Bletting my medlars

Three years ago when we planted up the gaps in the orchard, two medlars were included in the list of "must have" trees. I'm still berating myself for having forgotten a black mulberry, but this winter I will buy one - there is a tree guard already up waiting to protect it.
The medlars are growing nicely in their contorted fashion, and in contrast with two medlar fruits last year, they are positively blooming having produced a couple of fistfuls.
The fruit is sitting in the scullery waiting to blet, or rot, just a little before I make some medlar cheese, not unlike a quince membrillo.
The place is full of bowls and trugs and baskets and trays of runner beans, blackberries, courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines and more. We start jamming and peeling and shredding with a vengeance but start to flag by 6pm. There will be more to bottle and preserve tomorrow.

Drunk on apple fumes

68 litres of juice and 145 litres of cider later, I'm ready to fall into a soft sofa in front of the fire. First there was the picking and sorting, then the carrying, the washing, the milling, the pressing, the bottling, the labelling. Not forgetting the sterilising of buckets and bottles and barrels and funnels and the twiddling of bottle brushes of every size and shape to get into those hard to reach corners.
Friends have helped and used the kit all weekend too, so the machines have been worked hard. I suppose 400 litres of juice destined for both alcoholic and breakfast beverage has been churned out in total. Enough to keep us hydrated for quite some while.
The milling and pressing was done in the cob barn...finally it can be put to use.

Old Foxwhelp

It conjures up a gnarled character with a mature history and a way of telling the tale, or a field name in some forgotten corner. But Old Foxwhelp is an ancient cider apple and I make it into pinky perfect apple jelly to go with the pork and gammon.
I hoiked myself inelegantly over the tree guard with the help of a step ladder and filled the trug with red striped crab apple sized fruits, gave them a sploosh in the sink and then cut them into inexact quarters. One pint of water to every two pounds of apples, and blitz in a preserving pan, being careful not to burn the bottom as it simmers and froths. When all is soft and mushy, into the jelly bag to strain for hours, jelly bag emptied and more sloshed in. To every pint of the baby pink juice you add a pound of sugar (yes, you wouldn't want to brush your teeth with it) and heat to jam setting temperature and then pour carefully into hot jars and seal.
There wasn't enough to last all winter so the tractor was taken down the lane where a wild crab apple beamed with pride at its own harvest. Balanced on the arms of the front loader, and with shepherd's crook in hand, another trugful was tumbled down and is now simmering happily and scentedly before its overnight stopover in the jelly bag.

Glut and gluttony

It's been a weird growing year; all that water and not enough heat has suited some stuff and not others. So the orchard is heavy with apples but nary a plum, gage or damson in sight. Sloes are conspicuous by their individuality; literally one or two on a tree rather than the usual laden branches. I've been blackberrying three times now and perhaps it's a little early to expect otherwise, but although there's been enough for a fool and a crumble, I have yet to find the trug-full required to make the pots and pots of jam necessary to keep the household happy year round.
The polytunnel has been the star of the show: my aubergines are the best ever; the chillis will have to be dried or they will rot on the plant (you can't chomp on them for breakfast, lunch and dinner); the big boy tomatoes are gracing salads with their accompanying basil; the yellow courgettes are this month's staple; the cucumber surplus has gone to the pigs; the peas are still going (that's a long pea season in my book); and the pak choi was brilliant. Outside, the hispi cabbages have been forfeited to pigs and hens; the slug damage has made them beyond the human pale/pail. The onions did ok and today is the day for stringing them up. The swiss chard, artichokes, parsnips and red cabbage are all thriving, but it's the raspberries that have once again cheered the days; huge, sweet, beautiful and creating a jungle of unruly canes.

Movement without licence

5.30pm and I down tools. Well, move away from the computer and put on sheep chasing trousers and boots.
Today the ducks have been moved out of Back Orchard and into the garden for a few weeks. The grass in Back Orchard (so called because it once served as the secondary farm orchard near the house - there's posh) is long, and apart from the pig paddock area hasn't been touched by anything other than waterfowl and the odd badger or fox for three years.
There are big plans afoot for creating a duck pond and some good sized foxproof pens for the ducks, and another for guinea fowl. But first there's all that lush grass, and with haymaking weather failing to appear, there is a real shortage of forage ground at the moment. So after a quick once-over, a sore foot treated and an approving check on lambs being not too far off butchering time, the flock has been let loose in the long grass for a couple of days before the digger goes into pond-making mode.
They are so busy chomping they forget to baaaa. The ewes' milk is drying up and as soon as haymaking releases a spare field, there will be a weaning and a wailing.

