FoodGeneral

‘Abundance’

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Abundance’ is a hallowed concept in Permaculture. Abundance is what we permaculturalists aim for: abundant, multifarious yields of fruits, nuts, herbs, medicines, fibres… all things useful and edible.

The way I see it abundance is nature’s reward for careful, insightful design work. I like abundance. As a form of feedback it tells us we’re doing something right. In my mind the word ‘abundance’ conjures up the world of Sofia Coppola’s gorgeously realised period-extravaganza: Marie Antoinette. The costumes, designs and settings in this film reek of opulence. They’re sumptuous. Abundant!

What am I responding to when I respond to the idea of ‘abundance’? Is it something sexy? Something related to fecundity? Excess? Who wouldn’t prefer to lay eyes on a tray mounded with macaroons rather than a tray with just one or two macaroons swimming in vast empty space?

The fact is humans respond (through their eyes and then their brains) to abundance. No denying it. It’s why nutritionists urge people to store their wholefoods (nuts, seeds, pulses, dried fruits) in glass jars in prominent places in their kitchens – so the produce can be seen. Apparently the mind is attuned to abundance. When we see abundant food-stores we feel happy, assured, comforted: starvation seems a far-off possibility.

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Store your whole foods and preserves somewhere where you can see them. Celebrate ‘abundance’!,

To me, abundance is a principle exemplified by plants. Plants give abundantly. If you don’t believe me, look how many seeds reside inside a single tomato or how many mangos a mature tree produces in one season. Loads!

Sure, plants aren’t always abundant in terms of the yields they offer. There are bad years when not enough rain/too much rain/not enough sun/too much sun/sun at the wrong time/rain at the wrong time means poor yields and as a result, scarcity.

Yes, scarcity. That hideous word bandied about by scaremongering politicians and capitalists with a view to convincing us ‘There’s not enough stuff out there for all of us.’ And that, ‘We need to beg, borrow, steal more, More, MORE, MORE.

Me? I’m not buying it.

Why? Because I believe in abundance. And not just believe. I know it exists and that it is something we can all, realistically, aspire to.

Here’s how I know…

Three months after moving into our new home in the Obi Obi Richie and I had our first unexpected taste of abundance. With the annual veg beds still under construction and the planting of fruit and nut trees a far-off dream, we’d reconciled ourselves to the fact that it would be quite some time before we could enjoy our first harvest: our first taste of abundance.

Then suddenly, one day, out of the blue, without warning, food started falling from the sky. Literally. Falling.

I mean it.

Food was falling from the sky into the undergrowth beyond our veranda; in the two valleys that bracket our house. Food was falling on the rich soil of the river flats and on our neghbours’ lawn. I could hear it. Food was falling on the western slope where the regrettable black running bamboo has taken over, running so far and so fast it could outdistance a marathon runner.

Abundance fell from the sky not just for one day but for weeks and weeks and weeks. Two months in fact. Abundace fell like grenades. Like Bombs.

Boom’, they went. ‘Shatter! Crash’. Sometimes there were whole showers of them, but mostly just colossal thuds. We were under siege.

Under siege by Bunya bombs.

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A bunya bomb! This one weighs a little over 9kg.

After our first experience of bunya abundance Richie and I toyed with the idea of calling our new home ‘Abunyadance’. Get it? A-bunya-dance. Play on words… you know. Frankly, the name’s a bit trite and icky. It didn’t stick. But it is fitting. Abundance makes ya wanna dance.

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Richie’s ‘abunyadance’

Without doing anything: without planting a seed, tending a seedling, pruning, watering, fertilising, or any other activity typically associated with obtaining a yield, we’d received bounty. Healthy bounty, nutritious and tasty. Hallelujah!

Some people poo-poo bunya nuts. True, they’re time consuming to prepare. They can taste resinous and they’re too stodgy for some people’s taste but I love ‘em. And considering bunya trees give abundantly while requiring no care whatsoever I can’t begrudge the twenty minutes of cooking, and the twenty minutes of shelling required to prepare a cone of seventy-or-so nuts. It’s not a massive investment of time or energy: not considering how much time and effort goes into growing, say, one lettuce plant from seed and then nursing it to maturity. In terms of calorific energy input you get A LOT more bang for your buck with bunyas than you do with lettuce.

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The time-consuming (but rewarding!) job of cutting and shelling boiled bunya nuts

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A bunya cross-section

What’s cool about bunya nuts is what’s cool about all tree crops and perennial food plants: they only have to be planted once. No tilling required. After doing a little soil-preparation, watering, mulching and companion-planting with nitrogen-fixing support plants, you get to sit back and (in time) enjoy abunyadance.

The typical growth pattern of perennials is described by Eric Toensmeier, author of Paradise Lot and Perennial Vegetables as: ‘Creep, Leap, Reap’. That means that when planted, perennials start slow; come along in leaps and bounds; and then, when mature, there’s nothing to do but harvest, harvest, harvest.

Which brings me to another hallowed permaculture concept: ‘harvest as maintenance’. That’s what Richie and I are aiming for once our edible landscape is up and running. Once the hard work of preparing the ground, getting the trees in and nursing them through their first few years of infancy is done, well, we hope that the most demanding job we’ll have to do is harvest the fruit and nuts from time to time, and then cut, pickle, pound, jar and otherwise preserve them.

Eric Toensmeier talking about a hallowed permaculture concept: ‘harvest as maintenance’:

“My fantasy is that in decades or centuries to come, almost every interaction with one’s garden could be a form of harvest, guiding succession gently to an evermore productive future.’ (Toensmeier 2013, Paradise Lot, p. 180)

This year I learnt what happens when you don’t harvest your bunya nut abundance: the abundance either (a) rots, or (b) grows.

This year as the bunya nuts were falling – all through January and February, around the time of my nephew’s birthday (thanks for the reminder Julian!) – I was ensconced in preparing my doctoral confirmation document and presentation. Nothing could stop me. I had my head down, bum up. Not even the sound of bunya bombs falling could distract me from my work.

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Julian’s birthday. Reminder for Nina: forage for bunya nuts!

Well, those nuts got away from me. They lay where they fell for weeks. Uncollected but not unthought of. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll do it,’ I said to myself. ‘Tomorrow I’l go out and get them, stockpile them on the veranda like last year.

By the time I got outside to harvest, every single nut in every single cone had either rotted, sprouted or been eaten-out by sturdy-toothed rodents. Mama mia! Scattered across the forest floor were hundreds of spoiled nuts. From many of the tear-drop shaped nuts a disconcerting 5-mm thick feeler had emerged, up to 80mm long. The nuts were growing.

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Sprouted bunya nut

This is not a bad thing in and of itself. Of those thousands of nuts that fell a handful will take root and in a good 10-20 years they’ll be shedding their abundance left right and center.

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spreading the ‘abundance’: me planting sprouted nuts

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Richie planting sprouted bunya nuts

In the meantime, however… there’s a scarcity of bunya nuts in our house. The season wasn’t a total loss: I managed to cook a total of two cones (about seventy nuts per cone): one for ready-eating, and the other which I cooked and then milled into bunya meal. I store this meal in the freezer and use it from time to time in cake batters and bread dough (a good FREE local, organic substitute for almond meal). Richie’s bunya pesto is another brilliant way to make use of our abunyadance.

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Bunya meal – a good (local, free!) substitute for almond meal

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Richie’s famous bunya and basil pesto: bunya meal, basil, Obi Obi Essentials olive oil, garlic, grated parmesan, salt, pepper

My tangle this year with bunya scarcity is my own fault. The moral of the story is that all the abundance in the world is no good whatsoever unless you catch and store it. ‘Catch and store energy’ is the 2nd principle of permaculture. And bunya nuts are a brilliant source of energy. Well worth the effort of catching and storing.

