Late October Harvest, homebrew, balance sheet and a poem!

 Once again Im playing catchup with the blog, for which you have my apologies, as the weather cools, the nights draw in and I find myself wanting to curl up and stay in where its warm, it becomes something of a chore to drag yourself out into the cold to harvest, take piccies and then write it all up for the blog, however, as Im now on holiday for 2 weeks we should get a chance to clear the plot, take the remaining harvests and get ready for next years growing season!

We had our fourth frost of the season last night, a severe frost thats killed off a lot of the more delicate plants, and neccesitated us doing a harvest of any remaining crops today, but the good point about frosty weather is that it usually means we get a bright and clear day, with no wind, even if it is cold! As you can see, the courgettes have died off in the frost, the beans are dying, and a lot of the weeds are also dying back!

 Plot 2 looks fairly empty, yet there's still 2 1/2 beds of spuds, a bed of fartichokes and plenty of broccolli still to take!

 Despite the frost this rose has decided to bloom today, a beautiful sign of life trying to overcome the problems of the season!

 The sprout bed is doing really well, should have plenty to see us through the next few months!

 And the cabbage beds are still producing, this is the largest of the red cabbages, going to take this for making pickled red cabbage later in the week!

 This one came home with us today!

 The borlotti beans have done well, and are almost dry, so they will be harvested this week and stored for winter use!

 The last of the toms from the allotment greenhouses! About 20lb of ripe and about the same of unripe green toms, not bad for the end of October!

We also harvested turnips, swede, broccolli, caulie, chillies, peppers, raspberries and a few other bits n bobs today! Not too bad at all for the time of year, yet we've still got a fair bit still growing or almost ready for harvesting, as is shown in the updated balance sheet lower in the post!

 Another thing thats been going really well this year is our first forays back into the world of homebrewed wine! As you can see here, we've still got 5 demijohns of wine on the go, 1 of Elderflower, 1 of Elderberry, 2 of summer fruits and 1 made from the pressed juice from the grapes on the plot!

 We've also got a big batch of Mead on the go, with 5 gallons fermenting away in this barrel, and we are planning on making another 2 small batches of flavoured mead, 1 of Druids Celtic Mead and 1 of Metheglin, rosehip flavoured mead, which we are hoping to get started in the next few days!

The first batch of elderflower was bottled and labelled about 3 weeks ago now, and the batch of broad bean wine was bottled and labelled last week! As you can see, they've both cleareed really well, and the labels I made in OpenOffice and stuck on with a glue stick really finish them off well!

 We tried the first bottle of Elderflower last night, round at Pat and Colins (whilst extracting some honey), have to say we all thought it very good, crisp, clear, nicely dry and very pallateable, something non of us would have begrudged paying up to £10 a bottle for! Very happy with the results!

 Just a quick close up of the labels for the 2 types of wine we've so far bottled! I've got some work to do for the labels for the other 4 types of wine,  hopefully I will be able to make them as nice as these have turned out!

We've yet to try the Bored Bean wine, it needs a few weeks to mature before we try it, but I am tempted to take some to the Allotment Bonfire Night BBQ and see how it goes down!

So, onto the balance sheet!

Balance Sheet Update - 7th October 2010

Total Veg Plot Costs 2010

Rent + Subs for 2 full plots £100
Seeds £20
Seed Spuds £20
Onion Sets £6
Growbags £15
Chicken Manure Pellets £8
Plastic 'wannabe' Polytunnel £61
Bamboo Canes £8
Flower Plants £28
Scaffolding Boards £100
Watering Cans £8
Soft Fruits £16
Clematis £10
Arbour materials £ 40
Cold Frames (2) £30 (1/2 price at Argos)
Redcurrant £7.50
Birdhouse £7
Birdfeeders (for arbour) £10

Total Costs £ 504

Next years costs have already started, £59.50 for seeds (Wyevales sale), £7 for onion sets (3 varieties, 200+ sets in total), £12 for dual plum tree, so a total spend for 2011 of £88.50 so far, with only rent and subs + seed spuds to come (should be a total of £120 ish to add), so unless we decide to undertake any large projects on the plot, next year should be a relatively inexpensive one!

