Wildflower pathways, railway station gardeners and ‘Incredible Edible’ planters.

Tags

community gardens, Incredible edible, wildflower planting

Changes are afoot around Bradford on Avon. Slowly little pockets of loveliness are springing up in public spaces.

Anyone who has visited the railway station in the last few months will have seen what can be achieved on the platform by a small group of ‘railway gardeners’ working together for a few hours a week .

In Lambs Yard in the centre of town one of the large metre square wooden planters has been adopted by Climate Friendly Bradford and myself. On the 21st April at 2pm we will be holding a community planting event, digging out and rehoming the silver birch and periwinkles and establishing an edible garden - cordon pear, rose, strawberries and herbs for public picking. We’d love to see you there and will happily offer advice on growing edibles in small spaces to anyone who’d like to grow some of their own food.

We hope this will be the first of many edible containers and beds that we’ll see springing up around the town in the next few months. Who knows? The salad bed pictured above might provide you with a bit of inspiration.

In other news the muddy slither along the path to my allotment is a thing of the past, as the Council has seen fit to improve it with tarmac. This has not been altogether without controversy and incident. However they have left a few feet of clay soil on either side of the path which is ripe for an afternoon’s wildflower sowing. Climate Friendly Bradford have come up trumps and are supplying the seed. Now we just need the manpower.

Here’s the deal. Turn up at the top of the municipal golf course at 2pm on Sunday April 28th clutching a trowel. Spend an hour or so sowing a patch with a wildflower seed mix (advice given to novices) and in return we’ll provide refreshments for the workers. (Yes. There will be homemade cakes).

Further details of both these community planting events from me. Email me. I’m uber-efficient about replying. And for those of you too far away to get involved, I will post pics. Promise!

A passion for garden thugs

Tags

lemon balm, lemon balm pesto, lime balm

Yes. I know it’s been ages ….but when there’s no time for blogging there’s more time for lots of exciting projects. You will be informed in due course. (What a tease!)

I admit to having a bit of a soft spot for some garden thugs – mint, borage. lemon balm….you know, the kind of plants that once planted never seem to go away and benefit from a bit of roughing up and restriction. Tough love rules where these fellas are concerned.

It won’t have escaped your notice that I’m also a succour for a plant that is multi-purpose. If it smells good, tastes great, is good for you and holds its own in a bunch of cut flowers I’m a fan.

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), a member of the mint family, is considered to be a calming herb helping to reduce stress and anxiety, promote sleep and  improve appetite.  Even before the Middle Ages, it was steeped in wine to lift the spirits, help heal wounds, and treat venomous insect bites and stings. I happened to mention that it helped with stressful situations and found several pupils at school snacking on the odd leaf around exam time last year. (Using it to make tea or sorbet is better.)

As you see from the pic, we’ll have to wait a bit for lemon balm in abundance but the taste of Summer is only weeks away. Jekka’s herb cookbook has several recipes for lemon balm but my all-time favourite use for it is not in her book. Jekka. let me enlighten you, my friend. The delights of lemon balm pesto await. I can’t remember where it came from but I do know that I’ve twiddled with the original recipe, as is my wont. Here it is for when your garden and the supermarket carpark is over run with the stuff.  You won’t regret it.

Lemon Balm Pesto

2 packed cups of lemon balm leaves

3 cloves garlic

1/2 cup walnuts

1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh)

3-4 tablespoons olive oil

salt

Easy peasy method… Combine the lemon balm, garlic, and walnuts in a food processor. Give it a quick whizz until everything is finely chopped, but not completely pulverised. Add the lemon and slowly drizzle in the oil while the machine is running. Add salt to taste.

Use some elbow grease method…. Finely chop a 1/3 cup of the lemon balm with the garlic. Continue chopping the lemon balm, a 1/3 cup at a time and working it in. 

Once all the lemon balm is mixed in, start incorporating the walnuts into the mix. Keep chopping until everything is very finely mixed. It should take about 20 minutes and should leave you glowing nicely.

