Meet the Steensbys: Canberra's extreme organic pedallers

Cindy Steensby, an avid kitchen gardener in Scullin, has taken her organic cycle in life to new levels – pedal power.

She likes to mill her own flour and roll her own oats because whole grains store well. "Freshly ground or rolled grains are more nutritious and taste better than flours bought in a store," she says. The flour mill and oat flaker she bought five years ago were originally hand cranked, which made the mill exhausting to use.

She opted for manual power because it is more sustainable, not involving the use of fossil fuels. With the help of husband Walter's brother, Robert Steensby, they modified the flour mill, so it is powered by an adapted exercise bike. A small pulley on the bike's wheel is connected via a Y-belt to a larger pulley to the mill.

She bought her sourdough starter on the internet and she has kept it going ever since. Her basic bread recipe is mainly spelt and wheat, but also includes some barley, rye, buckwheat and oats.

Meanwhile, for the past three years, Walter has been president of the Canberra Organic Growers Society, and his term ends on March 24. People can be members of the society and not have a plot, and Walter and his wife, Cindy, garden at home.

"At COGS," Walter says, "we have presentation nights at Majura Community Centre in Dickson on the fourth Tuesday of every month which are open to the public, a backyard gardeners' group, a library and people willing to share knowledge of organic gardening. COGS has about 250 plot holders, plus 60 people on the waiting list."

Increasing concern over the direction that global capitalism was taking the food system led to the couple following organic agriculture that they see as sustainable, chemical-free, healthy and fun.

Walter was born in India in 1949 of Norwegian and Australian parents, who brought him to Australia that year. Cindy was born and raised in Minnesota, in the United States, where her parents had a large vegetable garden and the children were expected to help out.

"Gardening in Minnesota is different from here," she says. "The season is shorter, but the glacially produced soils, easily two metres deep, and plentiful rainfall, are more conducive to gardening. We rarely had to water and never applied fertiliser, as rotation of crops was sufficient. Cold winters to minus 40C kept most insects in check, and snails are unknown there."

The Steensbys married in 1988 and, after buying a house in Scullin in 1993, started developing the garden. Among their perennial vegetables and berries are asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes, redcurrants and a large patch of thornless raspberries that Cindy uses in delicious raspberry brownies to a recipe adapted from the Heart Foundation's Deliciously Healthy Cookbook.

They have a flowering choko vine planted beside a kiwifruit vine against the north-facing wall of the house, and both receive grey water. They are harvesting corn, broad and bush beans, kale, tromboncino squash more than a metre long, potatoes, French sorrel, warrigal greens and yacons, a tuber known as Peruvian ground apple. Rampant Australian ironbark pumpkins mingle with red grain amaranth plants from which Cindy stir-fries the leaves.

Among their tomatoes is the heirloom bullock's heart, raised last year from seed that fellow grower Jim Cleaver found in an envelope labelled "Bullheart Tomato 1944" and shared with his relatives and COGS members.

Walter buys seeds from the Diggers Club, but also saves his own and says growers need to be aware of how a plant is pollinated. "For example, pumpkins are bee pollinated, and in a suburban setting it is necessary to hand pollinate them to get seeds that breed true to the variety."

Five years ago, they added a wicking bed to their garden as an experiment. It worked so well that they now have five wicking beds. One, in a shady spot, has been planted with parsley, strawberries and ocas, a small tuber from South America that Cindy says looks like a stubby witchetty grub, but tastes good.

Chocolate raspberry brownies

1 cup flour (whole-grain flour and 100 per cent buckwheat used here)

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

¾ cup cocoa (Ecuadorian organic)

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1.25 cups castor sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1.5 tbsp olive oil

200g plain yoghurt (can be fat free – Cindy makes her own)

120g apple puree (or cook two peeled and sliced apples and mash them)

200g fresh or frozen raspberries

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line the base and sides of a 30-centimetre-by-20-centimetre pan with baking paper. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa into a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, oil and yoghurt in a bowl. Pour into the flour mixture and mix until smooth. Fold through the apple puree and raspberries. Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted in the centre. Allow to cool for five minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Cut into squares when cool. Makes 16.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.