5 Fresh Foods In The Garden - January

Despite the weather being decidedly wet and blustery, then freezing and blustery, then very wet again, I'm pleased that I've managed to get outside for short periods without getting soaked through. 

Most days I have been able to harvest something from the annual vegetable beds to use in the kitchen.

So, here are my five most harvested foods for January 2018.

1. Leeks
I grew three different varieties of leeks this year, to give us some security should one variety go too seed too soon. 

There are Autumn Mammoth, American Flag and one other variety, sadly, I can't remember the variety and unlike me, I didn't record it in my gardening journal.

2. Parsnips
These were grown from organic seed, the variety is Tender and True. This year I spaced the seeds much further apart than I have done in the past, giving fewer roots of a much better size. You can see very clearly on these roots where the growth changes after a few inches of nice straight growing; that's where the wood chip and compost growing medium in the raised bed meets the dreadfully poor soil that was in the field when we moved in. Hopefully this will improve year upon year as the topsoil is rebuilt.

3. Purple Sprouting Broccoli
I grew two varieties of purple sprouting broccoli this year in the hope that one would be ready to be harvested earlier than the other and that's exactly what has happened - hooray! We've been enjoying the purple sprouting broccoli for almost eight weeks and the second bed, the seed packet informs me, should be ready to harvest in February and March.

4. Fresh Herbs
The bronze fennel has braved the weather and the fresh growth is now around eight inches high, certainly enough to pick a little to add to dishes like omelettes and sauces.
The thyme and marjoram which I have growing under cloches, looks fairly scruffy and ragged, but I'm harvesting a little at a time from them.
The evergreen herbs like rosemary and bay add their warming presence to dishes and the sage, although looking very weather beaten, is still just about useable.

5. Cabbages and Kale
We have plenty of Cavello di Nero kale, January King and Savoy cabbages as well as spring greens. Other than the Savoys, I've grown most of these brassicas to give to the birds, as an additional green during the winter months while the grass has stopped growing. We eat just a little kale as we are not fans, but I enjoy Savoy cabbage on a regular basis.
I think the key to enjoying brassicas is to find the way to cook them so that you enjoy them. I dislike soggy cabbage, while friends of mine won't touch it if it still has a crispiness or bite.

Harvesting 800 pounds of food in 50 days

What an amazing experience this project has been! 50 days ago I set myself a target of harvesting, processing and storing at least 5lbs of food a day. Whether it was something grown in our garden, meat birds or something foraged. 

My target was to store 250lbs of food in 50 days, but by the end of the first week it became obvious that I would achieve that volume of harvest fairly easily and quickly, so I increased the target to 500lbs.

And, shortly after the midway point I realised that I could increase my target once again. Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined that this plot could yield so much food in such a short space of time.

I have, in fact, harvested more than the list below, because for the purpose of my 50 Days of Harvest project, I didn't include any food that we harvested to consume that day and it didn't include anything harvested prior to the start date. I will, in due course, calculate the total amount that has been harvested from our smallholding this year, but for today, I am celebrating that I have been able to harvest such a fabulous amount in seven weeks and a day.

Here's today's vlog, or if you can't view it on your device, you can watch it on YouTube here

The harvest included

317 lbs apples (cooking apples and eating apples)
85 lbs winter squashes
22 lbs beetroot
30 lbs dwarf beans
44 lbs courgettes
57 lbs tomatoes
3 lbs cucumber
9 lbs plums
48 lbs runner beans
8 lbs savoy cabbage
31 lbs borlotti beans (net weight)
9 lbs blackberries
75 lbs chicken and duck
16 lbs raspberries 
19 lbs sweetcorn
3 lbs Greek gigantes beans
23 lbs pears
1 lb parsnips.

Our cupboards are filled with jars of apple sauce, plum sauce, green tomato chutney and raspberry jam. Demi-Johns are filled with country wines nicely fermenting away, the freezers are filled to bursting with produce and our hearts are filled with joy.

The whole project can be found on YouTube here

The Corn Is Bleeding! | 50 Days of Harvest, Day 28

I harvested some beautiful coloured sweetcorn today and then had a big surprise!





If you can't view the video on your device, you can watch it on YouTube here.

50 Days of Harvest - Day One - An invitation to join a celebration!

Today I start a new project and I invite you to join me in a celebration of an abundant harvest.

If you can not view the video on your device, you can watch it on YouTube here.

Homestead Tour July Part 2

If you can't view the video on your device, you can watch it on YouTube here.

July Homestead Tour Part 1

As it's the first day of August, it's time to look at the progress made by the crops and animals during July. To stop this being a very long vlog, I have split it into two, so the second part will be published tomorrow.


