Covering up

What a blessing it has felt to have such mild weather at the end of October. I have spent a part of each day this week in the garden, some days more than others, but I've enjoyed every moment that I've been outside.

A local tradesman has been applying rendering to the external wall of our bathroom this week. When we bought the house the previous owners were going to put cladding on the small extension, but as it would have been the only part of the house with cladding on it, we asked them to leave it as blockwork and agreed that we'd get it rendered. Moving in during the stormy winter months, it didn't get done for the first few months, but we were keen not to let it sit exposed to the rain and wind for a second winter. So a couple of weeks ago, I got several quotes for the job and the local plasterer completed the job this today. And it looks great!

What surprised me about the rendering task was the difference in the quotes that I received. I asked four local tradesmen for a quote for the job, each was given the same information about what we wanted done, but the quotes were wildly varying. Three of the quotes were for over £800 and the last quote was for a little over £310. Needless to say, I declined the higher quotes and saved us well over £500. Normally at this point, I would rant about why tradespeople feel it's okay to charge so much for a job when clearly it can be done for less than half the price, but I guess I must be mellowing as I don't want to waste my energy getting cross about it.

Outside I have continued to move wood chippings into the young Food Forest to cover the pathways and build up layers on the planted areas. 

 The planting beds have now had the weed suppressing membrane cut away from them, cardboard placed on the ground and composted wood chippings and topsoil put on top of the cardboard. 

 I've placed wood around the edges of two of the beds which should rot down over the next few years, but in the meantime will provide some definition and support for the wood chippings as I build up the depth of the beds.

 I also placed some sticks in the body of this planting bed, they will add to the compost in time, but it was a useful way to dispose of some of the larger twigs and sticks that we have lying around.

Then the fruit and herb plants were planted. I had intended to leave the membrane down for a couple of years and then lift it around the plants that have been planted through the membrane, but I changed my mind and decided that doing this process now would stop the plants from being disturbed after they have put down a good root system. The Food Forest area is now about 30 feet by 70 feet and I'm very pleased with how it is beginning to look.

I've started to plant the trees that we bought last week. I've put in two cherries, a plum and three apple trees and have decided where the others will be planted. The soil is so poor and the ground highly compacted, so digging the hole for each tree is taking far longer than I'd like it to. I've also discovered two self-sown plum trees, one of which I think is a mirabelle (because of where it is growing). I'm using RootGrow mycorrhizal granules on the roots in the hope that this will help the trees settle into their new places more rapidly. The trees that are planted through the membrane and have chippings around them won't have to compete with weeds, but those planted into the other parts of the paddock are at risk of being swamped by clover, thistles or stinging nettles. So I have placed cardboard around them and covered it in a deep layer of wood chippings (taking care that it isn't touching the stem).

I've also continued to build up the layers of material on the most recent raised bed in the vegetable garden. Today I have added a layer of composted straw and brewery grains which have spent the summer in a compost bay with some summer squash growing on the heap. They aren't completely rotted down yet as I can still see some of the grains and the straw, but they are mostly decomposed and can continue to break down on the raised bed. The last layer to go on to the raised bed will be some topsoil, but the heap of topsoil got very wet in the rain last week and I've found it very heavy to move, so the final layer will have to be moved little by little as I have energy or will have to wait until Mr J can help me.

Elsewhere on the smallholding, the young chickens and ducks continue to grow but the chickens have all but stopped laying. Diesel is still laying around five eggs per week, Jack stopped laying some weeks ago and is now in full moult and starting to look rather sad for herself. The Cream Legbars have also stopped laying and are just starting to moult. For the winter period we have moved the Cream Legbars back into the main chicken field so that they can sleep in the large shed with the rest of the birds. This has two advantages, that more bodies in the shed will help keep it warmer and that there will be fewer houses for me to muck out. 

The Australorps will stay in their own section of the field until they are less in number. We currently have one female and six young males in the Australorp field and over the next couple of weeks Mr J and I will decide which two we will keep for breeding and the others will be our meat birds for the next couple of months. The young female and two males will either join the flock in the main field or we will move them, together with the older female Australorp to a new site on the smallholding.

