The Good Life - Harvest on the 26th June

The Good Life - Harvest and honeymoon on the 20th June

 

 Harvest shot; strawberries, turnips, oregano, carrots, beetroot, peas and radishes.

 

Corinne, Paul and Sonia

 

 Paula and Sonia

The Good Life - Harvest on the 13th June

While most of the vegetables are still quite young we have managed to take a little harvest this weekend. The radishes and lettuce are plentiful and need to be used. Elsewhere the rocket, beetroot, oregano and mustard flower and parsley are maturing well.

This week we planted our pumpkins, courgettes, patissons and butternut squash. Our other seedlings continue to make good progress and in particular the fennel and perennial spinach shall be ready to transplant very soon. The broad beans have proved to be very healthy and aphid free so far. Their neighbours, the peas had a slow start and Corinne spent some time attaching their tender stems to bamboo canes to encourage them to grow in a more vertical and skyward direction. In the last week the potatoes have grown very tall and they are beginning to flower. The strawberry plants are also fruiting which should give us a pleasant diversity of fruit and vegetables over the next two or three weeks.

Corinne attaching the peas

The Good Life - Operation weed removal

The plot just prior to the deluge on the June Bank Holiday

The Good Life - Harvest on the 6th June

Freshly uprooted white and red radish

The last three weeks have proved to be a period of prodigious growth in the allotment. Along with the growth of the vegetables we have also had to deal with the unwelcome advances made by weeds, which have become rampant in places. While we have been able to take small amounts of produce from the allotment over the last few weeks when thinning some of the early growth, this weekend the strong period of growth has enabled us to take a good variety of produce for the table. Lettuce, mustard leaf and radish crops are thriving at the moment along with the sorrel, perennial spinach and chard. A good salad now accompanies every meal and Corinne has served up nice dishes of chard gratinee.

Elsewhere in the allotment the turnips and beetroots have been transplanted and are growing well. Harry has also transferred his sweet corn from the glass house to the plot and lines of cabbages are appearing in the beds where available space remains.

Signs of plunder in my lettuce bed

The weather has been warm over the last few weeks accompanied and complimented by scattered showers. The Entry into summer has been sudden and the remnants of a cold winter and spring have not completely been left behind. We are still nervous about planting the patission, butternut squash and pumpkin which could be easily damaged by a cold snap. There is a change in the weather forecast over the next week and the weather is expected to become cooler once again. Caution prevails.

Dappled high cloud in the evening sky during the week

The Good Life - St George's mushroom

A small panier of St George's Mushrooms

“Les Champignons dans la Nature” by J. Jaccottet [Neuchatel, 1925] opens with the following line: “L’Homme a eté creé pour la marche….” which simply translated means “Man was created for walking”. The improvements in transport noted then in 1925, which he lists as including electric trams and bicycles, reduced ones desire for walking and therefore ability to access the countryside and forests. For one who enjoyed nature as much as Mr Jaccottet, the day was always too short, the sun rose too late and set too early.

Anybody who has done some mushroom hunting will appreciate the fact that there is rarely enough time in the day to find what you are looking for. A combination of patience, luck and a good eye may bring good results but there is no replacement for experience in this pursuit. Finally, when you find the particular variety you have been looking for it is important to never reveal the location of your discovery. People have been known to go to their graves without parting with such closely held secret.

The are a small number of mushrooms which work their way through the earthy ground at this time of year, but among them the St George’s mushroom, which is also known as Tricholome de la St George, Thricholome Georgii L’Écluse and Mousseron du Printemps, is the most highly prized. While they are said to grow in meadows and grassland, they are most likely to be found on the edges of woods. The season described by most writers is from April to June and they traditionally emerge on or about St George’s day and continue in season for a few brief weeks.

In Ireland and England their caps are primarily white, but they can be found elsewhere coloured yellow ochre, and rare varieties are known to be brown or chamois. The caps, which have a dry appearance, vary in size but they can grow to be 15 cms in diameter. By the time they grow to any great size they are more than likely going to be providing refuge and nourishment to a small worm colony, so it is best to pick the small ones when they are found, and check the larger mushrooms for infestation. Beneath the caps the gills are white and fragile. This mushroom has a large foot and grows in tight groups, so you generally will find more than one in any one location. When cut in half the flesh is firm and white. One of the most distinctive characteristics of this mushroom is its smell; the odour is quite strong and pleasant, and has been described as resembling freshly milled flour.

