An apple a day...

... makes Granny Smith a very rich old lady.

I always knew the Piccolo Book of Jokes and Riddles would come in handy one day and I can't believe I only got one chance to tell it when we went to Erddig Hall at the weekend for their 20th apple festival.

We are both sick of the supermarkets and their crappy apples from South Africa, Portugal and Holland so when we found out about this festival on a previous visit to the National Trust property near Wrexham we were determined to visit. We weren't the only ones either, as the place was full at 10.30 on a Saturday morning and we all had to wait until precisely 11.00 before they opened the doors.

Erddig Hall is a lovely property, with an interesting house as well as nice gardens. The apples were set up in a tent away from the main house, and there were, according to the brochure, over 120 varieites available. There weren't that many on show or sale but the choice of what they had was amazing. Far too many to make an informed choice and there was no way we could take one of each. For a start we'd have forgotten the names before we were out of the marquee. So we um-ed and ah-ed and eventually bought a selection:

• Foxes delight - crisp and juicy
• Red devil - hard and crunchy 

Both from a farm shop set up in the slightly off-putting 'midden yard', along with some Buerre Hardy pears which were crisp and crunchy, not soft and gooey like so many of the crappy ones you get at Asda. Add to that a couple of bottles of pure apple juice (which is perfect with Żubrówka) and we were loaded down before we even got to the main attraction.

From the Erddig stocks we went a bit mad:

• Tower of Glamis - to cook with
• Lord Lambourne - a crisp, slightly tart, eating apple
• Rushmead's Kernel - a very tart apple that stores well. These have been wrapped and stored and will come out at Christmas as a special treat. Assuming, of course, they last that long.

We were disappointed that no quince were available, nor were there any damsons or plums. There was plenty of other entertainment, though, and I discovered the £3.50 I charge for a 1lb jar of honey fell far short of the £5 they were charging for pretty much the same thing. With mouths open, we wandered past a potter, basket maker and tree surgeon to end up watching the Border Morris Dancers, who were very good and very entertaining. The girls were very sedate, flicking their hankies and skipping around, but the boys, all blacked up in 'disguise' were a bit more raucous and obviously enjoyed themselves.

Halifax Agricultural Show...

It was a grey, windswept morning on the day of the Halifax Agricultural Show and we arrived just after eight to find most of the showground closed. Exhibits were still arriving in the poultry tent and cows were still being washed by the side of the park. It is the first time I have ever been to a show where things got going after we had arrived.

Having said that, once it got going it was a good day out. The showground seemed to be divided into two sections; one for livestock and people interested in that, and the other for punters looking to be entertained by stalls and shops. We definitely preferred the livestock side and spent quite a while chatting to goat and cow owners. Everyone was very accommodating and went out of their way to give Agnieszka an opportunity to take pictures.

I spoke to a goat owner and am in the process of organising a visit with a view to a bit of hands on experience, to boost my knowledge and hopefully to learn how to hand milk. A skill I don’t have but definitely need if we are to keep goats in the future.

Other highlights of the day included the Shire horses, some very large bulls, a packed poultry tent, the mice section and the horticulture tent. Local people seemed to make up the bulk of the estimated 10,000 visitors and plenty entered things into the cakes, beans and art sections.

We spent nearly eight hours there, from the drizzly early dawn to a bright and sunny afternoon. It felt right to be around the animals and I hope one day we might even turn up with our own.

Pom-poms and inspiration...

I’ve never really been that interested in flowers, and I still prefer growing vegetables or herbs, but a recent trip up to Harrogate and the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Harlow Carr may well have changed that. We were watching an episode of Gardener’s World and the RHS garden was featured, it looked lovely, as did the forecast, so we chugged up there to have a look.

We knew we were the oddballs from the very start, when we parked our mud-spattered Ford next to gleaming 4x4s and personalised number-plated Jags. A quick look at the Bettys Restaurant menu made us glad we’d brought our dinner, which we had in the willow garden, basking in the sun.

I always feel a little out of my depth at places like this, like everyone else knows far more than me. A lot of the people there looked like they’d retired and would spend all their time in the gardens, bursting with knowledge, Latin plant names tripping off their tongues, a sit-on lawn mower and a man who comes in twice a week to ‘tidy up’. So I was heartened when three women walked past, close to the sea holly, and I heard one say: ‘I don’t know what they are but I really like those pom-pommy things.’