Next week we are due to have some leggy trees cut down and removed from behind the piggeries, which will give us another area that the chickens could move into. I am quite keen to let the Australorps run through the area behind the piggeries because they have proved to be excellent at clearing weeds and scrubland. In the meantime, I will spend a little time over the next few days clearing some of the debris that is behind the piggeries. I haven't really done very much in that area since we moved in and there is plenty of rubbish that needs to be taken away from the back piggery before any chickens live there. 

I am looking forward to a weekend of pottering in the garden and with luck we will have another evening like today, when I can sit outside with a cuppa and watch the sun go down.

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Plants, trees and leaves

 We are heading towards the end of our first year on the smallholding and we are taking stock of what we've achieved in the last twelve months and thinking about what we want to do over the next year.

This week I've been planting the plants, rooted cuttings, bulbs and trees that we've been given, bought or propagated so that none are sitting in pots outside the greenhouse unless that's where they will be for the next couple of years. I have a few tree seeds in pots that can stay by the greenhouse where it is light but sheltered until they are large enough to plant into their permanent positions. There are also several pots and bags of plants that I've put there with the intention of getting them into the ground, but as yet they haven't made it into the borders or field.

Several of the perennials that need to go into the perennial border have been put into a raised vegetable bed that otherwise would be empty of a crop over the winter. I've heeled in some perennials that I've divided and that I've been given and will scatter some buckwheat seeds in too, to be a green manure and ground cover over the winter. Then in early spring when I've weeded the perennial border, I will add the new plants in spaces between the existing clumps.

The perennial border has had little or no attention from me this year, other than to appreciate everything that has flowered in it, including the weeds! I've been delighted with the show of colour that we've had throughout most of the spring and summer, even the feverfew-daisy type weeds have added a welcome splash of white and yellow. The border has had different types of grains growing in it, these are from the wild bird feed that the previous owners put out for the local birdlife and as my focus has been on setting up the vegetable garden, I've left the grains to grow, enjoying the structural element that they have added to the border.

 As I started to clear some of the pernicious weeds from the border earlier this week, I noticed that the seed heads from those grains and also the herbs that I've planted look very much like a firework display hovering above the rest of the plant growth. The dill and fennel seeds with their umbilical like seed heads and the millet and oat plants offer different shapes and sounds as the wind moves through them. I take such pleasure in these simple moments of observation and appreciation and I'm glad that this pleasure hasn't lessened over the years.

I'm still gathering crops from around the smallholding to store for use over the autumn and winter. The apple trees that were here when we moved in have had varying degrees of sucess. One hasn't produced any fruit at all, but then I can't remember it having any blossom on it either. One has produced some fruit but the whole tree has black spot and the fruits do too. The third apple tree has produced some nice fruit which I have gathered and stored in the barn and the last tree's fruit is still not quite ready to pick. When I try to twist the apples from their branches, they do not come away easily which means that they are not ripe enough quite yet, but they look fabulous. The six new apple trees which we bought earlier in the week are unlikely to produce any fruit next year, but in a couple of years time we should, I hope, have an abundant harvest of apples.

The huge sycamore trees that grow to the side and back of the piggeries are starting to lose their leaves in the early autumn breezes. Yesterday I started to rake them into large piles with the intention of using them to create leaf mould or adding them to the food forest to improve the soil structure there. I filled a large green compost bin with them, pressing them down to fit in as many as I could. When that was filled I started to pile them up on the ground. After half an hour of raking and piling I had still only partially cleared an area about forty feet by six feet and there was an awful lot more to go! The trees look like they have hardly lost any leaves and yet the ground is starting to get covered with dried crunchy leaves. I can only imagine how deep the layer of leaves will be once the trees have shed all of them.

I think the best approach to the leaf collecting will be to take the wheelbarrow to the area and fill that a few times, taking the leaves to the food forest area and the rest can go into a compost bin or be piled up on the vegetable beds to rot down over the next few months. Last year, by the time we had moved in and I felt up to wandering around outside, the leaves were soggy and I didn't have the energy to rake up most of them. I cleared a small pathway to the chicken field, but left the rest to rot where they landed, this year I hope to gather the majority of them to help improve the condition of the soil in other productive areas of the garden.