Wildness tamed

Off to Roadford Wood Fair yesterday. It's a small scale affair, and a couple of hours gets you round all the stalls and displays and gives you time to chat at length with the folks selling wood-fired boilers and promoting sustainable domestic energy. You feel worthy and improved just by being there.
I love the locally handmade wicker baskets, the knives made in a charcoal fire, the old but usable tools, the trugs, the yurts, the scent of bombay potatoes, falafel and venison burgers. But best of all are the stands with the owls and the birds of prey. The golden eagle stretches out his leg, doing a fair imitation of the hokey cokey. The kestrel (above) preens and poses. The barn owl sits on the shoulder of its handler, clearly digging it claws through the man's fleece and causing him to wince - why doesn't he invest in leather epaulettes? But best of all is the little owl. I can't remember seeing one in the flesh before. Apparently they like living in orchards. I can only hope a pair might come and check ours out.

Some day I'll fly away...

...but not yet. Talk about creating parental havoc! I nurtured my goose eggs through 31 incubating days, popped three goslings (with some duckling mates) under a heat lamp and fed and watered them for weeks. Then I put them the outside to enjoy the sun and the grass. They spent a couple of weeks growing gawky and mildly feathery among the fluff, and I looked on maternally, pleased at their progress, chuffed at my surrogate motherhood.
Then it was time to get them out of their small pen and into the big wide world with the gaggle of geese in the orchard. One of the geese was sitting on a clutch of eggs, so I popped them in with her, and they went running to her side and sat under her wing overnight. Satisfied that the grown-ups had bonded firmly with the youngsters, they were all let out to play and roam under the apple trees, cropping grass for all they were worth. I go back up an hour later to check all is well, and... no goslings.
I hunt high and low, in ditch, under hedge, behind logs, in secret tuffets of grass, between bales, through gates, in every conceivable place. I am a mother bereft. It is the empty nest syndrome for real. I feel SO GUILTY! And why didn't the geese give a warning shout if there was a predator about?
The hunting continues, and everywhere I can hear the cheeping of young birds, and I'm sure the goslings are about somewhere, but every wild bird is fledging at the moment and it's impossible to isolate a honk from a cluck or a trill. I go to bed forlorn.
This morning I rush about getting ready to go to town, and hear a cry. All three gossies have reappeared, unharmed, in the yard being used by the builders. The birds rush forward, terrified by their unwanted freedom, lack of food and water. They are gathered up in welcoming arms, made much of, and put safely in a pen whilst their orchard accommodation is adjusted to keep them with their elders but secured.
But of course, before anyone thinks I have turned into a complete softy, if any reveal themselves to be ganders they will become freezer fodder and served to my very best mates. With apple sauce.

Blowsy or delicate?

I spend so much of my walking time seeking out the delicate notes of wild flowers that it's a shock to see the horticultural brassiness of the cultivated varieties in my tiny front garden. But this week the bloodshot eyeball peony and the Dame Edna gladioli are visual tricks that are somehow trashy in their exuberance in comparison to the delicacy of the ragged robin, the stitchwort and the many varieties of the carrot family that Jackson Pollock and Miro the hedgerows.
If I was to determine which of these two opposites describes me, I would have to go for the blowsy, in the same way that I'm a Bernese dog person and would give nil house room to a chihuahua. But it's those wild fragile blooms that attract me; those banks awash with the froth of cow parsley, red campion and bluebells just steps from my door.
Oh, and before I forget the sensation, today I smelled coriander in the orchard. There are no cultivated herbs planted there, so I stopped and sniffed again. I just adore the scent and taste of coriander; along with thyme it is my favourite herb, but it was not supposed to be there. And then I pulled down to my nose the nearest branch of apple blossom and inhaled. Yes. A definite but subtle hint of coriander. I felt a Jilly Goolden moment come upon me as I checked that it was a cider apple, a Bulmers Norman in fact.

Future promise

The orchard is blooming. After supper a wander with the dogs to check on the sheep and their lambs, the fencing, the drain repair, the sogginess or otherwise of the ground. And then back through the orchard, which has burst into flower, young trees and old in their May finery.
There was talk of last year's June frost and the poor fruiting season that resulted. But this all looks so burgeoning that it's hard to believe there will be anything other than barrels of apples, armfuls of plums and gages, baskets of cherries, crates of damson and sacks of pears.
Click on the pic to see those amazing pink veins on the petals.

