rhubarb

756 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel - a twice a day ritual

Last night it was rhubarb as you can see below. This morning it was a sheet of the last green tomatoes, sliced. Tonight more of the tomatoes. And so it goes on day after day, until there will be nothing left to flash freeze.

---

766 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel: a spoiler from the Mrs as first apple chutney produced

Gettig folks to eat apples here at the Welsh Hovel is something of an ask. Which is an issue as we now have two apple orchards and also a highly productive cooking apple tree. I just hate things going to waste. We are now past the blackberry season so there can be no more blackberry and apple crumbles. Rhubarb and apple? Maybe that will work.

---

778 days ago

Photo Article: Yesterday's harvesting at the Welsh Hovel

There is just so much to do but my target is to harvest at least one crop a day and put it away for winter storage. Tomorrow is the official start of the apple harvest and, having jumped the gun by a week on the crabapples and edibles from the new top orchard I have created, work will, start on the old orchard by the river which is dripping with reddening apples begging to be scratted and crushed into juice. Meanwhile…

---

787 days ago

Photo article: Hard at work in the kitchen at the Welsh Hovel

Yesterday, as my Oxford contemporaries discovered whether they were moving up or down the slippery pole at Westminster, my five year old son Joshua and I celebrated getting a sex pest suspended from his work, by going blackberry picking. It is horses for courses I guess. But boy was it fun as we discovered two new spots where nobody seems to have been and which were dripping with blackberries.  Joshua’s motive is that if we picked enough I could make more cordial which then becomes ice cream. His birthday party looms and he is keen that his friends have his favourite ice cream. Meanwhile…

---

863 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel - Gooseberry jam

Those attending ShareStock will enjoy a full range of homemade jams, alongside breakfast croissants and tea-time scones. First up is the gooseberry jam, made with dessert gooseberries. There may be another pot to come, but for now, that is it. Next up, blackcurrant and strawberry jams.

---

912 days ago

Photo article from the Welsh Hovel: Before and after lavender shots

The garden I created in the area once known as the jungle sits about 4-6 foot, depending on where you are, above the lane that leads to the Welsh Hovel. You may remember that last year I lined it with lavender bushes. Then came the weeds.

---

1087 days ago

Photo from the Welsh Hovel: Rhubarb & ginger gin and crumble

In the run up to my next Greek trip, once every few days, I am now decanting various of the fruit gins and vodkas made in late summer. The Mrs and i are still working our way through the plum vodka. Yesterday I decanted the rhubarb and ginger gin.

---

1125 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel: The last crumble of the summer - blackberry and apple

Having spotted some blackberries in the churchyard yesterday morning, when the Mrs arrived home to take charge of Jayarani, I headed back through the drizzle with young Joshua to harvest. We discussed the weather in Welsh as walked up the hill. We both know all the key phrases and also “it is sunny” not that we get to use that very often.

---

1135 days ago

Photo article from the Welsh Hovel - the apple juice flows

I flagged up the other day that the apple harvest from the old orchard by the River Dee had been piss poor. But still what juice might it produce. As you can see below the press I bought last year was wheeled into action.

---

1160 days ago

Photo article from the Welsh Hovel – a picture to warm Olaf’s heart

It is hoped that daughter Olaf, currently spending a term at the Sorbonne in Paris, will honour us with a visit at Christmas and, as you might have gathered, she is a thirsty young lady. As such, I have today been adding to the plum and damson vodka, gently becoming even more fruit flavoured on the larder shelf.

---

1242 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel – more amazing ice cream: rhubarb, rhubarb

This time it is rhubarb ice cream using the same amount of cooked rhubarb as the recipe I am given for strawberries and using rhubarb juice for half the suggested amount of milk. So far Joshua has not had a taste, his penultimate Friday ever at his nursery beckoned so no breakfast here. But the Mrs agrees it is fairly magnificent. Ideal for those who want something a bit less sweet than yesterday’s elderflower ice cream.

---

1308 days ago

As the sun rises on snitcher-on-Dee near Wrexham, I see another frost – 16 lavender plants to replace & a Clawdd to fix

Here in Holt, the last village in Wales, where snitching on your neighbour with unfounded allegations is deemed fair game but something that cannot be discussed openly, a bright sun shines this Tuesday morning revealing another night of, modest, frost. So far this frost season the blossom on the fruit trees has survived and peas and beans planted a few weeks ago, grow unaffected.