My daughter and grandson number two came to visit on Thursday and we spent a delightful couple of hours chatting, laughing and putting the world to right. She is coming back again on Monday with both my grandsons and I'll be asking grandson number one to gather some leaves with me and then we can choose some with which to make an autumn collage.

Today there is a distinct chill in the air and although the autumn sun is trying to shine, I'm finding it hard to spend much time outside doing gentle chores before I need to come back in for a cuppa.

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Rooty fruity

As part of our plans for the garden we want to surround the plot with native hedging and plant numerous trees. Although the smallholding is not very big, by careful planning and planting we will have space for plenty of fruit trees in the Food Forest.

Today we headed to a supermarket that had bare-root fruit trees for sale for £4.50 each. I expected to find small trees or whips, but to my delight they are healthy looking plants around four feet high. The roots are wrapped to keep some moisture around them and as yet I haven't inspected their root systems, but the top of the trees look good. They are grafted onto M26 rootstock and other semi-dwarfing rootstocks, so the eventual height of each tree will be around ten to twelve feet. For us, this is an ideal height, not so short that the trees look out of scale in the available space, but not so large that we'd need ladders to reach the fruit (or not for many years at least).

The fruit trees that I selected are

1 x Apple Cox's Orange Pippin (which were my father's favourite apple)
2 x Apple Elstar
1 x Apple Jonagold
2 x Cooking Apple Bramley

1 x Pear Doyenne Du Comice
1 x Pear Conference

3 x Plum Opal
1 x Plum Victoria

2 x Cherry Stella
3 x Cherry Morello

All these for a little over £75!

These will be the bulk of the fruiting trees in the food forest together with an apple tree from my neighbour (not sure what it's called but the fruits are delicious) and a mirabelle tree that I lifted from the root system of a mirabelle tree in the duck enclosure. I'll also plant some young hazelnut trees and elderberry trees moved from behind the piggeries. I'd like to find some quince, mulberries and a medlar tree, but those will have to wait until I find them at a reasonable price.

Tomorrow I will start to prepare for their planting by digging holes and incorporating plenty of well rotted wood chippings and garden compost, I will add a very little granulated organic plant food and prepare a mycrorrhizal fungi gel which should encourage root development and give the trees a good start. Where I can't dig down into the soil, I will build Heugelkultur mounds, piling old logs onto the ground with smaller branches on top, then cover them with a mix of topsoil and composted wood chippings before planting a tree on top of the mound. The mounds will be ideal on the areas where there are gentle slopes, so that water naturally gravitates towards the tree mound and the woody material will absorb the water, giving the trees access to moisture when they need it.

I plan to under-plant the trees with comfrey that has deep roots to draw up nutrients from the lower levels of the soil and leaves that can be used as a chop-and-drop mulch and also strawberries which will wilt quickly when they are lacking water and give me a hint that the trees may need a drink too.

Hopefully by next spring the trees will be settled into their new positions and will reward us with a lovely display of blossom.

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Raised beds, gifts and chickens

  It's been another good week in the garden, although the sun comes up later and the air is cooler, I have still been able to get outside and make some progress. We've had another couple of loads of chipped wood delivered by the local tree surgeons (two different tree surgeons now drop off chippings to us), so I have been able to move ahead with making pathways around raised beds.

  I've struggled to keep on top of the weeds growing through the cardboard layer that I've put on the pathways between raised beds and they've been rampaging through the vegetable beds. So I've made the decision that for the first couple of years I will have weed supressing membrane on the paths, covered with wood chippings and once the raised beds are more established and the pernicious weeds are killed off, I will lift the membrane, replace it with cardboard again and a deep layer of wood chippings.

I would rather not use plastic in the garden, but I need to find a balance between what I'd like to do and what I am physically capable of doing. If I spend the time and energy keeping on top of the pernicious weeds in non-productive areas, I won't have energy to either tend the productive areas or to develop further areas of the garden. On balance, this seems a sensible compromise, long term the plastic membrane will be removed, but in the short term I am giving myself a chance to get the rest of the garden developed.

