Apart from the occasional large deer breaking through the electric fence and the fact that it had not rained for over a month causing the stream that runs by the side of the barganews vegetable garden to dry up, the past 4 weeks have been pretty easy going but now all that comes to an end as we have now reached the point where all the work since the spring comes to the grand finale … it’s harvest time.
Lettuce and courgettes, green beans, borlotti beans, green peppers, cucumbers and aubergines are all ready to be picked. So are the tomatoes and basil. The carrots have been a disaster – tiny, straggly miserable objects, so have the onions – planted at the wrong time when the ground was waterlogged but the real star of the garden has been the potatoes. The field is now just about ready to be turned over and the new potatoes brought to the surface.
Its time to start to think about how all these vegetables are to be prepared and cooked and preserved for the winter.
Hmmm………nothing in those snaps we can’t get in a tin back here in Scotland. Why do you people bother. Orto schmorto. The spuds look OK but where’s the pasta trees and coconuts eh? You can take the boy out of Ireland but. I am going to teach you the first rule of market gardening young man. Grow to go. Cash crops like tobacco and those poppies they grow for remembrance Sunday in Afghanistan. You’ll have no problems trying to preserve those little darlings, they’ll fly straight off your shelves.
Donald Trumpet
Home Farm
Mennie Estate
Aberdeenshire
All donations to help stop the sands shifting gratefully accepted.
PS Me and the Izzy will be over on the 5th of next month to help you dispose of any of any excess product yum yum. This series has been my personal flavourite thanks db.
Zambo raises an interesting point, db. We Barganews readers have shared in the many woes of the Orto del Canebusta. Will we now share in the pleasures of those two-euro spuds? Whatever, I agree with the esteemed Mr. Z: the series was wonderful — informative, funny, thought-provoking.
… la terra è bassa!