shades of green

i've been researching quinoa.

"Quinoa was so vital a food for the Incas that it was referred to as chisiiya mama or "mother grain" in the Quechua language. The grain was so sacred that each season the first seed was planted by the Inca king using a golden spade. Today, quinoa is still a staple crop grown by farmers throughout the highlands of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. For the people of this region, quinoa is an important source of protein–a protein of such high quality from a nutritional standpoint, that it often takes the place of meat in their diets." (source http://www.seedsofchange.com/enewsletter/issue_38/quinoa.asp )

i've been pouring over internet pages on all things green. on how to save energy in the home, how to grow quinoa, how to make bio-diesel...
so far we're walking the good path- we've replaced a north-facing wall with a set of windows allowing for passive solar heating; we've insulated the walls, the ceiling and under the floors; we've installed instant gas hot water with flow reducer on the shower & with the idea of building a solar hot water system later on (we've saved the ancient hot water cylinder); we've saved nearly every piece of timber from within the house for use later as a bookshelf, as a table, as flooring (and in fact nearly every piece of building material has a secondary use: the old shower tray can be a solar oven, the old bath can be the new outdoor bath, the old kitchen cupboards are now the new shed and garage cupboards); we're designing and installing a water saving system (we could secretly do a water re-use system too); we've built a compost system that takes what the chickens won't; and we've designed a permaculture garden that references ancient french gardens and local maori mythology as a fusion of the essences of our times.

the point of quinoa was ot try and find a nutritious grain with a high yield that would be suitable to replace our front lawn with. apparently, here in aotearoa it is possible to get 2 crops in a season, with 7kg/9m2.

hmm, that's a lot!

so, plans (there's always a plan!) include sometime next winter diggin up the front lawn (who needs a lawn mower) to prepare the space for out super incan garden. watch this space!

xx
mama b