spuds

Good news post.. I've never had much to do with growing potatoes, partly because I'm a growing novice, partly because occasional contact with spud plots have generally involved pulling up blight ridden rotters. However, this lot have not only been lucky with the weather (ie sun and rain at the right times) but have also been easy, psychedelic*, and delightfully edible. They also serve as a nugget of permaculture - expressed way better than that.

So, this is what happened, and what can happen again..

• You find a spare bit of land (not dug or weeded or any of that tiresome nonsense), ideally next door to some chickens.and lay old cardboard boxes (flattened) on it. (If you don't have a garden or allotment but have a tiny bit of spare yard, try to procure some old tires, stack on said bit, and pretty much follow as below).
• You then chuck some old hay that the rain got last year (or grass cuttings I guess) and put as much as possible on top (in our case about a foot high), pulling it apart if too condensed for growths to push through.
• You take several varieties of potato 'seeds' that someone else has kindly got and left in the sun to start chitting. You nestle them in towards the bottom of the hay near the cardboard, making sure they're covered. You leave them, hosing occasionally if it's unusually dry and sunny. You wait and wait, adding more hay/straw replete with chicken poo from the chicken area next door (or from friendly purveyor of ditto; compost might be a good alternative if this also not an option).
• You then get very excited when you see your first baby leaves popping through, hopping happily, singing sweet praises; or you might just nod sagely.
• You carefully add more chickenpoohay up and around the fledgling leaves.
• You wait, water, wait more, marvelling at growth of potato crops and entire absence of weeds around.
• There's comes a time when stems are thick and leaves plenty, and you fancy some mash or a jacket. You go down to the bed, pull up some hay around a plant, have a quick rummage, and hay presto, there's some spuds. Or if you feel really adventurous, you can just delve in blind, feeling for the big'uns. And there's one of the joys, you don't have to dig up the whole plant with all its fruits at different stages - you just pluck medium or ginormous ones, and leave the babies to keep growing.
• You gobble up, delighting in taste, shape, and - if you decide to grow 'blue' (actually purple) varieties, the *psychedelic look of your mash.

Here's the benefits:

• use up 'waste' materials (cardboard/hay/grass/poo etc)
• no digging
• no weeding
• no piercing of prime spuds with orrible garden fork
• no wastage of tiny potato foetuses
• no washing off heavy soil (you might still like to rinse them!)
• you can have Easter egg hunts in the summer, with loads of free eggs; and not feel too silly doing this as an adult
• you have millions of delicious organic versatile veg for almost no cost
• you're out and about in the rain and sun

Colourful...

...but nothing compared to 

the rainbow chard next door

More appetising than it might look!

All home grown, apart from cuc & tom

(growing in the poly, should be ready soon),

and the camembert (maybe one day)

elderflower fizz

Well here's another joy of summer. The smell, the taste, the feel, the...quest before the very brief season of the flowers of the elder passes for another year.

This part of North Cornwall seems to have a remarkable shortage of elderflowers - or maybe everyone else has thought of this before us - but this at least makes for lots of sunny bike rides and walks searching the lovely lanes and paths near us. Oh, how spiffing famous five! In fact, you don't need to thwart too many baddies and jaunt off on ever so many jolly jaunts to do your thing - a bag full of heads (flowers, not Russians) will do it. And remember, children, to leave lots of flowers for other fizz makers, and for the insects and tree itself!

As I'm somehow in Enid / Delia mode, thought I'd lecture a little more. You probably know how to suck eggs etc, in which case please ignore all below.

I can't remember exactly what we did, chucking lots of stuff together, but here's the River Cottage recipe which sounds about right Hugh.. This makes 6 litres = about 7 bottles*

4 litres hot water

700g sugar

Juice and zest of four lemons

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

About 15 elderflower heads, in full bloom

A pinch of dried yeast (if it's not clearly fermenting after a couple of days)

Mix it all in a fat pan or mixing bowl, cover with tea towel and leave for a few days. Then strain through muslin cloth into old wine bottles, *leaving a few inches at the gap to allow gases to fill, thus hopefully avoiding nasty explosions (best to store somewhere nice and remote just in case...) We mainly used screw top bottles, but tried a couple of posh Grolsch type flip top jobs as well. I wouldn't recommend the latter - when you open them you feel like Jenson Button or some other brilliantly named driver, but unfortunately lose most of it as it erupts out. Screw tops can control release..

