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.

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The Whole Hog Part 2 Liver Pate

When we bought half a pig from Martha last week I stored most of it in the freezer with the idea that, bit by bit, I would experiment with cooking the pork in different ways. I also want to explore just how much of a pig we will enjoy eating and which parts are just too funky for us to want to eat again. So Martha bought us some offal together with the muscle cuts to start our experiment. Next time she will bring us other parts of the pig to try, I find it frustrating that generally we eat such a limited percentage of an animal.

I've called this blog part 2 because I've already talked about roasting the large joints. After they were roasted I sliced and cubed the meat and froze it in two-people portion sized containers to use in meals at a later date. I also saved the jelly from the roasting trays, freezing it to use as a stock and gravy base. The dripping has been frozen while I've been looking for the best way to use it and store it. Curiously a video has very recently been uploaded to YouTube about how to do just this by Guildbrook Farm. It's an American video so the dripping is called 'drippings' (which gave us the giggles for the entire video), but it was a timely answer to my query.

Anyway, I have started with some of the easier dishes like a rich and creamy liver pate. I used around 2.5Kg of pig's liver in this recipe and the results are very tasty.

 First I chopped three large onions and softened them in a frying pan with ghee, adding some dried mixed herbs, mixed spice (which is usually used in fruit cake but add a rich, round warmth), salt, pepper, a pinch of paprika. When the onions were soft and the seasonings well incorporated, I removed the onions from the pan draining them as much as possible and put them into a heavy based deep saucepan.

 I gently cooked the liver pieces a few at a time and then added them to the onions and added some boiling water (not quite enough to cover the livers) Then I added some other flavourings including a shot of brandy, 1/4 pint of Kopparberg elderflower and lime cider, tomato puree, lots of garlic, the zest of an orange and a lemon, more black pepper, gluten free Worcestershire Sauce and a dash or two of balsamic vinegar.

 I also added a large handful of frozen hedgerow blackberries. Then I added 500g of butter. The mixture was cooked on a medium-low heat for 30 minutes to allow the butter to melt and blend into the liver mixture and for the flavours to infuse. I checked the taste and adjusted the seasoning a little by adding more salt and more balsamic vinegar.

 After the mixture had cooled for a little while (but not cold), I spooned some into the food processor leaving enough room for it to expand and blended it into a coarse pate for Mr J.

  This photo shows the texture of the pate for Mr J. I then blended another batch for myself that was much smoother. To help make it smoother I added some cool water to the blender. 
 I blended it until it was velvety smooth and then poured it into ramekins and jars.

I melted some more ghee (clarified butter) very gently and poured it over the pate making sure that no pate was protruding through the butter. Once cold and set, I covered the ramekins with greaseproof paper and then food wrap and froze them for later use. The jars had the lids put onto them and I've stored the pate in the fridge as these are not mason jars and there is a risk that the glass would crack in the freezer. I also put some into small plastic freezer tubs and put them into the freezer. It made around 5Kg of pate which should last us a few months.

Next I am going to render the leaf fat (from around the kidneys) into lard and I'll let you know how I get on when it's done.

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Moving chickens

 My younger brother came for a cuppa on Monday. He lives in America with his family, but had come back for a long weekend. He hasn't been here since early March, so I was keen to show him how much we've achieved since he was last here.

But first we had chores to do and so, in the morning we spent a short time tidying up in the yard and front garden, putting away gardening tools that I had left around, sweeping the decking outside the back door and picking up some unwanted items left over from projects that we've done during the autumn. We wanted to get all these things put away before the winter winds blow them around the yard and garden and the rain makes the decking too slippery to walk on safely.

Our project for this week was to move the Australorps from their field and give them a new area to graze, peck and scratch. There were two obvious choices of place to which they could be moved, one area is at the back of the piggeries, the other is the front garden. Sitting at the kitchen table looking out towards the front garden it became clear that this was the better option. The grass has grown much too long to use a lawn mower on it and the area is riddled with perennial weeds, actually it just looks a mess. 

