Tilba Tilba/1st WWOOF place

ECO LIVING CENTER near Tilba Tilba

The main building, built in 1925, was an old cheese factory, and is now being renovated by Andrew North and used to run a solar heating business. The business provides "Ecological Solutions for modern living" particularly solar heated water, heating, cooling, ventilation and solar power. This center is going to be known as C.E.A.D.S. @ Tilba Tilba - a bio-regional center for health and sustainability. C.E.A.D.S. aims to bring together Community Environment Art Design and Science.

www.livedesigns.com.au

Jon and I rode south 5 hours from Sydney in this white van, catching a ride from Andrew while he was in Sydney seeing clients and picking up glass tubes for his solar water heating installations.

The trees on the front of Andrew's property are absolutely huge. They are massive towering trees, taller than any other deciduous tree I have ever seen, but at the same time gentle with their light-colored smooth trunks and delicate powdery green leaves.



Andrew's property is 1 acre at the foot of Mount Dromedary.











These 2 photos are taken from Andrew's driveway. The road on the right, up over the hill, leads to Tilba Tilba and then further on to Central Tilba.





























Our first day of WWOOFing at the Eco Living Center. There are 4 WWOOFers, Lena from Germany, Yo-Shi from Japan and Jon and I. We are weeding and doing fence work in part of Andrew's property and looking out at the beautiful brown Jersey cows in the pasture next to us.

There are lime, lemon and orange trees, warrigal greens (wild spinach), rhubarb, lettuce and herbs in this part of the garden.







A small
Dairy Farm
is our next door
neighbor.





























I say a small dairy farm because it looks like a small operation with a small building, but they milk 320 cows and have 20 that are calving at a time.























The milk goes to a local place up the coast to be made into cheese. I see the big silver tanked truck rolling up the lane every day at around 5pm to pick up the milk.

















































The farm is very close, right over the fence, and we go there every day to get milk, wonderful rich, creamy yellowish milk. The above photos are from my first trip to the milking barn; a local man, a retired farmer, is filling up his jars with milk. How fine to be able to bring your own bottles to the farm in a little basket and fill up with milk, a strong connection to where your food comes from and to your neighbor's life as well.











Jon and the calves watch each other.

CHEESE MAKING

Lemons from Andrew's citrus trees...













...lemons that I am using to make cheese.....and making cheese from the milk next door.

I heated the milk and added lemon juice, about 3 lemons, and a little bit of vinegar, until the fat in the milk coagulates.


























































Curd strained with cheesecloth and hung up overnight, letting all of the whey drip into a bowl.

cheese with fresh thyme and cracked green peppercorn

cheese with currants, ground persimmon seeds, dried figs and poppy seeds

a glorious soak in the milk/whey, leftover from cheesemaking, and hot bathwater
the whey can be used for many things so nothing needs to go to waste

Another WWOOFer
at Andrew's place,
Yoshi from Japan.




















Lena, a WWOOFer from Germany with an armload of harvested rhubarb and swiss chard.

POMELO fruit
native to SE Asia and tastes like a mild grapefruit
(a tangelo is a hybrid between a tangerine and a pomelo)

My first taste of NATIVE FOODS

























...a tad tart and
a bit sweet with
a crisp foamy
texture.





















And speaking of native foods, when we were digging in the garden, we found this grub, a rather large squirming grub, that Andrew said was a WITCHETTY GRUB, the sort that was/is a native food, sometimes toasted and other times eaten raw. Well, I was not convinced that this was a witchetty grub specifically, so I did not want to eat it, but Jon did. After thinking about it and watching it exist in his blue-gloved hand for awhile, Jon put it in his mouth and with a crunch, crunch and a twitch of his head, Jon had eaten this grub! In this day Jon had gone surfing, seen a wallaby, and eaten what he thought was a witchetty grub - three very quintessential Australian things!

A pat on the back to Jon for eating this thing in this raw state whether it is, or is not, a witchetty grub!

I will continue my grub research and identification and post my findings later.

I found 2 great books, Bush Foods by Margaret-Mary Turner-Neale and Bush Food by Jennifer Isaacs, which is where these 2 images originate. After reading a bit, I think that Jon's grub was not a witchetty grub, as the witchetty grub is found only in the roots of a witchetty shrub and they look very different from the one that we found on Andrew's land. Still researching though....

More native foods growing at Andrew's house, WARRIGAL GREENS, a wild spinach.

























































Jon and chainsaw work, using the wood for raised garden beds and for along pathways at Andew's house.

Yoshi and I weeding the lavendar bush plantings

This was our best weed/garden tool, and my Altas gloves were perfect to bring with me WWOOFing. Thank you Jeremy for introducing me to them.

GALAH / Cacatua roseicapilla

I found these beautiful pink feathers in the grass while weeding the lavendar bush area. They are from a bird called a GALAH, a small pink and grey cockatoo, that I had been seeing and hearing noisily roost in the nearby tree.

"Like most cockatoos they are considered pests in grain-growing districts as they invade growing crops as well as harvested seeds. Their depredations have been held responsible for the demise of oilseed cropping in the Wimmera district of Victoria and it is estimated that cockatoos destroy about one-fifth of the total grain crop in New South Wales each year."

"They feed in flocks of usually 30 to 100, which are made up either of pairs (which usually mate for life) or of non-breeding younger birds. Occasionally these join together and flocks of many hundreds may be formed. Galahs are fond of aerobatic displays, which are incorporated into courtship rituals but also performed daily before roosting and during rain storms. These are accompained by much swooping through the treetops (or telegraph poles) and loud, raucous screaming."

"Galahs are strong, fast flyers and reach speeds exceeding 50 kilometers per hour."

