Tales of a Backyard Farmer: why this book?

Life rolls along, and sometimes it rolls right over one.

Far off, on the other side of the world, the cook’s mother has collapsed one more time, and age and frailty suggest that there will be no happy ending to this latest episode.

And so the Australian gardener must leave his garden, and the German cook must leave her kitchen, and both must journey together to Europe to do what needs to be done, for as long as it needs doing.

There’s not much fun in writing about the bond between kitchens and gardens in the abstract; this is something that lives and breathes from week to week, as one does what needs doing.

But then, back in 2005, I wrote about life and a world view from the veggie patch, and these 23 stories were published locally among organic gardeners here in Adelaide.

So here they are again, week by week, until we can return to an Australian spring later in the year.