23 June 2021
Those who fail to plan, plan to fail," has been an adage I have fervently lived by. Spreadsheets are my jam, so a year leading up to a holiday is filled with carefully calculated costs and saving requirements and list upon list of what to pack, what needs arranging, and careful research. And then Covid happened... Hours of energy poured into plans, only to have them evaporate. For a planner like me, early Covid times were not easy. Uncertainty became the name of the game. Being unable to get a glimpse of the future was pretty unsettling and constantly having to readjust expectations was exhausting. Then, with a dip in the Covid cases, came a soar in hope. This year we were able to hold a small (mostly masked) birthday party for Arienne. Very occasionally, the reward to see family members outweighed the risk of spreading the virus and every precious moment was cherished.
Rising numbers this past month have again resulted in plan cancellation. I give myself a pat on the back for being much more resilient and half-expecting plans to change, but nothing could prepare me for the disappointment of a four-year-old, who has spent the week assembling a collection of crayon drawings and paint-covered pet rocks to give her friend, only to have a play date cancelled. While I am fully supportive of prioritising safety, I wish I could shield my kiddo from the disappointment.
Covid quarantine saw us having to cancel an appearance at our favourite market at Pug Rescue in Benoni. Since it was only myself and Arienne who had been in contact with someone who had contracted Coronavirus, Marijke and Byron were prepared to valiantly soldier on at the market alone. Until Marijke injured her hip and 2021 laughed and laughed at our contingency plan!
It's humbling to note that the garden continues to follow it's natural cycle, totally oblivious of loadshedding, lockdown level, changing school holiday schedules, impending economic doom, cracked windscreens and washing machine breakages.
The pecan nut harvest is in full swing! Arienne always comes home from my folk's house with a pocketful of nuts "In case we get hungry, Mommy." Our old patch of Piquante pepper bushes has been cleared as our new seedlings produced more than we were able to harvest this year. Mombles will be thrilled when (if) the school holidays roll around and I have time to move an old aviary into the abandoned patch to construct a seedling-germination greenhouse. She's not such a fan of my "let it be'' approach to gardening, and the weeds have done an excellent job of covering the soil to protect it from moisture loss. Sadly, they're not as obedient to the neat lines of growth of a traditional garden! Oupa (my dad) is planning to plant a few beetroot and I'm planning to cover as much naked soil as possible with green manure (such as vetch, clover, comfrey and borage) and flowers for the bees. If you'd like to provide a pretty snack for your garden bees, be sure to include a pack of Marigold seeds in your next order! We find these guys are stubbornly resistant to the directions we've printed on the seed pack, and will thrive even when you plant them in the wrong season, and neglect to water them. I have a few sprouting up between the cracks in my paving and I can't bring myself to pull them out. Such determination to thrive under impossible circumstances can only be applauded.
On Saturday we discovered the first peach blossom! I'm pretty sure I was also in awe last year and was convinced it was too early for the fruit to survive, but as I'm learning again, nature doesn't care about the calendar. Life will find a way. While we wait in anticipation for this year's fresh harvest, we still have a few bottles of peach jams in stock (R45), lovingly preserved from last season's harvest. Fresh produce in stock at the moment is our home-grown carrots (R10 a bunch), plucked from the soil just before you collect and having lived a life with no pesticide exposure. My lemon tree is laden with fruit again and this thick skinned variety is just bursting with juice, perfect for fresh salad dressing or to add while cooking (R10 for 4). The surplus will be bottled with our chilli and salt mixture to be turned into lemon preserve (R40). This jar of flavoursome goodness is the perfect additive cut up into salads, or added to soups and stews to amp up the yumminess. If you're brave enough, it's also tasty as is on a cracker.
Siza has been braving the dark and cold early on Thursday mornings to come and bake for our weekly deliveries to Organic Worx for distribution in Centurion and our newly established client base in the local Kloofsig community. We are so grateful for the weekly support which has enabled us to "make our circle bigger" and provide additional work to more people. Feel free to contact Gillian at Organic Worx to join her weekly mailing list for weekly orders of fresh organic veg. We source our apples from her for our Apple Jelly Jam (R45) and it is with great pride that we can offer a product that was not drenched in pesticides before we turn it into jammy goodness. Ciabatta bread orders need to be in by Tuesday morning, and sourdough by Wednesday morning to give us time to prepare freshly baked bread for Thursday collection from our base in Lyttelton.
Our marketing brain, Kirsty, has been hard at work to give fair attention to each of our amazing products. This month, we're highlighting our awesome Activated Charcoal Face Masks. Our Skincare Combo Deal includes a 3-pack of our reusable cotton face scrubbies and a jar of activated charcoal face mask (enough for three applications) for R70. All our glass jars are returnable to us, for a R5 discount on your next order. We tie all our labels on with biodegradable sisal twine so that there is no sticker residue on the jar and if you'd prefer to reuse it at home, or regift it, it's ready to go in all its glass glory!
Zero waste is certainly not an easy goal to achieve in our plastic-wrapped, takeaway container society. The culture of consume, consume, consume and chuck it on the rubbish heap as sadly become the norm (if the offending item is even lucky enough to make it there rather than end up in rivers and oceans...). At Rooted Herbivores, we're striving to create a new normal. Even recycling of materials is costly to the environment. Therefore, adding organic materials back to the soil to create compost, or reuse of durable containers is what we strive for. We avoid using pesticides on our fresh produce, because if the insects don't want it, neither do we!
We hope to inspire other businesses and clients to live in a way that treads lightly on the earth. Merging my business mind with my environmentalist mind is not easy. It is obvious that a plastic bag to package a batch of rusks is far cheaper and less work than making pulp from a beetroot to stamp a logo on a biodegradable cardboard box and wrapping them in sugar cane fibre brown paper. But you know what? It's worth it. For Arienne, for her kids, for all the generations to come, we owe it to them to look after this precious globe.
Yours in planet-saving,
Claire
Recovering calendar addict
Plastic hater
Emerging conservationist