Forcing Rhubarb

still Thursday 5th April 2018
Forcing Rhubarb
Just a quick one this.
We have lots of rhubarb plants, far too much for us to use every year. This is no bad thing though, since it means the plants are not over harvested. Rhubarb is a great plant because it basically looks after itself and is just about the first to poke its head out of the ground every year.
The advantage of perennial crops is that they are ready to go every year as soon as the sun warms the soil. They give a crop way before the other plants are even ready to go outside
The other big advantage of rhubarb is that it shades out everything else, so gives a virtually maintenance free bed.

This year I decided to try something I've never done before and force my rhubarb. This involves covering over a whole crown to deprive it of light. This causes the stems to shoot upwards and to grow pale pink, giving them a more delicate flavour than the more earthy rhubarb hit of the normal stems. It also gives a crop a couple of weeks earlier.

You can buy some very nice looking terracotta rhubarb forcers for fifty quid or more, but mine are hidden away behind the compost bins in one of the less attractive parts of the plot, so something more basic was called upon to do the job - upturned black plastic dustbins. I put a tyre on top of each to prevent them being blown over by the wind. Being black, I figured the bins would help raise the temperature inside as well as depriving the stems of light and giving them shelter from the wind.

The terracotta forcers usually have  a small hole in the top, maybe to give the rhubarb a small light source to reach for, but I decided to try my plastic bins without a hole. There was nothing to lose if it didn't work.

To cut to the chase, here are the results.

You can see the difference between the forced stems and those left to grow naturally. A very successful experiment I would conclude.

Forcing rhubarb like this does sap its energy, so I will take it easy on harvesting these two crowns any further and will choose different crowns to force next year.

Now for a rhubarb and orange crumble!

Friday 6th April
Is It Spring Yet?

I know I keep going on about it, but the weather so far this year has been pretty dreadful. Winter dragged on and Spring hasn't exactly hit the ground running.
We are now behind. Maybe as much as four weeks behind. Blossom is only just starting to appear, the soil is still wet and cold and seedlings have no stimulus to get growing.

But at least yesterday's lovely weather dried out the soil just enough to try the rotavator today. And a stiff warm breeze today continued to drive the moisture of the surface.

The sun didn't manage to appear until late afternoon, but the warm southerly breeze meant that the wet soil lifted to the top got a chance to dry out and I was able to rotavate for a second time in the evening.

Tomorrow I hope to get the new potatoes in and to plant the onion sets. Later than I would have hoped, but I'm sure everything will catch up by the end of the year.

An Early Spring Smallholding Week

What I love about working on the smallholding is the rich variety of jobs. So, by way of a bit of a catch up, here's a quick overview of a week here on Swallow Farm.

Thursday 15th February 2018
I started the day by jointing the ducks I recently dispatched and plucked - I am getting better and better at getting all the meat off the bone, which is great as I hate to waste anything when it is an animal's life we are talking about.
Hazel Coppicing
A trip to the vets for standard pet supplies hurt the wallet as usual, but we stopped off at a fellow smallholder's place on the way back to help coppice some hazel. Just one tree for this year but it gave us a fair haul of useable poles. They are a bit rustic but should be ok for what I have in mind, which is to make some hazel and willow hurdles. I had forgotten that the willow needs to be cut for a couple of weeks before it can be sufficiently bent without snapping, so that job has gone on the list.

I would normally cut all the growth at ground level, leaving sloped edges to shed water,

but the owner wanted this year's growth left - which made cutting a lot, lot trickier.

Friday 16th February 2018

The large water butt (an IBC - Intermediate Bulk Container) has been working well as a reservoir from the gutter to the wildlife pond. But the best laid plans... today I just needed to move it about 4 feet to make room for something else.
Willow harvesting

The job went more smoothly than I imagined, so I got straight on with harvesting the remaining willows. For the moment they can lay in neat piles until they have weathered enough to use for hurdle making.

