Thursday 29 May 2014

A trip to River Cottage


Having been a huge fan of River cottage since series one, I had long wanted to go down to River cottage HQ and see it all for myself. This bank holiday weekend was the River cottage food fair and we had tickets, you can imagine my excitement beforehand.


On arrival a tractor and trailer was ferrying all the fair goers down the hill to the farmhouse, we opted to walk down and soak up the view as we did so. The farmhouse itself is set towards the bottom of the valley surrounded by woodland, open pasture and some great areas that have been allowed to grow more wild. Beyond the cottage is a huge conservation meadow that has been left to flourish in it's natural state.


Of course being a keen grower myself I explored the vegetable garden with great interest. It looks a lot tidier than mine but there wasn't too much difference in the stages of growth that the plants were at. This was enormously encouraging; It's always fascinating looking around a fellow vegetable growers garden but here I was in the River cottage garden itself.



I was however slightly envious of the polytunnels. The size of them alone allowed for such a wide range of crops. The salad leaves were looking fantastic with plenty of fruits and herbs growing alongside them.


Throughout the day there were all sorts of courses being held in various kitchens and outbuildings; it was a hive of activity with everyone there enjoying some fantastic food and having a great time. 

Guest chef introduced by Hugh in the food tent was Valentine Warner. The whole day in the tent was hosted in great style by Steve Lamb seeing chefs Gill and Tim amongst others join him on stage.

A real highlight was getting to meet John Wright in person. We had chatted earlier in the week on Twitter where he confirmed that the elderflower wine in one of my previous posts was in fact rowan. Hence him holding up his hedgerow handbook with the photo of elderflower on show. A little embarrassing but all in good spirits; A thoroughly nice person full of advice and encouragement and someone I have wanted to meet for a long time.


A couple of pints of the River cottage IPA went down well too!


Despite it raining nearly all day a wonderful time was had by everyone, meeting the people I had watched living this amazing lifestyle for so long was a real pleasure. We'll be returning again soon now that we have tickets for dinner, I'm already looking forward to it.

Tuesday 27 May 2014

The Chicken coop


Next Saturday I will be going to my local poultry auction with the hopes of coming home with a few new chicks. As previously mentioned on my In The Garden This Week page these will be for meat rather than eggs with the ducks giving me plenty of the latter already.

I plan to get around five or six so have designed the house to comfortably fit this many; Anything can happen at an auction though so we'll see what we end up with.


I've been doing a bit of research on the better breeds for eating based on taste, size and how fast they mature, I've also had a look through the provisional auction listing and there's certainly a few that I will have my eye on. Some of these are Welsummer, Buff Plymouth rock, Rhode island red or maybe even some Maran crosses. As I'll be getting them as chicks they won't go straight out into the coop, for a couple of weeks they'll live in a big box/cage inside where it'll be warmer and more secure for them.

When they do go outside they have a big enclosure surrounding the coop made from chicken wire. With a bit of diy involved the idea is that this can be easily portable for when the vegetation gets low I can move the whole pen onto fresh grazing.

As with all things involved with smallholding costs come into it. The coop has been made entirely from scrap wood that I have collected whilst out and about. The only expense so far has been the nails and a length of chicken wire to create the fence. If I had to buy a coop I would need to get a lot more than six chickens to make it pay. Slightly lower costs if I would have had to buy the wood but certainly more cost effective than buying a pre-made coop.

What I will end up with will be organic, free range chickens knowing exactly what  they have eaten, how they have lived and of course how and when they have been slaughtered. With the price of free range chicken rising in the supermarkets it is now often cheaper to buy other British meat for a Sunday lunch. My costs will be feed and bedding over a period of five or six months. The price per chicken should be similar if not lower and the end product with a bit of care and attention will be so much better.


Thursday 22 May 2014

Elderflower wine - Part One



It's the time of year when everything has started to come to life. The vegetable patch is showing signs that any day now I will be enjoying a fresh harvest from it; My quick crops of radishes and lettuce are already in full swing; But most importantly for this recipe the hedgerows are beginning to flourish.

I've not made elderflower wine before, a smallholders staple by all accounts, only available for a short time but in abundance at the moment. My enthusiasm is partly spurred on by the success of my last home brew. Having received John Wright's River cottage handbook for Christmas I made a batch of the quick ginger beer; explosive as it was it tasted fantastic and only took a week or so from the initial brewing to actual getting to drink some.
This one is going to take a little longer maybe a month or two, which in the world of brewing is still remarkably quick.

I started by picking the elderflowers on a sunny morning, they were only a two minute walk from the house so I had been keeping an eye on them over the past week, waiting for them and the weather to be at their prime. As soon as I got them home, after checking them over for any unwanted wildlife, I separated the flowers from the stalk with a combination of the back of a fork and my finger tips into a sterilised bucket.


The juice and rind of four lemons was then added along with eight hundred grams of sugar. Two and a half litres of freshly boiled water then went in and it was all stirred together until the sugar was fully dissolved.


