Self-Sufficiency in Style
may 2004 diary
|
Self-Sufficiency in Style may 2004 diary |
|
|
The
countryside bursts with
life. We can no longer see the lights of our neighbours at night or the
smoke from their chimneys. The swallows are back from Africa and nesting in the barn. The elderberry by the front door is in bloom. |
|
|
The writer's back has given in to the annual unequal struggle with the
potatoes - and even the cat has hay fever. But the main crop potatoes are in. Late as usual, but in. The cultivator broke the soil in the old pig paddock, even if it bounced the driver about like a ping pong ball. The cultivator is no use in the walled garden, but will dig or cultivate a large plot of open land at ten times the speed you can do it with a spade. |
|
|
|
Having turned over and fertilised the potato patch before the
cultivator was brought in, Warmwell the sow has moved to her Summer
quarters and her Summer activity - snoozing in the wallow. She should be looking after a tribe of piglets, but alas this year, it did not quite work out. But we still have plenty of pork, bacon and sausages from last year in the freezer, so it is no real hardship. She has her daughter Tamsin for company. |
|
The yellow poles mark the rows, so that the cultivator can be run between
to keep the weeds down. The label giving the variety is tied to the top. This saves bending down. The only crops we can really grow outside the protection of the walled garden are potatoes and various squashes. Rabbits lately are a menace, as are bird attacks, but they don't bother potatoes and the various squashes, courgettes and pumpkins. |
|
|
|
For vegetables we are eating fresh steamed asparagus, with potatoes grown in
the greenhouse in black buckets. The potatoes are the famous Jersey Royals, once imported in huge quantities from the Channel Islands to give the first crop of the year. They are considered the best with salad. |
|
The salad crops are now being taken from outside. Many varieties of
lettuce, chicory and similar leaves are grown in-between brassicas, making
the best use of all the available space. As the brassicas mature, the salads are long gone to the table. Actually, these beds look pretty with their many colours - until the cook spoils the symmetry. The illusion of the medieval pottager is fleeting, lost to the table. |
|
|
As the month progresses, the fruit starts to show promise. It might just be a bumper year. |
|
|
|
The oldest trees in the orchard are now five years old and most look to be
bearing good crops, many for the first time. Plums, pears and peaches. Apples, apricots and almonds. It has become a delight to wander about on a summer evening searching out the fruit amongst the leaves. |
| Inside the walled garden, most of its trees being younger, there are damsons, acid cherries and a few almonds. |
Damson and two cherries - trained and now productive. |
|
Cherries barely started training and a plum being caned into shape. |
There is plenty of promise of fine fruit from many other trees, but it takes patience, work and more patience still. |
|
The Dusty Miller vine from the Weald of Kent is thought to be the same as
the Pinot Noir of Burgundy, and seems to be preparing itself for a good
crop. It will, eventually, have to give way for the King James Mulberry espalier coming along at a row a year below. The barn door is left open at the insistence of Mrs P to give easy access for the Swallows to their nest. The writer's workbench suffers from the inevitable mess. |
|
|
|
The fig by the back door, despite some frost damage, looks to be carrying a welcome crop. |
|
The strawberries from the pots in the tunnel have been cropping for the
past week, but alas had already disappeared by the time the camera
arrived. It must be the swallows! The main bed with its ten different varieties has been weeded, strawed and netted ready for Wimbledon week - or maybe just a little before. |
|
|
Strawberries pilfered at Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. |
