ode to a dehydrator

I was in someone else's kitchen, washing dishes. Not just dishes - also all possible hardware designed for the purpose of turning dead animals into dinner table delicacies. Not the greatest fun, and a remarkably good place to discover that I had some distance to go in the cultivation of a generous & non-judgemental heart...

My hosts were accepting (mostly) of my fruitarian ways, but I found that I was reluctant to prepare my fresh fruit meals among the blood splatters. So for a while I survived - very happily - on my dehydrated fruit. Home-made and taken along on the trip as a sort of experiment, to see how well things lasted without refrigeration. It was a huge success, and I am now a committed dehydrator - if you know what I mean.

My current favourite - persimmon. The overflow from my brave & generous little tree turned into delicate discs of translucent amber, light as air, intensely flavoured. I should post a picture of it here, but I ate it all. Perhaps from the next batch.

Highly recommended therefore: EZIDRI dehydrator. And don't mess around - get the big one which can stack up to 30 trays - you buy it with the initial 5 trays, but you'll soon be ordering extra trays as you discover how useful & effortless the whole process is.

This is where you find the SA distributors.

And herewith my thanks to Alison from Tierhoek Organics - this generous, lovely lady who said to me: "But you should do your own dehydrating... this is what you do..."

This was at the Organic Expo in Cape Town - I wanted to buy some of Tierhoek's excellent dehydrated products, and Alison did the noble thing, and looked beyond her own profits, and advised me to MY best advantage.

A toast therefore, to the lovely Alison of Tierhoek Organics, and to those good Ezidri people who made it possible for this fruitarian to ALWAYS (whether in the bush, on a long expedition, or indeed in meat-eating territory) be able to eat a variety of excellent, organic, non-preserved fruit, without being troubled by considerations of weight (try carrying a bag of oranges up a mountain...) or refrigeration.

still here !

Quite a few adventures between my last posting and this one - which I'll get to as soon as I've caught my breath. Just wanted to say: Thanks Anne for your comments - am looking forward to getting acquainted, and will pass on Essie's details to you.

Next: my New Best Friend - my dehydrator... and how it helped this fruitarian to survive a kitchen which turned out to be little more than an abattoir...

Living off the land

There I was, doing my humble best at 4x4-ing, and managing rather nicely, thank you, when there's this voice from the back: "Whoa ! Stop ! Stop !!"

Turns out the man wanted to look at a bush. The berries on the bush, to be precise - tiny orange-red fruits which may hold the key to his survival. This sounded rather important. So we troop out - and the Kriedoring proceeds to repay our interest with the most vicious scratches & stabs I've ever experienced from any semi-desert shrub. The bright little fruits are exceedingly well protected among the thorns - but once we tasted that sweet & complex flavour, they became worth the bloody sacrifice.

Apparently highly nutritious, as are all karoo & desert fruits - and they may indeed be a life-saver for my new friend preparing for his solo canoe trip all along the mighty Orange, all the way to the ocean. He's going alone, unsupported, and unprovisioned. He will live off the land - he will literally survive on the fruits of the veld.

So the man says, Why don't you come along ? It's a big river and a big chunk of land - we can each still be solo-ing.

Oh how I wish I was bold enough, fit & strong enough & mad enough to say Yes. Imagine just being with that river, that landscape. Just being. No clutter. Letting the fruits of the veld sustain you.

Imagine being that strong. That free.

the land remembers

Just back from a trip into the hinterland - /Xam hinterland, actually.

For thousands upon thousands of years they shared this part of what we now call the Northern Cape with elephants, eland, ostriches, elephant shrews, rhino, vast numbers of springbok.

They're gone now, as are the animals.

But on a little outcrop - unnamed & unmarked on any map - small precision-chipped stone tools and bits of ostrich egg shell lie half-buried in a rain-&-wind piled drift, around a group of eland grazing on a black dolerite boulder.

The wind moves, as it has always done, through the bleached, blonde grass among the glinting black boulders; a solitary kokerboom against an impossibly blue sky; that wide, wide horizon.

The land remembers.

