Sunday 31 May 2009

Wind tunnel tidings










And finally today we had SUNSHINE!!!! But the allotment, being beside Strangford Lough, was still a wind tunnel. It could be thirty degrees everywhere else in the country and there it would still be arctic.

Apparently it is only windy when the tide is either coming in or going out. The rest of the time it is calm. Still, it was a lovely day and I was able to supervise the head gardener doing a lot of very good work! I had the excuse of scary woman things but my help in monitoring progress was invaluable I am sure. The octogenarian mother was also there to help.

So what did we find this week? Spinach and runner beans doing very well thank you very much. Parsnips could feed the five thousand and had to be thinned. The Head Gardener said we should give the borlotti beans up as a lost cause and replant them so we did. I did actually help with them this time. honest. We replanted them with Italian beans.

We brought tomatoes for planting out which given the wind tunnel conditions is very optimistic but there ya go.

We did a lot of bed raising! The Head Gardener had gone to B + Q and got lots of lovely rough planks which he measured up in his workshop (our garage, which also doubles as a graveyard for wine bottles etc) and cut. He very considerately did this part on his own for three reasons:

1. I hate going to B + Q - nothing against them, it just brings out the worst in me.
2. My sole joy in going was to laugh at the fact that they sold mole repellent. Well, they probably didnt actually sell very much since WE DON'T HAVE MOLES IN IRELAND. which is why I found it so amusing. Then again, maybe it had just worked! Anyway, the point is that they have stopped selling it.
3. This week for the first time in twenty years I am going to be playing the viola da gamba on my own in public and am being paid for it. This has scared me into practising every day and I knew I had to get it done yesterday and didn't want to leave it until after we had got back from the allotment. In case you are wondering (most people do) the viola da gamba is a very unusual instrument - its closest relative is the cello. Anyway I digress.

So I helped raise the bed. In fact I think my input was vital.

Our allotment-neighbours-behind were there so we were able to chat. They are allotment virgins, a bit like us, so we try and cheer each other up! They, like allotment-neighbour-beside have had their carrot crop destroyed by something, probably slugs. Allotment-neighbour-beside wasn't there which was a first! He usually is, dispensing wisdom and help! We only have one allotment-neighbour-beside that counts because the one on the other side is never there - we have seen him once in three months - and his allotment looks like the savannah grasslands. you would need a machete to get through it. There was at one point a shed there but apparently it was a DIY job from a well-known supermarket and when it got hit by the gale force winds in November the roof came off it and it hasnt been replaced. According to Maurice-the-farmer the roof was last seen three fields away. The remains of the four walls are still there but look permanently as if they are about to collapse. The only sign of anything growing apart from the grass is a very lonely looking raspberry cane.

Our allotment-neighbours-behind told us that one of the compost bins belonging to their neighbour was providing a brand new home for a large brown rat who obligingly put in an appearance. i would think that the derelict site beside ours is a haven for him and come to think of it, that is where is was running from. He nearly ran over my foot. Thankfully all I saw was a shadow otherwise I would still be running myself.

Various solutions to the situation, mostly involving Mr Ratty's demise, are being considered.

We only have two more beds to dig up! And then that is the whole lot done!

So, to sum up:

Time spent: about two hours
Cost of seeds etc: minimal and can't remember anyway
value of produce produced - nil as yet.
social activities - talking to allotment-neighbours-behind. There were a lot more people around - fair weather allotmenteers! There is one person who arrives in a roller (you get a better class of allotmenteers here, you know!) and I am very keen to see the plot where alledgedly (is that how you spell allegedly?) the owner put astroturf down on the paths......WHY???????).

wildlife - Mr Ratty, at close quarters, lots of starlings going after the tractors bringing in the silage, two larks ascending and housemartins or swifts (not sure which), lots of worms, cabbage butterfly. Just think - in the autumn we will have a prime location for watching the return of the brent geese! Whayhay!

Sunday 24 May 2009

hoe down

The octogenarian mother was down at the allotment today and hoed every weed in sight.

Ode to gin

This is a little ditty I wrote on Friday night.

Ode to Gin

I like gin, so I do so I do,
It makes me grin, so it does so it does,
And then it makes me sin, so it does so it does.

Saturday 23 May 2009

Parsnips Peas and the Llamas of Ariss






















Today was allotment day! As usual in Nrn Irn it was raining. Shock horror. We went down to our allotments and as you will be able to see there has been a lot of progres.. The parsnips could feed the five thousand. The runner beans are doing well. We have ONE PEA plant up. the slugs have battered the hell out of the courgettes so that bed was taken back to ground zero and replanted. We dug another bed. And planted salad veg. I had texted the octogenarian mother to let her know we were going there and she turned up just as we had finished everything!!!

