After watching the film, all of our Greenhouse and By Joost staff have joined the campaign by sending a message to Brazil’s Justice Minister, José Eduardo Cardozo, in protest.

You can do so too! – via the Survival International website.

Click here to view the video on survivalinternational.org

“One man has the power to stop the loggers: Brazil’s Minister of Justice. But it’s just not his priority.
Let’s push it up his list.” — Colin Firth

The Awá, who are some of the last uncontacted people on the planet, are a small tribe whose territory has been invaded by a vast army of illegal loggers, ranchers and settlers. The situation is now so critical that several Brazilian experts have spoken of a ‘genocide’ and ‘extinction’.

As nomads, they carry the things they need with them as they move: bows and arrows, children, pets. Everything comes from the forest: the baskets made from palm leaves, the loops of vine used to climb trees, and the tree resin burned to provide light. [Source]

Although wild monkeys are an important source of food, once a baby has been brought into the family and breast fed, it will never be eaten. Even if it returns to the forest, the Awá will recognize it as hanima: part of the family. [Source]

‘I spend a long time breastfeeding the baby monkeys,’ Parakeet explains. ‘And when they have grown they go back to the forest to live. I hear the howler monkey that used to be my pet, singing there in the forest.’ [Source]

The Awá wait to choose their children’s names until they reach an age when the right name presents itself. Another of Parakeet’s daughters is called Forest Tree. One particularly wriggly child has just earned the name Earthworm. [Source]

The Awá know their forests intimately. Every valley, stream and trail is inscribed on their mental map. They know where to find the best honey, which of the great trees of the forest are coming into fruit, and when the game is ready to be hunted. To them, the forest is perfection: they cannot dream of it being developed or improved upon. [Source]

The forest provides its bounty, but not everything is taken. Some animals, such as the capybara and the harpy eagle, are taboo and no Awá will eat them. Eating a bat is said to cause a headache. The large opossum? Bad-smelling. Hummingbirds? Just too small. Other animals are hunted only at certain times of the year. In this way the Awá ensure the survival of the entire forest, themselves included. [Source]

‘If my children are hungry, I just go into the forest and I can find them food,’ says Peccary Awá. Women encourage their husbands to return with plentiful game meat, and the men oblige. Those Awá still living uncontacted in the forest hunt with 2 metre (6 foot) long bows. Arrows fly high and silent into the forest canopy, allowing several shots before game is alerted to the hunters’ presence. [Source]

Despite their extreme self-sufficiency, the uncontacted people are also uniquely vulnerable. The common cold could kill an entire group, and, if they run into illegal loggers, their bows and arrows will be no match for the invaders’ guns. [Source]

The work of the loggers and ranchers has reached crisis point: some 30% of one legally-protected Awá reserve has been cut down. The Awá’s forests are disappearing faster than any other indigenous area in Brazil.[Source]

If their forests fall, the Awá have no hope of surviving as a people. As Blade Awá says, ‘If you destroy the forest, you destroy the Awá too.’[Source]

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“Having been to this part of the world, and appreciating its beauty and biodiversity, it saddens me that we need to be doing this – but I am happy for the initiative and fully support this approach.” – Joost

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“I’d rather be a black sheep than a white sheep: I like to do things differently” Jason Chan. Image via Time Out

Who is Jason Chan?

It’s not easy labelling Jason Chan. You could call him a ‘master barista‘ – he
was 2005 Age Barista of the Year and owns Batch Espresso, a ‘mad bartender‘ – he won the 42 Below World Cocktail Championships and opened Seamstress, or a ‘spirits aficionado‘ – he has now entered the distillery game with his award winning West Winds Gin - however these labels fail to describe his sustainable food ethos, commitment to local community and ‘you make your own destiny’ attitude.

Originally from New Zealand, Jason’s introduction to hospitality began at a young age in the kitchen of his family’s restaurant. It was there that he watched his parents work hard to create a welcoming community establishment in which customers were well looked after. This generous spirit pervades all that Jason does today – he lives by the motto that ’hospitality is all about giving’.

