A red letter day

Sunday October 5th 2014 is now a landmark. We’ve been waiting for them to arrive for several years, having seen them in large numbers in Ceredigion and as far east as Brecon.

We’ve each thought on a number of occasions that we’ve seen them here in the lower Rhymney Valley but I haven’t been totally convinced.

This afternoon, however, I was left in no doubt: red kites have reached us at last.

I was walking back down from Mynnydd Y Grug and saw about a dozen birds of prey soaring on a thermal ahead of me. At first I was surprised to see so many buzzards at once but then realised, after one glided about eight feet over my head, that at least eight of them were Red Kites.

They really are elegant birds and I'm delighted to see them here as they very nearly were extinct in Wales in the 1980s. I recall the SAS were guarding a rare nest of them at one stage as a part of their training (For the benefit of Mr Kite, the headline read).

But their arrival comes with a tinge of concern: friends in Aberarth, where red kites are commonly seen in groups of a dozen or more, say they no longer see buzzards.

It may be that, although the birds I watched on the thermal seemed totally at ease with each other, the kites may be outcompeting the resident raptors and perhaps, in a few years time, we'll be calling on the SAS to guard the buzzards' nests.

A bumper year for field mushrooms

Word got out early in August, that we were in the midst of a bumper season for field mushrooms, Agaricus campestris. And by the time I got to the meadow on the side of the valley below us, it was evidently in full swing.

The white caps of the freshly emerged  mushrooms were everywhere. Alongside the path at the bottom of the field they were conveniently plentiful.

I ventured out half-a-dozen times over the course of three weeks. I gathered as much as 2lbs (900g) of  mushrooms in one picking at their peak and probably 8lbs (3.5kg) over all. By the time the fourth week of August began, the season was drawing to a close.

The best time to collect them is in the morning. They are freshest then and less likely to be attacked by flies. Also, the cows in the field, having been sleeping during the night, have had less time to trample them.

One thing to bear in mind is that the wild field mushrooms are quick to deteriorate once picked. I try to use them up that day, which meant repeatedly breakfasting on Agaricus campestris-on-toast. You can have too much of a good thing.

I also made a pretty good mushroom and tarragon spread. Click here for the wild mushroom and tarragon pate recipe.

A bumper year for field mushrooms

Word got out early in August, that we were in the midst of a bumper season for field mushrooms, Agaricus campestris. And by the time I got to the meadow on the side of the valley below us, it was evidently in full swing.

The white caps of the freshly emerged  mushrooms were everywhere. Alongside the path at the bottom of the field they were conveniently plentiful.

I ventured out half-a-dozen times over the course of three weeks. I gathered as much as 2lbs (900g) of  mushrooms in one picking at their peak and probably 8lbs (3.5kg) over all. By the time the fourth week of August began, the season was drawing to a close.

The best time to collect them is in the morning. They are freshest then and less likely to be attacked by flies. Also, the cows in the field, having been sleeping during the night, have had less time to trample them.

One thing to bear in mind is that the wild field mushrooms are quick to deteriorate once picked. I try to use them up that day, which meant repeatedly breakfasting on Agaricus campestris-on-toast. You can have too much of a good thing.

I also made a very good mushroom and tarragon spread. Click here for the wild mushroom and tarragon pate recipe.

Wild mushroom and tarragon pate recipe

Here's a great recipe I adapted from several others to use up a plethora of wild mushrooms, that is, field mushrooms or Agaricus campestris.

I've only tried it with this moderately falvoursome species but suppose other varieties could be successfully substituted.

It seems mushroom and tarragon compliment each other well as there are loads of soup recipes online too.

Mushroom and tarragon pate

Ingredients

50g butter or olive-oil-based spread
2 shallots
1 small leek
2 garlic cloves
200g wild mushrooms
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
2 tbsp crème fraîche
3 tbsp fresh tarragon (or 1.5 tbsp dried)

Method

Melt the butter or spread in a large frying pan. Finely chop the shallots, leek and garlic, then gently fry for 5 minutes or until soft.

Finely chop the mushrooms, add them to the pan. Turn up the heat a little and add a little extra butter if they soak up all the oil. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring, until the juices have evaporated and the mushrooms are tender.

Add the mustard and crème fraiche plus a little salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 2 minutes more.

Finely chop the fresh tarragon and stir in. Don’t cook any further as it will reduce the tarragon flavour.


Once cool, it can be stored in the fridge for a few days. It goes well with toast or breadsticks. Enjoy!

Five swarms in two weeks

The mild winter has left the five beehives with strong colonies and with some half decent weather they’ve been able to fly, collect nectar and pollen and breed.

So much so that these strong colonies have obviously been keen to divide and it looks as if each one has swarmed in the last two weeks.

