The Cottage Smallholder

When my mum gave me her dog-walking jacket I realised that Great Aunt Daisy Beatyl was here to stay. Retiring to the country had always been on the cards but making the final decision had taken some time. The moment was bittersweet. No one wants to give up their dog and we knew that my mum would miss the companionship and her soothing nocturnal snores. But Danny and I were so pleased to have Beatyl permanently living with us. She adds a sound dimension to our yapping pack and we love her.

Great Aunt Daisy Beatyl is my mum’s miniature dachshund. She’s on the largest end of miniature. And has very big eyes. These are soft edged, now that she is older. She was called Beatle until we ran out of magnetic letters on the fridge. And Danny’s version ‘Beatyl’ stuck.

She had been boarding on and off with us for the past two years and was reasonably happy on her sojourns. But she obviously adored the individual attention that she got from my mum each time she returned to Cambridge.

Beatyl is now one of four in our house. The senior dog. Less attention than she was accustomed to but a handy cat flap when she needs to take a turn in the garden after lights out. And she enjoys a different sort of status in doggy terms. The One Who Is Fed First.

She’s bought a calm to the cottage. This sunny afternoon I was so pleased to see her stepping into the garden sunshine to lie on the grass and warm her old bones.

She was never keen on walks in her Cambridge days. Always dragging her paws until they turned for home. Then suddenly this dear old dog that could hardly totter down the pavement was pulling my mum back home with astonishing speed. Now she can laze.

Like us she has discovered that life with three Min Pins is light years away from the gentle companionship of any other being – even dachshunds. She sleeps through a lot of our household soap operas but sometimes I discover her watching the dramas with interest. She is patient and it’s only when a Min Pin waves an aggressive paw in her direction that she finally snaps.

Her gentle eyes quickly become huge and clear when the prospect of food is in the offing. She suddenly starts twirling, yelping, hopping and braying. Danny calls this her tea dance. The Min Pins grow goggle eyed and silent. Sometimes they bay along, in a teeny wolfish pack response.

Her food has to be soaked because she is taking care of her teeth. But all dental advice is forgotten when the biscuit is steaming and softening in her bowl. The yelps quickly change to sonorous howls of impatience.

Once I made the mistake of taking a quick shower when the softening process was taking place. The grooves on the bathroom door will have future archaeologists scratching their heads.

I realised that if I bought leaf tea rather than tea bags I could save a bit of cash and also use the sweet little tea spoon that I inherited from my grandmother. It meant a week of drinking some rather elderly mango infused tea to finish the caddy. I stuck it for a couple of days and put the rest in the compost bin – it is supposed to be a fertiliser after all.

We discovered that the loose tea leaves were packed with far more flavour than the same type and brand of teabags. But dealing with the tea leaves was going to be a bit of a palaver.

Remembering that my mum used to put the tea leaves on the soil under the rose bushes, I have been feeding the rose that grows outside the back door with the leftover tea and leaves. The clematis that grows through it, a weedy specimen that has drifted waif like through at least ten summers, has perked up considerably. And was clearly longing for tea rather than good plain water. Admittedly it’s in a rather dry spot.
“I’m sure that it would thrive on whisky. It’s the moisture not the tea.” Danny was examining the miniature forest of new stalks and leaves.
“The rose is looking much happier too.”

The rose, has always been stick like. A Kate Moss amongst roses. With most of the growth at the top of slim stems. Now new buds are forming lower down. Fired with enthusiasm, I cut out all dead growth at lunchtime and watered it well.

I looked up the benefits of using tea as a fillip for the garden and discovered that it’s a natural fertiliser for roses and a host of other plants including parsley. In fact most plants would benefit from a top dressing of tea leaves even the ones emptied from old teabags.

I sampled our two and three year old rhubarb wine on Monday. And the 2006 greengage wine. All pretty good and as Danny said,
“They taste just like wine.”
But I reckoned that they need more time. As Daphne Moore writes in Discovering Country Winemaking, a wine that is unpalatable can often improve with keeping. Now I can see where she is coming from.

