The main strawberry bed is still on badger hill. But the plants have all shot runners and so I am opening up a new area of strawberry production in the main vegetable garden, what was known as the jungle. So far this expansion is half complete and I could go further but i am minded that with plans afoot for expanding production of fruit and other vegetables next year there is only so much space, even in an area the size of a small football pitch. A problem to ponder.
Actually, I had not given it much thought which I feel rather ashamed about. I was aware that today was the day but the last 48 hours of childcare have been rather manic and I just want to get to the end of this day without another crisis. My baby daughter Jaya is still not well enough to go to nursery but I was meant to be relieved at one O’Clock today. However..
What with my actual work, childcare, cooking and other matters it was about ten at night before I started to deal with the trug full of spring onions that was the 2021 harvest. The Mrs headed off to bed mutterng dark words about the inevitability of me spreading dirt in the kitchen. I am delighted to say that though dirt was spread, it was all cleaned up and there were no complaints in the morning, on that score at least.
Unlike Eleanor I do not want 50p from you to help plant a tree. Nor do I want to cover the whole of Wales and much of England with trees in the misguided belief that this will save the planet. Instead I just buy my own trees with my own money to make this place where I live a better place. Here are the latest two which will soon be joining the 22 tree new orchard I have created on the upper field above the barns.
Okay, it would not feed an army but we have, perhaps 60 carrots to keep us going until Christmas. Joshua and I picked the and cut off the green leaves. I wonder if the Mrs, who thinks all food comes from Tesco, knows that carrots have leaves? Now and again I would lift up one which was perfectly shaped and sized and would say to Joshua that “we could sell this to Tesco” but we agreed that we would not do so as Joshua loves carrots.
“I don’t envy you, you have your work cut out” piped up neighbour and fellow Irishman E as I harvested another crop ahead of winter storage. Once again, I said that it was he who had inspired me to create a football pitch sized vegetable patch in what was the jungle, with his warnings of a post Brexit lockdown apocalypse with empty shelves in all the food stores as Christmas loomed. He repeated his dire predictions as I dug up the rest of the spring onions.
Forgive the big thumb in the first photo. I never claimed to be a pro! But at least you get to see Quincey the cat inspecting the farmyard and the progress made.
The small chilli pepper bushes are still going gangbusters, each a small cloud of flame as the little mites turn a bright red. I am now harvesting about 30 a day,and stringing them up to dry next to the Aga. Just one added to a soup really gives it enough of a kick to have the Mrs laughing at her weedy Britisher of a husband. But we have also had a bumper crop of peppers both the normal type you buy in Tesco and finger peppers.
Glamorous great Aunt Anna Lee, the British Bombshell, was in the film, How Green was my valley. Not a lot of people know that. Anyhow, the grass on top of the new earth bank and around the Ha-Ha is now, after two weeks of rain but two days of sunshine really starting to push through. Earlier today there were still two small puddles on top but they willbe gone by tonight so burning hot is the sun here in Wales today. Only kidding.
Joshua and I have just reached the point in “On the Shores of Silver Lake” where the Ingalls family move into the surveyors’ house ahead of a long winter. In the fourth book of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series we see the family in a place already provisioned to the rafters. Heck,they even have coal for the stove. We have no coal for our wood burning stove which could really come into play this winter the way gas prices are heading.
Describing neighbour C as an earth mother is, of course, a compliment. The Mrs knows that I view the idea that food comes from Tesco with true disdain. However, the husband of earth mother C, another C, wandered in the other day and saw four onions on a string in the kitchen and quipped “that’s not much of a decoration.” He touched on a sore nerve as he, generously, dropped off two bottles of his home produced, but pressing outsourced, apple juice. I am the first to admit that not only have I dreaded stringing my onions and my first stab, which C spotted, was no great success. However…
After last night’s triumph with the apple juice from the River orchard, today I picked the rest of the edible apples from the new top orchard. This is only the second year for the trees and they all yielded well and I am sure will do better still next year. However, I reckon that I have room for at least four more trees in the upper orchard and so am minded to buy another three apple trees and one more crabapple tree to assist with polination and to increase the amount of crabapple jelly I produce.
I flagged up the other day that the apple harvest from the old orchard by the River Dee had been piss poor. But still what juice might it produce. As you can see below the press I bought last year was wheeled into action.
I am coming to the conclusion that in this increasingly crazy world, New Zealand is the largest open air asylum on this planet. For this week, the University of Otago on South Island has named as its sportswoman of the year Laurel Hubbard. Remember her?
I have since added a couple more red hot chillis to these jars of vodka which I have prepared ahead of a promised Christmas visit from thirsty daughter Olaf. The Mrs and I tasted a drop yesterday and they already have an almighty kick. “Good for clearing your sinuses” remarked the Mrs, before adding “Presumably you do add tonic?” I think we will be doing so. as for Olaf, I assume she will be drinking it neat.
