Self-Sufficiency in Style
september 2003 diary
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Self-Sufficiency in Style september 2003 diary |
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| The drought continues. The temperature drops, but the fronts of rain promised so often, dump their rain on the Welsh mountains and arrive here just as a little cloud. | |
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But we get on with life, the first batch of this season's animals are sent
for slaughter.
Two pigs and a couple of lambs. For the first time in three years we can look forward to home produced bacon, ham and sausages. The lamb will be very welcome too. We were over generous last year, gave a lot away, and ran out ourselves. For those unaccustomed to eating their own animals, your own meat helps put a difficult subject in its proper perspective. |
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Within a few days the meat is back, joints, hams, bacon and much more. A proportion is just in pieces. |
| This is chopped into small pieces and minced. |
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Four batches are prepared, different herbs and spices plus a little cereal in the form of rusks added... |
| Some casing and a little skill, remembered from the last occasion, some thirty-five years ago. |
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And we have our own English sausages.
The meat from our own home bred traditional English pigs, fed with the best we can provide, and the whole seasoned with herbs mostly from our own gardens. |
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There should be a picture of a full English breakfast opposite.
Sausages, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, fried bread - all from our own resources. |
But alas I ate it, forgetting all about this website and the camera. Mrs P says that I can't have another - something about cholesterol.
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...and then it rained for the first time for weeks. As soon as it stopped, we were out, catching up on the garden. |
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Dry soil. |
The walled garden is unusually empty.
The dry conditions did enable us to harvest what was there, but we did lose a lot of small plants and seedlings. |
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Although autumn is almost upon us, there are some seeds that can be
planted outside.
So there is a last minute rush to get some planted into the newly moist soil. |
The greenhouse acts as the command centre for sorting though. |
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Look at the head on that! |
The work is rewarded by a late afternoon pint of home brewed bitter. |
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To the writer's delight, his son who now lives nearby has taken up
home-brewing as a hobby.
His eyes have that manic glint reserved in the male of the species for such activities as collecting old tractors and fishing. He was even talking about growing his own hops and will be pleased to find that we seem to have located a supply. We can foresee a long business of swapping bitter for India Pale Ale, stout for mild, lager for barley wine. |
Hops found growing wild today along the lane amongst the blackberries. |
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When you are smallholding, history is all about you - inescapable. Hops were once an alien import to England... 1524 When it was said: "Hops, Reformation, Bays and Beer all came to England in one bad year." The "bad" is optional. I've seen the quotation with and without it. |
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Around the middle of the month the flood of vegetables from the
garden continues, but the workload is generally a little less. The dry weather means that the cow is only giving enough milk for her calf, so there is no butter, cream or cheese making . There is time for some adventurous cooking: mince inside a pepper inside a squash... |
| Time to buy some trellis for the wall fruit, especially the fig. |
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Then on the very last day of summer, the weather breaks. Still very
dry and quite warm by day, the temperature plummets at night. There is a
frost. We get a very unusual daily temperature range. The weather this year has been very odd. |
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The sheets come out. Decorating? |
We are not caught out exactly, the television forecasts were accurate
enough, but we didn't quite believe that you get this extreme and sudden
change here. We are used to cool damp summers that fade slowly into Autumn, not raging early New England falls that collapse into a continental winter. But it does not even do that, it is hot by day and cold at night. We get busy with a job that was planned for later. |
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No, chimney cleaning. The equipment doubles for drain and culvert clearing. Very worthwhile in a wood fired house. |
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..and comfortable evenings. |
It is still too warm during the day to start the central heating, but the drawing room fire makes for a comfortable evening. |
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Outside we start the potato harvest in earnest. It was too dry and hard
earlier to lift the crop and indeed it is still difficult, but this was an
advantage too. There was no potato blight this year, so less of a smaller crop has to be thrown away. The tree fruit is coming in - with the almonds being harvested and dried in the conservatory. |
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Dinner at this time of year, usually finishes with some of the grapes from the conservatory. |
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Fruit and nuts at a chilly Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. |
