Supporting Canterbury small business

I've started a small temporary blog, putting together a list of Canterbury small businesses that it would be good to support post the quake. So far lots of gorgeous crafts and craft supplies, lovely seeds and plants, and more.

It'll be in blog format for a while, then when I find out about a few more businesses, I'll convert it to a categorised list,  and try and promote it a wee bit more widely.

The blog is here - http://chchsmallbusinesses.blogspot.com/

If nothing else, I'm enjoying discovering more exciting small businesses and businesspeople through putting this list together.

I'm not in any way saying people should drop all support for their own local businesses to support the Canterbury businesses, but I know that if a disaster hit that impacted my own business, I'd porbably be keen for a bit of extra buyer support while things got up and running again! :)

If you know of any Canterbury businesses you'd like to see get some extra buyer support from round the country, please let me know!

Artisan perfumery course

 In September I met Alec Lawless - a highly successful artisan perfumer from the UK who uses almost all natural botanicals in his fragrances. He was teaching an artisan perfumery workshop in Wellington. (A first for NZ as far as I know!)

He appeared on the Good Morning Show while he was here - you might have caught it.

His workshop was a huge success, so he's back to do just one more in early January.

Interested? Details are here. I'll also post more soon.

Healthy Money Diary 1: fortuitous meetings

Whenever I ponder the economic crisis (recession/coming financial apocalypse/whatever you want to call it) I come back again and again to the usefulness of local currencies and alternative forms of trading -  vital tools that could help enable ordinary people like me to cope.

Just lately I've started thinking about it all a lot more, and I thought I'd blog a semi-regular diary about it. I'm calling it the 'Healthy Money Diary', after a book I read the summer before last - Healthy Money, Healthy Planet by Deirdre Kent.

(Highly recommend! A fantastic, clear explanation of the global financial system and its failings ... plus a detailed look at alternative forms of trading within communities).

I really feel right now that I want to increase my involvement with alternative forms of trading and currency.

The flames of my interest were fanned a few weeks ago when I got to meet Helen Dew at a Wairarapa craft fair. If you don't know Helen, she is a highly respected and long-time advocate of community currencies, and a board member of the Living Economies Educational Trust. My part in the conversation with her consisted mostly of a lot of vigorous head nodding.

I sat on my thoughts for a bit. Then over the past week I had a couple of other fortuitous meetings:

* I discovered that an anonymous crafter whose blog I had just started reading (thinking this person has some extremely interesting things to say) is actually someone I slightly know in real life! I was thrilled.

I have been especially thinking about this post of hers about a wool mill closure in the South Island, and the ensuing comments. It's the kind of thing that I can foresee happening increasingly often over the next few years. I don't know the answers, but I feel sure they rest at least partly with finding new ways to trade and support local small business.

* Then on the weekend I had the opportunity to meet and chat in real life with Isa - The Nourishing Revolution blogger, which was lovely. We talked about the state of the world, as you do, and yes she is just as full of insights and ideas as you would expect from her blog! I felt galvanised to act after talking with her. (And it wasn't just the two coffees).

So here I am, inspired by the things other people say, and their passion and enthusiasm, determined to try and find different ways in my own life to trade. I don't exactly know what I'm going to do next, but I'll just work away at it, and blog my thoughts as I go (maybe once a week or so).

Oh! And if you are interested in a copy of Healthy Money, Healthy Planet, it is available here. (No, I don't get a commission.) :)

Perfume sample winners

Thanks for the entries! I wanted to send everyone some. But winners drawn with closed eyes and lots of swirling round of the paper are - Nikki and Gillybean! Could you drop me a line with your addresses? My email is johanna dot knox @ gmail.com

Good Magazine article

The newest issue of Good Magazine is out - and includes an article  I wrote about the growing natural perfumery movement.

It was a lot of fun writing this article and talking to all the perfumers from around the world. I could only include a fraction of the fascinating stuff they told me, so over the next little while I'll feature longer interviews with some of them on this blog, like Ambrosia Jones and Charna Ethier.

The article is in Good's Smarter Living section. Table of Contents here! :)

P.S. If you haven't entered my draw below - for a 2ml sample of a delicious natural perfume, and you would like to, enter now. I'll draw it on Sunday.

Natural Perfume Giveaway ...

Want to share?

I never normally win a thing in giveaways and draws - but by some amazing luck I managed to score an incredible spray bottle of scent by California Perfumer JoAnne Bassett.

It's completely delicious, and since I have so much, I'd love to decant a couple of 1.5 ml samples and give them away.