Let there be light in the polytunnel
With jobs falling thick and fast, I made hay while the sun shone and cleaned the polytunnel. I have bought a new long-handled squeegee and soft broom for this and all was going well until a small plastic protrusion went straight through the polytunnel plastic. Fortunately I had a couple of foot of repair tape left over. More has been ordered as this is one thing you want in stock on the rare occasions when it is needed.

The monster chicks foraging in the rhubarb bed.

The upturned bins are for forcing pink rhubarb.

Saturday 17th February 2018

Rhubarb forcing

Not much done today, though I did place a couple of plastic dustbins over two of my rhubarb crowns in the hope that I can get a small crop of forced rhubarb this year. We'll see how it goes.

Sunday 18th February 2018

Grow-Your-Own Motivation

A day spent with the Grow-Your-Own group. I have handed over the reins of this group as I have taken on being Chair of the Smallholders Club and that is taking up quite enough of my time.

Our subject for the day was succession planting and we had a very informative discussion. I showed off my seed organisation system, which I can't show you as it is patent pending (actually it's not, but it should be).

More importantly we enjoyed a high quality bring and share meal. Then there was more club business. Four of the Grow-Your-Own group are now committee members of the Fenland Smallholders Club and we informed the others that the group had volunteered to organise the April club meeting. As this would be the first I had been in charge of as Chair, I want to make it a good one.

Lots of ideas flew about and I think we will put on quite a show.

I always come back from the Grow-our-Own group feeling inspired and reinvigorated.

Monday 19th February

Early Crops

Finally the polytunnel is ready for me to start planting. (I discovered that the old soft broom head fitted the new gubbins I've bought, making for the perfect polytunnel cleaning set up).

In went ten Arran Pilot seed potatoes for a super early crop of new potatoes. I sowed carrots, beetroots, turnips and lettuce too. The polytunnel is great for squeezing an extra crop in before anything is possible in the unprotected beds outside.

Turkeys not just for Christmas

I managed to catch and dispatch the superfluous male turkey - important to do this while I could still tell it from the older stag.

I got it all plucked too while it was still warm. I find turkeys the easiest of all poultry to pluck.

Primocane Raspberries

With these jobs done before lunch, I continued on to cutting back the stems of my autumn fruiting raspberries. It is amazing that from nothing new stems will shoot up, flower and fruit all before winter comes round again.

These are my new raspberries, one called Joan J which gets rave reviews from everyone and one called All Gold (though it doesn't produce chocolate raspberries and they're not Terry's!)

Another Re-organisation

With drizzle coming down all day, I was by now getting pretty damp. The water table is high which means that any rain makes the soil unworkable and things churn up pretty quickly. So I continued the day reorganising the stables. I have made some room in there and want to make good use of the space. It is amazing how every space I create seems to fill up with 'stuff', hence the endless reorganisations.

And finally, despite the weather forecast for the coming week, there are more definite signs of spring. Here's a photo of some catkins I took today.

Rhubarb Resurrection

Sunday 7th January 2018

The somewhat strained look on my face is because

I was trying to hold the trophy, the whopping great mangel

and take a selfie!

This was taken a few years back.

I didn't grow mangels one year, but every other the

Jeff Yates Mangel Shield has sat proudly on my mantelpiece.

Mangel disaster
Mangel or Mangold Wurzels are a traditional fodder crop, a member of the beet family. They are hardly grown for that purpose these days, but I like to keep the tradition going. Pigs, sheep and chickens all love them. They are an easy and attractive crop to grow.
On top of that, the Smallholders Club has an annual mangel growing competition. Participation is sadly less and less each year, but I still take great delight in seeing the trophy sitting on my mantelpiece.
But the last online supplier of the variety I have always grown, Brigadier, has ceased trading on line and no longer stocks the seeds.
I've even emailed the committee of the mangel hurling society to try to source them, but it is increasingly looking like I will, at the very least, have to change varieties. I'm not sure the sheep are going to be too happy.