Two swarms have been in an oak tree just 20 feet from the apiary, a third in an ornamental Korean Fir on one side of it, the fourth in a hawthorn on the other side of it. Today, the fifth went the other way and flew up into the hedge above the hive from which it came.

There are still plenty of bees in the original hives, though it is not always possible to tell which have swarmed without a closer inspection. But with four of the fives swarms safely collected, we’re now more than fully stocked with bees for what could be a very productive summer.

Transplanting and growing leeks

After a slow start to their growing season in the cold spring of 2013, the leeks never caught up with the growth rate we wanted and produced little of any size.

But while they may not have won a beauty contest the certainly tasted just as good. Normally, I transplant leeks in mid-June but this year it was mid-July, and they were barely ready then.

I usually use a variety called Longbow which is good for the wetter than average conditions we get in the South Wales Valleys. I sow continuous rows of seeds and let them grow to about eight inches high or as thick as a pencil. Then they’re about ready to transplant.

The ground needs preparing. It should be good rich soil, perhaps limed if it's acidic or had manure on it recently and perhaps with a general fertiliser top dressing if it's likely to be light in nutrients.

You’re going to make holes in the soil about five to six inches deep and about an inch and a half in diameter. So it helps to soak the ground the night before so the soil is damp and firm and the sides of the holes won’t crumble in.

You can buy or make a special dibber for this job. They're usually a torpedo shaped piece of wood, often made out of an old spade or fork handle.

Make the holes about 12ins apart. Then gently tease up the leeks you’re going to transplant with a hand fork. I always take the biggest or thickest seedlings to plant individually. The rest can either stay in the ground or be put for a week or more in a pot of water to keep them fresh. They’re great for stir fries and even salads.

“The chosen ones” are simply dropped into the holes. It doesn’t matter if they have a bit of soil on the roots as long as they go to the bottom of the hole. Twisting them gently as they go down helps the fine roots in. The more stem that goes into the hole, the longer the blanched, white shaft of the leek will be, which is supposed to be the best tasting part (though I eat as much green as I can too, as long as it is tender).

Then water in gently – trying not to wash the sides of the holes in. And keep watered every day for a week or two until the roots are really established.

Making pears last for a few months

Just like the apples, the pear harvest was also mixed. We’ve only three trees in the orchard and another two on dwarf root stock coming on in the fruit cage, but not ready for producing fruit yet. So it fell to three trees to produce our crop.

The earliest of them is a lovely soft, round pear called Beth, which I normally harvest in mid-September. The tree itself is very small and suffers from being under the canopy – and competing with the roots - of a small copse of oak, ash and beech, with a few holly hawthorn and brambles thrown in. I’ll have to cut them back this winter.

But it wasn’t competition for light or nutrients that did for the crop this year but, once again, the cold spring. I don’t think the blossom suffered from frost as the benefit of it being so close to the copse is that it shelters it from frosts and cold south-easterly winds that we are vulnerable to.

However, the lack of pollinating insects was very noticeable at the time of the pear blossom and that looks to have done for virtually the entire crop. We had about three small fruit ripen – just enough to remind us of what we were missing.

The other two trees are later into blossom and faired better. Concorde was the best crop with plenty of good quality pears in the second week of October. And Conference, ripe a couple week later, also did okay with good quality fruit though not so many of them.

I also noticed there were far more pears on the sunnier, south and west facing sides on both of these trees.

We ate a few pears, the rest I’ve tried to process in various ways to keep them as they won’t store for long if left as whole fruit. To this end I’ve made:

• Pickled pears
• Pear, hazelnut and chocolate cake
• Sticky ginger and pear pudding
• Pear and cardamom tart
• Anjou pear cake

I’ll add the recipes or links to them on later articles, along with further links.

Making cider

I managed to press the bulk of the apples into about four gallons (17.5 litres) of apple juice. I didn’t bother keeping the varieties separate, just let them blend.

It takes around 20lb of apples to make a gallon of cider – no water added, of course. Those who buy a bag of apples from the shops and think they’re going to have a go may do better making an apple wine with plenty of water to bulk it out.

I used my brother’s apple press which takes about 9 litres of chopped fruit at a time. To start with you roughly chop the apples and then put them through a fruit mincer held over the open press.

The press itself is lined with muslin and then squashed. It’s a surprisingly long process and some would question whether or not it’s worth it. But there’s nothing like home-made cider ... no really, there is nothing like home-made cider!

Perhaps the fact that it all gets consumed reflects the effort that has gone into making it rather than the quality. Here, I’m speaking about my own, of course.

My brother, on the other hand, who makes loads of cider every year and bottles it with crown tops, makes some really decent stuff that I quite happily swig of an evening.

