In addition to my post below,we also have a small spattering of the other sort of corn - err, corn. Field corn? It’s been growing under the crab apple all summer. I thought it looked good, especially as we have lots of poppies growing close by. It’s also been a handy place for wildlife to shelter, and I took a picture of one such resident:

I have been wondering if I can do anything useful with the corn though. I can’t really see myself grinding it down by hand with a pestle and mortar (partly because I don’t own one). So my little project is to find out harvest corn, how to mill corn by hand, and how much you need to do something decent with. Corn chips, anyone? Does it make flour easily? Am I completely on the wrong track? It’s actually quite embarrassing that I’m so baffled by the whole thing.

Anyroad, I’m not totally opposed to the idea of having a mini corn field here next year. The only problem is the chickens and cats have a tendency to sit in the middle of it and flatten it…more investigation needed me thinks.

I originally planted a small block of sweetcorn, but BunBuns and Hens were very helpful (!) in scratching up the kernels I’d planted and eating them. Hence, only two lone sweetcorn out of a whole block grew. Sweetcorn needs to be planted in a large block so the plants can pollinate and produce their goods. So I wasn’t really banking on the two plants that did manage to escape the nibbling nibblers to do anything.  Yesterday I bit the bullet and decided to CHEAT. Yes, I feel thoroughly ashamed, and I’m not sure why. I bought a tray of young sweetcorn plants from the garden centre and planted them in. They’re probably a completely different variety to the ones that are already half-grown, but nevermind. Hopefully the newbies will do something, and the oldies will attempt to do something.

I don’t know why I feel it’s cheating. I only feel like I’m doing a ‘proper’ job if I grow from seed. It makes me sound a bit like a veg-growing puritan, but I can’t help it! I don’t get the same sense of achievement from sticking in plug veg. It doesn’t feel like it’s been nurtured - in some ways it’s just like buying it from a supermarket because it’s come out of a massive commercial hothouse. But then, I guess this is only where the seeds come from too?

Anyway what’s done is done. For £2.99 I got 34 sweetcorn plants - so if you go on the premise that you yield at least 1 sweetcorn per plant, then that’s about £30 worth of sweetcorn there. At the supermarket it’s around £1.79-£1.99 for 2 cobs, and they come from places like Morocco. So I must be saving a heck of a lot of money, food miles and probably getting better flavour too. That’s if they grow and produce some big cobs.

Last Autumn I planted a couple of rows of Radar onion sets, just to see how they’d go. Radar are a super early variety of onion. Although really I was super late in getting them in, which is why they’re only really ready to pull now. But my bad timing aside, these Radar onions have been a bit disappointing. I don’t want to give this variety a bad name because I’m pretty sure it’s all my fault.

You see, I didn’t bother to condition or feed the soil much before I put them in. I think I may have sprinkled a bag of compost over the area, but didn’t do much else. And I’d already grown potatoes, followed by leeks in that area. Our soil here is quite sandy and very poor in places, so I’m guessing that any nutrients that were in the soil were sucked out in the first year.

Of course last year I had grand ideas about green manure etc. But I got lazy, impatient and forgetful and hastily shoved the onion sets in and hoped for the best really. I did put fleece tunnels over them during the winter for a bit of extra help. But the result is that they’ve grown pitifully small this year. So when I cook, I have to pull up four or five, sometimes six to equal a ‘normal’ portion of 2 onions. And I love onions. In fact, I’m a big allium fan all round. So I don’t want them to go to waste, but boy are they annoyingly fiddly to deal with when you’re cooking.

So I want to come up with some ways to use them elsewhere. And I think possibly the only things I can do with my current limited time and expertise is to try pickling them. And maybe a filo roasted onion tart if i’m feeling particularly exotic that day.

I myself am not an avid fan of pickled onions. Rich loves them, and my cousin Deborah could happily eat them by the jar (and has been known to).  So I don’t know an awful lot about them. My Mum’s best friend Sue is one of those people that knows how to do almost anything, and do it well - cooking en masse, sewing a cushion/curtains/dress, plant up a beautiful hanging basket, knit, grow veggies, crush coal with her bare hands and make diamonds etc. But her pickled onions are legendary, so I may ask her for some tips. I’m not sure that these Radar onions will work - do I need specific pickling onions? Should I opt for shallots? All I can say is by the end of my onion chopping session this evening, my eyes were stinging so much that I could barely keep them open, so I think they’ll do. Forget pepper spray, if you want to deter a criminal from attacking, rub a couple of onions in their face. It was quite torturous for all of 2 minutes.

