Tour of the Plot - Part Four

Well here it is the final Tour of the Plot. 

Let's go past the polytunnel now towards the waving man in the distance ... honestly since he came back to work at home full time, every time I get the camera out he's there hogging the shot   :-)

Notice on your left the little troughs of Cosmos that I've been selling at Car Boot Sales ...

... and on your right our most recent homemade flower bed.

Back to your left is The Orchard, also known as Chicken Land.  Here we have three Damson Plum trees, three Pear trees, four Apple trees (one of them is an espalier on the top fence) and three 'Victoria' Plum trees.

Also there are two Fig bushes, protected from the chickens by posts and wires. 

Back to your right and against the fence to the manure pile is our largest Gooseberry bush. It obviously enjoys all the healthy soil from being so near that amount of horse manure.

And speaking of horse manure ... that's just what Alan is busy unloading.

Going past him and we are into the paddock, and looking into the top right corner is the fenced off area we call Nut Wood.

It's here that we have most of our nut trees along with wild flowers and areas for wildlife.

The trees we have in here are three Oak and three Birch along the fence nearest the road, and then we have two Sweet Chestnut, four Walnut trees and two Almond trees. Of course we also have the Cob Nut trees in our woodland overlooking the Veggie Patch.  Cob nuts are like Hazelnuts, so altogether we have should have quite a good selection of nuts for future use.

Deliberately placed in here are the huge rocks that we excavated from the hillside when we were building the foundations for the garage and workshop, along with some smaller rocks, all there fore the insects and wildlife to make their homes under and around.

There's also the large piece of the old oak tree that we sadly had to fell not long after we bought the house. Now as it slowly decomposes it is home to masses of insects.

The whole area is alive with insects, birds, butterflies and bees and now we have just found out we have frogs around the pond.

The main wildflower area is in the corner.  Seeds sown and plants planted and then left to their own devices for the wildlife to enjoy.  These will self seed and spread each year.

The pond is just an old plastic paddling pool that we found here, dug half into the ground with rocks and stones to make safe area for smaller creatures to get down and drink or bask in the sun.

It's amazing how lush this area has become so quickly.

The chipped wood floor is also home to all sorts of insect life and mushrooms.

The Nut trees are all young, we had a few Almonds last year and there are more nuts appearing this year, but it will be another couple of years until we see much of a crop I think.

Heading back to the house we pass the manure pile now all unloaded and neatly covered over to steam away and rot down with the help of the hundreds of worms that are in there, ready to feed our vegetable beds next year.

And lastly at the back of the house, just outside the conservatory where they are handy for picking as I cook, is the majority of our herbs.  Still planted in the old tin bath. Here I have Rosemary, Chives, Parsley, Mint, two or three varieties of Sage, two types of Thyme, some Lovage .... and a scarecrow.

In these pots are some more herbs and some edible flowers, as well as a pot of Cosmos.

So that concludes the Tour of the Plot for this year. 

I doubt it will change much over the years, but things will move from bed to bed as I practice my slightly hit and miss planting rotations,  and fruit bushes and trees will hopefully mature and give us larger and larger harvests.

The only thing I've just realised that haven't mentioned or photographed are our wonderful old apple trees, they were here when we moved in and were most likely here for generations before the people that we bought the house from moved in.  Three have eating apples and one, deep into Chicken World, has a type of cooking apple.  Every year these help fill our freezer with apple slices, our cupboards with jars of stewed apples and give the chickens and wildlife lots to eat as they drop off the trees.  Oh yes, I almost forgot, also in Chicken World are one Cherry tree and one Plum tree, pruned hard by Alan last year and this year having a rest.

So we are now into the final part of our plan ... the one that we have been working towards for the last eight years ... the one where we cut our spending right down to only buying what we can't produce ourselves, shop less and less for food and learn to live more and more off the fruits of our land and labours.

I hope you have enjoyed this four part tour, it's been good to get it on here for posterity and really good for me to slowly walk our land photographing how far we have come in the three and a half years we have been here. 