If you can't see the video on your device, you can watch it on YouTube here.

Ready, steady, harvest! Abundance in our garden.

It seems that this has been a very good year for growing food in our garden. Hopefully this is a result of us improving the soil in the raised beds and an indication of things to come, that year by year the yield will increase as we enrich and enhance the soil.

 I've been picking blackberries, not only from the hedgerows of the fields surrounding us, but from the brambles that are quietly but steadily invading our garden.The area immediately outside our boundary is not being cut back by the farmer using the fields, this is a nuisance on one level because the weeds are growing very well and are now about four feet high and their seeds are blowing and dropping into our garden and chicken field, on the otherhand, it is supplying us with an amazing crop of blackberries. Now if I could just find a way to eat thistles, we'd be completely sorted!

 The elderberry tree is now starting to look purple, the birds are gorging themselves on ripening berries and I have started to pick as many berries as I can reach. I'm putting them straight into the freezer and, when I have enough, I will make some more elderberry wine. I'm also going to make elderberry syrup as I hear it is soothing for sore throats and the other symptoms of winter colds.

 The mirabelle plums are almost ready, one or two show the deep rich yellow of ripeness and I'm watching daily as the others turn from green to pale yellow to a darker, softer, buttery yellow.These too will be going into the freezer until I am ready to use them. Last year's crop were used to make some mirabelle plum and red grape wine which turned out to be a great success (unlike the elderflower wine that I made last year which is disgusting!).

Today's vlog continues the harvesting theme, if you can't view it on your device from this blog, you can watch it on YouTube here.

Food for winter

Vegetable Garden August 2016

After Storm Angus and Jack Frost had thrown their worst at the garden, I took a walk around the vegetable beds to see what had survived and was pleasantly surprised. Although the vegetable garden looks less than orderly or pretty at the moment, there is still plenty of produce to put on our plates for the coming months.

Here's what we have in the garden
Leeks
Oca
Dwarf kale
Purple curly kale
January King cabbage
Red cabbage
Swiss chard
Perpetual spinach
Parsnips
Swede
Beetroot
Lambs lettuce
Red oak leaf lettuce
Purple sprouting broccoli
Herbs

Stored in the freezer
Borlotti beans
Runner beans
Broad beans
Purple French beans
Patty pan courgettes
Tomatoes
Rainbow chard stems
Celery
Carrots
and fruit that includes
Apples (windfalls from our neighbours' garden)
Blackberries
White Currants
Rosehips
Elderberries
Plums
Mirabelles
Grapes (a gift from a friend)
Herbs

And stored in the larder
Onions
Garlic
Potatoes
Herbs
Plus a collection of sauces, jams, jellies and syrups.

Given that this is our first year, I am delighted with the range of vegetables and fruit that we have to see us through until the next crops arrive.

We have had to buy a few vegetables, but not very many, since the garden starting being productive and it feels quite strange to go to the fresh produce aisle. We have, of course, had to buy fruits like bananas, pineapples and citrus fruit. 

Since starting to plant the food forest I have discovered that we should be able to grow peaches, nectarines and apricots so I will be ordering trees very soon, to join the apple, pears, plums and cherries that I have already planted. I have taken hardwood cuttings of red, white and black currants, tayberry and loganberry. Although I don't eat nuts, Mr J does, so I have planted several hazel trees for hazelnuts and will be ordering a sweet almond tree too.

With all this abundance together with the eggs and meat from the chickens and ducks, I feel as though we have much more food security than we could have hoped for and, being able to buy meat from our friends, like the pork from Martha, means that we can be more certain of how and where our food is produced.

As Christmas is now only three weeks away, I have started to think about what we might have to eat over the holiday period, one thing that I can be sure of is that a large portion of it will be coming from our garden.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Year One photo tour Vegetable Garden

Little and often gets a job done! While many days I feel like I haven't done very much, the cumulative effect of the small tasks quickly build into big changes. This was the paddock as we moved in.

The deep green grass on the right has become the shrubberies, the large area on the left has become a perennial border, vegetable garden, the start of a food forest and the chickens' fields.

To celebrate the progress that's been made during our first year, I thought I'd share some of the photos that we've taken over the course of the year.

The first night in our new home

The first of many compost bays. I was delighted in early May to discover that I had made good quality compost in just a little over three weeks (read about my 3 week compost here)

In early Spring I started making the annual vegetable garden.

  I remember feeling a little daunted by the amount of work it would be to create all the raised beds that I wanted.

