Newsletter

 

Back to some good news this week! A couple of months ago, Simon built a temporary pen for the three remaining Muscovies and the Guinea fowl as the ducks had developed a taste for seedlings in the hardening off area this spring and last year the guinea fowl stripped the gooseberries of their crop. The two ducks went off lay for a couple of weeks, but when they started to lay again, I left the eggs in the nesting box so that they would keep laying. Between the two of them, they built a nest that was a work of art and lined with copious quantities of duck down. In total they produced twenty five eggs before squeezing together in one nesting box to incubate them. After five weeks of sat gazing at the wall timbers and just taking a break at breakfast for a snack and a wash, this morning they emerged from the converted horse trailer with a carpet of twenty three ducklings! They are pretty little brown and yellow things that fingers crossed will be safe where they are.

 The other good news is that despite the fox’s best efforts, where the guinea fowl are concerned we have replaced this years losses with chicks hatched from a bath of eggs found in the nettles and the eggs they have produced since being penned in.

 Despite the forecasters best efforts in predicting rain, we haven’t so far had any that has been sufficient to be useful. As a result, the irrigation is now on twenty four hours a day on some days. With the system we have, it takes a day and a half to irrigate inside and about a week outside. Very reluctantly, Simon has had to prioritise what gets watered and how often. This has meant that the strawberries have stopped production until the next very heavy rain as too has the rhubarb. Things like perpetual spinach and chard have to fend for themselves too, as it is essential that all the new planting gets watered in and established. We are expecting a very heavy apple drop sometime soon as the trees decide how many apples they can cope with in this dry weather.

 This week’s recipe came about preparing lunch last Thursday. I like the first of the summer cabbages shredded finely as salad because they are so sweet and crisp. In the middle of preparations Jean our current student mentioned that his favourite way of eating cabbage salad was to add crab meat to it. I gave him a look not quite of disbelief, and said if he wished to there was a can of white crab meat in the larder. He took over the preparation of salad for lunch and it was delicious.

Jean Baptise cabbage and crab salad: Finely shred a third of a round white summer cabbage into a big salad bowl. Add finely sliced fennel and grated khol rabi if you like and combine with the contents of a large can of white crab meat. Slosh in a generous amount of French dressing made of olive oil, white wine vinegar and a good helping of Dijon mustard and combine well together. It makes a lovely salad.

The following lunch, we did the same again using a can of smoked herring which worked very well too. The combination of brassica and fish with all its omega 3 oils must rank this as a supper food salad!