Harvest Monday - appley

I haven't done too much harvesting this week, but there's been a bit of an apple theme....

First appley thing was bottling up a batch of homemade apple cider vinegar. It's really easy to make....put a load of apple scraps like peels and cores into a jar or whatever (don't include any 'off' bits though). Fill the container with water and add a few spoonfuls of honey (this helps to speed up the ferment) and give it a stir. Cover it over with muslin or similar (so air can flow but flies are kept out) and leave for a couple of weeks to ferment (keep an eye on it for mould on top). Then strain off the liquid, compost the appley bits, and pour the liquid back in your container for another couple of weeks or longer depending on the flavour you like. Here's my latest batch, ready for bottling....

Then simply pour it into a bottle or two for storage...

Cider vinegar can be made without adding the honey, but it takes a lot longer.

 

Veggie-wise we've made a few meals with home grown produce, like this stir fry with the last courgettes, some chard and one of the peppers from last week.

I've made another sweet chestnut terrine, using our own kale and chard instead of broccoli, and chestnuts that I'd prepared last week.

Err I forgot to take a 'baked' photo though...here's one before they went in.

I also roasted some chestnuts at the bottom of the oven...they came out of their skins quite easily this way...tasty too.

Jan made a roasted butternut squash and rice dish, with some beans and courgettes from the freezer and drizzled with some of that cider vinegar, mmm. I now have three butternuts left - this dish can make a came back for sure.

And lastly, more apples, this time from a glean at an organic orchard...here's just some of them...look at them alllll! We had a fantastic turn out of volunteers this time, who really got stuck in, despite the rain. Well done everyone for a great day, harvesting apples that have gone to good use at various charities.

That's me this week, thanks for reading. I'm linking in with Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

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Harvest Monday and a glean

We've had a lovely sunny autumn day today....hopefully this is a trend for the rest of October (bit of wishful thinking there but you never know). The evenings are chilly, but that's what I like about this time of year, it's nice to start wrapping up. I've actually got socks on for the first time in months, gasp.

 

I've had a steady trickle of harvests this week...the summer crops are hanging on in there. We were also lucky enough to be given 10 eggs from our friends who've recently got some new hens....they're good layers (the hens that is, not my friends).

Yesterday I spotted some quite long beans in the back garden

And got a decent harvest from a quick trip to the plot too

Plus some reasonable toms from the lean-to today. It was quite warm in there with the sun out.

I've made this spiced apple cake a couple of times this week, with apples from my allotment (and in the second cake I used the gifted eggs). The recipe uses two cups of sugar, but that's way too sweet, so I actually use just-under one cup. I also replace the oil with room temperature butter, which is soft enough to mix in ok.

I didn't have chance to take any nice pictures of it dished out, but got good reports from everybody who had a slice. I expect I'll be making more because lucky me, I got this huge bag of apples this afternoon after helping in a friend's garden...

I volunteered at another gleaning day this weekend, returning to the organic farm in west Norfolk. There were only seven of us but we harvested masses of food.

 

Broccoli / calabrese field

Big ol' field - looking back the other direction

You can see the stumps where the farm workers had already been through harvesting the main crop. We were getting the smaller heads that had been left behind, but still lovely veggies. It's quite fun spotting the heads, in a sea of leaves. There must've been about 30-40 trays worth that we found.

We also harvested about 70 trays of caulis...some were too small for the farmer to harvest, or they had a slight discoloration or a spot or two of black, but nothing that couldn't be easily cut out.

The morning was beautifully sunny but then rain set in, so the afternoon turned out rather soggy, harvesting trays of Savoy cabbage and onions. Still good fun though. Goodness knows how much we saved from being wasted but it was several van loads altogether over the course of the day....and once again we could've harvested more if there'd been more of us. But word is getting round, with new people taking part each time. Hopefully I can make the next one, in a couple of weeks. The gleaning days are organised by Feedback and the food is distributed by FareShare, do get involved if you can.

 

Thanks for reading this week. I'm linking in with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

 

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Harvest Monday - rain (and elderberry & apple jelly)

Continuing with the autumn theme this week, unfortunately we're not getting crisp November days but instead rather soggy ones. Still not had a frost though.

Thanks to the rain yesterday I didn't get down the plot to sow me broad beans as it started in the morning just as I was about to head out. So I spent some time in the back garden ( in the rain) clearing away the beans etc. Mainly because I wanted to pull the canes out so they didn't rot in the ground over winter.

I did find a few blauhilde beans that seem edible (still crisp when snapped) and also some nice runner beans for saving seed from. There was a gherkin too but I didn't want to risk it being bitter, so just composted it. I cut back a couple of rocket plants to hopefully re-grow in the spring.

Here's the beans with a chilli from the lean to. I've just brought this plant indoors, managed to squeeze it on the shelf with two sweet pepper plants.

This week I picked one of the sweet peppers too:

That's pretty much it in terms of harvests apart from some chard I didn't get a piccie of. I have a small container in my front yard that I put some old tomato compost in and put in three chard seedlings earlier in the year. The yard faces North so they're not going to grow any more this winter but it's handy having them where we can pick a few leaves when I haven't got down the plot.

Using up some stored veggies this week included a yummy curry with roast sqush ( the skin was rock- hard and difficult to cut though but the flesh was delicious), beans from the freezer and fruit from the freezer too.

I made an apple and almond cake (using Shaheen at 'allotment to kitchen's plum cake recipe (which I also made when I had some plums in late summer). It was really good. Didn't get any pics though.

And made elderberry and apple jelly. I had the berries in the freezer from earlier pickings around the neighbourhood. I used up about half of them (3.5 pounds), with the same amount of apples and 1.2 litres of water. I cooked them up one evening til they were soft (and squished them up a bit more too to get the juice out). With the apples you just chop them up to get pectin from the skin and core.

