Little bits of self-sufficiency

This year we have eaten all our own rhubarb, but due to dry weather it has gone to seed (first time in 7 years). Don't buy shallots or onions, grow my own from sets, the shallots keep for up to 2 years, just gathered them in before the welcome rain of the last two days. Must get onions up and in soon. Ground still very hard, big cracks in clayey soil on allotment. Wonderful red and black currants this year. The bushes are not expensive to buy as small plants, don't need a lot of work, weeding, feeding, mulching, pruning maybe twice a year, netting to save the fruit from pigeons. Just put away many pots of redcurrant jelly and blackcurrant jam, make good  presents. French friends sometimes a bit bemused by my concotions such as rhubarb and ginger jam, green tomato chutney, chinese plum sauce... Trying to grow angelica again.

 Potatoes this year a disaster, very dry weather and some late frost. Beans looking good and enough for some nearly every day, will get boring soon. Years ago used to slice with a little machine and then salt them in big earthenware jars. Remember having a complete cupboard filled with Kilner jars with mainly fruit in. No freezers in the 1950s only a small fridge. luxury (you were lucky... young people nowadays...). Bendix washing machine my dad bought to cope with the nappies after I arrived in 1945 cost over £100, a small fortune, you could survive on £200 a year, lasted 30 years. I digress. We used to have fruit picking parties with all ages involved, a huge picnic lunch. I remember lots of people sitting round the kitchen table preparing fruit for bottling or making into jam. A joint endeavor, laughter, singing, drinking, playing "sardines" in the garden, a lot of cigarette smoking (both parents smoked 50 a day).


What is the point of all this you might well ask? It feels good to produce some of your own food, to be able to give it away, to cook and eat it, to share it. I get great joy from watching my grandchildren pick fruit as I did when small, to look for beans to pick, where they gathered the bean seeds, dried, sorted and planted them. I'm trying to reconnect them to the soil, the earth on which we all depend for our survival. To feel a part of nature not apart from it. To develop a sense of place, belonging, heimat, at-homeness. To come to know the seasons, the weather, the need for rain and frost, as well as sun and warmth. ho hum