Productivity Gardening.” We’ve trained over 300 people over the last four years in Australia, USA and New Zealand with excellent feedback. We will be offering this workshop on Sunday, November 13th from 1 to 5 pm here on Arawa Place. Some aspects of the programme include:
• Designing garden beds with the mantra, “Tools, Timing, Technique.”
• Improving germination rates in chunky soils.

• Tips for transplanting, spacing, staking, propagating and pruning tomatoes.
• The judicial use of mulch, and growing great garlic and onions.

• Super lazy, super productive pumpkin patches.
• Eco-thrifty compost making. For more details, click here.
And while you’re here, check out the rest of or eco-thrifty landscaping…
… including our almost finished brick patio. (John and Amy, Come back and help us complete it!)
And, most importantly, someone tell me the name of this plant. It has a thick, perennial woody root but the foliage dies back in winter. It grows everywhere in our sandy section.

Pre-registration required. Contact us through the ECO School. As always, discounted rate for our neighbors in Castlecliff.
Peace, Estwing