In the apple orchard with Win and Petal

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  • Published 20100201
  • ISBN: 9781921520860
  • Extent: 264 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm)

ON THE FINAL evening of our week away, I took a plastic bag bulging with broad beans out to the veranda of the holiday house. There in the twilight I set to the fiddly task of separating the pale fleshy bodies from their fibrous green envelopes. As I dropped the beans into a metal bowl, my thoughts drifted to questions that would have made no sense at all to generations past. I can’t imagine that my great-grandmother or her friends would have stopped to contemplate the merits of growing and making their own food. It was simply a matter of necessity.

As the bean skins began to pile by my feet, I wondered why so many people are returning to growing their own produce, whether in backyard, community, guerrilla or tree-change gardens. It’s surely no coincidence that this is happening as supermarket shelves buckle under a dizzying range of foods, or at least products pretending to be food.

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About the author

Melissa Sweet

Melissa Sweet is one of Australia's most experienced health journalists.She is author of Inside Madness (Pan Macmillan, 2006) and The Big Fat Conspiracy: How to Protect your...

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