Wet (Green) Garlic

Old gardening wisdom says that you should plant garlic on the shortest day and harvest it on the longest. So, I have an abundance of wet garlic to sell in STORES at the moment. Wet, or green, garlic is freshly harvested garlic that hasn't been hung up to dry. It's milder in taste and less pungent in odour than the usual kind and so can be sliced straight into salads.

To be honest, I'm a bit of a garlic fanatic and will eat it raw anyway. I love to crush garlic into my vinaigrette and slaver my greens in it.

In the garden my garlic and onion bed this year makes me really happy.  Not only have I got good sized onions and loads of garlic, but I've allowed the poppies to grow as weeds between the alliums and it looks gorgeous.

For thousands of years diverse cultures have believed garlic to have beneficial medicinal properties, modern science seems to be confirming this. Scientist believe that most of garlic's health benefits are caused by the sulphur compounds formed when a garlic clove is chopped, crushed or chewed. The best known of these is allicin, however this is an unstable compound only briefly present in fresh garlic after it has been cut.

Six Health Benefits of Garlic.

1.  Low in calories and rich in vitamin C, vitamin B6, manganese, selenium and decent amounts of calcium, copper, potassium, phosphorus, iron and vitamin B1

2.  Garlic has long been believed to help prevent and fight the common cold and flu.  Trials using garlic supplements suggest garlic boosts the function of the immune system and seem to support this.

3.  High doses of garlic appear to improve blood pressure for those with known hypertension. In some instances supplements may be as effective as regular medications.

4.  Garlic contains antioxidants that protect against cell damage and so it is believed has beneficial effects on Alzheimers, dementia and other chronic diseases.

5.  It appears garlic may have some benefits for bone health by increasing estrogen levels in females.

6.  Garlic supplements appear to reduce total and LDL cholesterol in those have high cholesterol. HDL cholesterol and triglycerides do not seem to be affected.

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Tea and Willow

I am a terrible junk shop explorer.  I simply cannot pass a second hand/ vintage/ charity shop without looking in. So much so I am thinking of opening my own shop with at least a smidgen of vintage paraphernalia.  As a paean to this much enjoyed activity I thought I would start blogging some of my favourite finds. 

Above is my proper old Victorian teapot.  I love the hand painted flowers, the simple swirls that make the leaves and stem. She's a grand old lady.  Although she has quite a lot of crazing, a spiders-web of hairline cracks and that little knob on her lid has obviously been stuck back on at some point in her past, she is still quite capable of brewing a fine cup of tea. 

I bought the Royal Doulton Pollards Willow pattern tea cups, saucers and cake plate at the same time as the teapot.  The pattern is unusual, showing the traditional method of growing pollarded willow for basketry.

  

I have a bit of a fascination with willow.  I love how they look when grown like this; the knotty trunks contrast with the soft catkins, the straight, spiky, architectural stems that come off the gnarled main trunk can exist in a wide variety of colours; deep red through orange and yellow, to greens and browns that go back to deep red shades all over again.  Below is an image from a fashion magazine (Harpers Bazaar I think) I came across it in a dentists waiting room years ago, loved it so much I took a picture of it.

I attended a talk on basket weaving at one of our gardening club meetings a couple of years ago.  A local basket weaver, Leah, came along to show us the beautiful baskets that she made.  Another thing to go on my ever growing "To Do" list.  

Her talk made me notice on one of my dog walks, that there was obviously another basket weaver living in the village as there were beautifully vivid pollarded willows along the side of a cottage in the fields at the back of us.  It turns out they belonged to Olivia Elton Barratt,the first female Prime Warden of the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers.  Olivia was instrumental in recreating the 16th Century, 14ft high guardians of the City of London, Gog and Magog, in willow for the Lord Mayor's Show in 2007.

As it turns out I did my bee keeping course with her daughter and so was able to ask to take cuttings of her willow this spring to use in my own garden.  Look at the gorgeous colours:

I intend to create a fence of pollarded willow to protect the flower garden and veg patch that I am moving to the back of house from the chickens.  I'd also like to grow some along the banks of the Ash along our boundary line.  Yet more to add to the "TO Do" list.

