Medlars saved from the geese!

Thursday 22nd November 2018
A leggy young Moorhen ran nervously ahead of me down the central path leading to the poultry pens and paddocks today. This is only the third time I have seen one of these on the farm. Hopefully this mini run of notable birds will continue.

I saved the medlars from the geese today. Just a week ago the tree was looking amazing in its best autumn finery. The fruits were still hard and not yet ready for picking.
What a contrast today. The tree was bare of all leaves and the geese had plundered any low-hanging fruit. The fruits had softened nicely, presumably helped by a couple of decent frosts.

This process is known as bletting. Medlars are an old-fashioned fruit, not well-known, but they make for a wonderful addition to the orchard and are well-worth growing with a delicious flavour when made into medlar jelly or medlar cheese.

harvested medlars 

(I make no excuses for displaying them

in my first ever independently made basket)

Don't ignore the red light on the freezer!

Sunday 19th November 2017

A Prickly Job
While Sue was inside making medlar jelly, I continued the job of pruning the gooseberries. Today I was thinning out the top growth, cutting the leader branches back and cutting the laterals (side branches) back to two buds. Gooseberries form on old wood and where last year's laterals meet the leader branch. The cut back laterals will hopefully form into fruiting spurs in the future.
If it all goes well, I'll get plenty of large, easy to pick gooseberries.

This took me quite a while, but Sue was kept busy by an unexpected mini-emergency. The red warning light had been glowing on the fridge freezer for a few days, seemingly for no reason... until today, when a small puddle of water appeared on the kitchen floor. Somehow Sue managed to squeeze most of the food into the other already full to bursting freezers.

With those jobs done, it was time for a long dog walk along the river. We went further than we ever have before. I never understand how the dogs are happy to laze around all day yet they have such limitless energy when it suits them.

Raspberry management
There was still time for me to tackle the raspberry canes when we got back from the river. I just needed to tidy them up a little and to take out the old stems from the summer fruiting varieties. These are easy to identify as they have the remains of flowering stalks on them.
The remaining stems are those which grew afresh this year and will produce fruit next year.

Autumn fruiting raspberries are treated differently.
All their growth is cut back over the winter (best done later in winter) and their new canes spring up next year, fruiting later on in the same year.

The light was falling as I finished this job and I was interrupted by a strange squealing sound. The closest I could think of was the squeal of a rabbit when our cat has caught it, but Gerry and the dogs were inside. Maybe it was a stoat kill?
An unlucky blackbird
As I approached where the strange commotion was coming from, somewhere near the bee hives, a sparrowhawk exploded from the ground carrying a still struggling blackbird. The poor thing had probably just flown al the way over the North Sea only to meet an untimely end when it was looking for a safe roost for the night.

Monday 20th November
A New Car - sort of

A dreaded trip to the dentist. And bad news. My dentist has left and I have someone new. This is a lot for me to cope with.
When I made it home safe and sound, I decided to clean the car to take my mind off things. My car must have wondered what was happening to it. Layers of dirt and moss and lichen which had been protecting the paintwork from the elements were gently wiped away.
By the end I felt almost as if I had a new car!

First Frost of Winter

Monday 6th November 2017
First proper frost
The first proper frost of the year. I got up early to see the sunrise. These clear, crisp winter mornings are one of my favourite times of the year.

A Silkie Swap
One of the Silkie hens which we purchased a few weeks back has started crowing good and proper. It can be hard to tell what sex birds are until they start either crowing and jumping on the girls or, alternatively, cooing and laying eggs

No problems though. The people we bought from were happy to swap for another and with them being a bit older now it was actually just possible to be sure what we were getting. When I saw the hens, I could indeed tell which was which - they had no wattle whatsoever and the cockerel had longer, shinier feathering in his tail.

The couple I was picking up from were incredibly chatty and I ended up staying over an hour. They had poultry everywhere - it is surprisingly easy to breed lots of animals or birds when you first start out, but you need an end plan.

Eventually I returned with not one, but two replacement silkies. Both black to go with the 'partridge' one we picked up last time. Hopefully they will settle in quickly and be going broody early next year.

The buzz of a brambling
On the wildlife front, 4 Whooper Swans were in with the swan flock this morning and another 7 flew over the farm. A brambling was buzzing from the birches, the first of the winter and a clear cold weather arrival.






Tuesday 7th November 2017
Medlar time
Rain promised. Never quite materialised.

The adult Shetland sheep in the furthest paddock.

I have left this paddock ungrazed for a yeat to give it a rest, so there's plenty for them to munch.

