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Category: Harvest

Home alone*

Home alone*

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Richard is back tomorrow after a trip to the UK and Isle of Man. In the past his absence has meant extra time for me, partly because I forgo doing much cooking. However, this trip has meant less ‘me time’ and a lot more work! Since moving here we have more and more projects on the go and these are shared, but now I’ve had to do Richard’s share: feeding, watering and cleaning out both sets of chickens; the weekly watering of the trees and shrubs; filling up the water tanks for our irrigation system; taking the dog out for runs (*the dog is still here of course following me constantly); emptying the compost bucket etc etc. Meanwhile the courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet corn and beans are endlessly producing their stuff which has meant me dealing with those, I’d hate to waste anything. So the freezer is slowly being filled up with cakes, quiches and all sorts of blanched and roasted goodies, and there’s plenty of sun drying going on too (now that the sun has finally come out, it’s been a cold, grey and even showery July).

Interestingly, well for me anyway, is that most of the stuff growing outside is doing better than that in the polytunnel. The polytunnel was great starting things off but it gets so hot inside (even with the window and door open) that things are suffering. The chilli plants have failed and there are fewer flowers on the peppers and aubergines too. I think this is partly to do with the very warm and sunny spring months, it was warmer at night in April than it has been recently in July, so the outside stuff did well and the polytunnel stuff overheated.

One great tip I have learnt recently is that you can easily make new tomato plants from the side shoots that have to be removed. They quickly turn into new plants with flowers which will give us an even bigger harvest.

In addition to the veg there are plums popping up all over the place. Our yellow and red ones have come and gone but two trees (that frankly look very ropey and gave us no fruit last year) have turned out to be greengages. Plus, along the lane, damsons are going to waste so these have had to be picked too. We’ve now made plum jam, plum cordial, plum and courgette chutney, plum crumble, plum tart and the latest is plum booze. It’s made with damsons and vodka which is already turning a delightful shade of pink.

Oh, and the mystery product I was making (referred to in an earlier post) is piccalilli which should be ready at the end of this month. Now I’m really looking forward to a time in the future when I can produce a delicious meal by simply defrosting things from the freezer, oh and Richard’s safe return too!

Isso é verão, não é?

Isso é verão, não é?

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It’s been a strange start to the summer. April and May were lovely (if you didn’t worry about the lack of rainfall) and saw us eating outside most evenings. Now, with the first of the summer months, the wind is cool, the clouds grey and it’s been showery – nothing substantial though and the grass yellows every day.

It’s a good time for the veg patch. The courgettes, surprise surprise, won the race for which veg we would be eating first from this year’s sowing, followed by the colourful chard. We’re either eating the produce or knowing we’ll be eating it very soon.

The extra four beds (there are now 13 of various sizes) have made a difference, both in terms of having more veg but also in the extra time looking after it all. We won’t be adding any more for the time being, what with the soft fruit and fruit trees as well there’s a lot to do if nothing is to be wasted. So at the mo we are eating our potatoes (the bed replaced with 44 leeks), onions, garlic, two kinds of French beans (the dwarf purple ones are recommended – always aphid free and prolific), broad beans, calabrese, cauliflower, courgettes, carrots, beetroot, chard, a few parsnips and turnips here and there, lettuce, raspberries and rhubarb. We’ve had one cucumber too.

The peas haven’t done very well, as last year; I really must remember to sow those and the broad beans in the autumn. We have also started to eat the tomatoes – hurrah! We’re growing more of these this year, and different varieties too.

The organic cherries are the first up – not surprising. What is surprising though is that these are not the ones in the polytunnel. The sunny spring has meant the ones outdoors have done very well and grown better than those under plastic. (It’s the aubergines and peppers which are appreciating the polytunnel more, both are flowering.) One of the new kinds we’re trying this year is the Roma kind – San Marzano. I’m really hoping to be able to freeze these for sauces throughout the year.

Yesterday I picked a mixture of veg for something I’m going to make, can you guess what?

My parents came last month and as always we try to make the most of my father’s woodworking skills. Last year he made a wooden support for the grapes in the courtyard and these are now doing very well so we hope to have a better harvest this year. As Richard said this time he was put to work making a new chicken run – I hope he didn’t think he was here on holiday! They bought with them a buddleia and this is now flowering, and it has attracted a very interesting butterfly (or is it something else?). Update: it’s a Broad-bordered Bee Hawk-Moth Hemaris fuciformis apparently. How nice!

So waiting in the wings are the sweetcorn, winter squash and melon, fennel, aubergine and peppers, perhaps some peas plus all the wonderful plums.

Here’s another pic of the veg I picked, all chopped and ready for the next stage… You’ll have to wait for the next update if you can’t guess.

