Something New With Tomatoes

Read on to find out what I've down to these tomatoes

 

It's been a great year for tomatoes and we have all shapes and colours pouring out of the polytunnel. Sue usually cooks them up, removes the skins and then freezes them. We use them through the year in the same way as tinned tomatoes.
But when another basketful came into the kitchen, we had a problem. Freezers full, plenty enough tomatoes for the coming year.
So I decided to try something different. We recently purchased a steam juicer. It's basically just a steamer with a tube. The steam breaks down the cells in the fruit and pure juice trickles down the tube ready for collection.
And so I loaded up the tomatoes and turned on the gas. It wasn't too long before I'd collected half a pan of translucent tomato juice. I kept steaming until the tomatoes looked pretty sorry for themselves and I had a whole pan of juice.



With my mind on freezer space, I left Sue to watch the pan as we reduced it further and further until it fitted into an ice cube tray.









I wasn't sure what it would taste like, but a dip of the finger and a lick of the tongue was enough to know that we had created something with a vibrant zing to it. A bucketful of tangy tomatoiness in a tiny package. It packed a real punch and will really add a new dimension to our cooking.


As for those rather sorry looking tomatoes, they still had too much flesh inside to ignore.
I wasn't sure whether or not all the flavour would have been already extracted, but decided to push everything through a sieve and see what I got. Again, I reduced it down, though not so drastically. Again it was really tomatoey and will make a great sauce for pasta or to go on a pizza. Alternatively, I can just use a cube instead of tomato paste when I need.

Sheep Scare

Every day I visit the sheep at least twice, often much more. It's important to keep an eye on them, for if one is afflicted by flystrike it can go downhill very quickly. Last week I headed down the land in the morning and my heart sank when I saw a bundle of wool just laying in the grass. It just didn't look right to be sleeping or resting. Something was up. But all the sheep had been fine the previous evening. No illness could strike this quickly, could it? It reminded me of when I found the goose after a fox attack a couple of years ago. But surely the sheep are too big now for this to happen. I clapped my hands hoping that the bundle would lift its head and get to its legs, but nothing. As I approached further, I could see that it was number 6, always the smallest and the weakest. It had only just recovered from a limp which seemed to go on for an age.
As I approached closer, it moved. I ran over and found it fatigued but wriggling and unable to right itself. How can a species survive which is more than capable of rolling onto its back and getting stuck? I lifted number 6 to its feet expecting it to run off ungratefully, but instead its legs gave way and it flopped back onto the ground. I was worried but frustratingly could see nothing obvious to cause this. I lifted her again, this time supporting her, and she managed to stay upright, but quickly sat back down and rolled onto her side when I moved away. I began to contemplate calling the vet for advice, but decided to try just once more. I stayed with her for a few more minutes, steadying her when she wobbled, and then she just waddled off as if nothing had happened.

A little wobbly and a little messy. But still standing.

I guess she had rolled over and tired herself out trying to right herself. Obviously her two left legs had gone to sleep which explains why it took her so long to be able to stand and walk again.
But it shows the importance of checking on the sheep.

Anyhow, back to today and moving the sheep. I keep my sheep on a strip-grazing system. This sounds complicated but it's not. All it means is that I divide the grazing land into sections and move the sheep around the sections in rotation. They munch one area until there's not much left to munch, then they get a fresh green area to gorge on for a week. By the time they get back to the first one, there should be plenty of lush grass in there again.

Ready to move to a new area.

One section seems to be enough to last the sheep for a week, so every Friday it is time to move them on. The operation today would be interesting, for one sheep, the White-faced Woodland, has taken to crossing the line. It has worked out that the electricity only pulses through the fence every second and that if it puts its head down and goes for it, those horns and the coating of wool will see it safely through to the other side. (I'm not actually sure it has quite worked out all the detail, suffice to say that every time I go down to the sheep it is on the greener side of the fence!) It doesn't really matter, as he still stays with the flock, just preferring to eat the greener grass on the other side. Unlike the Shetlands, he doesn't destroy the trees and if I need to he is tame enough to catch.

There's always one!

So I duly created a gap in the fence and called the sheep. Once the first comes, it doesn't take long for the rest to follow. "Hang on a minute! He's eating the green grass over there." Of course, a couple were so busy munching that they didn't notice. Another couple of ewes were engaged in a tussle until they eventually noticed and trotted through the gap.

 

In no time at all, 18 sheep were moved onto new pasture. That just left one. White-faced Woodland was running up and down bleating. Where were all his friends going? He still respects the fence enough that it is some kind of barrier. I let him worry for a while. Maybe it will be a lesson not to keep crossing the fence.

