A Spring day at The Larches....

Mahoosive spawn this year

'Hello Grass, it's been a long muddy winter..'

Nigella seedlings

 

Broad Beans... delicious young

 

Perpetual Spinach

Lupin for colour this year

 

Figs are growing well

 

Chooks a'chookin'

Delightful Caramel

Shadow and her shadow

Bracken

Fudge and Darcy

Annabel (the Boss)

Hot-bed of yucky love stuff - hence the spawn!

My most sincere apologies if you can't see the pictures above ...(you're missing out!) Something to do with Apple / Explorer interface??? In order to rectify this, click here and you will be magically transported to my blog. Thanks for stopping by. Why not leave a comment, I'd love to chat with you. xx

Fasting at The Larches....

Man (or woman for that matter) cannot live on strawberries, gooseberry jam, raspberries, potatoes and flaars alone!

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit! We've had other stuff like lettuce, rocket, onions, tons of broad beans and leeks, but it's really been a bit of a poor show this year. We were due to exhibit our prize horticulture and our pet lambs at Burwarton Show this year, but sadly the show was cancelled due to the weather/fields/hay. Lucky escape really; the Larches 2012 is a little meagre this year.

In contrast to the fruit and veg the flaars seem to be faring well. For the first time in 3 years I managed to convince the Echinacea that death was not the only option.

Having been cut back twice this year the purple and the blue geranium as well as the orange geum is flowering for the third time.

Along the path, calundula, rose campion, aster, penstamon and feverfew are rampant.

Shasta Daisies the colour of fried eggs, attract all sorts of visitors.

Early in the season the weather was too dreadful to plant all the potatoes in the field allotment so I hastily shoved them into the two year old leaf mold bin and into two of my compost bays. I tucked them in all snugly, covering them with more compost, home-made, rich in horse manure and hemp. I'm glad I did this as I strongly suspect that the field potatoes will be rotten, they certainly seem to have contracted blight.

Yesterday the sproglets and I harvested the leaf bin. The haul was fairly impressive considering..... maybe we won't starve after all.

We won't need to eat the chickens or the lambs either,

today we came home to a rabbit, dead and skinned on the doorstep, a gift from a friend. Not everyone's idea of a pressie but heo-ho, we live in the country. It's a wonder the deceased was still there when we returned - the cats are impressive thieves.






Save them for later....

It's great to have big, fat strawberries in summer, the taste of them fresh picked is pure summer (regardless of the weather) but it's even better to taste them mid winter, similarly baby broad beans and raspberries too.

Of course strawberries are not the same plump, robust fruits when they have been frozen, I'm not daft! But if you've tray-frozen them and they are loose in a bag (hulled and cleaned of course) there's nothing better than using them frozen in a milkshake or in a daiquiri. The same goes for raspberries who are best used frozen for a fabulous, tart Eton Mess.

Broad beans, picked very young are perfect candidates for tray freezing - no blanching required. Gorgeous.

I've been looking for an upside regarding the lack of sun and I feel I have found a tiny glimmer; (for me only probably,) it is that the crap moisture rich weather will allow me to grow broad beans for-ev-er! Fab news for the sproglets and me - possibly not for my hubby who's not a fan.

*

Queenie, positively the last lamb, is growing day by day. She spent the whole day with Pink (the lamb) today and I ignored her cries in the drizzling rain. She's still on a bottle four or five times a day (...as am I) but she has just ten more days of that comfort before she's on pellets and grass only.

Much as I love her, I will not miss the feeds.

Bountiful Land...

Just now there was a knock at the window and I jumped. I had been engrossed in settling my chilli plants on a window sill, they are all more than 2ft tall and heavy with long Ferrari-red fruits. I hadn't heard our farmer neighbour park as he arrived, bearing gifts.

He was proudly delivering a bowl of creamy field mushrooms, just picked from a 6 acre, south facing slope opposite our land.

