Yesterday’s tomato harvest

Posted on October 12, 2026 by james

They’ve done so well this year and there are still plenty more to come. The cherry tomatoes in the middle are Garnet. I’ve eaten a decent handful almost every lunchtime since July. They’ve been so sweet this year. Makes all the effort of watering them worthwhile. I managed to empty our well several times just watering the polytunnel. Fortunately we have a pump to do the hard work there. If I’d been lifting buckets of water manually I’d probably have died ? I reckon I was getting through almost 200 litres per day and even then the soil was dry within twenty-four hours and I still had a couple of plants fail due to dehydration.

The plan for next year, inasmuch as there could be said to be one, is to build a solar-powered automated watering system. That was actually the plan for this year before health issues overtook me. Such systems are available on the big river place, but not at the scale I think I’m likely to need.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged | Leave a comment

One time only

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

Ladies and gentlemen… Allow me to introduce the “combat cucumber”.

It’s a bit like dwarf bread for people who live out in the sunshine. If you threw it, it might actually come back to you, but you’d not want to get your body in the way for the return trip unless you fancy chasing your head as it bounces down the road.

Posted in Polytunnel, Smallholding | Tagged | Leave a comment

There may be trouble ahead…

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

Whilst watering the polytunnel today I noticed that a pepper and a tomato had been subjected to nibblage. This is the sort of behaviour up with which I will not put.

Fortunately the tomato is recoverable in a sense because I can still take the seeds to use next year. The pepper however is pretty much a dead loss. Even the perpetrator doesn’t actually seem to have enjoyed it that much given the remains scattered about. Can’t blame them. I prefer not to eat unripe peppers too.

Could be that I have to face the music and put a cat flap in the polytunnel so our furry footwarmer can earn his keep and take a turn at guard duty from now on.

Posted in Polytunnel, Smallholding | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Siamese twin apple

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

Found in some of the apples that have been brought in for me to press this week.

Posted in Orchard, Smallholding | Tagged | Leave a comment

A little more work on the polycrub

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

Progress has been painfully slow this year, but I’m really not comfortable using power tools when I can’t even get my fingers to do what my brain is telling them 🙁

I have however finally managed to finish off the wooden dwarf walls of the polycrub. Someone local was giving away some unsafe scaffold boards and it turned out to be just enough to do the job. I have almost nothing left over.

Next has to be working out what to do with the ends. It would be pretty simple, but I want to put vents in and I’ve not decided how best to do that yet.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged | Leave a comment

An exercise in frustration

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

I know we’re not the only ones, because if we were they wouldn’t exist, so we, err, wouldn’t be.

Since about 5BC (before children) it’s been a loosely-followed tradition in our household that Friday night is curry night. Probably because back then we’d get home from work on a Friday evening and there was a good curry house just around the corner that delivered and it was all just too easy. Probably fortunately for our bank balance, now the nearest curry house is several miles away and doesn’t deliver so we make our own.

Sometimes, we fail to achieve the required degree of arse and purchase plastic poppadoms to accompany the meal. You know how it works (and it’s not only poppadoms)… You spend ten minutes trying to locate the corner that peels off whilst your meal sits on the plate uneaten and then a further five attempting to remove the “film” top with fingers, teeth, pliers and a hammer until everything on your plate is the same temperature as the mango chutney you just got out of the fridge. Eventually, after an outburst of swearing, you get up from the table and find a kitchen knife to stab through the film into the tabletop and finally get access to the incarcerated crispy comestibles.

The packaging designers however are evil. Sometimes the film starts to peel off without requiring a trip to the workshop to fetch the jigsaw. Only what you discover as it comes away is that the film actually delaminates and you’re left with a piece of printed plastic in one hand and a still-sealed packet of poppadoms in the other.

I’ve no idea how they achieve this feat, but if I ever find out who is responsible I shall force-feed them ghost chiles until something explodes.

Posted in Kitchen | Leave a comment

Behold! The contents of the washing machine coin trap

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

Because they can, of course, the long thin stuff had wedged itself into the access plug for the coin trap so it wouldn’t come out when the machine decided it wasn’t happy with the lack of flow through the pump.

It therefore became necessary to drag the machine out so I could remove the top, control panel and front to get a the trap from the inside and pull all the crap out that way.

If I ever design a washing machine, it’s going to have a “crap trap” with separate access to enable easy recovery from such a situation.

Posted in Workshop | Leave a comment

Tongs for the memory

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

I’m not sure quite how we ended up with multiple sets of these tongs, especially as the pin that holds them together appears to be made of cheese and eventually fails to manage the one simple job that requires its presence.

Fortunately I managed to find a screw of the right size to replace it in the workshop (which has still not entirely recovered from flooding almost a year ago) and with a pair of nuts on the other end to lock everything together, one pair will hopefully provide years more service.

With a second failed pair, I tried to be slightly more clever and used a brass screw, giving the tip of the screw a decent “tap” with a centre punch after putting on a single nut, the idea being to distort the thread and prevent the nut from coming off. It looks neater, but only time will tell if it works.

Posted in Kitchen, Workshop | Leave a comment

I am a mushroom daddy!

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

Ok, so it’s only the one (grey oyster) so far, but I could hardly have made my first attempt at growing my own mushrooms in a more difficult year.

I’ve kept the logs in a lean-to where they wouldn’t get dried out in the sunshine, but perhaps it’s now time to move them outdoors.

Posted in Smallholding | Tagged | Leave a comment

Four courgettes and a pepper (or few)

Posted on October 11, 2026 by james

More peppers picked yesterday (and perhaps the last of this year’s yellow courgettes). From top to bottom, left to right: yellow Corno di Toro, Hungarian Black chile, Chocolate sweet pepper, red Corno di Toro (with a couple of other red ones that I can’t recall the name of), Purple sweet pepper, Zativa pepper (for making paprika), Cayenne chile and Malawi Piccante chile (claimed to be the same one used in commercially-produced Peppadew peppers).

I’m a bit disappointed with the purple ones. Most seem to be quite small. I was hoping for a fairly standard bell pepper size.

There are plenty more peppers in the greenhouses and polytunnel that aren’t totally ripe yet, though I’m not sure how much further they will actually ripen as temperatures are dropping quite significantly.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment