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 keepers rule regarding the apples and never try and pinch each other’s fruity treats. The chickens have no such system, and do plenty of squabbling and strengthening of the pecking order over the apple pieces. There’s plenty to go round though, and the chickens have been eating far less of their layers pellets in favour of the orchard fruit. Our four new Shetland sheep, who arrived on the smallholding back in July (we’ll post more about them soon), have been enjoying the odd bucketful of apple pieces too. And, as for us, we have been squirrelling away batches of apple compote and apple crisps, munching at least one fresh apple a day with lunch, and doing daily orchard inspections to check the apples and determine the perfect time to start juicing….
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 of our favourite rosemary bush, sprawling out from the centre, dangling across the garden path, and snagging our clothes as we walk past. On the edges of the old hazel coppice, they have formed a barrier between us and our prized cobnuts. And amongst the flowerbed roses, they have created an epic tangle of thorns. It is a constant battle to keep them in check….
Wild Cherry Sour
It has not been a particularly good year for our cherry trees. One of the two sweet cherries, which gave us an absolute bumper crop last July, has been struck by what appears to be a nasty combination of fruit drop and cherry blackfly. The tree stands curly leafed and forlorn, surrounded by shrivelled fruits that have fallen from its branches and now litter the orchard floor. All of its tiny crop of surviving cherries were snaffled by the squirrels as soon as they started to blush red….
Milk Jelly with Strawberries, Elderflower, and Cobnut Brittle
The tiny alpine variety of strawberry that grows wild might just be the tastiest strawberry there is. The minuscule fruits, sherbet sweet and deeply flavoursome, melt in the mouth in seconds. We have a small patch of them growing in the dappled shade of some rosebushes. We also forage a few extra from the grassy…
Borage Leaf, Pea and Garden Mint Soup
The borage pops up in the vegetable patch every year without fail. It would almost be considered a weed if the dark green leaves and starry flowers weren’t so welcome in our garden. We grew a few borage plants in a module tray in our first year here and planted them out in the corners…
Chickens: Creating a Dual Purpose UK Easter Egger Flock – Part 2
This is part two 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. After a lot of research, we settled on four main breeds that we wanted to keep to form the base of our flock.