GLEN APLIN MARKET 3
No report on a market would be complete without a mention of plants, herbs, dried fruit and jams, fresh fruit and vegetables sold at such venues. At the April Glen Aplin market I had purchased lettuce seedlings and a trombone gramma pumpkin. Grammas are a sweet pumpkin traditionally grown in Australia to use as a dessert. They are seldom for sale in fruit shops, although I have seen them on fruit and vegetable stands in the Lockyer Valley. I was happy to purchase this one at Glen Aplin knowing I could use the flesh for a pie and keep the seeds to plant in my garden next summer.
The lavender colours of the stall manned by Trish and Don Gaske selling Crystal Ridge Lavender products caught my eye.
Lavender products
Crystal Ridge Lavender sells
Soaps & Skincare
Massage Oils
Lavender Sachets
Lavender Essential Oil
Ageless Crafts
Lavender Gift Packs
Trish gathering lavender
Market raffle
The market raffle of the day featured products from the various stalls. These included several bottles of wine. It was there that I first noticed small packages of Saffron. Back in 1997 when Eberhard and I planned a visit to the Netherlands we were asked if we could locate and bring back some corms for the Saffron plant by a Glen Aplin resident. We were unable to meet this request, but as a gardener I was interested to read more about the product.
I discovered that Saffron is produced by growing corms, like a small bulbs, which are planted in the ground. This plant Crocus Sativus has a beautiful, mauve flower in the spring. In the middle of the flower are three tiny little stigmas of bright orange, which is the saffron. These stigma are harvested and dried to become one of the most expensive spices in the world.
Crocus Sativus has traditionally been grown in the cool mountain regions of Iran, Iraq, Spain, Greece and India. In recent years commercial quantities of Saffron have been harvested from farms in Tasmania and New Zealand.
Nature's Glen
The Saffron sample amongst the raffle ingredients had been donated by Russell and Noelene Leming who were manning the Nature’s Glen stall. They are Glen Aplin residents who gave up careers for a ‘Tree Change’ lifestyle on the Granite Belt and then looked for a product they could grow and sell. After six years establishing their their field of Crocus Sativus they claim to be Queensland’s first commercial saffron farm. To read more about their farm and the other products sold by Nature’s Glen go to this link www.qldsaffron.com.au
Urusula a German Wwoofer picking rosellas
Another interesting item on the Nature’s Glen stall were the value added products made with rosellas.
I’ve always grown rosellas, which are a form of hibiscus, in my garden each year to produce Rosella Jam. This year when we were celebrating my 70th birthday my daughter, Carol, brought a jar of Hibiscus flowers preserved in syrup, which I recognised as rosellas, to add to our champagne.
- Place a flower in the bottom of a champagne flute.
- Add a little syrup and fill flute with champagne
- Watch the bubbles stream off the flower.
- The flower may be eaten as it has a delicious rubarb/raspberry flavour
Birthday flutes of champagne with Rosella flowers
Before leaving the market I purchased two packets of ripe pears for $2.00 each. One of the sad things I have observed since moving to the Granite Belt has been the bulldozing out of pear orchards. When we first moved to Glen Aplin there were three nearby farms with pear orchards, but the farmers were no longer irrigating, spraying or harvesting the fruit. They happily told me to pick whatever pears I wanted.
Ripe pears
This was a wonderful opportunity for me to harvest and preserve organic fruit untouched by pesticides. Yes, I did encounter some coddling moth damage, but with a little work I could salvage a large quantity of fruit for bottling. One by one these pear orchards were pushed out and the ground turned over to grass. Why? There was no longer a market for the pears. Australia has become a busy urban society where mothers no longer have time to bottle fruit and shoppers want fruit they can eat that day, not green pears that must sit on the fruit stand for a week before they ripen.
Six pears for $2.00 was excellent value as they were ripe, but they needed to eaten either that day or the next.
Wildflowers, wilderness and wine
If you want to read more about life on the Granite Belt buy my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine.
It is available to overseas readers on my publishers site StrictlyLiterary. For Australian readers click on www.australia-book.com.au
As an author I am also publishing in weekly posts the story of my husbands early years in Germany on http://fayhelwigauthor.com Here you will be able to read for free the chapters of The Forgotten Ones.
