A new path across the lawn

Taking advantage of sunshine, the son and I placed some strategic stepping stones from our patio gate to the chicken and duck yards (they share a wall).  The son is in charge of their daily chores (mainly feeding/watering) and he was slipping on the too short grass;  now we can all safely traverse without any more damage to the lawn.

As a result however, all domestic birds are locked away in their yards until spring.  The grass just can't take any more abuse.  The two ducks have had regular free range until now, though the eleven chickens haven't had much, sadly.  While they have a fairly large yard, it's got no greenery.  I'm trying to keep it topped up with wood chips to soak up the mud/poo (an uphill battle).  The ducks like mud, so I'm not quite as concerned with the state of their yard at present.  If it gets too pooey, they can have some wood chips too.

Our two oldest hens, Rock and Cookie, are still with us at age nine;  if they make it to April, we will be able to celebrate their tenth birthday!  Before these two, the oldest chicken age we've ever experienced was six;  Rock and Cookie are true record breakers.  The son asked me if we would be getting any new rescue hens (of our flock, seven of the eleven are rescues) and I think we will wait till we're back down to around six chickens or so.  Rescue hens in particular are fairly short lived (getting to age four is pretty good and we get them at around 18 months old) so it's not outside the realm of possibility that we will get new ones in the coming year.  It's not been quite a year since we adopted the Birthday chickens.

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I'll be taking my Christmas blog break from now until January;  I'm hoping for as much homegrown food as possible for our festive meals.  I'll be back with my grand total of food for 2025:  have I beaten last year's record?  I'll try to get a last few things harvested and tallied before the deadline and we can find out together.

Keeping warm

A while back, the son and I (and occasionally husband) would go out on bikes into the woods near us every few weeks.  We'd collect as much fallen dead wood as we could into a couple large bags and cart them home on the bikes;  this was the kindling for our wood stove.  Now however, and for the past several years, I've instead been saving almost all our own woody prunings, large and small.  

I'm not sure if our current system is less work than the previous system.  For example, we need to cut and trim the wood ourselves instead of collecting it off the ground (and simply breaking it into pieces).  It also needs to dry several months, up to a year, depending on thickness;  the dead wood in the forest was ready to burn as soon as we brought it home.  True, we don't need to make much of a trip for our own wood, but we do need a place to store it while it dries;  and it usually ends up needing at least two piles if not more:  one for green wood drying out, one for dried wood ready to burn.  I collected the forest wood as needed, and kept it in the transport bags until time to burn.  I could also collect fairly thick pieces and not bother with the twigs;  now I even save my twiggy trimmings and tie them into kindling bundles (more work but great fire starters).

As I've mentioned in the past, we buy in the majority of the fuel for our stove, which is our main source of heating in the winter (we have a gas boiler which we rely on for hot water--we almost never use the central heating).  We also keep a large pot and a smaller kettle of water on top of the stove, for washing dishes/hot water bottles/tea/coffee.  

Being able to light the fire with our own (free) wood isn't the biggest money saver, though we think it's worthwhile.  I'm happy to have that little bit more of self reliance.  Although not directly related to my food, my homegrown woodpile is still a part of my garden. 

The Vegetable Challenge in winter

Our Thanksgiving meal was lovely and included lots of homegrown ingredients, including vegetables, eggs and herbs.  We had a nice dinner with friends;  now we're looking forward to Christmas dinner, though just with our four selves.

I'm still picking a few fresh things from the garden and allotment; this last week I've picked lettuce, cauliflower (I thought I'd already got them all), turnips and Chinese cabbage.  I still have fresh leeks in the fridge and squash in my living room, plus various bags in the freezer--and quite a lot of jars in my fridge and pantry:  dried, fermented, pickled.  The Vegetable Challenge has another seven or so weeks to run, and I'm fairly confident about achieving it this time.  I'm even confident about extending it beyond its finish date of 21st January.

Because of my garden and allotment plan this year, there's been plenty of variety and meals haven't got monotonous, at least not yet.  Eating with the season has been interesting and tasty I think.  I liked eating salads every day in summer and I've appreciated starting on the preserved veg at the start of winter:  pickled cucumbers and beets recently.  I've been trying to get through jars to make room in my fridge!  To that end, the last of the early summer sauerkraut has been cooked into most of my stews, and I'm alternating my breakfast kimchi with mixed veg salsa (which also pairs very well with eggs, regardless of having a very different flavor).

And after looking forward to it all year long, it's nice to start finally eating the first parsnips.  I don't have a lot this time, but next spring I'll try to get a full bed instead of just a few rows.  A nice treat in winter.  And I still have a small bed of pak choi awaiting me:  the anticipation is almost better than the eating.

First frost and jobs before Thanksgiving

First snow from the patio door, Nov 2025

Like last November, we got both our first frost and snow this past week, though the snow thankfully didn't last long (a few hours).  A few days later I went out and dug up my two dahlias and trimmed off their frost-blackened stems;  the same day I also went to get the runner bean tubers (seen to the left next to the wooden fence in the photo above) but as I approached with a shovel, my two ducks refused to leave their "tent."  Every day they've been sleeping under these leaves, in the shelter of the bamboo canes supporting the vines.  I could have booted them out but they looked so happy under there I didn't have the heart to disturb them:  I'll try again soon.

It's been a mix of frost and rain since, and not good weather for gardening.  I made it to the allotment one more time, this time to pick a couple of bolting Chinese cabbages.  We've been enjoying it like pak choi, which it resembles in taste and texture (I still don't know if this variety is meant to form heads or just a bunch of loose leaves like it is now).  I made a small jar of kimchi with it too.

In addition, I had to go out and pull all the remaining Lyon leeks from my kitchen garden, which had flopped over in the cold.  I was only going to pick my usual one a day, but when I touched it I realized it had gone a little mushy--I checked the others and most were in the same condition.  So I spent a cold muddy hour getting them all dug up and washed before going in to work;  the next morning I trimmed and froze most of the long green leaves, putting the white stalks in a few bags in my fridge.  I expect I'll still get a month's worth of meals of these stalks before moving on to my cold tolerant Musselbrugh leeks still growing at the allotment.  Recall that I have no more onions and per the terms of my Vegetable Challenge, while I'm allowed, I'm trying not to buy them;  leeks are my onion substitute for now.

It's Thanksgiving this week!  Our family is American as well as British and it's the favo(u)rite holiday of at least one of us.  As usual, the husband has the day off to do the bulk of the cooking;  we are having three additional guests (an adult and two big teenagers)--and we are in the midst of the Vegetable Challenge!  The pumpkin (squash) has been cooked and pureed for pie, the mashed new potatoes only need thawing and reheating (I strategically froze them back in summer, just for this meal), the other vegetable dish is to be confirmed but there is plenty of choice in the freezer, and still some standing veg in the garden and allotment too.

Cold coming

I'm waiting on a frost before attempting any parsnips from the small bed in my kitchen garden;  I sowed them interspersed with carrots which have been a bit small.  Will my parsnips be any bigger?  I may find out this week as it's forecast to freeze soon.  Although I've had some good parsnips in the past, they've not been very reliable for me;  maybe I need to sow them in bulk rather than just a few small rows.  I think interplanting/sowing with another crop (like carrots) is probably the best way in my garden, in case the parsnips do fail.

Because of the forecast, I also went and picked the very last (mostly green) cherry tomatoes at the front of my allotment:  that's it for fresh toms this year, though I have bags and bags in the freezer.  While I was at it, I picked every achocha bigger than a marble.  These don't survive a frost either, though they self seed readily every year so obviously the seeds don't mind it.  I haven't planted these on purpose for years, and I've never even planted them at the allotment!  They must have got there from seeds in the scraps for the compost.

I've read that leeks are better after a frost, which may be true;  I usually don't pick them until late winter/early spring.  This is the first time I've begun picking in autumn and to be honest, I can't tell a difference.  Maybe I'll be able to decide this coming week, if it does frost.  I still have around twenty more of the early leeks before I start on the later season ones--I would guess I'll probably get to those in about a month from now.  

One more job after a frost:  lift my dahlia tubers for winter, something I promised myself I would do this time.  Last year I had three plants and one didn't make it over winter;  I don't want to lose the other two.  I may try to lift my runner bean tubers too, something I've never tried.  I'm not committed to runner beans and don't care to take the trouble to grow them from seed next year (they've not been very prolific), but keeping existing plants is a reasonable amount of work I'm prepared to do.

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Small note about the Vegetable Challenge:  the husband (in charge of shopping) came home with some mushrooms from the store.  He defended his decision (they aren't vegetables, they're fungi!), and though perhaps doesn't break the letter of the Challenge I have noted it here.  The Challenge is still on:  no vegetables have been bought.  But I have requested than no fungi are bought from now on either.