Ignoring Mr Jaccottet's esprit de vivre, we steamed around the hillsides and meadows in an old Peugot 405, which cut down some of the vast wandering required to locate these mushrooms. With the small basket of mushrooms we had collected I decided to make an omelette. After cleaning them, they were cooked on a pan over a low flame in mountain butter with a little salt and pepper. We had earlier liberated some eggs from chickens nearby, and these were whisked and poured over the lightly cooked mushrooms. After two or three minutes I put some grated Comte cheese from Frasne on the runny surface of the uncooked egg and mushroom mixture and finished the omelette under a hot grill. It looked great and tasted really good, but I was scolded for not slicing the mushrooms finer and for overcooking the omelette. I accepted these criticisms graciously while drinking a glass of undated, but assuredly ancient, white wine from the Jura.

In preparation for the meal I found a book entitled “60 Champignons 190 Recettes” by Suzanne Fonteneau and Philippe Joly published in 1978. These authors rate their mushrooms with a star system; four stars being the best, and so on. I will not query why they did not chose a system of marks out of 10 or 5 for example, being nice round figures allowing for a wider variety for distinction, however in their opinion both the Truffe du Perigourd and Tricholome de la St George achieve the lofty and distinguished score of a perfect 4. Among the recipes they offer for the Tricholome de la St George is `Tricholome á la paysanne`. For this recipe you shall require 400 grams Tricholomes de la St Georges; 50 grams of butter; 2 spoons of vinegar; 1 spoon of flour; 1 egg; half a glass of dry white wine;2 spoons of bouillon; salt and pepper.

The method given is as follows: After cleaning the mushrooms, cut them into slivers (remember not coarsely or in chunks!). Gently cook them with half the butter and the vinegar. At the same time make a roux with the remainder of the butter and the flour and mix in the suggested half glass of white wine and the bouillon. All this time, you should keep the juice of the mushrooms moving on the pan seasoning with salt and pepper. The recipe is completed by turning the mushrooms onto the sauce, mixing together, and just before serving stir in the egg yolk into the ensemble to bind it together.

The recipe as given does make sense however; you may wish to experiment with another variety of mushroom and the suggested quantities a few times to gain some confidence in it and to satisfy yourself in advance of cooking these highly prized mushrooms. I would also suggest using white wine vinegar in preference to any other, and it appears that the tablespoon measurement is the weapon choice for this recipe.

A traffic jam or "bouchon" in the Haut Doubs, Franche Comté

The Good Life - Gooseberries

Green gooseberries in May

In recent years gooseberries have disappeared from shops and vegetable counters. Is it the case they are not made available for sale due to a lack of or waning popularity? Does a box of gooseberries get in the way of the old staple fruit such as apples and oranges? Or are people more interested in buying dragon fruit, sharon fruit, passion fruit, mangoes and other exotic tropical fruits flown or shipped in from all over the world? As a result are there any growers left?

There is something that draws me to the humble gooseberry. When I was quite young I discovered the the bushes needed to be handled with care because they are very thorny and one needs a certain amount of patience when dealing with them. As a child I am sure I was neither careful nor patient. The berries grow in a variety of colours, yellow, green, red and apparently a white berry exists. They vary in their sweetness but beneath the odd hairy, durable and veined skin is a flesh full of flavour with a refreshing and almost exciting bittersweet combination. While the red varieties are relatively sweet the green gooseberry can be quite bitter and best eaten one at a time.

There are many of varieties of the basic gooseberry or ribes uva crispa, including, to name but a few, Invicta, Greenfinch, Whinham’s industry, Jewetta, Careless, Woodpecker, Just Betty, Montrose, Surprise and Admiral Beattie. Across the north of England during the 18th and 19th Centuries there were many agricultural shows where fanatical growers would cultivate and experiment generating new varieties to compete and show their gooseberries.

Throughout his researches during the middle of the 19th Century, Charles Darwin posed to himself, and indeed many others, countless questions on the variation of species of animals and plants, exploring his theories of transmutation and natural selection. In particular, he continually targeted variation through domestication and cultivation based upon the reported experiences of pigeon fanciers and cottage gardeners to name but a few. Darwin himself famously had 54 different varieties of gooseberry bush in his garden at Down in Kent. He often advertised and encouraged correspondence on specific subjects that captured his attention from time to time and one such request appeared on the topic of gooseberries in the Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener on the 2 December 1862 almost three years after publishing “On the Origin of Species”.

