March 2016

It still feels like summer, even though it’s actually been autumn since March 1st.  Daytime temperatures have remained mostly in the mid-late 20s, making gardening work challenging.  The best times to labour - early mornings and evenings – coincide with the sand-flies’ favourite times to graze.   Sunrises and sets are becoming increasingly spectacular as the season changes. 

The winter veges are planted out over 2 of the keyhole beds.  The other beds will be closed down with straw once they’ve done cropping.  One lucky bed is being rented out to Karyn, who doesn’t have space for a vege garden at home.  It means that the carrot-growing stakes have never been higher.  Of course, I’m in it to win it, and have a distinct advantage in terms of my direct access to the competition.  We’ve used different techniques to sow the seeds, and different varieties, so bring it on.  Let’s see who takes the crown.

Vegetables are cropping beautifully, and apples and pears are on tap.  There are 6 varieties of pear – x2 Nashi (on a double grafted tree), Conference, Packham and the 2 pear trees that arch the entrance to the vege garden (Red Bartlett and Doyenne de Comice – I think).  Now I come to say it, 6 varieties of pear seems a tad excessive – are we spoiled by having so many pears?  Hopefully as the years go by and the pear volume increases, they can be extensively shared.  The peacharines are just softening, and the other peach varieties are beginning to blush.   And there are lots of medlar fruit this year – must find out what to do with them.  Then there are the crab apples and quince.  It’s quite a lovely problem to deliberate over how best to distribute and preserve them.

Last year’s dried tobacco leaves have been put through the spaghetti attachment on the pasta maker, and now resemble real tobacco.  It smells heavenly.  The plan is to use it in the cold smoker, but that would require us to actually have a cold smoker.  So far we only have a ‘virtual’ cold smoker, a mind-image, but hopefully it’ll materialise one day.  This year’s tobacco is flowering, so the leaves have been cut and are currently hanging from the clothes dryer in the living room.  I’ve left one of the plants so I can collect seed for next year.  I’ll be growing it in the flower garden as it’s such a gorgeous plant.

The herb garden has received a much belated tidy up and is now (temporarily at least) weed-free.  Lemon balm, chamomile and winter savoury have been added.  Allegedly the latter reduces the farty side-effects of Jerusalem artichokes – I’ll put that to the test and report on the findings later.  Herbs have been cut (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme of course) and are drying alongside the tobacco.  Once they’re dry they’ll be blitzed into a batch of mixed herbs.

A small selection of sunflowers planted along the chook run are now massive heads of seeds.  They’re being gifted to the chooks, and the excess will be added to bulk out their commercial feed.  One of the hen mothers is back laying, but we haven’t got round to re-convening the whole flock yet.  Cornelius and his 2 current girls have access to the connected run, plus the luxury of a bit of free-ranging now that Peter’s not working night shifts anymore.  Cornelius’ cock-a-doodle-doo is rather penetrating and at close range is not altogether conducive to a good day’s sleep.

The flower garden is in need of a tidy up.  But despite the weeds and the dried out plants and seed heads, fresh flowers are still abundant and being visited by bees.  The dahlias are stunning this year, and it’s lovely to see them at their best this month when many others are winding down.  In the vege garden there’s a half barrel planted up with vibrant honeywort which I sowed from seed.  It’s bright orangey-yellow, showy and happy and will definitely feature in the garden in the future.  Another half barrel is full of cosmos.  It’s gorgeous too, but it’s totally overflowing the barrel and reducing the path access and the sprinkler range. I can’t bring myself to cut it down yet though.

I’ve finally felt strong enough to get back into the beehives.  One hive was healthy and busy but had not built up any more significant honey stores.  The other hive was full-to-bursting.  I took off the excess honey frames to free up hive space, so now have another 10 litres of premium honey to add to the original 24 litres of this season’s crop.  This honey’s every bit as delicious as its predecessor, making me a very proud beekeeper.  I hope the delectability of the honey reflects some of my bee-friendly planting.

I had nearly enough Broxwood Foxwelp cider apples to make a batch of Linda Hallinan’s cider.  Her recipe uses cooking apples, and happily there were plenty of Bramleys to make up the difference.  The cider uses wild yeasts only, and the 8 litres of apple juice was certainly delicious before being bottled and brewed.  I’ve named it ‘Shilke’s Shider’ in the hope that it’s alcoholic enough to live up to that name.  It’ll be ready for drinking in a few days.  Most of the remaining Bramley’s were made into apple pies.  Two recipes – one from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, and the other an olde English recipe – were baked and blind-tasted in an apple pie-off.  Sam and Billy preferred Hugh’s sweeter and slightly fancier version, whereas Peter and me voted for the more traditional pie.

Lucas came home for a weekend visit and swapped cars with Sam.  Sam upgraded to a Mazda Familia, considerably newer than the slightly vintage Toyota Starlet that Lucas ended up with.  Both are happy with their deals – Lucas is better off financially and is pretty happy with the retro look of the Starlet.  Sam gets a more up market beast to take him back and forth from his daily studies.  While he was here, Lucas taught Maggie how to take selfies.  Quite a quick learner.

 Billy’s taking ‘Hospitality’ this year, and term one is all about cakes, scones and pastry.  None of his school-made creations have managed to reach as far as home yet, and he’s totally sick of me setting him practical hospitality homework.  I think he’s on hospitality strike at the moment (apparently he’d rather do maths than bake scones), so I’m laying off him for a while.  I’m hoping that next term’s project will be hot dinners though.

I’m gradually getting some energy back.  It’s enough to go to work and do a little pottering around outside, but not quite enough to sustain me doing all the gardening that needs to be done.  Mind you, it’s not that I’ve ever got on top of all of the gardening anyway.  It’s been another month when I imagined there would be very little to write about.  Yet here I am, rambling away about the mundane progress of our life on the land.  And still, there is no greater contentment and happiness than being immersed outdoors on the land.