Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention.
Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire.
A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me.
From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
Now we’re being watched - we’d better not be naughty! This amazing new addition to our festive flat was designed and created by my incredibly creative Cousin Jen. I texted to ask if she had an elf to go on our shelf and within a day this little chap was made and in the post - isn’t he fabulous?!
We are feeling festive. I had Friday off work and feel like I’ve stopped for Christmas, but actually it’s the first year for ages that I’m having to work on Christmas Eve - I hope it’s not busy! Friday evening we saw A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic Theatre - live streaming via Zoom, of course...
It was great; a really good adaptation with some worthy lessons, sadly, for modern Britain. We were drawn to it because of Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead) but there weren’t any zombies in it.
Yesterday I podded the Gigantes beans. Some hadn’t dried out enough, so aren’t suitable for storing. They’re so smooth and white when they’re properly dried in their pods like this.
But this lot, from 4 plants, will serve me well over the next year.
From today we have moved into the new COVID tier 4 which has been specially created for Christmas in the South-East of England, which we just fall within. It’s going to upset a lot of people’s plans, though our Christmas is always enjoyed in isolation.
It would have been better to have made the decision before everyone finalised their arrangements, but with hospitalisation and deaths increasing rapidly the main concern has to be stopping the virus from spreading/mutating and trying as hard as possible to make 2020 the only year that’s spoilt for so many 😔 So, here’s the beautiful Bill Withers providing the title track. I hope you can enjoy Christmas and look forward to a better new year x
The Lockdown Wood was planted up in Hungerford last weekend - more than 850 saplings. Another year. I would have joined in, but I’ll stay away from gatherings for a few months more... Our hazel tree needs to grow at least 3 times taller than this before it can join the wood, but I was pleased to see it looks happy with new buds just appearing.
We only visited the plot to add waste to the compost bin and to store our new honeysuckle in the polytunnel until we’re ready to plant at home. We got it free from Thompson & Morgan because they’ve published a couple of entries from this blog into their Favourite Bloggers articles recently, which is always nice to see 😊
While we were there I collected up all the Gigantes beans, which have been drying out in the polytunnel. I’ll pod them for storing in a few days.
And here’s one of the tasty meals I had using last year’s stored beans and some of the veg my sister brought over (swede, carrots, fennel, peppers). I made enough to cover three meals and added gravy to make it more like a stew for one of them.
Work continues to keep me far too busy, but we’re hoping it’ll wind down a bit as we get closer to Christmas. I’ve never had such a Christmassy office setting though 🤩
For the next few lunchtimes I have this scrummy chestnut and sage soup. Mmm, I could easily eat it all in one sitting, but I’m not getting any exercise so had better not! I used the River Cottage recipe because I didn’t want to add cream, but I did sauté the onion and sage in butter.
It's Gaudete Sunday today - the third Sunday of advent apparently. I'm sure this is the only time I'd manage to crowbar this song title on the blog :-) I chose Erasure’s version.
We just had a little walk up the High Street to see the Christmas lights and post some cards.
It’s so pretty, I do love to see it all lit up. I had to manipulate the photos a bit which has made the sky look interesting, it just looked black in the real world.
Our flat has also been lit up and is looking very much like Santa’s grotto.
My sister shared some lovely veg with me today. Also some peppers and potatoes.
I’m looking forward to a bit of cooking this week and decided to include a few of last year’s stored home-grown beans into the mix, so they’re soaking at the moment. Look how wrinkly they’ve gone, but they’re sure to be delicious eventually.
So, a final photo of the High Street and hopefully marking it as 2020 (and only 2020 please!) one of the COVID-19 signs.
As you can see I’m feeling rather Christmassy, so Coldplay provide the song title.
We don't need to move to have a lovely new view from our window for a few weeks and the weather has been so dreary that it’s been a welcome spot of brightness even during the day.
Hmm, what else has happened over the last week... well, I had a day off and went to a shop... it was self-service so I didn’t really feel the COVID-shopping experience. I did get to cook the one and only spaghetti squash that we grew this year - it didn’t get looked after as much as it normally would, which I guess is why it only produced the one fruit, but it was quite a big one. I had two meals of it as Jamie doesn’t like it. It was so delicious with Spanish spicy beans and topped with cheese.
