Some of the things we've grown so far with limited space

I still haven’t heard any more from the parish clerks regarding allotments.  I don’t like the fact that I’m being ignored rather than addressed.  I don’t like the fact that it seems they think I’ll go away if they pretend I’m not there.  Surely all six remaining clerks haven’t had problems receiving my emails?  Is the turnaround time for replying to queries really so long?

I’m getting serious allotment envy.  I read about peoples allotments in magazines or online and I wish it were me.  I don’t want a flashy car, or the latest gadgets.  I just want somewhere where the family can all muck in together, get a bit grubby and grow lovely, fresh food. 

A year of waiting patiently is long enough, I feel.  When you can’t even get a reply on what position you hold on the waiting list, or when you’re ignored by a whole group of people (that aren’t your children), it’s time to get annoying.  I’m sure I can manage that. 

My first step in my plan of action is to write to the local councillors (who happen to live very nearby).  The next step… um, I’m not sure yet… but if you think of something please let me know!

… that Climate Camp 2008 kicks off.   In a field a short distance away from Kingsnorth Power Station a few thousand people are expected to pitch their tents and join together to protest against the planned building of a coal fired power station. 

We’re very close to Kingsnorth.  We can see it from our garden.  The energy giant, E.on, plans to build a new coal fired power station where Kingsnorth currently sits.  Rather than harnessing any sustainable energy alternatives E.on want to take a dozen steps backwards.  Given where Kingsnorth is situated, on the edge of the peninsula surrounded by water, with plenty of land around it, I’m struggling to see why wind or water power to name just two alternatives, couldn’t be used.   Instead the energy companies and government believe the way forward is to increase rather than decrease the amount of CO2 which is pumped out.  Each coal fired power station is estimated to emit around 6-8 million tons of CO2 every year, and that’s per station.  Bear in mind that the government is backing the building of several more in addition to Kingsnorth and that’s a lot of pollution. 

E.on claim that the new station will utilise Carbon Capture and Storage but the problem here is not enough research has been done on CCS in order to be able to put it into practice.  Of course, they could claim that is the plan, then once the building is up and CCS isn’t used because of lack of information/experimentation on the feasibility of it, we can’t do anything about it.  The time to act is now and this is what Climate Camp 2008 is about.

Today will see a procession take place around our villages drawing attention and publicity to the cause.  This is drawing a mixed reaction from the community, with some people thinking that the intended downfall of Kingsnorth next Saturday after the “Day of Mass Action” will result in all our electricity disappearing through power cuts, not realising that there is something called the National Grid. 

During the week the camp will be hosting workshops, talks and events on different issues.  Ben, Stephanie and their friends are all planning on visiting the camp daily to attend some of the workshops of which there are plenty to choose from, and to learn a little more about the world around them which goes a little further than the realms of their games consoles.  Said friends are also staying at our house for much of the week too so the house will be a little busier than normal!  Our family intends to go along to the procession today and to visit the camp during the week and offer our support.  After all, if everyone passed the buck and did nothing, then nothing would ever get done.

We’ve been on the waiting list for an allotment for approximately a year now.  Time is passing and we’re still no nearer to getting a little more land to grow more than is possible in our garden.  I’m itching to get a plot and get going.  I have little plans in my head of what will go where but it’s not looking like it’ll happen.  Two weeks ago I emailed all the parishes, both my own and the others nearby, explaining how long we’d been waiting and asking whether any allotments were yet available.  I contacted a total of seven clerks in seven parishes and I’ve received one reply saying “sorry, but no”.   My own parish hasn’t replied so I sent a second email yesterday asking how far we now were on the waiting list, and whether any new plots are likely to become available.  How long shall I hold my breath for?

There’s nothing.  Not anywhere.  And it’s so frustrating and I’m getting extremely fed up with it!  I’m willing to clear a patch of land myself and do all the preparation myself if I could just have it.  But no, there isn’t anywhere on the whole peninsula, in or around any of the villages including my own that can give me a little bit of space.  Yet all the time, all the while, are new developments going up.  New “affordable” (to whom?!) housing sprawling out of the villages, turning them into towns.  Chopping down the orchards, covering the fields and creating a mess of new housing wherever they can.  Soon, there will be no view from my window.  I won’t be able to see the crops or the animals as I go by.  There will always be room for luxury apartments or executive family homes but what about preserving the land we have?  Will there be a limit to how much of the countryside will be allowed to disappear?  What will we do when it’s finally all gone?