Total Veg Plot Harvests 2010

Rhubarb £ 35
Fartichokes £ 4
Volunteer Spuds £ 15
First Early Spuds £ 15
Second Early spuds £ 30
Early Main Spuds £ 20
Late Main Spuds £
Lettuce £ 14
Radish £ 15
Garlic £ 85
Strawberries £ 65
Summer Raspberries £ 35
Autumn Raspberries £ 25
Blackberries £ 35
Peas £ 40
Broad Beans £ 70
Courgettes £ 150
French Beans £ 110
Red Onions £ 20
White Onions £ 50
Cabbages £ 30
Peppers £ 45
Chillies £ 50
Tomatoes £ 230
Turnip £ 30
Swede £ 10
Runner Beans £ 100
Broccolli £ 65
Apples £ 20
Plums £ 5
Sweetcorn £ 150
Chard / Spinach £ 2
Aubergines £ 5
Cucumbers £ 11
Blueberries £ 5
Caulieflower £ 20
Grapes £ 35
Sprouts £ 5
Jerusalem Artichokes £
Summer Squashes £ 20
Pumpkins £ 20
Beetroot £ 5
Leeks £ 5

Total Veg Plot Harvests £ 1705

So, a total nett profit of £ 1191 so far this year, with a large amount of harvests still to come! We've still got 2 1/2 beds of spuds to bring home, lots more swede and turnips, 27 sprout plants, a bed of leeks, a large bed of fartichokes, borlotti beans are almost ready to harvest, more cabbages, more broccolli, more rasps, lots of chard and spinach and a few more bits n pieces besides! The rest of the crops should bring the total harvests up to at least £1850, and possibly quite a bit more!!


Hope your harvests are safetly in, your plots are cleared and you've had as good a growing year as we have!

Oh, I got an email the other day, from the Government Petition website! I set up a Petition (http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/LowImpactLiving/) a year ago past, asking whether we could have a new class of land for planning purposes, to allow those of us who wish to live an ecologically sound self sufficient lifestyle to do so, although more than 300 folks signed the petition, it wasnt enough to guarantee a response, but once arrived this week out of the blue! You can read the response to the petition at the link below!

http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-responses/petition-view.aspx?epref=LowImpactLiving

 Nice to get a reply, but a shame that they cant allow those of us who want to live 'the Good Life' to do so!

Finally, I just wanted to share a poem I wrote the other day, I was listening to the Druidpodcast and got some inspiration, so penned this poem in about half an hour, I took my feelings about the fact that although you can buy agricultural land quite easily, it is almost impossible to do so and get permission to live on the land, and with the threats of peak oil, energy descent and climate change I decided to use them as the basis for a clarion call to arms for those of us who wish to live 'with' the land! What do you think?

Making a Stand?

Walking the path that calls to my soul,

Recalled again to play my Role,

Living a life rooted in the Old Ways,

Learning once more for all of my days!

Finding my way along the crooked path,

Sorting wisdom from chiff and chaff,

Living a life rooted in the Land,

Yet yearning for more, to make a stand!

The Land calls me forth to live a greener life,

Sustainable and self sufficient, with all its strife,

Earthen Sheltered I wish a home for me,

Yet without money its not to be!

Short-sighted rules of those who planned,

Keep us chained to a life that’s killing the Land!

Profitable decisions rule the day,

Yet in the long run its All who will pay!

Greenhouse Emissions out of control,

Melting Icecaps at the Pole!

The black gold is running out,

Civilisation is now at it's last shout!

Legacy of past riches squandered away,

For the price of a life lived at play!

Culture of Greed is how most now live,

For tomorrow not one thought most now give!

Yet there is still another way....

Living in harmony, day by day!

Reclaiming our connection with the Land,

Is it now time to make our Stand?

Land is owned by so very few,

But with it, most know not what to do!

Called forth, a new Vision we need to see!

One that’s fair and allows all to Be!

Communities once more come to the fore,

Building together, living within the Lore!

Regaining the connections that once were Ours,

Reclaiming again those once lost Powers!

Land enough to grow and farm,

Living a life with minimal harm!

Reclaiming the skills of times long gone past,

Building a future that’s bound to last!

Managing the Land through permaculture,

Safeguarding the Land for all our Future!

Sustainable building from local resources,

Allowing Nature to run her courses!

Technology yet still has its place,

But it needs a human face!

Not the God of corporate greed,

But as a tool, us to feed!

Learn well the lessons of the past,

Build things that are made to last and last!

Choose to work on a human scale,

Pass on the word with Your Tale!

If we choose to make a Stand,

We still can save the Land!

Its up to you to choose you're Fate!

Act Now, before its too late!

Suzanne Read

Samhain 2010

Well, more updates to follow over the next 2 weeks, thanks for reading!

Making use of the harvests!

Well, time does seem to be flying this year, although the weather has been fantastic hereabouts for the past few days, there's still a definite feel of the onset of autumn, the trees are taking on a gorgeous hue, there's a distinct nip in the air as soon as the sun dips and the nights are definitely getting colder!

We're still harvesting good amounts from the plots, but also having to take time to process it for storage and later use! Lee spent today processing about half of the sweetcorn, cutting the kernels from the cobs to produce our own sweetcrn kernels for the freezer, half the cobs produced about 10lb of sweetcorn kernels, quite a bit to use through the winter! Methinks next year we'll look into how to use dried kernels in order to maximise our storage!