It’s a good thing there’s been a lot of rain about. Because I have been so overloaded with work, I’ve had time to do little else (apart from sneakily watch Harry Potter on You Tube whilst gobbling down my dinner). The Smallest Smallholding is falling into decline, the weeds are threatening to take over and it all seems to have slowed into a weird state of perma-slow motion.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse have started fruiting at a perculiarly slow rate, they’ve been suspended for what feels like weeks, plump and green slowly swelling in size. But no ripe ones yet. Last year I had the tomatoes growing in the conservatory, where it gets ridiculously hot in sunny weather. This resulted in a jungle of triffid-like leggy tomato plants that needed watering twice a day and churned out more fruit than we knew what to do with. This year it seems the opposite, like a strange waiting game. Growing in the cooler, unheated greenhouse seems to have produced stockier plants, but I’m guessing the tomatoes will be of a good quality. Mum grew hers outside last year and they did really well. Needless to say, the figs are in suspended animation and I’m wondering whether they’ll actually ripen this year…

Down on plot 101 at the allotment, the onions are a sight for sore eyes. Rows of juicy red and white onions are waiting to be pulled and cooked with. Last night I used one white (Hercules) and one red (Red baron) onion in my chana masala. THEY TASTE SO GOOD. Really makes all the difference. I’ve been told to treble my onion output next year. I’m definitely open to it. The garlic is also almost ready - smells divine when you pull it up. It’s currently air drying in the kitchen, can’t wait to use it.

I’ve been pulling up a few turnips to use in cooking. The thing is, I’m not so sure what to do with them all. I decided to plant an early-harvesting, fast growing variety called ‘Snowball’. And true to form, they’ve grown wonderfully quickly and only needed thinning out. They’ve pretty much taken care of themselves (always handy) but I’ve come unstuck because I have a crop that could be harvested right now, but not sure how I can use them, apart from being really unimaginative and chucking them in soup! Their supermarket counterparts seem to be harvested when they’re slightly bigger than a golfball. Mine are well beyond that, but still surprisingly tender and fleshy. I thought I’d let them get too big, and expected them to be quite woody. Glad I was wrong!

Carrots are going well, although the weeds are creeping in left, right and centre. I’ve been pulling a few carrot top stalks out to feed Bunbuns, nice frugal way to feed them, seeing as I didn’t manage to locate (or indeed grow) any kale this year. A bag of kale in Tesco costs 98p, in Waitrose costs £1.19…and I’m not sure it’ll be in the farm shop. The farm shop scares me a bit. I don’t know why. I think it’s because I’m not used to shopping in smaller, intimate spaces where you can be watched from the counter. But then, I’m probably spied on from all angles in the supermarkets, I’m just not aware of it (note to self, don’t unwedge knickers/rearrange bra/vainly check makeup in mirror down deserted aisle, someone is still probably watching!).

Mehh, anyway I digress. We’ve been battling to keep our chicken Pattie from sliding into seriously bad health. She’s got a mystery reoccuring ailment that’s not linked to our EYP. We think. So we’ve sent off a faecal sample to a vet lab in Nottingham to see if there’s something amiss. Should have results tomorrow. We’re also putting Yoko through some photoperiod manipulation, as her EYP swelling was getting too big. It seems to have worked - she basically goes to bed around 5pm and it seems to have made a huge difference to her energy levels and eating. And she doesn’t go and sit in her carrier-come-nestbox (she can’t manage the henhouse ladder at present) when she has the urge to lay (internally). We know she’s feeling better because she’s become a big, barging bossy boots again.

And Maureen-the-wonder-hen-that-never-moults-and-never-gets-ill has got a limp and hasn’t laid in 5 days. She’s so reliable usually that it’s worrying. So having to deal with all that is an ongoing trial. Poor chookies. They’ve been so used and abused in the intensive battery system, it’s no wonder they have these problems later on. Still, they are still enjoying life. And that’s the main thing.