The last of mine tends to get used in cooking – pot roasts and casseroles – and here it works really well.

But this time I'm trying a new recipe and making a real effort to produce a decent drink. The recipe I’ve used is here and I've gone with the wild yeast rather than adding my own. I’ll report the results later.

When that will be – who knows? The mysterious art of cider making is a law unto itself! In the past cider makers used all kinds of techniques to determine when their brew was ready. One method was to add a one-cubic-inch nugget of pig iron to the fermentation. When this had completely dissolved the brew was ready.

And if pig iron was in short supply they turned to sheep – that’s a sheep, not sheep iron. They’d add a half a sheep to the fermentation vat and when the carcass was removed and no meat remained on the bones then the cider was ready.

Since I’m using demijohns, neither method holds much promise so I’ll stick to waiting until it is cleared (which hopefully it will).

Making apple cakes

I’ve already started putting the apple harvest to good use. The Bramley's make excellent Apple Cakes using a simple recipe:

Ingredients: 
1¾ cups plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ cup butter
½ cup sugar, plus 2 tbsp
1 egg, beaten
½ cup milk
1 large cooking apple (12oz or more)
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.
2. Butter a 10-inch pie tin or a Pyrex plate (great for shallow pies too).
3. Mix the flour and baking powder. Rub in the butter to produce a texture like breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, beaten egg and milk to form a soft dough. Pat out half of the very wet dough in the greased pie tin.
4. Peel, core and chop the apple into 2cm cubes. Cover the dough with the apples and sprinkle with 1 tbsp sugar and the cinnamon.
5. Gently spoon out the remaining dough on top of the apples to cover them completely. Sprinkle with the remaining 1 tbsp. sugar and cut a slit through the middle of the top dough.
6. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until golden on the outside.

The Bramley's do equally well in apple pies and, thanks to a very late and bountiful blackberry harvest (I picked what will probably be the last of them today), my favourite - blackberry and apple pie.

We’ve been eating the Sunset apples as whole fruit since mid-September and I’ve put a few dozen and a similar weight of Bramley's into storage to use over the next couple of months.

On Thursday I should be pressing the remaining fruit to make cider.

Successful apple trees

Two of the Katy trees produced good apple crops. The third and newest Katy, a four-year-old planted just two years ago on M11 rootstock and destined to become a full sized tree, didn’t. But I wasn’t disappointed as it needs to concentrate its energy on growing good strong roots at this stage.

The successes, as ever, were the Bramley's Seedling and the Sunset trees. I thinned the apples on all the trees in July but still the Sunset produced a massive crop of small but very tasty apples. I harvested the last of them today.

Some will be eaten, some cooked and the rest turned into cider. They are really a dessert apple and not generally used for cider making or cooking but they do okay.

The Bramleys, however, are out-and-out cookers. Huge, lumpy fruit, they retain their excellent flavour and soften quickly when cooked. 

Katy apples are quoted as being ready in the first week of September but for us it is usually the end of August. However, this year it was mid-September because of the very cold, long spring.

The fruit were picked and eaten straight from the trees to start with but then, as the volume overwhelmed us, I left them in a tray on the patio in full sun and the skins completely reddened (the Sunsets also take on far more colour once picked and stored in trays in the sun).

However, Katy apples don’t store well so whatever is left will go for cider – which is not a bad thing as they are commercially grown as both a dessert apple and a cider apple.

The apples that start to rot or are too badly damaged to bother with make a tasty and interesting diversion for the chickens.

Mixed apples, mixed fortunes

The apple harvest has apparently been good everywhere in the UK this year … everywhere, that is, except in our orchard.

Our fortunes were mixed with a couple of successes but a couple of total failures too.

Apple failures

One of our regular trees, a Cox’s Orange Pippin, suffered badly from the cold south-easterly winds that whipped up the Rhymney Valley last spring and froze and desiccated even some hardy plants.

It recovered but a lot of the new growth from last year perished and died. The rest of the tree suffered too. While everything was delayed by the unusually cold spring, this tree was much later coming into bud than the other apple trees.

When it did, those branches that had leaves had fewer than usual and those that had perished were just brittle sticks.

And there was very little blossom on it. I think by late June there were about four or five formative apples and all of these were lost before they could be harvested from what is usually a productive tree

Another apple tree suffered similarly with last year’s growth dying back and no fruit at all. But this tree – an Elliston’s Gold variety, has struggled to blossom at all since it was planted to replace a different variety that was removed five years ago because it was suffering from a canker.

I’m not sure what the problem is but there’s been very little blossom each year and the tree also suffers from a fungal infection each summer. I’ll watch it closely over the next 12 months and may have to resort to radical action.