Green Goals 2019

I am not a great one for New Year's Resolutions. For example I'd love to lose a bit of weight but I have been pretty much the same weight for the last 30 years so I accept it isn't going to happen however many times I add it to a list of Resolutions. I don't really drink that much alcohol and there's no way I'm giving up dark chocolate!!  However I do like the idea of having some green goals for the year to come so am happy to promote those.

Gardening in a heatwave

I recently wrote a post explaining what all the effects of Climate Change will be and included this point about agriculture:

"Drought, flooding and changes in seasonal temperatures will mean farmers having to cope with either too much or too little water and increased levels of pests and diseases.  These negative effects on agriculture will result in increased food prices globally, food shortages and more famines."

As we bid farewell to the heatwave summer 2018, where temperatures rocketed and rain was almost non existent it seems like a good time to assess how one hot summer affected my vegetable garden at Eco-Gites of Lenault and consider how the heat will have affected farmers.

Skills the world needs us to know

I wrote in a recent blog that when we lose so many of the skills our predecessors knew then we place our lives in the hands of others ... and with just a few large companies holding the greater part of the market share we are left to buy what we need from a small number of super-corporations and they can produce theses goods however they want. These large companies care more for profit than sustainability.  They can use as many pesticides as they see fit, grow GMO crops, use child labour, transport goods all around the world, wrap them in plastic etc etc ... and as consumers our choice to have anything different is lost with the skills to produce these items ourselves.

What skills, therefore, do we need for the sake of saving our planet from further environmental damage?

Skills we must not lose

This image turned up on my Facebook timeline this morning.  I am sure it brought a smile to a good few people, especially if they had managed to rush to the shops before the bad weather hit and stocked up of loads of bread.  However when a friend posted on Facebook that they were baking bread, he wondered how many people were also doing this and how many do not know how to bake bread.

Image from Leamington Spa Courier

A-Z of Going Green, one step at a time.

I am going to make any specific New Year Resolutions this year.  Instead I am going to try and follow the A-Z Going Green, one step at a time.  Are you with me?  Will you make 2018 the year of Going Green?

My kitchen table - my life

This was my kitchen table yesterday and I realised that it summed up my life so well and what I hope to achieve on a daily basis.  Let me take you on a journey round my kitchen table/life ...

Starting top left and going clockwise:

Bowl of bread dough rising - this one is pumpkin bread and it turned out really tasty.  The sharp eyed among you may notice the dough is covered with plastic and you would be right.  It is a bag that had tortilla wraps in it and after being used several times to freeze things it split so got downgraded to a bread cover.

My 13 year old Nokia phone - yup, I really do have an original Nokia and it is at least 13 years old.  Dare I ask how many phone upgrades you have had in 13 years?

2 tea towels - these came from my Mum's house after we cleared it out.  We tried to salvage as much as possible of things that could not be given to charity or sold on/recycled.

Am I really green because ...

I am not a vegan?

But what about all those vegan foods that are imported from the other side of the world.  Maybe I should only ...

Shop Locally?

But what if I can only get non organic produce or factor farmed meat locally.  I need to ...

Only Eat Organic

But you know what?  My organic shop sells a lot of processed foods, non local foods and those made with palm oil.  So let's go ...

Palm Oil Free

Looking good until you realise that the only palm oil free peanut butter you can buy comes in a plastic jar.  So the answer must be to ...

Go Zero-Waste

Sounds great until I tell you that the nearest bulk store for me is miles away without any public transport so think of all that fuel I'd use to get there.  So I need to become ...

Self Sufficient

Now in fairness I do grow a lot of my own produce.  And so it is local .... and organic ... and palm oil free and very low on waste.  BUT, I raise and eat my own animals (and use their manure to fertilise the soil) so I am well and truly not a vegan which takes me neatly back to the start of this post.

