Self-Sufficiency in Style
january 2003 diary
|
Self-Sufficiency in Style january 2003 diary
|
|
| January arrives with floods | |
|
The New Year begins with rain. The countryside begins to flood and
journeys have to be planned to avoid getting trapped in rising water
levels.
Eventually, the water meadows in the valley flood, the water seems to creep ever higher and we hear the first reports of flooded houses. We are on a plateau well above the river and feel secure. We stay in. All routes to the outside world become risky. Over the years, we have had to abandon cars to floods several times. It was never dangerous, but an unpleasant, expensive and very chilly experience. Work continues around the house, slopping backwards and forwards to feed the sheep and milk the cow, but suddenly we notice the pond has not overflowed despite all the rain, but the ditch to the north is full to bursting. The culvert that carries the water under the entrance to the hay meadow has become blocked and, as a result, the water is backing up on the several hundred acres a little higher than us. We have a legal duty, as well as the demand of good manners to our neighbours, to solve the problem. Our chimney sweep's kit, sans brush, is pressed into service. A quick prod through the concrete pipe releases the obstruction and the writer is swept off his feet by a minor Niagara. The water rushes away, through our pond and to the southern edge, down across the fields, ditch, joining stream, stream joining river until the whole lot reaches the sea. It is still raining. |
The ditch at the highest end of our land fills. |
|
|
In the odd dry intervals work in the walled garden continues. The raised
beds were equipped with drainage, so they are relatively dry.
Harvesting continues, and there is usually something to take the family. Celeriac, Brussels Sprouts, Leeks, Spinach are still being lifted, other items come from storage in the barn, or sometimes from the freezer. |
|
The Asparagus bed, planted last Spring is expected to produce its first
spears this year, so it gets some special attention.
The plants are to be buried deeper, so that they have nice long spears coming from well below the ground. That means cutting with a knife below ground. Although all the stones were carefully removed before planting, the new soil needs to be stone free too. What better than the compost used for the tomatoes and aubergines in the tunnel last year? |
The buckets with the "spent" compost had been doing duty holding the plastic down on another bed. |
|
The buckets are replaced with bricks. |
We have a surplus of bricks.
Left over from building the wall. They come in very handy. |
| There are pallets of bricks squirreled away around every corner and in use for all kinds of temporary jobs. |
|
|
|
The long term ambition is to use them to build a cold-frame in front of
the brick and wood greenhouse.
Meantime- bricks are always useful. |
|
The buckets when tipped out look a little like children's sand castles.
The red spots are the drainage "crocks" still embedded in the dead tomato roots. The empty buckets will soon be refilled with fresh compost for new crops. |
|
|
|
...the bed slowly being filled with nice soft compost. Some well rotten animal manure will be added, plus plenty of wood ash from the wood burner. Nothing wasted. The results should be plenty of wonderful asparagus to be steamed and eaten with our own butter. Asparagus is a luxury crop, well worth the time and trouble. |
|
The lack of wastefulness is one of the real glories of self-sufficiency.
A few seeds, a lot of thought and plenty of patience can give really pleasing results. There is a great deal of pleasure to be gained, not in joining some organisation claiming to save the planet, but of getting on quietly, wasting little and giving a multiple-life to once used materials. ...and not to live miserably either, but to live in considerable style on the fat of the land. |
A few bricks, some tiles, sand in a tub, miscellaneous timber and a concrete coal bunker filled with some solid fuel as a last reserve for prolonged cold weather - all hidden in the "slips" behind the wall. |
|
|
The rain eases and a quick burst of winter sunshine brings the cat out to supervise. |
|
When it is reasonably dry and not too cold to work without gloves, the
work of "wiring" the walled garden continues.
All the fruit trees need wires to train as either espaliers or fans. A straining bolt is put on one support - and an eye on the opposing one. Wire is fixed between the two and tightened. |
Both in one picture. The straining bolt on the left will have wire running away to an eye out of the picture on the left, the eye on the right away in the opposite direction. |
|
|
Some wires, in action.