The gardens themselves were fantastic. The herbaceous borders being my own personal favourite; inspiring and depressing at the same time. I found the kitchen garden too higgledy-piggledy, with too many flowers in among the vegetables. The scented garden had seen better days but the new alpine house and the forest walks were lovely. To walk through the trees when the rhododendrons were in full flower would be spectacular, so we may well be back for another visit.

Completely home grown...

Despite the long winter and the generally crappy weather, we are now starting to get enough food from the plot to give us a completely home grown tea. With a few variations, they generally look like this:

It might not look much, but it tastes wonderful.

Holiday in the sun...

After last October and our rain-drenched two weeks, we were determined to get some sun on our holiday this time - and we did! It has been such a comedown, though, being back in the rain-drenched shires that I haven't felt like posting anything. Even now I am struggling to think of how to report the whole two weeks in one post.

The easiest way is through photos, and these are the highlights:

Berlin: The Fernsehturm and World Clock, Alexanderplatz

Sleepy East Germany: Angermünde

Cooling off in Szczecin

Storks in various places, mostly on the top of precarious-looking nests

Breakfast in Osuch by the mill pond

Wheat and barley fields with no sign of pesticides, just a rainbow of wild flowers

A pedalo on the lake; silence except for the creaking of my knees

A barbecue on the beach, in 35 degree heat

Spot the difference...

Planting out at last...

Another weekend of warm weather saw us planting out at the plot. It was warm, sunny, quiet and the soil was dry and crumbly, the fine tilth you hear so much about. I love planting out, checking the distance between the plants, digging the hole and settling them in before a good water to settle them in. I learnt the hard way last year after squeezing in too many savoy cabbages in a small space. I’ve gone a bit mad with the calabrese this year and we have about 30 plants in now and another dozen for our own plot.

One of the reasons we bought a chest freezer was so we could fill it full of produce for over the winter and apart from a few loaves and some rhubarb it’s still pretty much empty, so at least this way we can top it up and have veg for the winter.

We’re trying a new tactic against cabbage white butterflies this year, a concoction of rhubarb leaves, steeped in water for several weeks (longer actually as my dad forgot where he’d put the bucket) and then diluted to spray on the leaves of any brassicas. Apparently the smell masks the scent of cabbage and keeps the butterflies away.

The spinach has already provided us with a superb meal of nalesniki, and so easy to make. There was so much spinach last week we had to freeze three bags of it and I was grateful a carrier bag full of spinach wilts down to a fist-sized freezer bag. Next job is to take some beetroot leaves and make botwinka, a lovely light summer soup. That’ll keep us going until the beets are big enough to make barszcz with, can’t wait.

The lovage has also picked up and shows signs of vigorous growth which is heartening as it looked quite ill for the first couple of weeks. If you've never eaten it, it has a lovely delicate celery taste and is perfect as an addition to salads or soups. Not too much, though, as it can be a little overpowering.

Finally, the most glorious sight on any piece of land, potatoes as far as the eye can see. Well, not really, but not bad. Agnieszka was surprised at how much they’ve grown over the past few weeks. The weather has been good for them, plenty of rain followed by a few dry and sunny days, then plenty more rain.

Finally, the foxgloves given to us by my mum last year are in full bloom, bursting with bumble bees and swaying majestically in the breeze, a lovely sight.

Yours are bigger than ours...

The weather at the moment is strange. For one or two days the sun is cracking the flags, then it clouds over, goes chilly and rains for three or four days before going back to being sunny again. Last weekend, with my parents away, we spent the day weeding, tidying and watering on their plot. The previous day I went to our plot and had only been there a few minutes before the heavens opened and I got soaked to the skin picking some spinach for tea. Saturday, however, was completely the opposite: hot, sunny, dry. We spent ages watering all the plants and baskets, pots and beds and then later that evening, and all the following day, it rained almost constantly.

One thing I have noticed is the difference in size and quality from things grown on our plot, where the soil is crappy, shallow and devoid of nutrients, and my parents' plot onto which tons of muck has been shovelled over the years. Our plot will catch up, but it takes time. These onions are on the good soil and are twice the size of the ones on our allotment, despite them both being planted around the same time last year and despite both sets sitting through the extended snow-filled winter.