I started winemaking with enormous enthusiasm and hope. I like wine. Always fancy a glass or two with supper. If we could make our own gluggable wine it would be brilliant. So I invested in the wine making kit that had belonged to a German P.O.W. who’d married an English girl and stayed in the UK after WW2. It was the dream Ebay purchase. The kit consists of everything that an optimistic would be wine maker could possibly need, with the exception of the chemicals and the fruit. There are still a few bits and pieces that I am not sure what jobs they might fulfil.

Included in the equipment were two good winemaking books First Steps in Winemaking by C J J Berry and Complete Home Winemaking by Gillian Pearks. Both are reviewed here . The latter is only occasionally available on the internet, although I’ve just spotted a few copies on Amazon. If you are interested in making country wine buy a copy immediately - it is my winemaking bible. Gillian Pearks won awards for her wine. She is well worth checking out and this is the book that I always turn to first. Since then I found a copy of Daphne Moore’s slim volume at the church fete. Highly recommended too (and incidentally on offer at only £1.50 - second hand - on Amazon at the moment). It’s a booklet but has given me lots of tips and inspiration.

So I made wine. Loads of it. Plum, wild plum, greengage, blackberry, rhubarb, rosehip, pea pod, mixed autumn berries, damson, dandelion. I even tried making wine with the grapes from our vine.

The demijohns bubbled away and after a year we tasted each one.

The results were so disappointing that I just made a couple of batches a year to keep my hand in. What a mistake!

This week we have discovered that country wine takes far longer to mature than the books suggest. You are looking at two or three years of maturing before you wave goodbye to Oddbins.

Monday’s sips were a revelation. So over the last couple of days we’ve been tasting a few more demijohns. This has to be done in stages, as even if the wine isn’t ready it’s still very strong. Wine tasting ideally needs to be tackled after dusk when Jalopy has settled for the night, wheels dug firmly into the gravel drive.

Although I was working just across the road today, I wondered if wafts of homemade wine were drifting across the room when I chatted to my client this afternoon. I had literally sampled just 4 thimblefuls and felt a lot chirpier than an hour before when I ran across the road for lunch. Yet again rain had stopped play.

A 2007 rosehip wine smelt like heaven but descaled our teeth. The 2005 greengage wine was exceptionally good but the 2006 and 2007 reminiscent of cheap Muscadet. A 2006 plum wine surprised us, it would be light and gluggable on a warm summer’s evening. Then we turned to the 2005 pea pod wine. Danny was gallant and took the first quaff.
“It tastes of peas, but sweet and all a homemade wine should be.”

The 2005 blackberry wine was very good. We have tasted the demijohn each year and it has been vile but left to mature it’s now better than our regular table wine. Not too sweet or too sharp. Joanne Harris’ novel Blackberry Wine inspired the idea of home made wine for me. So it’s just as it should be.

Thank goodness I have let the blackberries ramble this year.

When I was a child my mother would sometimes wake us and say,
“We are going on holiday today. Your clothes are on the chair and the cases are packed.”

It was wonderful. My mum knitting opposite us on the train. The first view of the sea. The dunes and ice creams. The beach hut and the ridgy sandy flats that led to the massive sea. Hunstanton was awash with shrimps, soft beds and sand between my toes.

Yesterday I woke at seven. The house was strangely silent  - I’d forgotten that Danny was away for the day. I snoozed and, although the dogs were keen for breakfast, they finally settled. The duvet is very large and irresistible. Then I dwelt on all the things that I’ve been planning to do in the garden. I’ve been working a lot at weekends recently and the garden has suffered a bit. As The Contessa and Inca bickered I reached for the telephone and booked myself out of work for the day.

Having put some duck breasts and bacon up the chimney over a smoking apple wood fire, I spent the morning beavering away in in the garden in just my nightshirt and Wellington boots. Had breakfast at midday (toast) and lunch at four (toast). In fact I had my favourite meal – deluxe cheese on toast - in the evening. Danny returned late and exhausted and turned down the chef’s choice of homemade chicken and mushroom pie. All he wanted to do was flop and curl up in bed.

It was a perfect day. 12 hours in the garden with no diversions. It’s probably a year since I’ve enjoyed this solace. This sort of gardening and fixing often needs you to be alone to focus on the jobs on hand. If you are in the mood they are a pleasure.

The Min Pins joined me in the garden, tagging along all day. Fast asleep after supper they had enjoyed a super active day too.

Now there are no seed trays of wilting, slim, pleading plants in the greenhouse. They are tucked into their beds, still waif like but they will perk up. The bee shed finally has guttering and down pipe that feeds a water butt in the centre of the garden. This has been a mini desert for plants for several years as the butts were all located at the top and bottom of our patch. The butternut squash plant is happily settled in a large tub at the front of the cottage. A sunny spot where it can ramble down the drive. If it really gets going it will challenge our parking but I’m sure that it can be corralled at the edge of the drive. Some hope as it’s still only six inches high.

I spent some time fiddling with the guttering that feeds a massive water butt at the end of the chicken run. Some of it had eased apart and it’s now watertight.

I was involved in short, sharp sniper fire with Thunder, on and off all morning, trying to keep him from harassing the ducklings. The water pistol worked perfectly. Initially he was bemused by the water and stared up at the sky. By the end of the day he knew that it was me and the ducklings were no longer constantly in his sights.

I discovered that our massive redcurrant bushes are in fact blackcurrant bushes. Ah, the joys of a fruit cage! I do have three smaller redcurrant bushes, so all is well. I had been thinking that it would be good to grow blackcurrants, having read about the Swedish liqueur. Suddenly, overnight I have an organic blackcurrant harvest. Beginners luck? I finally had the time to ogle the fruit in both the cages and picked some raspberries for jam. Not much jam as I devoured most of them in transit.

Racking last year’s greengage wine I discovered that it was very gluggable. Fired up by this I examined the ten demi johns in the barn and discovered that the rhubarb wine was ready. Drinkable but probably best left for a while. In amongst the plump containers I spotted a thin red necked bottle. Could it be raspberry gin? I made a lunge and discovered that I was holding a bottle of the best homemade liqueur that we make. Somehow this treasure had been passed over.

I ended the day happily digging in the kitchen garden. The excited shrieks of swallows made me glance at the sky. Blue, edged with pink and filled with darting birds.

A great day. Almost as good as those Hunstanton holidays.

Fillet of pork is so tender and succulent but sometimes it can lack flavour. Danny bought two packs of medallions from the condemned food counter at Tesco and fried them in a little black butter. He sat down to savour this delicacy with a small proud wobble of his head. Within seconds there was a roar.
“They taste just like blotting paper!”

When I found myself with a pork fillet to cook, I remembered the shrieks and made a marinade. I used loads of fresh herbs for this. We had a great tip from some friends who used to run a restaurant (so successful they could retire at 50!) Put your meat in a plastic bag with the marinade and fold it tightly around the meat and put in the fridge. The meat is infusing the marinade it all day. There’s no need to turn the meat. And the results are spectacular.

Our fillet of pork sat in a lemon, coriander and chervil marinade for 8 hours and was transformed. Thinking about it now, I reckon that buying fillet of pork sliced into medallions was probably a mistake. They look pretty but must have dried out considerably by the time that they finally reached the condemned food counter. Our whole fillet was marinated as a mini joint and then sliced just before frying. This wasn’t proper frying - I used the griddle pan as I thought that the nifty stripes would look good. The flavour was on the edges of the meat. Just enough to enhance the centre of each medallion.

There were purrs from the opposite side of the table.

This is a quick and easy recipe and classy enough for an intimate supper â deux.

