“Tell me, what exactly do you want to get out of this?” It’s a Saturday morning in early December and Ian Summers, the farm manager at Oranjezicht City Farm (OZCF), wants an understanding of what Deidré’s and my intentions are for our new allotment.
Our answer is simple. We both live in small apartments with no garden. I am the senior content editor at Woolworths Taste and Deidré is a production editor and diversity, equity and inclusion specialist at an international publishing company. Many months of working from home had crystallised our yearning to break away from our desks, meet up with other people outdoors and get our hands dirty. Along with many others around the world during lockdown, we had expanded our respective collections of houseplants. But we also wanted to learn as much as we could about growing plants which can be cooked and eaten.
I had previously heard about the OZCF allotment project and when I mentioned it to Deidré over a socially distant glass of wine in October 2020, she said, “Yes, we have to get onto their waiting list!” Three months later, the wait was over. We had signed the code of conduct for allotment holders, paid for our first six months, had our orientation session with head farmer Josephine Fitzmaurice, and were about to get our hands into the soil.
Our allotment had previously been rented by someone who had to return home to America during the) – a profusion of cabbage-type leaves atop a tall, thick stem. A quick online search revealed that it is an heirloom variety originating in the Channel Islands, where their leaves were fed to rabbits and livestock, and the stems were dried, varnished and used as walking sticks.