 Before we could put the Austalorps in the front garden we needed to make it a secure area for them. We put five feet long bamboo canes along the front of the garden at a distance of four feet apart and secured chicken wire to the canes. We constructed a gate from a short length of flexible chicken netting and moved an empty chicken house into the front garden.

After my brother's visit (with my sister and brother-in-law) we spent a merry ten minutes or so running around after the Australorps trying to catch them to put into the chicken crate, so that we could move them with the minimum of stress to their new patch of garden. Initially they looked less than impressed, but within a short time the boys had started to explore their new environment. 

The three girls of the flock (2 Australorps and their best friend, a hybrid) didn't explore very much, but did make sure that they knew how to get into their house. At dusk, the girls went straight into their new house for the night while the boys all scrabbled and scrambled and climbed onto the top of the house and starting going into their nighttime stupor. Mr J and I scooped up the boys one by one and put them into the house, I am sure that from now on they will also head into the house at dusk. 

On Tuesday the older Australorp hen and her hybrid friend decided that they didn't need to stay in the new enclosure and spent much of the day flying over the fence and exploring the rest of the yard. I think a task for later in the week is to add more chicken wire above the wooden fencing (with the green windbreak fabric on it) to make it less easy for the girls to escape and I need to do this before they teach the boys to do it too. I think (hope) that they won't hop over the stock fencing at the back of the field as they are wary of the sheep that are in the next field.

 We have also moved the little chicks that were hatched eighteen days ago. Until Saturday they were living in a large cage in the kitchen. With previous hatchings we have moved the birds outside to the nursery pen in the stable within a week, but because it is late in the year to hatch chickens, we thought an extra week or so in the warmth of the kitchen would give them a better chance of surviving. They are settled in well and enjoying having the additional space in which to fly, scratch and run around. We are covering the nursery pen each evening with large rugs to prevent the cold winds and frost getting into their pen until they are fully feathered (and possibly for a while after that too). 

I am being much more cautious with this set of chicks as they were hatched so late in the year and one of the chicks had some problems at hatching and is slower in developing than the other two, so I will keep them cossetted and well protected until the smallest one seems strong enough to cope with the winter conditions.
Having moved the Australorps, the field that they had occupied was now free to house the Jersey Giants. On Tuesday morning, I opened the gate between the main flock's field and the vacant field and LIttle White followed me into the field in a matter of moments. The mid-sized two took only a little encouragement to explore a new space and the younger girls that arrived with us last week took a lot of persuading to join the other Jersey Giants. Within a few hours the new family group looked happily settled. They had to be put to bed at dusk as their instinct was to head for the chicken shed where they have been sleeping, but I am sure it will only take a day or so for them feel at home in their new house. 

For the first day in their new field I put the two small white hybrid birds in the field with the Jersey Giants as they have become firm friends, but at bedtime, we allowed the hybrids to return to the main flock. They are likely to be small birds as their father was the bantam cockerel and I am concerned that Little White might hurt them when they reach maturity if he tries to tread on them. We really don't want more hybrid birds with a bantam gene and I want to be sure that any Jersey Giant hatching eggs I sell in the future are actually pure Jersey Giant and not a hybrid cross by mistake.

Eventually the two Jersey Giant chicks (that are currently in the nursery pen) will join the rest of the flock. They are from a different bloodline to Little White and his family so they will be a vital part of our breeding flock.

It's continued to be a sociable time, not only did my brother, sister and brother-in-law visit, but we also saw our friends the tree surgeons as they dropped off some old gnarly wood for us to use in the food forest, James and Dee came for one last visit before their move to the Orkneys, a new friend from the local town came for a cuppa and Kayt popped by.

As so often happens when I get my teeth stuck into a project, I've over-done things in the last few days and plan to spend the rest of the week taking it easy (very, very easy), so with that said, I think it must be time to make a cuppa!

