Editorial published in “Equine Excellence” magazine
May 4th, 2012My Food Garden Update Feb2012
February 16th, 2012Six years ago I came to Pinefield with a dream, and today as I stand in my kitchen I realise that I have succeeded in fulfilling that dream, beyond my expectations!
I wanted to have a food garden that made me self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables, and here I am, surrounded by food! I have more than enough for every meal I eat, and take a lot to my children and their families when I visit them in Melbourne. I have enough to make all the preserves I need and more, and my pantry shelves are stacked with them. I have chooks that lay me eggs that I use and enough to give away too.
I am amazed that I could achieve that, on my own more or less, whilst also making and selling riding shirts. The abundance is a tribute to the fertile land I live on, but I believe that most families could achieve this without much effort. I spend an hour or two a day on the project, but not every day, maybe only half the week and as a hobby and an enjoyment. I never need to force myself to work at it. I don’t believe that my garden has to be a showcase, only that it must be fertile, organic, and productive.
Fruit trees are a joy and reward me with beautiful fruit all through the year. When there is a glut I dry, freeze, bottle or make jam to keep till later on in the year when I will want it. I am constantly researching new recipes and ways to preserve and use the produce. Fruit can be used in so many ways, and my favourite is drying it to use in fruit bread and cakes that are so delicious on a cold winter’s day. The citrus trees are wonderful! They are always covered in fruit which stores well on the tree and the oranges are a delight in the winter when there is no other fruit. The varieties of tree that I have hold the fruit for a year, while the next crop is coming on, so I always have citrus to enjoy.
The last two years while my family did not have a large enough vegie garden to grow much, we have planted two large patches of potatoes in my garden, in an unused patch. We have had potatoes for six months or so That I take to them when I visit and it is a good reason for them all to visit me and help plant or dig the spuds!
How can I convince you to try this?
When I came here there were apple trees and quince, plums and oranges, a lemon tree and pear trees. I pruned and fed them back to life.
I planted a black Genoa fig which has sweet fruit all through the summer. A mulberry tree that is ten metres high that I share with the birds – there is plenty of fruit for us all. I put in a Pink Lady apple, a nectarine, two clingstone peaches, early and late and another that grew from seed in the worm farm. I planted apricots, cherries and a mandarin and Myer lemon. I decided nuts were good for protein so I put in macadamia, walnut, pecan and almonds.
Berries are also great and I have boysen berries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and red currants. They are all a delight and berries in apple jelly is a favourite jam. This year I made boysen berry and red currant jellies.
So my food garden is a mass of abundance that feeds me through the year with the most delicious produce. It is all the better for being eaten within an hour of being picked! I love knowing that it is sustainable and environmentally friendly. No chemicals, no sprays, just delicious food that I share with friends, family, Rosie the blue heeler and all the birds and rats and possums and bugs!
Another weekend gardening
May 22nd, 2011Saturday was the perfect autumn day, warm and sunny and so I spent all day in the garden! Then on Sunday I was hooked so I have spent most of another day in the vegie garden.
The first job was getting rid of the accumulation of grass after a wet summer – this country grows grass better than anything else and tends to overwhelm me in summer. I whipper snipped and weeded all morning and then got the mower out after lunch. After mowing there were piles of grass in some areas where it grows thickest, so I raked it up and gave it to the chooks who were delighted – maybe they will lay more eggs now.
I have a few acres of grass to mow and a large garden to grow things in, and I try to practice organic gardening as much as possible. No chemical fertilisers, dynamic lifter instead, which is chicken manure, and horse or sheep manure when I can get it. I do put the wood ash from my heater/stove on the garden to hopefully suppy potash, and I add trace elements because in Australia we are very deficient in minerals. I don’t use any herbicides or pesticides, unless they are organic.
My garden is a food garden and I live off it as much as possible, eating whatever is in season, storing potatoes, garlic and onions, and preserving fruit and vegetables as much as I can. I have planted a lot of fruit trees so that I almost always have fruit in season – at the moment I have oranges, lemons, mandarins coming on and raspberries to pick on.
Today I went into the vegie garden and stripped the leaves off the corn 
stalks. It was a second late crop of corn that I sowed at Christmas time, and it grew and grew like Jack’s beanstalk! It got to 3 metres tall before starting to set fruit, alas too late. That was in April and most of the cobs were not pollinated and those that did set didn’t taste great anyway. It was a cool January/February, grey and rainy a lot so I guess there was not enough sunshine and warmth for the crop.
