Above us only sky

I'm getting rather tired of the continual exhortations to go foraging, do wild rambles, get back in touch with nature by eating it. From being a mildly eccentric nerdish thing to do it's become so mainstream that it's practically Disney and, although it's unlikely that the countryside will become entirely barren at the depredations of Sunday supplement hunter gatherers, every edible native plant that's taken is removed from the food chain of local fauna which might reasonably be assumed to have prior right.

Easy for me to say,  living as I do on nearly 25 acres of ancient meadows surrounded by a national park. Foraging for me is easier and more convenient than persuading myself to leave my bed in the morning. It's iniquitous to want to stop people from towns having the odd day in the sun and enjoying a return to nature, but having such accessible countryside all around has built my understanding of the interconnectedness of the environment and a horror of greedily stripping an area of any particular plant life.



Every responsible wild foraging guru will advise their followers never to take all of a crop but of course, how many times can a population be halved before it becomes unsustainable?  The maths is inexorable.

Indeed, how many people actually enjoy their booty when they get away from the glamour of the celebrity who's using hogweed or ramsons as his flavour of the week. What's it all for?



If you really want to get a grasp on your food and sustainability then put yourself down for an allotment or just get a few window boxes. For every success you enjoy (and you will) there will be balancing failure that will help you understand how fragile the growing world is and probably improve your opinion of farmers too.

The natural world is even more delicate than your managed garden and humans more damaging than slugs and caterpillars. Give it a rest.



And so, with typical inconsistency, on to blackberry picking!

Well, we view the brambles here more as a threat than a promise. They are tremendous resources for many insects and small animals but they're so quick spreading that they can easily overwhelm meadowland and young coppice killing all that they swamp. For the one or two kilos of fruit we can use in a year there is more than enough to have plenty left over and it's quite unlikely that it makes any appreciable difference to the menace at all.

Pick your berries on wasteground or buy them in Waitrose, then make this jam.

Seedless Bramble Jam

1 kg blackberries (or raspberries if you're that lucky)
900g sugar
4 sterilised 400g jam jars and lids

Swill the fruit around in a big bowl of warm water to rinse off dust and insects then scoop out gently with your hands into a large heavy bottomed saucepan. Add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan to stop the fruit burning before it releases its juice and set over a gentle heat to simmer and become soft.

If you want a clear jelly then you'll need to put the softened fruit and juice into a jelly bag and allow it drip for several hours but I prefer to use a mouli food mill to separate the seeds from the pulp. It's quicker and keeps more blackberry goodness in the jam.

When you've removed the seeds by your chosen method weigh the liquid. You'll need a ratio of 4:5 sugar to liquid. Therefore 1000g liquid will take 800g sugar.  My berries produced about 1200g liquid so I used 900g (it's not an exact science!).

Put juice and sugar back into the pan and stir to dissolve the sugar, then bring to a fast boil. With occasional stirring it'll take about 10 minutes to reach setting point. I use the cold plate method, a teaspoonful on the plate, allowed to cool and checked for set by observing the wrinkles made when you push it with a finger, but if you'd rather use a sugar thermometer 104C is a soft set.

Pour into the warmed jars and seal while hot.

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By the way, I'm not sure how many readers here have also read my food blog, the Stripey Cat Food Diary. I'm still in two minds whether to resurrect it or not. I feel most of what I needed to share about vegan cookery is now done and my personal interest in food is at an all time low but that will change again.

Maybe the last days of summer

The wonderful weather finally broke and we've had some stormy interludes but it's still excellently warm and when the wind slows down and the rain ceases there is still joy to be had in mooching around the place, just looking.



There is a late summer flush of speckled woods, one of the prettiest small butterflies in my opinion, and the local subspecies seems much more brightly coloured than the ones pictured on British sites.



There's also more soft fruit than might have been expected. The autumn raspberries are just beginning to come on line, there are late strawberries to pick and plenty of blackberries and despite my complaints earlier in the year some sloes too, enough to make a bottle or two of Patxaran for xmas. So although I'm lonely and there's a lot that's wrong with the world, not least the late summer fly invasion, it could be worse.

50 shades of shame

Oh my, I said, as my inner goddess chewed my lip to a bloody pulp, it's so long...

Since I wrote on this blog, but that's o.k. because I've been having a life. First, I had visitors, a party with my husband to celebrate our marriage, and then I've been horribly, horribly ill. Which is a shame because the weather has finally kicked into full summer and what should have been trips to the beach and long afternoons catching up with each other in the shade has turned into hacking coughs, recalcitrant high temperatures and snivelly noses.

Today, after having stayed on an extra five days to nurse me through the worst, Paul has gone back to the UK, the weather remains overheated and I'm very much alone for the first time in nearly a month.



However, the good weather, and Paul cutting the long meadow grass, which sends no end of crickets and small flying insects straight into the mouths of the swallows means that the last brood of the year is feeding well and looking mighty fine.

These funny little babies sensibly hid well down in the nest when I went in to photograph them but for whatever odd evolutionary purpose popped right up with mouths opened every time the flash went off. Extremely strange but I didn't stay to exploit it for long as the parents were getting more and more anxious, trying to bring in the next meal.



