Harvest time

Ok so we are bigging it up a little, but in our own little way we are now harvesting the vegetables we planted and the fruit trees on our land. Today Bee fought through the jungle of the veg patch to reveal some untidy tomatoes desperately in need of training up stakes and the onions that were being strangled by some kind of bind weed and ivy.  We are paying for 3 weeks away and loads of rain during our absence. 

The potatoes that we carefully denuded of colorado beetle (aparently more common here whereas their presence in a UK field is the equivalent to pest warfare) were so overgrown we decided the only course of action was to start eating them (the spuds not the beetles).

So for lunch today we had some pretty ugly but blindingly awesome ripe tomatoes and for dinner we had the same toms, newly dug new (ish) potatoes and some rather splendid ripe yellow pear-shaped cherry tomatoes that we planted as a trial. 

We have at least 8 pear trees of which a couple that have been cared for are producing enormous pears in abundance (we will pick them tomorrow) and the rest which been neglected are producing tiny but quite tasty fruit. 

The small pears are being shed at a rate of knots so "booze production" is written all over those.  We just discovered an elderberry today - must research elderberry wine!

Furthermore the plum trees are all bearing ripe fruit with some delicous tiny dark plums that will be eaten fresh, frozen or bottled and loads of yellow plums that we think are called mirabelles (as per the guy who donated us a bottle of mirabelle hooch in a Perrier bottle during one of those business meetings in the Alps).  We could never persuade anyone to drink it with us strangely!.

The few apple trees we have are bearing near ripe fruit but it is destined more for cooking or bottling as the skins are a bit rubbery.  We invested in a copper pan and preserving jars today - our 1st attempt at making jams, poaching fruit and juice-extraction will be happening soon!

Next year after some serious pruning and proper thinning out, the fruit trees should do a lot better. We are looking forward to Al's dad Graham coming out to the mill for the 1st time in the autumn for some much-needed advice on how and what to prune.

After tasting all the fruit today we have had at least 10 of our 5-a-day......