Today I stripped off the cobs and leaves and cut the tops off as high as I could reach. I dug between the corn rows and carted in a wheelbarrow of compost which I added. I sowed snow peas and mulched with lucerne hay. I watered them in and I am waiting for the forecast rain to do the rest. I hope they germinate – it is still quite warm and we haven’t had any frosts here yet. But there is cold rainy weather forecast, with snow in the mountains.
Then I cut back the asparagus and went inside to have fresh baked bread which was ready for my lunch. Yum.
I still have the broad beans to sow. Bit late this year but I will get there. I have been pruning a few trees, the olives and the willows along the channel, and my burn pile is growing. There are a lot more trees to prune over winter so It will keep me busy.
Happy gardening and don’t forget to give me some feedback and visit my website to see the latest shirts. I am sewing as well as gardening and have new shirts coming out every fortnight or so. www.infinitycottage.comand the facebook page www.facebook.com/horseridingshirts .
Jill
My garden
May 15th, 2011After all the rain has cleared and the sun comes out – that is the time to venture out into the vegetable garden.
Now I must tell you that in my mind I have been whingeing about the grass and how it has taken over the garden, every inch of the garden. I am overwhelmed by it, I can’t keep up with it, I am never going to…… and so on, meanwhile not venturing out to do anything positive about it except mowing.
Well I wandered out today and started to hoe. Gloves on, rugged up and slowly attacking the mountains of weeds, mostly grasses. To my delight I find that there are plenty of advantages to the beautiful soft rainy weather we have been enjoying!
The ground is soft and easy to dig, and full of earth worms. The weeds can’t hang on and can be pulled out with ease. The grass was hiding all kinds of delicious vegies, carrots, lettuce, coriander and rocket, and even some fennel that I had forgotten about. Wow!
In 5 minutes my jumper was discarded and I spent an hour and a half weeeding and digging and finding tomatoes, zucchini, gem squash, leeks, pak choi and herbs.
Thank goodness for my yoga practice, as I was bent in half for most of that time, without ill effect. And the weed piles are finding their way to the chooks, who are delighted.
With the wet weather and probably more to come, I am digging up the ground and heaping it high in garden beds with narrowpaths between that become the drains in wet weather. The soil here is fairly heavy loam and can be poorly drained if it has nowhere to go, and the terrain is very flat too. It is the way I gardened before the drought, but in the dry weather I found that those beds dried out too quickly and I had a fairly flat layout.
There is not much to plant right now, broad beans and garlic and onions mainly, so I will heap the beds high with lucerne mulch that my lovely friend Virginia so kindly got for me. It is a massive square bale of lucerne not suitable for stock, and is full of soft leaf and no weeds. The mulch will keep the worms active and the soil soft and moist. Any weeds can be dug out as they immerge.
I didn’t dig out the zucchini because they are still fruiting, slowly, but enough for my dinner every few days. I might try the tip I heard on Gardening Australia last night on ABC TV – strip the corn stalks and use them to support a crop of peas, which I can plant now.
Another advantage of the wet winter is that so far there have been no frosts here so the soil is warm and vegies still growing. I planted a patch of cauliflower and broccoli that I grew from seed in February in my mini shade house, and they are going well.
The potatoes are mostly dug, just a few metres left of desirees to dig. I worked the soil and one patch has a cover crop of mustard greens and the other patch I planted cauliflowers and swedes and mulched them with lucerne. This was only because I grew too many seedling and didn’t have the heart to throw them away, after everyone who wanted some took theirs. I hope they are all finished and eaten before potao planting time.
Well I must get back to the garden and dispose of the piles of weeds. I haven’t got near the pumpkin patch yet and the asparagus needs cutting back. And the gardening passion has got me now and the sewing machine has been abandoned, at least for now.
Talk to you more about this later.
Jill
Home
July 12th, 2010I returned to Australia from Bangladesh inspired by the work there and eager to promote the beautiful horse riding shirts that are being made for the new season. I have left the production team at the Society for Underprivileged Families working on about 300 shirts in cottons and silk cottons.
