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The Seasonal Table

A journal of slow food and slow living from a smallholding in rural England

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Spelt Risotto with Sorrel, Asparagus, and Herb Flowers

31/05/2020 By The Seasonal Table Leave a Comment

Spelt Risotto with Sorrel, Asparagus, and Herb Flowers -- https://theseasonaltable.co.uk/savoury/spelt-risotto-with-sorrel-asparagus-and-herb-flowers/

We expanded the herb patch last year following a fragrant, fascinating, and rainy excursion to one of the Jekka’s Herb Farm open days. We returned from our trip, smelling strongly of every herb imaginable, with two huge, damp, paper bags full of baby plants. Salad burnet, caraway, chervil, lemon verbena, orange and lemon thymes, winter savoury, hyssop, wild celery, Moroccan mint, and sorrel. Space for the aromatic collection was made by removing a sprawling conifer shrub that had taken over most of a flowerbed, and emptying a couple of patio pots. While the herbs willingly fill out their allocated spots in the soil, we have been harvesting by the handful and experimenting in the kitchen. We have found ourselves regularly going back to the sorrel, a broad-leaved variety (rumex acetosa), which has proved extremely useful and delicious in cooking.

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Chickens: Creating a Dual-Purpose UK Easter Egger Flock – Part 3

03/04/2020 By The Seasonal Table Leave a Comment

Chickens: Creating a Dual-Purpose UK Easter Egger Flock – Part 3 | Foraging| https://theseasonaltable.co.uk/smallholding/chickens-creating-a-dual-purpose-uk-easter-egger-flock-part-3/

This is part three of the story of how we created our dual-purpose meat and coloured-egg laying flock here on the smallholding. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

After deciding on the chicken breeds to keep, we came up with a plan. We wanted to keep a closed flock*, which meant buying hatching eggs to incubate. As we are doing things on a very small scale (initially we had room in the chicken house for a maximum of 8 large birds), we had to build up the flock slowly with one hatch per year. We decided to start with the Marans and Welsummers in year one; Araucanas and Ixworths in year two; and breeding hybrid chickens in year three.

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Shetland Sheep

30/06/2019 By The Seasonal Table Leave a Comment

Shetland Sheep -- Breed Characteristics | https://theseasonaltable.co.uk/smallholding/shetland-sheep/

This time last year, after months of research and planning, we decided to get a small flock of sheep to live here on the smallholding. We were keen to get heritage, multi-purpose sheep, who could offer us the ability to produce excellent dairy, meat and wool. We also wanted a flock that would be well suited to life on a smallholding and easy to look after. After careful consideration (and a close contest with Icelandic sheep), we settled on Shetland sheep, who seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

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Rainbow Chard with Fennel, Chilli, Wild Garlic and Rosemary | https://theseasonaltable.co.uk/savoury/rainbow-chard-with-fennel,-chilli,-wild-garlic-and-rosemary/

Rainbow Chard with Fennel, Chilli, Wild Garlic and Rosemary

It has been a rather unusual weather week. Most mornings started with frost, icy water buckets, and gloved windscreen scraping. Then fierce daytime sunshine took over and our winter coats were swiftly replaced with t-shirts and sunglasses. As night descended, so did the temperature, which meant lighting the log burners remained essential in our stone…

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Apple Pie -- Seasonal recipes uk | https://theseasonaltable.co.uk/sweet/apple-pie/

Apple Pie

Apple season is in full swing here on the smallholding. It is a favourite time of year for the geese, whose morning routine now begins with an extremely loud and flappy visit to the base of their favourite apple tree to see what windfalls have come down overnight. They appear to have a strict finders…

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Wild Blackberry and Rosewater Cake -- Seasonal food UK | https://theseasonaltable.co.uk/sweet/wild-blackberry-and-rosewater-cake/

Wild Blackberry and Rosewater Cake

Wild blackberries are very much at home on the smallholding. They wind their way through hawthorn, ash and nettle hedgerows, providing a welcome barrier from the country lane and home for a multitude of wildlife. Unfortunately the brambles also pop up in less welcome places. This year they have made an appearance in the middle…

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We’re now writing over on Substack. We’d love to invite you to subscribe below:

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Hello everyone and happy weekend! We’re just pop Hello everyone and happy weekend! We’re just popping on to share a few pics from today’s newsletter, which has just landed in inboxes. It’s a late spring issue filled with vegetable growing, cow parsley, and bean tops!