Eventually he found his way through and all was well. But I expect it won't be long until he decides that the grass on the other side is greener!

White-faced Woodland reunited.



And that just leaves two sheep unaccounted for. My Shetland ram and his wether companion. I have moved them into the pigs' old quarters, which has rapidly become overgrown with weeds, in the hope that they will do me a favour and munch it clear again. But I always have to give them a helping hand, chopping most of it down with a grass hook. I guess that some of the stronger tastes must dissipate once the weeds have wilted a little. Anyway, they seem happy enough in there and haven't tried to escape (yet).







Barnsdale Gardens

Every now and again we deliberately try to have a day away from the smallholding, for as much as we enjoy it, we can still fall into the trap of not stepping back to appreciate what we've achieved.

Last Sunday was the Veg Group's summer outing and we had arranged to all meet up at Barnsdale Gardens, just up the A1 near Rutland Water. These were the gardens from where Geoff Hamilton presented Gardener's World when I were a lad.










Fortunately the weather held, just. At a leisurely pace (we don't spend enough time at this pace) we strolled around a series of 39 gardens, each holding trinkets of inspiration.
Some of these ideas will be appearing in my garden soon, maybe.

I returned to Swallow Farm full of plans. So far I've not spent much time on the ornamental side of the garden and what I have attempted has been seriously undermined by the rabbits (as an aside, I have seen a couple with signs of myxomatosis of late. I knew it was near, so it was only a matter of time before it hit the out of control population here. I have 'myxed' emotions about this.)

But I was not lured by the Barnsdale nursery. Instead I have started searching out the seeds I need and looking around for suitable subjects for cuttings.
A trip to a local plant cash'n'carry resulted in the extremely reasonable purchase of 17 box hedging plants and 6 lonicera nitida. From these I have taken a fair multitude of cuttings.

 















I reckon that in another twenty years or so Swallow Farm will be ready to open to the public!

Sweetcorn Salome

The sweetcorn this year has performed slightly oddly. The cobs have swelled and ripened well, but the plants themselves are rather stumpy. The result is that many of the cobs are low down on the plants, within reach of anything that decides to take a nibble.

In the past I have grown my sweetcorn in a 'three sisters' method. This involves growing three crops in one area, corn, squashes (including pumpkins and courgettes) and climbing beans. They are supposed to complement each other in terms of nutritional needs, light and shade. That may work perfectly well in the desert climate where the native American Indians used it, but here in the fens the beans don't seem to do so well in this system.
So this year I tried three different methods of growing my corn.

The first was to grow them in blocks - it is important not to grow sweetcorn in single rows as it is wind-pollinated.
The second was to grow them in stations, 4 sweetcorns, squash, 4 sweetcorns, squash...
The third was to grow a square of 9 corn plants under a wigwam of beans, surrounded by several courgette plants.

In the end, the first two methods did the best. For some reason, those in the third system never got mature enough. Looking back on it, I think they may have gone in a bit later than the others. The beans got nowhere.

So, the conclusion to my experiments is that it does not really matter which pattern you grow it in, as long as it is not in single rows! It does make sense, however, to grow squashes underneath, as the plants quickly creep along the ground between the corn plants and their leaves shade the ground nicely, keeping in the moisture and shading out the weeds.

One reason why my sweetcorn plants were a bit stumpy this year may be that I kept them in modules a little too long. I also used a different supplier, as my original seed supplier stopped stocking my favourite variety, Sweetcorn Lark. I doubt the change of supplier had much to do with anything.

So, when the field next door was harvested a few days ago, I was keen to gather in the corn cobs, for the invading rats are more than capable of climbing a corn plant to reach the succulent cobs, not that they'd need to climb very high this year.
Most of the cobs were nicely swollen and the tassels had turned brown, so in theory they should be ready. However, in this country sweetcorn needs a long growing season to get enough sunshine and I had squeezed this at both ends of the season. I sent Sue in to test one of the cobs and it was deliciously sweet and ripe.

192 sweetcorn cobs in a wheelbarrow

We then set about the task of harvesting 192 sweetcorn cobs. Some plants had two or even three cobs, but others we left unharvested in the hope that they would swell and ripen further.