Fillet of pork medallions on a herby bed of courgette and baby broad bean couscous recipe

Ingredients:

The marinade:

• Good handful of fresh coriander and chervil chopped fine
• 1 heaped tsp of ground coriander
• 1 tblsp of olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1 fat clove of garlic chopped fine

Main recipe ingredients:

• I fillet of pork
• 250g of dried couscous
• 400ml of chicken/pork stock (I used a cube)
• Good handful of fresh coriander, chervil and mint chopped fine
• Knob of butter for the couscous
• 1 courgette chopped
• Large handful of podded broad beans
• Olive oil for frying (dessert spoonful)

Method:

1. Prepare your vegetables and steam them for just four minutes. They need to be crisp as they will continue to cook in the couscous.
2. Put the couscous in a bowl and pour over the boiling stock. Stir in the herbs. Cover and leave to infuse for about five minutes.
3. Meanwhile heat the olive oil in a frying pan and slice your medallions (3mm thick) when the oil is just starting to smoke toss in the medallions and marinade. Sear each side for a few seconds and then turn the heat down(moderate) and cook for about 2 minutes each side. When they are no longer pink inside , the are ready.
4. Meanwhile, taste the couscous and add a knob of butter and salt and pepper. Fluff up with a fork and stir in the vegetables.
5. Serve the pork on top of the couscous, on warm plates with some good dry white.

When I was selling toys in Covent Garden the best week of every month was the week after monthly payday.

I realised that the week that Danny puts his sizeable contribution into the housekeeping account our spending rockets. So this month I pretended that every week was the week before pay day and entered a new realm of saving. My horizons were bolted so low that at times I couldn’t even see a horizon.

And it worked.

Savings were around 50% most weeks and, once, much lower. Last year I struggled to shave a few pounds off the cost of our weekly shop. I was shopping for what we wanted rather than what we needed. I now believe that if you have a figure set in your mind, you will shop to around that point. The subliminal mind is much cannier than we think.

Prices are jumping up alarmingly. Every week there are a few extra pence on most of the things that we buy. This will rocket in the future once the high oil prices really kick in. If you have a full trolley this translates into pounds. So how can we possibly be saving money?

I’m not cosying up to the suppliers, yet. I’m trying to turn our shopping habit on its head. Dumping ‘the old budget’ and just trying to think on my feet. In fact, I have an imaginary poverty stricken friend shopping with me. This penny pinching pal is also living with us. Shaking her head at any waste. Applauding when I can run up a meal out of seemingly nothing. It’s a love hate relationship. And a very tight learning curve.

It’s hard to admit but people like Danny and me have been spoilt for far too many years.
“Let’s buy lots of different vegetables so we can choose what we fancy each evening. Vegetables are so cheap.”

Well, they’re not.

These days we buy whatever vegetables are on special offer. The chickens get the peelings. We might have to buy more vegetables mid week but nothing is put into the compost bin at the end of the week. The garden won’t suffer. It will have the wood ash from the fire that we’ve been ‘too busy’ to scrape out and carry down the garden. We’ve been very lazy too.

Danny and I can shave our budget with a bit of improvisation and creativity. And it’s fun, as every tiny saving racks up with a dazzling pring. We are eating much less meat and, when we do buy it, making it stretch far further than before. Home curing bacon, making our own yoghurt and bread. Switching to tea leaves. And now enjoying quite a few vegetables from the garden. Eating vegetarian meals every other day has had a huge impact on lowering costs.

We have turned down the immersion heater a few more degrees and are now looking at the lighting in the cottage. Why sit in a kitchen with seven halogen lights blazing when a table lamp with a low energy bulb does the job perfectly. Jalopy rarely chugs into town these days. I didn’t even notice when Newmarket ran out of petrol during the fuel drivers’ strike.

The rise in energy prices is frightening. What about the millions of people living on the breadline in the UK? The majority have poorly paid jobs and have been struggling to make ends meet. They have been budgeting for years. They’ve no soft edges to trim. How are they going to survive now?

Sometimes it’s easy to be distracted by borders that have taken years to mature and miss the dazzling surprise of unplanned flowers.

Particularly those wild flowers that have quietly self seeded. Suddenly they are standing before you, like clear eyed children that have stepped out of the shadows to surprise you.

I found this opium poppy in the broad bean border this morning. I hadn’t even noticed that it was growing there. There was something about its fresh transient beauty that made my heart turn over.

“The ducklings are enormous; I think we ought to let them out into the big run.” Danny was watching them playing with the water fountain in the grounds of the Emerald Castle.