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Mighty meaty

It's been a highly sociable week. On Saturday, my daughter and two grandsons came for an overnight visit. It's the first time the boys have stayed with us and grandson number 1 was very excited about staying on 'Grandma's farm'. They arrived mid afternoon on Saturday and played a bit, ate supper and got settled in for the evening. On Sunday morning it was still damp outside, but dressed in our not-so-glamorous waterproofs, we still managed to get outside and do a few chores. My older grandson helped us to move flexible fencing, feed the chickens and ducks and move wood chippings onto a particularly soggy and slippery area in the duck enclosure. 

 My daughter took this photo of us on our way to get yet another barrow load of wood chips, it made me realise that I really need to invest in some waterproofs that don't give me a Michelin Man look. I loved spending this precious time with him and hearing his squeals of delight as we raced around the yard. It seems riding in a wheelbarrow is the mode of transport for a five year old, although I'm not sure which of us enjoyed this more!

 Yesterday morning Mr J and I cleaned out the chicken shed. The eight inch deep bed of sawdust certainly made interesting scratching material for the chickens and it also helped to soak up some of the rainwater that was sitting on the surface of the ground unable to drain away fast enough.

 The chickens will scratch through this and turn it over and over during the winter months and then, in the spring, I will fence some of the area off and plant kale, spinach and other vegetables that the chickens like to eat. It will be quick and easy to feed the chickens some of their favourite leafy greens when they are growing in the chicken's field.

We then refreshed the deep bedding sawdust in the chicken shed and I treated the perches and fixings with diatomaceous earth as a preventative measure against red mite and then we headed indoors for a quick wash so that we didn't smell of chicken poop for the rest of the day.

Martha of @MarthaRoberts arrived early afternoon to deliver a couple of boxes of pork. I met Martha via Twitter, which has proved a great place to get to know some like-minded smallholders. She has a smallholding near Abergavenny on which she raises rare breed pigs that happily spend their days foraging on her hillside amongst woodland and grass. 

Photo courtesy of  Martha Roberts

A few weeks ago I asked Martha for a half a pig when the next batch of free range animals were despatched. She gave me plenty of notice so I was able to make sure that we had lots of space in the freezer.

I asked for some of the parts of a pig that aren't as popular now as they were in the past. So yesterday I took delivery of my half a pig together with some liver, hearts, kidneys, hock and leaf fat (the fat from around the kidneys).

I'm going to make liver pate, a coarse pate for Mr J and a smooth one for me. I'm going to render the leaf fat to make lard, which is high in omega 3 and I understand that if it's rendered very slowly and makes a very white lard, it is perfect for pastry as well as for using as a cooking fat. I'd like to try a rich slow casserole with the kidneys and slow roast stuffed hearts.

I'm really keen to experiment with old recipes and find ways to use as much of the carcass as I can because I feel that so much of the animal must go to waste. While we love a pork joint for a roast dinner, there are an awful lot of other dishes that can be made using other cuts.

Photo courtesy of  Martha Roberts

This experimentation has a reason. Mr J and I have been discussing our mid term plans for the smallholding and have decided that we may have a couple of pigs in the future. This certainly won't happen in 2017 and depending on how far we get with upgrading the dilapidated piggieries, it may happen in 2018 or later. In the meantime, we can learn how to make the very best use of as much of a pig as possible. There are some parts of the animal that I can't face trying, it makes no logical sense at all, but still, I don't fancy the lungs or spleen despite finding several recipes of how to cook them.

I've been searching through my mother's cookery books (like this 1961 edition of Mrs Beeton's) and looking online for recipes, hints and tips of how to prepare our new food. My plan for the next couple of months is to try out new recipes and decide which appeal to us the most and to share the successes on my blog. 

This morning Helen and Jane came to visit. Actually, Helen came to collect the flexible fencing that she kindly lent to us earlier in the year. We spent a lovely couple of hours drinking tea, eating cake and talking all things smallholding. Helen keeps pigs and Jane has sheep, so we swapped stories of muddy incidents, rainy days chasing our animals and shared lots of laughter.

