Monday, August 21, 2006
After a Long Silence
School has started again, after what seems like weeks of preparation, and we are back to being just weekend visitors to the countryside. Thankfully, it has started to rain again so we do not desperately need to be there to water the plants as we did for much of the summer. Even more usefully, the weather continues warm and everything is growing well. As the food is ready for picking we have been kept busy planning what to do with it, and weighing our losses. When the very dry weather ended, we discovered that it had kept many of the worst pests at bay, and literally within days of the first decent rainfall we lost most of our savoy cabbage to a series of very hungry caterpillars. At the same time, the flea beetles returned to the basil and rather than treat them with ash again we just picked all 25 plants.
These were swiftly turned into a couple of litres of pesto, some of which was given to friends, and some kept in the fridge, where I am assuming that, drowned as it is in olive oil, it will keep for the couple of months it will take us to use it. In the meantime we are busy eating our way through kohlrabi, delightfully sweet baby broad beans, while treating ourselves to some still small, but very tasty leeks. Our pathetic crop of peas is done, but we still have some spring onions, runner beans, pumpkin, mangold and white cabbage to look forward to. Plus apples, of course. Our not very well pruned apple trees had a heavy year last year and we were not expecting much this season, but they have done better than expected - we ate the first and almost ripe fruit of the earliest variety yesterday.
These were swiftly turned into a couple of litres of pesto, some of which was given to friends, and some kept in the fridge, where I am assuming that, drowned as it is in olive oil, it will keep for the couple of months it will take us to use it. In the meantime we are busy eating our way through kohlrabi, delightfully sweet baby broad beans, while treating ourselves to some still small, but very tasty leeks. Our pathetic crop of peas is done, but we still have some spring onions, runner beans, pumpkin, mangold and white cabbage to look forward to. Plus apples, of course. Our not very well pruned apple trees had a heavy year last year and we were not expecting much this season, but they have done better than expected - we ate the first and almost ripe fruit of the earliest variety yesterday.
