Tag: organic

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Salad days

Another significant milestone. Our first salad from the croft!

For you rampant food producers out there with your polytunnels, greenhouses and fertile growing beds this is going to seem a bit of a damp squib, but we’ve just cropped our first bowl of salad from the croft and I’m doing my happy dance!

Salad leaves

It’s a mix of endive, red lettuce, red veined sorrel, Uncle Bert’s kale, mint and beetroot leaves. All grown organically outdoors from seed here on the croft.

Other things are growing too in these long, light filled days of summer. I can see a few purple heads of sprouting broccoli emerging, and the potatoes will be ready in the next few weeks.

Parsley grown from seed

The leeks have been a big fail – they’re still tiny and very slow growing. Kales, cabbage, garlic, beetroot, potatoes, herbs, and salad leaves have all grown well. The carrots and parsnips are small yet but time will tell. The globe artichokes are tiny plants, a few leaves apiece, but they seem to be surviving. I’m hoping that they’ll muscle-up and come into their own next year. The berry bushes are establishing. The borage and comfrey are flowering.

Wonderful comfrey

I’m just relieved that it hasn’t all been some monstrous failure. We’ve had one meal from the croft at least!

The key learning so far is exposure. We knew it, but just didn’t have the time to do it. We need to get windbreaks up and hedging in this autumn before the main growing season next year.

Small milestones on our journey. Forgive a woman’s unseemly crowing.

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Going back to proper meat

Since lockdown began and we started experiencing problems with supermarket deliveries, I began to source alternative places to buy meat online.

It’s proved to be a revelation and I’m not going back. It may be more expensive, but I’ll balance that by buying cheaper cuts of meat and buying less often.

I found an award winning organic pork producer in Lincolnshire who makes the most delicious sausages I’ve ever eaten. Plain pork, pork and apple, smoked pork, pork and leek – they’ve all been so good that I now get a regular fortnightly order delivered. We freeze them and use them crisped to perfection in butties or baked in lentil casseroles.

An old fashioned butcher who sells the cheaper cuts of meat as well as high end ones, and who delivers? I’ve found one in South East London. We’ve been enjoying beef short ribs and steaks from old cows that have huge depth of flavour, and also oxtail, brisket, flank, skirt, and onglet yet to try.

Cuts that I remember my mother cooking many years ago, but which I’ve rarely if ever seen in supermarket fridges recently.

These cuts take longer to cook, often simmered or roasted slowly for hours in order to release their flavour and render down into tenderness, but as time isn’t an issue at the moment, I’m glad to rediscover these skills, and the results are delicious.

I think that small businesses need all the help that they can get at the moment, and I want to support companies that produce organic, great quality produce.

I am one of the many millions in the U.K. that stopped using these businesses regularly some years ago when time was at a premium, and when long business hours meant that convenience was the most important thing to us. It was too easy to click and add all that I needed for the week in a one-stop shop.

No more. I don’t want to be in a position where we no longer have the choice, which is where we were headed.

If nothing else, this awful virus has shown me that we need to live more slowly and mindfully, and that there is a better way. With better quality, better tasting food and people that care how it’s produced.