The perfume is called 'Sensual Embrace' - you can see it and read about it here. It's made entirely from natural ingredients - a rare thing in perfume these days! (Although a small but growing number of artisan perfumers are doing it.) JoAnne created this perfume as part of The Mystery of Musk Project recently run by the US-based Natural Perfumers Guild.

To enter, just add a comment to this post, and I'll put all commenters in a draw, which my lovely assistant (AKA my daughter) will help with.

I have some other small samples of JoAnne Bassett's perfumes as well, though I'm keeping those to myself! She is amazing. (I read somewhere that one of her perfumes blends 39 natural ingredients. It seems hard to me to blend three without it smelling like a dog's breakfast.)

If you're interested in finding out more about natural perfumery, I have a small article on it it coming out (I think) in the August/September Good magazine. I'll also blog about it some more.

Artisan Perfumery Course

No time to post screeds at the moment, but I thought over the next few weeks I would post a few bits and pieces about my current journey into the addictive world of smelly stuff.

If anyone is interested, there's a rare opportunity to do an intensive artisan perfumery course in Wellington in early September - using natural botanical ingredients. The teacher is Alec Lawless, an artisan perfumer from the UK. To my knowledge - this is the first time a course like this has been held in New Zealand.

If I weren't going away when the course is on (which I'm quite sad about), I would be scrounging up money to do it every way I could!
There are details here at Wellington City Council's Feeling Great site.

War and the Otaki Womens' Community Club

Madz pointed out in comments on the last post that the settler government in the 19th century used legislation, backed up by military force, to take land from Maori. Important point!

So I wanted to write a bit more about that - because it's one way to see the colonisation of this country as part of a bigger picture that continues today - and affects everyone in different ways. (Including the Otaki Women's Community Club).

Why talk about it?
Sometimes in conversations I had while working on the Taranaki War exhibition, I heard people say words to the effect that as Maori their issue was - at its heart - not with individual Pakeha but with the juggernaut that is the Western system and way of government.

Another thing that was brought up often was the usefulness of finding common ground between Maori and Pakeha to help promote conversation and the understanding.

Well, I reckon that this idea of battling with legislative authority is one way of finding some common ground.

Back to the nineteenth century ...
So the British moved into this land that was governed by Maori law and custom. Once here, they set up their own authorities and wrote legislation (both here and in Britain) giving themselves their own permission to - bit by bit - take control of this land.

Perhaps the most infamous duo of laws is the 1863 Suppression of Rebellion Act and the 1863 NZ Settlement Act.

In combination, these laws assumed that Maori defending their land from illegal sales and military occupation were ‘in rebellion’ and could be punished - and that the punishment would be 'confiscation' (i.e. seizure) of their land.

Over a million acres of land were seized from Taranaki region Maori in this way, and a lot more around other parts of the country - although I don't know figures.

Law upon law
Over the decades the government put a further cocktail of laws into place that ensured Maori were pushed off and had no access to the vast majority of their own land. There are way too many to detail here. Maybe I'll list some in another post.

I'll just add that when bits of law didn't work with the government's goals, it either -

a) ignored them (e.g. from what I understand, the 1852 NZ Constitution Act says that some parts of New Zealand would remain ’Maori districts’, continuing to operate under Maori law and custom. This didn't happen.)

or

b) wrote new laws to close the loopholes. (E.g. the 1894 Native Land (Validation of Titles) Act Amendment Act simply and sweepingly declared many previous illegal purchases of Māori land to be legal. It's been nicknamed the ‘1894 Validation of Invalid Land Sales Act’!)

Government and business
Western governments have a long history of being entwined in myriad ways with powerful business interests, and certainly this was happening during the New Zealand colonisation period.

British land dealers and others were keen to get their hands on New Zealand land and resources, and were pressuring the government to ensure they could. (It worked.)

So this is where the common ground comes in.

I suspect that most people in New Zealand have, or will, at least once or twice in their life feel that their independence, self-reliance, and/or wellbeing is being thwarted by a law or regulation that seems to operate in favour of larger businesses/operators and discriminate against individuals, communities, or small businesses who are hurting no one, but just trying to get by or do their own thing.

Which brings me - at last - to the Otaki Womens' Community Club! This is the most recent example of that that I know of.

It's easy to feel that when you are hit with some kind of restriction like this, which seems to make no good sense, that it's an anomaly.

But there are people in New Zealand (and elsewhere) constantly bumping up against these kinds of crazy rules in many spheres - health, education, art, economy, and more. You don't always think about these rules too much until you actually come up against them, but they're a systemic problem.

And I think it is a big part of what colonisation was and is (with colonisation of course being on a vastly larger scale ...)