Finally, away from the fruit’n’veg, we have bought 8 new chickens. Like last time they are about a month old, there are 4 white and 4 brown ones. To put us in the right frame of mind we differentiate them from the ‘egg chickens’ by calling them the ‘roast chickens’ – no room for sentimentality! Today they ventured out of their hut and into the run. We bought them, as the previous ones, from the market in Ansião. The man said the white ones would be ready in 3 – 4 weeks and the brown ones a couple more weeks after that! I suspect we’ll let these live a little longer, and get a little fatter. We also need to pluck up enough courage for D Day!

Harvest time

Harvest time

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…OK a bit premature but over the last couple of weeks the veggies have sprung to life. We’ve been eating the strawberries for a while, the delicious raspberries have now come on stream and the cherries have already come and gone. Admittedly ours were rather small like last year. And of course just like last year, Luis, with a big smile on his face, came over with a huge punnet of plump ones for us. Back to our veg, the artichokes and purple sprouting broccoli have come and gone but now we’ve got potatoes, onions, garlic and various beans and peas. Oh, and those triffids from last year are back and already producing like no tomorrow – the courgettes. And that’s just the start. There are plenty of other veggies on their way as well. Jackie will follow with a full update soon.

plums

In addition to veggies, the tree fruits are coming through. The plums should be ready soon and although the main pear tree (and apple tree) may well disappoint (the aphids have been extremely busy this year), we found a rather sickly young pear tree at the end of the garden last year and after some careful nurturing looks like it will come good.

pear

I only hope our electrician returns and connects the electricity to the barn as our new chest freezer is ready and waiting for excess produce. Talking of the barn – that is finished (but still needs painting) as is the patio. And I must say the front of the house finally looks pretty good. However, unlike in the UK, we haven’t seen the builders for a while and I still owe them 1000 Euros!

Jackie has also been busy making Elderflower champagne. Despite exploding bottles – glass and even plastic (see below) we have salvaged a fair amount and I must say it’s pretty good. Next up the quince wine.

explosive device

Apologies for no posts over the last two weeks but we’ve had Jackie’s parents staying and we’ve been quite busy. So has Jackie’s dad. He very kindly brought over a new henhouse for our proposed table birds (chickens for eating) and he also made a run for them while he was here.

New chicken run

Having them over has also meant me and Jackie (and the hairy one) managed to get away for a few days for some camping while they looked after the hens. As this blog is focussed on casa Azul, I won’t go into details but we had a great time and below are some photos.

campsite near Marvao
in the Rio Zezere

 

And to wrap up this blog entry – garden wildlife. It looks like the black redstarts won’t be making a nest in the postbox this year but we do have a couple of collared doves in the garden. I presume the nest must be here somewhere but we haven’t found it yet. Watch this space!

collared dove
The fall of the monolith

The fall of the monolith

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One of the strangest features of Casa Azul has been a large stone, standing in the courtyard. Well this week we took it down. It went as part of patio project stage 2. Now we’ve done the barn we are paving part of the courtyard and turning it into a small patio area. The stone was in the way but we wanted to keep it so we’ve turned it into a stone seat. Very nice it looks too.

monolith in place
monolith gone
patio coming along nicely

After the recent, much needed, heavy rain a surprising thing happened. I found some puffball mushrooms at the bottom of the garden. Autumn was so dry we didn’t get any mushrooms but here they are now. I’d never eaten them before and I must admit they were rather a disappointment. Like creamy tofu.

puffball mushroom

Much tastier, I am sure, will be our honey and on the latest inspection, the bees are really going for it. Keen readers will know that we started off with one box (the brood box) and after the bees had settled down we added a second on top. Between the two was a queen excluder. This is a wire frame that stops the queen from going “upstairs”. Therefore she concentrates on laying eggs and making new bees in the bottom box while the workers fill up the top with honey. And after a few short weeks the bees have been busy making honey comb in the top box and filling it with honey. As can be seen in the photo below. This is just one frame of ten, so we are hoping they will all be full by July and ready for harvesting. Thinking of which, I’ll have to do some reading and work out how to do it.

honeycomb

Never mind honey bees, we also have a carpenter bee making its home in the pergola. I’ll try and get a photo of the bee soon (it’s a big black hairy thing like a bumble bee). The nest itself is just a small perfectly round hole which the bee has chewed out of the frame.

We’ve also got a wasp making a nest in the potting shed!

wasp nest

With the rain and now more sun, the veggie garden is taking off. Here are the spuds in all their glory. And thanks to the polytunnel we have been eating  strawberries for weeks (admittedly only about 6 or 7 a week) and have enjoyed plenty of  artichokes.