At only five weeks old they tower over Mrs Boss. It’s getting cramped in the castle. So when I was dusting and sluicing down the dormitory, I opened the castle gates wide. Freddie, Tipex and Eric stood looking out at their next step to freedom. Like so many dreamers, they dithered and remained exactly where they were.

They shot inside the castle when I started raking the gravel in the grounds. Mrs Boss was already there, examining the plump new mattress of wood shavings.

I opened the gates again a little later and an heroic Eric Boss stepped nervously over the threshold, swiftly followed by his brother Freddie – legs rather wide apart with the scariness of the adventure. He hid behind the hen house and observed our flock who were intent on hoovering up the lawn clippings that John Coe had tossed into the run.

Then he joined his brother at the Big Bird water fountain and drank and splashed a bit. Eric nuzzled Freddie. Two ducklings, happy in the sun, enjoying the fizz of freedom.

They must have observed Thunder (our male guinea fowl) from the protected comfort of the castle grounds. When he spotted them and strutted over they rushed away with shrieks. Thunder changed up a gear and accelerated just enough to peck Freddie who nipped into the castle grounds with a loud sonorous cry. Eric joined him and I clanged the gates shut.

The next day I tried again. When I threw open the castle gates Mrs Boss immediately led her posse into the run. She  paused briefly on the threshold.

Perhaps it was the flash of the cameras but it was just long enough for Thunder to twig that there were intruders in his run. He challenged Mrs Boss immediately. Although she put up a brave defence, Thunder eventaually won and she scuttled away with her brood.

After a while they all settled into an uneasy truce with the ducks sitting happily on the warm, dry ground. Thunder, the zealous policeman, moved on the ‘castle vagrants’ every now and then.

Meanwhile Mrs Boss attended to her coiffure. Took dust baths and chatted to the rest of the flock.

When I returned from work to a drizzly dusk, the ducklings were sitting outside in the run. I found Mrs Boss perched with Mrs Squeaky Clean in the hen house upstairs dormitory.

She was shifted into the castle grounds with a speed that has only been experienced by the rockets launched from Cape Canaveral. She landed softly and was greeted vociferously by her brood. With a bit of encouragement she led them through the castle gates but Freddie missed a vital turn and ended up the other side of the wire. After pursuing him for several circuits of the castle, I realised that he just couldn’t see the gates so I grabbed him. The shrieks would have woken any baby duckling within a fifty mile radius. Even Mrs Boss popped out her head from the castle to see what was going on.

When I placed him gently on the castle’s gravel drive he whizzed through the portcullis and, judging from the quacking and cheeps, he was warmly welcomed by his siblings.

Although the ducklings and Mrs Boss were safe inside, Thunder strutted forward and stood beside the castle walls. These are constructed of wood and thick, small gauge metal. He ran his beak several times across the netting. A menacing, scary sound. Cage Rattling à la guinea fowl.

Tomorrow, I will open the castle door again armed with a water pistol.

This is a great way of stopping bullying in its tracks. It is a palm held pistol, but a kind one. The best prize from a Christmas cracker that I have ever won. It has worked well with Inca and stops her jumping on the older Min Pins and Great Aunt Daisy Beatyl. Now I just have to raise an unarmed hand and Inca races away

Perhaps it will work with Thunder.

Danny reached for the ladle.
“How can you run up a soup like this in just ten minutes? I can’t believe that it’s low fat. It’s delicious.”
He didn’t mention the soup disaster that had been poured into the dogs the day before.

Unbeknown to Danny I had researched soup based simply on a good stock, a  few herbs and spices, a handful of fresh vegetables and some noodles. 

Many Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai and Indian soups use this principle of combining a stock that has simmered for hours with fresh vegetables, herbs and spices that are barely cooked. When it works, the combination is wonderful. Loads of zing and deep flavours. And low fat.
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Initially I made a ten minute soup and we ate it again on the second day. But the difference in taste and texture was not worth the saving on time. So now I make a fresh soup each day.