Then I set up my jelly strainer (upturned stool). This is in the morning after. I do squeeze mine to get all the juice ( and risk cloudy jelly).

Mm, juicy (Also bring back memories from the 80s by looking like a member of the red hand gang after squeezing out the juices)

Then heat up slowly to the boil and add lots of sugar (450 grams* to every 600ml liquid). I had 2000ml so used 1500 grams of sugar. (Think I got that right). Hmm, Looking at the photo again, I had about 2200ml so should have used a bit more sugar than that.

*corrected from 4.5 lbs! Thanks to Margaret for spotting my mistake. Not too much of a difference there then, oops.

Then stir the sugar in slowly until it's all dissolved and start bringing to a rapid boil for about 10mins ( or in my case, 40 mins or so! It just would not set so I kept adding lemon juice til I finally got a set)

Tah dah! But not as many jars as I was expecting because It boiled for so long and I lost a lot to evaporation. I've got the same amount of berries in the freezer so might make some more (and lots of apples still) and add some red currants for extra pectin.

As it's hard to get all the jelly out of the pan, I didn't want to waste it and so used the pan to make up a big batch of stewed fruit for the freezer. I also added some scum (bubbly aerated jelly juice) that I'd scooped off the top of the jars being sealing...no point in wasting it! (But it does make the jars a bit messy, really I should've scooped it off from the pan).

Linking in with the good folk for Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne's dandelions

 

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Harvest Monday - happy Halloween!

So this is a bit early but we're away at the moment and wanted to do this while I remembered. Here's a little cartoon I drew a few years ago....poor Bob.

And on to the veggies and fruit....haven't been able to get to the plot for a few days, so not too much to report:

Still picking basil and ripening tomatoes (in a paper bag in the kitchen).

Some sweet and chilli peppers in the lean to at home

A courgette! I've left the plants in case they decide to squeeze a couple more out. The plants themselves look rather sickly but we're still getting warm days sometimes and not had any frosts yet so may as well leave them

I actually found some climbing beans too, in the back garden, nice and tender, amazing! Glad I've not had chance to tidy everything up yet, it keeps growing!

I was given two big bags of apples this week from different people. The first lot were a bit rough, so I processed them straight away into stewed fruit (I added some frozen fruit too - mainly raspberries - and a jar of old red currant jam as a sweetener).

And the other bag is in a lot better nick, so I'm keeping them til I'm ready to make elderberry jelly (I have the elderberries frozen). I'll give most of these away as Christmas presents.

Hope you all have fun hallowe'ens! Wooooh.

Linking in to harvest Monday at Daphne's dandelions.

 

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Harvest Monday ......

So weather-wise we've had a bit of a mix again. This weekend has been really hot and sunny, a bit foggy and finally today we have had much-needed rain, though it's only really got going tonight.

Here's my round up for the week :

Some not v impressive peppers (I picked these first, there are some better ones). Anyone know what causes these brown bits? They were ok when these bits were cut out.

Contemplative crystal lemon cukes.

I brought a few onions back from the shed. I've grown Sturon from sets the last couple of years. I did autumn onions a few times but they never worked out that well so am sticking with spring planting.

Apples! A good crop this year. This doesn't include the ones we've eaten :) also I spotted a large gherkin peeking out. Unfortunately I wasted several gherkins as I found them at the back of the fridge all soft and mushy. Yuk. I'd run out of jars and forgotten about them. Oops.

Rubbish sweet corn from the back garden, tasted ok though. I only had three plants and they obviously didn't pollinate v well! The ones on the allot were better.

Last of the ripe toms from the lean to in the back garden plus a chilli. Got more chilis but still green so thout I'd take this one off to encourage the others to ripen.

The rest of me toms, removed to ripen-up. I've now taken out all the tom plants too, it really must be autumn.

A few more strawbs :) they were super-sweet, yummy. Last ridge cucumber.

These nuts are from an allotment friend's plot. His hazels are much bigger than mine! See previous post for a comparison. I helped him pick his and we shared the results.

Yesterday we decided to eat another one of the butter nut squashes.

It had a really tiny seed cavity like the last one! Not good if you want to save seeds but good for the tasty flesh. It's Sprinter

We roasted it and made some of Shaheen's quinoa and carrot meat balls / burgers, they were really tasty. We did change the recipe a bit (by accident). Jan got a bit carried away with the grating, and grated the carrot instead of steaming and mashing, so we added an egg to bind it all together. The photo doesnt do them justice :)

Tonight I dropped in to my allotment friends (Andrew) to give him half the nuts and he kindly gave me a bag of quinces and some of his apples. The apples are small but v sweet.

Tonight I also thought it'd better sort my potatoes out after they've been sat around for a while. I've tried to keep them out of the light as much as possible.

Minxie liked the cardboard box but not the potatoes.

And here's the mess! Top is the long term keepers, then clockwise....the mankiest (you can't see how bad they are, some even had living creatures inside, most will go in the compost), anyas (which have started sprouting), Colleen 2 bags (earlies. These have started sprouting too), and the medium term keepers.

This is one of my least favourite jobs, so I'm glad it's nearly over! I still have to put them in bags tonight though.

I didn't get any harvests today as I had to leave work late and it was dark by the time I got home (after I'd popped in to Andrew's) but think I might have some beans in the back garden ready to be picked...not too many left now though. I had wanted to check out my carrots on the plot but maybe I'll get time tomorow (and if it's not raining)

I went to a great open day at Norwich Farmshare on Saturday, which I'll report on soon...

Linking in to Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandleions

 

 

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