Before this it was all building work, hard construction and big boys machines, now it's time to enjoy the results of all that upheaval.  But before we say goodbye to tradesmen there was just one more job to do .....

I'll tell you all about it next time.

Sue xx

Rosemary Oil

 

 

I promised I would take some photos of what I was up to next with my Rosemary at the end of yesterday's post, so here they are. 

 

I have this lovely oil bottle that sits next to the cooker for use in so many things, it came with posh oil in and cost me a pretty penny but I have refilled it over and over and now I feel I have had more than my moneys worth.  It holds half a litre, so half of a one litre bottle, which of course always leaves me with half a bottle tucked in the cupboard for the next refill, but this time I thought I would do something different with that leftover half litre.

 

 

Luckily I had an empty half litre bottle in the cupboard so I simply filled it with some Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I always buy it when it is on offer and get as many bottles as I can afford) and popped in a washed and dried sprig of fresh Rosemary straight from the garden.

 

 

It looks and smells lovely ...

 

 

 

... and looks even better in the natural daylight. 

 

But for now it is back in the cupboard sat in the dark while the lovely taste and scent of the Rosemary infuses with the oil.  Another way of doing this is to gently simmer a sprig of Rosemary in the oil for a few minutes and then cool and pour into the bottle, putting a fresh sprig in the oil for aesthetic purposes and to identify the oil.  Either way a really handy flavoured oil to use in cooking or for salad dressing or simply to dunk chunks of homemade bread into as a lovely starter.  

 

So next time I make Mediterranean Vegetables I will have my flavoured oil ready, now I'm wondering if I should make up some Chilli Oil to expand my repertoire even further, after all I have lots of Chilli Flakes in the storecupboard.

 

Sue xx

 

 

My Favourite, Our Favourite ......

 

My favourite herb of all time, for it's scent, for it's taste and for the look of it growing so majestically is Rosemary.  I love the stuff, in fact I find it very hard to visit a garden centre or nursery or any place that sells plants and not buy one.  I stroke them as I walk around and then enjoy the scent all the way home in the car, it's a good job I use so much of the stuff in my cooking :-)

 

And I use it most often in our favourite meal, Mediterranean Vegetables.

 

 

Start with a sprig or two of Rosemary in the bottom of your ovenproof dish, and in a jug mix couple of tablespoons of Olive Oil with some freshly ground Black Pepper, some Garlic Flakes or Paste (or add a couple of cloves of Garlic, chopped up if you have some fresh) a sprinkle of Chilli Flakes, stir these all together and then pour over the Rosemary.

 

 

Next get a selection of vegetables, these are what we usually use, it doesn't matter if they are a bit sad or out of date.  Chop them rouchly the same size, Cherry Tomatoes can go in whole, chop any big tomatoes into wedges, the onions are also lovely if you leave them in wedge shapes (cut in half and then into wedges).

 

 

Tip them all into the dish on top of the Rosemary and then give everything a really good stir so that the oil ends up coating everything.  Make sure the Rosemary is tucked deep amongst the veggies and then put it in the oven on a medium heat for about 40 minutes.  Halfway through give everything another good stir and, if you want to prepare it as a whole meal in one dish place either a salmon fillet, a chicken portion, or a Quorn fillet amongst the veggies and then pop back into the oven.

 

 

 

I always prepare much more than we need for one meal and then Lovely Hubby can take a good portion of it to work on top of a serving of Cous Cous the next day AND I have a tub or two to pop into the freezer ready to use for a miriad of other meals.

 

 

A spoonful or two makes for a brilliant topping on homemade pizzas, or cheat and use the little value ones from the supermarket as your base, add the Mediterranean Veggies and then a good sprinkle of cheese straight from the freezer.

 

It also makes a lovely lunch mixed with some cooked pasta, and is tasty either hot or cold, this time topped with some grated Parmesan style cheese.