My Green Summer

I pretty much took a break from blogging this summer - partly I was too busy and something had to give and partly my internet connection was playing silly whatsits and was often so slow (or even dead) that it made working online almost impossible.  I am keeping everything crossed that will behave itself from now on.

So I though I would take this opportunity to share with you some of my green moments from the summer of 2017.  I'd love to hear what you have been up to too.

Family Time

The boys and Simon went camping in the UK for a while and when they were here we had some great times playing games such as Settlers of Catan and Molkky (Finnish skittles made from wood), visiting local landmarks including our favourite castle at Falaise (birthplace of William the Conqueror) and taking some lovely walks around the Normandy countryside.

Playing Molkky

Veg, Fruit and Foraged Foods in Season in June

What is seasonal food? 

If you grow your own vegetables the packet will tell you when you can expect to harvest the crop and this is when it is in season.  If you see vegetables for sale outside of this time then they are not in season and may well have been imported or grown under heat in a greenhouse.

Why eat seasonal food?

Food that is in season has many advantages over imported food or that grown under cover:

• It will have the best and freshest taste.
• It will have a higher nutritional value.
• It is good for the environment as it will have low food low miles and less energy will have been used than glass-grown plants to produce it.
• As a result it will be cheaper.
• Finally, as a consumer, you will get seasonal variety and the excitement of the first taste of a just in-season food is hard to beat.  A strawberry in winter may look appetising but it has minimal taste compared to a summer one.

Seeds you can sow in July

This evening we had dinner from the chickens and veg patch - ratatouille with our own onions, courgettes and aubergines together with new potatoes and a poached duck egg.  There is something immensely satisfying about eating your own produce and if you are keen to start vegetable gardening it is no too late for sowing a variety of vegetables in July for harvesting later in the year.

Seeds you can sow outside in July

Dwarf French beans* – so long as you are quick

Beetroot*

Spring cabbage*

Chinese cabbage

Endive

Non forcing chicory

Kohl rabi*

Lettuce*

Turnips* (late in the month)

There are also plenty of vegetables you can transplant if you can get seedlings.

Seedlings you can transplant in July

Broccoli

Winter cabbages

Cauliflowers

Kale and Cavolo Nero

Leeks (if you are quick)

Lettuces

If you are lucky enough to have a polytunnel or greenhouse then your choice of even greater

Seeds you can sow in a polytunnel in July

* All the vegetables above that are marked with an asterix can also be sown in the polytunnel along with the following:

Swiss chard

Spinach

Leaf beet

Pak Choi

Fennel

Oriental veg such as mizuna, mibuna, komatsuna etc

Parsley

Rocket

Lamb's Lettuce

These under cover sowings are really important if you want to see your polytunnel producing fresh veg once the summer tomatoes, peppers and suchlike are but a distant memory. By sowing now, in July, you can ensure fresh veg on into the winter months.  If, however, you are likely to be away you may want to delay most sowings until early August … and if you are away then I suggest asking a friend to come in and water or all your hard work could be lost in the heat.

Remember also that if you live in a mild area where frosts generally start late you have more chance of success with later sowings than if you live further north or in a frost pocket.

If you have no garden don't despair as there is still some things you can sow – the ever popular cress can be grown inside where you can also give sprouting seeds a go and maybe even a couple of lettuces in a pot on a windowsill or a chilli plant on a windowsill.

Have you been sowing seeds recently - have I missed anything from my lists?

Seeds and seedlings galore

Posted by Rosie

This week the weather has been fabulous in Normandy and warm spring sunshine, no rain and only a couple of frosts early on, have meant that I have made great strides in the veg garden.  

My sneaky plan to stop the mice eating all my seeds seems to have paid off.  I have seedlings!  The broad beans I germinated in the house are now growing well and are hardening off outside before being planted out very soon (weather permitting):

Broad beans hardening off outside

The other seeds I sowed in the cold frame have remained out of reach to mice and are busy germinating safely.  

Seedlings growing

Mice apparently don't like nasturtiums.  Last year I was a bit late clearing the nasturtiums after they had flowered and set seed so now they are growing like weeds in amongst the onions.  Before weeding them out I potted up this lot, some of which will go in a window box for the gite and others I will either have for us or sell at a Boot Fair.  Oh how I like a free plant!
 

Potted up nasturtiums

I have also started off all my peppers and tomatoes ... which turned out to be rather a lot.  For anyone who is interested this is the list of what I have sown but if you are not, just skip down to the next picture!

Peppers:

Padron
Ornamental
Doux D'Espagne
Marconi Rosa
One other I can't read (oops)

Tomatoes

Hazfleur
Roma
Coeur de Boeuf
Marmande
Yellow Poire
Green Zebra
Pomodoro Cherry
Golden Sunset
Roselle
Noire Russe

Curcabits (that's everything in the cucumber/melon/courgette/pumpkin etc family)

Cucumber - Crystal Apple
Courgette verte non coureuse d'Italie
Courgette verte non coureuse des Maraîches
Courgette jaune non coureuse Sebring

Oh and these packets of round and flat white courgettes just sort of fell into my basket today when I was buying animal feed and onion/shallot sets this afternoon.  Honestly, they just fell in ... !

MORE seeds?

I've also got some seeds sown outside with 2 double rows of broad beans, 2 rows of parsnips and a row of early turnips.  Straggly rambling fruit bushes (tayberry, blackberry and loganberry) have all been pruned and tied back and I have the scars to prove it as one particularly errant tayberry whipped back across my nose!  I got it in the end though.

Thursday is market day at Condé-sur-Noireau.  I've not been to market for ages as my friend and partner in chicken/plant buying crime snapped her Achilles tendon and was unable to drive there, but she is now mobile again and so to market I will be going!  There is a strong possibility I may come home with vegetable seedlings!  Watch this space.

All this is, however, in stark contrast to 2 years ago when this is what we woke up to on March 12th 2013:

March 12th 2013

Deep snow, temperatures down to -10ºC and no power for 52 hours.  Let's hope winter hasn't anything like that left up her sleeve, although to be fair that was an extremely freak occurrence for March!  Whilst I sincerely hope we don't get a repetition of this, I do know that this gorgeous spring weather may not last so I have plenty of old blankets etc at the ready to cover the cold frame and seedlings in case the temperature does decide to tumble.

All in all then, a very fruitful week in the garden.  Have you been lucky enough to have spring gardening weather this week or are you still under winter's white mantle?  Pop over to Annie's How Does your Garden Grow linky and you'll see what other gardeners have been up to.

Mouse Wars!

Posted by Rosie

Right, that's it - I am officially fed up with the mice stealing my seeds and war has been waged.  I had a long chat with a friend last week and a plan was hatched.  I need to get seeds sown but I need them to not just be mouse fodder so I have come up with what is hopefully a mouse-proof container.  I already had a cold frame in the polytunnel but the mouse could dig in to it through the soil underneath.  I have now put some boards under the frame and because they were not a perfect fit I have also lined the inside with fabric.  Oh yes and that is 2 mouse traps inside as well.

Mouse proof cold frame?

Today I sowed beetroot/sweet peas and placed the chard and summer cabbages that I had previously sown under a propagator in there.  The leaves are some lettuce seedlings I have bought that I am hardening off a bit before planting them in the polytunnel. I am also worried the mice will eat them so since taking this photo I have moved the mouse traps to where I hear mice squeaking, under the shelving and when I plant out the lettuces I will place the traps nearby.

As a back up plan I also have an old fridge I could use, turned on it's side, the door removed and a plastic lid fitted. At the moment my still slightly dodgy back isn't up to transporting the fridge to the polytunnel so that particular plan in on hold just for now ... however old, clear, lidded storage boxes may well also be bought into mouse-proofing duty.