Halved and cooked cut-side down for 45 minutes at 180°, then filled and put back in the oven for 15 minutes was just right for keeping the ‘spaghetti’ firm. For the last 15minutes I pricked the skin to let the juices escape.
I also made some thick and tasty chilli, carrot and coriander soup. I’m missing our usual supply of home-grown carrots and squash, we’re so used to eating loads at this time of year, so I put a shopping order in with Jamie 😊 (He's looking forward to me getting the corona virus vaccine before him so that I have to do the shopping!)
We had a couple of hours on the allotment yesterday. It wasn’t foggy, like Saturday, but it was very dull. I cleared the bean poles away and put all the runner bean stalks into the compost bins. Look at that root! I’ve never seen them grown thick like that before and it had a really strong smell of runner beans.
We were watching the birds while we sat having a cup of choca-mocha in the polytunnel.
The robin was enjoying finding grubs where I’d moved a large pot and these goldfinches were chirping away in the trees in the hedge.
And now a question for you growers. I saw this on Facebook:
Is my globe artichoke actually a cardoon? I hope someone can tell me! Or maybe I just need to chop off some of those stems to taste them - what do you think?
We’ve just watched the Hungerford Virtual lights switch on video. Fun to see so many plotholders who are involved in other town groups. Our HAHA Happy Christmas is around 14mins 20secs if you can’t sit through the lot 😁 And the beautiful Hungerford Christmas lights are on - yay, we can see a couple from the flat but I think we'll have to take a wander up the high street one evening next week.
So, Jackson Browne provides the song title with a little poetic licence, just a little bit longer in Lockdown#2, a little bit longer till Christmas and a little bit longer till the vaccine is available to us - hooray, lots to look forward to!
In the last two weeks I’ve literally only been outside twice - it’s just too easy to stay indoors when it’s November! But thank goodness for the allotment which is motivation to move, at least at the weekend. And the sun came out so the canal was looking lovely with lots of moored boats and the flowers on the bridge.
Walking through town was pretty quiet, with most of the shops shut, but quite a few plotholders were busying themselves at the allotment when we got there. The ground is too wet to do any serious work so we just enjoyed the fresh air for an hour or so. We weren’t sure the sun was going to make it out at this point.
The birds were very active. We saw redwings, blue tits, wrens, robins and dunnocks in the hedge. And crows and gulls were calling from the Marsh. We think this was a kestrel, though it looked very large sitting on the overhead wires - as you can see, it flew off!
When the sun emerged it was lovely and warm. We could hear the booming from military exercises on Salisbury Plain, which is about 30miles away, but mostly we could just hear birds - aah, lovely. Better than last weekend when we had to sit in the polytunnel because it was so rainy. I don’t know why my phone decided to make this video of Jamie in the rain last weekend. I’m pretty sure he didn’t actually do that nifty footwork 😃
So back home I finished off the last of my home-made spicy parsnip soup, with some Higgidy veggie cheese & pickle rolls. Yum.
Well, that’s another week gone. If they keep speeding by like this then we’ll soon have all been vaccinated and can move on with our lives again...Yay!
The song is for last weekend, which was too wet and dull to care about. It’s by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.
England is in lockdown for a month and the weather is gloomy but ... on Tuesday, a little bit of Christmas cheer visited the site. Forbes hasn’t gone completely mad, there is a reason behind this photo, but I’m not revealing today! 😀
I used the last of the focaccia mix. It was supposed to represent the classic Day of the Dead skull, but it didn’t quite turn out as intended 😂
Oh well, it still tasted ok, dipped in celeriac and squash (thanks Jim & Martine) soup. The squash was really delicious roasted. (I’m missing all our usual home-grown squashes). Jamie bought the celeriac and some braised fennel so I also made a soup with them - my favourite soup. It will be nice to grow our own ingredients again next year.
