Bedding-up for the winter

Whilst people are getting their borders ready for bed in preparation for winter dormancy, it's a good time too to be moving those fruit and veg for next year.  In this little album, taken early last week, Robert and his team prepare new beds for asparagus and strawberries in the walled garden using an excellent load of manure from the estate's stableyard.

 The ground, marked out and aerated, is covered in manure.

Topsoil from alongside the bed is heaped over the manure to leave a clean, fertile bed.

Into this were planted asparagus plants - they always look so weedy like this, don't they?  But what a vegetable, especially the first young sprigs of the year, briefly fried off in olive oil and peppercorns, with a squeeze of lemon and slithers of parmesan... mmm.

With the final dressing of manure over the top, and it's done.

Planted next door, the strawberries will of course become next year's jam for the tearoom, and after Susan's triumph at the fête this year, who knows what heights next year's bottled delights will bring!  But you can only get it at Iford with a warm, just-from-the-oven scone or inside a Victoria Sponge.

Autumn leaves

Well, you certainly know it's autumn when...

Apples are falling, ripe damsons soften on the tree (looking forward to 'jamming' those), a misty 5 degrees greets you when you get up, and the first colours start to change in the garden.  And yet, summer seems somehow to be clinging on, for when the sun is out, it's fairly warm.  Still, it won't be long before we're raking and blowing the leaves off the lawns daily - a broadly thankless, but crucial task to avoid damage to the sward.

Mowing day again

The near perfect combination of sunshine and rain, with moderate temperatures has meant the lawns are putting on a lot of late summer growth this year.  Today was mowing day again, generally a Thursday at Iford, and the full team was on the case.

Here Tom (pictured), who is currently studying at Lackham College and undertaking part of his practical training within the team at Iford, creates some excellent 'lines' on the rear terrace.

We're jammin'...

Around this time of year we have what has become a tradition where we wander out to look at the orchard and despair at "the amount of fruit which will no doubt once again go to waste and wouldn't it be nice if we could do something with it, but we're a bit busy this year what with the farm harvest etc. so we'll have to plan better for next year".  Well, whilst not entirely ready to embrace full fruit harvest usage from the orchard on site, I have this year tried to break the pattern, experimentally at least.

Jam. 
It all started a couple of years ago when my now-mother-in-law Pauline gave us some delicious raspberries from her own production and since we were unable to eat them all (and boy, did we have a go at it!) we decided to make them into jam.  It proved so easy that I concluded even a novice like me could do this, and so now, two years on, I have cleaned out our local Sainsbury shelves of jam sugar and I'm experimenting with the harvest at Iford.

What has surprised me the most, I think, is discovering the variety of what we have growing not only in the orchard and kitchen garden but also elsewhere around the estate, in hedgerows, thickets and the like, trees, shrubs and vines which I had never really stopped to appreciate for their full potential.  Mulberries (excellent coulis for lemon sorbet), whitecurrants, shropshire bullace... One such group of trees was pointed out to me by my own mother, Elizabeth, as being suited to jam production - cherry plums - I had, perhaps to my discredit, never even heard of or seen a cherry-plum fruit!

And so Claire and I collected around a kilo and a half of these ripe over-sized cherries, all dangly-down on the branches.  The roe deer had browsed the shelves somewhat, up to about four feet or so, but there were plenty left at loftier heights.  We got them home and being "rather busy"(!) we put them in the freezer.  Today, I got them out (yes, okay, no need for innuendo-filled comments...).

I'll tell you what I did, because the results were reasonably good - anyone with any tips, feel free to chip in with comments.  After removing the grottier ones, they weighed just about 1.3kg.  There's supposed to be a fair amount of pectin in plum-like fruit, and this being prunus cerisifera I supposed we were dealing with the same, so rather than use only jam sugar (i.e. added pectin), I used 1kg of jam sugar with 300g demarera.

The cherries went into the saucepan with a little water.

Over a medium heat they were boiled and broken down (squidging them on the side of the pan with a wooden spoon so they pop can provide endless fun!)...

They were then seived to remove stones and skins first through a [literarily confusing] collander...

...and then a finer seive.  The resultant liquor was an astonishing colour, and went back into the pan with the sugar and a knob of butter.  Apparently this gives a nice shine to the jam when finished (is this right??).

A squeeze of lime seemed a good idea at the time too, both because of the flavour of the mixture and because something told me the citric acid would act as a preservative (Any thoughts??)

The mixture was boiled for about 4 minutes, until the back-of-the-teaspoon trick suggested it was ready, and then poured into sterilised and pre-heated kilner jars (with a bit of overflow... for my breakfast).

Fingers crossed it will set nicely!  I'll report back once we've tried it on a few people.

[UPDATE]
So, the result was that despite positive indications, it was a bit runny.  Re-boiling it was the answer and had I not been over-zealous with the reboiling (which took out a good mug's-worth of water) we'd have had an excellent jelly/jam.  Amazingly clear, which was nice, and of good flavour (especially nice on toast), but unfortunately the consistency of gluey quince cheese... oh well, there's always next year!

Final floral fling for the painted meadow

It was the last haircut for the paths through the painted meadow this morning (group visits by appointement) and also for the lawns in the front of the walled garden.

These lawns are important because they are the public face from the bridge, so despite not being open to the public on a daily basis, the accurate clipping of the topiary Greater Crested Iford Fantailed Chickens (!) and some neat lines through the lawn are essential for a good first impression.

Earwig-oh, earwig-oh, earwig-oh...

Just a question really...

Has anyone else suddenly had the most enormous hatching of earwigs?  There's one small area of corridor in the house which has seemingly, and suddenly, become the mating ground for all Forficula auricularia.  


They all came out last night, and are now littering the flagstones.  Any thoughts?

Better-than-sticky 'fate' for Susan's jam in village competition

Excited news from the Westwood village fête last weekend.

Susan, Iford's Housekeeper who runs the tearoom over the summer, entered a pot of her increasingly popular Strawberry Jam, made using Iford's own strawberries grown in the kitchen garden, and enjoyed by many with their fresh scones and local clotted cream.

To everyone's delight, Susan won the jam prize.  So now we can proudly say that Iford's cream teas come with "award winning jam!".  Top stuff; well done Susan!

Here's a [rather grainy - sorry] photo of the jam's proud creator, holding court at the tearoom window.  Perhaps if there's a demand, some little jars of the stuff will appear next year.  Who knows?