The 15lb of grapes I harvested last week have been crushed and about a gallon of juice extracted, which is now fermenting nicely, proper homemade wine from grapes! This will make the 7th batch of wine that we've made this year, the first batch of Elderflower (the one from a kit) is now bottled and should be ready to drink by Samhain! The 2nd batch of Elderflower is still bubbling away nicely, as are the Elderberry and 2 batches of summer fruits, but the broad bean wine seems to be nearing the end of its fermentation, so hopefully we'll be racking this off in the next few weeks to clear a bit more, then bottling it for future consumption! One of the things Im finding almost as interesting as making the wine is also making labels for the bottles, a bit of pottering around in OpenOffice with a few free graphics has yielded both the Elderflower labels and the Mead labels below, which I think look great! Let me know what you think about them (yes I know, I dont need fancy labels, its only homebrew wine for our concumption, but as we've 42 bottles of wine and 30 bottles of mead on the go, I thought it best to properly label them, and once the design is done, its seconds of work to print a batch off and stick them to the bottles with a glue stick, much better than writing our the same label 6 or 30 times! Lol!!

 The honey we've saved from the wax cappings (a byproduct of the extraction process) has now been processed into 5 gallons of mead, which is bubbling away nicely in a fermenting bucket, and the wax has been melted down and the first 2 candles produced!

All in all its been a good year on the plots, we've still plenty of things left to harvest, plenty of crops still to process, and a lot of clearing and mucking of beds to prepare for next year, but it does feel as though its definitely all been worthwhile!

Hope your growing season has been enjoyable, your crops bountiful and your harvests are still safetly coming in! More to follow soon, thanks for reading!

Puter fixed, time for an update!

 Apologies for the lack of recent updates, poor weather, trying to fix this antique computer after the major crash and the sheer volume of harvesting that we've had to do (plus processing the harvests to make the best use of them) has meant a lack of time for posting to the blog! As you can no doubt see, the recent wet weather has proven to be a boon for the weeds, turn your back for a minute and they seem to take over! ertainly doesnt look like a plot that won Very Highly Commended awards now does it! Lol!

 As the nights start to draw in, the weather turns colder, the leaves begin to turn from the green of growth to the glorious autumnal colours of decay and the morning dawn cool and misty we find ourselves once more in the middle of a bumper harvest, our plot time is spent gathering in the crops, clearing the beds and reflecting on whats gone well and what our plans are for next year!

 Some of our crops have been spectacular, the grapevine that we spent a large amount of time building an arbour for has repaid us with a bumper harvest, I took 15lb of grapes from it today, and there's still more to come! A couple of demijohns of wine will be made with these shortly!

The green caulies have also done really well, nice compact heads of caulieflower, some of which has been used in branston, some will be used in piccallili, but the rest has been enjoyed already!

 The beans and brassicas have also been exceptional this year, fantastic harvests of tasty veg!

The first few sprouts were harvested (and eaten) today, with plenty more coming on, with 26 plants we should be eating sprouts right through until January or February!

 The first of the borlotti beans are drying nicely, ready for harvest, with lots more still to come!

Our pumpkin harvest hasnt been all that good this year though, no idea why, but we normally take 30+ pumpkins, and this year we've only got about 20!

The broccolli has been fab, as have the caulies!

15lb of grapes, ready to make some more wine!

Yet more courgettes, another 14 harvested today, with more still growing on!

The butternut squashes have been better this year than ever before, as have the carnival squashes, lots to see us through the next few months!

And the sweetcorn! This is the first of the 2 trugs we harvested today! In total 150+ cobs of delicious, large sweet perfection! Our only concern, is how we're going to process and store it all!

The greenhouses are also still producing, we're over 250lb of toms for the year now, its becoming something of a chore to process them all, I've lots of passatta, puree, ketchup, sweet chilli sauce and pasta sauce made already!

 The second trug of sweetcorn!

 So, one days worth of harvest, approx £320 worth of organic, fresh, tasty fruit and veg!

As I said earlier, there's still plenty of crops growing, lots of broccolli, caulie, cabbage and sprouts, plenty of turnip and swede, more runner and borlotti beans, more courgettes, more grapes, more spuds, lots more raspberries, more toms, the fartichokes, leeks, borlotti beans, chillies and peppers, plenty more to take over the next few weeks!

 As you can see, the rasps are heavy with delicious fruit, but producing sooo much we're having trouble harvesting it all! A lot is going over inbetween the times we are able to get to the plot!

The chillies in the now defunct hothouse are coming up next week, Ill be bringing them home to try and overwinter some of them in the hopes of getting a head start on next years cropping!

 And as I said, the borlottis still have tons of beans left on them, once the pods start to dry we'll take these and pod them for storage and winter useage as dried beans! Lovely in a chilli or warming winter stew!

