Sweet as the Moment.....

Cosmos.

I wonder how many people other than gardeners remember the true taste of a fresh garden pea. Having a feast of our fresh peas yesterday, the silly tune which accompanied the advertisement for 'Birds Eye' peas kept going round in my head. I grew up before frozen peas first hit the freezer cabinets of UK shops, I remember well sitting with my Grandfather shucking peas, fresh, straight from the garden. Somewhere along the line I must have tried frozen peas, they first hit the UK shelves in 1967, and that silly advert was in the 70's, however frozen peas have never made it into my freezer. Eating the peas yesterday I now know why, frozen peas do not taste the same as a freshly picked and cooked garden peas.

The variety we have grown this year is 'Hurst Green Shaft', and they taste as I remember peas tasting. I also remember well the tinned Marrow Fat peas, ugh, and  dried peas, double ugh, complete with a bicarb. tablet which you added to the peas whilst they were soaking, I'm not sure why the bicarb. was needed, to improve colour or to make the peas more digestible, whatever the reason I hated them. So I will continue to enjoy our fresh peas and then wait until next years harvest.

The ducks and Hubbard table birds have now all been processed, the Hubbards ranged in weight from 2.3 to 3.3 kg, we made sure that all our customers received at least one of the 3.3 kg birds. We will be picking up more day olds tomorrow, as all of our customers want more this year, they have all said that they consider our birds excellent value for money, which is nice, we are certainly not cheap, but I guess compared to the price that Tesco charges for an Organic bird we are, as our birds are far bigger. One customer in particular loves the chicken livers, I'm not sure what he does with them so we let him have them all. We however hang on to the duck livers which I will make pate from. This year I will be attempting to bottle the pate  using the hot water bottling method, we hope  to store the pate without killing ourselves with food poisoning.

The runner beans are now producing masses of beans, I cant remember what variety we grew this year but many of the beans are fifteen inches long, that's around 35cm. They are a lovey bean, with a great flavour.

The late cauliflowers are now forming their curds, but for some reason the cauliflowers have not been that great this year, the calabrese is also forming heads, so it wont be long before we are eating them.

The unexpected Muscovy ducklings are all doing well, there are eleven of them, just one egg failed to hatch,

Mum is very proud of her clutch, but we still have them confined as I would not trust the geese with them.

Cosmos, such a jolly flower.

The late summer flowers are now all in bloom,

many will continue until the first frosts or autumn gales destroy them. I am very please with a couple of clematis that we have,

the blue one has been flowering for over a month with lots of buds,

the  vermilion one was planted last year and this is the first time it has bloomed,

I love the colour of it and it contrasts wonderfully with the  pale pink of the perpetual sweet pea.

 

 

 

More Phlox

The Phlox are putting on a wonderful show, I love all the different colours,

and the Thalictrum has been flowering for over two months now.

The Agapanthus has at last flowered, it has been very slow this year.

All the peaches have now been picked, we have had around  twelve pounds in total, the final picking was five pounds, these have been bottled, ready for winter deserts.

A few more pictures of what's in flower at the moment.

 

 

 

Lots can change in a week.

Flowers this week have to be the Dahlias.

A week go we were struggling to find courgettes for the local agricultural show, suddenly we have a glut, but they aren't the nice small ones,

they have ideas of grandeur and tried to become marrows, some of them were just flowers a week ago, now they have taken over. Unfortunately courgettes are not the easiest things to give away, all our friends grow them and have the same problem. We could freeze them, to be forgotten until space is needed in the freezer, but the hens like them so that seems to be the better solution. We had the same problem with runner beans, just a week ago all we could find for the show was a handful, now we can eat them daily and have already given away a couple of pounds to some friends.
Summer vegetables all seem to mature at the same time, we are spoilt for choice,  what shall we have tonight? Cauliflower, runner beans, courgettes, chard, or garden peas, the list goes on. There is such a thing as too much choice.
This year we made the decision not to incubate anything other than the Quail, we have a good source for the Hubbard table birds which we buy in as day olds, we were also given a contact by  'The Friendly Farmer' for day old ducklings. The Friendly Farmer now does all our processing of table birds for us. Buying ducklings in as day olds means they are a fairly uniform size depending on sex. On Sunday we took the chickens and ducks on their final journey, they will be ready for us tomorrow, all nicely bagged and freezer ready.
 When we got home Simon had the usual evening chores to do, scratch feed for the hens and ducks,top up of water etc.,he then discovered that one of our Muscovy's had hatched a clutch of eggs, it wasn't until today when he sorted out a goose proof run for the new arrivals that he found out just how well she had done,

ten ducklings out of eleven eggs. I don't quite know what we will do with this unexpected arrival, we have all the duck meat that we need for the next year, so we will probally sell them at one of the poultry sales. They are so cute, all yellow and fluffy, we can't  get a good photo of them as mum is extremely protective. We will have to do another batch of Hubbard's this year, as apart from six birds all the others have been sold to various Organic friends, word soon goes round as we have found in the past when you have Organic birds for sale, although we are no longer registered, we are well known enough to be trusted that what we are selling is not only done to basic Organic standards, but higher than is required.

All the outside onions have now been harvested, along with the ones which we grew in the tunnel we have more than enough for the year. The outside ones were grown from sets but were first planted into individual modules,  then planted out when they had a good root system, this seems to have given them a very good start, the wild birds were unable to pull them out which is what normally happens, so the onions get replanted several times and we often lose a few by direct planting, we will certainly use this method in the future. I don't remember who's Blog I picked this tip up from, but many thanks for the tip!