Jason & Joost

After studying nutrition and food science, Jason came to Melbourne in 2004 and worked at some of the city’s iconic hospitality venues including Ray’s Cafe and Der Raum cocktail bar. It is at Der Raum where Jason met Joost, who was commissioned to create floral installations, and who is responsible for the bar’s signature hanging bottle display – a concept Joost devised whilst watching Jason struggle to identify different liquor bottles during a busy service. The two creative thinkers have been collaborating ever since, with Joost designing installations for Jason’s ventures Batch and Sweatshop, and Jason consulting on drinks at the four Greenhouse restaurants.

Above: Joost’s octopus strap and hook installation makes life easier for Der Raum’s bar tenders. Image via Pages Digital

Above: Joost’s fit-out at Jason’s Sweatshop bar features reclaimed airport departure signs and wafer board stools. Image via broadsheet

Jason’s philosophy

In 2005 Jason opened his first solo venture Batch Espresso, a cafe that embodies
his ‘thinking small, thinking local’ philosophy. With a passion for making things  from scratch, all Batch’s jams, muffins and slices are made in house from locally sourced ingredients. Besides producing high quality food and drink, Jason says that one of the most rewarding things about Batch is that it has evolved into a multi-generational gathering place for local residents: “The cafe offers an amazing way of looking at life – I’ve watched kindergarteners journey through to school, high school students graduate to university, customers get married and bring their kids in”.

Above: Joost’s road sign art piece watches over the daily happenings at Batch. Image via Breakfast out

The Famous Lemonade

Jason created this syrup recipe for the first Greenhouse at Federation Square. Wanting to offer something to the hoards of young children coming through the restaurant, and inspired by an excess of organic lemons, this lemonade was a hit with patrons young and old. It has become a fixture at the subsequent Perth, Sydney and Melbourne Greenhouses as well the Hidden Pizza experience. Now you can try it at home!

Above: Refreshing lemonades at the Greenhouse. Images via Gastronomel & All Hail You Huiness

Via Dezeen

Above: “I’m strangely aroused” – A facebook fan gets excited by Greenhouse’s Wega

Below: Lattes by Lachie served in Homewares by Joost

THE MACHINE

The Wegaconcept Green Line uses 47.6% less energy than standard coffee machines and has standby and night energy saving features. With a brain of its own, the Wegaconcept has the ability to memorise the machine’s workload, adjusting energy functions according to daily/weekly usage patterns. It even has a USB port to update software and install customised programming.

In keeping with the Greenhouse aesthetic and Joost’s ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ philosophy, electrician Kyle stripped the exterior shell from this top-of-the-range model to reveal it’s inner workings and glowing blue LED lights. “It was a challange, a lot of late nights, just like every Greenhouse” Kyle said of the stripping process.

Above: Melbourne coffee aficionado, Danny Colls, was Joost’s co-conspirator in stripping back the Wegaconcept machine

Above: The machine’s brain

Above: The Wegaconcept before; The Wegaconcept after the Joost and Danny treatment.

Above: “Disco espresso” – the Wega comes alive at night

WHO ARE WEGA?

Based in North-East Italy, Wega specialises in manufacturing professional, energy efficient espresso machines. We were excited to have Adam Genovese of Genovese coffee and Wega area manager Andrea Colombo from Italy visit the Greenhouse to take a look at the stripped back Wega. At first Andrea was surprised, but by the end of the visit he’d fallen in love with the concept and even made us an espresso!

Transcript: “Hi my name is Andrea Colombo, I’m from Wega in Italy. I’ve come out to Australia to visit my customers and have found this surprising Wegaconcept which has been remodelled, I would say, and it’s in line with the theme and it’s in line with our energy saving machine. And I’ll make you an espresso.”

View the ABC 7.30 segment here

Transcript

© Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 10/04/2012

Reporter: Greg Hoy

CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: In this land of bushfires, the challenge of how to build an affordable fire-proof house has confounded Australians for generations. Now a Melbourne artist-cum-inventor believes he may have found the answer, and guess what?: it’s a house made of straw. Just one of many bright ideas from a very unusual architect, as Greg Hoy reports.