Burning, sheet mulch, more preserving

The daughter and I went up last week to burn a barrel's worth of old pallet wood and artichoke stalks;  however it turned out to be so windy that afternoon that I burned the wood only--flames and sparks were flying and it was a bit scary.  The daughter (age 5) thought it was great;  I ran for the hose, just in case.  Luckily it's been raining fairly regularly and the ground was thoroughly wet.  And because it was windy, the fire burned fast and clean:  hardly any smoke and the full barrel was down to the last few embers in less than two hours.  I'm not sure if I'll try to burn the stalks another time (still some more old wood too) or if I'll bring them home bit by bit to burn in our wood stove.

Sheet mulching has commenced at the allotment, using some large pieces of cardboard I'd collected over the summer;  now there's space in my garage again!  I will start collecting smaller pieces and keep going over winter:  the couch grass grows over summer, I sheet mulch it over winter in order to plant in spring, then the grass grows, etc.  I can't eradicate the grass.  I also can't grow in the grass.  But I can knock it back long enough to get a harvest before it grows again.

I picked the last few cauliflowers this weekend, though I have about half a dozen plants without heads which may overwinter and produce in spring.  Actually I was expecting them all to do that but I guess I started a little too early.  I also made another batch of mixed vegetable sauerkraut, after tasting last week's mixed veg salsa (also fermented and so good!);  with the new batch I cut everything into matchsticks:  turnip, beet, fennel, chard stems, plus some of my earlier fermented spicy garlic stems.  

Speaking of fermenting, I'm down to my last jar of kimchi, made in July.  I eat it pretty much every day, usually with my eggs and bacon at breakfast.  I was a little concerned about running out!  However, I recently made a batch of kohlrabi water kimchi, something I did last summer too, and to fill out the 1.8 L container I also sliced up some (you guessed it) fennel.  I had so much fennel to use up and now it's gone till next year.  There are a couple small rows of both pak choi and Chinese cabbage, intended for kimchi soon.  In fact I was going to cut the pak choi this weekend but the kohlrabi will act as a stopgap:  I've got a reprieve for at least two more weeks.

Tackling the artichokes and making the most of green tomatoes

It was half term week off school and since I work at a school (in the kitchen) I had it off with the kids.  The husband was able to take the week off from his work too, so we had a rare week off all together.  What did we do?  Very little gardening!  

But on a sunny Sunday morning, our last day off together, we all spent two hours doing some work at the allotment.  The first job was digging out artichokes and moving some of them to the back of the plot.  The rest got cut down to the ground and we dragged a piece of carpet and another piece of rubber sheeting to cover over them (both pieces had been smothering weeds at the back where we moved the artichokes to).  Then a lot of wood chips to cover the now bare soil at the back, and my collection of pots and planters filled with overwintering onions on top of the carpet and sheeting.

I will probably have to leave that carpet and sheeting in place all of next growing season, to make sure it kills off what's left of the artichokes--they are very vigorous and we had so much plant matter to clear away first.  I prepared a tall stack of old woody stems to make a bonfire later.

On the same day I cleared away the remaining plum tomato plants and collected the fruits:  about eight pounds of mainly green ones.  We put down some large cardboard sheets over their bed (right in front of the old artichoke bed) for later sheet mulch.  We'd already done a lot of physical work and couldn't face digging out more mulch to pile on top:  soon.

In addition to the tomatoes, I also brought home another five cauliflowers, the last few bolting fennel bulbs and a pile of achocha.  Oh and a container of wood chips from the pile on site to pour into our chicken yard (I'm trying to collect some at least once a week to soak up the mud).  Once home, I started washing and weighing my veg and spent another hour making 6.6 L of green salsa, to ferment.  Although it's mostly tomatoes, I also put in most of the fennel, half of the cauliflowers and all of the achocha:  all chopped into a chunky paste.  Plus a good amount of salt, a handful of minced garlic and 10 small red chilies from a pot on my patio.  

That's pretty much it for my allotment jobs until spring.  Well, other than routine sheet mulching of bare beds and harvesting winter crops.  Maybe about half of the veg beds are still in production.  At home, none of my beds are clear yet, though I'm more than halfway through my early leeks (the late leeks are at the allotment).  Autumn is winding down and so am I.