 But I found ways to create raised beds that didn't need us to use wooden edging. (read about my super-quick raised beds here)

  This bed was made deeper by inserting spare pieces of wood around the edge, including a couple of drawer fronts so that parsnips would have a deeper root run.

   I've used old pallets to start making a fence around the annual vegetable garden, the pallet fence also provides me with compost bays.

   We've created 17 of the 22 beds that should provide us with a wide variety of vegetables throughout the year. 20 are for annual vegetables and two for perennials, globe artichoke and asparagus.

And I think it turned out pretty well. I've written further blogs looking at our animals and permanent planting areas . The best way to ensure that you don't miss them is to subscribe to my blog, which you can do below!

 If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Abundance and Fruits of the Forage Jam recipe

As   we head towards the end of the first summer on our smallholding, the rhythm of my days is changing. Although I am up at around five each morning, I am no longer out in the garden right away because it's still dark. So for the first hour I'm now reading, watching and researching instead of doing that in the midday heat.

I've been gathering as much food as I can, to eat fresh and also to preserve. I have frozen kilos of mirabelles, fat juicy plums, elderberries, blackberries from the hedgerows, sliced runner beans, broad beans, chunky rainbow chard stems and mangetout.

In  the piggery I've stored the garlic bulbs and the onions will join them once they have ripened. Yet to come are the apples, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and a myriad of other vegetables. Some crops will stay in the ground over winter and should give us freshly picked vegetables throughout the winter and early spring.

By  sheer good fortune, my neighbours have a glut in some crops that either have failed in our kitchen garden or we haven't very much of and we have a glut of crops that haven't done too well in their garden. Being the sensible bunnies that we are, we have started to swap the excesses meaning that both families now have a wider selection of foods to eat now and to store for the winter.

Yesterday evening our neighbour dropped by with a carrier bag filled with plums which were a swap for runner beans that they have been having for the last few weeks. 

They've also said that I can help myself to windfall cooking apples which I am delighted about as I have been foraging blackberries from the hedgerows and can now make blackberry and apple pie filling to freeze. If there are enough cooking apples I will also make some blackberry and apple jam or jelly. The apples on our young trees are eating apples and there are not very many of them as yet because the trees are only four or five years old.

The success of some vegetables has inspired me for next year. I will plant many more beetroot (Boltardy) which have been very sweet and flavoursome this year, to make wine from next year. In the area between the perennial flower border and the vegetable garden I had planned to have cut flowers and herbs, but I will now have fruit instead. I will plant some fruit trees, underplanted with currant bushes, fruit canes and strawberry plants together with some complementary herbs. Some mint in a pot buried in the ground to go with the strawberries, some sweet cicely to help take the edge off the rhubarb, some licquorice roots, tarragon to go with the raspberries.

This afternoon I have made some of my favourite mixed fruit jam, which I'm calling 'Fruits of the Forage' Jam.

Fruits of the Forage Jam

Ingredients

3lbs of foraged fruit (I used 1lb cored windfall apples and 2lbs of stoned plums, blackberries and elderberries)
Juice of 1 Lemon
2lbs unrefined granulated sugar
1 glass red wine (optional)
7 fluid oz boiling water
1tblspn ground cinnamon
1tblspn ground ginger
2 dried cloves (ground in pestle and mortar)
1/2 tspn grated nutmeg

Method

Wash jam jars and put in heated oven to sterilise and put lids in a pan of boiling water, boil for 10 minutes to sterilise and leave in water until ready to use.

Wash and prepare the fruit, squeeze lemon juice over the fruit and put in a heavy based large pan with the glass of wine and boiling water. 

Cook until the fruit is soft stirring regularly to prevent it sticking to the pan. 

Add cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. 

Stir in the sugar until dissolved.

Cook rapidly stirring to prevent sticking until setting point.

Remove jars from oven and leave to cool a little.

Spoon or ladle the jam into the jars (be careful because the jars will be hot).

Wipe the outside of the jars if necessary to remove any spilt jam, but avoid putting your cloth into the jar.

Using tongs, remove the lids one at a time from the pan of water and seal jars.

Once the jam has cooled in the jars, remember to label them to help avoid confusion later.

Use a deep pan to avoid splashes

Ready to put jam into jars

Use tongs to remove lids from hot water

Don't forget to label your Fruits of the Forage Jam

Nice surprises

The sun has shone on our corner of the world for a few days now and it is lovely here. It's been too hot to do much heavy work, so I have pottered early mornings and then stayed inside with the windows and doors wide open during the hottest part of the day.

The dozen chicks that hatched three weeks ago are now spending all day outside in a run in the front garden, but I'm taking them back into their pen each evening. Having fresh air around them and grass under their feet seems to have brought them on in leaps and bounds.

Likewise the ducklings are outside each day, going back to their pen in the shelter of the stable each evening. They are almost off the heat now, but I'm being cautious (and probably over-protective) as they are our first ducklings.

Yesterday Mr J put together a set of shelves that we found on FreeCycle and we put them into the corner of the kitchen. These will house the homemade jam, pickles, sauces and wine that I don't have space for elsewhere in the kitchen. A new freezer is being delivered on Thursday which will give us plenty of space to store the vegetables that I am gathering from the garden together with bulk cooked meals that we can then defrost and use immediately when we are too tired or don't have time to cook a meal from scratch.

I have been finding some interesting shaped tomatoes in the greenhouse, three of these are an Italian variety of plum tomato and they have a distinctly square shape. I picked them while they were still quite small, smaller than a golf ball, because they were deep red and ripe and I'd rather eat a small tomato than let it go to waste.

We've been enjoying the borlotti beans again, they are very attractive on the plant and equally so when the beans are taken from the pod. It's a shame that they don't keep the colouring when they are cooked.

The four chicks that are now seven weeks old are starting to explore the chicken field in earnest. The are on the same side of the fence as Jack, Diesel, Little White and Big Red and although they mostly keep themselves to themselves the older chickens are bossy and have been letting them know who's in charge. They are still small enough to escape through the flexible fencing and a few times we have had to encourage them back into their allotted space, but it won't be too long before they are restricted to their side as they grow too large to squeeze through the fencing.

Most days I am gathering enough food for our supper and some for the freezer. The best way to harvest crops like beans and peas is to take little and often, so that the plants keep producing more and more. This trolley load of vegetables were roasted with garlic and the runner beans were sliced and frozen.

I had a plateful of the roasted vegetables and Mr J had some homemade meatloaf with his. The colourful selection was very pleasing to the eye as well as the palate.

When it was time to put the chicks and ducklings to bed last night, we gathered the twelve chicks and took them to their secure run in the stable. When we went to collect the ducklings we found that they had managed to climb the (rather steep) ramp up to the house that is attached to their outdoor run and they had put themselves to bed. Oh my little lovelies, I am so enamoured with these ducklings. They are growing so much each day that it is noticeable, but they still look like babies (which of course they are) and we are delighted with how well they seem to be doing despite us.

I am feeling very blessed at the moment and to celebrate, I'm going to make a cuppa!

Full of beans

What an exciting time of year this is! We are now gathering food from the garden every day, some to eat and some to store for later. Most of our meals start with a selection of vegetables and I then decide what to cook once I've seen what we have available. 

This meal included homegrown onion, rainbow chard, garlic, peas, borlotti beans, kale, spinach, beetroot and tomatoes.

And became a tasty chicken stir-fry with a wine, lemon and ginger sauce, served with jasmine rice and a garnish of fresh cream. It wouldn't have won any prizes for beauty or presentation, but it's taste was superb.

Until recently I had been concerned that the bean crop was going to be miserably small, but to my delight the runner beans have come thick and fast and I can now freeze plenty for us to have during the winter months. I've grown both White Lady and Flavourstar varieties, but next year I will grow just the White Lady and perhaps an orange flowered variety. The Flavourstar have been okay, but I am picking about three times as many (or maybe more) of the White Lady variety. I will also allow some beans to mature fully and then dry them and save them as seeds for next year. Mr J and I thought that next year it would be nice to make a bean tunnel along the length of the kitchen garden as they are so decorative. I read somewhere once that runner beans were originally grown as an ornamental climber, but I am jolly pleased that someone tried the beans and that they have become a part of our diet. I am not very keen on the kidney beans on their own, I prefer them as a sliced green bean, but I know that they make a useful additional to meals like chilli and even in cassoulet. So, if we have enough frozen sliced beans and enough saved to use for next year's seeds, I will then use some to dry the kidney beans for rehydrating and eating.

I have already harvested a couple of kilos of broad beans and frozen them and have bought some seeds for autumn sown broad beans (Aquadulce Claudia) which should mature earlier than spring sown ones so that next year we have two crops of broad beans.

I hadn't grown (or eaten) borlotti beans before and although they look pretty in their pods I was sceptical about how they would taste. Well, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that they taste delicious and have a rich creamy consistency and next year, I will be planting many more borlotti beans. There are both dwarf and tall varieties, so I will give both some space in the garden and compare how they taste.