GREG HOY, REPORTER: This is the first green house that Joost built. Stripped of its greenery, the CSIRO tried to burn it down. Soon we’ll see if they succeeded, but first, who is this Joost whose fame is spreading across the country like wildfire?

JOOST BAKKER: Human beings are amazing at fixing problems. And there’s lots of problems in the world, but there’s lots of solutions as well.

GREG HOY: Joost Bakker is a 38-year-old from Melbourne – artist, builder, inventor and ideas man.

ROBERT RICHTER, CRIMINAL LAWYER: I mean, the man’s a genius.

JACK THOMPSON, ACTOR: He’s a man also with a recognition of the waste that we make. Here we are with one foot on the moon and the other one knee-deep in garbage.

GREG HOY: Joost loves recycling waste, now backed by global engineering firm Arup, which structurally designed Sydney’s Opera House, his green houses, steel-framed, the walls and roof insulated with straw bales, have now popped up as organic restaurants for guest appearances in the heart of Sydney, Melbourne and permanently in Perth.

JOOST BAKKER: Straw is still the biggest waste product on earth. We could be using it for cardboard, we could be using it for paper, we could be using it for toilet paper. Six million hectares of forest get cut down every year just for toilet paper.

GREG HOY: Not your average restaurants; everything from building, plates to the jam jar glasses is recycled. Even the toilet waste.

JACK THOMPSON: The greenhouse is an extraordinary example of not only recycling, but a self-sustaining cycle where the food that you’re eating is being grown on the roof, the waste is being used to recycle.

JOOST BAKKER: It’s just an installation and I’m hoping that people get inspired and create different things. So when schoolkids come through, I tell them, “In 10 years’ time I want to walk into a building that you guys have designed and go, ‘Jeez, what was I thinking? This is 10 times better.’”

GREG HOY: He started out as a florist, but not your average florist.

JOOST BAKKER: Wasn’t just about the flower, it was about the stem or it was – I was more interested in the ones that had fallen over and where – I found them more beautiful than the perfect straight ones, you know. I turned things around, I turned things upside down and contrast them with found objects and found materials and that led me more into recycling yards.

FRANK VAN HANDEL, RESTAURATEUR: He actually hang clumps of tulips with the bulbs in tact upside down from the ceiling and I was just in awe of how – the simplicity, but the effectiveness of it all.

GREG HOY: There are many staunch supporters across Melbourne and its fine dining establishment. At the top of the Rialto Tower resides acclaimed Australian chef Shannon Bennett’s Vue de Monde.

SHANNON BENNETT, CHEF: We have this sort of running joke that he’s my florist. But he’s more than that. He’s my design technician in many ways. … Everything in terms of what I put on the floor from the timber, to the kangaroo lever on the tables was something that I always bounced off Joost first.

GREG HOY: Frank van Handel of Melbourne’s iconic Stoke House where Joost has long done the flowers.

FRANK VAN HANDEL: He’s a guy that – the old saying, “You can’t make strawberry jam out of horse manure.” Well, Joost can.

GREG HOY: Floristry morphed into sculpture, architecture, restaurants with a thousand other interests intertwined. As anyone will tell you, to spend an hour with Joost is to leave your head spinning with possibilities.

ROBERT RICHTER: He’s got enormous energy. He’s a man who can work through for 48 hours non-stop. So he’s got vast drive.

JENNY BAKER, WIFE: We work 24/7 basically to do all of these crazy things that we’re doing. And, yeah, when you’ve got three kids and a husband with far too many ideas, it can be quite tiring at times.

GREG HOY: Meantime, back at the ranch, or the original greenhouse Joost had built for he and his young family. Interest in this construction concept for housing and other such developments had been growing exponentially across the country. But a straw bale house in the middle of a country bedevilled by bushfire? Surely this was courting disaster. Well that’s when the CSIRO came in to give the greenhouse, minus its greenery, a baptism of fire.