So back to the allotment.  What do I do?  Do I keep bothering the clerks until I get some real answers?  What are my chances of ever getting a plot?  And why won’t they make any new plots available despite there being a real demand for them?

Garden wise I’ve managed to do a few things in the last few days.  I’ve finally got around to repotting the chilli and sweet pepper plants growing on the windowsills in the house.  The poor plants were positively screaming to be put into bigger pots but despite my neglect they have begun to produce several peppers.  Spinach and some of the cut and come again lettuce went to seed in the garden while we were away, so I’ve pulled them up and sown some more seeds.  Cucumbers and tomatoes are growing well, and we’ve picked some peas and green beans.  We don’t have enough for a full meal so I blanched and froze them until more grow, but this morning I found dozens of tiny caterpillars in the soil.  That would explain the paper doily effect of the leaves.  As one of the plants was close to the end of its life I pulled it up and have sown some more peas in the hope that it’s not too late.  Eddie and I pulled up some beetroot and turnips.  The turnips have been blanched and frozen, and the beetroot has been pickled.  We have made another sowing of both so look forward to plenty more.

Eddie’s enthusiasm for gardening and animals has earnt him the nickname “Farmboy”.  He enjoyed pulling up the turnips and beetroot, but boy, did it take a few repeats of the sentence “Don’t pull anything else up!” before his enthusiasm was back under control!

And when the weather cooled, it was pickling time…!

 

It’s been so long since I posted here that I can’t even remember what we’ve been doing.  I’m sure we’ve been busy, otherwise there would have been an entry or two on the blog, but I can’t think exactly what we’ve been busy with!

Just to go back a while to Stephanie’s talent show first of all.  The night was fantastic with hugely talented performers on stage.  I think everyone was amazed at the high standard of talent on show and a couple of them in particular really have such great potential.  To think they are all so young too.  We had a wonderful evening and I would definitely go back next year, even if Stephanie wasn’t performing.  About a week before the show Stephanie was asked if she could change her act from singing to playing the piano as there were too many singers.  She ended up performing Turkish March and her nerves were clearly visible.  She did wonderfully well, though, and got good reviews from the judges.  She didn’t win but she had a fantastic time participating as did we all watching it, and she’s hoping to be able to get through again next year.  A really great night all round!

Two weeks ago we set off on our family holiday to Dorset which is absolutely beautiful.  We rented a spacious cottage for a week and had a lovely, but very busy time.  We visited somewhere different every day and Mike and were very tired by the end of the week but it was great fun and thankfully the weather held out for us even though it wasn’t fantastic.  The children had plenty to do and tried many new things.  Harry and Eddie held a snake, and also rode ponies (as did Caitlin) as well as go on their first rollercoaster rides which they loved.  On our first day we visited River Cottage.   It was nice to see the place and there were a few talks being given but although we tried to sit in on one, I felt bad that we were taking up so much space when so many others were also there, that we left the talk early.  The children did get to water the vegetables in the River Cottage garden though! 

 

We visited Longleat Safari Park (paid for with Tesco deal vouchers!  Hooray to them for saving us over £130!) where we walked through a cave of bats which would fly past your head at speed.  They wouldn’t touch you but you could feel the air brushing you as they flew so close.  We drove through lion and tiger and monkey enclosures, where the monkeys had fun ripping apart pieces of our minibus, and Ben and I fed deer through the windows of the bus. 

We visited another wildlife park, Cricket St Thomas, again part paid for in Tesco deal vouchers, where they have Lemur Wood which is four acres of woodland where lemurs live as close to the environment they’d live in the wild.  This was Ben’s favourite part as they are his favourite animals, so when they came up close to him he was thrilled! 

We visited Ferne Animal Sanctuary which is a lovely sanctuary in Somerset.  The animals were so wonderfully looked after and obviously very well cared for.  We visited Charmouth beach where we went hunting for fossils and found some too but unfortunately the weather was awful so we headed back after a couple of hours.  We visited our favourite discovery from last year, Kingston Maurward Gardens and Animal Park.  Again this is a place where the animals are extremely well cared for and a lovely place to visit.  The gardens are also very beautiful.  The final day was spent at Crealy Adventure Park which seemed to have something for all ages and we certainly weren’t disappointed.  As well as the rides they also had a couple of indoor play areas which were handy when the weather turned, pony rides and a farm area with piglets and goats running free.  It was so fantastic and well worth the only real splurge of the week.  Watching the children, Eddie especially, getting up close to all the animals was great.  He is truly a natural when it comes to animals but was very disappointed when he wasn’t allowed to milk a cow.  Caitlin, Ben and Stephanie were all soaked by the end of the day, not just because it was raining but because they went on the water ride five times in a row (it was raining so hard that nobody else was daft enough to queue up for it – except those three!).  Luckily we had a change of clothes for them on the minibus so a quick change before we left meant they didn’t have to sit there soaking and freezing on our way back to the cottage. 

