Our New Life in the Country: Still Harvesting

Monday, 31 October 2011

Still Harvesting

Amazingly we are still harvesting lots of lovely foods to eat both from the Kitchen Garden - Marrows (well they should be courgettes but they just grew and grew), Spinach Beet, Kohl Rabi, Cabbage, Leeks, Carrots and this weekend I got the last cucumber and from the poly tunnel Radish, Lettuce, Spring Onion, Carrots, Beetroot and Aubergines, so no chance of us going hungry in the near future.

The Pumpkins are all safely stored in the spare bedroom, proper 'Good Life' fashion with the Marrows all joining them today. The harvested onions are hanging strung up in the utility room and we have just one bulb of our Elelphant Garlic left, it was just so yummy we used it all up.

Of course all this lovely home grown food means that the How Low Can You Go Challenge is going to run for quite a while, stocks just never seem to go down in the cupboards as with all the preserving I'm doing as soon as I make space I fill it up again with jars of jams and sauces. The same is true in the freezers, the space we have made is rapidly being filled with tubs of homemade soups and stews all made with the bounty of the Kitchen Garden.

Not that I'm complaining of course!!

Sue xx

7 comments:

flowertotmum31 October 2011 at 11:32
Hi sue..i know what you mean about the garden bounty..we picked more marrows,carrots and onions this weekend..plus a huge pumpkin that when hollowed out we could actually fit fern in it..its massive..all home grown...thats something i am proud of..
Our back bedroom/toy room/nursery...is now renamed "mums market"..i have potatos,onions and butternut squashes in there..also a huge wardrobe that was a freebie and almost gave us hernia's getting it upstairs..that is full of my jams,marmalades,pasta sauces..plus i did a tin shop from a£da and got lots of tins of baked beans,spaghetti,custard etc for winter...
My freezers are full to bursting too..i take food out to eat and then end up making more to put back in...
This is one thing i truly love about growing my own..the satisfaction of knowing we did all this..hard work but the rewards are immense..
Having worked hard all summer..preserving and prepping for winter and more importantly planning for next years crops..i am going to enjoy our harvest..
love
sara,fern,iris
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Anonymous31 October 2011 at 11:50
I know what sara means about taking something out of the freezer and making more food to fit back in : )
It is the ingrained habit of stretching everything as far as possible and of using up every last iota. Our freezer is filled to the brim which is not good because if I lift something out to reach a second thing, I can't fit the first one back in the exact space again...

We are still having little harvests off the plants left in the garden too. We are reaping the benefits of the milder autumn here in terms of food still growing and of heating not used. Long may it continue!

Jo
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Dc31 October 2011 at 13:02
Must be nice having the space for a poly-tunnel. We haven't got a greenhouse but the conservatory helps with toms and things like them. Still have leeks, carrots, beetroot and a few lettuces in the garden. Still managing with no heating, just the wood-burner when needed. Slowly moving all our soft fruit into the same space to better protect them from the birds next year. Yum!
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Sue31 October 2011 at 16:02
Gosh, everyone sounds so very productive, especially you Sara, well done on all your hard work saving and preserving the Summer. We will all reap the benefits as all the food prices shoot up over the next few months.

Sue xx
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Scarlet31 October 2011 at 19:46
J dug up the last 8 rows of potatoes a couple of weeks ago, we still have a few tomatoes left in the greenhouse, and most of the chillies. I planted out 12 rows of onion sets at the allotment yesterday - each about 15 feet long. The man in the allotment shop looked at me like I was a lunatic when I asked him for 1kg of onion sets, telling me that was an awful lot of onions and asking if I had a full sized plot. The sets cost me £1.60 - about the same price as 4 red onions in the supermarket!
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Unknown31 October 2011 at 22:10
We have leeks and carrots but that's all. Congrats on a great harvest Sue!

Sft x
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My Happy Acres1 November 2011 at 22:10
dispite the freezing temps, somehow I'm still harvesting tomatoes! not as many as earlier in the season but enough to make it worthwhile. yummy swiss chard and brussels! brussels! brussels!
the best was finding strawberries, sweet and juicy, waiting to be put to bed. was amazed that the mice or racoons hadn't found them first!
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This was my Blog, just me writing about our day to day life learning all about and then living the smallholding life. First we started on a farm in Oxfordshire, then we moved to a smaller place in Berkshire (both in England) and then we found a place of our very own at the bottom of a hillside in North Wales. Along for the ride were all our various animals, and we ended up with just our dogs, Suky and Mavis, our cat Ginger .... who secretly thinks he's one of the canine gang, a sheep called Ethel who wandered in off the road and stayed... and a roving band of egg laying chickens that live cheek by jowl with the local wildlife.

We grow our own fruit and vegetables, selling surplus plants and edibles at the gate. We sell the eggs the chickens lay, we reuse, recycle and rethink ... and life ticks over at a pace that suits us.

It was simply the wild and wacky ramblings of a 50 something townie turned country girl called Sue, who lost her heart to a sailor and started a new life in the country .... many years ago. On a path that took us from Cumbria to Oxfordshire, to Berkshire and then we found our home at the bottom of a wet and windy Welsh hillside by a busy main road.

Pull up a chair, grab a coffee and relax into a world of dogs, cats, chickens, polytunnels and veggies with the occasional grass munching sheep thrown in for good measure.

Sue xx

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Our New Life in the Country is my blog.

I use it to chart the day by day, week by week, year by year goings on in mine and Lovely Hubby's life. In it I also express my views and opinions, and say what I do and occasionally how I do it. I am hoping that this will prove to be a useful reminder for myself of how we did things, as we continue in our learning process.

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