Food – Page 7 – Gallifrey Forest Farm

Black Rice, Mango & Purslane Salad

2016/03/11 Danielle 0

I’ve mentioned before about the little supper club that I’ve formed with some friends. This is an idea that combines some of my favourite things – good food, spending time with my friends (and indulging in interesting discussions), and cooking. As Gallifrey starts producing more edibles, I expect that out contributions to these dinners will include more of our own produce. We had our second dinner party last weekend, and K and I volunteered to make an entrée. I happened to have some black glutinous rice in the cupboard, and a couple’ve mangos in the fridge, and I was feeling […]

Polyembryonic Seeds

2015/12/22 Danielle 0

Plants grow from seeds, but what many people do not know is that not all seeds contain just one plant embryo. Many varieties of mangos, for example, have polyembryonic seeds, as do most citrus. A polyembryonic seed is one which contains multiple embryos. Poly-embryonic seeds produce a number of shoots, one of which originates from fertilisation. The fertilised seedling is often weak and stunted and should be discarded. The other seedlings are clones of the mother tree. Yes, clones – just like a cutting, only from seed. This means that if you grow a polyembryonic mango (such as Kensington Pride […]

urban agriculture and space habitats

2015/12/09 Danielle 0

I’ve been thinking a lot about space, recently. As in, spaceships and stars and planets. I know, I know, that sounds like it has nothing to do with our fledgling smallholding – but in reality it has quite a lot to do with it. When I say I’m thinking about space, I mean I’m thinking about humans going to space. Space habitats and the ecosystems we’ll need to support them, producing enough food not just for a few scientists but for entire villages of people living in colonies on the moon, or Mars, or Venus, or even in permanent space station […]

supper club

2015/08/04 Danielle 0

I haven’t posted much about plants or animals recently, which is mostly because it’s winter and cold and nothing much is growing. And most of my attention is on the house-building project. The chickens are moulting, and so laying fairly sporadically. The quail are still laying, although one of them got sick and we had to euthanise her. We ate her afterwards because (a) I feel that eating the carcase shows respect tot he animal, and not eating it is wasteful and disrespectful, and (b) the illness was a beak disorder, so there was no health risk to us. We […]

Abundance

2015/03/14 Danielle 0

Abundance is such a lovely word. It brings to mind the idea of an elegant sufficiency, of warmth and safety, of sharing. In the garden the other day, I stopped for a moment and I thought: this is abundance. The sun was shining, the air smelled of green, growing things, and there were bees and paper wasps buzzing around the flowers collecting nectar and, at least int he case of the wasps, (hopefully) killing the various insects which eat my vegetables. I had just picked a bowl full of cherry tomatoes from the vine, and collected a couple’ve warm, fresh-laid […]