Somewhere between VanWyksVlei, Verneukpan & Kenhardt you'll find Springbokoog, Strandberg, Tafelkop. Good places in which to be reminded of the big issues: life, extinction, one's own miniscule place in the great scheme of things - and the land which experiences it all, endures it all, and remembers it all.

get to know your land

My friend is building her own house. That is not unusual - many people do so, with varying degrees of expert and not-so-expert help. Most of them, probably, go through the process while living in rented comfort. Not my friend. She's in it for the whole experience.

So she acquired a tepee, pitched it on the land & started living there - before any building had begun. My friend is a dear soul, and surrounded by well-wishers - not all of them understanding why she would willingly engage in such a level of discomfort. Busy with my own life, I assumed she had her reasons, and so was happy to admire from a distance.

Then I went to visit, and stood next to her, and saw the place through her eyes, and heard the deep contentment in her voice. I had admired her courage - now I saw the wisdom of her process.

She told me of the permaculturist who advised her: "Live on your land. Get to know your land."

My friend is doing just that. She is getting to know every inch of it, the way the breeze moves across every inch of it, the life in and of every inch of it. She is in touch with the life of her land, and immeasurably enriched by it. It has become her home long before she has built her home there.

Doesn't it seem sad that so few of us get to do this ? Estate agent, price, transfer duty, home loan - if we navigate these issues competently, we acquire a home. And we call it "home" without being particularly acquainted with the very life of the land where we find ourselves.

"Home" can mean so much more - and it's a pity that so many of us, so often, find that we have to settle for a lesser, duller, smaller experience.

Tierhoek Organics

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, 1600 kms from land, there's an area known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's a dump of plastic debris - and it is twice the size of Texas.

I cannot even begin to picture this, and I don't want to. Texas covers 696 200 square kms, so we're already talking about close on 1.5 MILLION square kms of rubbish in the open ocean - expanding all the time. And that's not counting the loose bits floating around all over, and washing up on beaches everywhere - not to mention the unimaginable accumulation of garbage on land...

It's deeply worrying, and it should be. Now my conscience has taken me on a shocking tour of discovery through my household. I am shamed, I tell you. Guilty as charged. And I thought I was doing better than most... Well, sorry, No. Too much packaging, way too much plastic... Better start walking my talk.

So imagine my delight: Tierhoek Organics - Naartjie Bites. A Deliciousness for which I have no words. Weighs nothing (perfect for hiking, or any long-distance packing requiring padkos) and comes in fully bio-degradable, compostable packaging. Ditto their Dried Tomatoes. Don't know how they do it - NO plastic. I read the science somewhere & found it completely convincing & reassuring, and am now happy to indulge what has become a veritable addiction... those Naartjie Bites. The essence of more-ishness.

I like to think of those good people in their valley - hidden among the foothills of the Langeberg - bravely battling all the organic farmer's odds, and so gently and generously showing us the way.

Tierhoek Organics. Naartjie Bites. Go find some.

carbon conscience

Found myself in mixed company (omnivores, carnivores...) the other day, and stuck my neck out by quoting internet-sourced statistics - a meat-based diet requires 7 times more land than a plant-based diet, meat production uses 10 to 20 times more energy than grain production, red meat production uses 100 times more water than...and so on.

Since I was quoting "facts" I couldn't verify myself, I was quickly backed into a corner - but it made me think...

I wonder if anyone has made calculations comparing the carbon footprint of a fruitarian lifestyle with other options. My own experience tells me that the outcome would be very interesting indeed.

A fruitarian kitchen is a very uncomplicated, uncluttered place. No cooking means No need for most of what you'd find in a "normal" kitchen - which means that none of that stuff needs to be manufactured, marketed, transported, powered, discarded... and if your garden (or your neighbour's garden) feeds you - no packaging, no transport, no marketing machinery, none of that commercial madness & misery...

And that is but the beginning... now think of the environmental balance sheet, which begins with fruitarians planting trees, and trees, and more trees, and not needing to cut down trees to fuel cooking fires....

If I hadn't chosen this way for myself a long, long time ago, I suspect that I would have found the carbon footprint issue a convincing enough argument to say goodbye to the bloody fleshpots... if you know what I mean.

the secret of a happy garden...

We've always known that the secret of a happy garden is a generously sized compost-heap. And these days that is also the secret of a happy & well-supplied kitchen, and a happy & well-fed fruitarian. Cape gooseberries everywhere, and in the shade of every mulched tree, some sort of tomato - tiny little cherries, all the way up to heavy fleshy globes. Young papino and avo seedlings, pomegranate, guava & date - right through the household's menu - all kinds of seeds & pips now grown into generous new life.

What a lovely thing to suddenly find, in a most unexpected place, something delicious which required no attention, care or investment, but has been quietly growing towards that moment when the winter sun lights the shrubby corner next to the wide, deep stoep and reveals the little papery lanterns - this year's unplanned crop of Cape gooseberries.

A happy little moment, repeated all over the garden, throughout the year. Simple pleasures which somehow weave something rather special into the texture of an already rich life.

follow your nose

Pretty little pentzia incana - the quintessential smell of the Karoo. The honey fragrance of vygies on a sunny afternoon; delicate sweet-lime perfume of tiny ivory-coloured orchids; the intoxicating, invisible but almost tangible cloud around a flowering num-num; and now, that rich heady, robust note of a pure, aged balsamic vinegar that tells you that, somewhere very close by, under a euphorbia bush, there's a fruiting Hydnora africana. Pushing up through the karoo-soil, its chocolatey bulb opening to deep luminous orange, it glows against the dull dusty grey & green of its hide-away. My delight at finally spotting it, as nothing, I'm sure, compared to the pleasure of the small nocturnal harvester whose tracks I will find here tomorrow morning.

just don't talk about it

Here's something that never ceases to amaze me: You can discuss anything these days - even the traditionally taboo subjects like politics, religion & sex - and you will usually find it possible to have a rational & calm conversation. But mention dietary habits, and you'd better be prepared for some really touchy & defensive arguments. Even if you're not trying to convince someone to change his carnivorous diet, he will act as if you are. I've sometimes been amazed by the fact that a meat-eater can be so upset by the very fact that I am not also a meat-eater - as if that poses some kind of threat - and instantly has to defend & justify his own choice to eat meat.

I have realized the un-wisdom of trying to convert people a long, long time ago. But still, every so often, I will still find that people may act as if I'm trying to do just that, simply by virtue of the fact that I do what I do. As if being a fruitarian, and admitting to it, is equivalent to issuing a challenge to someone - daring him to pick up his club and go out and defend the patch in front of his cave.

Why is Food such a touchy & tricky issue ? It is easy to understand how food scarcity can ignite wars - hunger is a life & death issue. But in a society where there is no lack ? Why should a conversation about our relationship to food so often, and so easily, hit such a raw nerve ?

what will it take ?

It was one of those middle-of-the-night conversations deep in the African bushveld. So many stars that there seemed to be no dark left in the night sky; that deep, profoundly deep stillness, made all the more still & wide & poignant by the gentle punctuations from a little Scops owl somewhere close-by.

After days of walking the wilderness we were awake to the immense wonder of it - and deeply troubled by the deadly impact of the human footprint on the earth's natural systems. The game ranger - a wilderness-man through & through - cut right through our greenie concerns for the survival of the planet.

"Don't worry about the planet. The Earth will continue - we might, and probably will, screw up everything, but the planet will keep going. It'll be a changed planet, but it will survive. It's all this that won't."

And his all this took in the wide African night & all the life in it. And all the Life beyond it. All the unimaginably complex & wondrous beauty of the natural creation - that is what will not survive. That is what we're destroying - as if it didn't matter. The Life of which we are a part - the Life which keeps us alive - that is what we're killing. That is the big betrayal.

For a long time we sat around that bushveld camp fire. No one spoke any more. We could hear & smell & feel the Life in that night. And it was enough.

That was 16 years ago. And today it's as if we're still asleep at the wheel, hurtling to a certain crash. The human footprint is deadlier than ever.