They are also making calico bags from the fabric woven at a SUF project at Borisal, where vocational training for underprivileged children includes learning hand loom weaving. I worked with Salma, my production manager to make a new design of silk cotton bags that I am sure everyone will love. The bags are made of a sari and come in 4 colours. More on that later!
I visited a weaving village north Dhaka while I was there. 
The people in the village have a business they all work on doing hand loom weaving. I bought some beautiful fine cotton fabrics from there, and designed some of my own that they are making up for me! So look forward to those. For those who like a white riding shirt, I have ordered a white silk cotton hand loom for fine long and short sleeved shirts for this summer.
I brought back some of the completed silk cotton shirts, which I have put on the website http://infinitycottage.com/contents/en-us/d1_equestrianshirts.html so make sure you check them out! I keep on looking at the beautiful colours and the soft lustrous fabric and wish I rode horses and could wear one myself!
Here are some of them.
Remember that when you buy shirts from Infinity Cottage, the profits are helping Child Rights in Bangladesh through this project. You can also donate directly to help with the project and protect childen in the poor communities that the Society for Underprivileged Families works with.
I would love some ideas from “out there” – yes that is you! If you want to add a post to this blog, let me know and I can give you the password. It can be on any subject about your ideas on horses or hobbies or fashion tips ……. just let me know.
The winter weather is mild this year, and I have spent time sewing and in the garden digging and pruning and generally cleaning up for the new season. I know that I will be busy later on in the year because its Equitana in November this year, and I need a lot of lovely shirts to take there.
I hope you have your tickets bought for Equitana – they are selling quickly!
www.equitana.com.au
1300 765 929
See you there!
Regards from jill@infinitycottage.com
Our first week in Bangladesh
June 11th, 2010I flew out of Singapore on Friday night with Virginia, and we arrived in Dhaka at about 11 o’clock that same day. It was such a pleasure to be met by Mr Zamal, the head of the Society for Underprivileged Families (SUF) and Tipu who is the Project Manager and the best English speaker at SUF. They greeted us enthusiastically and we drove in their van through streets packed with cars, buses, motorbikes and taxis as well as rickshaws and pedestrians. Dhaka city is very overcrowded and has more people in it than the whole of Australia!
Tipu and his wife Salma, who is head of tailoring and production, have given up their flat for our accommodation, and seem to enjoy waiting on us hand and foot! Salma was there to greet us at that late hour with large glasses of mango juice and a full dinner too, but we drank the juice and retired to bed, comfortable and well provided for.
Saturday was a day for settling in and in the afternoon we persuaded Tipu to take us to the silk shops in Dhanmondi. The traffic was worse than I remember it and it took a long time to go a short distance. But it was worth it!!
I found six beautiful soft colours of my favourite shirt fabric, silk cotton blend, a cool easy to wear and very soft fabric. So look out for a range of silk cotton ratcatcher shirts with matching stock collars in the next month or two. We will start cutting the silk cotton first – pink, blue, aqua, green, mauve, yellow and cream.
Silk cotton fabric colours for ratcatcher shirts
Sunday is a working day in Bangladesh as the weekend is Friday and Saturday. 97% of the population are Muslim so their holy day is Friday. Every day the call for prayer rings out across the city 5 times a day, a wonderful sound to segment the day.
Since then time has flown by as we work in the heat and humidity as the power surges on and off – Virginia says mostly off! It is almost unbearable when the power is off as there are no fans or air con.
Salma, Virginia and I went to Shadaghat textile market in the old city. Mr Zamal organised the car, a driver and Salim as minder .We drove for 2 hours through intense traffic which included buses, cars, rickshaws, taxis, and horse drawn vehicles! The horses are small but look fit and healthy and I think the heaviest loads were pulled by people with rickshaws carts.
The fabric market is wonderful—every possible sewing accessory available. We found so many beautiful cottons and bought yards and yards of fabric. This will be made into horse riding shirts of all styles for men, women and children by the Society for Underprivileged Families, providing work for women in the production room and helping to continue SUF’s work for Child Rights in Bangladesh.
At lunch time we stopped and found a local café and sat down to 5 different curries with rice followed by sweet milky tea.
Every day here is a challenge and every day we achieve so much. The Society for Underprivileged Families (SUF) work tirelessly under difficult conditions to help the millions of children here who have to work for a living. SUF gives them free school and encourages country families not to send their children to Dhaka for work They are setting up tailoring, fabric weaving, and electronics training for them when they finish their basic education, so their skills will give them paid work and a better future.