This afternoon I started turned my attention to the pork. I started with the easiest joints to cook, the roast shoulder joints with crispy crackling.

I unwrapped the joints and left them to get to room temperature. I put them into a roasting tin. I scored the skin and rubbed some sea salt over the skin and into the scoring and put them into the oven on 220 degrees C. After about 25 minutes I turned the temperature down to 170 degrees C and cooked the joints until they were ready (I like meat well cooked). I poured off some of the fat and juices into a bowl after the first hour and again once they were cooked. Once they are cold, the fat and juices can be separated and I will freeze the juices in small portions until I want to use it as a base for gravy.

This evening's supper was a celebration of smallholders' food. We had roast pork, crackling, apple sauce that I made in September using our neighbours' windfall apples, gravy and purple sprouting broccoli which I picked from the garden just before dusk. We took a few moments to appreciate how lucky we are.

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Coping or managing

Most of my blog posts are about what we are up to, what's changing on our smallholding and how I've tackled various tasks with the poultry, vegetable garden or food forest. But sometimes the reasons that we've chosen this lifestyle become clear to us once again and although I try not to bleat on about being unwell, I think it's also useful not to pretend that all is hunkydory, because it's not. That said, we have better health than many people and better than many of our friends and family, so I do keep a sense of perspective and write with the knowledge that in the grand scheme of things, we are very fortunate.

It's been a funny few weeks. My thyroid has been playing up and I've been working with my GP to try to get it under control again. I had a marvelous spring and summer in terms of energy and pain levels and I have learnt how to better manage both, but at the end of September I started feeling not as well as I could (read about it here)

It seems that every now and then I will have a blip, one that I cannot manage and find it hard to cope with. Now I know how that feels and how it affects me, I can find ways to deal with it and act more quickly to counter the deterioration. 

One of those ways is to get a blood test as soon as I start feeling ill so that the GP can adjust my prescription. But this is easier said than done, getting a blood test can take two to three weeks and the GP appointment is usually a week after that. Once the prescription has been changed it can take a couple of months to feel the full effect of the new level of medication. So potentially once I start feeling unwell, it can be three months or more before I am back to feeling like me again. Clearly this is not an ideal situation, but it is one that I am going to have to learn to cope with.

Anyway, back in September a blip (often known as a Hashi's attack) caused my thyroid to function less well again and my GP increased my prescription with a view to getting my hormone levels correct, for how I want to feel, again. I have muddled through the last couple of months knowing that the medication level wasn't high enough and as instructed, I booked another blood test for six weeks after the last GP visit. Those blood tests were last week and the results show that there has been a slight improvement in the hormone levels, hooray! Although they aren't at a level that allows me to feel fully well, boo. And this week, I have been experiencing yet another blip, double boo! So today was the day to see the GP and I was going to tell her I felt I needed to increase the prescription and to talk to her about this next blip that I am having which will be knocking my thyroid function yet again. 

Unfortunately my GP is unwell and my appointment has been cancelled and there isn't another appointment for three weeks. So I have booked another blood test for two weeks time so that my GP and I can discuss up-to-date and relevant results rather than a month old results. It is not my doctor's fault that she is unwell and in the meantime I have the choice to self-medicate and increase my dosage or continue in this downward spiral of dysfunction.

Here's what I have learnt about my illness. Hashimoto's is an auto-immune disease and only attacks the thyroid, which means my body thinks my thyroid is a problem and is attacking it (doh!) and little by little is destroying it. Once my thyroid is totally destroyed I will no longer have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. There will be other issues to contend with if and when that stage comes, but at least the Hashimoto's will have gone. The thyroid is the gland that controls most of our hormones and our metabolic rate is all tied up in the same system. People with hypothyroidism are often (but not always) overweight as their metabolisms don't process food in the same way. They can also have all sorts of other issues as a result of a slower metabolism, like slower heart-rate, poor digestion, swelling, pain and weaker immune systems.