I will report back next week as to the success of this mouse proofing.  Also if the temperature creeps up just a bit and the sun comes out I will try sowing some tender seeds such as tomato, pumpkin, courgette etc.  In fact, thinking as I type, I could start these inside and once germinated move them to the polytunnel.  As the cat is no longer allowed upstairs and he was , in previous years, responsible for upending and/or weeing in seed trays, I could start seeds under my bedroom window and move them once germinated.  I suspect it is a bit chilly in the loft.

Speaking of the loft, the mangetout I sowed up there last week have already germinated and the beans are almost there.  Yay, let the veg growing begin!

Germinated mange-tout seeds

In other news I have taken delivery of more seed potatoes.  Many of the varieties I used to grow in the UK are not available in France so as a friend was popping to England recently I asked if she could get some seed potatoes for me. I now have a total of 6 varieties chitting in the left room:

King Edwards and Kestrel from England
BF15, Desiree and Charlotte that I bought here - I've never grown BF15 before but another friend recommended them.
A variety called Reine de something which was a freebie from my local agricultural supplier/garden centre.

Chitting potatoes

I do now feel that things are moving in the right direction in the garden and this despite the pretty much horrible weather we have had all week.  There were moments of sunshine, like when I was showing Annie (from Mammasaurus, who stayed in the gite last week) round the veg garden but they were brief and we were soon sheltering in the polytunnel as rain turned to sleet turned to snow!  It was wonderful to meet Annie, in person, having corresponded through the medium of social media for what I have just realised is exactly a year.  This is my 53rd HDYGG post and I have not missed a single week. I love the record it is building of the garden here at Eco-Gites of Lenault from one week to the next and over the changing seasons and I love reading the exploits of other gardeners.  Thank you Annie for running the link up and thank you for coming and staying here.

Is rearing your own meat cheaper than buying it?

Posted by Rosie

It's a question we get asked fairly frequently, 

"is it cheaper to rear your own animals than buy from the butcher or supermarket?"

It's a good question so whilst waiting to collect B from the bus stop this evening (T was at his saxophone lesson) I started crunching a few figures.

We buy our chickens from the market when they are 5 weeks old and last year they cost €3.50 each.  Calculating how much food they eat is hard as they share supplies with the ducks and turkeys but as a rough estimate I would say €40 for food in their lifetime.  So if my maths is right that's 12 x €3.50 + €40 = €82 or approximately €7 per chicken. Each bird probably weights about 5lb/2kg so the meat is about €3.50/kg.

Young chickens destined for the table

Chicken from Eco-Gites of Lenault - home reared

Now if I was to buy a similar farm reared chicken from a reputable dealer who raises the chickens outside and with a natural diet I would have to pay around €20 per bird.  So in that sense we would appear to be quids in (or should that be Euros in?).

But ...

... the supermarkets often sell chicken much cheaper.  I know a while ago Tesco was selling 2 chickens for a fiver but I have no idea of their size or provenance.  I would guess small and barn-raised birds, pumped full of growth hormones, water and suchlike.  Not what I want to be eating.

Looking on Sainsbury's website today (sorry, nothing French was available for comparison) I found these prices for whole chickens which I have converted to Euros:

Whole chicken - €3.25/kg
Taste the difference chicken - €7.30/kg
Organic chicken - €8.75/kg

So we appear to be producing meat at a comparable rate to the lower end of the market and cheaper than the taste the difference birds which ours best compare to.  But there is still another but ...

In the price to calculate the approximate cost per bird I have not accounted for any of the following:

• Our time to raise them
• Slaughter costs - we kill and pluck the birds ourselves but sending them to an abattoir would raise the cost.
• The cost of running the freezers to store them.
• The cost of packaging materials, any medication needed and other sundry items eg grit, bedding etc.
• The fact that we could lose one or more birds to disease and possibly all if a fox, weasel or suchlike were to get into the pen.