The bees have also been busy, we've had a reasonable honey harvest, about 30lb per hive so far, with more still to remove, but as we've a couple of hives that have become very large we are considering leaving a double super of honey on them, which will potentially reduce our harvest of honey for the year! At least we've got enough for our own use and some to sell to begin to recoup our initial outlay, perhaps next year, or definitely the year after we will recoup our start up costs abd it will then become a self sustaining hobby!

So, onto the balance sheet!

Balance Sheet Update - 7th October 2010

Total Veg Plot Costs 2010

Rent + Subs for 2 full plots £100
Seeds £20
Seed Spuds £20
Onion Sets £6
Growbags £15
Chicken Manure Pellets £8
Plastic 'wannabe' Polytunnel £61
Bamboo Canes £8
Flower Plants £28
Scaffolding Boards £100
Watering Cans £8
Soft Fruits £16
Clematis £10
Arbour materials £ 40
Cold Frames (2) £30 (1/2 price at Argos)
Redcurrant £7.50
Birdhouse £7
Birdfeeders (for arbour) £10

Total Costs £ 504

Next years costs have already started, £59.50 for seeds (Wyevales sale), £7 for onion sets (3 varieties, 200+ sets in total), £12 for dual plum tree, so a total spend for 2011 of £88.50 so far, with only rent and subs + seed spuds to come (should be a total of £120 ish to add), so unless we decide to undertake any large projects on the plot, next year should be a relatively inexpensive one!

Total Veg Plot Harvests 2010

Rhubarb £ 35
Fartichokes £ 4
Volunteer Spuds £ 15
First Early Spuds £ 15
Second Early spuds £ 30
Early Main Spuds £
Late Main Spuds £
Lettuce £ 14
Radish £ 15
Garlic £ 85
Strawberries £ 65
Summer Raspberries £ 35
Autumn Raspberries £ 15
Blackberries £ 35
Peas £ 40
Broad Beans £ 70
Courgettes £ 150
French Beans £ 110
Red Onions £ 20
White Onions £ 50
Cabbages £ 25
Peppers £ 40
Chillies £ 35
Tomatoes £ 210
Turnip £ 25
Swede £ 5
Runner Beans £ 100
Broccolli £ 60
Apples £ 12
Plums £ 5
Sweetcorn £ 150
Chard / Spinach £ 2
Aubergines £ 5
Cucumbers £ 11
Blueberries £ 5
Caulieflower £ 6
Grapes £ 35
Sprouts £ 1
Jerusalem Artichokes £
Summer Squashes £ 20
Pumpkins £ 20
Beetroot £ 5
Leeks £ 1

Total Veg Plot Harvests £ 1585

So, a total nett profit of £ 1071 so far this year, with a large amount of harvests still to come!

Hope your plots are as productive, your harvests are bumper ones and that you are able to gather them in safetly before the weather turns!

More to follow soon, thanks for reading!

Computer Crash

Had a major computer crash (whilst trying to update windows) on Thursday, so Im in the process of trying to reinstall evrything aswell as harvest and process the veg and do the bee inspections / harvest honey and jar it up, so please bear with me if the blog updates arent to their usual level! Im unable to download the piccies from the camera atm, but hopefully should have it all back to normal tomorrow!

 I've been using some of the produce to make some of this wonderful sweet pickle, I made a batch last year, very branston like and absolutely gorgeous, this year Im making about 5 times as much!

Dark Sweet Pickle (Branston type Pickle)

Ingredients

• 9 ounces carrots
• 1 medium swede (rutabaga)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 4½ ounces dates
• 1 medium cauliflower
• 2 onions
• 2 apples
• 2 unpeeled zucchini
• 15 sweet gherkins
• ½ lb dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 fluid ounces lemon juice
• 12 fluid ounces malt vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons mustard seeds
• 2 teaspoons ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
• 3 dashes browning sauce, for colouring

Directions

1. Cube the carrots and swede, and finely chop the garlic, dates, cauliflower, onions, apples, zucchini and gherkins.
2. Combine all the ingredients except the colouring in a large saucepan and bring to the boil; reduce the heat to a simmer.
3. Simmer until the swede is cooked through but still firm (about 11⁄2 to 2 hours).
4. Then add the liquid colouring until the colour is dark brown.
5. Spoon into warm sterilized jars and seal.
6. Leave for at least 3 weeks to let the flavours mature. 

Ok, I made it to the plot to harvest today, in the pouring rain, got a load of stuff, 20lb of toms, 15lb of spuds, 4 sweetcorn, 4 summer squashes, 5lb of runner beans, 2lb of french beans, 4 peppers, 12 chillies, 18 courgettes, a load of broccolli, 2 small caulies, 8 turnips, 2 swedes, a full car full!

