Thanksgiving 2021

First snow of the season, 28/11/21

The son, age 11, took the above photo of a surprise snow shower at the weekend;  it's the view from our sliding glass door.  At last it has become cold enough to kill the nasturtiums--they are slumped across the path at the right foreground.

We had an alteration of our normal Thanksgiving plans as our American friend had to work late on the day itself;  instead of holding the usual potluck, we had one dinner at theirs on Sunday which they catered, and a feast at ours on the day itself which we catered--and to make up for the missing friend, we invited some neighbors to join us and his family.  So we cooked for 10 people in total, four adults and six children aged between one and 13 (I say we, but the husband actually did nearly all the cooking).

And what was homegrown this year?  Sadly not a lot!  Though I was pleased that all the veg was grown locally, either by ourselves or at a local small farm.  We grew and served:

The best gravy I've ever made with garlic, duck stock and a bit of cider vinegar

Pumpkin pie with our own eggs (which I had saved specially earlier in the month, as our hens have all stopped laying now).

Homebrewed elderberry/blackberry wine and elderflower wine

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It doesn't sound like a homegrown feast!  But it was a locally grown feast:  we had lots of vegetables including potatoes from the farm stand (and also the pumpkin for the pie), a big piece of ham from the local butcher, a strawberry rhubarb pie (berries we'd picked ourselves in the summer and rhubarb from a neighbor).  The only main ingredient we couldn't get from a local producer was the turkey itself.  At Christmas our butcher orders them from a nearby farm but before then, turkeys can only be got frozen from the supermarket.

Inside only

I've been an armchair gardener for the past week, only venturing to the allotment once for a brief chicken visit (the husband does the majority of the chicken chores now that he works from home full time).   They're nearly all in some state of molt:  whether beginning, middle or end, and have pretty much finished laying eggs, probably till January now.

I haven't even gone in my own kitchen garden at home, not even to check on things--though I can see it all pretty much from my patio door and it hasn't changed much.

This time of year I almost always lose the will to garden any more.  Lack of light (it's dark by 4 pm), work schedules, child wrangling, rain, frost, any and all excuses will be offered.  I just need a break from it!

That said, we've had a few light frosts but nothing sharp yet--enough to need to scrape off the car in the morning (north-facing, shaded), but not enough to kill the nasturtiums out back (south-facing, sheltered).  Even the allotment nasturtiums were still alive when I visited them a few days ago, in a much more exposed spot.  

And really, nothing much is happening out there, or really needs to be done.  I'll find time for some sheet mulch, hopefully at home too where the grass and weeds are starting to encroach.  But that's really about it for this year.  Time for reviewing the past year and eating the harvest.

Reimagining the strawberry beds

This year I was concerned our strawberry bed at the allotment had been choked by grass and wouldn't produce.  I did my best to sheet mulch in between plants and the husband transplanted some of the smaller plants/last year's runners to a cleared spot, and we ended up having a good enough harvest, considering.  

However, here in the middle of November, both the old bed and the new bed are all grass once again, with hardly a strawberry leaf to be seen.  I think I will be simply sheet mulching (again) on top of both beds in the hopes of starting afresh with something else.  

Last month I took four or five large containers, originally from my patio at home, and filled them up with newly made compost and strawberry runners.  For at least the next few years I plan on growing strawberries in containers, which are far easier to get grass out of!  It means I'll probably need to net them against birds, and slugs also might be more of an issue;  but hopefully I'll get at least a similar harvest to this year's, and no grass (or easily eradicated grass).

Crispy duck

 

The daughter enjoying crispy duck, Nov 2021

 

The time finally came and two of our three drakes became dinner.  The flock of six had been free ranging for a few weeks beforehand;  we wanted to make sure their last days were calm and happy and I think we succeeded, judging by flavor.

The son helped me catch both drakes and hold them steady on the chopping block, but I completed the kill and processing alone.  I bought a 500 g bag of paraffin wax to dip them in to complete the plucking (after watching duck hunter videos on youtube);  this got them almost completely clean of down though I still had to pluck the outer feathers first before dunking in the hot water/melted wax.  

After plucking and cleaning, both carcasses went into the fridge to rest for four days;  then the younger drake became the tastiest crispy roast duck we have ever eaten.  I butterflied the whole carcass, salted the skin, and roasted it slowly in the oven for about two hours.  It was a one-meal bird for our family, but so amazingly good.