Trying to sum up ...
Legislation has always been a vital implement in the government/big-business toolbox. And it's this government/large-business pairing that colonised New Zealand and continues to strike at ordinary people's self-reliance in many ways both big and small.

I'm not for a minute saying that all individuals enforcing such legislation are thinking, 'Harrharr! I'm a tool of the state and I'm going to crush these pesky independents!!' (Although some of them might be ... who knows?)

I'm just saying that the western government system is and has always been very well set up to make sure large business interests are protected in an ongoing way, and the less powerful may get forced out, or tossed aside along the way.

Colonisation was/is a very extreme, far-reaching and horrific case of that. And now the process goes on, with most of us subject to it one small way or another. (I would argue that the economic crisis/recession has been another very large example of it .... but that's definitely another post ...)

Right, family wants me off the computer, so I guess that's the end of my rant!

Pedal power

Wellington sustainable food fan David Stuart has started a blog about his and his family's adventures ... Take a look at their new pedal powered blender!

As an aside, David's wife Charity runs the very wonderful Honeychild cloth nappy business.

Our suburban honey adventure

This is the closest to from-scratch honey I will ever get I think! (I just don't have it in me to keep bees.)

At the end of last year we bought an entire frame of honeycomb from Windy Bottom Farm (through Naturefoods).

I think these frames are now selling for around $30, but I'm not completely sure. Hopefully Deb or Ian from Naturefoods will read this and correct me if I'm wrong.

Sadly I seem to have lost all my pics of my son and daughter having a glorious, sticky time processing the honey! Well, you'll just have to use your imagination ... :)

Lost picture 1: Shows the children carefully using knives to cut bits of honeycomb from the frame - to eat as is.

Lost picture 2: Shows the children cutting MORE bits of honey comb from the frame, to eat as is. (It really was particularly delicious honey.)

Lost picture 3: Shows me trying to get organised to extract the honey from the comb, while the children ditch knives and dig out blobs of honey comb with their fingers - to eat as is.

Lost picture 4: Shows the children squeezing cut-out bits of honeycomb in their fists, and collecting the drips in containers, to extract the honey from the wax. (This is how it's done in some places sometimes apparently.)

Lost picture 5: Shows us scoring one rather ravaged frame of honey all over with a knife.

Lost picture 6: Shows the scored frame left to drip over a bucket, to extract more honey from the comb. This method was suggested by Pip in Kerikeri.

Lost picture ... Oh! Actually somehow this picture managed to survive! This is how much honey we got. The honey collected in the bucket using the score-and-drip method is on the bottom. The honey collected by squeezing is on the top. It amounted to over 1 kg. Note that the honey collected by score-and-drip is clearer and purer looking!


I think we could have collected more in the bucket if we'd scored it a bit differently. Next time I would use a finer blade (probably a craft knife) - and make more scores, closer together.

Anyway, after the comb had stopped dripping into the bucket (the next day) there was still quite a bit of honey left in the comb, so ...

Lost picture 7: Shows my children at it again with the squeezing ... I tried to keep track of how much extra honey we got doing this but lost my scribbles. It might have been another 150g?

Lost picture 8: Shows the empty frame (good for kindling) and the crumbly looking remnants of wax after all the scoring and dripping and squeezing was done.

And then this was interesting to me ... I saved those remnants of wax for ages. They sat in a bowl on the kitchen bench for a good three weeks, frequently eliciting from visitors an, 'Ew, what's that?!'

Well, I told them - it's wax. And when I get around to it, I'm going to melt it down to separate the last bits of honey out from it, and then I'll use it to make balms or lotions.

Finally I did get round to melting it down, and lo and behold - it produced only the thinnest crust of wax on the top. The rest was actually still honey! I'd say around 300g of it!

So the lesson I learned from that is that there's a lot MORE honey and lot LESS wax in a honeycomb than I thought! (The wax was fun for the kids to play with, pouring it over ice-cubes, dipping things in it, and making a couple of wax stamps for envelopes, but there wasn't enough for more than that.)

I'd estimate that overall we got about 1.5kg of honey from the frame, plus all the comb my children ate! But the money we spent on the frame was worth it for the children's experience alone.

If I did this again, I'd probably be more methodical:

First cut out some tidy blocks of comb for the children, and also to give as gifts to people who like honeycomb.

Then do the score-and-drip thing, with a finer knife so as to get as much raw, unheated honey from the comb as possible

Then melt all the rest down at the gentlest heat I could manage.

I'd probably dispense with the squeezing altogether (although it was fun!)

Coffee and the crisis

The two reasons I've just started home-roasting coffee are:

1. It's way easier on my wallet - even taking into account electricity use.

2. Green beans keep a lot longer than roasted beans. (I've read that if stored well, green beans can keep for 2-4 years with little loss of quality.) I'm keen to start storing coffee in case imported supplies become unreliable. Given how long they keep, it makes a lot more sense to store the beans at the green stage.