The medlars are just about ready now. They are an odd looking fruit, with the nickname of 'dog's arse' in French! They are inedible until they have bletted, which means that you need to wait until the flesh is bitten by the frost or softens until it resembles mushy apples.

Not really selling them, am I?

The tree is a good-looking orchard tree, quickly acquiring the look of an old tree and bearing wonderful white blooms in springtime.

When the medlar fruits hang on amongst the yellowing leaves, nothing could be more autumnal. But the chickens and ducks have started jumping up to get at the lowest fruits now. They are ready for picking. The medlar jelly that Sue makes is wonderful.

Wednesday 8th November 2017

Grey Wagtail!!!

Only the second ever that I've seen on the farm. Even better, it was darting around the drinking pool and new pond which I recently constructed, its tail lifting up and down as if on a pulley with an overenthusiastic campanologist on the other end. What a great start to the day. 

The end of the day wasn't bad either.

Saturday 11th November 2017
Romanesco

Look what I've grown. A brassica which has made it through to harvest and actually tastes nice! It has taken me several years, but I think I have finally narrowed my brassica list down to what usually grows successfully and what I actually like eating.

Next year I shall be growing: Red Cabbage; Scarlet Kale; Cavolo Nero; Calabrese; Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Romanesco. I shall not be growing sprouts, green cabbages or cauliflowers, which is pretty much the traditional list of brassicas grown by gardeners.

Carrots hanging on
I dug up more carrots today. They should really be out of the ground by now, but the freezers are full so they can take their chances. Covering with fleece has prevented 99% of the carrotfly carnage which destroyed previous crops. The voles haven't found them this year (it seems to be a poor vole year) and the slugs have only taken the occasional munch.


Other than that, it was just general tidying up of spent veg beds today. The ground is now wetter and colder and compacts easily so it's best to keep off the soil as much as possible.

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.

Medlar Mash Up

We had another good harvest from our medlar tree this year. This is my favourite tree in the orchard with its spreading, gnarled branches bearing fantastic white blossoms in the spring followed by the most unusual fruits. In fact, I like the tree so much that I've planted another five, even though I don't really need them.

One of the great things about growing your own food is that you get to taste things which are just not available in the shops, medlars being an excellent example of this.

Medlars are probably most well known for the need to 'blet' them, which basically means letting them begin to rot. But this is not as disgusting as it sounds.
There are two choices here - either pick them early and store them until bletted or, what Sue and I do, let them blet on the tree. The weather has been a bit funny this year (isn't it every year?) and things have been slow to ripen. Quite a few crops just didn't quite make it before a decidedly damp November led to them rotting off.
So we held off on picking the medlars. Other things got in the way too. Last year I'm pretty sure the leaves were still on the tree when we picked them, but this year the leaves have well and truly gone.
This last weekend I noticed that the fruits were much thinner and on closer inspection most of them had fallen onto the ground. There they lay on the leaf litter, nicely bletted.

Basically each medlar fruit looks like a giant brown rosehip, each containing seven stones. What's not stone is a spicy, aromatic, peary, apply mush. That's the best way I can describe it.
I collected just over 100 fruits from the tree and more than 300 from the ground. I left some windfalls for the birds and insects.
In all they weighed 10.2kg.

Sue makes an amazing medlar jelly which does not involve the need to extract the flesh from the fruits. She basically boils them up with a couple of apples for pectin until mushy and then strains them through jam bags.

To keep the liquid perfectly clear, it is important not to press the fruit mush but just let the juice drain. The juice then gets turned into an amazingly pink-hued jelly. It's a popular seller, but we like to keep a fair bit for ourselves.

In theory, the left-over pulp can be used to make chutney, but this would mean extracting all those stones. Besides, we have chutneys of various descriptions coming out of our ears!

This year we were keen to expand on our medlar repertoire and Sue found a recipe for a ginger, medlar and apricot cake. Only problem was that it required 250g of medlar flesh and it fell to me to extract it. Normally this would have been a doddle as I have a mouli which I use for making things like tomato passata, but this was not an option because of the stones. I tried pushing the medlars through a sieve, but the sieve was not strong enough and the holes not big enough. Eventually we ended up impovising with a metal steamer. It was a long, messy job though. The resulting mash did not look appetising but the aroma was beautifully spicy and exotic.
Sue took her 250g of mashed medlar which was a very small proportion of the 3+ kg I had prepared. The rest was portioned up and frozen, so there'll be no need for more medlar mashing for quite some time.

The cake, unsurprisingly, tastes amazing. And I won't be sharing it in case you're wondering.

