I’m finding that my vegetable garden is a really beautiful place to be, especially now with everything in full production and the flowers blooming. The birds fly in and out catching little bugs, and leaving their phosphorus rich manure, and the bees are buzzing around pollinating for more goodness to come. By including many flowers it not only adds to the beauty but invites these lovely visitors who are happy to help us out, reducing the bugs, fertilising and ensuring our crops will grow. Diverse plantings will encourage a diversity in these little visitors which gives the garden better capacity to deal with pests.
After getting the usual chores of sheep moving, and duckling tending done, I headed into the vegetable garden to do some much needed harvesting. There’s plenty of food that needs to be plucked off and whisked in to the kitchen to be transformed and stored for winter and beyond. Beans, tomatoes, sweet basil, tulsi, chillies, celery and collard greens filled my basket today.
Before settling in to the kitchen for the afternoon I decided to take Ruby for a walk along the railway line to forage for more apples and blackberries. Last year I got through many, many jars of dehydrated apples so I just need to keep going to ensure a good supply for this year.
Gathered up a back pack full of apples, and just a small amount of berries. I fancy a bit of apple and blackberry pie as a treat!
I filled two dehydrators full of apple slices, made a double batch of basil pesto and a double batch of fermented salsa. Tried out a grain free pastry made with pepitas and sunflower kernels, for my apply and blackberry pie. It was different but not bad. I think I’ll stick to using almond meal in future haha!
To finish my day I headed back outside to chop and drop a tree in my swale. I figure if I just keep doing one a day then maybe I’ll get the job complete. I have 240 metres of swale with quite a lot of these support species that need this major pruning so I definitely need to keep plugging away at that! Good thing is, I find it really enjoyable, so that’s lucky.