 

So a really good dish to make up either at the start or the end of the week using all those leftovers that you can find lurking with intent at the bottom of the fridge.  I have enough veggies left in the fridge for one more batch of it and then I will have to dig deep in the chest freezer for all those little tubs of leftovers that I know are in there.

 

So in our opinion this is the best possible use for my favourite herb.

 

 

There's something else I'm just about to do with some of my Rosemary from the herb sink, I'll let you in on that one tomorrow, when I've taken some photos.

 

Sue xx

 

 

The Leftovers Handbook

 

 

Last month this wonderful book was published, I was itching for it to be available after reading Suzy's lovely Blog, Sudden Lunch for quite a while and absolutely loving her descriptions of the wonderful food she made out of snippets of tasty morsels.  Her style of writing is just so easy to read it's as though you're chatting to a friend and one that's on the same wavelength as you too.  After leaving a comment on her Blog Suzy contacted me and asked if I would like a copy to review and I jumped at the chance, unfortunately the freebie copy never arrived but I decided to buy my own copy anyway, I just couldn't wait :-)

 

 

It really is my sort of book.

 

Set out for ease of use with hundreds of ideas for using up those little teeny tiny leftovers you find lurking in the fridge, the ones that perhaps your head says "ahh throw it away it's not worth bothering about", but your heart says "that was tasty, it cost me money, I want to use every last little bit".

 

I read it from cover to cover the minute it dropped into my post box and that same night made this ...

 

.... I can't really say it was made with leftovers, just things that were sat waiting to be used in the fridge, but now I know how absolutely delicious this sauce is, it is going to be my 'go to' recipe for any leftovers that I do find lurking there.   Of course I've had this sauce before and have cobbled together my version of it many times, but this one has the proportions just right and that makes it soooooo very tasty.

 

It would go wonderfully with chicken, with salmon, (oooh smoked salmon would be brilliant), with leftover vegetables or Quorn pieces, with meat balls for Lovely Hubby, anytime a tomato sauce would not be right or simply not fancied, I now know that this one would be.

 

And who knew you could make scones with porridge, I will be making purposeful leftovers to try this one out!!

 

So this is definitely a book well worth having within easy grabbing distance on your kitchen shelves, laid out alphabetically so you can go straight to the ingredient you have, so it is very easy to use, and with the 'Handy Hints' and 'Cook's Treats' dotted through it's inspirational.  Suzy also has a section at the back with Basic Recipes and Guidelines and a final chapter on building your basic Storecupboard.  There is a link that will whizz you straight to Amazon on my sidebar

 

All in all a brilliant book and one I would heatedly recommend.  If my free copy ever shows up it will be winging it's way to my lovely Mum, who's another queen of using up every last little scrap she finds lurking at the back of the fridge or cupboard.

 

 

 

And talking about making the most of everything you have around, remember this sad Parsley plant, left unwatered when we went away that half recovered and was then hacked to within a centemetre of it's life .....

 

 

... here it is this morning, just one week after it's 'haircut', looking green and happy and full of newly emerging goodness.

 

 

Something that lives next to the Parsley on the kitchen windowsill are these two Basil plants, on the agenda today to be turned into jars of goodness to be tucked into the cupboards for eating over Summer.

 

A day in the kitchen is most definitely called for, temperatures have plummeted here and it is much too cold for me to be able to plant outside the seedlings from the greenhouse, I do hope it picks up a bit for this weekend, I'm running out of space in there.

 

Sue xx

Supermarket Herbs

 

 

Supermarket herbs, so lush and green in their pots, more densely lush than anything you tend to find in your own plantings and even at the garden centre on occasion, yet you use them a couple of times and then they die.  So you go and buy some more ...... just like you are supposed to.... in the supermarkets eyes, a nice steady earner!!

 

 



 

A third time around Coriander

 

 

I have had to resort to buying supermarket herbs a few times this year as my own have been attacked by slugs in the greenhouse and then last week .... neglected by Lovely Hubby while I was away.  Of course it's all my own fault I didn't remind him, I forgot to erect the neon arrow pointing down to them that was obviously needed and the A4 sheet of written instructions in bright red ink.......Lol.....only kidding, he did amazingly well while I was away .....apart from watering my herbs!!