The prescription that is usually given in the UK is a synthetic replacement of a hormone called T4 which the thyroid converts into T3. T3 is the form that the body can actually use to regulate all the functions that the thyroid is supposed to regulate. It seems to me that it would make more sense to prescribe a replacement of the T3 hormone, but what do I know?

When a Hashi's attack occurs the thyroid function decreases and so more T4 is needed for the thyroid to convert it into T3 and so the spiral continues. Many folks find they get to a level and stop having attacks and can function fully on their synthetic replacement, for others it is harder or more complicated. So far I am pleased to say that I seem to be responding well to the synthetic replacement and as long as do several other things to support my systems, I can trundle along pretty well.

As result of either the Hashimoto's or adrenal fatigue (which most UK doctors don't recognise) I do not absorb nutrients as well as I could previously, so I take nutrient supplements every day. These include several vitamins and a handful of minerals. A catch-all multi-vitamin doesn't work for me, so I take individual vitamin and mineral tablets at different times of the day because trial and error has shown me which times of day to take which supplements to have the most positive impact.

And, there are several things I don't do any more to help my system work more effectively. I am now on a caffeine free, alcohol free, gluten free and as much as possible an organic diet (yes, mostly that feels pretty fun-free too!).

I know this isn't my usual type of blog post, but occasionally I feel the need to take stock and to remember that even though I don't feel 100% healthy all the time (or any of the time), I have achieved an enormous amount on the smallholding over our first year and that's something to celebrate!

Time for a cuppa!

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Comings and goings

Although the weather has turned colder, the work in the garden continues. Not at such a speedy pace, but we have achieved quite a lot in the last month.

 The tree surgeons have done a splendid job, taking out five spindly sycamores at the back of the piggeries and one rather beautiful sycamore which unfortunately was going against the front wall of one piggery. We have kept the huge trees on the right of the photo and most of those on the left.

  I've continue to be surprised at the difference it makes, with a new sense of space and openess.

  And it creates an ideal space for some of the chickens to live in. We plan to move the Australorps to this area so that they can clear away the weeds and gorge themselves on the grubs and bugs that have been living here relatively undisturbed.

 At the start of the week was the Supermoon. It was overcast and cloudy as the moon first rose, but as it got higher in the sky the cloud cover was less and I took this photo of the moon over the sycamore trees and barn. I was rather pleased that I managed to include the lights of the Severn Bridge at the bottom of the photo.

 Inside the house, the latest chicks to hatch are doing well. The smallest one is a little Jersey Giant that is about two-thirds the size of these two. It had an issue with its umbilical cord when it hatched and I imagine that as it has survived a week, it will make it to maturity. But, I'm not holding my breath, these little chicks are vulnerable and their immune systems aren't fully formed yet, so there is every chance that the smallest, weakest one may succomb to infection. Usually by a week old I would have transferred them to the nursery pen in the stable, but as they were a very late hatch, I'm going to keep them in the warmth of the house for an additional week or so to give them more time to grow some feathers and get stronger.

Today two new Jersey Giant pullets arrive on the smallholding. They are coming from the breeder that we have had hatching eggs from, the girls are surplus to his requirements and very much wanted here, so it's a win-win situation. These girls will join our tiny flock of white Jersey Giants to help us increase the flock next year and to offer hatching eggs for sale.

Jersey Giants are lovely birds with docile, gentle temperaments and although very big, they have a grace to them. They were bred to be large meat birds, similar in size to turkeys but without all the gobbling noisiness. I now have two bloodlines of white Jersey Giants which means that their offspring should be strong and healthy (and we hope happy) birds.

My friend Kayt mentioned that she would be happy to have more chickens and I know that her girls also live in a large open space, so I asked her whether she wanted some of the hyline girls that we have here. They are producing far more eggs than we need for the kitchen and if we aren't careful, we will end up with too many birds and far too many eggs. So on Sunday she is going to have half a dozen of the layers that we have here to add to her flock. I know that her birds have stopped laying at the moment, so I'm sure she will welcome the eggs that our girls are laying.

