The Power of One Person and Growing Fruit Trees From Seed

New World Regent Supermarket - I can take mesh bags for produce here.

My local supermarket has been in the newspapers lately. It's all on account of a comment made by a customer to the supermarket owner - whom the customer recognized at the checkout one day. 
This New World supermarket had attempted to go plastic bag free some time back, by encouraging people to bring their own shopping bags and charging for plastic bags. It failed after one week - they returned to supplying bags as customers threatened to change supermarkets.
The comment that changed things, was the suggestion to reward customers who brought their own bags instead. Now the supermarket gives a click on a card towards a free coffee with every $20 spent to customers who have their own bags. Since they started this (about 3 months ago) they have purchased 10,000 less bags to use - and it is really noticeable now at the checkouts how many more people bring their own bags.  
Doesn't that just show how much change one person can bring about.

A  Revelation

After buying a few tamarillo trees and having them die before fruiting (they are a bit fragile and prone to doing that). I proudly told my sister in Australia that we were at last picking tamarillos. Her response was that they have picked about 180 of them and were giving them away everywhere. Tamarillos were $12/ kilo in the supermarket today, so that would have been welcomed I'm sure. The trees sell for about $15 each here, but my brother-in-law had grown his from a single fruit. Duh - why was I buying trees???
So now I have about 100 seedling trees to plant and give away. I'm going to grow a forest of them. All I did was spread the seeds from the fruit onto a paper towel to dry, then planted them all. Next stop - kiwifruit from seed.
Tamarillos are great to eat raw or in baking, but also make terrific jams and chutneys and can be used in savoury dishes as you would a tomato. 
I wouldn't try growing all fruit trees from seed, as some take ages and benefit from good root stock, but tamarillos grow quickly and are fairly short lived.

tamarillo fruit

Sugaring and Kumara Toast

Do Something New Every Week

I have just finished reading "52 New Things" in which author Nick J Thorpe sets out to try one new thing for every week of the year. I love this idea, as I'm always excited by trying or finding something new, but I kind of skim read the book. A lot of what was interesting to Nick Thorpe, I found to be not my thing (buy a motorbike, break a world record, go microlighting) or something I'd already done (get something waxed, grow your own food, volunteer, turn off reality tv).
My new things don't need to be done to a schedule, but here are two that I tried in the last week.

Kumara (Sweet Potato) Toast 

Scrub your kumara and slice it into toast-thickness slices. Put them in the toaster and cook (mine took three times down in our puny toaster)
They are then ready to be topped with whatever you fancy - pesto and camembert... sour cream and chives...avocado slices (avos currently selling for $5.99 each here!) and smoked salmon.
Who would have thought??

Kumara toasts with pesto and camembert

Sugaring wax

This is one of those things that I wondered why I have never done this before.
It is hair removal that is totally plastic-free (If you buy your sugar in bulk and grow your own lemons). 
It's way cheaper than going to a salon to have it done, or buying wax or razors, if that's what you do.
It's less painful than waxing. The sugar "wax" just washes out in water
The main difficulty is getting the sugar "toffee" to exactly the right stage, but even if you make an error, it can still be saved, and spread on and lifted off with cotton strips like wax. 
I found it worked better than wax too.

So here's how you do it...

1 cup of white sugar
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
2 tablespoons of water

Put all in a large stainless steel saucepan. Cook on medium-low, stirring frequently.
Take it off the heat when the solution turns honey coloured (approx 7 minutes from starting to bubble).
Test a spoonful in cold water - it needs to hold it's shape and be pliable.
Transfer the paste to an airtight glass container that has been warmed (so it doesn't break).
Let it cool to room temperature before using.
If it turns solid try adding a tablespoon of water and heating 10-20 seconds in the microwave.

         Sugaring "wax"        spread it on against the hair direction

Take a blob and roll it into a ball. Drag it over the (clean, dry) skin going against the direction of the hair (this is the opposite of waxing).
Hold the skin tight and flick the paste off in the direction of the hair growth.
You just reuse the same blob until you've finished, then it can be composted.
If it is too runny, you can either cook it some more, or use it like hot wax, spread it on and take it off with cotton strips.
Just don't burn yourself - be careful.
It's better to under cook it than to overcook, so watch it carefully.
I've stored mine in the fridge in case it attracts ants, and just give it 10 seconds in the microwave to make it soft enough to get some out.

The High Cost of Cheap

This train of thought started with a book I have been reading called "Over-dressed, The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion", but more on that later.

We have just had visitors staying the weekend. They are from England, and arrived via China. Nicky popped these on to keep her feet warm inside, as we all take our outdoor shoes off at the door. They came with a quick explanation that she was going to wear them until they became unwearable, having been provided with their room in a Chinese Holiday Inn. Personally, I would have left them there in their plastic packaging, unworn.

What horrifies me is that they make these (ugly) things to be worn once or twice, and then be thrown away. Cheap as can be, and hugely wasteful and environmentally unfriendly. 

That reminded me of another incident that happened recently. Our teen had a sports day at her school where they dress absurdly in their house colours. This time young Katie wore a pair of orange tights - without shoes, and they came home with the feet very muddy. When I suggested that she needed to soak and then gently scrub them, she replied - "ah no, they're just really cheap - I'll get some more". Well no, that's not how it works here.
See photo of nice clean tights, and hopefully lesson taken on board.

That reminded me of some young female tenants of mine who moved out of my house (they didn't last long), planning to dump their fridge because none of them wanted to clean it. I said they could leave it there - it worked perfectly well. I gave it a good clean and sold it for $80.

What is wrong with people?? Things are so cheap that people just don't care, and the impact on the environment by this kind of thinking is huge.

Back to the book.
"Overdressed - the Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion" has a lot in it about what super cheap clothes have done to the US garment industry. Elizabeth Cline glimpses into attitudes of those buying cheap, fast fashion, and plenty about the biggest fast fashion sellers in the USA. She travels to countries investigating factories where they make these items for so little. 
I thought this comment on donated used clothing was an eye opener...
"The Quincy Street Salvation Army may be on a quiet street, but it is in fact a major distribution centre serving eight Salvation Army locations in Brooklyn and Queens. It processes on average five tons of outcast clothing every single day of the year and much more during the holiday season when donations spike. From that astonishing mass, the sorters choose exactly 11,200 garments a day to be divided up evenly between the eight thrift stores they serve."

I just wonder when the world will run out of resources. Things will be a changin' some decades down the line. We are on a runaway train. 

So it was refreshing for me to join the Facebook group Mend it May! It is a closed group that anyone can request to join and everyone has been posting their mendings for the month, or asking for help and advice. There have been all sorts of repairs, and they are still taking members if you want to go and have a look. I think it will be carrying on because it has been really popular.

A Library of Things, Days for Girls

A Library of Things
There are some great initiatives out there around the world, that would be fabulous to start up in every small town and city. But it takes a lot of work and dedication to start any initiative and keep it going, as I have seen with the ones I am involved in. It needs a dedicated team, or sometimes just one person with a lot of energy.
Here is one idea that I spotted a few months back A Library of Things - where you can borrow almost anything. 

A Library of Things 

You could try out musical instruments to your heart's content, try camping, or do all your mending on a sewing machine. That would be a terrific use of resources - particularly of items that are not used often.

Days for Girls
This one was new to me. What a wonderful way to support underprivileged women worldwide. In many countries girls stop attending school when menstruation starts as they have no means of managing it adequately. This initiative has volunteers worldwide sewing reusable pads, which are then sent to women in need. I came across it via a Facebook page I follow Just Zilch - Palmeston North's Free Store.....  A mother and daughter duo in New Zealand have been making them to give out via the store to New Zealand women who can't afford sanitary supplies (as well as sending them to some of the Pacific Islands). 
When I have finished sewing market bags for our Plastic Bag Free work, then this will be next on my list.  

Mend It Monday

Last week I had my first day running SewGood Whangarei - the community sewing space that is getting started again after having a year off.
We have a free room to use, and loads of donated sewing machines, material, zips, threads, patterns, fasteners - in fact everything we need for people to walk in and get sewing.

Some of the donated goods free to use at SewGood

One lady came along to check it out, with a pair of her son's shorts to mend as her own machine was no longer working. She said "I know this sounds silly, but I'm really proud of that" with what she had done when it was finished. She will be back next time with a bigger pile of mending.
Do people who throw stuff out when it breaks or becomes less than perfect, realize the sense of achievement of mending things? I think not.
So here are a few of my little projects today on - Mend It Monday.

My leather wallet had seen better days, as a result of overloading it with too much coinage most likely.
I have restitched it on the sewing machine and given it a clean up with some bees wax leather conditioner that I use on my boots.

Before and after - wallet mend, clean and condition

It's still not perfect - but it will last a bit longer, and hopefully the kids won't keep saying "You need a new wallet'

This dear little brooch that I had been given had a broken pin on the back, so I have added another one that I had among my supplies, using that wonderful E6000 glue. Done.

An old pair of jeans that really, I did consider throwing out as I have so many home clothes. But then I thought, no, I'll just mend them. Most people reading my blog will know how to mend jeans, and I'm sure there are more ways than one. I found a piece of similar coloured material, which I pinned and sewed on the inside, then zigzagged all over the split part. I then turned it back inside out, trimmed away the excess material and zigzagged over the edges.

I love how the look of something mended has become trendy.

So are you are mender? Have you had a great success lately? 

Animal Repellant, Wool Wash

Just another day at the office..

The Office - Matakohe Quarry

Derek found this great office shack on his work travels - love it! I can't imagine there would be a lot of high tech in there.

Repel those pesky animals from your garden
Quite some time back I posted here about Wormwood that I had planted, with the fact that it was supposed to repel rabbits, possums, deer etc.

This year I broke off some huge branches and hung them in the peach and apple trees. If you have followed my blog, you will know that last year possums ate nearly all the fruit on our peach tree. I don't know if it was coincidence, but they didn't get one peach this year, and they only ate the apples that had fallen on the ground. As a disclaimer, we had also trapped a lot of possums, and I did put a wire netting deterrent around the base of the peach tree (but not around the apple). I feel like the wormwood may have helped too. 

Wool wash mix
I'm always on the look out for things that I can make so that I won't need to buy another plastic bottle. When my wool wash ran out a while back I went searching in some of the vintage householding books from my grandmother's era. Here's one that I found and it works just fine.

The cloudy one, I shook before using

Whisk together:
2 cups of grated soap (I used Sunlight)
4 cups of boiling water
Add 1 Tablespoon of eucalyptus oil 
1/2 cup of methylated spirits
Whisk again.

Use 1 Tablespoon in warm water to handwash woollens. Leaving them to soak for about 10 minutes, before gently rinsing twice. It is recommended that you turn garments inside out before washing, to protect the outer surface, roll them in a towel to remove water and lay them flat to dry.

About the methylated spirits - it turns out that this is an environmentally friendly product (apart from the plastic bottle), distilled from natural substances rather than being a petroleum product. We already had some of this so I didn't need to buy it,  as I am trying to not buy more plastic.
I think the methylated spirits is in the mix to boost the cleaning power. 

Guavas and Guava Jelly

Over a year ago I posted about tropical guavas, but I didn't mention the guavas that are more common here in the north. Other places might know them as a pineapple guava or strawberry guava. 

Guavas ripening

They are a small, tangy tasting fruit with seeds inside that you just swallow. 

Guavas are a fruit loved by our native wood pigeons (Kukupa, Kereru), they can get quite drunk on them. I don't mind sharing anything with woodpigeons.

NZ native wood pigeon Photo credit

This year we are starting to get enough of a crop that I was able to make that old childhood favourite - guava jelly. I wasn't going to bother, remembering how my mother used to make it by hanging a bag of the cooked fruit and letting the liquid drain into a bowl, before adding sugar to it and reboiling - it seemed like a bother. I remember her telling me not to squeeze the bag because it would make the jelly cloudy.
Well I just squashed the pulp in a strainer using a masher - and it turned out perfectly fine. It probably wouldn't win a prize at the Womens' Institute, but it looks good enough.
So this is how I did it:-

Guava Jelly
Trim the guavas and cut them in half. Add enough water to cook them, but not covering them. Cook until stewed and soft, then push the juice out of them using a masher and sieve (or a hanging muslin or calico jelly bag if you want to be correct about it). Discard the pulp.
For each cup of juice add a cup of sugar and boil gently until a blob on a saucer wrinkles when pushed (about 25 minutes).
Bottle into sterilized jam jars.
If you are too snappy and it doesn't set, just reboil it and get to to wrinkle stage (Wrinkles are good here).

Back to the Turmeric Bomb/ Gummy saga
For anyone who read my post on turmeric bombs for inflammation and wants to know how they worked? Well after finding that I was unable to take much of them due to their laxative-like effect, I tried making turmeric gummies, using gelatin, however they still require some coconut oil in the mix to get the turmeric to work efficiently, and I have found they give me the same digestive problem, with no greatly noticeable result. They may work better for other people.

Turmeric gummies