   After laying out the paths and giving them a three to four inch layer of wood chippings, I covered the area that will be the raised bed with a layer of cardboard boxes and then covered the cardboard with well composted wood chippings. Next I will put some topsoil, garden compost and mixed them together and top it with another layer of well composted wood chippings. This bed will then be ready to plant up.

Having decided on next year's planting plan I have realised that some of the options I've selected just won't work. I've allocated one bed to have broad beans in it, which will need planting in the next couple of weeks if I want to have an early crop next year, but that bed still has purple sprouting broccoli, carrots and spinach in it and they will sit in the ground over the winter. So I will need to re-jiggle my plan again and put the autumn planted vegetables into beds that are vacant or becoming vacant very soon.

I've been back to see my GP this week to discuss the results of last week's blood tests. It looks like the short Hashimoto's attack that I had a few weeks ago took it's toll on my thyroid, as it's function had dropped again. Although my results showed 'within normal range' I have learned that I feel best when the TSH level is around or just below 1. The normal range for the tests that my GP uses is 0.3 - 4.2, so in theory anywhere in that range is acceptable. I'm not sure who it is acceptable to, but it's certainly not right for me! When I can get my TSH to around 0.5 (together with some pretty careful management of what I eat and when, and what activities I do and when) I feel close to normal in energy and general health, last week's test showed it had increased to 2.38, which explains why I have been feeling less than sparkly for the last few weeks. My lovely GP, who is happy to work with how a patient feels and not just the numbers on the screen, was happy to increase my medication to help put my TSH back to where I feel I good as I can.

I'm aware that I am very fortunate to have a GP who works with a patient in this way, so many people that I've spoken to are told that they have reached 'normal range' and that's that, they are left struggling with a thyroid still not being supported to the extent that it needs to be for them to feel healthy. Hats off to my GP for listening to my request and being happy to work with me as I try to take some control of my well-being.

Hashimoto's is an auto-immune disease, my body has mistakenly decided to attack itself and in particular, attack my thyroid gland. I have a couple of other auto-immune issues lurking away, but thankfully they don't effect my every day living and hopefully they never will.

Growing my own food is part of managing the Hashimoto's disease and the hypothyroidism that it's caused. Reducing the synthetic chemicals and toxins that I eat has gone a long way to helping how I feel and Mr J says that he is feeling healthier too. Added to the reduction in substances that were causing problems, the increase in fresh air and gentle exercise has also helped me feel better. It's a win-win situation.

Earlier in the week my brother-in-law telephoned me to see if I could make use of some grapes that a friend of his had. So mid-week we went to my sister's home and collected two huge carrier bags filled to the brim with sweet black grapes.

I have washed them and sorted through them, picking them off their stalks and discarding unripe, over-ripe and mushy ones. The first bag yielded almost 9lbs (4kgs) of grapes ready to cook. 

I used 4lbs of fruit to make some grape jelly, which tastes wonderful and will be a lovely accompaniment to cold cuts of meat or roast duck. The remainder I have frozen and will use to make syrups and wine when there is a little less to do in the garden.

Over the weekend, we started to put fence stakes into the ground in the chicken field. Until now we have been using flexible chicken netting (the type that can be electrified), but two long rolls of this netting were on loan from Helen at Valerie Chicken. We need to give the netting back to Helen for her to use to keep her pigs secure and although she doesn't need it back until December, there is no point in us waiting until last minute to put in our permanent fencing. So using the recycled fence stakes that came from my sister's home, Mr J has put in the first row of stakes that I will then fix metal chicken wire onto and that will divide the field in two (as the flexible netting does now). 

We have decided that it would be sensible to then plant trees and shrubs along each side of the new fence. This should provide us with more fruit, nuts and berries and give the chickens some shade, but most importantly it will offer more wind protection and as the plants grow, the hedge should slow down the wind that whistles across the chicken field for most of the year.

Last night (Sunday) we moved the Australorp pullet that was hatched at the end of June into the chicken coop that houses the other Australorps that were hatched at the end of July. As they are from different breeders, the eggs from the older bird will be ideal for breeding additional members of the flock and for providing us with hatching eggs to sell.