In this country 75% of the population are below the poverty line!
The horse riding shirts sold by Infinity Cottage are making a valuable contribution to the people at SUF and the children they help. I didn’t want to make this trip but it is proving to be so valuable that I am inspired by it: the shirts and the beautiful fabrics, the people and their cheerful resilience and at the same time distressed by the poverty and breakdown of this country.
Singapore – on the way to Bangladesh
June 3rd, 2010
Singapore is beautiful. Very tropical and hot and steamy, the lush green vegetation makes me forget the bustle of a big city, and it is a very clean and organised big city.
My travelling companion Virginia and I are staying in a lovely flat near the city centre, with Steph who kindly offered her hospitality. Virginia’s partner Steve organised it for us as he met her here when he spent 2 years living and working in Singapore. So we are very lucky, and have spent the day browsing the shops and visiting the botanical gardens which are specacular and filled with exotic tropical plants. It was steamy, colourful and restful there, till the heat got us and we came home to rest, shower and get ready to go out for dinner in Little India.
But before I left I decided to have my ears re-pierced so that I would look well dressed in my new ear rings! Alas, I have a massive infection from my ears to my chest, and had to find a doctor in Singapore, and we delayed our trip to Dhaka till Friday.
We asked the lady who changed our tickets at Singapore Airlines and she gave us the address of Raffles Medical Centre not far from where we were. No need for an appointment, after 10 minutes wait I saw a delightful young lady doctor who gave me antibiotics, antihistamine and antieptic ointment for a very low cost! And so kind and efficient. The drugs were all in the same clinic so no need to visit a pharmacy and I was off home to the flat for some R&R.
The same shopping centre housed all the designer labels! Max Mara, YSL, Dior, Armani, Dunhill, and many more, so we went nd broused and got new ideas. I would have loved one of the shirts! Country style in a fine soft fabric, it was a mere $460.00! So no more complaints about price please!
Well I am resting up today, in the warm tropical environment, and eating great Asian food, and planning some great shirt designs when I get to Bangladesh.
Talk to you soon
Cool season in the Southern Hemisphere, hot in Bangladesh
May 27th, 2010Today the wind and rain are flying past my house, bringing the first cold weather for 2010.
The quietness of a rainy day also brings new inspiration for next season’s shirts. I would love any new ideas from anyone who wants to share them too.
Next week I am going to Dhaka in Bangladesh, to start the production for next summer. Its the first chance I have had to take time away and choose fabrics, train my staff at the Society for Underprivileged Families in new techniques and keep up the “continuous improvement” that is the secret of great production. The Society for Underprivileged Families (SUF) is an NGO in Bangladesh that provides free schooling to help working children to retreive their lives from poverty and become educated and skilled.
Look at their website at http://www.sufchildrights.org for more information.
This year I am travelling to Bangladesh with a friend, Virginia Hill, who will have wonderful new ideas that I can tune into and who will make the trip more fun and more fruitful.
SUF has asked me to spend a few days training new staff from the new SUF schools in the areas outside Dhaka, who want to improve their skills too. SUF has been working on a lot of new Free schools for disadvantaged children in the Bangladesh countryside and I think these are funded mainly by Save the Children (Sweden/Denmark). The work that Infinity Cottage does selling the shirts that they make in Australia also helps SUF to keep up their wonderful work.
So send in your ideas for new shirt designs, and I will keep you up to date with my progress in Dhaka when I am there. I am sure you would like to get some photos and hear about our adventures there in the market places and silk shops!
Jill Atherstone
jill@infinitycottage.com
Welcome to my blog
May 27th, 2010I hope that this blog will be an interesting view of my ideas and yours. I want to talk about horse riding shirts, about my passion for making shirts and about your ideas about what you would like in a shirt.
I make shirts for any one who loves shirts, not just to use for horse riding, but for anyone and for any occasion when a shirt is appropriate. Shirts are classic, they are smart, they are useful so we all need plenty of them.
I plan to talk about different aspects of shirts but not to go on about them too much! after all there are so many more interesting subjects, like horses and gardening and food…….
So welcome and I look forward to your comments, photos and news.
Jill
