OH and I spent the afternoon on our allotment today, tidying up and being seen by the committee, in case someone had taken umbrage at the state of our plot. It's not actually looking half bad now. I've cleared the nasturtiums from the lattice fence, which were going slimy, cut down the mint stalks, ripped out the borage, gave the santolina a shave to get it to bush out next year, harvested some coriander and dill seeds and also armfuls of fresh parsley, perpetual spinach, chard seed, broccoli florets, the last carrots and the Bavarian purple radish.
Last week, I'd already gone and weeded the back beds where the pumpkins used to be. OH had dug over the old potato and onion beds in a separate session so there wasn't that much left to do -- apart from the structural work, of which later.
I sowed some lettuce and some more 'radi' (type Eiszapfen / icicle) and put the mini-polytunnel with the black debris netting over it. I've sited it against the south-facing side of the allotment, which is shielded from the north wind by the corrugated steel fence. If I get lettuce off this site during the winter, I'll be very pleased.
The red cabbage this year isn't great -- could be the type we used or maybe it just didn't take to the debris netting and got too much shade. But given that we only finished the 2011 red cabbage last night (thawed and stewed with apples and cloves and casseroled with salami plus roadkill potatoes from the supermarket -- quite nice!), we're probably not too sad that there isn't more. Truth be told, we've now got fresh kale coming out of our ears and the frost has still not got to the majestic red chard in the allotment sunspot.
OH meanwhile was testing the remaining grapes on his Mueller-Thurgau, which were lovely and sweet. When these vines get going, there'll be no stopping him. For now, I am grateful that he has offered to rescue my last batch of cloudy home-made apple juice, which for reasons I simply cannot fathom has gone from cloudy to fuzzy. I had pasteurised the stuff into submission -- I know it because I measured it with my thermometer. I don't even mess around with 75 degrees. I go up to 85 degrees and keep it there. Don't know what's gone wrong. But now I also know why, in the last week or so, I had had to visit the facilities so often after I'd necked a pint of the stuff every morning. I just thought, whoa, pure appleage, I'm being sluiced out here by concentrated appley fibre. And there was me thinking that I had so far escaped the bronchitis viruses and vomit bugs that are circulating out there because I was drinking this superhealthy vitamin bomb while all I was really doing was take a honking great dose of nature's most impressive antibiotic every day: mould.
OH thought it was hilarious but said that the stuff was salvagable for cider, that all it would take was a campden tablet and that the yeast that turned sugar into alcohol would take care of the rest. I stared at him and the floating island of snowy fuzz in my brown-glass swingtop bottle. "Okay," I said, "have a go. If it tastes alright, I'll drink it."
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