Anyway, no whinging, this is a cheerful post! Our garlic seedlings are growing well in this mostly-mild Autumn.
Though we did get a frost (-2.5°) which has seen off the runner bean plants and begonias.
Luckily Jamie picked the remaining Gigantes beans on Tuesday, so they’re drying in the polytunnel.
And the broad beans have avoided becoming mouse food in their little cloches.
Yesterday afternoon we visited the plot to just sit awhile in the last of the sunshine and Min gave us a couple of her interesting harvest of Yakon. I hadn’t heard of it before. It grows like Jerusalem artichoke but the flavour sounds quite different. We’re drying them out as that should apparently sweeten them up. It’s always good to get to try something new, don’t you agree?
And the main reason for using Ian Dury’s great song title is the US election Result. How relieved must the non-Trump supporters feel?! Just need to move the big orange baby on now...
We always enjoy celebrating Halloween with a meal followed by a horror film. This is the first year in ages that we had to buy a pumpkin rather than growing our own. Of course, the pumpkin seeds weren’t wasted. I roasted these (about 20mins on 180°) with oak-smoked oil, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. So more-ish, but afterwards, as Jamie said, it is rather like having eaten a balsa wood model airplane 😂
We managed to avoid the rain when we popped to the allotment to leave our 2020-style Jack-o-Lantern on the bench to ward off evil spirits from our plot ;-)
The creepy couple from Plot7
We had a starter of green spicy parsnip soup and for the main had our favourite Stahly’s veggie haggis with roughly mashed roast Festival squash (thanks Kate!) and roast spuds.
And for dessert we had bloody lemoncello.
So that marks the end of October 2020. What a year and we’ve just learned that England is going back into lockdown for a month from next week. It won’t make much difference to my life, particularly as allotments are still able to remain open. The song music is provided from the Nightmare Before Christmas (great) film soundtrack.
Getting out of bed for the last couple of weeks has been a struggle. The mornings have been so dark. I'm glad the clocks have changed back to GMT today, at least there may be a few weeks of getting up in daylight rather than seeming like the middle of the night! I've mentioned before that working from home is a bit too intense - staring at the screen all day, even during meetings and catch-ups with work friends and colleagues. But at least I don’t have to get up so early and drive to work. Let alone those mornings when you need to scrape the ice from the windscreen, get petrol or sit in a traffic jam.
We ventured out to the allotment yesterday afternoon and got a drenching, but it was nice to be outside. And I was suprised to see the Anemone de Caen in bud (photo above). I'm sure it's meant to be a Springtime flower. The weather has been quite mild but the lowest temperature on the polytunnel thermometer was just below 2°.
You can see we’ve not had a frost because the begonias are still alive and flowering. I expected our broad beans to have germinated and broken through to the surface, but no sign of them yet. As soon as they pop up we'll protect them with plastic
bottle cloches, otherwise mice will enjoy them.
This is the ash tree by our plot at the end of the site's central aisle. Sadly it has Ash dieback - a disease which is apparently infecting 80% of the ashes in the country. We have a couple of other ash trees which need to be removed - it’s more obvious in them as they’re completely dead. 'Our' big one is between the site and the canal towpath so there's a debate going on about who's responsible for it. Luckily we have a plotholder who is a tree surgeon so he can advise.
On Friday night Jamie and I had our own Oktoberfest evening, you see, we’re very good at social distancing :-) The Heck veggie sausages were very tasty and a nice selection of German beers (we didn’t drink them all - honest!) and bier nuts.
You may remember the huge Tromboncino squash that somebody gave us last week. I actually did make it into a cake - the last time I made a cake was 2011! I only needed to use the long stem (the bulbed end I fried in chilli and had with other veggies for cold lunches in the week). I grated the squash and squeezed out most of the water before weighing and mixing with the other ingredients.
I used this Hairy Bikers recipe. The only changes I made were using mixed nuts, instead of walnuts, and olive oil instead of vegetable.
It‘s very tasty and I’ve enjoyed having it for breakfast (and snacks). I wonder if the next cake I make will be in 2029?!
