Veggies on the verge

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WHEN housewives in Malaysia start complaining about the high cost of living, male ministers advised them to plant vegetables in their backyards to reduce the family expenditure on food. For the bulk of the family’s budget goes into basic foodstuff. The minister in charge of kitchen affairs is the woman in the house. She knows better.

For years, Kuchingites relied entirely on three sources of supply for their greens and other goods: the sundry grocery around the corner, the wet market at Gambier Road, and the mobile grocery van that plied its wares in the housing schemes like Kenyalang Park and Lintang Park.

The Gambier Road Market is gone. Small multipurpose shops died out for lack of customers. At Jalan Kulas, the shop owned by Pak Haji Sidek where I used to buy sireh, pinang and kapur for my mum whenever she came to Kuching, is gone.

When big shopping malls started to appear on the scene in the late 1980s, the supermarket invariably forms part of a mall. All sorts of veggies are being sold there. Their existence draws away part of the regular shoppers.

The smaller suppliers have lost out to the big players as the middle class income earners in the community prefer the air-conditioned shopping complexes while the ordinary mortals are happy with the wet markets at Petanak, Stutong, Seventh Mile or Tenth Mile bazaar. Even these are becoming endangered species as malls mushroom all over the place.

At Satok Road, there was the famous multipurpose Sunday market that served housewives from practically all of Kuching. Minus its fame, it has crossed the river to Kubah Ria, thus losing some of its regular customers.

During my visit to Australia, I have come across an interesting new concept, rather grandly called ‘permaculture’. Nook-and-corner gardening to you and me. Maybe we should take a leaf out of the Hong Kong self-sufficiency book. There, the residents have long learnt how to survive in a crowded city where there is practically no space for a vegetable plot. And yet many families have adapted well, building gardens on roofs using either a hydroponic system or buying earth from plant nurseries.

Here in Australia, many families in the cities and suburbs use plots of land in the backyard for vegetables. This culture is nothing new; the early settlers had their own little farms of potatoes, etc.

The latest trend among city folk is to plant veggies in old boxes and containers. People who used to rely on the local greengrocer for their supplies have begun to think in terms of self-sufficiency in veggies and fruit.

Community farm

Another interesting project is the community farm. I went to one in Bellingen,  some 50km from where I am staying at Deer Vale, Dorrigo.

On this farm, I saw representatives of certain familiar fruit trees and vegetables, some tropical – longan, papaya, lime; vegetables such as yams, tomatoes, even cangkuk manis. Cute tiny cherry tomatoes are sweet. The lime is as sour as it has always been. All for free.

In theory, everything is free to pick in this garden, but nothing is actually free. Volunteers do most of the gardening – nice spot for a retired uncle to get a bit of healthy exercise – but the upkeep of the garden is not cheap though the water supply, electricity, and organic fertilisers are sparingly used. Fortunately, visitors donate more money than what the tomatoes actually cost them, by putting money inside an honesty box, which is unattended; that helps with the maintenance of the projects.

Food swaps

What interests me most is the way people here get themselves involved in community projects without government help or intervention.

Back home, food swapping in the longhouses is part of the family culture. I’m not sure if this can be introduced to a Kuching community, with the metropolitan culture of putting a monetary value on everything. However, it might be worth trying, as an experiment. It may work, who knows.

In Australia, there are Diggers Clubs. On specified days, members bring along their veggies and other produce such as eggs to the village hall. Anyone can help themselves to that what is enough for the family for the day or two, and put what they have to offer for others to take home.

They even exchange seeds, seedlings, pots, preserves, and honey. Old magazines on gardening may be exchanged among the enthusiasts.

That’s ‘permaculture’ – it can be part of our city culture too.

Is there anything similar that we can do in Kuching? The problem may be that there is no space behind the houses or the condominiums. What is left of fertile land is taken up for parks or playgrounds, they’re necessary to the community too.

Public land rights are normally vested in the local government, so the authorities could allocate land in unused pockets, for people to grow veggies. Come on, give it a try!

Unlike Hong Kongers, Kuchingites are not a creative lot. Very few plant anything, at the most chillies in a flowerpot. So when the price of kangkung goes up during the landas, they raise complaints, some of which would be converted by politicians into hot political chilli. Remember how they threw kangkung at the Prime Minister not so long ago?

Maybe we should adopt the concept of food swaps again; it was normal practice in the longhouses and villages. What about forming a group of neighbours to plant vegetables in pots and by hydroponics? And when they are available in excess of family consumption, organise swaps – the rich members of the group may provide something not easily available to the gardeners, fresh veggies in exchange for juicy apples from the supermarkets.

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