Another three litres of cold water then went in a the whole mixture was left to cool. once it had reached room temperature five grams of wine yeast were added it was again all stirred together.

That's it, easy so far. I now need to stir it once a day for four days then let it settle for a day before transferring to demi-johns. It's certainly smelling good at the moment and the simplicity of it all makes amazes me.

I'll post another update once bottled and more importantly once tasted, if these first steps are anything to go by I'll certainly be making this one agian.

Monday 12 May 2014

News from the garden


Today we ate the first radishes of the year straight from the ground and they were delicious. Much more juicy than ones you would buy, beautifully fresh and peppery. I have been sowing a few rows every couple of weeks since early April and now that the first few have been harvested I should have a continuous supply over the coming months. I went for a mixed seed pack giving me a few different varieties and from the two we tried there was a huge difference in taste between them. Another reason to grow your own, there are so many varieties of every vegetable that you might never get to try if your only getting them from the supermarket

There are now also plenty of plants in the polytunnel that are ready to be planted out. The runner beans (moonlight) have now been taken out and will be left outside for a couple of days to harden off prior to being permanently sited. I've sown about three times as many as pictured above and am now beginning to wonder where to put them. I've sown the same amount of borlotti beans too, these are hugely versatile in the kitchen and can either be eaten fresh or dried and stored for months. These will fill a gap in the colder months when growth slows almost to a standstill on the veg patch, so the more space I have for these the better.


The tomatoes (Alicante) that have gone into the bed in the polytunnel are really thriving now. A tip for planting these, that I picked up from all my winter reading, is to break off the bottom sets of leaves before planting and then make sure it is planted deep enough to cover over where they originally were. This should then go on to create a new root and make the plant stronger. It really looks to be working they are strong and healthy and should soon be in flower. The variety Alicante should also be hardy enough to grow outside so I may risk a few in a sheltered, sunny spot. After all space in the polytunnel is at a premium and should really be reserved for the more exotic or less hardy varieties. These were plants that I started off inside the house back in February so are a bit ahead of others.

I also have some in the polytunnel that were started a month or so later. I had planned to sell my excess plants but at the moment I think if I really want to be as self sufficient as possible I may need all the plants I can grow. Again though it may be a matter of space as to what makes the cut.


One thing I am really pleased about is the courgettes that I planted in the bed inside the polytunnel. if they continue as they have been doing I fully expect to be eating home grown courgettes at the beginning of June.


Meanwhile on the veg patch my onion sets have started to grow, my second early and maincrop potatoes have been earthed up, and my broad beans are just beginning to flower. The red and green cabbages that I have been growing under cloches are now big enough to stand up for themselves, if anything the cloches are now restraining them rather than helping them.

The Chard however, which is growing alongside the cabbages doesn't seem to have grown any bigger in weeks.I not too sure why but you can't win them all. I have sown some more in the polytunnel so these will go out with a handful of well rotted manure going in first to give them a kick-start.

With another week of sun ahead of us It's good news for all us gardeners, things should continue to push on and I should be eating fresh, home grown fruit and veg everyday.

Thursday 1 May 2014

Change of plan


I started out the year with a good idea of where different vegetables were going to be planted along with a rough plan of how I would rotate the beds throughout the seasons. Already now, at the beggining of May, this has completely gone out of the window.

A trip to the garden centre the other week saw me come back with a horseradish plant, this was not originally catered for but has been squeezed in alongside the rhubarb. Some Jerusalum artichokes bought from the farmers market had begun to sprout in the kitchen, of course these weren't going to waste so I cleared a patch of ground for these to go in.

This isn't bad news however,  I shouldn't have expected to be able to plan months in advance depending on the weather and performance of different plants. The garden is evolving as I go on, so whether it is a snap decision to plant something in a certain place or a long term plan, as long as it grows it's fine with me.


At times I think I haven't sown enough to fill the beds so I dash out to the polytunnel and quickly sow some more seeds. Other days I look at all my rows of pots and wonder where I'm going to put them all. The latter is a problem I am more than happy to face and in reality is more likely to be the case.

I have also been trying to sow a few surplus plants to sell, the polytunnel has proved really useful for this. It would have been nearly impossible growing enough seedlings on my windowsills to fill the beds let alone have surplus. I've been amazed just how quickly things are growing in there. Germination rates have been high with strong growth afterwards. I perhaps should have cleared the floor of grass and weeds first though as these too are shooting up.


I already am on the verge of having a constant supply of salad leaves, this really is something anyone can achieve inside or out. Over the next couple of weeks I will be harvesting my first radishes to add to the salad.

The successional sowing is working out with my first early potatoes shooting up, my second earlies just poking through and my maincrop going in last week.It shouldn't be too long before I get to harvest some broad beans too,  all I need now is a bit more sun to spur things on.

The hedgerows will also soon be abundant with wild treasure too, top of my list at the moment is Elderflower which will be in season very soon near me. Roll on the champagne!


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