…and at last s is for the summer too. Hot, sunny days without a cloud in the sky so of course s is also for swimming. We have returned recently to one of our favourite spots and, because it’s September, we had the place mostly to ourselves. We took our friend Ana-Louisa with us plus a picnic. The water was bitterly cold at the start but this didn’t bother the dog who thought she had gone to heaven.
S is also for seedlings. There’s plenty to be done in the veg patch as the second round of crops are sown; so far cabbage, calabrese, cauliflower, chard, sweet peas and broad beans have all germinated. I need to get rid of the pesky mouse that’s making holes in the beds before I plant them though.
Meanwhile the courgettes are just about still going, the tomatoes too, and we have peppers and aubergines ready. Yesterday we had the last of our potatoes though (how I hate having to buy them now!) but the first of our leeks which made up for that, they’re great this year.
Finally, S is for Spain as we plan another camping trip this time a couple of days in Salamanca. Super!
The new project I mentioned in the last post is almost complete. I’m not sure what it is called but it creates a cool shaded area in the courtyard which was looking too barren. And I managed to use up the old tiles and some of the wood from the barn roof.
Today is the second anniversary of our arrival in Portugal to start a new life. It is also just over a year since we moved in to our new house and we are already doing repairs. Fortunately not to the house but only the polytunnel at the bottom of the garden. The sun has taken its toll on the cheap plastic covering which was falling apart so I recovered it with UV resistant plastic. Looks good now, I wonder how long that will last.
'new' polytunnel
However, we continue to build new things. Since the renovation of the barn, our attention has been on the courtyard and to this end I recently made a new flower bed. I had to dig up the new paving, and a layer of concrete and then the original cobbles underneath but the main reason was to practice my bricklaying as I intend to embark on a bigger project in the courtyard very soon.
starting the new bedcompletedNew project started. What will it be?
Meanwhile, as we move into September, things are ripening. Walnuts are appearing on the ground around our three trees and so soon enough we’ll be sitting in front of the telly of an evening shelling them in readiness for a succession of walnut cakes. Also the figs are coming to fruition. Not just in our garden but there are a few trees in the lanes and tracks hereabouts. So along with the blackberries and apples, they are providing sustenance for our country walks.
figs and walnuts
One tree that doesn’t know what time of year it is, is our new apple tree as it has rather strangely come into blossom. I’m sure nothing will come of that.
apple blossom in September
Despite Jackie’s bemoaning of the lack of sun and heat to dry her tomatoes, we have had little rain – as measured by my new rain gauge. In fact in August we only had one decent night of rain which measured a relatively pathetic 25mm. However, this was enough for the grass to be reborn and now patches of the garden are starting to green in a sea of brown. And that is the signal that I’ve got a few months of strimming to look forward to …
Well, I took the plunge yesterday and made some bottled / canned tomatoes. Actually, it wasn’t that difficult it was just that there were so many different stages and it was the first time. I wanted to fill the bottles with whole, peeled tomatoes and have these in a sauce, not unlike a tins of toms that you buy. So that meant skinning a load of toms of course and making the sauce. Plus all the bottles had to be sterilised not to mention getting the food mill out – the kitchen looked a real mess.
In fact buying the glass jars was the first challenge. We’ve only been able to get 750ml sized ones, and these are a touch too big, half litre would’ve been better. And the spare rubber rings (which apparently should be changed every time) don’t seem to be for sale… one of the reasons for bottling was to be able to reuse all the jars again so I do hope we can find the rings somewhere.
Back to the bottling: eventually all the whole toms had been peeled and ready for the jars, but I realised that I hadn’t got enough for the sauce. Next time I’ll have a load of sauce all ready made in advance, and then that just needs to be heated and poured in. So one jar was filled with tom sauce, one half and half sauce and water, and the third only water (which is apparently normal to use).