Of course I could solve all the issues in one fell swoop by giving up coffee, but I'm not quite ready for that!

I used this website's instructions to get started.

I buy green beans - Ethiopian Yirgacheffe - from People's Coffee.




I roast them in our little old electric popcorn maker.

The first time I did it, it took eight minutes.

Now I've got it up to nine.


Dan, one of the lovely People's Coffee barristas, says the ideal amount of time (for a dark roast I think) is about 16 minutes. If you roast too fast it doesn't taste as good.


Apparently electric popcorn makers can sometimes roast coffee much, MUCH too fast, but Dan seemed to think that 8 or 9 minutes was pretty respectable for one of these appliances.

A few notes:
I was relieved to find that the smoke produced during the process wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

As the beans heat and puff up, they crackle and pop a bit. I put a bowl under the popcorn maker just like I do for popcorn, and during the roasting, when any beans come flying out and land in the bowl, I quickly drop them back into the popcorn maker.

The husks that fly off have to be cleaned up afterwards, but it's really not that bad.

I'd like to try roasting beans in our cast iron frying pan. That way I could do it over the woodburner in winter and avoid electricity use. I think I'd get a more uneven result, but I might be able to control the overall speed of the roast better.
Ultimately I'd love a proper stove-top popcorn maker to use.

I've just found out that Sharon and her family roast their own beans too - have been doing it for ages. Hopefully I can pick up some tips and ideas from her.

Small honey update

I just got this comment from Pip in Kerikeri, about separating honey from its wax comb. It's so useful that I'll cut and paste it in here, since I know things in the comment section often get missed:

Hi Johanna, we have just removed the frames from our hive. To start with we score the surface of the honeycomb, to open up the comb, with a normal fork. Then we leave it to drip into a bucket overnight. Most of the honey flows out this way and if there is any left we still want then we squeeze it. Enjoy, its so much fun!

Also, I put a basic honey junket recipe up on Wild Concoctions, and will put up some variations soon.

Lastly - a quick plug for Peanutbutterland peanut butter - available through Nature Foods. This is lovingly and labour-intensively made by a guy in Kapiti. (At least I think it's Kapiti. Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong.) And it truly is the best peanut butter ever. It's not just ordinary home-made peanut butter. It's gone through a whole soaking and drying process, and been mixed with coconut oil, so it's way more nutritious and digestible than 'regular' peanut butter.

The reason I mention it in a post about honey is that my son and I have become addicted to having it with honey!

Honey!

We don't have the room to keep bees, but even if we did, and I was prepared to put the time and effort in, I don't think I would. I LOVE the idea of it, but whenever I've read those 'Is Beekeeping For You' articles - there is one sticking point. Beekeepers get stung. (I know, I know, it makes no sense - I've given birth to two children, but I'm scared of the pain of a bee sting.)

Having resigned myself to never producing my own honey, this might be the next best thing - buying complete frames of raw comb honey, and doing my own processing.

You see, Deb and Ian at Nature Foods have just started supplying some delicious locally grown honey from 'Windy Bottom Farm'. If you haven't seen the Nature Foods website, take a look. There are all sorts of interesting, healthy, and yummy foods there. (They may not have put the honey up yet, but just enquire if you're interested.)

Some of the Windy Bottom Farm honey that they stock will be raw, some finely filtered, and some coarsely filtered - depending on what's available at the time.

I've got us some finely filtered manuka honey, some coarsely filtered kamahi honey, and of course that raw frame, which the grower says was 'collected in the Battle Hill area and so will be a mixture of pasture (clover) and bush honey, with probably also a high manuka content.'
It is absolutely oozing with honey, and our entire household has been tasting the drips, and exclaiming over their heavenliness. I have no idea why, but it is so much yummier than 'ordinary' honey.

My son may have nailed it when he said, 'Actually THIS is ordinary honey, and the stuff you buy in containers in a shop isn't. That's why this is yummier.'

Well, wish me luck with my processing. These are the grower's instructions:

The raw honey can be separated from the comb by squeezing the honeycomb in your hands over a collecting vessel (bowl) and the honey will run through your fingers to the bowl and you will be left with a lump of wax in your hand. This is how it's still done in some countries in South America.

If anyone reading this has done it before and has any tips - I'd love to hear them!

The frame weighs about 3kgs. I can't wait to see how much honey and how much wax I get from it. I'm looking forward to the wax almost as much as the honey, and yes, every one will be getting home-made balms for birthday presents during 2009!