He published the following in a notice:

“The fruit of the wild gooseberry is said to weigh 5 dwts. (I am surprised it is so heavy), and from various records I find that towards the close of the last century the fruit had doubled in weight; in 1817, a weight of 26 dwts. 17 grs. was obtained; in 1825, 31 dwts. 13 grs.; in 1841 “Wonderful” weighed 32 dwts. 16 grs.; in 1845, “London” reached the astonishing weight of 36 dwts. 16 grs., or 880 grains. I find in the “Gooseberry Register” for 1862, that this famous kind attained only the weight of 29 dwts. 8 grs.; and was beaten by “Antagonist.” Will anyone have the kindness to inform me whether it is authentically known that the weight of 36 dwts. 16 grs., has since the year 1845, ever been excelled?”

The seriousness of these competitions he referred to cannot be underestimated. They might have been conducted with the outward appearance of a friendly and community spirit between growers that could have competing against each other for decades, however the weight measurements are to this day recorded in drams, grains and pennyweights troy, a unit of measurement more commonly associated with a measurement of weight for precious metals than fruit. The oldest show still running today is held by the Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society on the first Tuesday in August. In 2009 the Whitby Gazette announced the new world record weight of a gooseberry which had been entered into this prestigious show by champion grower Bryan Nellist. The “Woodpecker” which won the Harland Challenge Cup weighed 35 drams; 39.867 pennyweights troy.

At this time of year, those lucky enough to have a good crop of gooseberries should begin thinning them, removing about half of the crop to allow the remaining gooseberries room to grow. I am this lucky and will commence a bit of thinning at the end of May once they have had a chance to plump up just a little more. These “green” gooseberries are not thrown away or to be wasted. They are edible and can be introduced into tarts, preserves and jams. One interesting recipe which twins these young berries with another seasonal companion appears in an excellent book entitled “Forgotten Skills of Cooking”, page 444 to 445, by Darina Allen.

For Gooseberry and Elderflower Jam you shall require the following: 1.6 kgs. of green gooseberries, 5 or more elderflower heads tied in a muslin bag, and 1.6 kgs. of warmed sugar. You might wish to consider picking your elderflowers on a bright sunny day. To make the jam, place the gooseberries and the muslin bag of elderflowers into a preserving pan with 600mls of water after washing, topping, and tailing the berries. Simmer the fruit until it has softened and the contents of the pan have reduced by a third. Remove the muslin bag and add the sugar. The jam should be boiled rapidly until setting point is reached and thereafter placed into sterile warm jam jars, and sealed. Some people calculate setting point by the clock, others by temperature, however the time honoured way is to draw your finger across the back of the wooden spoon you have used to stir the jam. If the jam does not flow back into the area you have drawn your now blistered and burnt finger, the setting point will have been reached. This recipe should yield 6 x 450 gram pots of jam.

The Good Life - Seasonal allotment philosophy

The seven-spot ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata)

There was a constant stream of rain showers across the country last week however most of them managed to bypass our little garden. The first slugs have emerged from the dank dark world they occupy but as yet there is limited evidence of them in allotment. Corinne is returning to France soon with the primary objective of returning with my Christmas present to her; "50 facons d'assassiner les limaces" [50 ways to kill slugs].  This authoritive tome should provide valuable assistance in the weeks to come. Nature's great counter offensive to the nasty aphid population has also arrived on site. Brightly coloured ladybirds have appeared in force to commence their annual feast. The less common 22 spot lady bird can also be found at this time of year. These guys prefer a diet of microscopic fungi and mildew which they find on plants.

The cool recent temperatures may have slowed growth in the last two weeks but the annual cycle of the seasons never ends. Swifts and swallows, yet another cornerstone of summer, have also made to Ireland's green shores despite numerous reports of delays imposed by closed aerospace and volcanic ash clouds. We hope this weekend will be a turning point and signal the end of a prolonged cold spell, bringing a return to normal temperatures for this time of year. We have been quite cautious for fear many plants might perish and have decided to delay putting down the courgettes, pumpkin, patisson, and corn, to name but a few,. This weekend we spent a lot of time transplanting the lettuce, turnips and carrots to new beds. We think cabbage seed may have become mixed with the lettuce seed, because we have some very odd looking lettuce with robust dark green leaves. These mystery plants have also been transplanted and given a new home.

