Bringing in the harvest down at Jimmy's

Jimmy Doherty is an absolute hero of mine. We went to Jimmy's Farm a few years back when Matt had bought me a tour of the farm and lunch with Jimmy himself and he is such an inspirational chap. So, imagine our delight when we discovered that he was hosting a food and music festival.

In case you don't know who Jimmy is, this is he (holding his month old baby in a carrier...aaaah):



We booked tickets months and months ago before we knew the line up so I was soooo excited to discover that my favourite band (The Futureheads) were playing. The music was brilliant, of course, and the atmosphere fantastic:




The food was also brilliant. On the first night I had dinner from Wahaca, the Mexican "street food" restaurant set up by Tomasina Myers who won masterchef a few years back. I've been to the restaurant in London a few times and it never disapoints - it's just my kind of food! On Sunday we had some Greek-style salad from the "farmers market" area, and a pasty from Jimmy's shop. Being such a small festival it was a great place to just see people. We watched The Hairy Bikers do a cooking demo and they were jolly funny and just as entertaining as on TV:


(a speeding biker)


(bikers in action)

Last, and by no means least, my gardening guru, Alys Fowler was there! Matt said I was all red every time I saw her and I saw her lots - she clearly wanted to be my friend because she queued next to me for breakfast and sat behind us at Wahaca:



She talked about wild food and some unusual ideas for preserving and pickling, which was fascinating, and we even won a prize from her of some walnuts that she had collected on her drive down from Birmingham. Brilliant!

I was a bit of a loser and asked for her autograph (I never do that, but I just couldn't not!) and talked to her about flea beetles, a very important subject I'm sure you'll agree.




Finally, a visit to Jimmy's Farm wouldn't be complete without a mention of the pigs. We had a lovely talk from a pig expert about the different breeds and they all came out to show themselves off:

Gloucester Old Spot

Large Black

Tamworth

Wessex/Saddleback

I thought this chap was an Essex but he's clearly not so he's nameless

Middle White


It was just running around pigs that kept us amused either, there was plenty of piggy to fill our tummies (Katy, don't scroll down)...














Pass me the apple sauce!

Produce update

I haven't done an update on the food that we're getting from our garden for a while so I thought it was about time...

A couple of weeks ago we went down to the allotment, basket in hand, and had a good old harvest. The peas are pretty much spent so we picked the last of those (I think we've had over 4 months of peas, which is great considering I only successionally sowed twice and we had pea moth larvae). Some of the squash had also gone orange and hadn't grown in a few weeks so I decided to pick those. I'm glad I did because we now have a load more femal flowers fruiting, which is very exciting. We obviously had some courgettes (who doesn't?!) and the first of our tomatillos were ready so I picked some of those. I collected a jar of raspberries and I have also presented, harvest festival style, some of our chillis here. We've had over 15 chillis now from our 3 plants (and a good few to ripen yet) and 1 chilli is hot enough for a good kick in 4 portions of chilli!



To celebrate our bounty, I roasted a squash, some courgettes, tomatillos and a chilli (which was a bit too hot!) with some of my mum's garlic and some thyme form the garden and we had it for a few meals with couscous.



We are also continuing to get a continuous crop of tomatoes, although no new ones are growing now as you would expect. I picked a small punnet's worth today to add to a paella that I'm cooking for friends on Friday night. Despite it not being a traditional paella ingredient, I am going to see if I can hide some courgette in there!

We all need some...preservation

It's been a while since I've updated the blog as you will see (once again I blame it on weddings, festivals and a PhD) so I have quite a bit to update on.

Following on from the tomato ketchup success (it really is very delicious) i got the preserving bug.

Firstly, I emptied the fridge of summer fruit so made a "summer fruit jam" which contained various quantities of blueberries, blackcurrants, raspberries and some alpine strawberries. It's quite delicious and has a lovely tart edge from the blackcurrants:



Secondly, in true self-sufficientish style, I swapped half a dozen eggs for 1.5kg of plums from a lady at work. I kept some aside to grill with sugar and serve with ice cream but the rest I made into little jars of spiced plum chutney, which is yummy, and should be good for Christmas - I think it'll go well with turkey, or with my special Boxing day sprout and sweed sarnies (yummm!).

Unfortunately I haven't taken any photos of the chitney jars so here is a montage of some of our produce:



Finally, I walk in the gate every day and brush past the lovely bushy mint bush and it makes me long for mojitos so i decided to do something useful with some of the mint and make some mint jelly. My mummy made some delicious mint jelly when I was younger, which had lots of sugar and was like minty-jam. So, I decided to immitate this and make some lovely sweet mint jelly. It's very sticky but very nice and goes well with potatoes (and, I imagine, the aforementioned sprout and and sweed sanger):



So we have well stocked cupbopards for the winter...as long as our diet consists only of preserves!