Apparently her brother had rung. Her brother, my Uncle Tom, lives in Ariss just outside Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He has a large family. The Waltons are nothing on them. We went over for Christmas some time ago and there were 18 of us round the table. Children and animals have always been his thing. so he has hundreds of them. He used to keep turkeys, sheep, donkeys, goats adn chickens. That was in addition to the domestic animals. Now he just has llamas, a donkey and his domestic animals. his llamas are called "Solomon" and "Jenna". People actually travel to see them. Solomon could be featured on the llama equivalent of "Grumpy Old Men". If he doesnt like you, he spits on you. I would love to be able to do that! Wouldn't it be great if every time your boss (or anyone) annoyed you you could just spit at them! And a lot of people get spat on. People stop their cars to go and look at them. There are bus tours with old people who come specially to see the Llamas of Ariss! You can see them on google earth which is really impressive.

At one point there was an elderly couple who had driven out and had stopped the car. The man, who was was short and bald as the proverbial coote, spent a long time trying to take a rise out of Solomon. Auntie Bea and uncle tom were watching from a vantage point. Eventually Solomon got so pissed off he spat at him and Solomon's vast quantity of llama spit hit the top of yer man's bald head and covered it like a pancake. It then proceded to drip down on all sides. Uncle Tom and Auntie Bea were inconsolable with laughter....................Anyway now Solomon has a friend. There is a neighbour lady who has a collie dog that she walks past and Solomon and the collie are new best friends. They go past every morning and Solomon leans down and they nuzzle each other and the collie puts its paws round Solomon's neck! But the phone call meant that the octogenarian mother didnt arrive down until fairly late on. In fact we had finished.

Today we had a bit of extreme weather but dug and planted another plot! Only two more to go. And our spinach is looking as if it is going to be ready within the next couple of weeks.

Our allotments are right beside a local air field so we were also treated to an impromtu display by biplanes! Brill!!!


So there yare now.

And here is the summary:

Time spent: 2 hours
activity: replanting courgette bed, digging and planting another bed
cost of seeds: no idea it was ages ago
value of produce nil
wildlife viewed; 2 buzzards circling - lots of wee birds that were disturbed by them, a lark ascending
socialising; talked to neighbours on two sides complaining about slugs eating carrots and parsnips.

Sunday 17 May 2009

Normal service has been resumed.











It has been a while. Due to illness, other commitments etc I have not been able to update this for some time. The head gardener has been working away though and you will probably be ablet to see a real difference with the photos. We were all down there today! I was hung over to hell because we were "entertaining" last night. I was particularly entertaining especially with the quantities of wine I had consumed. I made my new best dish which is Ragu Napoletano, as previously mentioned, where you cook large chunks of dead pig for about a week. Or so it seems. Well I started it on Friday night and it did take a full 24 hours to cook. That was before getting the phone call from the Head Gardener who was celebrating a bit of a milestone in his day job. Celebrating took the form of vast quantities of Guinness in our favourite local pub with his colleagues. As the sum total of food he had consumed during the day was a piece of cheddar that would make even weightwatchers raise an eyebrow, he was very happy by the time he rang at 10 pm to ask if I would like to join them. I had been sampling the wine before cooking with it so was barely much better but at least I had eaten during the day. His (younger) colleagues were then going on to continue drinking in Belfast and trying to persuade him to go but we thought it wiser to give patronage to our local indian restaurant. By this stage it was almost 11 pm so, as you can imagine, they clapped and cheered when we came in!

As you can see we have dug quite a lot more beds and some of the plantings are really coming on! Roll on our first allotment food! Technically we have actually had it since I made nettle champ with nettles harvested from the plot but it was, as they say here, boggin. So I am not going to post the recipe since I wouldnt wish it on anybody. Uncle Hugh won't have to lose any sleep over me. Just yet.

There are noticeably more people there now - the fairweather farmers are there! Apparently we passed an allotment test - our Allotment Neighbour approved of the fact that we "got stuff in" rather than, as some of them have done, laying out fancy paths and "designing" it. One person last year even laid astroturf paths.. Why?

Today's japes included digging another bed, planting sweetcorn in it and doing more raised beds. The Head Gardener has been very busy improvising and building things. Our paths are made out of old roof tiles that the previous occupant of our house inexplicably left lying round the oil tank. Wood for the beds has been recycled whereever possible. Much swearing was done when the planks were being screwed together and even more was done when the octogenarian mother/assistant gardener was helping the Head Gardener put them in place. She thought they were putting them in a bed somewhere near Comber with the result that she headed off at speed and there was an almighty "Crack" because the Head Gardener, who was holding the other part, had stopped at the bed. However no damage was done and the beetroot bed was sucessfuly raised!

As you can see octogenarian mother was in fine form especially considering that she had pulled a muscle in her shoulder on Thursday after swimming her customary sixty lengths. She would put you to shame. One of my colleagues, who is incidentally a park ranger and therefore not the weakest of people, tries to avoid shaking hands with her when he meets her because he says she crushes his fingers! She has also been doing guerrilla gardening during the week - she came down to the plot and weeded.

So to sum up:

Tasks done: digging another bed and planting sweetcorn, 1 raised bed added, weeding done.

Cost of seeds nil

Value of produce -nil

socialising done - new neighbour slagged me off for "supervising".