It’s a good challenge as it’s a great opportunity to play with flavours. And the ten minute rule makes you think on your feet. No time to linger and fiddle. It’s the sort of close cut and thrust that makes cooking exciting. Over the past two weeks there have been disasters and triumphs.

The secret is a really good stock. It’s worth taking some time over this. Hank has some great ideas here – my stock has improved since I read his post. I especially like his tip for adding a parsnip for sweetness. Joanna’s idea of keeping the skins on onions is superb – it gives colour and added flavour to the stock. So with help from these two ecellent foodie bloggers and my new slow cooker friend (Crock Pot) my stock has transformed from the sceptre at the feast that often needed a handful of stock cubes to improve it to the sort of guest that you would welcome with open arms even if they arrived unexpectedly at breakfast.

Check the dates on your spices too. Everything needs to be really fresh.

The asparagus soup was just right although the soup didn’t break the Olympic barrier on the ten minute challenge. It swished into our bowls well into penalty time but it was so delicious that we forgave the extra wait. 

N.B. If you want the gisteny quality of a Chinese soup add a heaped tblsp of cornflour to a little hot waterand stir into the stock when you add the vegetables. 

Quick Asparagus and coriander soup recipe (for 4)

Ingredients:

• 2 bunches of asparagus
• 2 large continental spring onions
• 1 fat garlic clove chopped very fine (or 1 tsp of garlic granules at a pinch)
• 1 litre of rich chicken stock (or boiling water and 2 chicken stock cubes plus one vegetable stock cube. In the UK Gallo are good)
• 3-4 tsp of ground coriander
• Half a tsp of ground ginger
• Pinch of salt
• Half a tsp of ground white pepper
• 2 tsp of lemon grass (I used Bart lemon grass in sunflower oil)
• Sprigs of fresh coriander and/or chervil to garnish

Method:

1. Bring your stock to simmering point whilst you chop your garlic.
2. Wash and snap off the fresh ends of your asparagus, reserving the woody ends for stock. Cut off the tips and slice the rest of the stems (half a centimetre rounds).
3. Add the asparagus stems, garlic all the spices and herbs (excluding garnish) to the stock. Simmer for three minutes.
4. Stir and taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
5. Add the tips and simmer for a further two to three minutes until they are cooked but still have a bite.
6. Serve in warm bowls with a garnish of fresh coriander and chervil.

An immense pot stands beside the back door step. The pot holds roughly 100 litres of earth. It has stood there for about three years now and this evening Danny noticed the pot for the first time.
“Wow. That pot is enormous. How much did it cost?”
“I bought it years ago.”
“It’s stunning.” Visibly relieved that the pot had not made a massive dent in the housekeeping budget.

It’s a simple pot but the spot, north east facing, cried out for a hefty container that would give plants a decent chance to thrive without the help of afternoon sun and daily watering. The pot is just watered once a week. Perfect.

There also is something special about the pot. Somehow every plant that is put in it does well. D has never noticed the pot as he is always distracted by the contents.

The big pot is a miniature auditorium that delights us all year.

It’s also too tall for a peckish Min Pin to reach. We used to grow violas and pansies in low pots but Inca discovered that these were particularly tasty. It must have been disappointing to discover that they are not a cut and come again salad crop. After a month of munching, the plants just gave up. This winter we planted violas and species tulips in the big pot well out of reach of Inca’s jaws. And treasured the fact that she passed them every day oblivious of the decorative smorgasbord.

This evening the downstairs of the cottage is filled with the aroma of the scented geraniums that over wintered in our greenhouse and have been waiting patiently in a long queue of plants ‘to go in’. This afternoon I took pity on them and hoisted out the leggy violas that had done their job valiantly throughout the winter and spring.

The scented geraniums were joined by another friend, a pretty pelargonium that must be a real old lady by now. She is gnarled and twisted but enjoys her summer sojourn in the garden. I’ll take cuttings from them all in the autumn just in case they don’t survive their rest in the greenhouse this winter.

For now we are celebrating their survival. Immense plants with a history and  happily settled in the big pot for the rest of the summer. They sit beside a large and blousy ballerina fuchsia that I have nurtured since she was given to me as a twig in bud, many years ago.