 

Leave in bottles for at least a week, and drink with barbecue etc. Lubly jubly. If you tuck in after a week, wonderfully fragrant and sweet but hardly alcoholic; leave a few weeks longer and dryer but more pokey - the choice is yours.. Discovered it's also very good on fruit salad - if you happen to be feeling healthy, and in the sweet position of having no OJ but a cellar (thought we'd store it in the hole under the cabin) of this stuff.

 

 

Tiny bit more here.

 

 

Felix in the woods

Check him out! Felix the Landy, bargain of the century, the communally funded, communally driven, one-eyed monster raving Landy!

After yet another amazing repair job from Mr Jalex Nightingale, Felix has matured from excitable stalling stallion to powerful calm workhorse, most happy to be of service. Not only can he transport chicken houses and yurt crowns, but now also timber. Timber extraction extraordinaire from our steep woods down yonder. His greenhouse emissions may be slightly higher than a traditional logging horse, or even logging elephant (I haven't worked it out), and he provides no manure; but he doesn't go far and is a joy to ride.

So pleasing to have a rare burst of energy and help harness him. Pleased to report my maiden drive down the sleep slope into Trelay woods didn't tip him over the edge; that Danny maintained her head in the back through the branches; and that Olly powered him back up again with more fallen fuel, already seasoned, for next season's fires. And another splendid time with dem dappled bluebells.. Click on a pic to scroll through big view.

Bluebell Wood

I've never properly appreciated bluebells until now. I've wandered Trelay's couple of acres of woodland since October and loved the peace and timelessness of the trees and bracken and valleys, but it's often felt dark and dank and dying. Now, suddenly, the wood's floor has delighted into life. There are pansies, cowslips and three-cornered leeks, and I love the weird and wonderful coiled ferns; but these lovely ladies are surely the daddies, or something along those silly sexy lines.

 

Click on one to big it up and scroll through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Truly, Spring is Sprung

We'll no doubt have more gales, hail, plagues of frogs and locusts and all sorts of mayhem - and when we do, it's not my fault for declaring it's well and truly Spring. We've certainly had lots of that sort of stuff since the last Spring post in Feb. The sun is shining, the weather is hot, your mama's good lookin, the cotton is high (ok, not that one, but it's not summertime quite yet). But we do have all sorts of amazing growth.

Daffs have been replaced by the most amazing bluebells in the wood (which I thought deserved their own page). Apple trees have turned pink, bigger trees have turned green, and to my great relief and satisfaction, the blackthorn and sycamore hedges that we laid over winter have also sprouted leaves, which seems really miraculous given the ferociously hacked, crazy thin slivers that keep their newly horizontal branches connected to the soil.

The first new greens in the veg patch are pushing through the cracked earth in neatish rows, and the leaves of our experimental permaculturalish 'no-dig' spuds are thankfully breaking out of last year's sodden hay, and top-up chicken poo hay from over the fence.

The polytunnel has evolved from a grey wintry haven of relative warmth to a colourful heaven of fertile heat, our composted waste outside the tunnel obviously a big source of that fecundity. So nice to be able to pick spinach, beans, mint, herbs, marigolds and all sorts of spicy salad leaves already; and just to gently hang out there with the weeds, cricket, and purring cat.

Talking of odd felines, they seem to have made friends with Trelay's new Dexter cow and calf. And everyone's made friends with the other Spring additions of three rescue ponies in the top field - whether or not they'll be of any use helping haul timber out of the woods remains to be seen, but they're certainly good therapy value. And good to see the notsopigletish piglets out and about in the sun, or wallowing in their wallows.

There's also lots of evidence about the place of slightly less organic production - the incredible transformation of the carpark thanks to diggers and dumpers and lots of (other people's) hard work, new steps down to the house (ditto), newly exposed cobbled yards, etc.

Lots of photos of all this to follow, taken over the last couple of months - again, probably best to click on the first and then scroll through.

10 points if you name all the flowers, 20 if you find Wally.