This morning she doesn't look wildly happy about being in a new enclosure and her former companions are looking rather put out that she is now in an adjacent space, but it won't take too long for either her or the others to settle down again.

Once the new fences are in place we will also create a separate enclosure for the Jersey Giants. I had said that I'd finished hatching eggs for the year, but I changed my mind and decided to hatch one more batch of chicks which can over-winter in the shelter of the stable and venture outside at their own pace. 

 So I have found another breeder of Jersey Giants (photo of his young birds above) and ordered six eggs which should arrive in the next few days. Hopefully this clutch will give us another female or two and if we get a cockerel then it will be going to the breeder that we bought the first eggs from to put some fresh genes into his flock of birds.

I have tried to build good relationships with the breeders of birds that we have bought eggs from, because there is nothing quite like asking advice from folks who know the breed well and it's nice to be able to offer something in return, like birds from different bloodlines. We are still learning (an awful lot, thick and fast) and I feel that knowledge and experience are the greatest assets we can acquire.

We are heading back outside this morning to continue installing the new fencing for the chickens. But first, as always, it's time for a cuppa!

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Wisteria hysteria

There's a wisteria planted just outside the front door and although it is beautiful, it is entirely mis-placed for such a vigorous plant. We don't have a long expanse of wall for it to grow on and to show it's wonderful mauve flowers, all we have is a narrow space of wall that goes straight up to the low roof.

And that's exactly what has happened this year. The wisteria flowered in early summer and gave a pretty display of hanging flowers and then it grew. And grew and it kept on growing! It grew to the top of the house and wound itself around the guttering and into the eaves.

It became a focal point for wasps and having had one wasps' nest removed from the porch, I watched more wasps start to explore the possibility of building a nest close to the shelter of the wisteria. I dislike wasps, I am frightened of their sting and Mr J has an allergy to their sting, so without wanting to get hysterical about them, I was pretty scared of the prospect of yet another colony of them living just outside the door.

Clearly this lovely climber is in the wrong place. I am sure if it could talk it would tell me it likes where it is, but for us, it isn't working. I don't want to get rid of the wisteria, but I do want to move it to the front garden to allow it to grow along the long low fencing that surrounds that part of the garden.

So on Sunday, we tackled the task of cutting the plant back prior to moving it.

 We cut it to waist high so that it will sit nicely in the new place we have in mind for it.

 Then we set to work removing all the long leggy growth that has happened this year.

 We were surprised at how quickly the snug and hallway became much, much lighter. I think we hadn't realised just how much light was being blocked out by this vigorous beauty.

 We simply can't reach the very top growth and are leaving it to shrink back and hopefully it will then fall out of the eaves and guttering once it is no longer wedged in place. The next step will be to carefully lift the root from the ground, but I am going to wait until a little later in the year when the wisteria is dormant and the shock of being moved will be minimalised.

We tried to shred the stems so that they could be composted easily, but the bark kept wrapping itself around the central spindle of the shredding machine, so we have left it on the ground to rot down (more slowly). 

After all that cutting and chopping we were both ready for a cuppa!

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Totally home grown

 We reached a milestone this week, our first meal that was made from entirely home grown ingredients. It doesn't feel like a big deal, it feels like an enormous achievement and one that I'd like to repeat regularly.

 I've continued to harvest the crops as they ripen and prepare them for storing for the winter. The beans, in particular, have been very good, I had left the last of the runner bean pods on the plants to ripen and this week I picked the fat bean pods and spent a lovely half an hour popping the creamy white kidney beans out of their green jackets.

The largest of the kidney beans will be dried and saved to use as seed for next year's plants. I was surprised at just how large the beans are, so hopefully next year the White Lady runner bean seedlings will be strong and healthy. The remainder of these fat beans will also be dried and added to the larder for use in soups and stews over the winter.

