Denis

It's been another stormy weekend - Storm Dennis this time - less windy for us, but so much rain!

Dwarf Iris in a weedy pot, just about surviving the deluge

The weather during the week, between the two storms was pretty horrid too. I nipped up the allotment straight from work on Wednesday, as I promised some people at work that they could have some carrots and I needed to make some more soup to cover lunchtimes.

Carrots posing with my little satellite model at work

Some of the carrots have a lot of stringy roots and there is some carrot fly (or slug) damage. I also gave a bag of my mixed dried beans to one of my friends - I felt I had to share the delights!

The soup I made in the week was carrot and coriander, I think I used more coriander than I needed to (the resulting soup was a bit greener than expected) but it was still very tasty with some cheesy bread.

Other areas of the country have had much more rain than us, but the River Dun is certainly flowing higher, faster and browner than usual - it's a trout stream and is usually lovely and clear.

Those downpipes aren't meant to be in the water!

We got a drenching walking to the plot yesterday to feed the poor birds and pick more carrots (I know, but there's nothing else!) and a few sprigs of sage.

It was rather chilly and I was glad when we got back home into the warm to make my soup. I added the sage to the pot with the onions - mmm, the smell while they were cooking was lovely! While they were softening up I chopped the carrots and chestnuts.

 

I remembered to remove the sage sprigs and added salt and pepper.

Then after the stock was added, boiled and then all simmered for about 50mins I blitzed the mixture and luckily <ahem> there was some for me to taste - delicious! The chestnuts add such a pleasant flavour and make it a nice creamy soup.

Poetic licence has allowed me to use Blondie's song Denis (the 'Dennis' song I found didn't appeal!) and the blogpost is brought to you by the colour... brown!

Wild is the Wind

Storm Ciara hit the whole country at the weekend. We're not really used to such dramatic weather in Hungerford, we're in a valley and often miss the news-worthy weather. Of course, we couldn't resist a walk out in it so we took the HAHA anemometer up to the allotment.

The rain started while we were on our way, luckily it wasn't too cold and 25.8mph was the strongest gust while we were there. (Official wind measurements are made at 10m which is why they forecast significantly higher speeds.)

There was plenty of wind damage - netting and plastic blown around and structures in various states of collapse. As you can see, our polytunnel cover was removed - well, it was on our list of things to do!

And we seem to have gained another polytunnel... I think it's from Jackie and Elaine's plot at the other end of the site!

It was good to get back home to the warm (we were lucky, our power didn't go down) and we only saw one tree down although many more were reported in the area and so much debris on the roads as I drove to work on Monday morning.
Last week, as promised, I soaked some more dried beans overnight and Jamie cooked them for an hour the next day before I turned them into my long-awaited sausage casserole - it was delicious, quite spicy. I was going to have it for 2 dinners but it was too good to not eat all of it in one sitting.

And then for a couple of days I finished off the remaining beans with salad purchased from the restaurant at work. So tasty for lunch. I've discovered that the Borlotti seeds that I ordered are a dwarf variety, so I will buy some climbers as well, to make sure I get plenty of beans to store along with the Gigantes and some fancy Edamame that I've bought.

This blogpost is brought to you by the the colour (I know, I know, it's a shade) Black, because Ciara is apparently derived from Ciar meaning black (or dark) in Irish and each time we the storm brings us rain or hail the sky is going very dark.

And the song title is provided by David Bowie, and the wind is still rather wild today!

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

This time last year my blog was full of lovely snow photos - no snow this year, mostly grey weather, although Saturday was nice enough to go for a long walk with my sister in the fields above her farm - we did nearly get blown away, but it was worth it for the beautiful views over West Berkshire.

So this February blogpost is very similar to my first-week-in-February posts each year. It's potato-buying time! There's the classic potatoes chitting in an egg box photo...

There's Jamie selecting some goodies from the vast selection at Charlton Park Garden Centre in Wantage.

And here are the varieties we selected. Estima, Foremost, Nicola and Kestrel. We don't buy many tubers nowadays as the plot normally turns into such a slug-fest. We'll be growing most of these in bags.

The Kestrels we actually bought in Wilko as we didn't think Charlton Park would sell them individually, but they did. We also bought these two varieties that we haven't tried before.

Look how expensive the Belle de Fontenay are for a bagful! We only bought two tiny seed potatoes so I hope it's prolific :-) And how could I resist the Purple Rain?

Apart from buying potatoes, we've also been looking through the catalogues over the last few weeks and have bought some seeds and ordered some plants. I've made sure I've got some Gigantes, Borlotto and Edamame seeds again as I've enjoyed having home-grown dried beans at home. I've bought some of these through Real Seeds again - an online company.

I've used the last of the stored mini pumpkins (just one spaghetti squash left now).

 

Cooking the pumpkin and onion with some curry powder, cumin, turmeric and garlic powder and then adding that little can of coconut cream before blitzing has made the most delicious smooth, spicy soup!

This weekend has been marred by the Brexit 'celebrations' so that's why a quite positive blogpost has been brought to you by the colour blue and the song is by Bob Dylan.

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!