{"id":1702,"date":"2020-04-18T19:29:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-18T08:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mtloftyhistoricalsociety.org.au\/?page_id=1702"},"modified":"2020-04-24T11:19:26","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T00:49:26","slug":"from-famine-to-magic-food-plots","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mtloftyhistoricalsociety.org.au\/?page_id=1702","title":{"rendered":"From Famine to Magic Food Plots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Text and Images: Elisabeth Anderson<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Lolo feeds the chickens at her Uncle Wim\u2019s in Holland <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As a young girl Lolo\nHoubein saw her hometown in western Holland implode under the impact of World\nWar II, until all animals, birds and rodents were eaten, all fish angled, all\ntrees used for firewood and a long winter famine began, in which 24,000 people\ndied of starvation in an area approximately a sixteenth the size of Tasmania.\nIt goes some way towards explaining her passion for self-reliance in food. It\nhas been Lolo\u2019s lifelong preoccupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence her now completed trilogy of Magic\nSquare books – the latest with co-author Tori Arbon – in which she helps readers become self-reliant by\ndeveloping their own food gardens to produce nourishing meals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Lolo and co-author Tori Arbon sign \u201cMagic Little Meals\u201d, third book in the trilogy <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Lolo, who has lived in the Adelaide Hills since the early 1970s, was 11 years of age in\nthat Hunger Winter of 1944-45. She was evacuated with many other children from\nthe starving western provinces of The Netherlands and in a small canal village\nin south-east Drenthe foster parents increased her weight by 50 percent in four\nmonths. Growing one\u2019s own food was the rule there and this was one of many life\nlessons learned during that period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lolo remembers the schoolteacher, a young man from\nAmsterdam, who prepared a long strip of\nground in the school yard and divided it into as many plots as there were\nchildren and handed out seeds for them to sow. Lolo believes she grew radishes\nand some flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back home there was no\nroom for a vegetable garden of any sort but there was at her Uncle Wim\u2019s place\nin Laren, North Holland, and her uncle taught her a lot about vegetables,\nfruits and chickens. Not only that, her great-great-grandfather Hendrik Houbein\nhad been a market gardener in North-West Frisia and she feels that he passed on\nthe food gardening gene to the generations that followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lolo first grew her own\nfruit and vegetables after she settled in South Australia with her young family\nin 1958 – though only after realising that good land was the key. Her first\nattempt had come to naught, the ground she had dug up to plant her first\nvegetables having been poor quality former grazing land on which only tough\ngeraniums and succulent cuttings seemed to thrive. But that was only the\nbeginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lolo with a sample of her produce<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In her Magic Square trilogy, where she provides a guide to developing successful and sustainable food growing, Lolo describes how on a plateau in the Adelaide Hills she had worked on plots just one square metre at a time, removing rocks, stones and roots and digging and composting the soil before sowing and planting her herbs and vegetables. She also used planter boxes made with second-hand bricks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since One Magic Square <\/em>appeared, says Lolo, thousands of people have\ndiscovered how much fun, food and satisfaction can be had from such small\nspaces. She has observed Australia\u2019s precarious situation in the world food\nsystem and her books look for solutions in the suburbs where the majority of\nthe population lives. Lolo believes that countries should retain a measure\nof self-reliance in food, as should households and individuals, and that\npeople\u2019s health would be the better for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
One Magic Square<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The time of writing this\noverview has seen a shortage of many essential food products due the corona\nvirus pandemic of 2019-20 and that includes seeds and seedlings. Particularly\nsignificant therefore is Lolo\u2019s advice on saving the seeds of home-grown\nproduce and cultivating one\u2019s own. She ponders whether we will find ourselves\nliving in a different society after this and has a vision of people standing on\nstreet corners discussing the progress of their bush beans, turnips and\ncabbages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CLIMATE CHANGE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lolo advocates that growing one\u2019s own helps to draw down greenhouse\ngases, as it eliminates fossil fuels needed in horticulture, transport,\nrefrigeration and displaying of produce – homegrown food therefore having\nthe smallest possible carbon footprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GROWING TREES<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She provides useful\ninformation about growing one\u2019s own backyard fruit, regardless of the space\navailable, and writes about her own small espaliered orchard and some old\ninherited fruit trees that provided fruit three quarters of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lolo and her partner\nBurwell Dodd also founded the well-known Trees for Life movement in South\nAustralia in 1981, an initiative in response to their concerns about the speed\nat which the Australian environment was being logged, mined out and sold off.\nSeeds and seedlings are provided through this organisation, resulting in\nmillions of trees being planted throughout the State. They worked\nalmost full-time for several years as the movement was run\nby consensus with a group of committed, skilled people, who joined up\nto revegetate South Australia.  Over nearly forty years of its existence\nTrees for Life has continued to attract such people to make the movement a\nhousehold word in South Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trilogy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Magic Square (2008)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside the Magic Square (2012)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magic Little Meals (2019)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn more about Lolo Houbein in our Migration topic here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Do you have stories or memories of Gardening or Gardeners in the Adelaide Hills? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contact us at mldhsgateways@mtloftyhistoricalsociety.org.au<\/a> or drop into the History Centre at the Coventry Library, 63 Mount Barker Road, Stirling.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Text and Images: Elisabeth Anderson As a young girl Lolo Houbein saw her hometown in western Holland implode under the impact of World War II, until all animals, birds and rodents were eaten, all fish angled, all trees used for firewood and a long winter famine began, in which 24,000 people died of starvation in … Continue reading “From Famine to Magic Food Plots”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PaNLq6-rs","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1596,"url":"https:\/\/mtloftyhistoricalsociety.org.au\/?page_id=1596","url_meta":{"origin":1702,"position":0},"title":"Lolo Houbein; Author & Conservationist","date":"March 30, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Text and Images: Elisabeth Anderson Around 2006 a department at Curtin University set out on a quest to preserve the Dutch cultural heritage of Australia\u2019s immigrants. 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