On Tuesday we were without electricity for the day. The local electricity supplier had told us that the power would be off for the best part of the day while they did essential maintenance to the power lines. The essential work that they were doing was to cut back trees that were at risk of interfering with the power lines. Far from being an inconvenience, I realised that this might be a great opportunity and so, as soon as we could see where the workmen were, we hopped into the car and headed off to talk to them. I gave them a note with my name, phone number and address on it and asked them to drop off any wanted wood chippings that they weren't leaving at the properties they were working at. 

 The next day they arrived with two trailer loads of chipped wood. It will need to sit for a year or two before it can be added to the floor of the food forest or into the soil of the raised beds (as it's from fir trees), but in the meantime I am using it on the pathways to cover the weed suppressing membrane. I know it's not ideal to have plastic membrane on the ground, but for now I am using it to kill off the pernicious weeds and in years to come and when I have saved up to buy the materials, I will replace it with bricks, flagstones or something else more environmentally kind.

On Wednesday, we had our 100% home grown meal. The only things on our plate that didn't come from the garden were a bit of butter and salt and pepper, but everything else had been grown or raised on the smallholding. The chicken was small, but tasted fabulous and was all the better for us knowing that it had lived a good life with daily (all day) access to the chicken field with fresh air, space to run around and a healthy diet including plenty fresh greens to eat. With the chicken we had roast potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli, leeks and a ratatouille type mixture made using patty pan squashes, tomatoes, garlic and basil. We had a certain sense of pride and satisfaction at knowing that we had put all of that food on the plates.

 On Thursday I started to clear the pumpkins from the small patch where they've been growing all summer. Earlier in the year I made a compost heap hotbed from spent brewery grain and straw, then made four small planting pockets in the top and planted a pumpkin and a nasturtium in each. One plant was eaten by slugs over the course of the first night, but the other three plants have gone on to produce some nice fruits.

 We had nine large pumpkins, seven of which are now ripening and hardening in the gentle autumn sunshine. As the seeds we a gift from my daughter and grandsons, they will be given one of the fruit to use for their halloween evening and the others will boost the larder considerably.

I was looking foward to seeing how much the grain and straw mixture had broken down and had visions of being able to spread a nice deep layer of well rotted compost across the area where the pumpkins have been, but the materials haven't broken down as much as I'd imagined that they would. So I think the best thing that I can do with this is create a new compost heap and use this as the brown material in it.

 In the raised beds, the nasturiums have grown well and seem to have done their job of attracting pollinators to the garden. I've collected some of their seeds and others I have scattered across the beds. I am happy for them to pop up at random in future years, after all, if they are somewhere inconvenient then I can either plant around them or pull them up.

 Nasturtium seeds can be pickled to make a 'poor man's caper' and if they are soaked in brine for a few days before pickling in vinegar some of the heat is taken out of them and they are a milder, gentler taste. I've tried this before with success and would happily make them again, except neither Mr J nor I like them! I might make one batch so that I can give them to friends and family at Christmas in a home-made hamper.

 In early summer I noticed that a sapling was growing in the area to the side of the piggeries and this week I've spotted that it is now about eighteen inches high. Fortunately it is growing in a suitable place, not too close to other trees or near buildings, so I will leave it where it is and allow it to grow. In other spots around the garden I have noticed other seedlings that are not in such clever places. There's a cherry tree that is growing at the foot of a compost bay, I will carefully dig it up and move it to the food forest. Several hawthorn and buckthorn are growing in the scrubby area behind the piggeries and they will be moved to the hedges.

There is still a great deal to do in the garden before autumn sets in fully and as today it's dry again, I am heading back outside to carry on getting in the vegetable garden, but first I think there's just time for a cuppa!

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Bountiful garden, busy kitchen

As the summer gives way to autumn, the focus of my day seems to have shifted from outdoors to the kitchen. Gathering food from the garden and preparing it for the freezer, canning, making preserves, meals and drinks takes up increasing amounts of time. 

I'm not a bad cook, as domestic cooks go. A bit basic maybe, nothing modern or fancy, but as what we want is wholesome, hearty or comfort food, I can do that pretty well. I'm now facing the new challenge of preserving all the vegetables that I've grown for using throughout the winter.