I have discovered one of the most remarkable things about working on an allotment is the fact that you become thoroughly absorbed in it to the exclusion of so many other daily activities. I often lose track of the time and find that we arrive at the shops to do the weekly shopping last thing on Sunday evening covered in muck and dirt. Following the news seems less relevant, especially at a time when the media are behaving like merchants of doom and gloom concentrating on the past, current difficulties, shortcomings and failures, with little or no consideration of the future. I find the allotment is the perfect anecdote to the morose content of current affairs. Over recent weekends in the allotment, we have rarely had a chance to dwell on the past. In the world of the allotment a disappointment is always short lived even though the compost heap may be full of them. I may have persisted with my gooseberry bushes for two years while they promised nothing but barren thorn ridden branches but beside them the raspberries would always be abundant in fruit. Running an allotment is possibly the purist pursuit in optimism you can have.

The word mistake is rarely used. In circumstances where an error is made, it is easily covered up and forgotten or is simply put down to experience with no loss of face.  While the scale of the allotment may be quite small your focus is solely fixed on the future; the next phase of planting; and planning the extended harvest of various crops; and last but not least dealing with the pests, and attending anger management classes to address the sensible slaughter of thousands of slugs. There is very little to regret - except perhaps this week and the non-appearance or germination of my tomatoes.

A pretty 22 spot lady bird (Psyllobora vigintiduopuntata) on a nettle leaf

The Good Life - No rabbits allowed!

This is myself watering the triffids at sunset - Photo by Moritz "the Sicilian"

The recent rain has brought about a discernable amount of growth. Weeds are abundent of course and grow with unusual rapidity. Seeds that have slowly germinated in the last few weeks have fresh leaves after emerging from the darkness of the soil; the carrots, beetroot, lettuce and spring onions are now readily recognisable albeit still diminutive. The deep green leaves of the potato plants have emerged from the crusty earth. Surprises are plentiful elsewhere as the gooseberry and redcurrant fruit have begun to form and the first sighting of a thin lonely spear of asparagus. Of the five asparagus crowns we planted on the fifth April, this solitary spear will hopefuly have set the example for his fellow spears and demonstrates some promise for future months, although they shall be required to grow through for the first two years before harvesting.

Fruit forming on the red currants

Although it is practically the middle of May, the weather is still somewhat unstable for planting young vegetables. The weather is improving and temperatures are rising, however the wind is still predominately from the north east and the damaging chill of winter remains with us for the moment, threatening tender young seedlings, and pushing back planting plans. Dwarf yellow beans which we planted three weeks ago have had to be dug up and new drills sown due to recent ground frosts which killed the plants. The extra time afforded to us due to the delayed planting schedule has allowed us develop some of the more difficult ground at the front of the allotment. In the last few days we have been digging and developing a small complex of new raised beds. Harry has also been working hard on the allotment during the weeks. He told us he found a tonne of bark (in an as yet undisclosed place known as "somewhere") and the walkways are now quite neat and hopefully will be weed and mud free for the foreseeable future.

Some new digging and raised beds

In the last few weeks we have seem a number of young rabbits about looking to gorge themselves on young leaves. Other allotment holders have found them hiding under upturned wheel barrows. We think our little patch is pretty much rabbit proof at this stage, and have dug the wire into the ground to prevent burrowing. Corinne is considering putting up a notice to ward them off. It was originally entitled "No Rabbits Allowed". This sign has been since changed to read "Rabbits strictly by appointment only".

 Primroses

 Blossom from a wild prune tree

The Dandelion wine was siphoned into the demi johns on Tuesday the 27th April. Having given it some thought, I decided to add a teaspoon of wine yeast to kick the fermentation process off, and since then it has been bubbling away in the corner and keeping us entertained. Every now and again froth develops on the surface of the mixture and will suddenly recede, but all the time the fine bubbles rise to the surface causing the fermentation trap to bubble and gurgle away. We have also opened a few bottles of the nettle beer which is approximately two weeks in the bottle. The first bottle was certainly an active brew, because I had primed the bottle with a teaspoon of demerara sugar. Luckily mugs were on hand and very little beer ended up being wasted. Subsequent bottles were more of the gentle sparkling variety, and the beer exited the bottle without ceremony in the normal way, which was a relief. It was served chilled with a slice of lemon and it tasted very refreshing and palatable. To reduce the ceremonial type pressure there are a number of options available; I might use less sugar priming the bottle or simply wash the inside of the bottle with a sugar solution.