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! 

Medlar Magic

Of all the fruit trees I have planted, my favourite just has to be the Medlar tree. Only planted for three years, it already looks old, with twisting branches and thick, lush foliage. Add to this a wonderful display of simple, white flowers in the spring time followed by a bountiful crop of intriguing fruits.

 

Now, medlars will not be familiar to most people these days, and even fewer will know what on earth to do with one, or for that matter what one tastes like.
So when I tell you they have to be bletted to make them edible, you're probably still none the wiser.
When I explain that bletting is the process of letting them go soft and mushy (almost rotten), you'll probably be well and truly put off... as was I.

I was quite happy just to grow a medlar tree as a curiosity, but when I saw quite how many fruits the young tree bore, I kept thinking just what a waste of a unique resource it would be just to let them rot away.
When I noticed that a few of them had bletted on the tree, I decided to close my eyes and taste. For medlars are supposed to be quite a delicacy. Having said that, I do find that people claim all sorts of food to be just the tastiest, the more unusual, the more trendy.

When I say that I decided to close my eyes and taste, I actually let Sue take the first nibble. Then I followed. The flesh inside the fruit was like an apple and pear paste with a little sweet spice, perfectly edible, quite pleasant but nothing to rave about.

 

But the delight of medlars is, supposedly, when they are turned into a jelly or a cheese.

The folk at ashmeadtrees.co.uk from whom I purchased many of my trees when I first moved onto the smallholding, have the following to say about medlar jelly:

 

Well made medlar jelly is a true delight. It is beautiful to look at – amber with pink highlights and very glossy.
And medlar jelly is joyous to taste; some say it is like sweet cider infused with cinnamon and a touch of allspice. Whatever your adjectives it is utterly delicious, wondrously fragrant and gives a lift to game and cold meats like no other jelly. Add a spoonful to your gravy and you will never be without it again.

Ingredients (for 6 large jam jars)

• 3 small, sharp apples or 20-25 crab apples
• 2.5kg bletted medlars(see below)
• 600g firm medlars
• 4 lemons
• 3 litres water
• 1.2kg granulated sugar

(Optionally, you can add about 20 cloves at the beginning which are removed when you strain. They make the jelly a bit more Christmassy.)

Instructions

* The bletted medlars should be dark and soft before you start. Clean them by removing any stalks and leaves and chopping them in half. Remove any really obvious rotten bits.

* Cut the lemons and apples into quarters (just halve crab apples if you are using those instead). Then put all the fruit into a maslin or large saucepan, such as you would use for jam making.

* Pour all the water over the fruit and bring to the boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat and cover with a lid. Leave to simmer gently for about an hour.



It still doesn't look appetising, but be patient!

* Don’t boil hard, and keep covered so the water doesn’t evaporate.

* Every 10-15 minutes squash the fruit with a wooden spoon. Don’t over squash or stir the whole time as your jelly will end up cloudy (the taste is unaffected though).

* Pour the whole mess into a jelly bag hung over a large bowl. Bathroom taps are great for the job although we have a hook on a beam in the garage. Just let the juice drip into the bowl.

A beautiful juice emerges

* For the clearest jelly, do not squeeze at all. If you leave the bag there for 12 hours, almost all the juice will have run through by itself anyway. (After the juice has run through, you can put the contents of the bag on the compost heap.)

* Measure the juice, which should be clear and a wonderful amber-rose colour, into a suitably sized clean saucepan and boil hard for 6-7 minutes. Then add an equal amount of sugar (which should be about 6 cups or 1.2kg).

* Bring back to the boil and stir until the sugar has completely dissolved. Boil hard for another 2-3 minutes and test on the back of a spoon for setting.

1. * When it has just begun to set (medlar jelly is best with a soft as opposed to hard consistency) pour or ladle into sterilised, warm jars and seal. Leave to cool.

If you were a bit nervous about your jelly being too hard, and find that is still has not set the next morning, you can put it back into a pan and boil for 4-5 minutes then return to the jars. When cool, medlar jelly should be smooth and soft and have a lovely gleam to it.

So Sue set to work transforming my offerings from the garden into something delicious. And the bletted medlars slowly changed, step by step, from a fairly ugly and unappetising fruit into a refined and beautiful jelly.

Just look at that colour!
It's not amber, like the website said. It's a rich, velvety purple/pink.

 

We got a leg of pork out of the freezer, specifically so we could try the medlar jelly with it, not that we ever need a reason to roast up a nice joint of pork.
And the verdict?

... absolutely delicious.