Balance Sheet Update - 18th September 2010

Total Veg Plot Costs 2010

Rent + Subs for 2 full plots £100
Seeds £20
Seed Spuds £20
Onion Sets £6
Growbags £15
Chicken Manure Pellets £8
Plastic 'wannabe' Polytunnel £61
Bamboo Canes £8
Flower Plants £28
Scaffolding Boards £100
Watering Cans £8
Soft Fruits £16
Clematis £10
Arbour materials £ 40
Cold Frames (2) £30 (1/2 price at Argos)
Redcurrant £7.50
Birdhouse £7
Birdfeeders (for arbour) £10

Total Costs £ 504

Next years costs have already started, £59.50 for seeds (Wyevales sale), £7 for onion sets (3 varieties, 200+ sets in total), £12 for dual plum tree, so a total spend for 2011 of £88.50 so far, with only rent and subs + seed spuds to come (should be a total of £120 ish to add), so unless we decide to undertake any large projects on the plot, next year should be a relatively inexpensive one!

Total Veg Plot Harvests 2010

Rhubarb £ 35
Fartichokes £ 4
Volunteer Spuds £15
First Early Spuds £15
Second Early spuds £30
Early Main Spuds £
Late Main Spuds £
Lettuce £14
Radish £15
Garlic £85
Strawberries £65
Summer Raspberries £35
Autumn Raspberries £
Blackberries £35
Peas £40
Broad Beans £70
Courgettes £140
French Beans £105
Red Onions £20
White Onions £50
Cabbages £20
Peppers £25
Chillies £25
Tomatoes £180
Turnip £20
Runner Beans £80
Broccolli £50
Apples £12
Plums £5
Sweetcorn £25
Chard / Spinach £2
Aubergines £5
Cucumbers £10
Blueberries £5
Caulieflower £2
Grapes £
Sprouts £

Jerusalem Artichokes £
Summer Squashes £6
Total Veg Plot Harvests £ 1249

So, a total nett profit of £ 745 so far this year, with a large amount of harvests still to come!

More updates and piccies (hopefully) to follow, hope your harvests are coming in well!

Catch up and Tomatoes, tomatoes everywhere + Balance Sheet Update!!

As the harvests start to come in I find myself pushed for time, and unfortunately, its the Blog that suffers! Please accept my apologies for the lack of updates, but with harvesting the bountiful crops, processing them to store and using the autumn fruits to make homebrew wine, the last week or so has been exceptionally busy!

The Elderflower (from dried), just before the yeast is added to start fermentation!

We've now got 4 batches of homebrew wine on the go, the first kit batch of Elderflower is going well, the second gallon of Elderflower (from dried flowers) is now in a demijohn and bubbling away furiously! We've also got a gallon of Elderberry wine on the go, I picked the berries from down on the side of the ship canal on Saturday, and it got racked into a demijohn today, where it too is bubbling furiously, and finally we've got a 2 gallon batch of summer fruits on the go, this was to use the extra lb of Elderberries, so I added blackberries and raspberries to make it up to a sufficient quantity of fruit, plus the extra Elderberry from the first batch that wouldnt fit into the demijohn went into the bucket! The Elderflower wines should be drinkable in only a few weeks (for the kit wine and a few months for the second batch from dried elderflower), but the 2 batches of berry wine that we've got going will probably take a lot longer, at least 6 months or so! We're also planning a 5 gallon batch of Mead, using some of the granulated honey from the honey harvest! I'll update you on that once we get it started (definitely a long term project, its not normally consumed until at least 12 months old!)

The local birds on the plot have now found the feeders we put up on the grapevine arbour, its quiet amazing to watch them at work! The foliage each side of the feeders is a dual plum tree we got last week from Parkers, its been 'tied' to the upright until the crops that are in the bed its heading for are removed!

As you can see, once again the war against the weeds has been lost, but as the crops are (in the main) ready for harvesting, at this time of year its not too much of a problem! There are some winter crops that we are endeavouring to keep weed free, and any weeds that are going to seed are assiduously removed!

The courgettes are still producing in quantity, and the greenhouse and polytunnel tomatoes are the best I've ever seen! Peppers and chillies are fab, the brassicas once again are good, and please, dont mention the beans!!

Our tallest sunflower seems to have now decided to flower, at about 11' tall! The sweetcorn and squashes below it are really good, and we've still got 2 1/2 beds of spuds to dig up yet, so plenty of potential to see us through the winter!

The first of the pumpkins and squashes are just about ripe, though we'll leave them a few weeks yet before harvesting.........

...... and those beans I asked you not to mention? Runners are running away, the borlottis are bulking up nicely, and the french and broad beans just keep on coming! If nothing else, we'll have plenty of beans to see us through the winter!

And as I said, the greenhouse and polytunnel toms are the best Ive ever seen whilst we've been growing! This was just 1 days harvest, and we've probably got about the same again to come every 3 or 4 days for the next few weeks! 70lb of ripe beefsteak and standard tomatoes was the harvest I took off the plot here!

Tomato Recipies!

So, with harvesting 70lb of ripe tomatoes from the plot a few days ago (and with many more still to come), we've been able to get lots of pasta sauces made (tomatoes, cabbge and courgette with some herbs and garlic, reduced and then bagged for the freezer), but we are fast running out of room in all 3 of our freezers, so I've been processing our harvests into sauces that can be kept in the cupboard (once they have been sterilized in a boiling water batch for 30 mins).

After being asked for a few of them on the Grapevine (GYO forum), I thought I'd share them with you here, in the hopes they may allow you to make use of the tomato glut!

Tomato Ketchup

Roasted at least 4lb of toms in hot oven for 30 mins (brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and black pepper)

Let them cool, meanwhile lightly fry 2 large onions and a whole bulb of garlic in a large pan (until translucent)

Remove the toms from the juice and add whole to onion pan. Heat to boiling.

Add 200ml vinegar, 450grams sugar, allspice (teaspoon), coriander (1/2 tsp), basil (1/4 teaspoon), cayenne pepper (teaspoon), a dash of worcestershire sauce, a dash of balsamic vinegar, more black pepper and salt to tast and boil for 30 mins.

Once cooked to a consistency you like, put into a food blender and blitz it all todether!

Prep your jars, put ketchup into jars and place in water bath to sterilize for 30 mins before sealing!
Tomato Soup

Sweet Chilli Sauce

Sweet Chilli Sauce (borrowed from Galloping Gourmets)

1 kg of peeled chopped de-seeded tomatoes - brilliant if you have a glut, as we have!
A head of garlic - from the garden of course
8 large red chillies - ours were 'hot cayenne'
About two table spoons of grated fresh ginger
4 Tbs of Nam Pla (Thai fish sauce - available in most supermarkets)
600g sugar
200ml or vinegar (I used red wine vinegar for this but apparently any works)

First put your tomatoes in a blender (after peeling, deseeding and rough chopping)

Then take a sharp knife and peel your ginger. It should be juicy and moist not hard and woody.

Grate or finely chop the ginger

Take the garlic and peel all the cloves. Put the garlic and ginger in the blender

Chop up the chillies, seeds and all, leaving the stalks - make sure you wear gloves for this!

Add all this to the tomatoes and blitz to a puree in a processor -
Add the 4 tablespoons of fish sauce

Then add all this mixture into a big pan

Then add 600g of sugar and 200ml red wine vinegar

Stir well and bring to a boil

Lower to a simmer. A small froth or scum will form - skim this off and discard

Maintain the simmer stirring occasionally for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes put 6 half pint jars in the oven to warm for another 15 minutes - keep stirring and skimming the sauce

When the sauce has thickened and reduced, pour into the jars; seal and label.
This sauce is hotter than the commercial stuff so adjust to your taste. Leave for a month to mature - be ready for Christmas in plenty of time and will keep for at least six months.
I hope you found the recipes of interest, and perhaps of use to deal with (what I hope is for all) the tomato glut!

Anyhows, onto the latest balance sheet update!

Balance Sheet Update - 14th September 2010

Total Veg Plot Costs 2010

Rent + Subs for 2 full plots £100
Seeds £20
Seed Spuds £20
Onion Sets £6
Growbags £15
Chicken Manure Pellets £8
Plastic 'wannabe' Polytunnel £61
Bamboo Canes £8
Flower Plants £28
Scaffolding Boards £100
Watering Cans £8
Soft Fruits £16
Clematis £10
Arbour materials £ 40
Cold Frames (2) £30 (1/2 price at Argos)
Redcurrant £7.50
Birdhouse £7
Birdfeeders (for arbour) £10

Total Costs £ 504

Next years costs have already started, £59.50 for seeds (Wyevales sale), £7 for onion sets (3 varieties, 200+ sets in total), £12 for dual plum tree, so a total spend for 2011 of £88.50 so far, with only rent and subs + seed spuds to come (should be a total of £120 ish to add), so unless we decide to undertake any large projects on the plot, next year should be a relatively inexpensive one!

Total Veg Plot Harvests 2010

Rhubarb £ 35
Fartichokes £ 4
Volunteer Spuds £15
First Early Spuds £15
Second Early spuds £20
Lettuce £14
Radish £15
Garlic £85
Strawberries £65
Raspberries £35
Blackberries £35
Peas £40
Broad Beans £60
Courgettes £120
French Beans £100
Red Onions £20
White Onions £50
Cabbages £20
Peppers £21
Chillies £14
Tomatoes £125
Turnip £13
Runner Beans £70
Broccolli £45
Apples £12
Plums £5
Sweetcorn £20
Chard / Spinach £2
Aubergines £5
Cucumbers £10

Total Veg Plot Harvests £ 1083

So, a total nett profit of £ 579 so far this year, with a large amount of harvests still to come!