Of course warmer weather means the smell of summer is here – yes the barbie!

Most of the locals have small tractors but we’ve got one old boy who still uses the old ways.

Couldn’t resist putting in this photo of the hairy one enjoying a puddle. They won’t be here for much longer.

And of course the wild flowers are still a joy. The poppies are coming up now but we still have a few orchids about. We’re not sure whether this one is a bee orchid or woodcock.

The hungry gap

The hungry gap

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Spring is often referred to as ‘the hungry gap’. The winter veg have come and gone, and the summer crops are just seedlings.  Next year I’ll make sure there are some calabrese and cauliflowers for the table but we do have two delights ready to eat now (having finished off the last of the cabbage last night). At long last the purple sprouting broccoli has sprouted, a year after sowing, and (also a year later) the artichokes – the first two chokes we will have tonight along with a whole bunch of PSB – mmm.

Buzzy time

Buzzy time

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Spring has well and truly sprung. The last few posts have been about how rapidly everything in the garden seems to have taken off. With the plants sprouting, so have the number of jobs I have to do. We plan on getting some more chickens – this time to eat, so I need to build another henhouse for them, we need to fix the well and get some sort of irrigation system ready for the baking hot summer, the barn needs renovating, shelves still need to go up, the list is endless. However, some things are getting done – I repaired the potting shed roof and strimmed the garden – a big job which takes at least a couple of days. I have left some areas unstrimmed however. My excuse is that these areas should be left to nature, encouraging the insects, wild flowers, birds, pest predators etc.

We have also got one of our next major projects up and running – bees!

We’d got word from a friend of ours that there was someone in the Dornes area, not far from here, who had bees and hives for sale. We headed down there with great anticipation and came back with a hive full of bees and all the necessary equipment. We were also quite proud of ourselves in conversing with this guy all in Portuguese (we are still very ashamedly poor at the local lingo). As instructed, we set up the hive in a good place at the bottom of our garden and let the bees settle for a couple of days. Only then were we to inspect the hive.

We have a beekeping guidebook and it explains what to do on this first inspection: try to spot the queen (she is slightly longer than the normal ‘worker’ bees), see that she is laying i.e. try to spot eggs in cells and grubs in various stages of growth and also to see if there was any honey. Basically just to check that everything seemed OK. The book also said that when you buy a nucleus – which is a starter colony containing only a queen and a few attendant bees, you don’t need to smoke them as they will be very calm.

We chose to inspect them first thing in the morning as we knew they would be still asleep (or whatever the bee term is). So, Jackie settled at a safe distance, camera in hand ready to record the moment.  I must admit I felt a bit like Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak approaching the hive all suited up.

And then our troubles began.



We had not actually bought a nucleus, but a pretty full hive. Morning is not a good time to open up the hive as everyone is at home rather than out foraging. We had Iberian bees which have a reputation (well warranted I will vouch for already) for aggressiveness.

While I was gingerly taking out a frame to inspect it, clouds of bees took off in front of me. I could see them all over my veil. I almost felt they were going to bite through the gauze. However, I maintained my calm. Then, I heard a scream. It was Jackie running down the garden. “It’s in my hair, it’s in my hair. Arrrrrrrrggggghhhhh!” I didn’t see her for a while but she had only suffered superficial wounds. One sting to the scalp which was not painful. I carefully put the frame back in the hive and then replaced the top. Unfortunately there were bees all over the rim, so a few got squidged, which also makes them angry. I then retreated. I didn’t find the queen and am not even too sure what I saw.

But the story doesn’t end there. Later, in the afternoon, I was strimming the garden quite some distance from the hive and I heard a buzzing followed rather quickly by a sharp pain in my hand – one of the blighters had got me after all!

The bees obviously are not going to give us their honey without a fight but we remain determined. Next time we are using the smoke!

We also made a video for our English teaching site podcastsinenglish.com. Unfortunately (perhaps) most of the more exciting moments were not captured on film and the section with me examining a frame is necessarily ‘artistic’ (and accidental) as by this stage Jackie, the camerawoman, had dropped the camera and retreated to the safety of the house.

To anyone who knows about bees there is also a glaring error in the narrative. The queen doesn’t lay the eggs in honey but in an empty cell. After it hatches, the other bees then feed the larva with royal jelly and pollen. The honey is put in cells purely as a store for the winter months.

