Cuckoo’s Pressed Raspberry Shortcake.

Over the past 5 years I have trialled various different plant raising methods. The traditional method of raising most Brassica and lettuce crops is to create a nursery bed. The seeds are sown relatively thickly in short rows and thinned lightly as they establish, discarding the weakest seedlings. The advantages of this are that it is easier to protect these small plants against attacks from slugs, pigeons and fleabeetle under small patches of fleece and it is economical in terms of both space and expensive compost. Using the range of plantlet sizes will help give you a longer harvesting period.

However, there is one serious disadvantage with this method, the digging up and replanting of seedlings causes massive root disturbance and a severe growth check. Unless the soil you are planting into is well watered with a good tilth there are invariably losses.

In recent years I have moved away from the seedbed system and do the vast majority of my plant raising in modules and containers of different sizes.

The benefits are numerous.

1. Crops can be started early under cover, allowing an earlier crop in many cases. especially with modern protected cropping (tunnels. cloches etc).

2. There is no replanting shock as roots remain undisturbed. This also speeds the time from sowing to harvest and reduces losses.

3. Sowing  2 or 3 seeds into a module and 3 or 4 varieties /tray every 2 weeks will give you succession planting of lettuce all summer and not take up space in the main garden and reduce seed wastage.

4. Seedlings can be protected from all sorts of pests especially mice which can be a serious problem for early crops of beans, peas and some flower seeds.

So many options are available today, different systems, different sizes, different shaped modules, Trial and error has taught me a few things about which shape and size suits which sort of seed, whether they are happy to be sown in small rows and pricked out into modules at the 2 leaf stage or whether they need to be direct sown into individual cells.

I’m going to concentrate on Vegetables (apart from sweet peas) and leave flowers for another time.

First I must mention the “Root trainer” a marvelous invention,  foldable strips of deep celled modules held in a frame that open right out for replanting. They are perfect for all leguminous vegetables and sweet peas. all of which have a long tap-root and where this is allowed to develop from the outset you will get a much more robust plant and higher yield. Put into an ordinary pot the tap-root often splits or curls and will never carry on down straight and true searching for water in the dry of midsummer. They also have a neat clear plastic propagation top that is perfect for keeping mice out in the early stages. There is nothing that a mouse likes better than sweetpea seeds!

Rootrainers

Sweetpeas sown in september/october and over wintered in a cold greenhouse are perfect to plant out in mid March.

All climbing beans. Sown at the end of May by the second week in June they are romping away and ready to harden off and plant out

Broad beans. I don’t do these in modules due to the scale of our operation but where mice are a real problem outside or in colder part of the country it would work well.

A good alternative to Rootrainers, which are expensive at about £7 a tray for 36 modules are loo rolls, packed into seed trays and filled with compost. They have the added advantage of being biodegradable   but I have found that they can sometimes be susceptible to moulds (despite recently reading a very interesting  blog http://oxoniangardener.co.uk/ubiquitous-root-trainer-roll-germination-30/

Standard 20 module seed tray insert

These are perfect for most brassica. 2 seeds sown per cell will allow you to thin to the strongest seedling and give you enough root space for the plant to reach the  2 true leaf stage before planting out. If you are only planting a few you can use a slightly larger cell, it will only be a good thing and the better established it is at planting out the better. Cells smaller than this shouldn’t be used for brassica, the plants can too easily become pot bound, the compost dries out too fast and the stress of any sort of nutrient deficiency will quickly stunt the plant. They will find it hard to  recover from this sort of ill treatment at this tender stage.

Peppers, aubergines and tomatoes can all be sown into modules of this size, again 2 seeds per cell kept on a heated bench or in a propagator, thinned to the strongest seedling they will grow away well. At the point where you see the roots trying to get out of the bottom of the module pot them into 3″ pots. Where they can stay until you plant them out or pot them on.

Small module trays.

These are perfect for salad plants. I grow all my whole head salads in modules. planting every couple of weeks throughout the summer. This way you can easily grow a real mix of varieties without wastage, glut or bolting.

Much earlier crops of both Swiss chard and beetroot (I use Bolthardy) can be obtained by sowing a tray of these under cover in early spring, The soil being a bit to cold for good germination you can steal a march on the weather and have a crop 2 or even 3 weeks before the direct drilled crop.

Basil is another seedling that is happier undisturbed, sown in March in a  small module tray I try to get a few plants out in the tunnels at the beginning of may in the hope that the plastic will keep off the worst of any later frosts.

One of the polytunnel benches in April by which time the greenhouses are full to bursting with pots and trays of hardy seedlings, all well established and waiting for the ground to be warm enough outside or about the be planted out undercover.

