The Idler

Country Diary: 18

The Idler’s Editor, Tom Hodgkinson, has retired to a Devon farmhouse. Here’s the eighteenth part of his diary.

JUST WHEN we thought it was all over with the chickens… Arthur and I were clambering up the haystacks in the farmer’s barn the other day when, twenty foot up, we found a clucking hen sitting on the straw. I pulled my jumper over my hand to avoid being pecked and rooted around underneath it. It was sitting on fourteen eggs. We carefully removed a dozen - apparently if you take them all then the hen will bugger off and find somewhere else to lay - and took them home in triumph. Unfortunately ten were rotten but at least now we know where to find the eggs.

THE SLUGS and caterpillars continue to wreak havoc in the vegetable patch. The poor cauliflower plants have been stripped bare and so we’ve been making regular slug-destroying trips. We fill up a jam jar with an assortment of stomach-churning blobs of fat and then pour boiling water over them before chucking the gloopy mess on to what is becoming a slug graveyard next to the barn. Alas, it appears too late to save the pea and runner bean plants, which wither further every day. Each bean and pea pod is covered in silver and black spots and they look distinctly unappetising. The leeks and parsnips, thank God, appear to be immune to slug attack and I understand from my vegetable book that we’ll be digging up the parsnips in about a month. The leeks grow very slowly but should provide leeks through the winter. I didn’t realise that there were all these winter vegetables as well. My book says we should plant spinach now for winter greens, which sounds like a good idea.

A NEW DISCOVERY has been prawns. Arthur and I go down to the bay and hunt for them in rock pools. We knock a limpet from the rock with a stone, tie it to a piece of string and wait with our little net at the ready. The prawns - which look like tiny transparent lobsters - mosy over to inspect the limpet and away we scoop. The last catch was five. We then bring our haul back to the kitchen and drop the little things in boiling water, whereupon they curl up and turn pink. Then we eat them, or at least we eat the ones that are big enough to be eaten. It may be a meagre repast, but the fun of getting food for free is enormous. Hunting, truly, falls between work and play: it’s enjoyable and useful. I’ve even started to fantasise about buying a lobster pot to leave in the sea. One day we will get our own boat and pull more food out of the water.

VICTORIA has been baking some fantastic loaves. She has discovered a wheat flour substitute called spelt flour which makes tasty loaves without the heaviness of wheat. As the months go by we find we are using less and less supermarket produce and more food grown nearby. The butcher sells the most delicious bacon for about ��2.50 a pound. Instead of cereals we have porridge and home-made muesli. The vegetables come from the garden and from Riverford home delivery. The kitchen now barely has a brand name in it and Arthur hasn’t mentioned Coco-Pops for months, which we count as a result.

I THOUGHT I’D write a list of what we’ve grown so far.
Potatoes: hundreds of delicious potatoes, the success of which was marred by a load of rotten sludge-filled rubbers towards the end of the season.

Tomatoes: zero, unless you count the single green ball - about the size of a marble - that has appeared on my one remaining tomato plant.

Green beans: pounds and pounds. More than we could use. Delicious.

Peas: about four meals worth. Next year I will give more space to peas and less to runner beans. The little ones were amazingly sweet and tasty, and the kids ate them raw from the pod.

Carrots: around 100, 98 of which were fantastically wonky. Give more space next year. According to the books, we should be lifting and storing carrots by now, but we ate the last one two months ago.

Beetroots: these were really easy and next year I’ll grown more.

Onions: twenty five giant onions, which I’ve dried and which we’re gradually using up.

Garlic: twenty five nice garlic cloves, which should last us a good few months.

Spring onions: these were really easy but again I grew too many.

Courgettes: two plants, given to me by Alan, were ample for a long summer of courgette eating.

Radishes: always easy and fun, they only take about a month from sowing to eating.

Rocket: despite the presence of the odious Alan Titchmarsh on the seed packet, the rocket grew brilliantly. In fact, there was far too much. Now it’s all over the place and I notice that seed pods have appeared. Does this mean I can keep the seeds from the pods and plant them next year?

Lettuces: the first round in the summer were excellent and we had about twenty. The problem was that they were all ready at the same time. Therefore I need to learn about sowing them at intervals. The second round of sowing was a disaster: about thirty plants have been completely destroyed by slugs. I might try once more as you can sown lettuce all year round.
Leeks: I sowed a few rows next to the runner beans and then transplanted them to where the onions had been. They seem to be OK. Apparently you’ve got to “earth up” when it’s dry. This contributes to blanching. I’m not quite sure what “earthing up” means, or blanching, for that matter, and also it hasn’t been dry. So I’ve been drawing up little piles of earth around the base of the bigger plants, hoping this is the right thing to do.

Curly kale: there are about 20 plants. They are all still alive - just - but most are mere skeletons, having been stripped by little green caterpillars which are hard to spot as they are the same colour as the stalks.

Caulfilower: they started off all right, but the 12 I transplanted have been severely attacked by slugs and it’s doubtful whether they will make it.

Broccoli: there are about twenty broccoli plants still growing where I planted them, some bigger than others. They should have been transplanted two months ago but I forgot. They have suffered some damage from pests but one or two are looking quite healthy. I wonder if I should put them where the spring onions used to be. The only problem is that they’re supposed to like firm ground and the soil in all the empty spots seems quite light. I’m not sure how to firm up the ground. Do you just walk around on it in your wellies?

THE CATS have been leaving turds and pisspools around the house again, so we have banished them to the barn formerly occupied by the hens. They now mew piteously at my study window when I am trying to work and at the kitchen window when we we are making tea or having breakfast. They slip between our feet back into the house as we open the back door, and leap on to the table to steal our food. They leave vole, rat, mouse, rabbit, frog and bird entrails in the laundry room. Still, no mice.