I could sit and play with figures all night but it would not change anything.  We would raise our own birds what-ever the cost as we want to eat food that has minimal food miles (we buy their food from the farmer next door), that has had a good life and a quick end and we are repaid with the most fabulous tasting meat.  Were we to buy chicken it would have to be those €20 birds raised in the same way as ours.

So with that in mind, yes, rearing our own meat is cheaper than buying it, assuming you do not lose all your birds to a predator.

I would love to hear your views on this subject.  Do you raise your own or buy the cheapest meat available.  Please do leave a comment below.

Animals and Frost

Posted by Rosie

When you look after animals on a smallholding you are very much aware of the weather as this affects what you do and even how the animals react.  Since Christmas I think we have had every type of winter weather possible including a smattering of snow, heavy rain, strong winds, calm days, an afternoon warm enough to sit outside with a coat on and frost.  If I had to chose one of these I would of course love a winter of mild, calm weather but as, in reality, that is not going to happen, I would have to chose frost.  In frosty weather the mud in the pig pen and all field gateways disappears overnight and you wake up to everything clothed in a silver mantle.

HOWEVER ... isn't there always a "however"? ... frosty weather is not without many potential problems when you live on a smallholding and look after animals:

Bedding and Food

In cold weather animals need a lot more bedding and food to keep warm.  The piglets love nothing better than burying deep in their bedding on a cold, frosty night and come the morning they all emerge demanding extra rations.  This year we've bought a supply of sugarbeet in from a local farmer - a tonne of it in fact so hopefully that will keep them full!  The pigs and Maddie, the goat, love it but the sheep thought I was trying to poison them!  They prefer their hay.  Maddie loves nothing more than a chou lapin as a tasty snack (a type of kale) but in frost these would give her belly ache and anyway they are frozen solid in the ground.  However she will at least more hay when it's cold, where-as in mild weather she tends to turn her nose up at this.

Sheep enjoying their hay

It must be cold - Maddie is eating her hay!

Water

Water becomes an issue as first the water butts all freeze and as the temperature falls further so does the outside tap. Then we have to bring water out from the house which isn't too as we have a downstairs bathroom, but it is a pain. Also if you have not seen the frost forecast and leave your watering cans full water ready for the next day then you have a problem. The water is frozen in the cans and you have no receptacle in which to transport water.  In really cold weather the wet food we make up for the pigs will freeze in the feed room and only a kettle full of boiling water will render it edible for the pigs ... so we have to bring the pig feed buckets in and store it in the bath overnight!  Good job we have an upstairs shower room too.

Gates and Soil

If frost follows wet weather you can find yourself in the situation of all metal gate bolts being frozen solid in the morning.  And even after getting these defrosted you may find that gates which only just skim the soil surface in wet weather will be stuck in frosty weather.  Remember how in school you learnt about water expanding as it freezes (or how the wine escaped out of the bottle top when you left it too long in the freezer to cool and forgot about it?), well the water in the soil expands as it freezes so the ground level rises and gates can be difficult to open.  Further more any rocks or logs used to wedge gates open will be frozen solid in to the soil and I can assure you a kick with a wellied boot does not always shift them and really hurts!  At least I am not wandering around barefoot like the chickens (who find suddenly there are no early worms to eat) or the ducks who find standing on on leg the best means to keep one foot warm at any one time.

No early worms on a frosty morning

Keeping one foot warm

Despite all of these points though I still prefer frost over wind, rain or snow.  Wind makes the animals skittish and I spend ages searching for lost food bowls etc., rain makes everywhere muddy and doing rounds is just miserable and snow is simply hard work (although in it's defence the countryside does look wonderful). 

Winter at Eco-Gites of Lenault

Do you look after animals and find you or they have a favourite type of winter weather?  Maybe your dog doesn't like the frost or you have a cat who adores playing in the snow.  Please do let us know in a comment.