In the afternoon, before the demo Xanthe came to get some vegetables and have a cup of tea.

Alright, Xanthe is a bit of a dude, when I first met her I thought she looked like a wartime housewife but a little bit ‘rock and roll’.  She was wearing a flowery dress, black net tights and black shoes with her hair up in a twist.

We went to the patch and on the way back we picked blackberries, she asked me if I would demonstrate how to joint a rabbit at the demo. I said yes!

When I first went up on that stage I was so nervous, but who wouldn’t be, there were 100 people waiting to hear about, my gun, shooting and preparing rabbits. I showed everyone how to cut up the rabbit step by step and then helped her make the rabbit rillettes and the green sauce, which I didn’t really like because it was too zingy.
Then we made a pudding with Mum’s raspberries and the blackberries that we picked at the garden.

I had a great time doing the demo with Xanthe, I’d love to do it again.

Xanthe was very warm and cheerful and it made me laugh that the dog went and curled up at her feet under the table while we were having tea. (He hardly ever does that with anyone but Dad and Mum.)

Lately she’s sent me a couple of postcards from interesting places across the globe. It’s very nice to have a friend like her.

William lent me his beautiful, whetstone sharp Sami hunting knife and what I joy that was to use! They know a thing or two those Sami. Just the right weight and blade length for the job.

So, There is absolutely no reason for anyone to say they cant do this on grounds of strength or ability and to be fair it’s not gory or bad smelling so really unless you are properly squeamish the rewards are totally worth the effort.

Probably not for the faint hearted or veggies!

First hang up your beast. you may need to be double handed for this as they can be surprisingly heavy.
Starting on one leg cut down the inside of the leg to its bottom and start to peel the skin off. Work your way down both legs and then you can start to pull.

Pull downwards, firmly cutting with the side if the blade as you go being careful not to make holes in the pelt (specially if, as was the case with us, you are going to cure the skin) The outside of the haunches can be tricky as the fat covering is much thinner and you will find that you seem to be cutting into flesh here and there, don’t panic, it’s very hard not to and will cause no real problems later.

Once you’ve got over the haunches you can probably pull the central section off without needing the knife too much but you will need it again for the shoulders and front legs. By the time you get here though you will have the feel of it and will be confident enough to do that more fiddly last bit.

You’ll be left with a smart looking carcase all ready to be cut up.

I used a great you tube video as a tutorial for this and mixed it up with the butchery I have learned over the years.

You can dismantle a deer carcase with little more than a sharp boning knife, there is no real need for great bone-in chunks for the most part and the loin and haunches can yield some excellent joints without bones and therefore the need for saw or cleaver..

The Haunches once removed, I boned and seamed, that is I followed the natural lines of the muscles making a mixture or roasts, steaks and dice.

The shoulders come off easily with a knife, lift and follow the natural curve. you will see where you need to go! I diced them both for casseroles.

The loin I took off in two sections, left and right, sliding the knife between meat and rib from the bottom upwards and rolling the meat back till reaching the backbone, being sure to keep the flat of the knife on the bones, thus keeping wastage to a minimum. Once you have reached the top of the backbone push it back and then cut carefully down the outside right near the top of the backbone. It should then lift away in one big piece that can be trimmed. (obviously repeat the process on the other side.

You can actually see exactly where you need to cut the loin from the outside in the picture above. if you look at the body to the left you will see a grove running just above the table. That is the line of the muscle meeting the bone and should give an idea of the cut you need to make to remove the loin.

Neck and all the trim from between the ribs and any bits that are mangled from the bullet can all go into the mincer but just have a care for bone splinters.

You should be able to deal with it all in a busy afternoon and with a bit of ‘man help’ with the pulling of the skin and lifting and carrying I probably would have been a fair bit quicker. The 20kgs or so of meat that it yielded has all been delicious and there is still plenty more in the freezer,
And for those that find this a little too raw and distasteful, We all have massive respect for the meat that we eat. We recognise the sacrifice and the responsibility and part of that respect is in making sure that every meal that it gives us is delicious and enjoyed by everyone.

Funnily enough there are no photos for this post!!

Now, I doubt anyone that knows me well would describe me as prudish and I think I have a very healthy attitude to sex. In my youth I had rather more fun than many but I think on the whole I was pretty dignified, apart from a couple of occasions that I’d  rather not remember,  No one was ever badly emotionally damaged by what my parents generation may have found fairly promiscuous by comparison. looking back though, I don’t think I’d have changed a thing. I am still friends with a fair few of the lovely men that I’ve known and enjoy those relationships greatly as an adult, as there is a quiet warmth between us after all these years, marriages and children of our own.. So there in summary.. a pretty healthy attitude as I say!