This roast gave us about half a cup of duck fat which was saved to make confit with the older drake (using several cups of beef fat also, which we got from the butcher and rendered ourselves);  I cut the carcass into quarters, salted it well, and let it cure for another two days before cooking it in the slow cooker.  The confit is still in the fridge but will be eaten imminently.  Bones of both are to be saved separately from our usual stock-making ingredients to make a special duck-only stock for our Thanksgiving and Christmas gravies. 

To raise our own meat is a long term goal of mine.  The son told me he didn't want to know his meat--though he agreed our crispy duck was delicious--but I'm the opposite:  I want to know our meat.  I want to know that throughout its life it was able to express its natural behavior and eat a natural diet and see sunshine! which almost all farmed poultry in this country don't get.  I know my ducks had very good lives and good deaths too--over before they knew it.

Will I try to raise more meat ducks in the future?  Yes!  We still have our dominant drake and three females, and if our reliable mother hen Cookie goes broody again in the spring I would willingly give her duck eggs once more.

Food totals, October 2021

Vegetables

22 oz zucchini

68 oz green kuri squash

9 oz radicchio

78 oz chard

12.5 oz green beans

16.5 oz carrots

14.5 oz kohl rabi

1 oz celery

3.5 oz lettuce

4 oz tomatoes

2 oz kale

12.5 golden beets

Total:  243.5 oz, or 15 lb 3.5 oz

 

Note:  I weigh all my veg after preparation:  peeling, trimming, etc.

Fruit

44 oz flowering quinces (chaenomeles)

2 oz yellow raspberries

 

Total:  46 oz, or 2 lb 14 oz

Eggs

44 eggs from 8 hens and 3 ducks

Seed saving, Oct 2021

Every year I try to save seeds from certain vegetables, and some strains I have been saving for many years now.  I've been keeping the Lord Leicester peas going for ages, though this year we ended up eating most of them fresh!  I got a few dozen only, but I do have quite a lot from last year which should still be viable next spring.

Another one which I have been growing for several years is the green Kuri squash.  We cooked the biggest one from this harvest already (it met with a little bit of damage during harvest and couldn't be stored) and the husband put the seeds to dry for next year.  It came in at around 4 lb;  while it's a good size for us, none of the others are even half as much.  So to try and get the biggest squashes in the future, we saved the seeds from the biggest one harvested.

I grew two new to me varieties of French beans this year, and have saved seed from both of them;  one is a long podded purple type and the other is a flat podded green type.  Both tasty and fairly productive.  I'm moving away from runner beans--my usual green bean in the past--to French beans as they tend to set beans more reliably in dry summers.  That's not to say I won't grow runners again, but I didn't grow any this year.

Another new to me plant was the yellow crookneck squash, which was not as productive as I would have liked but such a tasty vegetable that I allowed one squash to mature fully for seed; the rest were eaten as young courgettes.  I still plan on trying to cook this lumpy yellow squash--we'll see what it tastes like when mature, but regardless, seeds will be saved.

Not seeds per se, but still continuation of the strains:  this year I saved and have replanted garlic cloves and leek bubils.

I have also acquired some seeds of a huge cabbage (and a few more leek bubils) from a fellow allotmenter, and have a very large Cinderella style pumpkin from the local farm stand, though we'll have to taste test it first (after we attempt to carve it later in the week--it's not a traditional Halloween pumpkin and might require a hatchet to get inside);  while I'd love to grow some big carriage-like pumpkins, I only want them if they taste great too.

State of the flock, October 2021

Our eight chickens have finally made the move back to the allotment after spending all summer at home;  I grew some excellent sweetcorn, squash and beans in their allotment yard while they were absent.  They are cleaning up the residue of these now, and will probably stay at the allotment all winter unless we have another enclosure order.  They are currently laying 1-3 eggs a day.

I'm hopeful we'll get the plot fully fenced sometime this winter--mainly because I want our ducks to go up and clean up the slugs.  So many slugs up there, just crying out for a duck to come slurp them up.  As of right now, our six ducks are free ranging at home, mowing the lawn and eating bugs and slugs here;  they're not on the veg patch just yet, but I'll try to move the fence to allow them access to it but not the patio--they poo too much for that.  I don't think any of the three females are laying right now, but as none of them lay in a dedicated nest I can't be certain.  I haven't found any eggs for several weeks anyway.

And Peep the duckling?  He is definitely a boy and his days are numbered, alongside one of the older drakes whom the son named Aggro (for good reason--that duck is a jerk).  We will have just the one drake by springtime, which is plenty.  I'm only waiting for it to be a bit cooler before I kill the two of them;  twice it's cooled down to around 12C during the week only for the weekends to climb back up to 19/20C.  I should have them done by November.