Garden plans for 2015

Posted by Rosie

At the start of the New Year it is traditional to make Resolutions for the year ahead but long ago I realised these were a waste of time - I invariably weighed the same at the end of the year as I did at the start, the washing still reached mountain-sized proportions before I finally put it away and I never did start that course on how to speak perfect French in 6 weeks.

However I have found that putting my lists in the public domain does ensure I get more done than if I just leave a paper list on my desk ... remember my December Gardening List?  Well I may not have got everything done (Christmas and inclement weather rather got in the way) but I reckon I did more than had I not published the list.  So, following on from there here are my garden plans for 2015:

Source and plant a Quince tree

I love quince jelly so this seems a natural addition to our orchard,

Sort the fruit trees in our small orchard

They really do need a good mulch and prune

Grow something totally new in the polytunnel

Any ideas what it should be?  In 2014 I grew peanuts with, how shall we say, limited success, but I need something new for 2015.

Keep on top of weeding

This may be rather like saying I'll lose weight or suchlike but now it's written down you have my full permission to chastise me if, later on in the year, I am moaning about the triffidness of the weeds.

Grow more beans for drying

We love cooked beans and now that I have found the dried beans that the mice stashed away I have  good supply of saved beans, plus some from a friend so I should be able to grow more of our own beans in 2015.

Make a paved area in front of PT

Each summer this becomes a dump for plants that don't need to be in the polytunnel and then the grass grows up where I can't cut or strim it.  So I reckon if I pave a small area I will have solved this messy issue.

Area in need of paving

 

Plant more fruit bushes

I have space in my soft fruit area but what should I grow?  I need a replacement jostaberry for the one that died last year but what else could I grow?  I already have gooseberries, tayberries, loganberries, raspberries, red, white and blackcurrants and an extremely spiky worcesterberry.

Grow more cauliflowers!

Last year for possibly the first time I managed to grow cauliflowers that were actually big enough to bother harvesting and numbered more than one!  Will 2015 see even better results?

An Eco-Gites of Lenault Cauliflower!

So that's it - I may add things as I think of them but here's welcoming in 2015 with good intentions for our veg and fruit growing.

I wonder if anyone else has garden plans - you could always pop over to Annie's How Does Your Garden Grow linky and have a look at other gardening blogs.

All Change in the Polytunnel

Posted by Rosie

It's very much all change in the polytunnel - summer crops are disappearing fast and there is rather an air of abandonment there.  However, far from being abandoned there is much going on and as one crop goes another soon replaces it. 

October in the polytunnel

The Three Sisters planting of sweetcorn, round cucumbers and climbing beans has finished.  It was a 2/3 success with the sweetcorn and the cucumbers doing well but not the beans.  I think if I were to do this again (and that is very likely) I would need to sort out timings - the poor beans, planted at the same time as everything else could not compete with the fast growing cucumbers and there was not enough sweetcorn for them to initially climb up. Next year I will sow the sweetcorn and beans earlier, with the beans in pots.  I will transplant the beans next to the sweetcorn when both are a bit bigger and sow the cucumbers later. 

With these 3 plants gone the space has been manured and replanted with late leek seedlings.  The man I buy the seedlings off at the market thinks I am daft wasting polytunnel space with a winter crop but I did this last year and it worked.  In previous years when I have planted leek seedlings outside in October they have come to nothing.  But when I planted them late in the polytunnel last year I ended up with a nice crop of small leeks in mid to late spring, when the larger outdoor ones had finished.  They were only 3€ for over 50 seedlings and I got enough small leeks for plenty meals.

I will need to plant overwintering onions soon as like th elate leeks, these do not do well outside here.  The bulbs are not in the shops yet which may be just as well as I want to put them where my peppers are and they are still cropping.

Peppers galore this year ... and they've gone red!

Outside there are still a few flowers to cheer my heart.  The dahlias are beginning to look a bit raggedy although these nasturtiums have self seeded on the compost heap and obviously love it there.  The final flower is the unassuming head of a parsley, gone to seed. It may not have the colour of other flowers but I love it's shape.