We are now picking lots of peaches and eating a lot,

they taste wonderful, nothing like the dull ones sold in shops.
The early summer flowers are now giving way to  the late bloomers,

Lucifer looks lovely,

especially when planted next to Hypericum or Aconite,

I will have to check the label of this one but I think it's called Potluck.

The Bishop, I love the dark foliage.

Add caption

the Dahlias are all looking great

and the perfumed lilies are now in full bloom.

The Passion flower

and Oleander are also putting on a great show.

Kiftsgate now supported.

Simon finished building the new rose arch and Kiftsgate now has a secure support. Everything has grown so much this year, a sever hacking back is needed, the Rosa Rugosa has also gone crazy, we have suckers all over the place, these will get dug out in the Autumn and replanted into the bank at the back of the cottage.

I've used Goldfinger on this one, I will keep experimenting.

Watching Country File a couple of weeks ago gave me an idea for a new craft project, making castings of seed heads, flowers, foliage and seed heads, I'm still experimenting with different plant materials and finishes, but it could be a nice winter project.

The art of relaxation, Zara has a cat nap.

 

How much is that doggie in the window? Meg looking cute.

 

Disorganised Chaos.

Today was our local Agricultural and Craft show, and like so many things in Ireland it is best described as chaos. Although it opens at 8am for exhibitors to display their entries, at 9am half the shelving was not even in place, and what was in place made little sense.
 Baskets of  vegetables were allocated a space of eight sq.ft for all the exhibits, on the same table as Turf  which had sixteen sq ft ( there were only two entries)

We grow lots of different herbs, but Sage Rosemary and parsley won out.

and then eight sq ft for kitchen herbs, why I ask myself was turf on the same table as edibles, maybe because you need turf to cook your food, I'm sure there is some logic there although it misses me completely. Still like so many things here it was alright on the night, or rather day. We came away with ten firsts,

Ours are the ones with the blue card.

one second, ( our onions came second to four slightly larger ones but they had soft necks) and two thirds. I was very pleased to get three firsts for our flowers,

one was a table arrangement, one miniature arrangement and one for our Dahlias, and four out of five firsts for my jams.

I was especially pleased to get a first in the craft section for my Faberge egg.
What we both found surprising was the cheating! The rules state that produce and flowers must be grown by the exhibitor, yet there were lettuce clearly straight from Lidl, the type that are grown together in a square cube that you put in water to keep fresh, they received second prize, well done Lidl! Flowers must be from your own garden, again several displays came straight from  a florist shop, the flowers I mean rather than the arrangement. I wonder if this sort of thing happens in the UK, I know it didn't used to. I cant see the point in entering any competition if it's not from your own effort. 
All in all it was a good day and well worth doing from a financial point of view, no doubt the money will be spent on the garden.

All in all a good result.

Everlasting Courgette.

This weeks flowers.

How long does a fresh Courgette last? In my experience by the end of seven days Courgettes will be soft and flaccid.

Now fourteen weeks old.

Last weekend we were given this courgette by a friend who asked me to include it in one of my posts. So, the story. This Courgette was purchased  by my friend in the middle of April, it was left on the sideboard in a warm kitchen and rather forgotten about, which is why it wasn't eaten. A couple of weeks ago my friend was having a good clear out, discovered said Courgette and was amazed to find it looked the same as the day she had bought it. The following weekend she passed it on to me to include in the blog. I guess the question is, what the hell has this vegetable been treated with for it to still appear fresh after fourteen weeks? I have weighed it, 5.2 oz which is about the right weight for it's size. I know I would not want to eat it either now or when it was first bought, for something like a courgette to remain looking fresh for so long has to mean it's been treated with something nasty or even irradiated.  I think I will stick to our veg, fresh, straight from the garden and in season.

Redcurrants.

At last most of the soft fruit has now been picked and processed,

The most boring job in the world, topping and tailing Gooseberries.

most of the Gooseberries were bottled,

there's still a couple of pounds of gooseberries to come, but there will only be the odd picking of raspberries and the same with the strawberries, and a few more Loganberries,

Final picking of redcurrants, around 17lb from three bushes.

but  we are not talking about Blackcurrants.

I have made a few pots of jam and nine bottles of Ribina the rest will have to stay on the bushes.( yes, I know that's not how you spell Ribena) Next week the  peaches should ready and then all that remains are the Victoria plums, provided that the wasps or birds don't get them first.

A handful is all the birds left.

We should have had a reasonable crop of cherries, unfortunately we didn't get round to netting the trees and the wild birds had most of them, leaving us just a handful. Never mind, it has been a bumper harvest on the soft fruit.

I made redcurrant jelly to go with lamb , pork, and poultry, to half of the redcurrant jelly I added finely chopped mint for the rare occasions that we have lamb, it tasted lovely, giving it a whole new dimension.

And then there was one.

The baby swallows all fledged and once again the cats are allowed out.

Final farewell.

It was so nice to be able to follow the chick's progress and to see them all fly safely away.

The cottage outside painting is almost finished, just the two end to do which have very high gables, Simon will have to have clamber up a ladder to do the those.

We are both very pleased with it, we knew it needed doing we just didn't realise how much.

Kiftsgate mingling with the Albertine.

Our thug rose 'Kiftsgate'  is now flowering,  it has grown so much that the arch that it was clambering over has partially collapsed, next job on the agenda is making a solid arch out of 3X3 timber, not even Kiftsgate will collapse that.

A miniature arrangement, just three inches tall.