You can buy a pressure canner in the UK!
I’d been thinking about importing a pressure canner from America for some time. I already bottle/can fruit and tomatoes each year but a pressure canner would enable us to bottle lots of other home grown vegetables for use during the winter. And of course the thought of being able to can spaghetti sauce, cassolet, confit of duck, patès and pesto to name but a few delicacies would be amazing. No need to pay electricty for freezer space, everything nicely on view on our shelves. Water bath canning and the oven method takes some time and is...
read moreThe power of things left unsaid
Danny is doing a kitchen clean up. We’ve both dabbled with this over the past week. “There’s still hot water after my shower. Great for the washing up!” “Hurumph.” “What’s that smell?” “I opened the bin.” “Oh. I’m sorry.” “What for?” “Everything.” The latter remark is a good one. It leaves no niggly teeny thing alive that might fester and spring up, snapping at your calf at some future date. Just a few moments of contrition for everything that has happened and, as there are two people in the cottage...
read moreHow to improve soil organically on your allotment or garden
We have two big borders at the bottom of our kitchen garden that formerly were just a rough patch where very little thrived. With great hope and optimism these became our first space for growing vegetables. I scattered a bit of Growmore and watered my seeds fervently. Things germinated and grew in a spindly sort of way, the nasturtiums were the only great success – these don’t mind a poor soil and will grow virtually anywhere. We extended our kitchen garden to a slightly more fertile patch. Now we had the opportunity to compare the...
read moreUpdate on our allotment – 3 weeks on
We haven’t done anything on our plot this week. Since the treasurer rang us and said that our ryegrass-covered plot was going to be scraped. We had finally completed one 6’ x12’ border – it had taken 8 hours so we jumped at the chance. My good friend The Chicken Lady (aka @KittyGG on twitter) alerted me to the fact that our allotment was being ‘scraped’ last night. The allotment committee had hired a nifty little mini digger for a week, to clear the debris from the stream, dig up tree roots, clear ancient carpets and have a go at...
read moreFish
We’ve lived without fish in our pond for about three years and I yearned for them. Ours were fish that had been born and bred here for over 25 years. But one bleak winter a hungry heron discovered the joy of our pop up restaurant. There are ‘heron losses’ in most country ponds. In a big pond like ours they tend to take the weakest ones and solve the problem of overcrowding so we didn’t take much notice. It was only in spring that we realised that the heron had picked them all off one by one. There must have been at least a...
read moreVegetarian Polenta Bake recipe: easy, cheesy and delicious
Lots of people at the party asked me for my new polenta bake recipe. Danny and I had spent some time tweaking Anne Mary’s recipe and I think that we’ve created a winner. This dish is packed with vegetables – I reckon that the sweet corn is essential but if you don’t have/like sweet peppers substitute tomatoes and grated courgettes. The word ‘bake’ has Danny feverish with horror in a second. Perhaps somewhere in the far distant past someone gave him a ‘bake’ that he loathed and felt that he had to force down. Unlike D, most good...
read moreTwink
When I was six I met an amazing child. She was in the year below me at school. Of course fraternising with the year below was frowned on. “They’re babies.” But she was no baby. Intelligent, exquisite and fun, she became my best friend. I’ve been searching for her for years, hoping to rekindle the joy. The daughter of a famous father she shunned the blazing light of the Internet and vanished. This morning I discovered that she had died in February of this year. She was only 55 years old. A very special friend that died too young....
read moreThe First Cottage Smallholder Party 2011. Official unexpurged report
A party is a bit like a garden. You plan and dream but can never know exactly how it will turn out. Both will develop a life of their own. Organising a party where most of the guests had never met before was a first for Danny and me. Most of these party goers had chatted on the CSH forum and/or had read the blog. So contact had been made in the virtual world, friendships forged and developed. But what would happen when everyone met in the real world? And what would they think of us? The cottage and garden – a bit scruffy although we like...
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