Not many to go

I lugged the wheelbarrow full of cobs up to the house and set about stripping (the cobs). To be honest, some of them could have done with an extra couple of weeks on the plant as they had not fully ripened, but we had to balance that against the risk of them being nibbled. Also, if they are left on the plant too long they can go too starchy. Harvesting on a large scale becomes more tricky once the summer holidays are over too.
Some of the cobs had developed patchily. I guess this is down to not being well pollinated.
In the end we got nearly 150 cobs though. We put them whole into the freezer. No blanching. This has always worked well for us and should keep us supplied with delicious corn cobs throughout the year, until next August and the next harvest.

In fact, we've got enough for Sue to make some sweetcorn relish and the rejects, the unripe and patchy ones, well let's say that the chickens were very grateful indeed.

Stripping back 192 corn cobs, the mind wanders. So I leave you with a somewhat quirky version of the dance of the seven veils. Sweetcorn Salome!

 

No need for the Pied Piper.

This was the view from the bedroom window when we woke up on Tuesday morning. For on Monday they came to harvest the wheat field next door. Fortunately the wind was coming from the north-west (very rare here) which meant that the dust cloud kicked up by the combine harvester swept away from the house and over the fields.
Dare I say it, but it's beginning to feel a bit like autumn! I've heard more chiffchaffs and willow warblers calling on the farm than ever, They are obviously heading south through the country on their autumn migration. Most of the local fields have been harvested and our efforts here on the smallholding are dedicated to gathering in the crops. But the fields being harvested has another consequence for us. Last week I began catching field mice in the polytunnel traps. It's usually voles. This may sound cruel, but otherwise I'd lose half my crops in there. They love to climb the corn stems and nibble on the cobs and have even been known to clamber up the tomato vines and eat those. But it's their bigger cousins who are less savoury, for the combines drive the rats out of the fields. For the last couple of days, you can't drive a country road without seeing them squashed on the tarmac or scurrying along the verges. A couple of buzzards have been unusually vocal, perching atop our ash trees waiting to take advantage of the chaos created in the rodent world below.
Inevitably signs of the rats' presence will appear on the farm, tunnels under fences, runs through the grass. But I am countryfolk now. They are firmly under control and I know to bait heavily at this time of year. It's far better to hit them hard at the critical time. By doing this, in the long term I use the minimum amount of poison that I can get away with.

In fact, although I make it sound as if we live in a vermin-ridden landscape, we now very rarely see rats on the farm and even at this time of year there will only be a tiny number. Probably far fewer than scurry secretively around your average urban garden.

Playing God with Sheep. No more Head Butts!

Which ones have to go?

The trouble with rams is, like young men, they tend to let their hormones rule. They occasionally indulge in bouts of laddish behaviour, stomping about, sniffing the air and charging headlong at each other...THUD!
Because of this, the four Shetland rams which I purchased a few months ago were never going to all make it into their third year.

The lucky one, who I call Doc, is no longer intact, so to speak. This makes him a wether and as such he qualifies as a perfect companion for a fully equipped ram.

Doc

The unlucky one, I rather crassly named Hitler. He only has one ball. The castration ring obviously missed its mark.
Then there are the two who obviously breathed in deeply when the castration rings were being doled out. So I had to play god and decide which would survive.

The lucky survivor will spend his next few years sharing a paddock with Doc. Come late autumn he will get to visit the girls.

When some friends enquired about buying a lamb, I had to tell them that all the lambs for this year were sold, but that I did need to thin down a little on the Shetland rams. I suddenly wondered, is there such a thing as ram taint? For male pigs, once their hormones get active, can acquire a rather unpleasant taste, especially if kept with sows. This is known as boar taint. I researched the subject and found it to be a rather grey area. Some said that the meat may taste a bit stronger, 'goaty', but many said that they could taste no difference. The crucial thing seemed to be to send them off before they got too randy in the breeding season.
And so, for the last month, the Shetland rams have been living away from the ewes. Last Sunday was D-day. I'd chosen the survivor, based on his good looks, ample equipment (!) and on his size. I actually chose to go for the smaller of the rams - something a commercial farmer would surely not do - precisely because the whole point of Shetlands is that they are a smaller, slower growing breed. Most of the ones I eventually send for meat will be hogget, two year old sheep, for Shetland hogget is supposedly some of the best meat you can get. A smaller ram would make for simpler lambing in the spring too.

So the decision was made, the sheep were loaded into the trailer and off we went. The butcher will have collected them by the time I publish this and is going to hang them for a week. Today, though, I pick up the horns, since a couple of friends have requested them to use as handle for walking sticks / crooks.

Anyway, you're probably wondering who is the lucky survivor.

And here he is. I may even give him a name now. Any suggestions?