During our week of fun our neighbours (aka, “The Nice Side”), looked after our chickens.  In fact they didn’t just look after them but thoroughly spoilt them rotten too.  They also looked after our garden, our home and even mowed the grass at the front of the house too.  They didn’t do the back though… terrible eh? Anyway, a stick of rock doesn’t seem enough to say thank you but we appreciate it so very much.

So in a nutshell (!), that’s the main couple of points from the last few weeks.  Did you miss us?!

In May I wrote this post which included some photo’s of what we’re growing where.  Much of it looks bare compared to how it looks now so I thought I’d add some up to date photo’s so you can see just how much it’s all changed in a couple of months.   Some plants are thriving, a few have been eating by slugs and some lettuce had gone to seed last week and so was pulled up and new seeds sown.  Some tomato plants look healthier than others, one courgette plant in particular looks like it’s doing wonderfully well and every day brings new changes in the garden. 

 

I was doing a few jobs in the garden on Sunday when I noticed the lid to the dustbin above sitting unused and unloved.  And then it came to me that I could use it for growing radishes!  The seeds were sown on Sunday and look at them today, only five days later…

And here, drying out on the cage above one of the raised beds is our first harvest of garlic which were planted in a 12″ pot in December…

So far, so good I think.   Hopefully we’ll be able to get a watering system in place for everything this weekend, as well as continuing the refurbishment of the wendy house in the corner of the garden which the younger children (and possibly the neighbours to one side of us much to their dismay I’d imagine) believe is to house some goats. 

252 people have come to this site after searching for Pob.  This search has led them to Sid’s pouting picture.  This is by far the highest search term for this site, with 54 Cherry Bakewell recipe related searches being the distant second runner.  So, feeling a little bad that people searching for the classic children’s television character has resulted in them ending up where they least expect it, I’ve found a clip of the little fellow.  I wonder how many people as children (or when drunk), have ever tried writing their name on the TV screen Pob-style… or would admit to it!

In the days before Jamie Oliver took on the schools (although not that long ago I hasten to add), and when Spam was a tinned meat, school dinners were very different to the meals that they now offer.  The meals themselves I was not normally very impressed with.  And we weren’t allowed a drink during our meal, instead we had to collect a cup of water from a trolley at the end of the school hall once the dinner ladies excused us from the table… after plates were cleaned up of all the last morsels of cold, lumpy mash and some kind of fish (?) in some kind of sauce (??). 

Puddings though, were something different altogether.  Who could forget the sponge with pink icing, or chocolate custard, or the jam roly-poly.  Mmmm, that was the reward at the end of the gruelling, gut turning meal.  My personal favourite though, was Butterscotch Tart.  Once I had left primary school for middle school, and traded my weekly brown dinner money envelope for a cool lunch box and flask, Butterscotch Tart was no more.  It wasn’t the kind of pudding you could find in the shops and nobody ever knew the recipe for it.  For years and years I had no luck, and then later on came recipes which called for tins of condensed milk.  This isn’t what I wanted.  I wanted a proper recipe, with proper ingredients, that I could make from scratch.  So for the first __ years of my life (I’m not telling you!), I went without my favourite pudding, relying only on the memories of sickly dinners and a sip of warm water before the trophy of the school dinner eating champion in the form of the best pud in the world was allowed.  Until last year, that is!  And yes, it’s as lovely as I remember it!  Here is the recipe which will make enough for two 9″ tarts.

Butterscotch Tart

Pastry:

300g plain flour

150g softened butter

150g caster sugar

1 egg

1 pinch salt

a little water

For Butterscotch:

320g demerera sugar

320g butter

80g plain flour

6oz milk

Mix flour, salt, sugar.  Add eggs and softened butter.  Mix to a dough and leave in a cool place for 1 hour.  Roll pastry and place into 2 greased tins.  Bake in oven at 180ºC for 10-15 minutes.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Melt butter in pan. When melted mix in sugar and stir until dissolved.  Add flour and milk and whisk until smooth.  Heat for a few minutes longer until mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon. Pour onto pastry.  Allow to cool then chill in fridge.  So simple, yet so tasty!

 

 

… and that was the eldest.  The others all learnt like this…