As May begins the countryside is full of colour at this time of year for a very brief period. Along with the abundant and easily recognisable dandelion explosion, the last two weeks heralded the more subtle arrival of the pretty yellow primrose. The primrose grows in small tufts on grassy lanes, railway sidings and in secluded watery ditches. The cherry and apple trees are now bright and coloured with blossom and among the hedgerows the wild prunus and hawthorn are full of delicate while blossom. A brisk wind or heavy rainfall will carry the delicate blooms to the ground to be forgotten for another year.

 Corinne dreaming about her garden in the evening sunshine

The Good Life - Rain

View from the shed where sheltered during the showers

There are holes in the sky where the rain gets in

But they're ever so small

That's why the rain is thin

Spike Milligan

Nearly four weeks of dry weather ended on Saturday evening as gradually but surely isolated droplets of rain began to fall through the small holes in the sky. Initially I could count the drops on the windscreen of Corinne's car, monitoring with interest the possibility of a downpour, and after about 20 minutes of it became clear we would have a decent shower or two overnight. Harry worships the rain, and waxes lyrically about the special nourishment all vegetation receives from it. He often says that the watering can is no substitute for the rain and in his experience plants would be jumping out the ground after a good spell of rain.

The first radish; a striking 1960's red against our 1960's baby blue table

Harry always recommends a steady slow pace of work in order to make it through to the end of the day. He has numerous stories, approaching the status of parables of a bygone age, from his days working with Dublin Corporation. In between planting a few rows of onions Harry broke off and told me a story of a man he used to work with. He had been tasked with the preparation of a patch of ground for a lawn and half way through the day, but not the job itself, a manager arrived on site and insisted the grass be sewn that evening. After a moments thought, this man seeing the impossibility of the demand and the lack of knowledge or his supervisor, responded with a moderate amount of Dublin sarcasm, and requested permission to mow the grass the following morning. We laughed heartily for a while before casually progressing onto the few remaining shallots, while Corinne was slaving away elsewhere in the allotment transplanting beans.

Corinne sorting through the dandelion flower heads

 

Bright full blooming dandelions during a sunny spell in the afternoon

There has been a fantastic growth of dandelions in the last three weeks and recently I have been reading about traditional Midday Dandelion Wine. I suggested to Corinne that we might try to make a batch. She seemed to be quite enthusiastic and told me her father made many bottles of what they called vin de pissenlits in France and went on to say that it tasted very nice. I was immediately sold on the idea, and when we had a break on Sunday afternoon I walked across to a neighbouring field and set about collecting as many dandelions as I could. The idea is to pick the flowers at midday or when they are fully open. After about two hours I had tired of the constant picking and bending routine, and became slighly worried by the fact my fingers were being stained black, and  returned to Corinne. For a good hour we picked through the flowers watching the little beatles make their escape from the pile of yellow flowers while removing as much of the green leaves and stalk from beneath the flower head as possible.

Upon returning home, I measured out 8 pints of flowers into a clean bucket and then poured 16 pints of boiling water over them finally covering the bucket with a clean cloth. The recipe stipulates that they be left to steep for two days and no longer. The mixture must then be strained and poured back into a pot and brought to the boil. For the quantities I am using, I must use the zest of 8 oranges and boil the mixture for ten minutes. The mixture must then be strained again through a muslin cloth into a clean bucket containing what I am currently calculating to be 6 pounds of sugar, making sure to dissolve the sugar. When cooled sufficiently, the juice of the oranges and the yeast can be added, and this mixture can be poured into a secondary fermentation vessel with a fermentation trap, and allowed to ferment completely.
 

Corinne's father has warmed me already that yeast will not be necessary as this mixture will ferment like crazy. Furthermore he recommended I should leave at least 20% free space in the demi john to deal with the highly active fermentation process. The English recipes recommend racking and bottling the wine when it becomes clear and to allow it to age six months in the bottle before tasting. Corinne's father differs on this point as well, and being French he is probably more patient with the whole process. He advises bottling the wine after a year and promises us time will improve the wine. In any event my next date with the dandelions is Tuesday evening when I must strain the mix and add the zest and sugar, and make a decision in the yeast.
 

The forecast for the week is good for the allotment because showers are forecasted for just about everyday during the week providing good prospects for the initial growth period and reported green shoots. The Irish economy may not be as fortunate as every week brings with it revelations of financial impropriety. The unimaginative politician's refrain of green shoots has now lapsed only to be replaced with the specter of projected economic growth, which it must be said would sound more convincing from an old haggard gypsy clasping a crystal ball.