Autumn Sauce Making and a visit to our local FOGO facility

I’m already sleeping better with the soft chill of Autumn coming through our window.

In simpler terms, this Autumn breeze signaled the start of the harvesting season, when the community prepared for the colder winder months ahead. It was a season to celebrate so much fresh produce ‘available’. We now live in a world modified by globalisation and technology where everything is ‘available’ all the time, however there is nothing better than eating fresh local produce which has been naturally grown during the season in which it thrives. You can taste the goodness.

We have been doing our own harvesting and preserving, to mark the start of the season, with a full weekend dedicated to making Grandma’s Tomato Sauce. Pete grew up helping and then indulging in this sauce during school holiday visits to Grandmas.

Our kids have now been involved in this ritual since they were tiny, and so it’s now built into the traditions of our family. Peter even inherited Grandma’s wooden sauce spoon. I’ve been told that’s because he used it the most, however there is a lot of speculation that this was because he needed more discipline than his other cousins. Grandma used to shake the spoon drawer whenever anyone was cheeky.

Be warned, this recipe is certainly a time commitment, however the process is fun, and the resulting sauce lasts for months. (Fresh tomatoes stored for winter). It also gives the gift of a slow family day at home where we can reminisce about Pete’s childhood and his gorgeous Grandma.

Of course the best thing to eat with this is Grandma’s pasties, however I can never get the pastry quite as good as hers. She did have a lot of practice. These were always made to be sent for lunch with the working men, who would have dirty hands, so could eat the pastie and then throw away the end corner. Convenient fast food without the plastic wrap… what an innovative modern idea!

On a different topic entirely, recently our team were fortunate to get an insider’s tour of our local FOGO compost processing facility. It was absolutely inspiring! The team arrived back at the office feeling even more motivated having seen the scale of difference FOGO is making in our community alone. It’s genuinely exciting to be a part of.

Whilst the technology is impressive, with finely tuned inputs and scientific monitoring, the processing plant is essentially allowing nature to take charge and do its magic, just like it has for millions of years.

The first step is a manual one in which contamination is removed. Be kind and check your FOGO bin for plastic bags and contamination, as there is a person like Larry at the other end who manually searches through and removes contamination. If in doubt about an item being compostable, choose the landfill bin.

Then after just one week in the tunnel, which accelerates the composting process, there was hardly any sign of the huge volumes of Compost-A-Pak bags which entered, nor many evident food products, apart from a few pieces of bone and sticks. After another 6 weeks finishing in rows, rich luscious compost is ready for farming and local community spaces. Nature really is magic!