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!