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Snowdrops and Snow Drops

The snowdrops have been out for several weeks now.   I thought that they were heralding the beginnings of spring but now that the snow is falling I'm not so sure.

Our duck eggs hatched four weeks ago now.  Only one tho.  Having done a bit of reading I'm now pretty sure we should have helped the other 2 eggs that looked to be viable, but I applied chicken knowledge to ducks and we didn't.  So our single duckling has become something of a house pet:

S/he liked to sit in my pocket while I worked, follows the children around the house and generally enjoys the run of the house.  Not so fortunate are her cousins the garden hens.  They have been living outside in a slowly thickening mud slick of a chicken run.

I've been feeling sorry for the hens and getting fed up with slip sliding through the mud to feed them.  So, I contacted our regular tree surgeons for some wood chip which Beau has been enjoying digging through:

Several back breaking hours later I have a chicken run that looks like new:

Even in the snow (which is now a lot deeper) they are looking much happier.  Although they still prefer to be out and about in the garden:

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New Year, New Eggs

I'm not sure quite how, but the little foxes managed to convince me to raise ducks this year.  A friend in the village gave us six duck eggs and we put them in the incubator on Christmas day.  They are due to hatch in 5 more days.

After a few months of not laying, illness and disruption in my little flock the hens have started to lay again too.  

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Astrid

Astrid - the smartest chick in town.

I mentioned in passing in that last post that our oldest and best loved chicken, Astrid, one of the original A-Team passed away the other week.  I just had to do a photo-ode to our lovely hen:

Loved by the kids

She was not always such a beautiful hen.

A source of fascination for dogs & children alike.

She & her sisters, Agatha, Ashley & Anoushka were the A-Team.

Not always keen to stay in their pen...

they often came in the house.

Astrid helped with the gardening.

And enjoyed a dust bath.

She was the top hen in our flock

She, not Mr Tappy Shoes, ruled the roost.

The yellow chick is her daughter, Damson.

Our last picture of her.

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Spring Has Finally Sprung

Today it hit me, spring has sprung.   The bees are flying.  I need to be feeding, spring cleaning and applying varroa treatments, to give the two hives that have survived the winter, room and encouragement to start expanding their colony and producing honey.

The veg patch needs some TLC, I should be getting broadbeans into the ground and sewing seeds  indoors for planting out later in the spring.

The chickens know it's spring too and they really need to be let out.  There are restrictions on poultry in the UK, and mine are also living on a building site so they are not free-ranging at the moment.  We were planning to try and breed from our hens this year.  We've 2 strands of Maran heritage in our little flock.  We can breed the classic Black Copper Maran...

and Lavender Birchen Maran. 

However, all this is being hampered by the mess, time and energy being expended on the building works we are in the midsts of.   The extension is going up fast:

From a demolition site...

foundations,...

preparations for the slab being poured,...

under-floor insulation,...

slab being poured,...

to Louis driving the digger.

There have also been some surprises.  Well one really!  We have a well in the dinning room, more on that later.

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Goodbye Summer

I was looking back at pictures of our Summer, now it's over and Autumn is upon us.  Still the memories are GREAT.

Giant Rhubarb

Bee Keeping:  I got stung this year for the first time.  Still it was fun...

with the children.

And honey this year, enough to sell.

Our Maran chicken's - Bernadette, renamed Bernie, because she's a boy!

We've a flock of 11.

Picking plums - at least the dratted caravan has some uses.

Greengages, nom, nom...

Harvest from the Veggie garden.

Rainbow chard was a big hit.

Ash Camp was bigger and better than ever this year.

Our summer cocktail of choice for 2016 - Aperol

Reading in the hammock

Trips to the seaside in the summer hols went on late into the evening.

I became a member of the Little Hadham & Albury Gardening Club and we went to the show.

My entries for the show.

Una won in the junior section with her "Tutti Frutti Chicken"

Louis won in the junior section with his photo of a field of poppies.

All together a glorious summer!

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