This is a fan trained morello cherry, due for a prune shortly - and if you look carefully, you can see it needs some more wires to cope with its growth. This is on the back of the cow shed wall. It is one of the few fruit trees that will fruit well on a north wall. Although it is a sour fruit, the birds still attack, so having it on the wall will make netting it rather easier. |
|
..as I finish writing this at 3 PM on January 4th, the snow begins to fall. |
|
|
What at first seems to be a major problem, actually signalled a great success. The house is unusually cold. |
|
|
We can't figure it out. Last winter we did not need to light the
drawing room fire.
This year we are lighting it almost every evening. We are using more logs than last year too - a lot more. It must be the cold weather, we thought, but we also noticed that during warm spells, the house still seemed cold. |
Cosy, but usually unnecessary. |
|
|
We checked the wood-burner in the kitchen. We checked the pump. We checked
everything.
...but the house still was cold. |
|
We could increase the heat output of the wood-burner by switching from
logs to our "secret" supply of solid fuel stashed in a
coalbunker in the slips behind the north wall.
But this is for real emergencies and it makes the house smell terrible. We can just light the fire each evening in the drawing room. ...but it still does not explain why the house is so cold. |
|
 
|
It was a new gadget that provided the explanation.
We had bought a wireless thermometer set. The base station in the drawing room enables us to check the temperature in both greenhouses and the conservatory without moving a step. Yes, lazy, I know, but with widely fluctuating temperatures, very useful. |
|
A careful watch day and night quickly established that the temperatures in
the greenhouses seemed lower by both day and night than might have been
expected.
Cloud by day was stopping the sun heating the enclosed spaces and clear skies at night were allowing the temperature to drop quite sharply. It was not that cold outside during the day, but it was unusually cloudy. By chance a succession of depressions were hitting the east coast of England during the morning and clearing by nightfall. West Wales was probably getting the exact opposite. |
|
|
|
So why was the house unusually cold?
It was actually a success rather than a failure. We had been very careful to extend the house with heavy insulation and so that big windows faced due south to catch the maximum sunlight... |
|
...and the north side with small windows to avoid heat loss.
The north side was, of course, achieving its objective - so was the south, but only when the sun shone. The explanation was that sunny, although sometimes cold, days last year were reducing the need for heating. An efficient use of solar energy achieved by good design. We will try to remember that as my valuable log supply is diminished by the laws of chance....and the erratic English climate. |
|
|
The days are beginning to lengthen already, the hens are starting to lay again and the first faint signs of spring appear. |
|
|
|
Although it is mostly a time for sorting seed packets, there are a few
outside jobs to be done, when the weather permits.
The early rhubarb starts to peep through the ground. |
|
The black mulberry is pruned to a espalier shape.
This is a rather special tree. This is derived from a cutting from the original tree which was in 17C London, during the reign of King James I. The tree was cut down to make way for an air raid shelter during WW2, but cuttings were taken. The mulberry always seems to attract special attention. Most readers will be familiar with the nursery rhyme..."Round and round the mulberry bush..." This was derived from a mulberry in a prison exercise yard. |
|
|
|
The strawberries have been brought into the aluminium greenhouse for an
early crop. There are ten different varieties all propagated from runners
last year.
Later, when the greenhouse is needed for other tender plants, they will be moved again to one of the tunnels. |
|
Harvesting also continues. Root crops such as salsify, scorzonera and
parsnips are still coming out of the ground, and, of course, leeks.
Leeks withstand any bad weather very well. They microwave well to provide a green vegetable for any cooked meal. |
|
|
Milking is approaching its end for this season. The cow is only milked once a day now, and soon she will be dry for a couple of months before she has a calf again. We get an annual chance to take a little time away from Hangman's Cottage. We have been on a secret mission to the very Heart of England, we will tell you all about it, probably next month. Meantime - the kitchen... |
|
|
Orange ice-cream, from our own oranges under way. |
The milk is also a little less creamy at the end of lactation.
The freezers have enough milk, butter and cream to last us through the dry period. So we use the winter fruits to produce some deserts. Deserts that can be eaten now, or stored ready to eat.
|
| Passion Fruit too. Just picked from a greenhouse. |
|
|
Orange and Lemon Syllabub. |
...and a desert for a small dinner party tonight. Even the finishing touch
of mint decoration is home produced.
In fact, the entire meal, lasagne - everything, comes from our own resources, except the fish starter. We are working on the discrepancy! |
|
Nothing fishy about Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. |
