Salsify (by sarah)

The salsify are beginning to seed! When in flower they are a lovely purple dandilion type flower that only seems to open in the morning. Their name is supposed to be the corruption of the latin for 'follows the sun' I dont know if that is true but it sounds fesible. Anyway we like the to eat the roots which are tasty - basically thanks to the constriction of British tastes with all the rationing and stuff.

Unfortunatly the roots are only tender enough to eat the first year and becuase they have tended to seed themselves its not obvious which ones are old roots and which are new. Some of the roots are huge and ancient and as tough as old nials - I run on the supersition that if I cant get the knife to cut the roots easily from the roots then they are old tough ones that need discarding.

Now this plant is also could purple goats beard and the oster plant (as the root is supposed to taste like oster I dont think so as I dont like osters but I like this plant!). The seed heads are giant brown fluffy dandilion clocks - this is what I have been haversting.

The reason? Why not let them seed themselves?

We are fed up with digging up the old nails! Therefore we pull all the plants this year after they finish seeding and sow the seed ourselves insuring that we have all new plants and therefore yummy tender roots for us to consume. I am also sure that we are going to have far to many seeds - so if anyone whats them they are 50p for hundred seeds whilst stocks last! (erm p&p extra but hopefully you'll be visiting us! or we'll be visiting you!).

Even if you dont want to eat it its a lovely plant - with pretty purple flowers 🙂 Bring on the purple!!!! Also these plants were rare in the 70's so probably still are - I havent checked mind! Now these are cultivated plants not wild ones we've dug up or anything so we are not depriving the wild but if people like this type of old English rareness then this is the way to go. (this isnt ment to be a sales pitch I just love my veggies!)

Roasting Soup (by sarah)

Ok I bought lots of veg for a nice roast but with Jeans inpromptu hospital trip etc... it didnt really happen so I had stuff left over therefore I souped it! It was tasty too Al really liked it 🙂

*1/3 celeriack *1/3 swede *2 medium potatoes *1/2 butternut squash *3 salsify *1 couguette *2 large cloves of garlick *Black pepper *1 tbl spoon fennel seeds *pumpkin seed oil

I had par boiled alot of it all ready to roast and put in the left over roast veg (these had been roasted in sunflower oil with rosemarry and pepper). I had also kept the water a veg stock which I then boiled everything up in that hadnt yet been par boiled - these were the potatoes (for some reason there are never any roasted potatoes left after the meals reguardless of how many I cook?), butternut and courgette.

Then we blend the whole lot! Bzzzzzzzzzz

Into the suacepan about a quarter of it went, along with the garlick crushed and fennel seeds - also crushed. I also drisseled about 1/2 a tbl spoon of pumpkin seed oil into it and ground some pepper in (using our phallic pepper grinder from an Italian restruant!), add the fennel seeds and away we go!

Oh and don't forget to add a pint of milk - I use a 50:50 mix of semi skimed goats and skimed cows milk but thats cos of special dietry recurrements and should be fine what ever you use - it would probably be tasty just with a pint of veg stock instead!

Gentle heat until the odd bubble starts to appear, try not to let boil! This allows the garlick and fennel to permeate the soup properlly 🙂

I had it on the heat for about 1/2 hr.

Be warned me and Al have had this two days in a row and I have frozen enough (without garlick, fennel and milk) to feed 6 a thick soup and 10 a thickish soup!

Jean also loves this but she had it mixed with mash potatoe:)

Thinning the Parsnips! (by sarah)

What was I thinking!

I went to water the veg patch about 2 hours ago, noticed how big the parsnips were, thought, I'll just do some wedding around them and some how ended up thinning them and transplanting the leftovers!

Now I have a nagging feeling that parsnips dont transplant very well so most of the effort may have been in vain 🙁

Still next year we know to a)ignore the packet on how many to sow in a row and b) not to plant the radishes and salsify so near to the carrots and parsnips!

Still the garlic are taking root and I found a random mint plant in the patch - now if I can harvest it apropriatly it shouldnt take over and its a really nice tasting one too! (I'm not to hot on types of mint sorry guys!) That makes three types of mint I can locate in the garden now 🙂

Also we have loads of wounderful wild strewberries!!! Yum yum yum 🙂

The Duck Invasion! (by sarah)

This morning I heard lots of noise outside - I thought oh no Tims caught some gosling or something and is torturing it (Tim being the cat), I went outside the door only to be flown at by an irrate mother duck. I screamed - she quacked.

I could still here loads of strange quacking next to me - I looked down to fine juvinile ducks around my feet in a panic, they then hastily retreated into the dead end of the coal store! Trapping themselves - I thought they were going to have heart attacks! They were trying to climb the coal sacks and just sliding back down them.

I put out some bread for the panic stricken mother waiting up on the grass verge and then 'hid' inside and took photos as they made their daring escape!

We are very happy becuase we thought the magpies and that had eaten all their eggs but obviously not 🙂

Doing the Veg Patch! (by sarah)

Today we did some more clearing of veg patch and planted out the garlic and the celeriack, unfortunatly in the process we found an ants nest - so I was face with the moral dilema yet again of commiting genacide with a boiling kettle so that our food may grow. I'm sad especially as they had all their eggs and stuff which they were moving - so we made show we disturbed the ground lots to give them warning of the impending doom and hoped they moved and got the egg with the new queen in/recued the old queen out of their 🙁

I also potted up some parsley (yes more of the stuff I want to make parsley honey at some stage 🙂 ), coriander, and some globe artichokes 🙂 Then put out some more of the cherry tomatoes out into grow bags and some into pots - I still have excess which need potting out but I was having compost issues!

We also have wild strewberries growing and ordinary strewberries 🙂

In future if we have lots of a plant then we will happily let people have them for 10p a plant/pot when they visit or you can put in requests for Al to bring into London when he goes 🙂

Unfortunatly I also decided to pick nettles today not realising the gloves I was wearing werent stinging nettle proof 🙁 then I got attacked by flying insects and I found the ants nest becuase they all started bitting me and then I decided I had to recue all the poor worms they were attacking!