Place everything in a bowl, add lemon, oil, and salt. Stir to mix well. 

Meanwhile during #britishflowers hour on Twitter a week or so ago. (Monday 8-9pm, for the uninitiated) someone happened to mention Lime Balm in cut flower arrangements. There’s a lime version? My ears pricked up. I had to have some.

Guess what? Everybody wanted some but nobody had any. Cue finding the detective outfit in the dressing up box. I AM the reincarnation of Miss Marple without the ability to knit obviously. And so, my friends, I can reveal that I will soon have some seeds in my possession courtesy of a roundabout route involving my lovely stateside sister.

I will publish developments and may be in the market for some swopsies. Watch this space.

Spicy citrus anything

Tags

January kitchen, Spicy citrus shortbread

 

pic from my lovely vegbox people at Abel and Cole

If pomegranates and cranberries appear in a lot of my December dishes then January is all about citrus and spice. There’s something comforting about spicing up your Winter dishes but after the excesses of Christmas a bit of citrus zing is just the job too.

I admit I still get pathetically excited about the contents of my vegbox when I need to supplement what we grow on the plot. This week’s included a recipe for Spicy Citrus shortbread. Clearly meant for me and even though I’ve made it before it’s always good to have someone else’s take on a treat.

Here’s what you’ll need

• 150g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, softened
• 75g caster sugar
• 150g plain flour
• 75g cornflour
• zest 1 orange or clementine
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• A pinch of ground cloves
• A pinch of ground or fresh ginger

And here’s how…

Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3. Beat the butter till softened. Add the clementine zest, spice and sugar. Work until well mixed. Add a pinch of salt. Sift in the flour and cornflour. Mix till smooth. using your hands to gently bring the dough together – try and knead it as lightly and as little as possible. Lightly flour the surface and turn out the dough. Pat into a large flattened round. Pop the dough into a round cake tin lined with greaseproof paper.  Gently work it to the edges. A good way to smooth it out is to put another layer of greaseproof paper on top. Then carefully pull off the top layer. Cut the dough into eight wedges. Crimp the edge with a fork. Prick the centre with the prongs of a fork to make a pretty pattern. Bake in the heated oven for 20 mins – keep an eye on it, you only want it very lightly coloured. While it’s still hot, sprinkle with spiced sugar. Finish off with a bit of zest. Cool and scoff with coffee and friends round the kitchen table on a wintry day.

And for those of you looking for more opportunities for spice and zing try adding orange zest, cinnamon and cloves to apple crumbles or sauted red cabbage. Spice up a parsnip soup with ginger and orange zest. Spicy lemon muffins are good on a cold winter’s afternoon with a cup of steaming coffee. A late night homemade elderberry cordial with added ginger, cloves and chunks of orange slips down a treat. The options are limitless. Go on. Experiment.

Happy New Year…Hen Galan

Tags

Hen Galan, New Year traditions

You know how I like to celebrate the seasons. If you’re a Pembrokeshire girl – like me – then today’s the day for celebrating New Year. What better excuse to break open the remaining box of Christmas chocs and get together for a singsong with your neighbours? And if you’re lucky, the view through the window will be picture postcard snowscene by now.

In parts of Pembrokeshire where I grew up, children spent the day roaming miles around the valley on foot or on horseback singing old Welsh songs to their neighbours and collecting sweets or money (*calennig*) to welcome in the  New Year. We missed school, got lots of exercise in the fresh air and spent time celebrating with our community. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of education once in a while.

I can imagine all the bemused expressions. This was a celebration of the *old* New year (Hen Galan) based on the ancient Julian calendar. When the rest of the country had already adopted the Gregorian calendar here we still rang in the Julian new Year.

We always like to do things our own way in Pembrokeshire.

Cue nodding from the rest of my family.

So ……..Happy New Year.

Where have all the (British) flowers gone?