Catching and storing is about ameliorating shortages – making abundance last. Ironing out the hungry gaps. That’s why food like nuts, pumpkins, root vegetables and dried pulses are such a boon. They store well. Stored food = year round food-security.

The lesson I learnt this year is: when the bunyas are a-falling, get your head out of the books, your ass out of the chair, a gleaning basket in your hand, and a pot of water boiling on the stove. Sharpen your knife and get cracking! By doing a little foraging and cooking every day, by the time March rolls around and the bunyas have stopped falling, you’ll have enough abunyadance squirreled away even a squirrel would be envious.

I don’t see why abundance isn’t something for which we should aim in life. Not materialistic abundance – that can be a trap – but abundance of good things: quality food, fresh water, solitude, rest, sleep, good books, sex, love, friendship, dancing, singing, drumming, swimming… surely those things are worth cultivating: worth catching and storing and savouring.

I don’t think we’ll name the house ‘Abunyadance’. But I’ll always be thankful to the bunyas – thankful every year – when the sound of them falling through the canopy and hitting the forest floor reminds me that ‘abundance’ is the natural state of the world, of nature, and of our natures – which are not outside of ‘Nature’ but a part of it: interconnected, linked, enveloped, one.

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Communal food – shelling bunyas with friends

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Richie at the Bunya Dreaming Festival 2014. So how much does it weigh

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Cross-section of a bunya cone. Watch out for the prickles when you’re shelling them. They hurt!

About the Author

My name is Nina Gartrell. I’m a Doctor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing) candidate with the Faculty of Arts and Business and the Sustainability Research Centre at the University of the Sunshine Coast. The concept for my doctoral research is to write a permaculture-travel memoir about the flightless journey from England to Australia that my partner and I undertook in 2012-2013. The creative artefact will be called Seed: The Art and Mystery of Permatravel.

Her blog is Permaculture Traveller: a permaculture-writing symbiosis. This blog is a nursery bed for ideas on integrating permaculture with writing.

8 Comments

  1. Hi Nina,

    Wow. What a great article. I would love to have some here in Belize. How much would it cost to ship a kilo of seed to Belize? We had one tree, but it died.

    Let me know if we can work something out.

    Best wishes,

    Christopher

  2. I grew up at the base of the Bunya Mountains on the Darling Downs side. These mountains and their valuable timber were first discovered when explorers followed the Bunya Pine trees back up stream to their source. You will find that your trees only produce a big crop of cones every third year. We boiled up the nuts in salted water (often after cooking corned beef in the water) then split them with a sharp knife, removed the yellow central shoot and ate the warm, cooked nut spread with butter.

  3. Great article.
    I’ve been trying to get hold of bunya seed to plant here in northern Spain. Same question as Christopher: please can you send me some of next year’s crop?

  4. Don’t forget you can germinate and eat the cryptopgeal tuber for a secondary meal that tastes different and is easier to prepare than the nuts (your photos aren’t the nuts germinating, that’s the second stage of the lifecycle and is a photo of the cryptogeal tuber). If you aren’t freezing the nuts direct (which you can do before processing), this will buy you a little time to harvest later. There isn’t much online regarding consuming the tuber so I went ahead and did it myself and the photos below are the results.

    https://i.imgur.com/lL3fWKC.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/ZSeGIFA.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/eQ6gNDr.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/l8DYVaN.jpg

  5. Robert: The world’s biggest Bunya nut is in Portugal, bigger than the trees that remain in their local range. You have access to nuts in your part of the world.

    1. Thanks Evan, yes I had heard about that tree. Amazing! Also the tallest tree in Europe is a Eucalyptus in Portugal or Spain, i forget which. What is it about these antipodean transplants?
      But the Bunya is not at all widely known here and I have come up blank trying to get hold of seed…

  6. What about camping out the tree every year? Or contacting the group/department that manage the area?

    Not sure how we could send seeds to the Northern Hemisphere but if it was to be done, I would have the secondary tuber sent in a dark, moist substrate. It often lays in wait until the right conditions and would likely transport well.

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