Nirvana Organic Garden with Mike Keelan: In the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia
On a cold, wet and windy day there's a sparse feel around Heathfield in the Adelaide Hills. The chestnut and walnut trees are bare as the earth catches up on forty winks in readiness for an explosion of new life and growth.
Come spring and the scene has changed - the burst of new growth and color has transformed the landscape and a good place to see it all is at Nirvana Organic Garden.
Deb Cantrill and partner Quentin Jones have been working the property for twenty-two years. When they took it over it was covered in blackberries but now, Nirvana Organics is known for its vast array of produce including jams, chestnuts, and walnuts. It's been a slow transformation but Deb admits the pet geese have played their part.
“Two geese equal one sheep in what they eat in a day but they’re a lot smarter,” she laughs. “They graze all day and when they finish they go home by themselves!”
And, of course they leave that special something behind in the soil.
During her regular in-house seminars at Nirvana Organics, Deb describes bio dynamics as a holistic approach in which the property is seen as a living and breathing entity. For some, the compost heap is merely discarded fermenting rubbish. But at Nirvana, it’s described in ways that would make a baker proud.
“I make my compost all at once just like you'd make a cake,” she explained. “I collect all the ingredients and I make it all in a day. Then I cover it up and leave it to digest.”
The chooks help too by providing a lot of the ingredients. Add some local grasses and special plants like nettles and water regularly and the ‘cake’ rises to the challenge of fertilising rows and rows of raspberries and currants.
“If your pot plant needs watering once a week then your compost needs watering once a week. You've got to see it as a living plant.”
And that's the secret to the seasonal transformation from the winter blues we filmed in winter to the explosion of growth three months later.
But there's one secret ingredient that the disciples of biodynamics speak of in reverential tones. It comes from the earth in a process that seems positively medieval.
In the depths of winter, Quentin and Deb buried horns filled with cow manure. And we were lucky enough to be present when they were ready.
“Biodynamic Preparation 500. It just seemed to be loaded with bacteria and worm eggs and all the things that are important to activate the soil. Biodynamic farmers have been doing this since 1924.”
That's when biodynamics guru Rudolph Steiner, a German philosopher came up with his plan to help struggling farmers whose soil had become less and less productive.
“In good soil there are millions and millions of bugs,” said Quentin. “More bugs in the top three of four inches in the soil than there are of any other animals species on the plant. So we've got to look after these.”
From cow horns to the stirring tank beneath a one hundred fifty-year-old oak tree, the process continues as Quentin dilutes his precious humus material in water.
When stirred, brew in the drum will cover five acres of raspberries, currants and chestnuts. It’s a method, which has changed little since Rudolph Steiner fist hit upon the idea all those years ago.
It may not be everyone's idea of a day in the garden but the proof is in the sale room at Nirvana Organics on Longwood Road at Heathfield. Deb and Quentin run regular farm tours and seminars.
Nirvana Organic Produce
184 Longwood Road
Heathfield
For tours and seminars contact 8339 2519