Years ago a friend’s father went away on holiday leaving a laptop on the table.   Later that morning mum walks into the kitchen where their 4-year-old daughter is staring at the screen  showing a prone naked woman legs akimbo.. ‘look mummy’ she says ‘lady fallen over’

Last week my lovely husband suggested that I look up a particular web page in the ‘wonderweb’.. (now you’re all a bit worried about where this is going….. but stick with me!!)  I scoffed at him ‘no way… I’ve never looked at porn on-line and I’m not about to start now’, but ‘no’ he said ‘you ought to… to see just whats available just 2 or three clicks away’  I did nothing about it.. too busy with important things like feeding my family with food that doesn’t contain horsemeat, transfats and a million other nasties, trying to set up a new business at the same time as running the existing one… and to be honest porn always rather scared me.. what flashes I’ve ever seen in girly magazines (but always on paper) and I’ve never really found it titillating.

Last night however I decided I ought to have a peek…….. I think I am still in shock

For starters I was horrified that in just 2 clicks I was being offered a selection of boxes that looked like a hybrid of our local abattoir and the movie ‘naked lunch’. No preamble, straight into images and then a box on the right that had some sort of staged rape going on!

Closer inspection revealed a bewildering collection of just about every sexual act and fetish that you could imagine.. all in one page and thousands and thousands of videos all showing pretty much the same things.

What struck me as I wandered through this charnel house of writhing, moaning lubed-up flesh were a number of things:

1. That is was totally male centric.. even the supposed ‘lesbian sex’ pages seemed to me a male fantasy of what this might be like. There was little there that was designed to appeal to a female audience and it just appeared to be of men just banging away!

2. That the women appeared to be faking pretty much all of the enjoyment.. we’ve all done let’s be honest. whether out of pity, politeness of just plain wanting it to stop! but all that whooping and hollering and moaning away.. who is it for? making men feel good about themselves?

3. It was boring and unimaginative and once I’d seen 3 or 4 of the same formula I was wondering how there could be 1000s in each section.. Who is making all this… maybe that is why they look either bored or as if they’re acting.. maybe its all the same few shagged out people doing it over and over again!

So those were my thoughts on watching the array of videos that were’ headlining’ some of the ‘categories’.

I came away from the computer with a head full of images that no one REALLY needs to have! and a few serious worries about the next generation growing up with such ready access to images that for us as young adults (and not 9 and 10 yr olds) were only to be found in continental import magazines.

I have, as many of you will know a 7-year-old daughter and a 9 yr old son, wise beyond his years and with a very adult understanding of what sex is, love, in its many forms and how important it is to respect people you are in relationships with, homo or hetero sexual. We’ve never hidden sex away as a topic, we live on a farm for goodness sake and it wasnt long before they cottoned on that if that’s how ‘Bullie’ does it. something similar has gone on with us! So again, no mystery or fear and the questions about how and why and do you only do it to make babies have always been answered honestly.

So this is a whole new aspect that we, as parents have to deal with, This totally unreal, one-dimensional portrayal of sex. I’m sure that it is sometimes like that for many people and for others maybe it always is, but I don’t really want my children thinking that:

1. This is totally normal and the only way sex can be.

2.That the majority of women want to be treated this way.

3. That they are likely to enjoy this raw explicit kind of sex in their teens at the start of that journey.

4. That young women should be all be perfectly shaped,  pert breasted, hairless and vajazzled or pierced.

5. That young men should  all be shaven chested muscular and hung like a horse.

5. That oral sex is always just ‘par for the course’ and that every sexual encounter ends in anal sex!

I fear for both boys and girls. For the boys who have this falsified image of what sex will be. Imagine the disappointment that they will encounter when the reality is so very different from the internet videos and their warped sense of the meaning of sex, love and respect and the interconnectedness of those 3 words as they grow into adulthood.  But more I fear for the girls. The pressure to look like that, behave like that, and the realisation that , in order to play the role that you have seen portrayed on the internet you are going to need a GCSE in acting and moaning. Teenage girls the world over just want to be loved, to be adored and put on a pedestal. The images I saw yesterday are so far removed from the romantic ideal of first love it’s as though it’s an entirely different act.

If I was making a Dame Edna face at some of the things I saw, imagine what a 10 or 11 yr old will make of the graphic close-ups of shaved genitalia.. it would put you off sex forever and that would also be a dreadful shame because sex is GREAT!

If these images do float your boat as you explore your own sexuality (and its only right that you discover who you are and what you do and don’t like) then marvelous, Can’t we just let them find that out for themselves.

