Last weekend was dedicated to the annual apple pressing. Every year we harvest a hotchpotch of eating and cooking apples from the orchard to transform into a year’s supply of apple juice. By late October, most of our trees (with the exception of the two Spartans and a little tree of unknown variety by the…
Apple and Blackberry Crumble with Rosemary, Cinnamon and Rosehip
Autumn is here. It’s now dark when we get up in the morning, and we only have a couple of hours of daylight left after work. We’re wearing coats and boots again, watching the leaves slowly fill our gutters, and inching ever closer to lighting our woodburners. We opened the curtains this morning to find…
Apple Crisps
Apple season has arrived here in Somerset, and the fruits on each of our trees are busy ripening in quick succession. The orchard equivalent of a musical canon. There is a wonderful mix of eaters and cookers. Some are great for roasting, bubbling down into a compote, or turning into chutney. Others are best crunched…
Beetroot Leaf and Potato Gratin
The last of our beetroot have reached the size of Bramley apples and are starting to turn a little woody. They need harvesting quickly before they reach the point of no return and end up on the compost heap. So, at the weekend, we pulled up a huge basketful, leaving just a couple of the…
Mulberry, Goats Cheese, Rocket Leaf and Fennel Toasts
We tried our first mulberries at a family barbecue on a sweltering summer day. There was a sprawling black mulberry tree by the garden wall, crooked and aged. It looked like something out of a fairy story. Enveloped below its heart-shaped leaves were fruits so ripe they were falling off the branches and smooshing on…
Rainy Days and Lost Swarms
The beekeeping year started out so well. Our two hives had overwintered successfully and powered through spring with neat frames of brood, plentiful pollen stores, and lots of straw-coloured honey. We artificially swarmed one of the hives in June and proudly increased our apiary size by half. To our absolute joy, several swarms landed in…
Herbed Omelette with Griddled Courgette, Halloumi, and Nasturtiums
One of the lovely things about growing our own food is being able to pop outside and literally pick our own meals. Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are built around whatever is flourishing or newly appearing in the veg beds, orchard and herb patch at any given point in time. Yesterday morning, before the rain came,…
Cherry, Vanilla and Cinnamon Clafoutis
We have had a bumper cherry crop this year. The two trees in the orchard have been so laden with fruit that their branches have arched and drooped with the weight of the hefty bunches. The ruby cherries, speckled with flecks of pale orange and yellow, are beautifully sweet, and full of juice. As the…
A Swarm in the Plum Tree
When we lived in London, we did everything we could to entice a swarm of bees into our little garden. Purchasing a colony of bees is quite pricey and the idea of being able to expand our hive numbers for free was very appealing. In the beekeeping world, lost swarms are fair game and it’s…
Keeping Geese Part 2: A Rustic Wooden Brooder, Garden Adventures and Bath Tub Swimming Lessons
Following our decision to keep geese (see Keeping Geese Part 1), we prepared carefully for the arrival of the goslings. We read up on the finer details of goose keeping (Keeping Geese by Chris Ashton was our go-to book). And we made sure that we had all of the equipment and feed we needed: