GLEN APLIN COMMUNITY MARKET 1

My Gran, my Mother, Me and my two Daughters learned to knit, crochet, sew, embroider, grow vegetables and flowers, bake cakes and make jam at an early age. We exhibited our needlework or cooking in the country agricultural shows and always when a school, church or some other community organization was holding a fete we contributed our goods and sometimes manned the stalls.

If it wasn’t our church or school holding the fete we went along to purchase cakes and confectionary, but we never bought needlework. As my mother once said to me, “I can make any of these if I want them.”

Today it seems to me the district markets now held in most towns and cities have taken over this niche market. No longer are goods donated to a worthy cause. Instead people man their own stall to sell their produce and pocket the profit. Organizations have realized that they can hold regular markets and make an income  by renting space to the stall holders.

My district of Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland needed to raise money to renovate the Glen Aplin Community Hall, so now about four times a year a market is held in and around this hall on a Saturday morning. Today, 31st July 2010, I attended this market and took the following photos to share with you.

It rained overnight and has continued to shower today, so there weren’t many outdoor stalls. The first to catch my eye was providing a substance for organic gardeners.

Bags of manure

• Sheep manure @ $7.00 a bag
• Chook manure  @ $10.00 a bag
• Cow manure @ $5.00 a bag
• Barley straw @ $7.00 a bale.

These quantities and these prices are clearly intended for the small garden. When I buy Lucerne hay, containing many more valuable nutrients than barley straw for the purpose of mulching my garden, I need to buy 100 bales  @ $7.00 each, delivered to my garden. Read the rest of this entry »

GOOD TREES – BAD TREES 4

I learned to iron clothes with flatirons heated on the top of a wood burning stove.  These stoves had metal plates  over the fire which could be lifted off to provide instant flames to boil a kettle quickly, although usually kettles, frying pans and cooking pots received sufficient heat through the heavy metal. Every day the top of the stove was shined with a combination of mutton fat and black shoe polish. Cakes and biscuits were baked in an oven heated by the wood burning in the firebox at the side. Every cook quickly learned to regulate the heat by the size of the wood selected to use that day and the type of wood available. Every baker learned to gauge the temperature of an oven by placing their hand in the oven to feel the heat prior to putting the tin or dish on a higher or lower shelf.

Ironbark, a form of hard Eucalyptus, was the favoured wood of most cooks. It burned slowly, giving off a steady heat. Importantly it burned away, leaving very little ash or coals to be cleaned from the firebox. There were times when my mother only had Brigalow wood, but this was also considered a good wood, although it burned more quickly and hotly. The cooks of those days adapted their cooking styles to the type of wood available. It was often a matter for scolding when the cook discovered her wood box empty and no man available to split more wood for the stove. As a joke men would say they were giving “The Missus” a new axe as a Christmas present.

Nowadays, I only use wood for heating purposes. Here on the Granite Belt we have cold winters with most nights in June, July and August dropping well below zero Celsius. The weekend clientele of guests visiting the district during the winter months demand cottages with a wood fire.  It is a novelty they enjoy. We have two big combustion stoves in our main house and individual stoves in the four self-contained apartments. In years gone by we purchased Ironbark wood, already split, from one of the many suppliers in this district. There are several old trees, many of them already fallen, throughout the open pastoral country. Wood cutters pay the land owner to go on to his property, cut these trees into sizable portions with chainsaws and then deliver it to the purchaser. It is a seasonal industry.

When we decided to remove so many trees from our garden in August 2008, I wondered if we could utilize the wood, rather than create a bonfire.

Storm damage

These trees along our entrance road are an ornamental Ironbark from Western Australia, mostly grown for their beautiful silver foliage and pink blossom.

Ironbark blossoms

Read the rest of this entry »