Ketchup catch up

We went to the market on Saturday morning and, on the veg stall, they were giving away 4kg boxes of very ripe cherry toms for £2! Not ones to pass on a bargain, we snapped it up to make some ketchup!

Here's a summary of the process, which took quite a lot of time because of the volume!






The finished product, 5 bottles of ketchup and 2 of chilli ketchup...



and I have to say, it's absolutely delicious!

It's all over!

At last, after 3 weekends of work, the pergola and paving is complete! We finish the weekend once again, absolutely knackered, but satisfied to be done!

Here it is:




We're so pleased with it, even if it does look a bit orange at the moment! I have planted the hop on the right, with the fig tree in front as well as some wild strawberries which I had in pots but I thought would be lovely rambling around the base of the fig once they get the chance. I can't wait to see how it develops over the years as the greenery takes over. I have ordered our grape vine (Kentish Claret) to go on the left hand side. I can't wait to get a little bench to go underneath it...hopefully next weekend!

As you can see, the lawn has taken a bit of a battering so I have sowed some grass seed and hopefully it'll recover in no time.

Other news of the day is that our beautiful Hollyhock took a battering in the wind today and sadly one of the stalks snapped. Sad for the front garden but happy for the house because I stripped the flowers off and filled a couple of vases. Lovely!




It's got to be bedtime soon. It's been such an active weekend with all of the digging and two outings on my new bike. I'm so glad I'm working from home tomorrow - lie in!

I want to ride my bicycle

Tonbridge, despite being a small town, has 3 bike shops! The best, in my humble opinion is a little shed crammed full of second hand bikes run by a man who, we are told, as a further 200 in his garden at home as well as a load more in a lock up! For some time we have been pondering whether to get a bike so, finding ourselves with a free Saturday morning, we paid him a visit.

We were seriously tempted by the tandem he had standing there but decided that it might not be very practical! So, I am now the proud owner of a very lovely metallic orange Puch Sprint...



Isn't she beeeeeooootiful? I immediately popped down to one of the other bike shops (somewhat larger!) and got her a basket which I think she wears very well indeed.

I haven't really riden a bike for at least a decade but was pleased with how well I got on. I did a turn of the park, discovering a little village of barges on the river which I didn't know existed. I let Matt have a go too. The bike man is going to see if he has any vintagy men's bikes at home so we will pop back next Saturday to find out and, fingers crossed, we can both have one!

1 more of our 52 meals

We managed to have another of our 52 meals to save the planet (from Home Farmer magazine - aiming to grow enough to make 1 meal a week from your own produce) last week - stuffed courgette (stuffed with breadcrumbs, nuts, tomatoes, courgettes flesh and cheese)with new potatoes and salad. All from the garden! (apart from some of the stuffing)



Very excitingly, we are also getting loads of ripe tomatoes. We have always suffered from Blight in the past and, as such, have always had to make do with green tomatoes but tihs year we have red! We have just had some for dinner with cheese and ham on toast - yummmm!

Wild flower meadow

For Christmas my sister, Katy, gave me a couple of packets of wild flowers, one of which I scattered down the back of the allotment where nothing else will grow and they've done remarkably well. Here is a selection:

Pergola shangrila

On Saturday night I had my last hen night of the year (number 5!) and Matt his penultimate wedding (number 4) so we went our seperate ways to eat drink and be merry. This made it doubly difficult to get up early on Sunday morning to lay a patio but lay we did...for 11 hours! We cam frustratingly close but the weather and the final episode of Sherlock conspired against us so we put it on hold and have just now finished.



The garden looks like a building site still, and the poor grass is suffering but by the weekend (in which we have nothing to do - hurrah!) we will have it all cleared and I will be spending Saturday digging a nice big hole for the giant pot I've bought for the fig tree while Matt finishes the patio edges and we attach the trellis. I might make a trip to the garden centre to get some nice shade loving plants for the back of the patio, where this is a little strip of mud.



After we finished there was nothing else to do that have a celebratory cheese cake and shandy. A meal fit for royalty!

A Blue day

Saturday was an emotional day for us as we said goodbye to our little Blue. Poor thing has always, in the 7 months that we've had her, been sickly, and has been laying softies for a couple of months. She hadn't eaten for days so we took her to the vet and he confirmed what we thought - egg peritonitis. It's fatal 99% of the time and although she looked perky we decided it would be cruel to keep her alive just for our benefit so the very nice vet let us say goodbye and off she went. We know we did the right thing but still sad to see her go - we always love the under-chicken and she was certainly that!