Obviously some will stay in the ground, winter cabbages, parsnips and leaks can be lifted as and when we need them, but others like the softer leafy greens and celery will need to be brought in or they will just turn to mush in the frosts. Because I have grown so many vegetables that I haven't tried growing before, I've had to look up when they need harvesting or whether they can stay in the ground and also find out the best ways to preserve them.

 I've frozen a large number of rainbow chard stems, chopped into two to three inch lengths which will be added to stews, roasted or tossed into a stir-fry. Neither Mr J nor I are very keen on the leaves of chard and while I have frozen a few servings of chard leaves, most of them were given to the chickens as I picked the stems.

The celery (Red Soup variety) will be cut this week, then chopped and frozen to add it's warming effect to meals throughout the winter. I don't like celery in salads, but I do like it braised, made into a soup or added in small quantities to dishes that are cooked gently over a long period, but most of all I like it roasted in a tray filled with a mixture of vegetables with fresh herbs and plenty of garlic.

Every day I have managed to prepare and freeze some vegetables and fruit. I've decided that even if I don't get to make syrups and wine immediately as long as the raw produce is frozen I can spend time in the kitchen once everything is gathered and make them at a later date.

The tomato fruits on the plants in the greenhouse continue to ripen and every few of days I've been bringing in a couple of handfuls of semi-ripe tomatoes.They are left in the warmth of the kitchen to ripen more and then I'm cutting them in half and freezing them. These will be a welcome addition to breakfasts in the colder winter months.

The purple French beans from a late sowing of seeds have yielded about 5lbs and there are still more to come. I planted a few seeds on 31st July in the hope that the plants might grow enough to provide a small crop, but it didn't matter if we didn't get any beans as the plants would fix some nitrogen into the soil following the onion crops that were in those particular raised beds. Having such a good crop from this late sowing feels like a bonus blessing.

Earlier in the week I noticed that one bed in which I've recently planted some purple kale also has lots of small purple leaved seedlings popping up all over it. I thought perhaps that it was red orach as there is a plant nearby, but yesterday I realised that these colourful little leaves are actually a purple oak leaf lettuce. I had forgotten that I had broad cast some seeds from a plant that had gone to seed (and now I think about it, I did the same with a tasty green leaf lettuce somewhere in the garden, I will need to go and look for seedlings). I will cover the bed with fleece to keep the warmth in the soil and hopefully we will have some baby lettuce leaf salad before too long.

I have gathered some fresh herbs and frozen the leaves whole, so that during the winter months when the herbs have died back I will still be able to use them in cooking. Each type of herb is in its own bag in the freezer. I keep them all in a small cardboard box so that I don't have to hunt around in the freezer looking for them.


Out in the garden I'm continuing to lay cardboard and make new raised beds, it's become quite slow going as there is so much to do in the kitchen. I've repositioned some strawberry runners that were growing in long grass in a corner behind the stables. They now have plenty of space in a more open position in the food forest and I've planted another blueberry there too. 

The Australorp chicks are growing fast now and their petrol black feathers are growing with a delightful sheen. They are so soft to the touch and very friendly. It won't be too long before I need to make the decision about which ones to keep for breeding and which to dispatch for the freezer. There are eight chicks and I am certain that two are pullets and two are cockerels, the other four I am not sure about! So hopefully in the next few weeks it will be become clear what gender they are and I will be able to make a proper decision. 

Of the four hybrid chicks that hatched at the same time, two are cockerels and one of the pullets is bantam size. Typically, the two cockerels which we won't be keeping have beautiful colouring while the pullets are white with scruffy black splashes. No matter, they will still provide us with eggs next year.

Yesterday (Sunday) we had sunshine for most of the day and the forecast is for fine weather for the next week. I am delighted to have this last touch of warmth before autumn and winter arrive. 

Today we will be taking one more walk along the hedgerows to pick the late ripening blackberries, they have been particularly good this year, not only have there been masses of berries but they have been large, juicy and sweet. We've already enjoyed blackberry and apple crumbles, blackberry Eton mess, I've made jams and frozen pounds of berries to make syrup and wine from. I want to make the most of this foraged harvest as not only is it free food, but there is such an abundance of it this year.

But before we head out to the fields to pick blackberries, I think it must be time for a cuppa!

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