The lettuces are doing really well, started off at home in a tray, potted on and then planted out a couple of weeks ago. We can probably start tucking into them in the next week or two.

Finally, a strange occurence in the garlic bed. It appears that the single bulb has added a few siblings which have now decided to make a break for it. I have never seen this before and wonder if anyone else has. Is it caused by the extreme cold followed by warm days? Too much / too little rain / watering? A genetic malfunction? Any thoughts are most welcome.

This week it is time to pot on the ogorek and some Romanesco Calabrese, a new type we're trying this year. I also need to find out why my dwarf French beans won't germinate. I have tried several batches of a dozen but so far only have five plants. What am I doing wrong? Answers on a postcard please...

So near but yet so far...

The gap between the dream and reality was never so apparent as last weekend when we went, for the second time, to the Smallholder and Garden Festival in Builth Wells.

The first time, in 2009, all was new, exciting, overwhelming even. It was an opportunity to see animals and ask questions of their owners in a way we hadn’t been able to do before. It allowed us to decide that Anglo Nubian goats were our goat of choice and that a cow needed too much space. We spoke to people who bowled us over with their enthusiasm and positivity while, at the same time, leaving us with no illusions that a smallholder lifestyle is a soft option.

This visit we went with open eyes and decided to concentrate on less but more intently. This also proved difficult as there was again so much to see but we did spend plenty of time around the goats and Anglo Nubians came out top again, although Toggenburgs come a close second. I spoke to a very nice lady from Devon who gave me lots of advice and then brought everything home by asking: How much land do you have?

So the dream and the reality are still very far apart. While the slowly recovering economy is starting to reduce the negative equity we found ourselves in two years ago, it’s a long drawn-out process and one that will probably never give us a good return for our money. At the moment I think we’d be lucky to get the deposit back. Anything on top of that is a bonus.

So what are the next steps? Well, firstly a trip to Poland in July which will be concentrated around Szczecin. This will allow us to explore the area further and decide if it really is where we want to be. It will also enable us to visit a few estate agents and talk to some people about the price and availability of property with land. After that we can decide if we have the money to carry on.

It's a dirty job, but...

When I was 17 and Channel 4 was just months old, I watched The Animals Film. It showed, in graphic detail, factory farming and what went on in a vivisectionist’s laboratory. I decided there and then that no animal needed to live in such conditions and I gave up eating meat (and six months later, fish) as a personal protest. I said at the time that when factory farming stopped, or when I killed and ate my own meat, then I would eat it again. That hasn’t changed over the years, neither has my support of animal welfare (although not animal rights). Over the weekend, though, I think the day got that little bit closer.

We had three hens. The biggest used to bully the other two to the stage where they have almost no feathers on their backsides. One of them was also laying shell-less eggs. So, with my dad’s help, we built a ‘sin bin’ and I started to isolate them to find out who was laying soft eggs. It turned out to be the bully, so she was put in the sin bin for two days to try and cure the feather pecking. However, when she was put back in the run she viciously attacked the other two and plucked feathers from anywhere within reach. So we took the decision to cull her.

Not an easy decision but the hens aren’t there to look pretty, they’re there to lay eggs. As Agnieszka said, we’re not a charity. In addition, if I want to farm a smallholding, then there will be times I need to cull birds or animals and if I can’t do it, then I might as well forget that kind of life. It isn’t something I would do for the hell of it, just when it’s necessary. So I took advice about the correct procedure and late on Friday night when it was dark and everything was still and quiet, I lifted her out of the sin bin and wrung her neck. She was plucked, dressed and in the fridge an hour later.

To say I haven’t wrestled with my conscience over the weekend would be an untruth. It bothers me that I did something I thought I never would. I lost sleep over it, felt guilty, tried to justify what I did and at the end of it all came to the conclusion that it was the best thing. We don’t have room for a ‘free-loader’. She had a good year with us, was well looked after, but in the end she stopped producing what she was bought for.

Learning the hard way...

I've been keeping bees for over two years now and am part-way through my second full season. I do enjoy working my way through the hive, trying to guess what they're going to do next, trying (and usually failing) to see the queen, checking for stores brood and varroa.