Tags

British flowers, cutting garden, South West flower farmers meet up

January can be a gloomy time for gardeners  but British flower farmers are making the most of some Winter downtime by organising a *bit of a do* in the South West next Monday. it’s an opportunity to share ideas, make connections and raise the profile of flower growing in the South west. And despite the fact that I can’t go because of work commitments I’m really rather excited about the whole thing.

The cut flower industry is huge but I wonder how many of you picking up a bunch of flowers to brighten a gloomy Winter’s day realise that 95% of the flowers sold in Britain are grown overseas? That’s a change from thirty years ago when my dad used to appear at the back door on a Friday afternoon with a bunch he’d grown himself or bought from a local florist. Back then only about 5% of the flowers sold in Britain came from overseas.

The buy local, eat seasonal approach to fruit and veg consumption applies just as much to flowers. Of course that means that you can’t always have what you want but that doesn’t mean that a beautiful bouquet can’t grace your home all year round. It can. And many of the growers attending Monday’s event in Devon are experts at making that happen.

With the decline in habitats for butterflies, bees and other pollinating insects, buying British grown flowers is an easy way to do your bit along with planting wildflower meadows. More of the latter another time. British flowers in your vase have already helped increase the biodiversity of the area in which their grown and provided food all the way up the chain.I have always grown a proportion of flowers for cutting on my allotment for that reason as well as the obvious advantages of having bucketfuls of affordable blooms to arrange around the house.

This year I am hoping to spread the word a little further by making a cutting garden at school and selling the flowers to parents and members of the local community to raise funds for long term school gardening projects.I’m also hoping to spread the word to other schools who are looking to improve the sustainability of their gardens and raise some funds by selling the flowers they grow.

I’ll blog about our progress on the cutting patch during the year. In the meantime why not look at flower farming in action from two of my twittermates – Georgie at Common Farm Flowers who made the Christmas wreath pictured above and Ben at Higgledy Garden who has just moved his operation to Cornwall and supplies many of my seeds.

A Year of Seasonal Eating

Tags

eating seasonally, local food, Local Morsels magazine

I make no New Year’s resolutions but post-Christmas ‘blow-out’ is as good a time as any for a little discipline in the kitchen. My battered second-hand copy of *It’s Raining Plums* has inspired a little 2013 project. How difficult can it be to feed a family of five on seasonal food for a year? Take three children, a father with *particular* culinary tastes and an experimental mother. Game on!

My monthly column for Local Morsels this year will follow my family’s attempts to eat seasonally and I shall be blogging about it. This is where you all come in. In the best panto tradition – audience participation is the name of the game. Help me, people! Ingenious ways to feed your children Jerusalem artichokes? What to do with Seville oranges when you live with a family of marmalade-haters? Anyone?

Every month I will be sharing my successes and failures, seasonal recipes-both old favourites and new discoveries and I’d like you to do the same. Send me your tips and recipes via Twiiter, this blog or email cally@countrygate.co.uk  and I’ll publish them on the blog, tweet about them, mention them in my column and may even choose a monthly prizewinner.

January stars are Seville oranges, leeks, parsnips, celeriac and Jerusalem artichokes. It’s over to you.

The Turning of the Year

Tags

New Year Plans

picture from Local Morsels

I love this time of year – that inbetween time between Christmas and New Year when nothing much is happening.

The year has turned; the days are lengthening and although Spring is a long way off, it WILL  come.

Time to settle down in front of the fire with the seed catalogues and a notepad and make plans for the coming year.

There are lots of exciting projects to look forward to on the plot in 2013 and now is the perfect time to mull them all over.

Have a peaceful and productive New Year.

Stir up Sunday

Tags

Christmas pudding recipe, Christmas rituals, Homemade Christmas, Stir up Sunday

Here on the plot we’re hurtling towards another milestone on the journey towards Christmas readiness – *Stir Up Sunday* which will give us plenty to take our mind off the howling winds,rising flood waters in the middle of town and the fact that we are rapidly developing trenchfoot.