'The whole field is white with them,' he said.

So the 9yo and I are set for dinner, although the other two family members are not so keen. She and I will share the feast and I may make a garlic and mushroom tart for my book club guests tonight when we discuss Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt.

Fresh Picked Field Mushrooms

The rest of the garden also continues to inspire for dinner; the leeks are good and the celeriac a decent size, the parsnips obscene. Spinach continues to thrive.

Planning ahead, the broad beans are emerging from their seed trays and will go in the ground next week. The kale and other spring brassica are almost ready for planting out.

Broad Beans

In the greenhouse I'm ahead for spring colour and scent, my sweet peas bullied daily as I pinch out growing tips to ensure bushy plants for next year. I'll do the same with the Cosmos babies, a find (and a financial saving) as they'd all self-seeded in the flower beds. I decided to dig some of them up in order to try and protect a few plants from the worst of the weather. The Lupins are doing well too.

Sweet Pea

Cosmos

Lupin

Fortunately the weather hasn't turned here yet, as the mushrooms will testify, so I've still got time to insulate my greenhouse this weekend. I'm determined to experiment this winter, to see how many seedlings survive out in the greenhouse and in hand-made cold frames, I need to see how they do without constant heat. Mind you, if temperatures dip dramatically I may use my paraffin heater, but at approximately £6 per 5 litres, this really isn't viable for very long periods.

I've managed to plant two long beds of 160 strawberry plants in the allotment in the field, these plants were runners from my original 12 plants that I received as a gift from our neighbours in 2009. Having planted these 160 plants I still had another 400 plants to rehouse in order to free up three of my seven raised beds. These runners had virtually taken over the walled garden.

I've potted up most of them in well rotted manure, thus ensuring another crop for next year. Being rather more portable, these pots can be dotted around the allotment or I might even sell some to friends and family.

Next season strawberries

This weekend in the allotment I spied a new red strawberry - extraordinary weather we're having for November.

Archie's chicks (Roosters centre stage?)

 

Archie's chicks are enormous and I still strongly suspect that 5 of the 8 are boys. Having experienced the financial disaster of the Poultry Auction when selling roosters, I am determined to lean how to humanely dispatch (polite word) and dress my own birds. After all, I regularly buy free range birds for the family to eat, at a cost of £8+.

Bearing in mind these birds roam or grounds, are fed on corn and quality pellets as well as selected scraps, I know they will be quality meat, so I'm afraid their days are numbered. I just cannot afford to keep them and, believe me, no one wants to take in additional roosters.

To that end, another farmer has promised to teach me how to to responsibly kill. It's not a decision I came to lightly, after all I know these birds personally, however, it is interesting to note that we, [and I mean all family members,] have only named one of Archie's chicks, that being the little white one; Moon. Maybe we are seeing them less as pets and more as egg producers or livestock.

Are we becoming more countrified I wonder?

Easily Impressed from Shropshire....

Its boiling today..... by boiling, I mean that it's almost -3.

School run was pretty....blah,blah,blah; sheep, ice on trees, slippy road, ice fog in valley,..... although I did see a bird of prey take a rat from a farmyard. It crashed into a white hedge..and there was a great poof of frost and then they were gone, rat and bird. That was quite exciting... But c'mon, roll on Spring already.......... Whad'ya mean Winter's only just begun?....no,no,no, I want planting and strawberries and birds in the garden, other than robins, and fluffed up chickens, rather than the miserable looking molting sad ones I seem to have at the moment!

I cooked spaghetti for the chooks today. They're very Italian - loved it.

Then I saw something that made me really smile: Broad Beans. My broad Beans, some in pots some in the ground, are ignoring the weather, braving the ice age and popping their heads up at the meagre winter sun. How wonderful.

The onions too are toasty under the frosting.

And the leeks are delicious, seemingly unbothered by the cold. I made Leek, bacon and pork (leftover) pie the other day and it was deeee-lish.