Saffron

Saffron petals and stamen, zoom view.

My first saffron flower opened today!! 

Quince and seedballs

Harvested quinces waiting on the mushroom straw

Here's some quinces waiting to be taken up to the house after harvesting. They're lying on the straw I put down for the giant mushrooms to grow in. Anyone know some good quince recipes? I read that they keep well so all the unblemished ones can be boxed until I work out a good strategy to deal with them. Maybe I could make a tub full of quince paste... Maybe a bathtub full.

The picture underneath are the seedballs. I made them for the first time today to see if it would work with the clay at my place. And it did! The idea is that the seeds are 'planted' into the balls which means that the soil need not be tilled. Its a genius idea of Mananobu Fukuoka. He is the Mr Miyagi of permaculture.

The mix is 1 part seeds, 3 parts compost and 5 parts clay. Next time I'll add blended chilli to keep out the bugs. The compost is a bacterial innoculant which hopefully will aid to build the soil wherever the seedball lands.  I didn't need to add any water as the compost was already moist and the balls formed up easily in the cement mixer. Its an optional extra.

I chose barley as geese love gobbling barley. By the time it grows I may have got around to getting a flock of them! 

Seedballs drying in the sun after a tumultuous time in the cement mixer.

Barrow of spuds

I dug up these spuds yesterday, so I could keep them over winter. There are many different types of spuds in there.  I knew the forecast was for rain and wanted to get them out before they all got wet and muddy. I'll pack them in boxes between sheets of newspaper and keep them at the bottom of the pantry. There's more spuds in the garden still They'll have to wait until the next dry spell. And by the look of it today, its not coming for a while....

Honeydew melon

Sweet and delicious, look what grew in the hothouse! We cut it into segments and savoured every sweet juicy mouthful. I think there's one more of these in there, next year we will have to plant a whole lot more...

Muscovites

They arrived today in a grey and a red box. 4 ducks and a drake. He's the big one sitting there in the corner. He makes a great hissing sound, a bit like Smeagul. One of the ducks is brown and the others white. They all look like superheroes with their red masks. They've had their wings clipped as they all flew away from their previous owner (who eventually caught them again) except the drake who is too big to fly. Luckily I have a big enclosure for them in the cherry orchard and they can cruise around in there until they make it their home. I fed them a bunch of ripe plums and they were fully disinterested and went around, munching instead on the clover. 

Grover and Mrs perch in the apple tree for the night.

Introducing the new rooster Grover and his new Mrs! He's moved into the orchard with a Mrs. Its evening and they are perched in an apple tree. You can see Grover through the rooster shaped window in the apples. Mrs is harder to spot. We were walking all around the orchard enclosure looking for her and thought she'd left and gone to join Foghorn and his crew. Finally we saw her, sitting quietly next to Grover in the apple tree! You can see her there, rather better camouflaged than Grover.

I hope they are happy together. Grover certainly seems to have calmed down a lot and is less fussy than when he was in a little cage waiting for his enclosure to be finished. Mrs seems ok in there so far. There are so many plums for them to much on, and grubs in the apples and pears. Next year the fruit will be healthier if those chooks eat all the grubs...

The all new all recycled solar dehydrator!!!

It looks like a cross between a children's slide, a rocket launcher and an outside shower.  A big welcome to the solar dehydrator that we just built from all recycled materials based on the very informative videos on permies.com. Its for drying all the fruit which is coming thick and fast this time of year.

The dehydrator works in a counter-intuitive way. The sun facing, glass fronted solar collector heats the air and it rises up the sealed black gutters into the top of the box. Then the air becomes humidified and drops to the base of the box. While this is happening the mat-black chimney which enters at the base of the sealed box heats up in the sun and also makes the air rise; effectively sucking it out of the bottom of the box. So air rushes over the thinly sliced fruit and dries it out! 

Well, thats the theory! Its night time now so, sorry, can't test it yet. Plus, as the more astute of you will have noticed the door isn't on the back yet.... But when we were building it the metal at the back of the ramps and the chimney were getting hot in the sun.  The minstrel insists that we put an insect blocker on each end to prevent invasion and the Captain wants it sealed from the inside. As for me, I think insulating the ramps will make it work even better.... and of course a gutter to collect rain caught on the roof and glass...

All I can say now is, watch this space!!!

The colour purple

Deep purple leguminous fingers hung from the vines this afternoon, ripe and crunchy. They writhed in the bucket as I dropped them in one by one and clambered over eachother trying to escape. Here they are, clumped and wriggling in the baking tray. 

Bean medusa

They're not poisonous despite the inky black appearance. I'm holding one now.  Its quiet and the room is very still.  It doesn't even quiver. The skin feels soft, and my fingers slide between each gravid bulge.  Without the others watching I crunch it and the thin string sticks between my teeth.  The taste lingers on the top of my palate, more green than purple,  and festive, and fresh.

