Harvesting lavender
July 19, 2009
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It’s been made clear to me that I’m doing this lavender harvesting-thing entirely too late in the season, and that if I had harvested it 2-3 weeks ago it would have been much, much more potent. But it is only now that I have the time and inclination to collect the stuff. Upon my return to the Occitanian kitchen garden I am ecstatic to find the bushes bent from the weight of fat-blossomed stalks, all loudly a’buzz with what appears to be an entire hive of REAL bees. No look-alike species and inadvertent pollinators here. I pause for a nano second to feel guilty before cutting away the flowers. May this act encourage the bees to enjoy my calabash, pumpkin, butternut, luffah and zillion other pollen laden flowers that are blooming all around, though surely the lavender would have made someone’s honey taste amazing.
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After cutting the lavender off 4 plants, my basket is bulgingly brimming, slung over my shoulder it’s so heavy that it makes for an uncomfortable ride back. I spread the stalks out on a table cloth to dry, and the next day they are ready to turn. Thanks to yesterday’s wind, today the flowers are dry enough to pluck from the stem. I wonder if there is a word for this activity, because it’s taking lots of time. (In Dutch I would call it rissen, like what one does with currants.) There is a high pain-in-the-ass factor but every time I walk back into the room where the lavender lays drying, I ‘do’ a few bunches, and now it appears that I’ve inadvertently done half. This doesn’t stop me wondering whether this work would better suited to nuns and virgins. As drudgery goes, this is pleasantly meditative work, but drudgery it remains.
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I urge myself forward only because I know some underwear and linens and a closet full of woolens that will be pleased with my efforts, once I get these fiddly buds into piddly muslin pillows. Think I’ll make a pillow for my cranky self as well. In the mean time, my hands have never smelled better though my nose hurts, in fact the fragrance is so strong that it’s giving me a massive headache. Weird consolation for a late harvest.
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1 kilo lavender bud. Street value; 12 euros. Personal value; priceless.
debra at 18:32 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
Speaking of the Future…
how ’bout that market?
June 15, 2009
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Market of the Future poster-child Juli Mata
You’re probably wondering how the future turned out. Last weekend’s was a culmination of the test-phase with FREEHOUSE’s de Markt van Morgen / the Market of the Future, in Rotterdam Zuid’s Afrikaanderwijk. Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking has been experimenting the past months with a Free Kitchen using existing neighbourhood food facilities, food flows and working with local entrepreneurs to investigate what the Afrikaanderwijk would produce if it designed its own food products.
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Yvonne G. unpacks the Groenhart Family ginger beer, fruit syrups & preserves
The final event was an two-day market and to be clear, Lucky Mi’s involvement was just a part of this enormous FREEHOUSE project. On the first day, there were interventions into the business-as-usual format of the Saturday Afrikaandermarkt, orchestrated by FREEHOUSE and representing every area of this large urban outdoor market. Many of the stalls were re-styled and entirely new, locally produced product lines were unleashed on an eager public. The Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking Free Kitchen held court in the food court obviously, testing out the new market stalls designed by artist Dré Wapenaar. We gave away yummy taste-tests of our pickles & kimchi, an array of hummous with lavash bread from the Ata Bakery, ginger beers & kefir drinks and fruit syrups & preserves by Yvonne Groenhart c.s., and the delicious sambals by Dr. Mau.
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All natural, all yummy, vibrant hummous
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Chef Abdel and Lenn Verjans plate pickles
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Market stalls designed by artist, Dré Wapenaar
One the Sunday, (2nd market day), the ENTIRE market represented the FREEHOUSE vision for the regeneration of the Afrikaandermarkt. Improved products, services and market interactions, a more vibrant Afrikaandermarkt was the result of months of work. The next posts will tell all about the various interventions made by many artists, designers and of course locals looking to keep the Afrikaanderwijk economy in the hood where it can bloom to the benefit of all those that live there.
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Super-seller Alia with Dr. Mau sambals
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Please check out an image selection of the Market of the Future, remembering at all times my Creative Commons license: no commercial/no derivs/credits/linkage!!!!
Jeanne van Heeswijk and Dennis Kaspori’s FREEHOUSE PROJECT
Markt van Morgen & Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking graphic identities designed by Roger Teeuwen
debra at 17:45 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
Rethinking the
Market of the Future
June 5, 2009
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Market folk, people from Rotterdam’s Afrikaanderbuurt and artists renew one of the Netherlands’ largest open-air markets, the Afrikaandermarkt. My involvement in this mega project is one of the reasons I’ve written so little in this blog the past year. So much to write about, but no time to write.
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I’ve been collaborating my Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking project with Jeanne van Heeswijk en Dennis Kaspori’s enormous FREEHOUSE project that has been working with local entrepreneurs and artists to develop a better, more unique, more relevant market for this neighbourhood. The focus of the FREEHOUSE project (the Market of the Future) is to infuse the market with better products and services, developed in the hood, and that actually benefit the hood, the Market of the Future. Oddly, the future officially arrives this Saturday and Sunday in Rotterdam’s Afrikaanderwijk when the Market of the Future opens.
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At the ‘old’ Afrikaandermarket, products come from far, far away; the produce, the fabric, the gadgets, the thingy-thingies. The past year artists, designers and local people have been working together to sketch a product line that hyper-uses and reworks the current materials flow such that folks north of the river have a reason to bike over that pretty bridge to do their Saturday (and Wednesday) shopping.
Some of the innovated products include the Suit It Yourself clothing line, developed and manufactured locally, the Lucky Mi Free Kitchen, (yay!) that breathes new life into produce by making jams, syrups, pickles sauces and other foods and snacks. Unique to the Afrikaandermark is the involvement of market folk selling products of district inhabitants . Hippiydippity young fashion designers share space with the scooter store on the corner, there is a mobile repair-anything and everything service and a camel-milksmoothie stand. Stalls will carry speicalty items for the Turkish bride and vegetables from local kitchen gardens.
New pop-up market stalls have been designed by by artists Dré Wapenaar, Jeroen Kooijmans and Hugo Carpenters. Market folk are known to be critical, and after this weekend, we’ll know if these amazing ideas are worth a repeat.
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Freehouse is a project of Jean of Heeswijk and Dennis Kaspori in cooperation with Kosmopolis Rotterdam and is made possible with cooperation and support of the Dutch Arts Council (Fonds BKVB), European Fund for Regional Development of the European Commission, Pact op Zuid, Housing Corporation Vestia, CVAH and VETRA. For more information about Freehouse, the Market of the Future or image material contact Ramon Mustard (T 010-2134201 / E info@freehouse.nl).
To get to the Afrikaandermarkt from Rotterdam Central Station, take the metro to Rijnhaven, get out… and follow the hoards.
debra at 23:35 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
