Author Archive

I’ve spent a good proportion of the bank holiday reading about food and quite specifically how to eat food. I started with the seriously irritating Allen Carr and his Easyweigh to Lose Weight. I’ve read this once before and threw it out in disgust but I have to cut Allen a lot of slack...
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The plot and the hedgerows are so productive at the moment. It seems about two months too early but the sloes are already plump and juicy. I’ve just had to polish of the last remaining drop of slow gin from last year so that I can re-use the bottles for this year’s vintage. Extraordinarily...
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It’s been an incredibly productive season. Today we bagged up 3 sacks of assorted spuds and loaded the car boot with beans galore. It all feels vaguely sinful. The freezer is bulging, I’ve cooked dishes to last a week, I have beetroot roasting for a delicious chutney and still we have buckets of beans...
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What’s happening with the weather gods? The rain has come too late for a bounteous crop of spuds but is perfectly timed to ruin my garlic bulbs that are desperately in need of a good sun basking. I had a tricky decision to make this weekend. The ground was sodden and with no respite...
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I did my best to get in the sartorial spirit of the weekend but my enviromesh veil was hardly an Alexander McQueen. I’m all for Royal Weddings, I get to weep with a good proportion of the nation and then as a bonus I get an extra day to play around on the plot....
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There has been a slow and soggy start to the 2011 allotment year but the urge to plant is becoming more forceful. The urge to get out there and dig over the plot isn’t that strong yet though. Hopefully it will come soon as the potatoes are taking over the house….
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Last weekend I became a forager, this weekend I quit. It started at 11am this morning in the pouring rain, we’d just had to vacate our lovely weekend Yurt and the warm safety of the wood burning stove. All for the sake of a haw, or two. Having shredded our hands on blackthorn and...
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I must feel settled here. I spent the afternoon preparing a permanent bed, with manure, trenches and finely sieved soil, all for a crop that won’t be harvested for about 4 years. It’s an incredibly high maintenance crop, at least at the outset, and it only produces edible shoots for a couple of weeks....
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The committee ladies accosted us at the gates and threw down an ultimatum. Apparently our plot needed weeding and weeding quick. We had 3 days. They then told us that we had won the best new comers award – no congratulations implied. Apparently we were now in the running for best new comers in...
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You know it’s been a great evening when you finish off with a couple of empty bottles of fine ale and a bucket full of fresh produce. Days really don’t get much better than this. We sat in the sun and ate Ratte potatoes boiled with freshly podded peas and pondered over the mystery...
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