Hope your crops are proving bountiful, and your harvests are big ones! Thanks for reading, more updates at the weekend (hopefully)!

Hedgehogs, Gardeners Presentation Evening, Homebrew and lots of seeds!

 Finally, a few days off and the weather has been good! Apologies for the recent dearth of posting to the blog, but as any who have an allotment or veg patch will agree, this time of year is about harvesting and then dealing with all the produce to ensure you maximise its usefulness! Rest assured, we've not been idle, far from it, the harvests are coming in aplenty, the bees are producing plenty of honey (that also has to be sorted out, extracted, filtered, settled and jarred)! On top of that we've also had the Trafford Gardeners Presentation Evening to prepare for (the site had to put in a tray of fruit and veg and set it up, which Pat, Sarah and I did yesterday), plus next years seeds to get (in the Wyevale 50p seed sale of course), onion sets to procure, homebrew wine to get started and of course work too!

I'm actually on holiday this week (although had to spend Monday afternoon in a Training Coordinators Meeting wth the other cluster training coordinators from the area, and had a Managers Meeting to attend on Tuesday), so a chance to do a bit of shopping and get some stuff sorted!

 Monday morning before my afternnon meeting we decided that as the Wyevales 50p seed sale had just started that we needed to go and stock up on those seeds that we'd run out, in order that we kept our spending to a minimum and maximised our seed choices! A happy hour or two was spent sat in deckchairs going through the sale buckets........... although I didnt expect to spend quite so much! £59.50 later we left with 119 packets of seeds! Other shoppers were looking at our trolley in amazement, though I cant personally see why! If they had 2 allotments, and anted to maintain a good spread of varieties of each type of crop, then the more types of seed that you have, the more safeguarded you are against any particular crop having a failure!

We recently decided )after sampling some of Dave's homebrew Rhubarb wine (at the plot BBQ) and having been to a talk at the Stockport BBKA about making your own mead), that perhaps it would be a good idea to start making our own homebrew again. We've both done it in the past, but hadnt done it for years, so after being given the inclination we decided that now was the time! So, after Wyevales we popped out to the Homebrew shop in Stockport, a few bits n bobs to procure to enable us to start making homebrew again, although we'd already got demijohns and had recently got hold of 3 x 5gallon brewing containers (from freecycle), we were lacking some of the bungs, corks, air locks and other sundries, so a quick trip down there sorted most of our needs! Along with everything we needed we also decided to start off with a homebrew Elderflower Wine kit, as for a first batch it would be good if we had at least a good chance of making something nice, so that was duly started yesterday!

Its bubbling away nicely now (and before you say anything, the kit wine does say to leave as it is for 3 days before you top it up to a full gallon, so I'll be topping it up as per instructions on Satrday)! We also bought some dried elderflowers, so we can get a batch of homemade (rather than kit) elderflower wine on the go too, then we can compare the 2 and see what we prefer! I'm also going to try and harvest some Elderberries over the next few days, so we can get a bacth of that on the go, and then once we've extracted the uncapped honey from the wax trimmings from the apiaries we should have enough honey for us to make 5 gallons of mead!

This must make us sound like raging alcofrolics, which we definitely arent, but if we make something thats drinkable, then not only will it help us save money, but also will let us use any surplus crops and perhaps give us something that we can share with friends and family!

So, as yesterday (Wednesday) was the date for the Trafford Gardeners Presentation Evening, Pat, Sarah and I  agreed to meet up at the plot at lunchtime to harvest some produce for the show bench and see whether we could hold up our honour amongst the other allotment sites of Trafford! We managed to put together 2 trays, 6 types of veg on each (as per the rules of the comp) in the stated quantities. It sounds easy, but when you're looking for 3, 6 or 8 of any specific type of veg that are as similar as possible and free from any blemishes, its a lot harder than it looks! The tray to the right of the piccy features 3 sweetcorn, 6 spuds, 8 runner beans, 3 onions and 6 toms from our plot (along with 6 french beans from Pat's plot) and the tray on the left features 3 of our turnips, then an assortment of other veg from various plots on Mos View! We kept it simple (as per the instructions / rules), but were amazed when we saw some of the trays from other sites!

As you can see, the standards of produce was amazing, and we knew fairly quickly that we weren't going to win (even tho our entry was exact to the rules and some of the others certainly didnt follow the rules exactly), but never mind, its the taking part that matters! The tray to the left with the 2 cauli and 1 squash was the first prize winner, and the tray to the right with the peppers and butternut squash was 2nd.