We've been chasing some strange butterflies too, now that the weather has finally perked up enough to encourage any flying insect to show its face. We're very short on the smaller varieties this year, common blues and coppers, but have been plagued by an unidentifiable large brown and orange creature that never stops and can't be photographed.

Luckily this dragonfly, the common Golden Ring, Cordulegaster Boltonii, was taking a rest in the sun this afternoon, so I snapped it instead.

It's a beast

I've always had a fear of vehicles with big wheels and steam engines scare me silly. A tractor has aspects of all of these things so living with one is a big learning curve and I'm finding it somewhat gut wrenchingly scary. A fifty horse power tractor is so powerful, I can't imagine what being in control of the bigger ones is like and I'm so aware of the damage I can do by missing a turn or misjudging my line.

I'd never driven a tractor before this one arrived. My extreme youth spent on and around farms means I'm not unfamiliar with them but opportunities for driving lessons when you're six years old are few and far between. My experience was all about riding in the trailer with the feed sacks, something that is severely frowned upon by Health and Safety these days.

The controls are easy enough although the clutch needs all my strength when engaging the power take off for the tools. There are  four gears and two gear ratios, high and low, although for the farm I only need the low option effectively turning it into a four gear machine. The higher ratio is for road use when head spinning speeds of 25 mph are achievable. A separate stick selects forward or reverse. Plenty of levers and settings for the front hydraulics to control the bucket and more levers to raise and lower the back tools. I've only really used the grass topper shown although we have some other implements for fancier work.

The real problem is my inexperience. We have wonderfully flat land on the whole, a few rutted places and just a tiny slope  at one end of the lawn area but all the time I'm driving I'm petrified of turning the tractor over. Never mind that I have a heavy cutter behind and a heavy bucket held low in front, the slightest incline and I'm sweating and trying to use my comparatively puny weight to counterbalance the slope. I've spoken to other amateur tractor drivers and they confirm the same feelings. It just feels dreadfully out of control.

The silly thing is I've watched Paul bounce and jounce the thing across all the bits that scare me and from the ground there's no problem apparent at all. He's done some other things that are frightening but you wouldn't catch me trying them in the first place!

I suppose I'll just have to keep working at it until familiarity breeds some contempt but in the meantime my adrenaline is running high every time I climb into the driver's seat.

By the way, if you'd like to get one of these for yourself, I can offer no better advice than to contact Danelander if you're in the UK or France. They have done us proud and have an excellent customer service attitude which has helped us no end as we learn about the equipment. Highly recommended.

Just like the Red Queen the weather forecasters keep promising jam tomorrow. Today, they say, is the last twenty four hours like this - windy, chilly, showery and more suited to a good day for late October than the middle of July - for at least a week, maybe even the rest of the summer. Humphhhh, is all I have to say to that.



I sprayed the tomatoes and potatoes liberally for blight again yesterday. It rained all night but there was still enough blue on the foliage this morning to give me hope that the dread disease will be checked long enough for the drier conditions to take hold. If the promised improvements don't arrive I don't know what I'll do. Cry, probably.



Still very few butterflies, one of the most profuse this year, previously notable by its rarity, is the Marbled White, a very pretty little thing. Also seen today a Comma but nothing else identifiable.

Stinking Roses

Realising that the rust attack on the garlic meant the plants had stopped growing, it was obvious that the time had come to pull the plants and see what could be saved. The bulbs are tiny; the picture has by chance a crown cap from a beer bottle in it but that's a clue to the scale of the crop. I've trimmed and cleaned the outer leaves and have left quite long stalks in the hope the drying bulbs will pull a little of the goodness back into themselves as they dry. It'll make plaiting easier too, if that seems worthwhile at all.

Paradoxically this pathetic harvest has made me feel a little better about the garden and I'm marginally more inclined to keep fighting the blight on the potatoes and outdoor tomatoes, to plant out cabbage seedlings that are languishing in pots and maybe even start some autumn vegetables before it's too late. However, in fear of a false dawn I make no promises there. I'll do what I can, but for this year, I'm not a gardener, just one of my many other personas and she doesn't like to get her hands dirty at all.

The elephant garlic has stood up to the poor conditions rather better seemingly able to withstand the rust and equally more robust in the face of sodden cold conditions. The bulbs are as good as I might have expected in a more normal year. A few are very good indeed.



However, does anyone know how to break the dormancy on the little bulbils that are produced between the cloves? It seems such an obvious and intentional way of propagating the plant.  Last year I found this article which seemed to answer all my questions but despite carefully snipping the bulbil coat and replanting them immediately after harvest nothing came up at all.

Thinking hard about it, and noting that the plant multiplies readily from the individual cloves anyway seems to indicate that these bulbils are a back up method of  reproduction, perhaps only of use in time of drought or inundation when the main bulb has been destroyed. In that case, some form of stress needs to be be brought to bear but should it be heat, damp or cold - and does anyone have the slightest idea what I'm on about?

A hope is arising that the summer might yet recover. There is talk of the jet stream moving, that more settled and warmer weather will result and the excessive rainfall and chilly temperatures will be no more. I'm not sure whether there is a basis in science for this hope or if even meteorologists have succumbed to wishful thinking but if we all hold our breath together perhaps we can influence our environment and bring back the sun.

Pictures today

Also spotted, some ringlets and a marbled white butterfly but they didn't stop for pictures.