Lolo Houbin's great-great grandfather was a market gardener in North-West Frisia who passed on a food gardening gene down every generation. In Lolo's youth she saw her hometown in western Holland implode under the impact of war, until all animals, birds and rodents were eaten, all fish angled, all trees used for firewood and a long winter of famine ensued during which 24000 people died of starvation in an area approximately a sixteenth the size of Tasmania. Food security has been Lolo's life-long pre-occupation and this book is an offering for survival to those who have never even grown a radish. Lolo Houbein was educated at the universities of Adelaide and Papua New Guinea in the literatures of Australia, Britain, Papua New Guinea, the Pacific and Africa, classical studies, world religions and anthropology. She is well known as an author of fiction and non-fiction. Her novel Walk Barefoot Road won the Bicentennial/ABC Fiction Award.