Time was that this was a community event with family members each taking a turn at stirring the mix from East to West before trooping down to the village hall with their carefully marked pud and placing it with all the others in the communal steamer. Time for a knit and natter, catching up on the local news before taking your pud home, rewrapping it and stowing it safely away in the pantry for the day itself.

We are likely to be mixing our pud post rugby mudfest in the privacy of our own kitchen on Sunday afternoon. Unlike the cake the pud is an old favourite inherited from my Great grandmother and includes the addition of a couple of grated carrots. Secreting a vegetable or two into sweet treats obviously runs in the family.

Granny Scourfield’s Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

• 300g fresh white breadcrumbs
• 100g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ whole nutmeg, very finely grated
• 350g raisins
• 100g mixed peel (we’re not keen on mixed peel so substitute a mix of peel, dried cranberries and dried apricots finely chopped)
• 50g flaked almonds
• 250g suet
• 225g demerara sugar
• 225g sultanas
• 225g currants
• 2 carrots, peeled and very finely grated
• 2 cooking apples, peeled and very finely grated
• Zest and juice of 1 orange
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 1 small glass of brandy
• 2 tbsp black treacle
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten

Method

Put the breadcrumbs in a very large mixing bowl. Sieve in the flour together with the mixed spice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Then add the remaining dry ingredients including the dried fruit..Add the  grated carrots and apples.

Combine all the wet ingredients in a jug. Pour over the dry ingredients and mix together, from east to west, with a big wooden spoon. At this point you can add lucky charms to the mix for lucky people to find on Christmas Day. My granny used threepenny bits. The whole family should take it in turns to give it a stir, closing their eyes and making a wish.

Cover the bowl with a clean, damp teacloth and leave overnight.

Butter 2 x 1.2-litre pudding basins and spoon the mix into them. Place a disc of baking paper on top of the puddings, then seal with a big sheet of baking paper with a central pleat, to allow expansion. Cover with muslin cloth and tie with string. Steam for 6 hours in steamers, You can use a pan of simmering water if you don’t have a steamer. It needs to reach  2/3rds up the sides of the basins. Be sure to keep the water topped up.

Remove and allow  to cool.

When cool, re-cover the basins and store in a cool, dry place. On Christmas day steam for another 1-2 hours. Turn the pudding onto a plate, then pour 75ml of brandy into a ladle and carefully warm over a low heat for 1 minute or so. Light the brandy using a long match and tip over the pudding just before serving.

picture courtesy of Local Morsels

The Great Christmas Cake Debate

Tags

Christmas cake, Christmas rituals

Rituals – my children LOVE them and I NEED them to keep the essentials of family life ticking over – for I am a worshipper at the altar of spontaneity. Making the pudding to my Granny’s recipe on *Stir Up Sunday* is a ritual. So is  chutney-making in October; pumpkin carving for Calan Gaeaf; making leaf mould and tramping around Stourhead in October Half Term. Christmas cake making is NOT one of those rituals.

I love fruitcake and at Christmas  one must always have a rich, moist and, above all, homemade celebration fruitcake to share – right? But for the rest of the household it has never been top of the wish list when it comes to tea time treats.  In fact they are much more likely to opt for chocolate , ginger, lemon drizzle, in fact anything BUT fruitcake.  Christmas isn’t quite the same without that rich combination of fruit, sugar and alcohol which arrives as the days get to their very darkest.

My mother always made hers on October 25th. It was huge and usually lasted until Valentine’s Day – but  one of the pleasures of Christmas is finishing off leftovers for weeks afterwards. I am less rigid. It happens at some point during October or early November and unlike any other activity in preparation for Christmas is an entirely solitary affair.

It starts with a feeling on a bleak and usually damp morning that today’s the day to fill the kitchen with all those Christmas spices. After the family are packed off to work and school the decision has to be made. WHICH of the myriad recipes accumulated on bits of paper in my notebook should I use this year? I have my mother’s recipe with treacle, my grandmother’s with sherry, my great grandmother’s with brandy, Nigella’s with bourbon and treacle, Delia’s, Mary’s, Nigel’s, Jamie’s……

Then there’s the question of size and of shape. My mother baked the cake one year in several basins and iced them all to look like a wierd Victorian version of *Stepford Wives*. The next year we had a family of snowpeople. I even recall some faintly threatening Russian santas. It must have been during the menopausal years!!