JOOST BAKKER: I didn’t think it was going to survive.

GREG HOY: But clad in sheets of fire-proof magnesium oxide, which is cheap as chips in China, but not available for sale in the bushfire capital, Australia, survive this blaze the greenhouse did with flying colours.

JOOST BAKKER: When you get a building that’s so well-insulated, it means that you’re not needing to cool it as much, you don’t need to heat it as much. So we’ve used something that’s cost us hardly anything, a by-product from a farm, and created a place that uses very little energy.

GREG HOY: Vue de Monde’s Shannon Bennett is using Joost’s technology to build a hotel retreat in the fire-prone Dandenong Ranges and a home by the sea for his family.

SHANNON BENNETT: Australia should listen. I think it’s very exciting for Australia, and also could be an amazing export to Third World countries.

GREG HOY: The road for Joost Bakker and his family has not been easy.

JOOST BAKKER: We’ve been very close to going completely under.

GREG HOY: But with invitations rolling in to build greenhouses in London, Copenhagen, New York, Shanghai, Auckland, even South America, the future, as usual for Joost, seems bright.

JOOST BAKKER: It’s all about collaboration. I think that’s why the future’s so exciting. If we all work together, there’s plenty of solutions out there.

CHRIS UHLMANN: So you can huff and puff and not blow down that house of straw. Extraordinary. Greg Hoy there.

Yep – that really is a tank of harvested urine at the entrance to
MFWF Greenhouse by Joost

The urine was harvested using Caroma waterless urinals and revolutionary Dubbletten dual bowl toilets, before being transported to Daylesford, where we will be conducting a full scale fertiliser trial starting in June.

“Urine is incredible for nitrogen, phosphorous and other trace elements. It’s so valuable – you only need the urine of 25 people to provide fertiliser for a hectare of crop.” Joost Bakker 

Whilst many people baulk at the idea of urine harvesting, throughout history people have used urine for everything from cleaning clothes to bathing, even as a medicinal cure-all. And in European countries it is a well known fertiliser of citrus. Why? Urine is rich in nitrogen (11g per standard urination), phosphorous (2.5g) and potassium (2.5g) – common components of commercial mineral fertilisers – as well as other beneficial trace elements. Additionally, the body’s urine production process creates a sterile, nutrient-dense liquid that is easily absorbed by plants when used as a fertiliser. As Håkan Jönsson of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences explains: “Food gives us nutrients like nitrogen as parts of complex organic molecules, but our digestive system strips them down into the basic mineral form that plants need – so we have done half the job”.

 Around the globe, researchers have successfully used urine to cultivate healthy crops including amaranth, cucumber and beetroot. A study conducted by the University of Kupio (Finland) found that urine fertiliser produced beets that were up to 27% larger than crops fertilised with industrial substances! Furthermore, results from experiments conducted by Surendra K. Pradhan comparing fertiliser types on cabbage crops showed that as well as bearing larger fruit, plants fertilised with urine grow at a quicker rate and are better resistant to pests.

 “Every day, we urinate nutrients that can fertilise plants that could be used for beautiful landscapes, food, fuel, and fibre. Instead, these nutrients are flushed away, either to be treated at high cost or discharged to waters where they over fertilise and choke off aquatic life.” Carol Steinfield, Liquid Gold

 Though it is a relatively new concept in Australia, harvesting urine for agricultural purposes is widely practised in countries such as Sweden, with the potential environmental benefits extending beyond healthy crops. Whilst Australians currently ponder how to curb our water usage, it is estimated that diverting urine could reduce a toilet’s water consumption by 80% due to the reduction of liquid used for flushing. Considering that a standard toilet can use up to 100 litres of water a day, this means significant reductions. As well as saving water, urine diversion also ensures the health of our marine life. If nitrogen isn’t properly extracted from waste water through an energy-intensive detrification process, the surplus minerals flooding into waterways cause excess algae growth which can lead to the death of plants and animals.