The huge pan I had ready for the bottling, my jam-making pan, turned out not to be quite big enough. The jars, once filled, need to be closed and completely submerged in water. There was perhaps only 2 cm of water above the jars so that had to be regularly filled up. Then the water needs to brought to a simmer and maintained at 88C for 40 minutes. 40 minutes of checking the water level and checking the temperature… it was great though to see the steam coming out of the jars which hopefully meant they were going to be sealed ok.
This morning, the jars having been left to cool in the water, I gingerly took them out. Looked ok. And then the seal test – the clips were undone and hurrah! it wasn’t possible to open the lids so sealed tight. Job done. I’ll have another go now if I can find some spare rubber rings, I’m rather reluctant to buy more jars if they can’t be used again. It’s good to have another way of preserving up our sleeves though, much cheaper to put up more pantry shelves than buy another freezer!
One of the projects set for the summer was to grow as many tomatoes as possible and have them preserved, in one form or another, so that we have them all year round. So the veg patch is certainly bursting with toms – small round ones, yellow ones, stripy ones, long ones… and thanks to the polytunnel we started eating fresh ones much earlier than last year. We’re hoping to extend the fresh season so we can eat those later in the year as well. So far so good.
However, it’s been the preserving side that has been more challenging. Sun-drying tomatoes is easy and the results delicious but you do need the sun, and finding two or three hot days in a row this summer has proven difficult. Imagine that! In Portugal, in August and still a problem! The last attempt had to be thrown away as they had gone mouldy; very disappointing.
Meanwhile I spent ages and ages trying to find a food mill or passata machine here and eventually ordered a mill through Amazon. Once I worked out how to use it we now have tubs and tubs of pasta sauce and soup filling up the freezer.
Perhaps the most successful has been the oven roasted toms, they are divine. These go on pizzas or make a lovely salsa when blitzed with a blender (alas, this is now on the blink); they are also put into bags or tubs and put in the freezer…
And earlier in the ‘summer’ loads were thrown whole in plastic bags and then bunged into the freezer, these will be fine for soups or stews or made into sauce later on. But our new chest freezer is now full… So now yet another system is to be tested today – canning. We have a large pot for boiling, some Luminarc glass jars and a proper thermometer. The idea is that we can put the jars on the pantry shelf rather than putting anything in the freezer, fingers crossed.
And look – a whole post without me mentioning the fact that it’s raining (again)!
Aside from all the veggies we’ve planted and the animals we’ve introduced (bees and chickens), there are plenty of things growing around here that we inherited, some that have sprung up like weeds and some that are growing wild in the lanes around here.
I suppose the dreaded brambles are the main things that spring to mind. I spent months and months trying to eradicate them from the main part of the garden but they have still thrived around the edges. Last year the blackberries were dry and shrivelled but the cool summer we have ‘enjoyed’ this year has been a boon for them and plenty have ended up in various deserts. The common accompanyment to blackberries is of course apples. We do have an old apple tree in the garden which has been here for years. It produces plenty of apples (there are plenty on the ground that’s for sure) but they are all tiny and mostly inedible. Fortunately there are plenty growing wild in the lanes around here, as well as pears, and often on my daily walk with the hairy one I manage to snaffle a few for my knapsack.
oranges and apples
Two of the trees that were also here before us are the orange trees in the courtyard. Fortunately they seem to be doing very well and have plenty of fruit which should be ready at the turn of the year. We also have our fingers crossed for our small lemon tree which has two lemons and our new lime tree which has quite a few microscopic fruits clinging on for dear life.
I suppose quite naturally for these parts we have grapevines sprouting all over the place. Most have had a poor summer with few grapes but we have an enormous bush in the lane by the house. Although the grapes are only small at the moment and not of high quality I am hopeful for at least a few glasses of grape juice for next month.
grapes and blackberries
Aside from the flora, the fauna still continues to thrive. I took another frame off the bees which they seem to be fine with. This gave another two and a half jars which is just as well as we seem to be giving plenty of the stuff away. I won’t be taking any more so let’s hope that we’ve got enough for ourselves over the winter (I’m sure the bees will be thinking the same). Other fauna is also doing well. The collared doves must like it here as they’ve had a second brood and the fledgelings have just left the nest but are staying close to home for now. I wonder how long parents and kids will stay for?
As Jackie mentioned in the last post, we were rather chuffed to recently harvest our first batch of honey.
It was quite straightforward to remove the frames, I just had to be careful to brush the bees off the frames and quickly put them in a sealed box to take away. There are nine frames in the top box which contains the honey (the lower box contains the brood – eggs and larvae). For the first harvest I took four full frames and left the rest which were not quite full. We may take two more a bit later but there is no rush. We must remember to leave some honey for the bees to eat over winter.
Here’s a photo of a frame packed with capped honey – about 1.5kgs worth.
It’s accepted that most of the honey should be capped before extraction. The frame below is only about three quarters capped but should be fine. Basically the bees mature the honey and reduce the water content to below 17% before capping it.
Generally beekeepers use a dedicated mechanical extractor to get their honey but for just four frames it wasn’t worth our while so we did it manually. After a bit of messing about and some very sticky fingers it all went surprisingly smoothly. I cut the honeycomb out of the frame and then put it in a sieve to drain out. As it was a particularly hot day the honey was very runny which made it easier. The honey that came through was amazingly clear and wax free which was good and of course, it tasted delicious!
Hot on the heels of our roast chicken success, well more for us than for them as all 8 have now been dispatched, we are now harvesting our first honey. As the bees are Richard’s project I’ll leave him with the details but suffice to say we are feeling rather chuffed (again!) having filled (so far) 12 x 500g jars of the darkest, richest and most delicious honey!
Right now I’m baking a honey cake which not only uses some of our most recent produce but also our eggs and olive oil *smug*
Well, that’s July come and gone – and what a strange month weather wise: cold sometimes, and grey and then some of those hot, hot days you think should be here all the time. We’ve done very little swimming (a trip to the beach the other day saw us don more clothes as we sat in the sea mist, the crashing waves only just visible) and we had more breakfasts outside in April and May.
And the veg patch? Plodding along slowly, we did manage to sun-dry some more toms in July, and our stanley plums from the tree we planted in 2009, but in fact there’s not a great deal to do now. No sowing, or potting on, or even weeding, just harvesting which is good. But there are fewer squash this year, I think because of the hot spring, and only 4 (but really delicious) melons. The second crop of french beans are doing well but, like last year, not as tasty as the first crop. At the end of the season I’m going to sit down and see what I have learnt from 2 summers here now, and plan for the year ahead.
Richard is doing wonderfully with the roasties, just two left from the original eight. Another roast chicken tonight (with all the trimmings again of course), and what a lot has been learnt from that. Not just raising them, but the killing, plucking, guttering, boning… and now we must find some more chicken recipes too.
Meanwhile, the photo looks a little dull, doesn’t it? Well, today is the 1 August – and it’s raining!
…is in the eating. That goes for the chickens too!
From this to this…
And we were particularly smug that everything from the oil, onion and garlic, through all the veg (carrots, parsnips, beetroot, potatoes and sprouts) and of course the chicken itself were all home produce. Just the salt, pepper and cornflour for the gravy were not our own.
We even celebrated with the posh crockery and cutlery
And how did it taste? Well, sitting outside in the sun and stuffing ourselves with this feast was just perfect, and that includes the taste. To be honest I wasn’t sure how I would react to actually eating the chicken having seen it killed, plucked and gutted, but in fact it wasn’t a problem. And as you can see Richard couldn’t wait to tuck in. Pudding also included our own greengages (although we bought the ice-cream!) Mmm
…and at last s is for the summer too. Hot, sunny days without a cloud in the sky so of course s is also for swimming. We have returned recently to one of our favourite spots and, because it’s September, we had the place mostly to ourselves. We took our friend Ana-Louisa with us plus a picnic. The water was bitterly cold at the start but this didn’t bother the dog who thought she had gone to heaven.