 

Marching on…

Marching on…

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Both January and February, despite being winter months, weren’t too bad and we were able to eat outside in the courtyard for lunch quite a few times (although a roaring fire was going come the evening). They both had, however, a week or so of almost non-stop rain. Now the weather forecast says the same is going to happen for March, our mantra is always it’s good for the garden! For the chickens it’s water off a duck’s back…

Two weeks ago the first lot of seedlings planted back in February were showing but already it’s time for the sprouts to go in the garden. I’ve already put in a few broad bean plants (although why I have no idea, I wrote in my gardening diary not to do them again at this time because of the aphids but I forgot to get them going in the autumn).

So seeds sown in the polytunnel recently: sweet corn, peas, french beans, courgette, buttercup squash and yet more toms. Seedlings already up are the sprouts (above, two weeks ago and today), cauliflower, watercress, leeks, melon, bell peppers, cauliflower, calabrese, runner beans, cucumber, artichoke, loads of different toms and a range of herbs. Seeds sown directly into the beds outside: parsnips, fennel, beetroot, different kinds of carrots and rainbow chard. Plus three kinds of potatoes have been planted too. I hate seeing the empty beds (next year I’ll do more autumn planting) but am really pleased so much is on the go now. The companion plants, marigolds and nasturtiums, are also doing well.

The last of the leeks were eaten last week, and we are on the cabbage now. Apart from some onions, parsley and celery there’s nothing to eat. We should be eating the purple sprouting broccoli but, although it’s almost my height, there’s nothing apart from leaves (below right). I know it can take a long time (started a year ago now) but we are getting very impatient, no wonder it’s expensive in the shops. It will be our first time to try it, hope it’s worth the wait.

And talking of waiting, many of the produce needs our patience. The asparagus is shooting up but we have to wait for the third year’s crop (luckily that’s next year), a year on the artichokes are at last showing signs of producing something (above left) but I’m not sure if we still have to wait before we eat those, and we can only take a little of the rhubarb too – fingers crossed on that one as there doesn’t seem to be any signs yet…

Meanwhile all the fruit trees are doing well and as soon as the rain stops there are three big projects for us, watch this space!

Blossom

Blossom

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While Jackie was suffering with the wind and rain at Casa Azul, I was back in the UK where the uniform grey was cheered by snowdrops and the first signs of crocuses and daffodils. Here and now, however, the crocuses and daffodils are already on the way out to be replaced by tree blossoms. Already, one of our plum trees is in full bloom and is being quickly followed by the peach and even the apricot which we only planted last year.

plum tree in blossom
plum 2
peach blossom
apricot blossom
apricot blossom

As my sister visited us in September last year, she never realised we actually had grass in the garden (by then it was just a red dustbowl). So here’s a photo for her.

Adeus, inverno

Adeus, inverno

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There was a horrid blip towards the end of February when it rained everyday. The mornings were misty, and the spiders were busy. No more frosty mornings, just grey clouds.

Goodbye to the frost, and hello the wet

It meant doing lots of work inside the house (still more painting!), and plenty of baking to use up the eggs and oranges. And then, hey presto, out comes the sun and on come the wellies – back to the garden!

Plenty of seeds have been sown, and amazingly, I have already been transplanting the germinated seedlings into little plugs; the polytunnel definitely makes a huge difference. So there are sprouts and cauliflowers and broccoli and herbs and loads of different tomatoes all in little rows:

I’m particularly pleased as many of the seed packets were over a year old, and some a few years. I have only bought a few new packets this year so that’s been a great investment, especially as I hadn’t always been careful about keeping them in a suitable place. But perhaps most incredible is that already, in February, some of the asparagus has shot up! The sprouts were finished so I cut off their tops which meant their stems have come alive with new growth, enough for some sprout soup methinks…

March starts tomorrow, along with a few new interesting projects. It’s going to be a busy month!

 

Polytunnel

Polytunnel

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Now the new year has begun, our thoughts turn to preparing for this year’s main harvest. Having said that we still have plenty of winter veg in the garden to eat now. We have only just finished the swedes and cauliflowers, there are quite a few leeks left and the brussel sprouts keep coming and coming. Anyway, with thoughts for the future, I recently constructed the polytunnel (ably assisted by the hairy one) which we shall mainly use for starting seedlings off until they are big enough for the main veg patch. We’ll also grow some tomatoes in there full time and some strawberries have already been installed for safe keeping. If the last few days are anything to go by we may also use it as a sauna when the warmer weather comes.

It was actually very easy to build (just as well as I’m not exactly a master craftsman and more commonly referred to ironically as ‘Handy Andy’ by my mum). Let’s hope it stays up through to the end of winter!

Actually, further to my initial remarks in the first paragraph, there is quite a bit more going on as you can see from the picture below. As well as the brussel sprouts , there are cabbages (left), the purple sprouting broccoli (centre) will soon (insha’allah) be ready and on the right, Jackie is tending the celery (which is doing fantastically well), carrots and spring onions.