Some of the other trays were also excellent!

Whilst we were harvesting the produce for the show Pat noticed this yound hedgehog, sat sunning himself!

He had a small injury to his right ear, and was being bothered by the flies, so after checking he was ok, we decided to move him away from the flies by taking him to Pat and Colin's hedgehog house (they've had it for a few years and its not been used yet), but on showing him the entrance he decided he didnt like it, so took off at a fair click up the path towards our plot! A few minutes later I looked around for him, only to find..........

.................. that he'd decided that our hedgehog house was far more to his liking! A few seconds after we took this piccy, he turned round and went inside! Lovely!

So, after taking the hedgehog pictures and setting up the trays for the Gardeners Evening we went our separate ways to get ready for the night, and met up again at the Gardeners Evening!

There were 7 of us from Moss View who managed to turn up, to the venue, Flixton Ex-Servicemans Association, where the coucil liason, Janet had done a fantastic job decorating the large function room! There were piccies of plots, plotholders and other related pictures all over, must have been over 900 pictures on display, all at least A4 size.... even the piccy of the rabbit I managed to take a few months ago was on display!

After an intro from the Head of Services for Trafford MBC the local Mayor gave a speech, then the awards part began, with all those who had managed to earn a Very Highly Commended Certificate called up to receive a framed picture of their plot and a certificate from the mayor, where they had their picture taken for the local newspaper! There were about 24 VHC's for the plots (out of 1400 plots), of which only 3 went to allotmenteers who were running 2 plots, and these 3 got a big round of applause! Lee was the 3rd of them to be called up (as the plots are in his name), and as my name hadnt been called, I stayed firmly sat down! Lol!

After that was a talk by a locla wildlife expert (about encouraging wildlife onto allotments), then a break for a buffet, followed by a Gardeners Question Time session and the raffle! Amazingly we won a prize in the raffle, of a Spear and Jackson Stainless Steel Ergonomic Spade (10 yr guarantee!) Overall we had a good night, it was great to see Lee receive such a big round of applause (I think he was the youngest person in the room to get a VHC, and certainly the only non retired person to get 2 VHC's, 1 for each plot!

So, today being Lee's last day off we had a few bits n bobs to do before meeting Pat and Colin at the plot for lunch and to do the bee inspections! First off we went to Wilkinsons in Eccles to see if they had any tannin extract (the elderflower wine recipe in CJ Berry suggests using it) and to see if they had any (they didnt, but after talking with a friend, he suggested using a strong cup of cooled earl grey tea - without milk of course - as this contains plenty of tannin!), and also to see whether they had any onion sets yet! We left with a few more homebrew supplies and 2 types of  onions sets, with 50 sets in each packet!

On the way back home we popped into Parkers Garden Center as they were advetising the new fruit trees had arrived, so after a good look around we ended up with another packet of 100 onion sets and a dual plum tree, 2 varieties of plum grafted onto a single root stock! This will be planted into the bed behind it on the picture, the one with the lavender in it, which is what will be growing beneath the plum tree!

With the purchase of the plum tree and all the seeds on Monday, we've actually begun spending for next years balance sheet, the plum was £13 and the seeds £59.50, so next years balance sheet is at £72.50 currently, with the allotment rent and subs (usually about £100 or so) and the seed spuds (£20 or so) plus compost (£20 or so) and a load of manure (£20) still to come, which should make our spend next year significantly less than this year at about £232 for next year compared with the £504 we've spent for this growing year!

This afternoon we completed the bee inspections, with another 4 supers of honey almost ready to be taken for harvest (shuld be ready for next week) then we did a quick harvest, took a few piccies and came home to start melting the wax trmmings from the hives (the cappings from extraction and the bracecomb from the hives that we've been saving) in order that we can use the honey from them to start our mead and the wax to make some candles for the Stockport BBKA honey show in 2 months time!

Ok, so onto a few piccies from around the plot!

I think the Heath Robinson Hothouse has had its day!

The sprouts are coming on nicely!


As are some of the cabbages!

And finally, a piccy of some of the sweetcorn we had for tea, absolutely fantastic taste! We gave our Beekeeper friend Dave a cob last night (the third one we took for the Gardeners Evening Tray) and he rang us tonight just to say 'Wow' at the taste! Lol!

Ok, Im off for the next few days, still on holiday, so I should hopefully get to the plto and do a good harvest and get some more piccies, plus get some more past sauces made and frozen, some courgette soup made and frozen, some herbs dried for storage, some more wine started and hopefully some more pics and an updated balance sheet done before I return to work on monday (for a rest! Lol!)

Hope your harvests are coming in well and your balance sheets are more than healthy!

Thanks for reading!