 “Think about Australia’s 20 million people providing fertiliser — think about the world’s 7 billion!” Joost Bakker

A loo with a view! Caroma waterless urinals and a Dubbletten dual bowl toilet

Watch this space for updates from the fertiliser trial and the development of Joost’s waterless female urinal! 

Prolific Melbourne writer Stephen Crafti recently interviewed Joost on his radio show RMIT Talking Design. Grab a cup of tea and sit back for 30 minutes and listen in on their conversation about Joost’s background, processes, design installations and upcoming plans.

Click HERE to listen on-line now – or ‘right click’ and ‘Save Link As’ to save the audio file to your hard drive, to listen later or on your mobile media player. (File size 38.7MB)

A biographical story by Stephen Crafti, “Who is Joost?” can be read here

Image: Robert Banks

Peter Wilmoth from the Weekly Review writes:

In preparation for talking to Joost Bakker (it’s pronounced “Yoast”), I have done something unsustainable and I feel like a goose.

In Queensbridge Square, on the river at Southbank, I have dashed into a café to visit their bathroom (sorry, didn’t buy a coffee or even a Happy Meal, but I was a semi-regular customer 15 years ago) and then, moments later, arriving at Bakker’s Greenhouse café, discovered that, had I waited, I could have joined hundreds of others in contributing to a sustainable future.

You see, the urine collected at Bakker’s Greenhouse “pop-up” (temporary) restaurant, built as a base for the 20th Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, will be collected by farmers to fertilise their crops.

“Urine is incredibly rich in potassium and nitrogen and phosphorus, so you only need urine from about 25 people to fertilise a hectare of crop,” says Bakker.

“So when you consider how many people there are on the planet, that’s a lot of hectares of fertiliser available to us that’s just going down the drain at the moment. We throw it away and we shouldn’t; it’s valuable.”

Just in case I wasn’t feeling guilty enough for my wasteful ways, Bakker then tells me that urine harvesting is virtually government policy in enlightened countries such as Sweden. “I’ve got Swedish urine-diverting toilets here because in Sweden they’ve decided to stop letting this happen and they want to start urine harvesting. The government initiates people to put in big tanks underneath their house and because it’s sterile you can store it for years. It gets collected by tankers and then gets pumped onto farms.

“Bill and Melinda Gates are offering vast sums of money to anybody who can come up with a solution for it. My philosophy is there shouldn’t be any waste. There’s no reason to have waste. If we rethink everything we do we could easily have a waste-free world.”

Joost Bakker – remember the name. As an installation artist, builder, florist, furniture designer and articulate spruiker for reducing waste, Bakker is the highly photogenic new face of environmental sustainability (he worked as a model for a while).

Born in the Netherlands to fourth-generation tulip farmers, his family emigrated to Australia when Bakker was nine, settling on a farm in Monbulk, in the Dandenong Ranges: “My great-grandfather started growing tulips in Holland and my brother still grows tulips in Monbulk.”

He finds it interesting that his Dutch relatives no longer grow tulips, but the tradition continues here.

Bakker says his mother was creative – she painted, sculpted, did pottery. “Dad grew up on a farm, always wanted to be farmer, owned a pub for 25 years.” In 1982, he decided to start a farm in Melbourne.

There was no lightbulb moment about sustainability for Bakker. Even as a kid he was into recycling. “I’ve always dragged rubbish home,” he says. “I often walk past stuff that people are throwing out and think, ‘What a waste’.”

Now, at 39, Bakker scrambles anyone’s attempt to define his work. He started out as a florist who by 2000 was servicing 150 bars, cafés and restaurants with a mix of floral arrangement, sculpture and art installation.

Hip restaurateurs Shannon Bennett (Vue de Monde) and John Van Haandel (Circa, The Prince) were early fans, commissioning him to create innovative floral installations, often using reclaimed objects.

In public spaces Bakker would use concrete-reinforcd steel to support the floral arrangements. Architect Nonda Katsalidis commissioned an exhibition of his installations on the top floor of the Eureka Tower.

“I’m always in recycling yards and being asked to do little projects,” he says. “My work is varied and exciting.”

Alighting on the idea of a pop-up café, bar and restaurant, in 2008 Bakker developed a Greenhouse – a temporary venue that is completely sustainable, from the food to the chairs to the walls and floors – in Federation Square, complemented by food by Bennett and Fenix’s Ray Capaldi.

It was such a success Bakker built a permanent Greenhouse in Perth, followed by a pop-up Greenhouse in Sydney’s Circular Quay last year, made from disused shipping containers.

The Greenhouse at Queensbridge Square will almost certainly be the last pop-up. He has been approached to build them around the world, including in London’s East End and Milan, and says he now wants to build only permanent ones. Partnering with friend and Melbourne businessman Greg Hargrave, who is a former chief executive of Skilled Group, he sets up these projects under the name “By Joost”.

But amid his work on the Greenhouses, there are always several other projects on the go. He is working on houses for Mitch Watson, the owner of Hepburn Springs mineral water, outside Daylesford, and for Bennett near Lorne.

Part of Bakker’s 100-hour weeks involves spreading his message of sustainability to schoolchildren. Today he has spoken to a school group at Queensbridge Square about the Greenhouse project and its philosophies.

“Those 100 kids – that’s the best part of my day. Watching them chew on unrolled oats and taking turns rolling oats. You could see it was so exciting for them. And the wheat getting turned into flour. To me these are such simple ideas. The toilets they got super-excited about. The beehive on the roof, opening it up and getting them to smell them.”

Bakker asked the kids what they thought was in the tank adjoining the Greenhouse. “Somebody guessed it was wee because they knew from the homework they got that I had special toilets in here. They all went ‘Eeeuuw’. But by the end they’re going, ‘We need to do this at home’, which is fantastic.

“When you think that a third of the world’s gas today is used for fertiliser, it’s just crazy. People don’t make the link between agriculture and oil or gas prices. They think, ‘It must mean it costs more to drive the tractor around the farm’. It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s the fertiliser that gets put down that is the highest cost to most farmers around the world.”

I ask him about the urine from the Greenhouse’s customers. “That’s going to get injected into a crop of mustard seed. We crush the mustard seed for oil, which will generate power. The building is running on oil – olive oil, sunflower oil, any oil rather than diesel or bio-diesel. Upstairs we have a toilet with two bowls. The front is for the urine and the back is for the solid. Next Greenhouse I want to work on is solid waste.”

At the Queensbridge Greenhouse they have collected 1000 litres in four days. “That will be enough for 20 hectares. We’ll get 40,000 litres of oil for the 20 hectares. (The urine) goes to the farm. The farmer has a machine that sprays it onto the soil before he plants the crop.”

All of Bakker’s varying projects are carried out under the same philosophical umbrella of promoting a sustainable way of living. “That’s one of my big points – it’s holistic. Everything you do affects something else. I think people are so focused on one thing.”

The Greenhouses are a physical manifestation of these ideas. “The food philosophy can come across in the food, the way it’s served, the way it’s grown, the building’s materials, creating buildings that add biodiversity rather than take biodiversity away.

“I’m actually quite an optimist. Solutions are not that hard.”

“To me it’s my artistic installation. I’m so passionate about growing and I’ve combined the two: using old vessels to grow stuff in, making soil from byproducts and waste, trying to highlight that it’s not all doom and gloom. I’m actually quite an optimist. Solutions are not that hard. We all think that it’s all too hard, but it’s not, it’s actually quite easy.”

What is his message? “Think holistically. You can go out and spend a fortune on organic food or clothes. But if you’re not worried by the paints that you use … you’ve got to think about where things come from and the consequences when you buy certain things. It’s usually about less. I say to people it’s about reducing the shit in our lives. We’ve got too much stuff going on.”

I asked who has inspired him. “My dad. And I get quite inspired by farmers. They work so bloody hard. They’ll never talk themselves up and they never complain. People always say ‘whingeing farmers’ but I think farmers are a pretty amazing bunch of people.

