What a Waste

January has sped by which is unusual for this long cold month. The weather has been mostly grey with the occasional frost and some very welcome blue skies but we've only managed a few brief visits to the plot. I was very pleased earlier in the month when I made this sausage and bean casserole with the dried Gigantes, Edamame and Soya beans, using Shaheen's recipe.

Just one problem.... I forgot to actually cook the beans, after I'd soaked them overnight, so it was all wasted - boohoo, it looked so delicious and was going to serve me for two meals! Hence the blogpost song-title.

On Sunday we spent over an hour on the plot, but only to do our bit for the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch. What a wet and miserable day! But I like this little slow motion video of one of our over-flowing buckets.

Most of the birds, sensibly, had decided to stay under cover, but these pigeons were enjoying the berries on the ivy.

So this was our, rather weak, count:
  1 x robin
  6 x wood pigeons
  4 x magpies
  1 x blue tit

Our cover was somewhat lacking... the polytunnel has a new sunroof...

Jamie ventured a bit further from the 'comfort' of the polytunnel - look at that weedy plot! Well, it'll have to wait a bit as it's so soggy and we've got a holiday to go on before we deal with that :-)

The wellie-boot remover that I retrieved from my Mum's house has been well-used so far this year.

I'm pleased that the sempervivum (houseleek) which I potted on last Autumn seem happy enough in the wet weather - I do love them.

Jamie and I enjoyed a fun weekend with two celebrations to hijack and make our own - first was Burns Night on Saturday. It's a good excuse for eating our favourite Stahly veggie Haggis with neeps & tatties washed down with a few tasters of whiskey (not my favourite drink). Followed by a Scottish film called Restless Natives from 1986.

And then on Sunday evening we celebrated the Chinese New Year - of the Rat. We had more of a pan-Asian feel to our evening with miso soup, Japanse saki and various oriental items to decorate the room and then watched CJ7 a Chinese film that I've been wanting to see since 2008, it was good.

So this blogpost is brought to you by the colour red - for luck, joy, and happiness over the next year and just a few rats, I'm sure! The song is provided by Ian Dury and The Blockheads.

Orange Crush

My first post of the new year is mainly about soup - a common theme for me at this time of the year. The soup I made today is Squash and Chestnut.

I used two of the remaining four Jack Be Little squashes. I read a previous post of mine and saw that I got away with leaving the skins on, so I just removed the seeds, sliced them, added a bit of chipotle rape seed oil and roasted them for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile the onions and chestnuts were cooking on the hob with a little oil and seasoning along with half an Oxo cube.

Everything was then simmered for about 20minutes before I blitzed it. It's rather sweet (not sure how I could make it less sweet given the main ingredients) but the taster I had makes me think it'll be a welcome lunch for a few days at work next week.

We visited the plot today; there were people working. Not us though, we just wanted to pick some carrots.

The plot is looking as expected; soggy, unloved and mostly brown. The weather has been so wet and mild that there's a lot of growth so we really need to get working on it, but although we're thinking about the plot, the activity is less appealing just yet.

But there were a few good signs. Our broad beans are looking better than this time last year (tempting fate here!).

But our bulb pot is looking sad - clearly a mouse took a fancy to those fresh new shoots. That was going to be a stunning display of crocus that Jamie planted up :-(

I received this interesting book for Christmas, from my sister. I love the cover and that the pages are coloured. I'm attempting to colour-theme each blogpost - well, there is a lot of orange on this one... we'll see.

An interesting fact about orange is that the word 'orange' as a colour was first used in the sixteenth century; before that, the fruit's colour was described as 'yellow-red'. Well, I thought that was quite interesting.
And the song is provided by REM.

Auld Lang Syne

Hoping for a good year and it seems an opportune time for a brief look back over the last decade on the allotment. I've selected a couple of photos from each year...

2010

After almost losing the site in 2009 we were given a 4 year reprieve so we could really concentrate on growing our own.

Look at how dry the earth looks - not suprising, as we were having to collect water from the nearby river. The borehole was dug in November - when it didn't stop raining :-)

Here we are painting parts of the container - one of the first jobs for newly-founded HAHA.

2011

I had a diary previously, but so much easier having an electronic version so I started this blog in June 2011.

The purple Conga potatoes (mini tubers) did particularly well - just look at that mash, with no added colouring!

We bought our first bench for our plot and clearly found that spending evenings on the plot (with a bit of wine) were a great part of allotment life - some habits stick fast :-)

2012

This was my busiest blogging year, with 142 posts! We took over Plot 8A and this was the year that the Edinburgh Fringe acting group performed their play on the site.

We had some freezing Winter weather and saw -9° in February, but showing how keen we were we were working on the plot in those months that we tend to avoid these days.

My cousins visited from Hastings in October, for the wettest Hungerford Food Festival on record.
We all got a drenching when we showed them around our plot - the pot marigolds were a lovely display that year, but I'm sure we didn't plant all those :-)

2013

We took over the other half of Plot 8 in a year that started with thick snow and suffered a heatwave in July.

