A Year of Slow Food: Four Seasons of Growing and Making Your Own Food in the Australian Countryside

by David Foster, Gerda Foster

Twenty-five years ago, David and Gerda Foster and their young family moved to Bundanoon, in the fertile Southern Highlands of NSW. They had a yearning to farm. They wanted to eat slow food. Although completely inexperiences, they learned through trial and error how to milk a cow, plant crops, repair their almost derelict house, and grow enough food to feem themselves.The eight children are now adults and David, a Miles Franklin award-winning author, still chops wood, makes bread and cheese, and keeps bees, while Gerda uses fresh food as therapy in her work as a counsellor in a maximum security prison. This is the story of a year in their life, with a recipe for each week using what's ripe in their garden. It is also the story of a particular approach to life, in which the growing, preparation and eating of food plays a central part.

Genres: Memoir, Australia

277 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

David Manning Foster (born 15 May 1944) is an Australian novelist and scientist. He has written a range of satires on the theme of the decline of Western civilization, as well as producing short stories, poetry, essays, and a number of radio plays.

Foster writes in an Australian tradition of idiosyncratic satire and comedy that may be traced through the work of Joseph Furphy, Miles Franklin, Xavier Herbert and David Ireland. His novels are the most wide-ranging and fearless of the Australian novels that have contributed to the late twentieth-century re-examination of Western ideologies and the literary forms in which they are expressed. ('Foster: The Satirist of Australia' by Susan Lever)

Reviews

[Reannon Bowen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not at all what I expected but an interesting read. I like that things aren't glossed over, not everything is perfect & nothing is preachy.

[W.J. Gunning · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the concept of Slow Food and so much of this book I did love, but he lost me completely when he suggested spraying Roundup on the nettles in the forest. Also being a vegan I guess the meat and milk parts of the book were of little interest. Still an admirable lifestyle away from twenty first century consumerism. Just throw away that glyphosate laced Roundup and grow beans instead of cows and this could be my ideal life

[Frank Ashe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful. Makes me hungry just looking at it again.

[Cheryl Sharkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this honest refreshing aussie book. David is quirky and likeable I have reread this book a couple of times a year, Simple and honest and an easy two night reading trip to Bundanoon.

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting :-)