“Recyclers. And guys like Nonda Katsalidis. He gets a lot of attention for the way his buildings look but what he doesn’t get a lot of credit for is that he builds in a smart way that uses less materials.”

Bakker was recently invited to speak at an event in the Netherlands called The Picnic Festival. “Some pretty powerful guys are behind it, like Brad Pitt; (it’s) about sustainable ideas,” Bakker says. “There’s a €500,000 prize, and first prize was won by a guy from Melbourne who invented a shower that recycled its water. I’d never heard of or read about him in Australia.”

From his home at Monbulk, Bakker comes into the city most days. It’s a busy life, supported by his wife Jennie. “Married for 10 years, been with Jen for 20.”

They met at the Mount Dandenong pub. “She didn’t want a bar of me for the first three months. It took me a long time to convince her to go out on a date. Twenty years later we’re still going. She’s been amazing. I couldn’t have done any of this without her.”

Their remarkable house in Monbulk – which has starred as a spread in Vogue Living – features a façade of thousands of terracotta pots in steel reinforcement. It’s a wonderland for their three daughters, Ruby, Charlie and Remy, aged eight, six and three. “These projects take me away from them a bit too much but you can’t expect to build a restaurant and do a 100-hour week …” he says.

He finds solace from all the work at home. “Spend time with the kids, work in the veggie patch. I was in the veggie patch for the first time in two weeks and bloody tomatoes everywhere, corn overgrown, so the chooks are having a field day at the moment because I’ve thrown half the corn to them. This time of year, if you’re not around, there’s an abundance of food. Cucumbers coming out everywhere.”

As we sit in the Greenhouse, Bakker is approached by a man wanting to discuss some pipes, by a photographer and by various assistants. The room is crowded with customers and the kitchen has several tattooed chefs in singlets making the food. Bakker is the genial, charming figurehead, ice-cool, as though nothing will be a problem, and this is the way we should all be living.

How’s he handing all the media attention? “It’s all good. I’m more worried about, ‘Are the plants getting watered? Are the generators running properly’?”

Greenhouse By Joost is in conjunction with the Melbourne Food and Wine festival, which ends on March 21. www.byjoost.com

View more recent Press here 

The menu delivered upon the Noma philiosophy. (The name is a mash-up of the Danish words “nordisk”, meaning Nordic and “mad”, meaning food)

1st COURSE – Rene Redzepi (noma, Copenhagen)
Raw Squid, white currant juice and douglas fur

2nd COURSE – Claus Henrikson (Dragsholm Castle, Horve, Denmark)
Oven baked Stargazer with potatoes, pickled pearl onions and smoked oil

3RD COURSE – Christian Puglisi (Restaurant Relae, Copenhagen)
Poached veal tongue, steamed potatoe nudles, pickled green seaweed, veal sauce, seaweed butter

DESSERT – Rosio Sanchez (noma, Copenhagen)
Bitters Dansk Gemmel

Photographer Earl Carter documented the evening so we could share the experience with you. Enjoy!

Guests arrive to the Greenhouse – treated to a peculiar sardine hors d’oevre

The room set – the anticipation palpable.

Rene Redzepi prepares the first course, utilising Joost’s jars and pots!
Greenhouse chef’s Douggie and Dobbers assist intently.

Rene Redzepi (Noma, Copenhagen) introduces the first course.

The guests eat by candlelight as the sun goes down over Melbourne

The activity in the kitchen was intense and focused, quiet and measured.

More on Rene Redzepi’s time in Australia here

Wheat that is packed full of vitamins, minerals and essential oils should only be stoneground on demand. Research has shown that flour loses it’s vitality within moments of being milled.

Pasta that you have at lunch at the Greenhouse was grain only hours earlier. The wholegrain donut or muffin that you have with your coffee was grain that morning. Bread is made 3 times a day from grain grown locally and bio-dynamically and has all the goodness that nature intended and keeps us healthy in ways we are yet to understand.