The most important tool in my garden is not actually in the garden at all, it's in the kitchen! I keep a garden diary, this is so that I can keep all my notes and observations in one place, this way I don't have to try to remember what was planted when and how it grew and whether I like the taste enough to grow them again next year. I'm using one page per crop, so that I can keep adding to it as time goes on. A more organised person might use their computer for this, but I find it easier to have a pen or pencil lying around on the kitchen table and jot down notes as I need to. It also means that I can take the book out to the garden if I want to wander around writing down my observations as I go.

I also keep a poultry manual along the same lines, dates of birds arriving, where I got them from, any that have hatched or been dispatched and most importantly of any medicines that they have had and how long we need to exclude their eggs or meat from our diet. As a smallholder, this is an essential requirement.

I've been wiped out for a couple of days this week and apart from ensuring that the birds had sufficient food and water, I have done very little else on those days, leaving Mr J to put the animals to bed and secure them for the night against preditors. It's becoming increasingly frustrating to have days where I am unable to do much, I am so excited and enthused by life here that to be stuck indoors struggling to stand up and move around is irritating to say the least. But the good news for me is that I am starting to feeling myself again and as long as I have sufficient rest (I slept for three hours today) I can crack on with the tasks that I want to achieve.

The birds seem to be growing rapidly at the moment. Big Red and Little White are now fourteen weeks old and are huge! Big Red is likely to continue growing for at least another six weeks, he is already much taller than Diesel and Jack (who is his mother) and a couple of inches taller (to the shoulders) than Little White, who will when fully grown be much larger than him because of the breed that she is. I took this photo of Big Red about two weeks ago and he is considerably larger now. I love his colouring and markings, the offspring of a Crested Cream Legbar cockerel and Warren hen (Jack) he has a her colouring mixed with the Legbar's flecking and not a full crest but a small Mohican style tuftiness arrangement on his head.

The four chicks (that I have collectively nicknamed The Four Horsemen) are now six weeks old and growing well. They are very timid and particularly nervous of Diesel who is at the top of the pecking order and for much of the time is quite bullying in her behaviour to all the other chickens. This little chap is the Jersey Giant cockerel, or at least I am pretty sure it's a cockerel, who will eventually be the size of turkey and will live in a separate area with Little White and the other female Jersey Giant. Presently he just looks a bit sorry for himself and scruffy, but I have not doubt that he will become a graceful bruiser of a bird over the next few months. Jersey Giants are slow to reach full maturity so it will be interesting to watch them as they develop into the large birds that they promise to be.

The youngest chicks are two weeks old now and most of them have about three quarters of their wing feathers formed. This little one has been nicknamed The Colonel and using lots of old wives' tales to try to work out its gender, I think it is a male. We will keep a couple of males to decide which will be the best for breeding and the other males will be meat birds.

I was talking to Mr J this evening about how best to describe my feelings about caring for animals that will become food for us and decided that the best way is that I care for them without caring too much about the birds. Those that I have come to care about will be very difficult to dispatch when the time comes. I've found that it is easier to care for the birds without getting attached to them when there are larger numbers of them. It was inevitable that we would become attached to Big Red and Little White as they were the first birds that we hatched ourselves. There were also only two of them, the Four Horsemen are nice enough but I haven't got to know their personalities or quirks and the latest brood are almost too many to be able to spot the differences between some of them. Of course I can see one is champagne colour and another is white, there are eight that look similar to The Colonel with varying degrees of white and grey patches and they will join the Australorp (one of The Four Horsemen) in their own area of the paddock when they are large enough.

We have finished hatching chickens for the year, we have about 10 meat birds which won't keep us fed throughout the winter, but will provide us with some food. I can make a chicken provide four to five meals for the two of us, so they will go a long way to filling the freezer.

The ducklings continue to be ridiculously cute and somehow I can't imagine that we will want to part with them, but the reality is that we can't have more than one drake on the smallholding, there simply isn't enough space to run several flocks of ducks and it would be an indulgence rather than a practical decision to keep the drakes. As we have no way of telling as yet, what gender the ducklings are, we will carry on enjoying their funny behaviour for some time to come. 

One day last week one of them was very poorly, it was twisting its head to the side and racing around in circles backwards. I scoured the internet for causes and more importantly, for a cure and we went to the local farm supplies and bought vitamin boosting drops. This seems to have done the trick, within twenty-four hours it was significantly improved and it is now bright and happy again with no sign of having been unwell. It has become a great swimmer, dipping time and time again under the water of it's washing up bowl pond. (If you can't play the video on the link, you can see it here on YouTube)

The week is running away from me again, there is so much to do and, it seems, so little time. Today (Thursday) I will be processing the fruit and vegetables that I gathered this morning, but first as always, it's time to make a cuppa.