We spent months encouraging this little robin to get braver and eventually he ate from our hands. We haven't been so successful with subsequent robins but they're lovely to see on the plot.

Gluttons for punishment, we also took on an empty plot for HAHA 'unusual veg' to show at the Hungerford Food Festival - we did rather well, don't you think? All those lovely bright colours. We haven't grown mooli since as they weren't that tasty, but they do look good.

2014

Neither of us were very well in 2014 and only 32 blogposts as a result. I was off work for a bit but the plot didn't get all that extra attention - which I'd love now, though I'd rather stay healthy!

This was a Spring workday - well attended for those early days. Look at that lovely blue sky and happy workers :-)

These were the tallest sunflowers that we've ever grown -  I don't know what we did to make them so happy, but I'd like to grow them that tall again!

2015

We finally erected our polytunnel - our lease says we're a 'no structure' site, but it's easily de-constructable if we ever need to ... :-(

Our bench was the perfect spot for viewing the partial solar eclipse - what a great event that was, definitely worth getting up early for!

Jamie's HAHA-carved pumpkin was a great success at the Food Festival. The stripey Cornell's Bush Delikata squash on that table were some of the tastiest we've grown.

2016

We had a further year's reprieve for the site - still under threat as a pawn in a building contractor's plans for the town...

We took on another plot - to encourage more plotholders to a rather abandoned section of the site. Plot3 is a nice square plot with just tree roots and mares tail to contend with...

Growing the cucumbers in moulds gave us these great star-shaped and also heart-shaped additions to salads and we still grow the little Rocky cucumbers as they're so abundant and tasty.

2017

I started using song titles as blogpost titles. I like having a song for each post but finding an appropriate one is by far the hardest thing about writing this blog! I'd like to stop, but I'm a bit obsessive....maybe I'll stop in 2020...

I love this amazing cloud formation - so interesting, I think they're a type of cirrus

I began planting a few more flowers on the plot - they are such a lovely addition and there's still plenty of room for veggies. The trouble is, I have so many that self-seed now that I've lost control a bit...though it looks beautiful!

2018

Visiting frogs laid frogspawn on the empty plots' white tarpaulin so we made a little pond to save some of them. It was lovely watching them develop. What a sweltering year that was!

Two adult frogs moved into our little pond after the tiny froglets had moved on - there's certainly plenty of slugs for them to enjoy.

HAHA joined in with the lantern parade in the Hungerford Christmas Extravaganza with vegetable-shaped lanterns - they ended their day on the plot.

2019

Last year was the 10 year anniversary of the Marsh Lane site, so we had plenty of social events including our best ever plant sale on the Town Hall steps.

Everyone helped out

 Our Open Day was also our best attended with lots of games to enjoy in the hot, sunny weather.

Ivan and I enjoying some healthy competition on the Squirty Boats.

We got some great local press coverage and lots of visitors discovered the little corner of Hungerford that we've been raving about for the last 10 years.

Our plots looked pretty and produced plenty. We hope we'll have more time next year to enjoy a few more days/evenings just sitting and watching things develop in 2020.

Happy New Year!

Upon a Winters Night

It's Christmas Eve - Merry Christmas!

We've had a very busy month. It's been extremely wet, but luckily on a few important dates it didn't rain so it's been a lot of fun getting ready for Christmas. We had our usual trip to Oxford and I had some delicious tofu Singapore noodles in the Gloucester Green street market.

Then bought a few pressies at the Christmas Market before having a cuppa in the Covered Market - visiting some of my favourite places in the City.

The beautiful Elisabeth Convent (Belarus) convent - I should have bought more there

Back in Hungerford we saw Will Young (local singer) switch on our lovely Christmas lights and enjoyed the Christmas Extravaganza, including being in the lantern parade - this year we made the HAHA lanterns in the shape of snails.

 

Somebody paid me £4 for mine at the end of the parade! I gave it to The Big Issue seller.

Kerry's is now residing on her plot - although it's a skeleton again because the rain removed all the paper.
We managed to avoid rain at the Newbury lantern parade - huge compared to the Hungerford one, but we're hoping ours will grow and more people join in in future years.

It's been a very wet Autumn/Winter so far.

 

That's not the allotment. It's the River Kennet in Hungerford which is very full and fast-flowing at the moment. We did actually visit the plot yesterday and it was very soggy, although it was a crisp clear blue sky day. We only visited to pull some carrots for our, now traditional, carrot lox which we'll have on Christmas Day. We have our big Christmas meal late this evening.

Here's the latest addition to our Christmas tree. Unfortunately we had to buy sprouts but we may get some from the plot for another meal this Christmas.

We had lovely visits to family and lots of shopping trips. And this is a photo from our window as the sun set at the end of the shortest day of 2019. Hooray, we're on the way back up now - but I wouldn't mind a bit of snow before Christmas holiday is over (or maybe just at the end of the holiday so I can't drive to work)!

Here's a lovely version of this song performed by Cara Dillon. Enjoy and Happy Christmas!