Permaculture Living

Mmm, coffee. These green beans, after ripening, fermenting, drying, and roasting, eventually become your morning cup of caffeine.

From flower…

… to fruit.

Yesterday’s rain shower on a cassava leaf. Cassava bushes grow all around the farm, though mostly as a weed suppressant rather than for the edible roots. The leaves can be eaten too, but have to be carefully prepared to remove the toxins.

One of the cob ovens (the one with a personality) was fired up at the farm today, for a birthday lunch.

Two farm chickens were the guests of honour.

I was going to take this carton from the chicken shed to collect the eggs. The geckos were already collecting theirs: there were tiny two eggs neatly placed in cups of the egg carton.

These are pods on the icecream bean tree. It tastes nothing like its name to me; it’s like tiny pieces of slightly sweet cotton wool around a huge seed. Not my favourite fruit, but it’s a good permaculture plant because it grows fast, provides shade and is a nitrogen fixer.

A frame was pulled out of the beehive and forgotten. It’s degraded (the geckos ate pieces) but you can now see the paler yellow cells where the collected pollen was stored.

Meet the Finger Lime, a fruit native to south east Queensland. It grows on a spiky bush and is also known as ‘vegetarian caviar’.

My favourite after-lunch snack to have while wandering around the farm.

One of my favourite parts of my permaculture course is being introduced to new food experiences. Today, the Pitaya or Pink Dragonfruit.

I’ve tried the white version before, but this was the pinkest fruit I have ever seen, more intensely coloured than a beetroot and with a milder sweetish, musky flavour. It grows not on a tree but on a cactus-like vine.