“Here’s the real charm of the place: biting into nutty pizza, just-baked bread or fresh pasta, knowing it has been made from flour milled that morning. Food made from scratch, by hand, on the spot, has an energy and goodness that you can practically taste.” Terry Durack

THE FACTS - WHY MILL YOUR OWN WHEAT?
grainmaster.com.au

The wheat from which most bread is made has proven to be one of nature’s most perfect foods, full of vitamins, minerals, and many trace elements.

The seed of wheat is made up of many parts consisting of three basic categories:

The bran, made up of many layers of vitamins, minerals, and rich proteins, forms the tough outer covering. This part of the wheat also provides valuable roughage which acts like a sponge to absorb and remove unwanted poisons and toxins from our digestive system.

The germ is the life-giving part of the seed. It’s packed with vitamins B and E, but once milled, it can only last 72 hours at room temperature before going rancid.

The endosperm, (or the white centre) is mostly starch with very few vitamins. This is the part of the wheat that most of todays store bought milled flour is made from.

For centuries wheat was milled into flour with large milling stones which crushed the seed grain into whole wheat flour. There were no supermarkets for selling flour, and so people made their flour as and when they needed it, ensuring minimal time difference between making flour and eating the results.

To ensure today’s milled white flour lasts long enough to sit in warehouses and on shop shelves for months on end, todays millers have had to remove all trace of the bran and the germ – losing at least 22 of the 26 known vitamins and minerals in the process, and all of the valuable roughage our bodies need to absorb and remove unwanted toxins and poisons within our digestive system.

You get whiter, fluffier bread, cakes or pastries but you get them at a price. Health problems such as Obesity, Diabetes, Hypoglycaemia, Heart Disease, Bowel Cancer and Tooth Decay are just some of the major diseases on the upswing since the introduction of white flour in the 1900′s. Many nutritionalists agree that white flour and other refined foods are largely responsible.

Millers have tried to counter the problem through “enrichment” or adding vitamins B1, B2, Niacin and Iron. But there are at least 26 known vitamins and minerals in the whole wheat kernel. How can you enrich something with 22 fewer qualities than you started with? And why strip the natural goodness from our food, then artificially restore a part of it back? Wouldn’t it be wiser to eat the wholesome natural food in the first place?

By making your own flour as and when you need it, your body absorbs all the goodness that nature packed into her wonderful seed grains. You get to enjoy all the delicate oils and vitamins that are so important to your health, but so easily lost or damaged in the commercial milling process.

The flour you’ll produce is very soft and smooth. You’ll feel the slight oiliness of the natural life-giving wheat germ. This type of flour will take on moisture fast, is easy for the body to digest and utilise, and (if you like the taste of fresh quality ingredients) will enrich the taste of everything you make from it.

For many years the health and flavour benefits of freshly milled flour has been lost to the western world in the name of convenience.

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Joost came across some particularly interesting [and quite shocking] research by Dr. JG Schnitzer – a dentist and researcher, who published his studies in the early 1960′s. Dr Schnitzer was an avid campaigner for the health benefits of freshly milled grain.

See below the incredible comparative study of the effects of a whole-meal diet and a refined-flour diet..

Laboratory rat, fed with whole-meal bread. During 11.5 months of whole-meal bread nutrition the rat was completely healthy and free from vermins.
(From the book of Professor Dr. Friedrich Proell  “Zahnaufbau und Zahnabbau in Abhängigkeit von der Ernährung” (Construction and decay of teeth in dependence of nutrition), Johann Ambrosius Barth Edition Leipzig, Germany, 1956).

Laboratory rat, fed with white bread rolls, 2nd generation. Heavily ill, with violent rash of ears, snout, tail and extremities (thick crusts), coat of hair rough; “ugly”, unharmonious proportions of head, body and extremities. To show details better, the rat is photographed a bit bigger than the healthy one.
(From the same book of Professor Dr. Friedrich Proell). You can see here, that type of bread of a population is not only having influence on teeth, but also on the complete body, the appearance, beauty or ugliness of proportions.