Pergola-la-la

I have been thinking about a pergola for some time. An odd thing to think about I'm sure you'll agree but I have been certain that our garden really lacked it. Our neighbours gardens are so empty of plants etc (although one side is getting better) that we don't get anything filling any space so it makes our garden feel even emptier! So I decided a pergola was the answer...

This weekend just gone we took a couple of days off so we had some time to get it done. We took our little car down to the local timber merchants and placed our order, which they prepared straight away (very nice chaps) - we managed to fit it all in the car and get it home without losing any out of the open boot (phew!).



Two very hot and sweaty days later we got the main posts up:



I'm afraid I don't have a photo of the finished product yet. The cross beams are now on (not in this photo). We are also going to put some trellis panels on the left and right hand side (to the left and right of the main posts) for the grape and hop to grow up. The fig tree is also going to go into the ground in front of the right hand side.



We also still have the patio to finish. We tried to get some nice reclaimed tiles from the local reclamation yard but were shocked to discover that they were £3.50 each (we would have needed 250!), which is considerably more expensive than those that we've seen before so plan B was Homebase where we found some nice-ish brick tiles. Not perfect but they'll do! We need over 200 of them so I did 2 shifts bringing them home in the car so that it wasn't too heavy. I still have one or two more loads to go but couldn't face it this weekend so I will need to get up early on Saturday to get them while Matt starts preparing the ground for laying them.

The chickens decided that we needed some assistance with the pergola. This is Rom, who decided that a pile of bricks would be a good place to sit (she just hopped up there. Isn't she clever!)



Blue, who is still quite ill and having antibiotics, was also trying to help Matt by removing bugs and worms from below the ladder. Isn't she good.



Having dug out the post holes, and some of the paving area, we made a nice pile of soil on some tarpaulin ready to go down to the allotment. The girls, however, had different ideas. Apparently a neat pile is not the done thing and a nice flat dusty spread across the lawn would be much better:

Ground Force

I have been feeling rather down about our garden recently - the grass is looking a bit scraggy (I refuse to water it), and the chickens went on a rampage last week and flattened lots of plants. I have also been neglecting the beds a little bit recently (working and doing a PhD doesn't leave much time for gardening!) and we are planning on building a pergola so it feels a little bit in limbo.

In order to make myself feel a bit better me and my mummy went plant shopping at the weekend - spending some of my birthday money from grandma.

A lovely Hibiscus ("red heart") - with big white flowers with a dark red centre, which I have put near the back and hoping it will fill out nicely over the next few months and years.

I managed to find a white Hollyhock which I was delighted about, being one of my favourite flowering plants. It's gone in at the back in the hope that it will spread and get nice and tall in future years. Katy has also given me a pink one which she has grown from seed from one of her plants so hopefully we will get some nice big spikes of flower next year to add to the "family"!



The most gorgeous Delphinium (Guardian Blue) with flowers which look blue but are actually a mixture of blue and purple. Again, at the back, and there are plenty of buds which I'm hoping will open.



Coreopsis (grandiflora Sunfire), which has amazing yellow flowers with a red centre, and has tonnes of flowers, which I am hoping I can keep going by deadheading and picking for cut flowers - the bees seem to love it!



Next to the bright yellow sunfire, I have a Catanache (blue), which has silvery foliage which lots of purple flowers on tall stems. They close up in the evening so I don't have a photo, but they are very pretty and make a lovely rustling sound in the wind.

I also got some little plants to go at the front of the bed - a lovely little yellow poppy, which again has lots of buds which I am hoping will open. It looks everso delecate so I am hoping I don't kill it!



Also at the front is this very pretty Sanvitalia (Inca), which has tiny yellow daisy like flowers. I think it should spread nicely under the larger plants.



Finally, these lovely evergreen bedding plants (Lysimachia Aurea), on the right, which has beautiful light green foliage which looks like it will spread across the ground and provide some nice winter colour.



The produce that we have in the garden is also doing really well. We have some cayenne chillis in the greenhouse, which has HUGE chillis on them. I've done so much better this year at watering and tending them and it really shows. I just need to keep it up now! The tomatoes, which I hadn't intended to grow but just popped up out of mummy's compost! I'm glad they did though, and hopefully August will be sunny enough to ripen them.



All in all I think the garden looks a lot better. Not perfect, I still have a lot that I want to do, not least build the the pergola. I would also like to fill it with more plants including some climbing up the fences on either side to make it feel more lush.