Dec 21 2007
Get Iuye and hull, woman deck vp thyne house
And take this same brawne, for to seeth and to souse.
Prouide as good chere , for thou knowst the old guise:
Olde customes, that good be, let no man despise.
At Christmas be mery, and thanke god of all:
and feast thy pore neighbours, the great and the small.
yea all the year long ,haue an eie to the poore:
and god shall sende luck, to kepe open thy doore.
Oct 25 2007
Standing on the top of the hill, I watch my neighbour turn fields of stubble into rich, rolling acres of dark chocolate once more. Gulls mob his tractor in a huge white cloud taking advantage of an easy meal. As I walk on with the dogs to check the sheep a lazy wind blows across the fields. Too lazy to make it’s way around, it goes straight through me with an icy lick. In the past few weeks we’ve had some golden, glowing, autumn days but now the sky has turned slate grey. The valley seems suddenly to be hunkering down and preparing for the swift decent into winter.
Sep 16 2007
The relentless summer rain has given way to golden autumn sunshine. A chocolate box blue sky is decorated with perfect puffy flat bottomed little clouds gliding majestically across the valley. Sloes, fat and shiny fill the hedgerows with plump black wild plums and glistening blackberries. Orchards are heavy with fruit. Golden stubble fields striped green are evidence of a meagre harvest gathered at last after the summer floods that devastated livestock and crops alike. Feed and hay prices are rising, vegetables will be in short supply this winter. Even my own little harvest is the worst I’ve ever had. Potato blight destroyed my vegetable garden this year, caused, I suppose by wet, water logged soil. It swept through potatoes, beans, tomatoes. And then the badgers had a midnight feast, disco in fact, in my little patch of sweet corn. They trashed the plants and munched on every cob leaving their debris for me to clear up. Maddening as it is I rather wish I’d seen them having such fun!
Jul 13 2007
I wake abruptly at three o’clock to the sound of more rain beating on the window panes; more rain and still more rain. Will it never stop? Nervously I look out of the window into the first shards of dawn light and watch a veil of water drifting sideways past the window. The wind howls, I watch the trees bending their knees in the half light. It’s July. Floods are swamping Britain. The biggest rescue operation since the Second World War, shouts the radio. Television pictures show towns and cities under water, houses destroyed, people staring uncomprehending at the wreckage of their homes, crops submerged, fields turned to lakes, herons fishing amongst the corn. Pea crops rot before harvester’s eyes as they wait for the deluge to ease. In the South West gentle rivers on the Moor are transformed into raging brown rapids. Sheep shorn for summer sun shudder coldly in the relentless tropical down pour. I climb anxiously back to bed and await morning.
Jun 02 2007
As we march into June the valley puts on its thick summer coat. The skeleton shapes of winter, clothed, oh, so gingerly in spring, are suddenly engulfed in furry foliage. Shapes merge and disappear; hillsides take on different contours, swathed in green lushness. Strong winds blow huge cumulous across the transparent sky. Giant shadows come and go playing tricks with the light. Sparse pastures are replaced by shimmering grass and the hedgerows are littered with wild flowers.
Jun 01 2007
Take two red peppers, ten tomatillos, ten plumb tomatoes, three large cloves Elephant garlic, sprinkle them with olive oil and put them on a roasting tray in a very hot oven. Keep a check on them and remove each as they become soft. The peppers will take longest, up to 20/25 mins. Skin the tomatoes and garlic and place in food processor. Don’t blitz yet! Add the softened tomatillos and the peeled peppers. Take the peel off a lemon with a potato peeler, leaving behind the pith. Add this and the juice of the lemon to the ingredients in the processor. Add a good handful of roughly chopped parsley and chervil and two hot chillies. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper. Now blitz it all very quickly for just a few seconds. Add 3 oz olive oil. Taste, adjust seasoning if necessary. Add a dash of hot chilli sauce if the chillies are not particularly hot. Stand for an hour before using..
Harvest Time
Jun 01 2007
I have never preserved cherry tomatoes in spiced vinegar before so this year is a bit of an experiment. I filled sterilised kilner jars with tiny, freshly picked tomatoes which I pricked with a wooden cocktail stick. I added basil leaves, lemon zest and black peppercorns. Then I covered them with hot spiced vinegar. I push the tomatoes down with the handle of a wooden spoon to get rid of air pockets and made sure the top ones were well covered with vinegar. Then I covered them with a wax disc and sealed the jars at once. I used new seals on the kilner jars. .
To spice the vinegar I brought distilled, clear white vinegar and a little clear apple juice to the boil, took it off the heat and infused it with a bag of mixed spice; cloves, black pepper corns, dried chilli, coriander seed, allspice berries; you can make your own mix. But one thing I have discovered is if you boil the vinegar with the spices it will go cloudy and spoil the tomatoes. So I let it cool, take out the spice bag, reheat and pour over the tomatoes.