Which leaves me with this question tonight:
What will it take for the human - this crown of creation - to come to its senses ? What disaster will be devastating enough, what threat will be terrifying enough, what danger frightening enough, what hope inspiring enough, for us to stop this blind, head-long rush to our own doom ?

What will it take to wake us up to the magnificence that slumbers in all of us ?

don't fear for your friendships

Are you concerned about the possibility that your fruitarian life may cost you your friendships ? Relax - you may be surprised.

My dear friend, M, who is completely accepting of my way of life, but certainly doesn’t have any desire to change his own very different relationship to food, came to stay with us for a few days. One afternoon I opened the fridge to find something I really didn’t expect and hadn’t had to deal with for many years: a sizable parcel of raw & bloody meat. M was going to have a barbecue.

It took me a few hours, but eventually I felt rational enough to tell him that this was just not something that was appropriate for me any longer. And then what could have remained an awkwardness between friends relaxed into farce. M was contrite, apologetic, shocked at his own insensitivity, and undertook to bury the meat immediately. We considered this for a bit, and then decided that – in a world with millions of starving people – maybe he shouldn’t do that. OK, then perhaps he should find a needy person to whom he could give the meat – he’ll think about it some more.

At that point I had to leave for a few hours. While I was away M found his solution. He cooked the whole lot & ate it all in one sitting. The sacrifices of friends ! It’s most endearing.

a life about something

Remember the Prof from Pretoria ? Prof B J Meyer who risked his reputation and his research grants by going against the establishment with his research into the health benefits of the fruitarian diet...

I remember a telephone conversation with him, many years ago - he'd been retired from some years, and was working on another book. He was passionately concerned about the state of food security in Africa, and felt that what was required was a radical re-think of the relationship between people & their food - otherwise we'd all be in great trouble.

And here we still are - shoring up the old systems, depleting an environment already so dangerously on the edge. Yes, Professor - we are indeed in great trouble.

A couple of days ago I got the news of Professor Meyer's passing. With our sadness, of course, there is enormous gratitude for his work & legacy. And strange as it may seem, envy. His life was about something. There was meaning & purpose & a point to it. How many of us can say that ?

I have always been struck by a story of the great Buckminster Fuller - of the moment when he had to decide whether he was going to live or die. It was night, on the edge of a lake - he had gone there to commit suicide. He found himself reviewing his life, and everything he knew or believed to be true. At the end of that night he had made the decision: if he had to live, his life had to be about something. Every word, every action had to be deliberate, meaningful & congruent. No matter what the cost. (For the rest of the story, I recommend you read his autobiography - or any of the many books written about him - it's inspiring stuff.)

A life about something. I've come to believe that we need to be grateful for the dark nights, the depressions & despair - they're our Damascus Road moments. They prevent us from drifting, only half-awake, through a life, only half-lived.

the Great Work

I am embarrassed to admit that there was a time when I considered any flower which didn't have a fragrance hardly worth the trouble. Those were the pre-Kyloe days. I know better now. Which is why I'm wondering if we could ever have too many Tecomaria's (Cape honeysuckle with none of the classic honeysuckle fragrance) around the place. They're at their best now, and the sunbirds love them.

In gardening - in life generally - it's not the best idea to put humans first... people as the centre & clincher of every argument. This anthropocentric obsession has got us into a lot of trouble, and the way to get out of it is through a recalibration of our place in the scheme of things. A re-reading of what the great, wise Thomas Berry calls, The Great Story - the wondrous narrative of the universal unfolding of which we are but a part. Call it by the smaller, more familiar terms - evolution, web-of-life - we are woven into an ancient, ongoing, exuberantly creative life story much, much, much greater than ourselves. I like that. Look up at the sky on a clear Karoo night, and you'll know the truth of it.

This remembering of our own Great Story, and the re-shaping of our life to be congruent with that, is what Berry calls The Great Work of our time. In a world which - unarguably I think - has lost its way so completely and so dangerously, I have no better suggestion than Berry's. I like the idea of a personal life which engages with The Great Work, which honours & benefits ALL of life.