Just in case you haven’t heard us waffling on about it already, our newsletter is called The Seasonal Supplement. It comes out once a month and is free to subscribe to. In it we share lots of writing and photos about life on the smallholding, growing our own food, seasonal living, recipes, and self-sufficiency - much like we do here, but in way more detail and at a far gentler pace. 

If you fancy a look you can sign up for free through the link in our bio or our story and have a read through today’s issue as well as all the past issues from the last eight months. We’d love to see you there!
It’s peak laying season and the mismatch of wood It’s peak laying season and the mismatch of wood and wire racks in the kitchen are full to the brim with eggs. Together their shells form a rainbow of colour. Everything from darkest brown, brick red and terracotta, to pastel blue, sugared almond pink, olive, and powdered lilac. There are various shades of beige too, plus a pure chalk white. We’ve had to bring out reinforcements in the form of cardboard egg trays to manage the overspill. 

We’ve been busy writing about some of the ways we use the egg glut, from making a super speedy mayo with the freshest eggs, to homemade pasta in bulk, and squirrelling eggs away in the freezer for winter. If you’d like to read all about it, we’d love to invite you to subscribe by clicking the link in our bio and story.
The biggest apple tree in the orchard towers over The biggest apple tree in the orchard towers over the logstores and is home to a multitude of wildlife. It is quite something at this time of year, when blossom season is in full swing. This pic was taken a couple of springs ago before the tree lost two of its enormous branches during some windy, winter weather. This year it still looks beautiful but perhaps a little worse for wear. Fingers crossed it will still be here next spring.
Bees! We started keeping bees in the back garden o Bees! We started keeping bees in the back garden of our flat in London over a decade ago (the hives were set up right next to our kitchen window so we could watch them coming and going from the comfort of the kitchen table). 

They came with us when we moved to our smallholding here in Somerset and continue to be some of the most joyful and rewarding livestock that we keep.

We’ve written all about them in our latest post (link in story and bio). We cover everything from the story of how we got started with beekeeping to our ten top tips for budding beekeepers (from books to equipment to avoiding stings). It’s a long and detailed read that took us many hours (and many years of beekeeping experience) to put together, so it’s for our paid subscribers only, but there’s a free preview of the article that is open for everyone to read. If it piques your interest, we’d love to invite you to sign-up so that you can read the whole thing in full plus all our future weekly posts. The link is in our story and bio.
Making rustic plant labels from garden twigs. The Making rustic plant labels from garden twigs. The super simple instructions are in this month’s newsletter, along with lots of other snippets of seasonal jobs, some seed sowing, and some cooking from the smallholding. You can read it all for free via the link in our bio or story.

If you do have a read of the newsletter, you’ll also see that we’ve just launched an exciting new paid subscription option. If you enjoy our writing and photos, would like to read more about smallholding and seasonal living than we have ever been able to share on these tiny insta squares over the last 6 years, and are keen to support our work so we can continue creating content in these spaces, we’d be  delighted if you'd consider signing up.
A few joyful spring moments from the smallholding: A few joyful spring moments from the smallholding: foraging hens | pear trees in blossom | lambs in the next door field | and apple blossom (because you can never have enough blossom).

And a quick note to let you know that the next issue of our newsletter, The Seasonal Supplement, is coming out tomorrow. It’s an extra long read for the bank holiday weekend packed with yet more blossom, a simple asparagus recipe (and a tip for using the woody ends), homemade rustic plant labels, our seasonal task list, and an announcement of something brand new (that we are really excited about). If you’d like a (free) copy sent straight to your inbox, just click the link in our story or bio and pop in your email address.
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We’re now writing over on Substack. We’d love to invite you to subscribe below: