212 days ago
Though health issues leave me behind schedule in the garden I saw last night that my peas, garlic, shallots, onions and radishes are all poking through and are on track. There is no sign yet of the early spuds or beetroot and this week the kids and I plant leeks, carrots and a second helping of peas. The strawberries and fruit bushes look set for another bumper crop and we already have a glut of rhubarb. However, the annual humiliation has hit me again.
528 days ago
The first three and a half litres of home made ginger beer should be ready within 24 hours. The ginger beer bug plant is bubbling away and the next batch will be ready for bottling a week today. Meanwhile, the elderflower bush at the top of our upper field by the churchyard is in full flower, flowers we picked on Saturday afternoon.
1005 days ago
Last night, the remaining squashes stored from the Autumn went into a stew. Today at lunchtime we ate the last of the winter potatoes seasoned with almost the last of my dried herbs, some rather miniscule sprouts from the winter crop and a small cauliflower from the same vintage,all of which you can see below. The last of my stored apples were used to make an apple sauce for a joint of pork.
1154 days ago
Stringing the harvested garlic and onions is what I was dreading but I took the plunge and did the garlic last night. I followed a “how to” video on the internet from one of those utterly infuriating folks who make it all look so simple. His garlic is so clean, the stalks never break and it all looked so well presented at the end. Mr garlic threading expert: I hate you. Having said all of that, I did follow his instructions and, as you can see, it worked. Triumph!
1170 days ago
We have already enjoyed a good few meals of Autumn Squash here at the Welsh Hovel but the plants have a large yield this year and so I have now taken off all of those squashes that had ripened through to orange to try and store them. A few yellower squashes I have left on the plant and we should eat them in the coming weeks.
1171 days ago
So far I have done the easy bit, the hard yards come in about ten days time. But this is a big harvest. For cultural reasons – the Mrs being of Indian descent – we use quite a bit of garlic and onion in the cooking here and if I have got this right we will not be heading to the shops for supplies all winter.
4142 days ago
Sadly I arrived a day late for the Onion harvest at the home of Stavros and Stavroula in the Peloponnese. Shucks, the back breaking work of extracting the onions from soil watered the night before to make it less rock hard was done by others. The onions are then laid out to dry in the sun for a month or so before being stored in the cool cellar for year round consumption. Anyhow here are the onions from the garden of Stavros.
I have described earlier and shown videos of the goat milking process. They can be found here. Do not laugh too much at my efforts.
One thing that I forgot to mention was how all the goats had been sent the week before to meet a Ram for "servicing." However,