Having settled all of the above there remains the question of how long to soak the fruit. One day; two days; a week; not at all? What about the mix of spices? Should I knock spices on the head altogether? So now you’ve realised why it’s a solitary affair. Any family involvement would lead to a scaled down version of the United Nations in our kitchen.

This year I have plumped for Nigel Slater’s basic cake recipe of a modest 20cm size and round. When I say Nigel’s what I mean is my version of Nigel’s. I fancied a quick and easy approach. This one does not require any soaking of the fruit beforehand and is only in the oven for 21/2 hours. I adjusted the balance of dried fruits adding blueberries and dates, reducing the amount of figs and nuts and increasing the amount of cranberries. I couldn’t bring myself to leave out the spices entirely so threw in a heady mix of nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. I also added a couple of chopped russet apples.

And now it’s wrapped up well in its tin where I will *feed* it with brandy every week until the big day. The cake ritual happens a few days before Christmas when it has been covered in marzipan and iced. The children tie a golden ribbon round it, carefully unwrap the figures of the Holy Family and place them atop the cake.

One must have SOME cake rituals.

November ….it’s not Christmas yet.

Tags

a walk in the woods, Autumn pleasures, Hopton House, November

November gets a bad press.

It’s cold.

It’s damp.

The garden looks sad.

Your first cold of the Winter strikes.

The only thing to look forward to is Christmas.

Well – I’m here to balance the scales a little with a bit of November love courtesy of my twittermate and soul sister Karen Thorne of Hopton House. Put the kettle on. Cut yourself a slice of cake and enjoy.

My love of autumn started as a very young child, with long dog walks in the wood with my parents, kicking leaves and collecting the best coloured, along with acorns, haws, hips and conkers for the nature table at school. Always coming home to a fire & hot buttered crumpets.

 

As I grew to be a teenager it became the new fashion season, wrapping up in the loveliest chunky knits, long boots, scarves and gloves; usually heading off to the same beautiful beech woods, this time with a boyfriend in tow for a romantic walk.

 

Then I headed down South to University. I decided on my college as I sat outside it, waiting for the bus home, watching squirrels running up & down the tree lined drive. Autumn then became a time of exciting new beginnings & adventures ( and, even now, I’m far more likely to make this a time of resolutions than New Year ); spending autumn afternoons, wrapped up warm, watching the college rugby players.

Once I left university, in very rapid succession, I got a job, got married, moved house, got a first dog and then a baby. Our first home was chosen for its vicinity to the woods at Runnymede and Windsor Great Park. My long weekend autumn walks in the woods now accompanied by husband, daughter & dog, picking up treasures for the next generation’s nature table.

 

My low point in my career was finding myself managing 120 staff and having to do all of their performance reviews in September & October. I felt bitter & so sad about this happening during these months. I was having to work all the hours I could, including weekends, and all the time Autumn was carrying on without me able to get involved.

 

Then 10 years ago we moved to South Shropshire. We look out on farmland, scattered with oaks, towards wooded hills, which are punctuated with deciduous and larches. Even on the greyest of days the landscape glows.  No tidy lawn carefully raked for us! But instead a country garden lawn scattered with the jewels of the season; red, gold, orange leaves, in front of a wildflower meadow, bordered by our own hedgerow filled with sloes, bird cherries, haws & rosehips.

 

I can experience autumn without leaving my kitchen, something I sometimes need to remind myself after 5 weeks of running the B&B without a day off. And if running my own business all gets too much I load my mini up with the 2 collie dogs & head up to the woods. Just 45 minutes of soaking up the views over the Shropshire Hills & kicking the leaves is enough to restore the peace to my soul.

Now put on your boots and enjoy November.