Rhubarb awakes from its dormancy
While I was pottering about today I noticed that the rhubarb bed was coming back to life for the spring. The soft new growth will get knocked back a few times by the frosts. This happens every year but it doesn't seem to harm the plants. I could trying mulching them with straw, but that would just harbour slugs and the chickens would scratch it away anyway.

I might try forcing a couple of plants this year, just using inverted black dustbins.

Parsnips and Leeks allowed to Flower

Thursday 1st June
A few images from the veg patch

We never got through last year's bumper crops of parsnips and leeks

so I have left them in to flower.

They are a great attractant to predatory insects such as hoverflies.

Globe artichokes in amongst the grasses, poppies and Scorzonera flowers

The geese protect their two goslings along the edible hedge

A hoverfly doing its job

on one of the

polytunnel melon flowers

Friday 2nd June
Sue did a mega rhubarb pick again today, probably the last harvest of the year. We will leave it now to capture some energy for the plants.
I am looking forward to sampling the rhubarb and fig chutney when its ready. Meanwhile I'll have to settle for a nice bit of rhubarb crumble.

While Sue was busy with that, I put the finishing touches to the brassica netting, where I will grow the members of the cabbage family which demand a long period in the ground, cauliflowers, winter cabbages and Romanesco.

Rhubarb, Broodies, Basket-making and Twitching... and more

7th May

Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Rhubarb.... Today Sue picked 14kg of Rhubarb and set about turning it into leather, ice-cream and stewed rhubarb. The rest she froze. Rhubarb is another of those crops which is ridiculously easy to grow but ridiculously expensive to buy. If you ignore the freezer, it is highly seasonal, which makes it special when it comes around each year.







While Sue was doing that, I was undertaking a bit of DIY.
Every time a hen goes broody we have been putting eggs under her, either Ixworth chicken eggs (for meat birds eventually) or Muscovy ducks (again for meat).

The trouble is that we are running out of homes to place the young families. With this in mind I responded to a Facebook advert for a broody box - basically a small hen house with a simple run. When I went to collect it, I was able to get two at a discount price.
However, they weren't wonderfully built. But they did give me a useful starting point and I spend today pretty much dismantling and reassembling them, adding small design features to make them more functional.

As with all jobs, this took longer than expected, but I was pretty happy with the end result. As one of our hens hadn't moved out of the chicken house for two days, we immediately moved her into one of the nest boxes on top of ten Ixworth eggs and closed the door to allow her to settle down.





I then embarked on another job, to weed and rotavate the flower beds in preparation for sowing the annual mixes. I knew that a few nettles had crept in over winter, but as long as these don't establish a deep root system they are easily pulled out. What I hadn't bargained for was the encroachment of creeping buttercups. These have a compact root system which clings onto the soil with a vice-like grip, meaning they have to be individually dug up. A couple of hours later or more I was eventualy finished. It had turned into a very physical job but I'm sure it will be worth it when the beds are a riot of colour.

Other things that happened today, in no particular order:

Another day of hot weather and the strawberries will be ready.

 

Time to plant up the shop-bought

lemon grass. The roots have developed nicely.

Basket making homework

before our session tomorrow

Growing early mangetout in the poltunnel is paying handsome dividends

8th May

The day started very early as I aimed to be at Gibraltar Point (near Skegness) by sunrise to see an Alpine Accentor. These birds are very rare in Britain and the only one I've seen here was over ten years ago. So with news the evening before of one poking about on a feeder just an hour's drive away, I set the alarm for early. Unfortunately the bird didn't play ball, vanishing overnight, but it was good to see so many of my birding friends there.
The day warmed up nicely and by the time I rolled up back on the farm the temperature had soared into the high 20's (high 70s for the oldies out there)

I couldn't hang around though, for I was due back at the Green Backyard in Peterborough for the second of my basket-making sessions. Everyone was impressed with my homework and I continued weaving until I was ready to put a rim on. An unexpected bonus was a handle - I had presumed it would be too complicated.
I also got to bring home quite a few long willow cuttings so that I can grow more of my own basketry willow. I've put them in the water butt with the other willows which have well and truly rooted. The hormones from the others should help my new ones to root.

