Back at The Funny Farm in September

After selling our cottage, with an intended move to France, (which had to be shelved for now), we have finally finally settled into The Funny Farm completely. It is absolutely brilliant here, and my very Black Gardening Cat has got over the trauma of being unceremoniously 'shoved' into a plastic Cat Carrier Basket on the day of our move, and has become an exquisitely loving little black panther, that neither Trousers nor I recognise from the semi-feral beauty that we once allowed into our lives nearly a decade ago... A fantastic transformation of happiness in her that is so truly inspiring.

I must now apologise.......With it being such a long time since Trousers and I last 'blogged', we'd forgotten that our pictures come up here 'in reverse order' (!) and so you'll just have to 'go with the flow' peeples?!

I've never grown Grapes before, so - armed with the knowledge from the Farmer's Son that these ones tend to end up 'small and pippy', I've completely 'winged it' and tried to thin out the bunches a bit. And then I read somewhere that you should never touch the grapes with your hands. Well. Too Late Too Late my friends, I'd already gone and done that? But nonetheless, I shall take great pride in sampling them, however small and pippy they are. I can always try and improve on 'small and pippy' for next year, eh?!

In the same greenhouse, I've also been fortunate enough to take custody of a mature Peach Tree and a ditto of Nectarine. I was underwhelmed earlier in the year to find that we had NIL Peaches, and the only Nectarine just 'fell off' in my hand before it was ripe or edible!
Wellie was well and truly Gutted actually children.....

Anyhow - we've had a crackin' year with the Winter Squashes in my book (given that we moved mid spring and the veg garden wasn't here?!) So, even though I'm patting myself on the back, I feel that it's praise suitably well-deserved, because without having moved that mountain of well-rotted manure from the other end of the farm, I can assure you, you wouldn't be now looking at these little beauties at all!

But I did manage to start my tomato plants off in The Little Girl's Greenhouse back at The Cottage, and with a bit of TLC in the warmth of the new North-East facing conservatory (much lighter that the old one) they did fantastically well, and have probably been the best Tommies I've ever grown. Seriously. But I did sow them on the day that was forecast Biodynamically as being the best day to sow Tomatoes, so I'm well chuffed.

Talking of Well Chuffed.... Trousers does, no? Our friend Piggie gave me some Marshmallow Strawberry runners a while back, and we built a raised 'table top' strawberry planter to facilitate easier picking and less bovver from slugs'n'snails, and this little harvest was an evening's picking.

So I promptly took Bob Flowerdew's advice, and stuck them in a Kilner Jar with a litre of White Rum, put it in a dark place, and shook the jar every day for a couple of months! and I shall probably go completely Bonkers and make some Strawberry Rum Leather Chewy Sweeties from the pulp extracted from the alcohol when I'm ready to strain it. It's a toss-up between that and Strawberry Rum & Redcurrant Jam. Ooh! what am I like?!

Trousers has got more photos to show you in our continued progress on The Funny Farm, so it's worth popping back in a while to check it out if you're interested.

In the meantime, thank you for watching.

X