Mud, Glorious Mud

As we squelch our way into December the perpetual rain that has been preceded by a couple of fairly hard frosts sets alarm bells ringing over the state of our crops at the allotment. It has been a good couple of weeks since we have even ventured down there. Filled with the fear that we will have lost an entire row of celery and our bounty of beetroot through the forces of nature and our overly hectic lives I armed myself with gloves and carrier bags and headed out into the wind and rain with plans to pickle and make vats of soup with whatever I could salvage.

Luckily things were not as bad as I had feared and other than the leaves of the celery looking rather unappealing (probably from the repetitive freezing, defrosting and freezing cycle that they had been through) the stems seem to have been unaffected and on a whole, all things considered ,the plot was looking pretty good.

Shirley and Basil our two scarecrows (mother and child) look rather in need of a makeover as mildew seems to have completely taken over. Poor Basil is highly likely to lose an arm on the next windy day and potentially her head as well. Hiding behind her dark glasses and beret Shirley is maintaining her rather foxy appearance but closer inspection proves that a spot of re-stuffing is definitely called for in the near future.

With rain sodden hair and clothes, mud caked boots and trouser bottoms and my mascara running in rivulets down my cheeks I set about cropping a fabulous array of vegetables. Beetroot, celery, leeks and cavolo nero were all hastily dug up, picked and thrown, haphazardly, into bags.

Despite my attempts to shake the roots and knock the mud off my boots on the gate post as I left the plot I suspect that the weight of mud that I wore and returned home with probably matched that of the vegetables themselves.

Whilst the celery appears particularly impressive with huge heads and tall green stems washing and preparing proves really time consuming and I battle between an appreciation of the effort that has gone into growing it and a desire for the time saving benefits of a pre washed supermarket head. The earth that we built up around to blanch the stems seems to have actually penetrated into the plant itself so that it is an unsightly brown colour rather than the desired white. It has also provided a comfortable home for slugs who have merrily chomped their way up and down the stalks. Luckily there is something to be said for sheer quantity over quality here and despite pest consumption and an unappealing appearance the taste is still good and we have more than enough from a couple of heads to make a vat of soup. Next year we will use straw instead of soil around the base and see if that works better.

Dinner – Roasted crown prince squash, red onions (the last of this years crop) and cavolo nero (finely shredded and stirred through the roasted vegetables for their last ten minutes of cooking. Accompanied by a delicious pork shoulder steak with a mushroom, mustard and brandy sauce. I had planned for the mushrooms to have been foraged from the wood where the girls and their friends have been den building this week but by the time that we headed for home on Friday it was getting dark and so mushrooming had to be left for another time. We made do instead with some chestnut mushrooms that I had in the fridge and still enjoyed a satisfyingly autumnal feast.

Of the nine crown prince squash that we have harvested this year we have just two remaining (I am filled with a small pang of sadness). They are without a doubt one of our most versatile crops and make their way into many of our meals either as an accompaniment or as the star of the show. Once picked they keep (assuming that they are not being eaten) for weeks and even when cut open the flesh can easily hang about in the fridge for a week or so without spoiling. I can confidently say that by the time we eat our last mouthful of this years crop it will have appeared on our dinner table in some form or other a good 35 to 40 times. That's a pretty good yield!