Artichoke Harvest (by sarah)

I have been trying to get the artichokes harvested since the first frost but what with lots of pooing sillyness and illness and what not it obviously didnt happen as a result I got militant when I looked them up in one of our thousands of books and found that though we had missed the prime time for harvest (Nov, Dec, Jan) they can be harvested until early spring (half way through march).

I need them to a) make soup and b) to replenish the chutney stores as Alaric has seen fit to consume or give away most of our chutney and as they take several weeks to mature (about eight) I thought I'd best get started - my perants gave me a cool preserves and chutneys cookbook at christmas and it has a recipy for artichoke chutney!

So off we went on Saturday - this is our disgrace of a veggi plot though to be honest its not as bad as we were expecting.

First off we removed the rotting storks - this of course should have been done just after they turned brown in October as it increases the chance of fungi getting to the tubers (oh did I mention these are Jeruselum Artichokes rather than globe?)

Of course there was hollowing of some tubers (this is where things have eaten holes into them and eaten away some or all of the inside), my book says that this most lickly coursed by slugs - yep all the artichokes that had 'broken the surface' where covered in the little homeless molluscs. The book goes on to say that rarer is a soil dwelling catipillar which if found means oiking everything out and treating the soil.

Sigh - oh well looks like we'll have to dig the plot over and actually plant things than goiing for the self seeding technique. Some things are a blessing in disguise 😉

Not entirely sure what this feller is or weather I have to fret about him and his sisters, there was a bit of a disagrement over what a wire worm looks like so really not sure - suppose I should look it up!

Now I had got pictures of the HUGE amount of usable artichoke we got - put it this way it took me two days before I had washed them all! But unfortunatly its on the missing camera :'(

Mew Missing Camera (by sarah)

Well there was supposed to be nice posts about clearing reeds from the stream and Jeans first night at her little bluw table eating etc... but the camera has vanished 🙁 Last I saw it was Monday night when I took some photos of a shrew.

I'm really not happy I can not think where the hell it could be and am slowely having to face the realisation that perhapse its been snaffled by someone :'(

This is more than annoying as most of my projects rely on me having access to a digital camera :'(

I still live in hope that perhapse Jean's got hold of it and I'll find it in some random place whilst cleaning - in the mean time I do have several 1000 photos to go through and sort.

Sigh.

Minni’s new collar (by sarah)

We had to replace the kittens collars as I was a bit of a muppet so we decided that we should probably get one for Minni too but thought that she wouldn't like it and didnt give it a very good chance of remaining on her. I chose a sparkly silver one as I thought it would look really good against her black fur - the kittens have matching purple velvet ones.

To our suprise she didn't even complain when we put it on her! And she seems to be showing it off! This has the added advantage that you can now see her in the dark etc... this is good as she had a bit of a close shave with the postman as he's a new one and didn't see her!

Another Bizzy Week (by sarah)

This last week has been busy yet again!

With Village feast meetings starting up again - which we had forgotten about!

Friends staying, building walls, meet ups with old friends, building walls, business meetings, building walls, harvesting artichokes, building walls and vanishing cube units - oh and fixing laptops - on top of a normal week which for us is a tad rediculas anyway! Did I mention BUILDING WALLS?

This is my excuss for the bad blogging of late!

Oh did I mention that we had another leek under the sink - something different this time to before - which need fixing and that I've been doing the spring cleaning which includes that whole carpet shapooing thung!

Harvest (by sarah)

It being nearly spring and me having writen this post way back in the autum I thought I'd best post it!!! I was reminded today as we harvested our artichokes (jerusalum).

We are very proud of our first harvest - especially as we have not had a lot of time to donate to the growing of things! The marrows and courette plants went in very late but still seem to have produced a bumper crop 🙂 We also had butternut squash.

Alaric just could not resist when we started cutting the produce up for pasta suace making and freezing.

We also had so many tomatoes that Jean started to refuse to eat them - mind due I had been feeding them to her with everything!