I have started to think about ways to sell our surplus eggs, vegetables and fruit and to that end, today I will be researching and start approaching local food outlets and also finding out whether I need to register as a food business, take out specific insurance etc. if we find somewhere to sell the surpluses. As there isn't a huge amount of produce to sell, it may not be economically viable, so today's research will be to find all of that information to be able to make an informed decision.

And before I start the research I think it must be time for a cuppa!

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Moving gestures

 Our new friends James and Dee of Happy Homestead are due to move house very soon and because they are moving to a remote croft on the Scottish islands of Orkney, they have decided that taking their chickens on the long journey north would be too much for the girls. So we are giving them a home with us.

Yesterday afternoon they brought the girls to our little smallholding to start the next phase of their lives. We have put them into a house of their own in a section of the field away from the other chickens for a week or two to allow them to settle in before they join the main flock of layers.

As it was dusk when they arrived, the chickens were put straight into their temporary house, so we didn't really get any time to spend with them. They also brought with them a selection of fruit bushes that they are kindly giving to us. The plant pots were put on the edge of the shrubbery for ease of storage until I had the time (and daylight) to move them into the food forest.

I am so excited by these gifts, James and Dee's generosity should give us years of harvests and I feel touched by their kindness. They were going to give us the water butts that they have been using to collect rainwater, which we could definitely do with more of.

 But over a cuppa yesterday, I suggested that they took these bulky items with them and filled them with items that they are taking to their croft, so that the smaller items were protected by the plastic and they could save on the cost of having large items delivered to their new home.

As sun rose this morning, I let the birds out of their houses for the day and spent a gentle half an hour or so moving the new fruit bushes to the food forest area. Placing them where they might eventually be planted and then repositioning each one until I was happy with their placement.

James and Dee returned this morning with a second car-load of plants for us as well as some bags of potting compost and ericaceous compost. We talked some more about chickens and ducks, about how easy the different breeds are to care for and they told us more about the new life upon which they are about to embark.

So in a blink, the food forest has a dozen or so additional bushes which include raspberries, gooseberries, currants, honey-berries, a loganberry, rosemary, mint and several varieties of blueberries. Growing in one pot, below the blueberry, is a cluster of strawberries, which I'll use as ground cover.

Earlier in the week, we had more new arrivals. Three little chicks hatched on Wednesday and Thursday. One is the offspring of Big Red and either Jack or Diesel (we aren't sure which one yet) and the other two are white Jersey Giants to add to our small flock of these majestic white birds. The Jersey Giants are from a different breeder (and different line) to the ones that we have here already, which means that next year we will have a breeding flock and will be able to offer hatching eggs for sale.

I also had another nice little surprise on Thursday. 

When this month's Country Smallholding magazine arrived in the post, I found that I had been included in an article about the first few months of smallholding. I'd been asked to write a short piece about three months ago, but didn't know whether it would be included in the magazine. It was equally nice to see that our friend Helen had been included too, with her pigs, the Swanbridge Porkers. 

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been posting a three-part review of our first year on the smallholding. There has been a lot happening here and it has left me feeling quite tired. The tree surgeons have been to remove the spindly trees behind the piggeries, I've raked up and moved several cubic metres of leaves to make leaf mould and I've also been busy studying. 

I've enrolled to take an online course with Oregon State University and have been engrossed in reading, researching and absorbing information from the Introduction to Permaculture course. It's been useful to confirm that many of the practices that I've used (in the garden) fit perfectly from a permaculture perspective and I've learnt in more depth about using the natural lay of the land and water flow to make the most of the space we have. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will have completed the course and done well enough to be awarded a badge, which I will proudly display on my blog page.

So this evening's plan is to watch a couple of gardening programmes that I've recorded and then get back to studying. But first, it's time for a cuppa!

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