Beans trying to escape. Don't worry, none got out

Suprises

Plum lines

It has been so hot and dry, day after day. I looked at the fallen plums lying under the tree and some had become wrinkled like old hands. When I bit one it was an incredible sweet and delicious flavour! I had discovered the wonderful taste of a sun-made prune. I picked a few bucketfuls and placed them on drying racks away from the birds.

The shade house had another big surprise for me. I had given up on the coffee that I had planted and was with some friends. Is that coffee? one said.  I was about to say "no, it never came up" but... how did she know I was growing coffee?? There they were; little sprouts with a coffee bean balanced on top! It was months since I had planted them and finally they had come up!!

Coffee beans lurk amongst the carob seedlings

Hidden in the vege patch are some onions too. We fried them with garlic in our own olive oil then mixed them with roast tomatoes, put the mix through the mouli and added a big bunch of basil. I put one teaspoon of the new pasta sauce into my mouth and the taste lingered for hours...

Lovely red onion waits patiently on the block

Some flowers

These great sunflowers with their shaggy manes prowl around near the bore shed. They don't bite but maybe its better not to get too close...

Nearby, chicory flowers like under-the-sea plants are washed by the tide... Bees swim down to find them and carry the pollen back to their cosy hives where they can dry their wings and warm their six feet by the fire.

This morning our oats looked a bit boring so we went for a breakfast fruit scavenge around the garden. We picked a few handfuls of blue-purple plums and some berries from the thornless bramble. We wandered across to the fig trees.

The figs which I had bagged in paper  in order to protect them from the birds (I'll post on this later) were soft and the skin had turned lighter green. So here goes! Breakfast fruit basket!!

tonight's dinner hamper

Flying dragon

We found a collection of giant bones on the island. Was it a whale's graveyard or the remnants of a lost prehistoric creature? Rebuilding the skeleton revealed a flying dragon, complete with bat-like wings and rakish claws, a double tusk and prominent blunt horns. 

Did it crawl out of the sea, live here once or land and stay forever in transit from another place? We had our theories but really, its all speculation.

Peach Soda

Papi was very happy; looking all shiny and dust free after his waterblasting this morning. He even has his rudders back on, ready for painting.  It is hot already and I ended up covered in dust and thinking what'd be great is a cold and refreshing drink. So I just took two frozen peach-juice blocks and watched them fizz in the soda water! 

I was right! 

Totally refreshing and delicious!

Mint and lavender tea, as instructed by the tea connoisseur and wandering minstrel.

When I came home the mint and lavender was all dry and crispy so I cut up all the mint and stripped the  flowers from the lavender stems.  It was such a pleasant task with the wonderful aromas mingling in the air. I chopped the mint coarsely as instructed by the tea connoisseur and wandering minstrel.

Lavender castle

The fresh mint and lavender had taken up so much space to dry then it all fitted in this little golden box.

Tea box

Foghorn defends the Saffron patch from Turkey attack

I was sleeping in the afternoon and woke suddenly. We were under attack! The neighbour's Turkey was attacking Foghorn in the saffron beds! He's about 4 times the size of Foghorn! But Foghorn fought back bravely and pecked him on the back of the neck. Well he got locked in the bird cage, that mean old Rooster-attacking Turkey.  I took him back next door later in the day and he still looked pretty stunned from Foghorn's excellent defence of the saffron beds.

Foghorn Leghorn, King of the new Saffron Patch

Meet Foghorn Leghorn, uncontested King of the new saffron patch. I was up early digging manure and shot rocket into the sandy soil and making deep trenches to fill with grass clippings in preparing the new saffron beds and all the Leghorns wanted a part of it. 

Foghorn Leghorn in saffron patch

I've been waiting for the saffron to come for half a year and finally it  arrived in the post, all soft and brown and silky. I've read that saffron doesn't like to be out of the soil for too long and needs to go in a well composted trench. I'm leaving paths in the bed for access from all sides without compressing the soil. Question is, how am I going to keep these chickens who seem from digging up the saffron...

Bee boxes

The bee boxes are built and painted and waiting until I find a swarm to make them its home. Q says that there should be one around at the moment, as if they pop up all the time. In any case, if one does I'll be ready to drop it into my newly painted bee box and still have a spare for the next swarm. I think they'll live in the walnut orchard down by the old willow tree which we poisoned last winter. 

We used some shiny white marine paint which I have been putting on Papi during his rebuild.  The bee box kit came with no instructions and there's a couple of pieces which I'm not quite sure where they go...Maybe I need another trip to the shop to see how it all fits together.