I get more confident with every hive inspection and I find I am now thinking ahead more to try and ensure I am not caught out when I get to the hive as it is a half hour drive away from the house and forgetting a vital piece of equipment is a real pain and means a second journey.

Although i am far from being an expert, I do know a little and a colleague from work, who got his first colony last year asked me to go along and check his bees over as he was worried after the long winter. So one Sunday we went up and had a look. I should've been alerted by the pitch of the buzzing that came from the hive but I assumed they were calm bees like my own. They aren't.

We only got part-way through the brood before I decided they were too agitated to carry on, although by then we had seen the queen and made sure she was laying. We put the hive back together and I had moved away and taken off my veil when I wandered back over to help put the woodpecker guard on. That's when I got stung twice on the side of my head. Not content with that, they also stung Agnieszka on the leg and, as we left, I saw several come straight out of the hive to try again.

So for three or four days I've been walking lop-sided and staring out of one eye like some kind of cyclops. We laughed about it at the end but I'm not sure we'll be rushing back to have a second look; if we do, I won't be taking the veil off!

Kwiecień plecień...

Kwiecień plecień,
Bo przeplata,
Trochę zimy,
Trochę lata.

Easter was early this year and both of us have noted how we’re still in winter coats, with the heating on at night, despite it being light now until nearly half past seven. From a planting point of view, everything seems to be late. The garlic and onions that went in before Christmas have survived, for the most part, but the spring cabbage have wilted and will have to be removed to make way for more onions. The leeks were doing ok although some rotted in the soil, and they’ve now all been lifted, blanched and frozen so there’ll be a bit of soup to be had yet.

Onions and garlic (above, on the right) and potatoes (below, first earlies

on the right with the maincrop due to go where the black plastic is)

In a sunny window I managed to plant up some more autumn fruiting raspberries as well as three blackcurrant bushes. These bushes need a lot of room and we thought a lot about taking up the space but I think we can work round it by using small patches in different parts of the plot.

Sunday saw me having to feed the bees. The winter has been so long that they've had no chance to forage and have used up almost all their stores so I gave them a bit of sugar syrup to keep them going. There were a lot more under the lid than I thought there'd be, which made going in without a veil a bit of a silly idea, especially with my new 'summer haircut'.

We also decided to break up some of the pallets and make fences to keep in the lilies and some other bulbs whose name I have forgotten, sparaxis maybe? The trellis was salvaged from the long grass and the honeysuckle that did so badly last summer seems to be going from strength to strength, as do the foxgloves at the opposite end. The plan is to add some cosmos, sweet peas and maybe some ribes to give lots of colour, feed for the bees and also make a windbreak. We both enjoy going there to dig and potter so it makes for a nice relaxing morning, if only the roar from the motorway could be replaced with birdsong!

Without bread all is misery...

So said William Cobbett: pamphleteer, farmer and parliamentary representative for Oldham in the early part of the 19th century. However, if he had popped round here a couple of months ago he would have changed his tune pretty sharpish: 'with this bread, all is misery'. I had a go at making sourdough bread after reading plenty about how wonderful it is. I remain unconvinced.  While the starter worked fine and the actual 'dough' seemed to do ok, the end result was disappointing. Brick-like and tasteless. It wasn't helped by the fact I forgot to add salt to the flour and tried to hide this mistake by serving the bread with salt on top.

So I have gone back to 'regular' bread. I'm now at the stage where I can make a few loaves a week without too much faffing or swearing, and they can be frozen until needed. We both take 'bagging' to our day jobs and a few slices always comes in useful. Usually the chore needs to be done when the heating is on so the dough will rise but now it is getting a bit warmer during the day it seems to come up with no problem.

On a visit to Buxton in February we found a shop that sold the old type of bread tin, not the fancy non-stick ones, and I have two of those for 1lb loaves, plus a 1lb non-stick one bought in an emergency. The 3lb of flour plus yeast and water makes three loaves as well as between 8-12 small buns. As I get more confident I am slowly experimenting with things like rye and spelt flours, wholewheat flakes, herbs and sunflowers seeds. Not all of the results are brilliant, but they are all edible and by my own hand. That's worth a lot to me.

Dla Ewka

We're always thinking of you.