When I have seen them flying, they seem to be crazily flapping and flying like they were drunk almost running into each other.


www.galah.galahs.com.au

Andrew took us to a nearby beach,

BERMAGUI BEACH

Norfolk Island Pines along the coastline

Bermagui Coastline Seaweed

Andrew also took us to a beach in Narooma

BARUNGA POINT BEACH

internal cuttlebone of the cuttlefish














volcanic rock

Barunga Point Beach at sunset while the guys are surfing

Jon surfing at sunset - the end of the day in which he also ate a (supposed) witchetty grub and saw his first wallaby in the wild.

GARDEN SNAILS / Helix Aspera Muller

HELICULTURE - the science and occupation of raising snails for food

While at Andrew's house, doing garden work, we ran across many, many, many snails, common garden snails. These are a pest to the garden and all its vegetables, so Andrew had all 3 of us WWOOFers collecting the snails and putting them in a pail with a lid. Andrew mentioned that some people eat these snails, but he had never tried cooking them. I wanted to try the process so we did it. We made this beautiful garlic escargot linguini with warrigal greens and took it to the Tilba Community Dinner at Mystery Bay beach while watching the full moon rise.

pasta with snails, garlic, cream, warrigal greens, nasturtium leaves and flowers, basil, thyme, and calendula flower petals - all from Andrew's property except the linguini



and this is how we did it





snails eat bran for 4 or 5 days to cleanse their system of grit and any possible poisonous plants


snail water dish - shallow with paper towel so they do not drown


washed and ready to go to sleep in the cold refrigerator for a few hours

boiling water with herbs - snails cooked, boiling, for 3 minutes

steaming cooked snails


My WWOOFing host Andrew - he gets the pasta and herbs ready while we are removing the snails from the shells


snail meat is rich in protein, vitamin E, iron and potassium

herbs from Andrew's place to top off our finished snail pasta dish

Andrew found a bunch of crab apples on the roadside, so we, Andrew's girlfriend's kids, and I are making applesauce. We also made little carved apple heads to put out into the sun to shrivel.

ROADSIDE CRAB APPLE APPLESAUCE



























EDIBLE FLOWER in Andrew's garden
CANDULA FLOWER

























We have these flowers in the USA, but I had never harvested them, so I enjoyed the chance to use these flower petals in our salad mix picked from the garden.



















This flower is native to Mediterranean countries and is also known as GARDEN MARIGOLD or POT MARIGOLD. It can be called POOR MAN'S SAFFRON when the petals are used in food dishes, used more for color than taste.

The oil (from the petals?) is supposedly a good skin/wound healer.





















Andrew fed us great food always - here is a mess of fish from the nearby fish market, local GAR FISH.





















Since we were working the soil in the garden and digging up weeds, I thought that I would try HARVESTING DANDELION ROOTS - roots to dry, roast, grind and use as a drink. All I know is that it is a coffee-like substitute, but will report more later when I finish the process.



















beautiful, organic dandelions with Australian black soil clinging to the roots

HANDKERCHIEF BEACH

This beach near Narooma, Handkerchief Beach, was beautiful and I had a great time climbing around the rocks. I also really enjoyed exploring the river that lead to a mudflat area. The mudflat had all sorts of fish and snails and seaweeds. It was such a quiet space to think and feel the muddy sand under my feet.

Many fish were swimming in this mudflat area and I would loved to have gone fishing. There were also SO MANY of these large snails - so many that I was wondering if they might be edible.

Using my skirt to collect greens for a dinner salad

Finger Limes, Microcitrus australasica, native to Australia








LION'S HEAD or WILD DAGGA / Leonitus leonurus

This is a salt water tolerant plant that is growing at Andrew's house, but I also saw it in the wild near Narooma. It is also called WILD DAGGA, WILD CANNABIS, and LION'S TAIL. Wild Dagga was smoked by the Hottentot tribe of South Africa because of its euphoric effect. It is known to be the most effective legal herbal alternative to tobacco and cannabis known to humans. The main active alkaloid is leonurine and can be smoked or made into a tea. I harvested some leaves and flowers to dry and try making a tea, but have not tried it yet.







HUNTSMAN spider / family Sparassidae

This spider is so large it is unnerving a bit at first, but they are relatively harmless. They are found in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, SE Asia, the Mediterranean, Florida and Hawaii.









more of Australia's creepy crawlies...



Australia has about 1000 native species of earthworms worms but now European introduced worms have pretty much taken over the land. The largest native Australian worm is the giant Gippsland earthworm. It normally has a length of about 2 to 3 meters, (6.5 to 10 feet), and is about 2cm, (0.8 inches), in diameter however the longest worm on record was 4 m, (13 feet), long.

I do not think this is the GIPPSLAND EARTHWORM, Australia's largest earthworm, but it is indeed a large one and I could not resist taking a photo.




another native edible in Australia...

PIGFACE
Carpobrutus rossi

salty strawberry

family Aizoaceae
temperate climate
found on beaches, dunes, cliffs and inland SE and SW Australia
prostrate, creeping groundcover with trailing branches
succulent, three-sided blue-green to red leaves
large purple flowers in spring and throughout the year
small, fleshy, pulpy fruit, shaped like a pig's head, ripe when red-purple, late summer

Pigface plant belongs to the same botanical family as Warrigal greens. Aborigines in Victoria ate the salty leaves of pigface as a kind of relish with meat and other foods. The leaves can be cooked in a stirfry. Break off the fruit and such out the small seeds and pulp. The taste has been compared to salty figs or apples.

I found this information in a book "Grow Your Own Bushfoods" 1999 by Keith and Irene Smith
page 68 and 69