I’m afraid that their first experiences of sex won’t now be a learning but an ‘un-learning’ and that is ever-so sad.

So these last two days I have cut, snipped, hacked, hauled, dragged and burned. and now it is unrecognisable. Wonderfully behind the meters of horror, a proper hedgeline has appeared. Mostly willow, alder and blackthorn and horribly over-grown I think with platforms and a chainsaw we can probably rescue it.

It is hugely rewarding to see what we’ve  achieved in just less than a week and my body is telling me that I’ve done some proper days of work for the first time in weeks! I love that feeling of used muscles, and the deep sleep of a tired gardener is surely the most profound.

The overgrown hedge

If you follow us on Twitter you may well have heard that Bosley is hatching a bit of a plot!

I have  had a rare ‘good idea’ (well I’ve had two actually but the other is properly ‘secret squirrel’) and I am more than a little over excited!

In fact I’ve barely slept in a month. Plotting and scheming into the wee small hours, ignoring everyone, forgetting everything I ought to remember and generally being a proper nightmare to live with (more, that is even than usual) I’ve now reached that point where I really have to stop banging on about it and actually make it happen!

I have a list, it’s one of those slightly scary ones that is full of things I need to do myself and more worryingly things I will need to pay people to do with real hard cash and this is a frightening prospect for someone who has tried in all possible situations to pay for nothing over the last 10 years,  through a mix of borrowing, begging and theft in plain sight.

Sorting good burning logs

The more things we can achieve with out having to put my hands in my pocket the better, so  we have spent the last two days battling with miles of bramble stems and a vast and vicious tangle of blackthorn and willow.

We took chainsaws, hooks and fire starting kit and the savages down to the garden. We cut and sawed and hacked. The children helped, got bored, helped a bit more, dragged cable reels from the ‘Bonfire of Plenty’ hurt themselves, fought, helped some more. We lit a fire and the  brambly thorny hedge got smaller and smaller whilst the fire and the field got bigger.

A good burn up

Who needs and xbox?

Before the end of the day Katie managed to injure herself properly and unspeakably, straddling the edge of the cable reel she was dancing on and William found himself chest deep in the ditch trying to ‘make a bridge!’ I may sound a little blasé but a day in Bosley’s life isn’t complete without drama and injury! And when you consider the fact that the whole weekend has been about chainsaws and fire I think we’ve done rather well. There are still 16 limbs (20 if you include the dog) between us, which I count as a result, and no one got barbecued.

The result is fantastic. We have a clear boundary at last. One that can put a fence along, and by clearing back the huge, overgrown, once coppiced willows we have given ourselves at least 10m more field! Space for a properly organised compost heap for all the wonderful greenwaste that I get from the camping site and more importantly a clear discrete space for my compost loos.

Pallets from the ever fruitful ‘Bonfire of Plenty’

William undeterred by his dunking in foetid freezing ditchwater has spent the evening quantity surveying the requirements for a natural swimming pool. Gawd help us all!

Well it all started with my ‘crap February’ last year. In February 2012 the back of my eye fell off. I had to have a whole load of operations to fix it. For a treat from all my ops I got given a rat-catcher air gun for shooting rabbits on mum’s patch. With my dad we started with target shooting. After a long time we went on to live targets. I got 3 rabbits on my first go. 

chuffed!

My gun is not something to be taken lightly. It is powered by co2 canisters. It has a range of 25 yard’s a bolt action reloading mechanism and takes single round 5.5 mm 0.22cal pellets. It is perfect for a first timer as it is small and light. The rat catcher will cost you £100-£150(max).

If you are really interested I have made 3 youtube videos about the rat catcher

No end of bowls of porridge, pancakes or steaming “strangled eggs” mitigate the gloomy and rather chilly breakfasts, (I’m too tight to turn on the heating just yet) and having to wrap children, who hitherto went to school in jumpers, now in coats, hats and wellies is an added stress when they too have had to be cajoled from their muzzy beds on these dark autumnal mornings.

The things that I find hardest though are in the garden. I know that I need to tidy up, pack away and burn. That raspberries need to be cut back and the chickweed growing long after most other things have stuttered to a halt, needs weeding if I’m not to be fighting a battle with its babies all next year. Beans poles need dismantling,  the curcubits need to be cleared and mypex folded and stored. Blighted tomatoes need to be burnt and tunnels remulched. In fact the to do list is so long that to write it down seems like a dreadful waste of time.  This sense of enormity, coupled with the lack of energy is a great part of the problem. It paralyses me just when I need to get out there and get on with it.

