A lot happened off-farm this week, to say the least, but there were plenty of tasks to keep us occupied. At the moment we’re juggling the need to plant what we will eat during winter, to keep expanding the garden ahead of the next season and to preserve what we’re harvesting. In a mini-landmark we finished our first row of garden beds this week. Admittedly it’s the row with four less beds because the tunnel takes up space. But it looks satisfyingly complete and we’re up to 28 garden beds outside the tunnel, or 210m2. Most of the now-complete row will have green manure during autumn and winter to help kill the grass below and prepare the soil for spring plantings. An extra bed along the fence is earmarked for our 34 asparagus seedlings since they will (hopefully) live for years. Team discussions about what will accompany them are progressing. 

• 

• 

Another shot at thinning the apple tree (something that should really have happened earlier) led to 9.5kg of apples covering our kitchen bench and some culinary challenges. We now have two competing versions of stewed apples (i.e. Alex’s and Christie’s), and three litres of apple cider vinegar (currently slightly bubbly water with apple scraps and sugar but it’s on the way).  There’s still much to learn, including how to prevent the fruit from floating and how to make the process somewhat efficient. Fortunately there are still plenty of apples on the tree as well as our kitchen bench. We’ve also started making kimchi with the chinese cabbage, which we’ve both been looking forward to. Even after narrowing the universe of kimchi recipes to vegetarian ones, there’s a confusingly wide range with very different ingredients! We started with the shortest list but with more cabbage still growing we will have a second and third chance to get it right.

• 

• 

An especially happy discovery this week was an earthworm in the garden bed, which was a simple but reassuring sign that things are working as expected. It seems that I may finally be able to reliably make decent sourdough bread, with two consecutive good loaves this week. Other developments include (very preliminary) signs that we might have corn. And tomatoes are still growing, though not yet yellowing. We added green beans, raab broccoli (aka rapini) and pattypan squash to the list of dinner ingredients from our garden. Blackberries foraged from the roadside were a delicious dessert. Next week we’ll still be juggling the present and future, checking that we have the seeds we need, doing our first “bed flips” to make space for seedlings and preserving more of our current harvest.

• 

• 

•