The Cottage Smallholder

I suddenly realised that I hadn’t posted “Flowers from the Garden” since Christmas. I have been picking flowers. Mini bunches of bulbs and Wintersweet in January. Hellebores and winter flowering honeysuckle in February. And now the garden is bursting into song with a background of flowers and unfurling leaves. Even though I don’t buy flowers anymore, Read More »

Recently we bought a dinky little salad spinner from TKMaxx (Swiss – Zyliss, reduced from £20.00 to £7.99). A perfectly engineered addition to the kitchen. I have a horror of wet salad leaves but have always avoided those cumbersome salad spinners that take up loads of space and aren’t very efficient. I’ve been through the Read More »

“Why don’t you spend the day in bed if you’re feeling off colour? The Min Pins would love it. I’ll bring you a hottie and breakfast in bed in half an hour.” These past few days I’ve been feeling really odd. Light headed and detached. Not wanting to go to work and longing to stay Read More »

The taste of really fresh purple sprouting broccoli from the garden is only beaten by the flavour of sweet white sprouting broccoli. John Coe gives us broccoli plants each year in July. They need to be covered with nets or the birds will strip the young leaves clean within a few days. They also need to be Read More »

I was walking back to the car at dusk this evening and passed a very smart building with two smallish standard trees either side of the large front door. I spotted a neat nest of twigs in the branches, and a glimpse of a tail feather. A pigeon was sitting on the nest, she looked incongruous Read More »

My father was in the army and my parents were stationed in Germany after WW2. The country was devastated and poor. “Every single piece of each garden was filled with vegetables. No flowers. No lawns. Just vegetables. I think that a lot of people were starving.”   My mother always described them quietly. My parents Read More »

Tonight I was going to share my latest triumph. A Seville orange and quince marmalade. A very special recipe that needs a bit of forethought. The local quinces are frozen in late autumn to join the fresh oranges in january/February. The result is a marmalade with an unbelievably fruity depth. Heaven. Over the past couple Read More »

In the early eighties I worked part time in a French restaurant on Lavender Hill, London.  It was a really long day for the restaurant proprietor. He had to be there at 8:00 am to take in the fresh food delivery and we were often still waiting for diners to leave at two in the Read More »

Debonair and charming, Sam serves organic food to the tradesmen of East Anglia. His van is parked in the car park of Ridgeons, Newmarket. A lot of people that I know visit Ridgeons just for Sam’s food. I also have driven in, ordered my food and shimmied out without even buying  a one inch brush.  Read More »

Wednesday was like a summer’s day here in East Anglia. Our winter flowering honeysuckle is covered in tiny white fragrant flowers. When I opened the cottage door that morning sun, the lemony scent and the sound of the bees hit me with a surge of spring. The forsythia was just coming into flower.  A few daffodils had opened Read More »