Obsessed by the Weather!

Us Brits are often said to be obsessed by the weather and living on a smallholding on Bodmin Moor I can understand why! The weather is so variable here, warm and sunny in the morning and foul and wet by the afternoon the next day clagged in until lunchtime and then wonderful sunsets in the evening. Since my last posting the weather has tended towards the wet with just a few fine days.


This has impacted on our outdoor crops rather badly - tomatoes, squash and strawberries have rotted before ripening. Our greenhouse and poly-tunnel crops are also suffering from the continuous damp and lack of sunshine but the peppers in the conservatory are beginning to ripen. Cucumbers continue to do well and I have made several jars of 'bread and butter pickle' which is has used up most this surplus plus a few pounds of onions - all we have to do now is wait for about six weeks for it to mature and then hopefully it will go well with a large chunk of bread and cheese. The local supermarket had a glut of beautiful peaches which they reduced to less than half price and these have been preserved in a sweet, spicy vinegar and should be delicious with cold meat especially ham by Christmas.


We have four chickens and they have been very productive and produce an egg a day each. The eggs are great with very yellow yolks and whites that stay together when poached rather than spreading into each other as soon as they are broken into the pan! As they are still relatively new to laying we get quite a few double yolkers and the occasional soft shelled egg - these are usually given to our yellow Labrador, Saffy who never hesitates to eat them. I have been experimenting with different flavoured vinegars to pickle the eggs in and will let you know the results in a few weeks.


I have always enjoyed cooking and have spent many happy wet evenings finding old recipes for preserving food. I had hoped for a good glut of home grown produce by now but this has not happened so far - but I am prepared for when Steve brings in vast quantities of fruit and veg!

Getting Started

I have a day off work, the weather is not great and my better half, Steve, suggested I started a blog. Not entirely sure what a blog was, I agreed and now find myself sitting at the laptop typing away my random thoughts.

I live on a smallholding on Bodmin Moor and its a place that since I moved here in January I want to be. I enjoy my job but don't want to leave here in the morning and look forward to returning to when the days work is done. Unusually for me I haven't wanted to go away on holiday this summer I have just enjoyed being here and pottering around, picking some of the fruit and veg we planted in the spring, that the local wild-life have rejected!

The spuds have generally done ok but some varieties have done better than others, the broad beans got off to a flying start but most of the earliest ones had their flowers destroyed by rain and rotted but we have had a reasonable crop from the second planting. Steve's lovingly planted seeds of carrots, parsnips, celeriac, fennel, peas, onions, radish, lettuce and beetroot have been eaten as soon as they got above ground. Cucumbers, courgettes, peppers, grapes and tomatoes in the greenhouse are doing well, but the aubergines are rubbish with just two fruits on about ten plants. My gooseberries bushes have been attacked by caterpillars, raspberries have been slow to fruit(but are an autumn variety so I'm hopeful), the strawberries have grown loads of leaves but little fruit, cranberries nothing, blueberries nothing. So disheartening after all the hard work but this was always going to be the year we learned about our land, soil and pests! Next year we will be ready for them and we are determined to win the battle!