Tag: food supplies

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Rain and Junior Gardeners

We have had an incredibly wet couple of months recently, and as I look ahead at the weather forecast for the next week, I see no respite. It really doesn’t feel like summer.

No sun, just back-to-back clouds and rain for the week to come. I’m clutching my mug of coffee and peering out through the rain-smeared caravan windows as I write.

Baby cucumbers at last

Luckily the polycrub remains largely unaffected by the rain. Everything seems to be growing nicely in there, although the lack of warmth and sunshine means that my tomatoes and courgettes are being very slow to set fruit. There are lots of flowers, but only a few tiny fruits so far, despite feeding and shaking to help pollination. More patience is needed as well as more sunshine!

Baby tomatoes

We have youngest stepson staying with us at the moment. I say youngest, he’s 21 😊. Despite being a child of the city, a very definite metro-being, he’s been quite taken by the rituals of watering, pruning, planting and harvesting in the polycrub and has been helping me with this.

Which is a really good thing as it’s a busy time of the year in there and I’m still pretty limited in what I can do since the operation, with no lifting or standing for too long.

Lettuce

He pricked out baby beetroot into pots yesterday and I showed him how to take excess foliage off the tomato plants to redirect energy into the setting fruits. He’s also been building plant stakes to support the trailing plants.

Sitting in there with his music on enjoying the now rather jungle-like environment of climbing greenery, it’s been nice to see him without his nose in his phone or laptop for a bit enjoying the outdoors. Well indoors really, I guess. A polycrub is a sort of halfway house, isn’t it…😊

Who knows, maybe we have another generation of growers in the making…

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Caravan food

The caravan has a tiny kitchen, with three working gas burners and a very small electric oven. It’s lack of storage space has meant that we have no room for electrical appliances like mixers or blenders, making everything a manual process when it comes to food preparation . So, meals have to be simple.

But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be good. We’re working hard on the house and croft, and we need sustenance. An army marches on its stomach!

I’ve looked back at some of the meals that we’ve produced in the caravan with our one baking tin and I’m pleased to see that we’ve actually managed OK.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that we seem to be heavy on the sweet treats! No apologies for that. It’s true to say that this build is being fuelled by cake…

Bakewell tart
Sourdough from the Mallaig bakery with homemade houmous
Strawberry slab cake
Lunch butties with crispy chicken
Turkish bean salad
Chocolate cake
Teatime flapjacks
Cheese and chive scones
Local rope grown mussels
Lentil, garlic & veg soup
Pear pancakes with Greek Yoghurt & Honey
Soy marinated sesame salmon
Cranachan
Lentil dhal
Baklava
Thai salmon ready for baking
Local langoustines
Breakfast of champions
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Perennial Vegetables

I love the idea of vegetables that are sown or planted once and keep growing. For years.

There’s a lot of effort involved in sowing vegetable seed annually, so it makes sense to have perennial vegetables as the backbone of a permaculture garden.

They may not bring instant rewards, but you know what, this croft garden is for the long term and so a few years for these plants to establish before they give back isn’t a great deal to ask.

Perennial vegetables are for the most part ancient heritage varieties. They include such vegetables as asparagus, artichokes, walking onions, leeks, kale and broccoli. Some of these varieties, such as the Sutherland kale that I’m growing from seed, nearly died out and are really quite rare.

I’ve received my very first perennial vegetable in the post from Quercus Edibles, a small grower in Devon. It’s a Babbington Leek. As soon as the hail storms abate, this little clump of hardy loveliness is going into the ground.

The first of what I hope will be many perennial plants on the croft.

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Once around the slow cooker

Two chicken breasts, a pepper, and a non-working oven? No problem as long as you have store cupboard staples and a slow cooker.

Spicy chicken with tomato and peppers cooked in the slow cooker for four hours with basmati rice to the rescue for dinner.

Husband brought in the box with my kitchen spices today for unpacking.

As I unpacked I added in a generous scoop of dried chilli flakes, a tin of chopped tomatoes, smoked paprika, onion, far too much garlic to be sociable, smoked salt flakes and a little sugar.

Luckily he didn’t bring in the canned goods box or I might have been tempted to chuck in some tinned pineapple. Maybe that would have been a step too far.. 😏 A tin of borlotti or butter beans would however have been a worthy addition.

The slow cooker did the rest.

Served with a spoonful of Greek yoghurt as a balm to the heat, it was one of those ‘once around the cupboard’ dinners that went down well after a long day.

I can’t wait to source some local venison to make a venison stew soon. I’m sure that there is a bottle of port in the boxes somewhere found at the back of one of the London kitchen cupboards before we moved. I’m thinking beef bourgignon but with venison. And mashed potatoes.

We are eating out of bowls most of the time now, like four year olds. It’s just easier.

Just don’t ask me for chicken dippers.

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London Lockdown

The streets and squares are empty here in London. It’s quite surreal for a city that was packed with people only a week ago. I know that they’re in the houses and flats somewhere, living their lives behind the windows, but it feels deserted.

London is now officially in lockdown. Bars, restaurants, cafes, gyms and businesses closed. Very limited public transport. No cars on the road.

Buying food is now a problem. We have some stores of dried and frozen food, but have no idea how or when we will be able to buy more. Online food services are overloaded and either suspended or not taking on new customers due to demand. The local Tesco supermarket has been stripped back to the bare shelves through panic buying.

I have bread flour, and when my current loaf runs out I will bake bread at home. Sourdough, flatbreads, rolls, scones. As long as I can source flour we won’t starve. I know how to make meals from scratch and cook with the dried pulses and grains that we always have on hand, but I do wonder how many of the generation who don’t cook this way are going to cope.

Perhaps this will be a reset for humanity. Maybe this will act as a very real warning that we have lived disposably, wastefully and with excess for too long. I believe that we will get through this, but I also think that what we will be left with when we do will be a very different world.

On the Skye build front- it looks as if work should start in the next few weeks at last, subject to contracts next week. If we still have builders who are able and allowed to work, that is. I can’t think in chunks of more than a week at a time at the moment so where we go from here is very uncertain.

Both Hugh and I wish that we were a year further along and had the resources of the croft behind us for isolation, but there’s no merit in that thinking. We are here and we need to make the best of our current reality. All this has done is to re-strengthen my resolve to be more independent – to grow vegetables, keep a well stocked pantry of essentials, and build the life skills to get through such times as these as easily as possible.