 

 

 

This Parsley is also on for it's third resurrection.

 

 

 

The ones in this picture,  Parsley on the left and Mint on the right, were fully grown lovely bushy relatively new plants when I left, I had used each two or three times and there was at least another couple of uses out of each one to come, and then they would have had this treatment.

 

After some of the comments yesterday and the emails asking for tips I got this morning I thought I would just show you how far I do cut my bought herbs back after they are all used up for the first time.

 

*** *** ***

 

When you first buy them they look so lush because they have actually been planted too many seedlings to a pot, this means that they have to fight for nutrients and water, and their roots are too closely entwined for each plant to really thrive for long.  So tip number one is ..... the first time you use them you should pull a few stems completely out of the pot, roots and all.  Of course if you were being really frugal you could try to transplant these uprooted seedlings, sometimes it works, but I don't bother with this, I use what I have pulled up in my cooking and put the little root bit in the chickens bowl.  Waste not want not!

 

This gives all the remaining plants more space in the light and more room for their roots in the compost.  I then look after the plants by checking daily how heavy the pots are and if they are too light, which means the compost is drying out I give them a drink, watering from below, hence the reason I keep them all in yogurt pots or planters.  As they are on the kitchen windowsill if they are leaning towards the light I turn the pot to give all sides equal access to the light. 

 

Once the herbs have all been used up or if they are starting to look sorry for themselves I give them the chop.  Literally right down to just above the soil and within one or two days you will see the start of new growth.

 

The first time you do this you are virtually guaranteed a second crop of leaves, and then if you are lucky you can do it all over again.  The reason this works at least once is that the plant has already got itself a good root system, so it can put all it's energy into making news leaves to replace the ones you've hacked off, and as it's the leaves you are after it's perfect.

 

Sometimes it's even worth buying the herbs when the supermarkets reduce them to 10p or 20p when they look like they will never recover, if the plant itself doesn't revive with a good drink, and they usually do, (why don't they even bother to water their living plants) you can chop all the leaves off and do this.

 

Give it a go and see for yourself.

 

*** *** ***

 

Maybe if Lovely Hubby reads this post he will remember to water my plants next time........ she says with a big cheesy grin on her face!!

Sue xx

Lush and Green

Everything's lush and green here on the old homestead at the moment.  Sometimes too lush for my liking.  I start to feel swamped at this of year when everything is going over into full blown greenness.

The weeds win the battle when you have so much land, you have to learn  to almost turn a blind eye to some of them or you'd be super stressed with that awful feeling of not being able to cope.

I admit I get on the verge of that sometimes even now, but nowhere near as bad as I used to be.  I know now that if chunks of land don't get weeded and even if the weeds look like triffids about to take over the place entirely, come that first frost of Winter they will be well and truly zapped and my worry and stress will have all been in vain.

So this year I am relaxed about it, more relaxed than ever.

My herbs are flowering, but I don't mind I enjoy eating the flowers too, sprinkled over salads and sandwiches, nibbled while out and about.

The herb sink is looking good .... and tasting even better.  We add them to so many dishes, nothing is roasted without a few springs of herbs, they add their deliciousness to all our foods.  Even a simple tray of homemade potato wedges reaches new heights of flavour when roasted with a sprig of Rosemary or a scattering of Thyme.

Gorgeous flowing Thyme.

The cucumber at the top?  ...... my pride and joy, the biggest straightest of the season and totally yummy it was too, I have a little piece left of it to add to my lunch today.

I'm off now to feed the windfall apples to the hens and geese, they are loving them and are getting at least half a dozen a day, chopped into pieces so they can share slightly more fairly.   We have a tree that is drooping under the weight of it's bountiful crop so every windfall that drops off is a lightening of a very heavy load for this lovely old tree.

Sue xx