October Dahlias

Nasturtiums

Parsley Flower Head

How is your garden looking in early October?  Still full of floral and vegetable beauty or looking ready to close down for winter?

For more gardening blog posts do head on over to Annie's weekly gardening blog linky over at Manneskjur.  

Could you kill to eat?

Posted by Rosie

One of the main things we wanted to do when we moved to France and had the space, was to rear our own animals to eat.  We get a butcher in the slaughter the sheep and pigs but we do the poultry ourselves (ducks, turkeys and chickens).  Yesterday and today it was the time for our 12 table chickens to take a one way journey to the freezer.  When people know that we slaughter our own birds it elicits a range of reactions from "How could you?" to "I couldn't do that but respect that you can" to "Could you show me how it's done!?".

What about you?  Could you kill something that you had raised and then eat it?  Obviously Simon and I can and maybe being brought up on a farm has something to do with this ... although Simon is from Bromley!  So why do we do it?  It's simple really.  We want to eat meat that tastes great and whose provenance we know.  We know that our birds have had a good life. We buy them from the market when they are about 5 weeks old, thus supporting a local business and feed them on wheat we buy from the local farmer - almost no food miles there then and supporting another local business.  When their time comes they have the shortest of journeys from their shed to where we slaughter them.  No long journey to an abattoir and the end comes with a swift breaking of their necks.

In comparison, we could go to the supermarket and buy a much cheaper chicken but what life would it have had?  Raised in a barn with no natural light?  Pumped full of growth hormones?  Transported miles to be slaughtered?

No thank you.

I mentioned taste earlier as well.  If you have never tasted a free range chicken then you have never really tasted chicken.  It is much more "meaty", with far more texture than a factory-produced bird and simply has a fantastic taste.  I would not now cook chicken unless home reared, preferably by ourselves.  In fairness you can easily buy farm reared chickens here in France (Poule Fermière is I think what they are called) but they are expensive.  A bird the size of those we produce will set you back the best part of 20€, possibly more.  So economics come into our decision too.  The chicks we buy cost 3.50€ and the feed is nowhere near 16.50€ per bird.

I certainly don't enjoy the act of slaughtering a bird ... but if we are to eat meat I would rather stick to my beliefs about how it should be reared and how it's end should come and if that is the case, then slaughter I must.

What are your thoughts on this?  Could you kill to eat?

Pickled Runner Beans

Posted by Rosie

Anyone who grows more than one or two runner bean plants will, more than likely, find themselves over-run with excess beans at some point.  Whilst they can be frozen, they are never as nice this way so for a different way to store them for later, why not pickle them?

(See below about successful cooking of frozen of runner beans.)

Pickled Runner Beans

 

Ingredients

• 1kg runner beans
• Salt
• 300ml cider or white wine vinegar
• 300g sugar
• 100ml water
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper 
• 6 juniper berries (optional)

Method

1.  Trim and string the beans then slice into thin lengths.
2.  Place them in a pan of lightly salted boiling water and cook until just tender (5-8 mins).
3.  Meanwhile mix together the vinegar, water, sugar, allspice, pepper and juniper berries and heat gently to dissolve the sugar.
4.  Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 minutes.
5.  Drain the cooked runner beans, add them to the boiling vinegar mix and simmer for a further 4-5 minutes
6.  Strain off and retain the vinegar.
7.  Pack the beans in warm sterilised jars, cover with the hot vinegar and cap with vinegar proof lids.
8. Store in a cool, dark place and use with 12 months.  The flavour is best if the pickled runner beans are allowed to mature for several weeks before eating.

Freezing Runner Beans

If you do want to get the best taste from frozen runner beans I can recommend 2 methods which will help them taste more like freshly cooked beans.

1.  Steam from frozen rather than boil them
2.  Double boil them.  Place the frozen beans in a pan and cover with boiling water then immediately drain them.  Add more boiling water cook to your preferred tenderness.