There was still time at the end of the day to get most of the lawns mowed... again. A brief rest to chat to our neighbour Don was interrupted when we spotted a Short-eared Owl quartering the farm. Don told me that he had seen two together recently. It is getting late in the year for them to be migrating, so with a bit of luck they will become a regular sight.

That wasn't it for wildlife today. For when I let the dogs out just before their bedtime, there just outside the patio door was a spiky visitor. The dogs just sniffed at it and wandered off. It's only the second hedgehog I've seen on the farm. The first was caught in a rabbit trap (and safely released) last year.




9th May
At midnight last night I picked up reports of a pelican in Cornwall. It had initially been identified as a White Pelican, a sure escape so of no particular interest to the twitching fraternity. But the midnight message had a photo of a Dalmatian Pelican - a potential wild vagrant to this country. It had been seen in three different places on the sea. I resisted the temptation to head down overnight. A seven hour drive for a bird which could be anywhere off Cornwall is the sort of crazy manoeuvre I used to pull but I now take a (slightly) more balanced approach.

I awoke late with a very thick head. Pager news. The pelican just flew over Lands End! All that stopped me going was the thick head. I went out into the veg plot and tried to forget about the pelican. It was another very hot day. I had planned to sow seeds ahead of forecast rain, but the soil was very dry and lumpy so I decided to delay. Everything needed water so I set about the task of topping up all the poultry drinkers, duck pools, sheep buckets... when... the pager started wailing. That PELICAN. Some great detective work had identified it as the same bird which had been in Poland the previous month. This bird certainly hadn't just hopped out of some Cornish zoo. Should I go now? I wouldn't arrive till late in the day and the bird hadn't exactly been pinned down to one place. I reluctantly decided to stay put, but changed my plans for the rest of the day. Nothing too strenuous, for an overnight drive to Cornwall was surely in the offing.

I carried on with the watering, giving everything in the polytunnel a good drenching as it might be a couple of days before it got watered again.

Sometime during the afternoon I looked in on Elvis, for this was the first due date for the eggs she had been sitting on, and this is what I saw.

Yes. I know it's got a strange bill for a chicken. Elvis has been sitting on Muscovy duck eggs! It's not the first time she has hatched out ducklings and she doesn't seen quite so surprised this time.

At 8 in the evening I headed off to Sandy, Bedfordshire, to pick up a birding friend before embarking on the trip to Cornwall...

A country kitchen

Wednesday 20th June 2012
Summer Solstice.

Rhubarab, rhubarb, rhubarb...

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb! Rhubarb crumble, rhubarb and custard, rhubarb and ginger jam, rhubarb and vanilla jelly, rhubarb chutney. Yes, Sue has been busy plundering Don's rhubarb!

And the latest? Rhubarb vodka and rhubarb leather. The last of these is thin sheets of rhubarb juice and puree dried on a low heat in the oven. The end product is packed with flavour and the tartness of the rhubarb adds a tangy bite.

Sue's been getting boozy too. The cider has been siphoned out of the demijohns and is all bottled up ready for consumption. It just needs a gorgeous, hot summer's day to provide the perfect opportunity to christen it.

Then there's this...

Elderflower champagne.

It's best to pick the elderflowers on a hot, sunny day, but if we waited for one of those there'd be no flowers left! The potion was mixed in a large cauldron (aka large, plastic bin) and left for a day. Then into bottles to ferment. We did try some of the liquid and it was pleasantly refreshing. Another drink for a hot summer's day.

We now wait a week and hope the bottles don't explode. We'll keep an eye on them and release some pressure if need be. We've tried plastic and glass bottles to see which work best and they're all packed in a bin with pillows on top just in case they blow up! We'll let you know how it turns out.

Meanwhile, this could just be the beginning of the next glut...

Strawberry wine anyone?