My Little Trowel

How do you do it!?!
How do you feed a teenage male on one income?

These are the questions I asked as I faced a food bill for one son amounting to $200 AU per week.
The phrase 'eating me out of house and home' became reality!
With limited work income, mounting debt, and without financial support from elsewhere, something had to be done.

Necessity being the 'mother of invention' I hit the internet to find solutions.

Solution - food gardening.
With a flourishing Spanish Pomegranate tree in the front of my rental, I learned all I could about how to harvest and care for this beautiful fruit tree.

Middle eastern salads, breakfast and desert toppers became a great way to use these delicious pops of paradise.  With a love for Devonshire tea, I immediately invented the pommie scone :-)

Inspired, I went shopping and I picked up my one little trowel and began my steep learning curve.

My steep learning curve began with Food Swaps.  These are wonderful community events that allow home food gardeners to gather and swap their harvest surplus.  So I took along some of my surplus pomegranates, and returned home with a rainbow chard (pictured behind the trowel), pumpkin and a few lemons.  Suddenly, I was able to cut a few dollars off my food bill in exchange for pomegranates.

Hooked!

I used my little trowel to plant that chard, and continue to eat from it for the next two years.  I dug a hole in this rich Australian soil and planted rosemary, parsley and spring onions right away.  Flourishing now!  Flourishing!  All my cooking is filled with the rich aromas of fresh herbs cut straight from my garden.  Organic, fresh herbs at little cost but the sharing of a pomegranate, and a little tiny bit of work - but fun work - and the arm muscles improving.

My Little Trowel has had a huge workout since then, and I have found the joy of gardening!
I will share my joys and discoveries over the coming days and weeks - hit the 'follow' button on this blog and read about the journey as I share how you too can be enriched, and your cooking enhanced with just one little trowel.