The Seasonal Table - A journal of slow food and slow living from a smallholding in rural England

Spelt Risotto with Sorrel, Asparagus, and Herb Flowers

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

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.

…

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

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

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.

…

Shetland Sheep

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

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.

…

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…

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…

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…