Yet more firsts - some good, some most definitely not

Last month I was counting off the various firsts of the year to date. Now there are more to add to the list.
This morning there was a heap of straw in the goose hut, pulled and picked into a comfy doughnut shape by one of the geese. I parted it carefully, and yes, the first goose egg of the year. Traditionally they start laying on Valentine's day, so if it was laid before midnight, she was spot on. I'll wait til there are enough eggs to put in the incubator and then let them do their thing by benefit of electricity, leaving the geese to sit naturally on another clutch.

There was the first flush of blossom in the orchard. It is on the unknown tree - I think it is a plum but don't really know - and the reason as to why it never fruits and reveals its true nature is clear; every year it blossoms far too early and the frost will kill off any premature buds. Looks like it's getting it wrong again.
Then there were the two nuthatches eyeing each other up. One of them, the male I guess, was displaying and trembling his tail feathers for all the world as if he was a bird of paradise; never seen that before.
And then on Wednesday I came in to find my first ever ominous recorded phone message from the animal health department of Defra announcing that the farm is in the newly enlarged Bluetongue surveillance zone. To be honest, the chances of doing anything to prevent my sheep getting this disease is nil, and the temptation to bury my head in activity is strong. I know only too well that some midges and mozzies have survived our warm winter. What a way to welcome the lambing season.

Yesterday was Apple Day

I didn't celebrate it other than reading my Apple Source book and patting my fabulous home-made tree labels, but just knowing it was a festival in honour of the glorious fruit gave a glow to the day. This year the orchard is justifiably in hibernation mode. It is taking care of itself, regenerating after a year of goodly pruning and planting and identifying and cidermaking and apple juicing and crab apple jelly making. It was introduced to sheep and geese, had guards stamped around each tree and was generally poked about and played with. It deserves its time of rest after all this intrusion and the amazing fruit glut of 2006.
There is just one thing I want to do with the few fruit that have doggedly grown and ripened. I want to experiment with dried apple rings, dehydrated in the bottom oven of the Aga. I promise not to bother the trees too much. I'll remove a few samples, walk quietly away, and they won't be the wiser.
The hedgebanks round the orchard will be laid and restored this winter and so let more light in which will benefit the young plantings. By the time blossom arrives, the hedgelaying will be complete, and the banks will be fenced. Yes, the sheep love lying on top of the banks but their sharp feet erodes them terribly and this in turn kills off the plant life. Instead, they will have to lie under the trees and scratch their arses against the guards.

PS: the apple is an unknown dessert/culinary type; the pomologist was unable to identify it.

Farm craft

I never realised that there were so many art/farm projects 'til moving to Devon. I thought my two worlds were at a permanent distance one from the other, until landing in this agricultural and cultural stronghold showed me otherwise. If it hasn't yet been done, someone should produce an art farm map of the county, making sure to include: The Art Farm Project, Occombe Farm, Aune Head Arts, Organic Arts, and all the rest of them.
There isn't much art at home base though. Just some hamfisted craft. Nothing like the amazing quality of the stuff you might find here, more of the kind on display in the home-craft tent at the village fete.
Just the thought of pyrography makes me chortle; it's tattooing for the sensible, or the naff hobby you can do hunched over the kitchen table when there is nothing good on the telly and you don't fancy reading. I don't think I have ever seen an example that suggested this was a means to achieving good or interesting art. Perhaps it will be the medium for a future Turner prizewinner.
But I was desperate to label the trees in the orchard. After going to all the trouble of asking a pomologist to identify the existing varieties, and carefully doubling the number with new plantings of old Devon fruit trees, I didn't want to scratch my head in a couple of years time wondering what on earth was what. The posh version as used by the National Trust, arboreta and probably her Maj's gardeners were much too expensive and anyway entirely daft for a farm orchard. I improvised temporarily with stapled dymo tape, but the sheep rubbed them off quick smart, and with more than sixty of them I wanted a fairly permanent solution.
Pokerwork was the only cheap idea I came up with, and after a swift ebay purchase and a bandsawing of ply offcuts, there I sat, hunched over the kitchen table, being naff.
It worked though.

I'm no Monty Don but....

After my rant yesterday I am calm, and focused on the veg patch. Red cabbage casserole (buckets of it) are cooking in the Aga, anointed with red plonk, wine vinegar, demerara, Blenheim Orange apples from the orchard and sultanas, and once cooled I will bag it and freeze it for serving later with pork, goose and duck (probably not all at the same time).
I have also unearthed the first of the celeriac - not as large as I would like but an improvement on past year's golf balls - to be mashed as an accompaniment with partridge this evening, larded with streaky bacon from the pigs and roasted. Partridge sounds very posh but they were freebies from the local farmer's shoot last winter (perhaps that makes it sound even posher).
Celeriac are bonkers vegetables, I mean, just look at them - a kind of vegetable version of an octopus. But they are delicious boiled and mashed with a bit of butter and black pepper and can be used in place of spud mash if you are avoiding potatoes.
I can hear the weeds call; it's therapy for the furious.

Weaning lambs

Tonight will be a noisy night. Bleating will carry over the barns and penetrate through dreams. Several times I will be half out of the bed in Pavlovian response before I remember that today the lambs were weaned and their calls are unlikely to be due to being caught in fencing, fox attack or rustling. The ewes have been put into a field with a minimum amount of grazing to dry up their milk, and their lambs are on rich pasture in the orchard to fatten. They will share the orchard with the geese whose diet is also grass, and I must remember each morning to shut the goose hut door once the birds are out, or the lambs will bounce up the ramp and bash around inside the hut, causing damage with their sharp little feet and growing girths.
A decade ago, new to sheep, I was devastated to come home to find two unknown but happy Jack Russells, one still a pup, blood dripping from their jaws, yapping in hysterical excitement in the garden. I shut them up in the porch and went into the field to find three ewes down, their cheeks torn out, their tails ripped, their lambs unharmed. The vet came and humanely destroyed the ewes. I said to him, naively, that their lambs hadn't yet been weaned. "They have now" was his blunt but right response.

Murder and retribution

I am the Snow Queen. Or perhaps the Snow Goose. My hair and clothes are covered in flecks of white down, a mark of Cain. For I have done murder and the youngest goose is now plucked and swinging by its feet, from a beam in the workshop. It was due to be dispatched for Easter, but somehow busy-ness prevailed and it continued its reign of terror in the orchard, charging the dogs, nipping the sheep and cadging the odd ride. It was the most feisty gosling I've ever raised, often scorning the protection of the flock to venture alone to seek new mischief and create noisy mayhem. But as it reached maturity, and started to fulfil its Oedipal destiny, with mother and sister having their head feathers aggressively plucked off during incestuous encounters, the pot called ever louder. A spare two hours (it takes me that long to pluck a goose, not having any fancy waxing, boiling or other medieval sounding kit) meant his time was nigh. I caught him by the neck, he was tucked under an arm and taken away to be swiftly dealt with, but as I turned my back his father pecked me by the knee, hard and sharp. The nip broke the skin through my jeans and has left a dark blood-blister and a mark the size of a ten pence piece. It seems only fair.

Playing with apples

For the first time ever, in October 2006 there were enough apples to make it a genuine crime not to use them properly. Hiring an apple crusher and press from the local commercial makers was simple, and the apple picking was a joy - filling barrels in the tractor link box making sure that each different variety was kept separate and labelled on a cold but sunny autumn day was a novelty. They got a quick bobbing in clean water and then were put through the electric crusher before putting the pulp into the press. The smell of the crushed apples was heavenly. The pulp is put into a kind of stocking (very high denier!) bag, wooden blocks hold down the lid and then you turn the press until the juice flows. It comes surprisingly quickly and clean food-safe buckets have to be at the ready. We made over 100 litres of apple juice and 4 barrels of cider. The cider was a mix of bittersweet and sweet cider apples with some Bramleys for extra flavour. The juice was a combination of blends and single juices and now, some months on you can determine which ones should be incorporated into blends when juicing next years load and which are best kept as single varieties. The orchard has a lot of Blenheim Orange apples - very sweet, in fact too sweet as a single variety juice - but just fantastic when blended with Egremont Russet and Bramley (ratio of 1:2:1). The best single varieties were Allington Pippin and Ellisons Orange. I didnt want to pasteurise so had to freeze the juice - in new 1 litre plastic milk bottles that a goat-keeper in Milton Abbot had surplus to requirements. The cider has been racked once and now needs to be bottled, ready for tasting in the summer. Cider making and apple juicing has been happening in and around Dartmoor for hundreds of years - it's nice to know that you are part of a tradition and that there is a lot of advice around for novices.