The queen is dead

Sunday 6th May 2018
The queen is dead
Lovely Weather!
But I couldn't spend too long outside today as Sue was planning on killing one of her queen bees. I know this sounds a bit drastic, but queens don't keep laying well for ever - a bit like chickens really.
Like many others this extended winter, Sue's bees are struggling a bit. The smallest colony is barely hanging on and the queen in the largest colony has started laying drone brood - that's male bees. In the world of smallholding, males are pretty useless. One of each species is generally enough.

Today I needed to keep my distance from the bees would likely not be happy, though using lavender cuttings in the smoker seems to be having a calming effect on them.

So I decided to erect my bean poles. I use old willow for this which the sheep enjoy debarking for me - this stops the poles taking root.
I dig these in about a foot and stamp the soil back down around them to secure. They are sturdier than bamboo canes and carry a lot less 'food' miles. They are better looking too and give some real height and structure to the vegetable garden.

For the first time in ever I have actually got the bean poles erected in advance of the beans being ready to be planted out. In fact I have not even sown them yet.
I prefer to sow them in paper modules indoors rather than direct. I can get  slightly earlier start but more importantly they are protected from birds and voles. Further, germination can be a bit patchy if the soil is not warm enough, so if I grow them in modules I can make sure that every pole has a bean.

The bottle fed lambs, Flash and Rambutan, are getting big now. They have become good friends and nothing pleases them more than a little run around with the dogs. Rambutan is Boris size and Flash is Arthur size.

Monday 7th May 2018

Getting Crabby

I've just got to show you this crab apple. Look how much blossom! I am anticipating a good year for all our fruit trees this year. Even if I say so myself, I have done a good job of pruning them. We had a decent spell of cold weather in the winter to kill off some of the nasties and we seem to escaped any heavy frosts, high winds or hail storms at the wrong time of year.

Tuesday 8th May 2018
Been bean sowing

A day of seed sowing and potting up. timing the sowing of the beans is a fine art. For they grow quickly but can't go outside until we are frost free. Most of them are for drying so I need as long a season as possible. For these I prefer to grow climbing varieties as they are up in the air and more exposed. It is hard to dry the beans on dwarf varieties which are low to the ground and shaded by their own leaves.

For seeds and seedlings sown earlier in the year I use plastic trays and modules, but for those sown late which go in the ground quickly I make paper pots, wither round ones using a special wooden shaper or cube ones using origami.
I like the fact that they are reusing old paper and that they can be planted straight in the ground with no further rot disturbance.

Everyone's a Fruit and Nut Case

My one piece of advice to anyone setting up to be self-sufficient would be to plant fruit straight away, orchard trees, soft fruit bushes, nut trees and hedgerow fruit. It is an investment which takes a little while to start paying off, but it has rich rewards for the patient.

Our orchard is just starting to produce properly and can only go from strength to strength in the next few years. As summer gives way to autumn variety upon variety of apple comes ready, each with its own unique taste. There are pears and plums aplenty too, as well as more unusual fruits such as medlars. We have gradually added to the trees we first planted and will hopefully soon have an annual crop of apricots too.

All these, of course, can be bought in the shops (except maybe medlars), but some of the hedgerow plants I have planted are even more of a treat. Crab apples make a wonderful jelly, as well as being an excellent source of pectin when added into preserves.
And what about the elderberry - its flowers make an excellent cordial and an even better champagne, or let the berries ripen for one of the best wines. This year we harvested the berries (leaving plenty enough for the birds) to make pontack sauce. This old English recipe has enjoyed a recent revival, probably due to its inclusion in Hugh F-W's repertoire. It is a heady infusion of elderberries, vinegar and spices. The closest equivalent I can think of is Worcestershire Sauce. Pontack sauce stores indefinitely in the larder and develops its taste over the years, so Sue makes a big batch every few years. It adds an incredible richness and depth of flavour to meat dishes, particularly stews and casseroles.
Elders poke out from the edible hedgerows I have planted as well as being dotted all around the smallholding now. They are easy to propagate, grow well here and feed the wildlife as well as us.
Alongside them are blackthorn bushes with their yield of sloes. When you say sloes, most people instantly think of gin, but Sue prefers to add them to vodka. Once they have imparted their unique flavour to this beverage, the same berries are then used to make sloe port. Definitely a hedgerow fruit for the drinkers! We almost had a sloe disaster this year. After a blank year countrywide in 2016, our edible hedgerow has again failed to produce any sloes (or Mirabelles for that matter). I think I have been cutting it back too much in the winter and taking off the fruiting wood.
Sue's disappointment was tangible, but then I remembered that I had planted a few blackthorns in the woodland area which I have created. A closer inspection yielded several bushes laden with sloes ready to pick - a thorny job and it takes a while to fill a basket, but yesterday (edit - now a while ago as this post was superseded by other events) we collected 2kg of sloes, plenty enough for a lot of alcohol. They have gone into the freezer to simulate the frosts, as left on the trees the autumn thrushes would take them all before winter bites.

There are hawthorns and rowan berries too, though we don't have much use for them and leave them for the birds. Rosehips explode colourfully from the hedgerows too and every few years Sue makes a batch of rosehip syrup, a rich and sweet source of vitamin C. I actually grow plenty of rosa rugosa as its flowers brighten up the borders of the soft fruit area and it produces the plumpest, most vivid hips.




Back to the orchard fruits and damsons take centre stage. Our tree produced abundantly this year. They are a handsome looking fruit and handsome tasting too. All varieties of plum produce, in a good year, bountiful crops too much for simply eating the fruit straight. Pies, crumbles and jams go without saying, but Sue has had the dehydrator and the ice-cream maker busy too. Her plum yogurt ice-cream is delicious and dried fruits or fruit leathers make excellent healthy snacks for a hungry worker.






