Into the oven

The Rayburn is back on again and I've had to change my mode of cooking from stove top pressure cooker to everything in the oven. We're now having soups or stews casseroled in the oven every day, slow cooking from breakfast onwards. I'm alternating between carrot, leek and potato, mixed veg (potato, kale, kohlrabi, celeriac, parsnip and carrot) and parsnip, with an occasional butternut squash soup. The easiest dish is baked whole pumpkins, served with butter, salt and pepper. At this rate the pumpkins are going to run out before the New Year.

Kinda cute celeriac

It's very windy again and we've had a fair bit of rain so the veg garden is looking a bit forlorn these days. Soon it will be time to dig beds over and tidy up. All the pumpkin plants joined the compost heap last week and Jim turned over all the compost; there is some lovely stuff to enrich the beds.

The fruit and veg wines are merrily fermenting away and we bottled the bramble wine the other day. Luckily there were two glasses left over to sample and very fine it was already.

 Larbrax Bramble '14

Quite an absorbing hobby, this wine making.

Monster from the deep

We harvested the first parsnip this week. It took us 20 minutes to get it out; the monster weighed in at 2.2kg.

Monster parsnip next to normal-sized parsnip and carrots

This is how it scrubbed up

It's not going to win any beauty contests, that's for sure. Since most parsnip wine recipes call for 2kg of parsnips, the fate of the monster seems preordained.

The weather's turned chilly, the wellie season has begun and it's only a matter of days until the Rayburn gets fired up for the winter.

Autumn weather

Our autumn raspberries (Autumn Bliss, Fall Gold and All Gold) are cropping well in their first year already and we have delicious raspberry porridge every morning.

I harvested most of the pumpkins and squashes and transplanted some herbs and salads into pots to keep them going in the greenhouse. The courgettes are still going strong. I wonder how long they'll keep going.

Metro gourds and Jack be littles

We didn't have much damage from our first two autumn gales, but the rocket got a funky haircut:

Rocket after 60mph

The garlic is ordered. No skimping this time. I've already planted some supermarket cloves, but have also treated myself to 40 cloves from the Real Garlicky Company.

Heard on Farming Today last week that there is a company growing tea in Scotland and that they are looking for more producers. Now there is a project for next year!

Ready for the storm

The first autumn gale is upon us and a second one scheduled close behind so we spent a busy few days harvesting and clearing up. Most of the onions are now drying in the guest room and some pumpkins are hanging out in the vestibule.

Jack be Little pumpkins

Now this pumpkin variety is called Jack be Little so I was expecting smallish pumpkins, but maybe they should rename it Jack be Tiny. At least the second lot is looking a more useful size.

We've just had a lovely gourmet weekend, with lots of garden produce, including artichokes and a watermelon. I couldn't resist and left some flowers on some of the artichoke plants for a small sampler.

Gourmet weekend cornucopia

Artichoke starter

Scottish watermelon dessert

 I've been experimenting with the dehydrator a fair bit. Drying tea herbs - excellent. Kale crisps - very good, which is just as well as I've gone a bit overboard with the kale, but only make what you want to snack on that day since the crisps don't keep well. Courgette crisps - disgusting, never again. Brambles - looks good, but the taste test will be in the porridge of the coming weeks.

Tabasco a go go

We've also been using 30 of our finest chillies to make our own Tabasco sauce. This has been quite a drawn-out process: three weeks of fermenting in a homemade Pickl-It jar, followed by one week maturing with vinegar. It should be ready for straining and bottling this week.

Doesn't look like we'll run out of cabbage this winter

In the veg garden, the spring cabbages and kale have come on immensely. They are ready to eat already! The leeks have also bulked up nicely.

 Leeks Musselburgh, but they also work on the west coast

A big thank-you to Green Bean who's sent me a gift of Egyptian onion babies, which I just managed to plant in a sheltered corner before the gale hit.

The middle paddock is on its way to becoming an orchard

Next to the veg garden, the middle paddock is slowly turning into an orchard, with four apple trees, 12 blueberries, six raspberries and two tayberries. We've already got the plastic down for a further six fruit trees this winter. Please note the nicely scythed grass!

The next few days will be spent hunkering down indoors. Might be the perfect opportunity to decide how to spend my first seed voucher...