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Inside Tharwa knifemaker Karim Haddad's garden

Susan Parsons

Karim Haddad next to his persimmon tree at his Tharwa home.
Karim Haddad next to his persimmon tree at his Tharwa home. Jeffrey Chan

On a jaunt to Tharwa last month I stopped at a driveway opposite a little church in Johnson Street to check an address. A smiling man in an apron came out to the car and asked if I was lost. After I interviewed his near neighbour, Dr Peter Ellis (Kitchen Garden, April 20) I returned to the Tharwa Valley Forge to see the cabinets of knives made by bladesmith Karim Haddad.

On the adjoining lawn was a persimmon tree, its bright orange fruit aglow in the afternoon sun. Following my admiration of the crop, Haddad offered to show me the family's kitchen garden.

He moved to Tharwa in the early 1990s to work with Outward Bound Australia. In 2002 a house came on the market that was set up with workshops as part of the Tharwa Arts Precinct. Haddad and his partner, Ali Wass, bought the place with a plan to open a knifemaking school. In the years since then it has grown to be the biggest knifemaking school in the world with hundreds of people making beautiful knives on the courses Haddad holds each year. Students travel from all over Australia and internationally to attend the classes.

Karim has been making custom knives for more than 20 years and has been teaching for the past 13 years. He and Ali have a 13-year-old daughter, Leila Haddad, who is an accomplished young knifemaker. She makes high-end kitchen knives for chefs around the world. When the couple first moved to the site in Tharwa, Ali Wass built a vegetable garden but she converted it to a large raised bed five years ago. It is a no-dig design utilising original soils with rich compost and paper/straw layering to build the soil structure. The walls were made from used dry stacked Besser bricks and the insides of the bricks were filled with soil in which strawberries and shallots were planted. The bricks warm up in the afternoon sun, keeping the soil warm all year round.

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They use chickens to create the soil by putting garden clippings, leaves and straw in their yard and letting them scratch around. Twice a year they dig up the soil from the chook house and top up the vegetable patches.

Although Ali is the main gardener, Karim's surname prompted me to ask if he was related to the Haddads of Griffith. They are his parents. I first met Dr Maurice Haddad and his wife Ann Haddad in spring 2002 when their garden was open for Australia's Open Garden Scheme and, to my surprise, peanuts were being planted. Haddad Snr is an economist, a cabinet maker and an innovative kitchen gardener. To save space, his fruit trees were trained as step-over espaliers. There were a dozen varieties of tomatoes, a salad garden, and a sun-trap courtyard nook where citrus trees were thriving.

In May 2011 I returned to the Griffith garden to see cherry tomato plants climbing to a pergola that needed a ladder for harvesting. There was a new chook house, a potted Australian bush lime and a late-ripening pomegranate, the skins of which Ann Haddad used to dye wool for her quilting. However, the highlight that early winter's day was a laden persimmon tree.

In Tharwa, Ali Wass planted the persimmon in 2003. It is the variety 'Hyakumo' which has very soft fruit when it ripens but is astringent prior to that. The unripe fruit leaves a gummy taste in the mouth but the ripe persimmons have a jam-like consistency. The family eats the persimmons fresh but also air dries them to eat later. Thinly spreading the fruit in a dehydrator makes a delicious jam-like fruit leather that keeps for months. Ali says squeezing the fresh persimmons onto breakfast cereal or sour yoghurt makes a great start to the day.

Even in late autumn tomatoes are still being harvested from Maurice Haddad's extensive collection of heirloom tomatoes. There are leeks, spinach, beetroot, rhubarb, the last of the lettuces, pumpkins and strawberries. Onions and garlic as well as Asian greens are on the go. From the Griffith garden they have also planted a pomegranate, olive tree and fig tree. As a keen gardener, Ali makes sure there is something from the garden to eat all year round.

Asparagus, showing its ferny after-cropping foliage on our visit, is a special local plant at Tharwa. The asparagus has been growing wild along the Murrumbidgee River since it escaped the Cuppacumbalong gardens more than 100 years ago. Karim and Ali dug up some crowns a decade ago and planted it in key sites around their garden. After a few years to get established, the crowns are now prolific producers in the spring and early summer months. The spears grow several centimetres each day, providing a tasty side dish for the family most nights. To harvest, no knives are needed, they just snap the spears off at ground level. They walk out just before dinner, snap off a dozen or so, then bring them in for a quick rinse and into the pan.

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