The French are only just catching on to the idea of eating runner beans.  You can find the seeds here but you invariably have to look in the flower section under Haricot d'Espagne.  Beware though, you'll pay a fortune and only get about 5 seeds.  Better if possible to import from the UK or save your own seeds.

For more food ideas why not have a look at some of these linkies: TastyTuesdays, Recipe of the Week and #NoWasteFoodChallenge

#NoWasteFoodChallenge

#NoWasteFoodChallenge

 

7 Ways to Free Up Freezer Space

Posted by Rosie

Hopefully if you are a fruit or vegetable grower you will be bringing home the harvests now and probably having more produce than you can eat.  If you are freezing this excess there is a good chance you are suffering from:

FULL FREEZER SYNDROME!

Our rapidly filling freezer!

This can be a serious problem if you still have produce to store, but fear not, there are ways to free up freezer space so you can store more of your wonderful harvest without having to buy another freezer!

7 Ways to Free up Freezer Space

1.  Flash or Open Freezing

      
Flash freezing is a method of freezing certain vegetables and fruit so they remain separate or free flowing instead of freezing together in a solid mass.  It works well for large amounts of veg like peas and beans, and delicate fruits such as raspberries.  Prepare the produce as normal, blanching if needs be and then spread them out on a tray in a flat layer.  They can just touch as long as they are not too wet.  Place the tray in the freezer and once frozen slide the individual pieces into a freezer bag.  This way the loose produce will fit better into the freezer and you can use small amounts as needed rather than waiting for when you need to use a big amount.

Flash Freezing Raspberries

2. Use preformers

      
For "wet" produce eg stewed tomatoes/fruit etc, freezing in small plastic tubs works well but often this leaves empty head space in the tub.  Therefore once the product is frozen, pop it out of the plastic tub (the preformer) and place it in a plastic bag.  Now you are not freezing air and the tub can be used again to freeze more produce.  The pots to the left in the photo above are not ice-cream but are stewed red cabbage and ratatouille, waiting to be put into smaller plastic bags once fully frozen.

3.  Brick Freezing

      
If however you do not have a selection of small plastic tubs but you do have a large one you can use this method.  Place your produce in the large tub and once it is almost frozen, take it our of the freezer and cut it into suitably sized blocks, freezing these in individual plastic bags.

4.  Keep an inventory and label things well

The bane of every freezer owner, the bag of something unknown that slips to the bottom of the freezer and never gets eaten thus taking up valuable space.  If you keep an inventory and label your produce well, you can track what you have and use up old supplies before adding new.  I won't mention how I once found 7 year old Worcesterberries lurking in the bottom of our freezer .... !

5.  Make soups with less liquid

If you turn your vegetables into soups and stews make them with less water/stock and add this after defrosting. Just make sure you label what you need to add.

6.  Cook produce to reduce space

      
Some fruit and vegetables take up less space when cooked.  For example stew your rhubarb or roast your tomatoes and purée them, then freeze in preformers as detailed in point 2.

7.  Use other methods to preserve produce

     

Bottled passata, roasted tomatoes and fruit

Do not always think that freezing is the only method of long term preservation.   Here at Eco-Gites of Lenault I bottle a lot of fruit and passata.  Other methods you can use include making jam, pickles, chutneys, sauerkraut, wine, syrups, fruit vinegars or dehydrating produce.  Many vegetables such as parsnips and leeks will happily stay in the ground over winter and others such as pumpkins, potatoes and carrots, using the correct methods, can be stored overwinter without the need to freeze them. 

My friend at Colour It Green says she plays Freezer Tetris at this time of year - taking one thing out and trying to add two more and then spending ages trying to get everything into the freezer!  I so know this feeling and all I can say is it is nowhere near as fun and a lot colder than the computer game of Tetris! 

Are you reaching freezer saturation  point?  Do you have any other methods you have used to make more space in your freezer?