Finally there is the rather poshly named nuttery. The nut trees were an expensive investment when I planted them, as I opted for named varieties bred to produce fruits early in their lives. The almond tree has produced virtually since day one and the nuts taste delicious with that lovely marzipan kick of arsenic to them. The cobnuts are basically hazelnuts cultivated to produce larger kernels and these are producing more and more year on year. In contrast, the wild hazelnuts in the hedgerow and woodland will be keeping us waiting a good few more years before they even think about producing a nut.

The Plant Auctions - My New Favourite Place

Now I know how the kid feels who's just been let loose in the proverbial sweet shop.

For every Wednesday and Saturday morning there is a plant auction in a little group of buildings tucked away in a quiet corner of Wisbech. I had heard talk of it, but it has taken me four years to get round to visiting... and boy do I regret the wasted years!



The travelling auction begins

They have just about everything you could find in a garden centre, but at rock bottom prices. In some cases you could knock a zero off the garden centre price. Granted, you have to buy plants in lots, but when you can get a whole tray or a group of pots for the same price as one normally costs, then that's got to be good news. In my case, with rather a lot of land to play with, purchasing one plant at a time has no impact whatsoever, so this way of buying is absolutely perfect.

If I'd discovered the auctions a couple of years ago, there would be a lot more shrubs, flowers, fruits and trees in my garden, veg plot, soft fruit patch and orchard. Anyway, my last two visits to the auction have seen me making up for lost time.
I've been quite restrained actually. The focus has been on topping up the orchard, though I have let myself be tempted by a few ornamentals too.



Bare root fruit trees galore.

The bare root tree section is amazing. It comes at the end of the auction, so most people have gone by then. There's not really even any bidding. The auctioneer just calls out what the reserve prices are and which varieties are available. All you have to do is tell him which ones you want. Most fruit trees come in fives, but I like to peruse the ranks of trees before the auction and count the stems in each bundle, for there are twos and threes to be found here and there. If I end up buying five, I can often sell a couple on to fellow smallholders and then everyone benefits.



Click here to read my post on Concorde Pears

So the outcome of my last two visits has been the acquisition of approximately fifty new fruit trees, which has doubled the size of my orchard.
I was especially delighted to find Pear Concorde at £3 per tree (+ 12% commission). This is the pear which did so well last year and I was prepared to pay a lot more to add to my stock.

I've also added to my range of apples. I now have Egremont Russet, Kidd's Orange Red, Laxton Superb, Scrumptious, more Discovery, Blenheim Orange and Ashmead's Kernel.

There are more plum trees, crab apples and cherries too, but I've saved the very best find till last. For my favourite tree in the orchard is my medlar. Even as a young tree it has taken on the appearance of a gnarled, old specimen. It puts on a stunning display of blossom in the spring and produces an intriguing and luxurious crop late in the autumn. The delightful pink tone of medlar jelly provides the final pleasant surprise.

So when, hidden amongst the serried ranks of trees, I discovered the label "Nottingham Medlar" I was very excited. But when I heard the price - £2!!! - yes, that's right, I said TWO POUNDS - I bought five immediately. I think my first medlar tree cost me over £20.

Click here to read my post on medlars, including a recipe for medlar jelly.

All this happened last Saturday, so I have been a busy bee during the week and all my fruit trees are now planted and labelled in the orchard. I've still got some raspberry canes,rhubarb plants and gunneras to go in, but I managed to get the orange contorted willows planted as well as the grasses, the aconites, the snowdrops and the conifers. I told you I showed restraint!

I plan to visit the auction once a month from now. That way, I'll end up with a selection of plants with interest throughout the year. Priority for my next visit are laurel plants and blueberries, though quite what I'll come back with is anyone's guess.



As you can see, I showed considerable restraint and didn't buy too much.

 Wait till I tell you about my other new favourite place! 

Pectin

So pretty.



Crab apples boiling up.

This week I have been busy processing green tomatoes into soups, cake (yes, cake!), marmalade and jam.
It was while gathering the ingredients for the jam that I came across a problem. For jam needs pectin to set. Green tomatoes do not contain enough pectin to make this happen. So you have to use special jam-making sugar (over twice the price of normal sugar - and you use a lot in jam) or you buy pectin.

Sue told me it would be in a packet next to the sugar, but it wasn't. Maybe a bigger store in a bigger town may have had it, but all I could find was a small bottle of what looked like concentrated apple juice which cost a lot. In fact, it was looking as if the pectin was going to be a significant part of the cost of the jam.

Always looking to save a bob or two, I got to thinking. I knew that crab apples contain plenty of pectin so decided I would pick some off the tree in the garden and use those instead. But I could not just add them to the green tomato concoction as I would get the pips and all the nasty bits in my jam. And I wasn't about to stand peeling and coring crab apples!

Instead I found a recipe for making pectin. The actual recipe, here, uses normal apples, but I figured crab apples would be even better.
So I picked my crab apples, added a couple of lemons and some water and boiled the whole lot up until it was soft and mushy. Then into a muslin sieve to drain (best left overnight and not squeezed, to keep the juice clear. I was not this patient but it seemed to work out OK. I figured it wasn't too important for the pectin to be completely clear.)
Finally the juice went back into the saucepan to boil right down until it reached setting point. It was supposed to form a jelly when placed on a cold plate, but this never quite happened. Setting point with jams is never as straightforward as they make it sound in the books. Anyway, when I judged it was time I left it to cool before portioning out into freezer bags. Altogether I got six 8oz portions, each enough for a batch of jam.