More than anything its the smell that fills me with melancholy, the damp decaying must that pervades the garden, A fire helps, its bright acrid sharp smell cutting through the sweeter smell of rot and the dusty, dusky smell of mildew. So much that was vibrant and cheerful has drooped or collapsed, the fragile cells burst and shattered into a vitreous dullness, almost transparent now, leaves lose their lustre and texture, beans are a dull green, courgettes curled and blackened. The dahlias have turned dark brown under the long fingers of Jack Frost their flowers still showing their vibrant colour on bowed heads.

Is it any wonder that I am low, wanting to retreat like a bear into my home and not to see the death and decay that has invideously overwhelmed my garden, but I cannot, and must get up tomorrow in good time, get out there and deal with the tangled growth of the last 9 months. And then when in the dying days of November I have cleared everything, canes and textiles are under cover, ground mulched of sown with green manure, pots cleaned and the greenhouses and tunnels tidy. Then I can stay inside on the really miserable days baking, writing and clearing the dreadful mess that is my home after a summer outside and wrap myself in the warmth of a fire and family Christmas.

So to January….  imperceptibly the light is returning… day by day a tiny lengthening and for us folk that look down and peer beneath the leaf mould or care to stop and really ‘see’ there is movement in the frozen soil as bulbs that have been storing spring sunshine for 10 or 11 months push their green shoots into the frosty winter world. “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”. There is so much promise in the quiet heaving of the damp sweet earth. The green spears are unstoppable, moving through and round any obstacle to reach the feeble sun. It is impossible not to be excited by this force, this explosive, bursting newness. It is all around the garden, tightly furled leaves on trees and shrubs and the flower buds of fruit trees start to swell. The Hellebore starts to flower and the Witchazel fills the garden with its scent.  It may be cold and grey but there is so much latent life, so much promise.. Give me the dankest February day and I will show you hope  I will show you Spring

9 years ago when I had William she appeared with the most beautiful hand spun, naturally  dyed, wool blanket, and soon after, delicious hooded cardigans, little  vests and teddybears all made with dyes from the hedgerows round my slowly expanding vegetable garden, blackberries, nettle, elderberries, carrot tops and onion skins,  beautifully knitted or crocheted.

Initially embarrassed by her kindness,  I  didn’t understand how she could be so generous with her time and care, it dawned on me only slowly that with her own grandsons well out of baby clothes and with time on her hands it gave her pleasure that the beautiful things she had made had an appreciative home.

When savage number two arrived in the blistering August of 2005 and I  was back to the garden within the week, I think Audrey realised that I was slightly unhinged and appeared one morning on my doorstep. “I think you need some help” she said, “I’d like to come and do your ironing”  I remember the it so well, standing there exhausted, hot, squirming grumpy baby over my shoulder with wind and this excruciating moment thinking ‘oh god that would be amazing but I can’t afford to PAY to have someone do my ironing’

And so she has, and now I don’t know how I would manage without her, she wanders down on a Tuesday morning and sets up the ironing board on the patio, often just letting herself in when I’m busy in the middle of the summer. I come home at 4 for the savages return from school to find that the kitchen has been tided,  piles of ironed sheets and clothes sit on the table and the chairs are festooned with Marc’s shirts.

She is always able to child-sit in a crisis and despite frugal living on a state pension, thoughtful presents appear for the children, a little yellow handbag, a ladybird mobile to hang in a tree, tank tops for William, knitted  in wool from Katie’s godfathers Oxford sheep, videos on tractors,  and for me and best of all,  pairs of  thick, fingerless gloves and wrist warmers,  carefully designed so they don’t bunch up, crusty with mud under a spade handle.

It is when it comes to creative making and  mending that she really comes into her own! A broken tent zip is now closed with strips of Velcro, my favourite favourite shirt so badly torn in the sleeve now has neat short sleeves, children’s clothes that looked beyond repair, invisibly mended and a brilliant rain cover for my vegetable stall.

And of course we look after them too! Vegetables and flowers find their way into a bag each week, a sack of King Edwards go down to London in the autumn with a couple of silvery crown prince squash, and we keep an eye on their patch and caravan when they are away.  But it’s a small thing compared to the support that she and Brendan give us.

Her generosity with so little is humbling and hearing her stories of a blitz childhood and the cheerful way that the community made do and mended makes me ashamed of our profligate wasteful world, she would never waste the tiniest bit of food, throw away a torn shirt or buy something new if second hand would do. She is my conscience and an example to all of us.

The best illustration I have of this is a conversation we had about the war when William was doing a school project about ww2

I must write down  her stories. They are a time of values that we would do well to remember. A time of community and making do with what you have. Where small kindnesses are repaid without money changing hands and where the conspicuous consumption of today would have been unthinkable.