Leeks, Parsnips & Bit of Digging

 

The plan was to get some quality time on the plot on Wednesday but, as often happens, work got in the way. As well as the paid work, I had an email telling me that the little “Tell a friend about this site” system that’s on the main web site’s pages wasn’t working on some of them. It didn’t take too long for me to discover that I’d forgotten one line of code in some pages I say ‘some’ – about 350 pages. What a boring job that was to fix. Still, thanks for letting me know.

Anyway we did drop down to the plot to harvest some leeks. Val was making a stew and the leeks went in along with some parsnips.

The parsnips were reaching the end, starting to sprout back and so I dug the last of them up. Those that were left over wouldn’t really store well so we cubed and blanched them for the freezer. They will still go well in stews or even deep fried with roasties for Sunday lunch.

We’ve quite a lot of leeks left in the ground and they won’t stand much longer so we’ll probably convert some of them into Leek, Potato and Stilton soup. We’ve plenty of potatoes in store and quite a lot of stilton in the freezer. The best time to get bargain stilton is after Christmas in the supermarkets and it does freeze. Not ideal for eating raw when it’s been frozen but perfectly good enough for cooking. The benefit of strong cheese is that you need less to add flavour, so reduced fat.

Didn’t manage to get down at all on Thursday I did get down on Friday afternoon. I just did a bit of digging over. I really can’t get over how far behind I am this year. One tip for getting time to grow some vegetables is not to write a book about it!

I’m only single digging and even though it’s late my trusty Merry Tiller will be in action soon enough to break everything up. Larry commented one good day would get me finished but I think that’s a bit optimistic. The clay soil is loads better than when I took the plot on but it’s still heavy work turning it over.

Many native peoples just didn’t understand the concept of owning land when the Europeans arrived, planting their flags across the world. Allotments are a good example of that. You don’t own the land and one day you will no longer be there to work it. I know that whoever takes on my plots in the future will get them in better condition than I took them one and that’s quite a satisfying thought.

Anyway, I was getting on fairly well when the sky turned very black and I felt it start spitting with rain. Now it’s not far to walk home but I thought it looked like I’d be soaked if I hung around so back to home.

It’s getting a lot better now the days are lengthening and pretty soon we’ll be sowing again. It’s seemed to be an awfully long winter, but then we didn’t get a summer last year.