---

1343 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel - The huge expansion of the fruit empire

A few folks asked how we could be enjoying rhubarb already here at the Welsh Hovel. The answer is in the top photo below; each of the eight plants is covered with a pot which seems to be accelerating growth. Don’t ask me to explain but it works. The tree in the middle of the rhubarb is, incidentally, one of the eight cherry trees I planted in December 2019 and it looks all set to blossom and deliver fruit quite magnificently this year. But it is not just the rhubarb which, after some persuasion, even four-year-old Joshua decided he liked.

 

---

1344 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel: Rhubarb, Rhubarb

It is only March but we have the first harvest from the newly created gardens at the Welsh Hovel – a small bunch of rhubarb.  There is more to come. Today sees the planting of beans, peas and potatoes. Yesterday it was (indoors) chillis and peppers. More photos later.

---

1373 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel - the 2021 planned fruit harvest part 2, rhubarb

This patch is the far end of the area formerly known as the jungle. Behind the wall is the lane down to the hovel and on the opposite side of it is the only other chap in the village who is cursing the defeat of Ireland by Wales today. Eight rhubarb plants went in last year and eight have emerged this year. They are now all covered with pots which, I am told, gets them shooting ahead faster. Round the edge are the surplus lavender plants from the lavender hedge we are creating, and in the middle one of the cherry trees planted 14 months ago along the edge of the garden and which is coming along very well indeed. So I hope for another bumper rhubarb harvest to make rhubarb gin for the Mrs, rhubarb crumble for Joshua and er…what else do you make with rhubarb?

---

1397 days ago

Stunning Welsh Hovel photos - the jungle is now almost a vegetable garden

If I tried to explain my pride at what you see below to daughter Olaf she would just roll her eyes with that “daddy you are so old and boring“ look. So, dear readers, humour me and share my pleasure at what you see below.

---

1414 days ago

Pondering so many, sometimes conflicting, New Year’s Resolutions

The day is looming when I must consider my New Year’s Resolutions. It is no great shock in that my top few are all to do with being a little bit, no a lot more, healthy. Spending those last couple of weeks with Dad and his death, covid, the second big lockdown here in Wales, the new baby and now Christmas have not been good for my health. The large Christmas jumper given to me by my mother in law is a little tight. I am all too aware of what needs doing. I am 53 in two weeks time and I have a one month old baby so I need to up my game in the healthy living department. It is all very well me considering plans for wind down and retirement but you have to live long enough to get to spend more time with your children and goats.

---

1505 days ago

Photo Article from the Welsh Hovel - welcome to the gin factory

The two bigger jars were made earlier and already my damson and rhubarb gins are starting to take on a colour. The smaller, later batches of apple and pear are not colouring yet. In fact, I am not sure they ever will. The next steps: shake each jar once a day for a week so that all the sugar dissolves. Then store in a cold dark place, not hard to find here in Wales, until Advent when all four batches should be ready.

---

1506 days ago

Photo article from the Welsh Hovel - the final fruit harvesting

I harvest not just for myself but for the pensioner couple one house up the lane and 95 year old E one house further up. And so we have a small number of crab apples from the two trees I planted this year – enough for one small pot of crab apple jelly, the last of the damsons for gin and then stacks of cooking apples from the orchard by the river and pears from a tree in the centre of the vegetable patch. Then finally some rhubarb which I planted this year… I have promised the family rhubarb crumble this evening. But I will also be making apple jam, pear jam and maybe a bit of rhubarb and ginger gin.

---

3012 days ago

Photo Article - summer pudding improvisation with a hat tip to Darina Allen

I noted in my culinary bible that is a Darina Allen tome a recipe for summer pudding without raspberries. Darina uses cake as her padding I stick with the traditional white bread. Armed with the last of the blackcurrants from Shipston as well as the last of the dessert gooseberries I started to improvise. Having cooked both fruit until they popped in sugar water the overwhelming taste was blackcurrant. The juice was like concentrated ribena. But cripes there was not enough mixture for both bowls.

---

3046 days ago

Photo Article: here you go its gooseberry and rhubarb crumble

As I mentioned at some stage last week my step mother is keen that fruit from the garden in Shipston does not go to waste. And so I returned home for an all too brief weekend in Bristol with a punnet of gooseberries that I had picked. Oakley's friend Tara was buried beneath the rhubarb earlier this year and, I apologise if you regard this as tasteless but it had come up amazingly.

Hence below

---