The real treat of the season – purple sprouting broccoli!
I know, thanks to the greenhouse and ploytunnel we’ve been eating fresh, homegrown salad leaves for about a month now, but it’s the PSB I really look forward too. I can’t tell you how excited I got going to pick the first of it the other day.
The only trouble is I have to pick twice as much as I want for diner as half of it will get eaten on the way home!
This week has been a bit weird really.
Starting with the bank holiday weekend and all the work I managed to catch up with in the garden and down the plot (really good). Then then news about no chooks (a bit of a blow, but not really a problem). Then the seeds sown over the weekend – so many have already germinated! I really can’t believe how well they’re doing – it’s been perfect weather for them really and the seedlings from the previous week’s sowings.
This morning I found out a potential new client wasn’t going to be a client after all. That’s fair enough, but they didn’t actually have the decency to let me know. I was waiting for some info from them that hadn’t arrived so phoned them. When I spoke to them they were very “fluffy” sounding and gave a perfectly reasonable explanation and said there would probably be other stuff coming my way, but it was painfully obvious that they’d had no intention of letting me know. That’s just disrespectful.
In business, there are a lot of cut-throat, hard-nosed operators out there. Each to their own, but this company isn’t one of them. They trade on a lot of good will. Karma’s one of those things – what goes around comes around. I have no intention of “getting back” at them, that’s not my thing, but if that’s how they treat everyone they’ll soon be running out of good will to feed off.
Now for a bit of a rant, not connected to the above, but certainly triggered by it.
Ethics is one of those curious things. All too often it’s all a facade – scratch the surface and you’ll see the true colours. I know it’s inevitable, but it does annoy me – I can’t help it. If you want to “be green” or live/work “ethically” then do it, but don’t try to pretend you’re something that you’re not.
For me, honesty is fundamental to both those issues – if you’re trying to be green, then say that. No-one can change overnight from living a consumerists lifestyle to living a sustainable one in the same way farmers can’t pour chemicals on their crops for decades then decide to stop and call themselves organic the very next day. The powers that be have decided for the farmers that process will take 3 years, year on year the land becomes more organic and less polluted.
I wonder how long it takes the average person to change from consumerist to sustainable?
I can’t answer that as I’ve not reached the end of that journey. Will I ever? I don’t know – I don’t think so. When you make that kind of a commitment you decide what you can change now, what’s for the future and what’s out of your control (to greater or lesser degrees). In my experience, by the time you’ve ticked all the “change now” boxes things on the “future” list suddenly become the “now”. Of course the list keeps growing.
Even now, if I were to sit and write down a list like that to apply for me I know as soon as I think I’ve finished I’ll think of something else. One thing leads to another. Finish one task and another will present itself. The list goes on. Forever.
Bad news, the chooks I was going to be getting won’t be coming as there was a power cut which effected the incubator.
Never mind, these thing happen, but it is disappointing.
For Christmas the OH gave me a hot smoker. Yesterday was the first chance I had to use it.
We had applewood smoked chicken, homegrown salad and homegrown tatties for us tea!
This year I’ve decided to a make a few hedgerow wines. In the past I’ve made Elderberry, Bramble and even Oak Leaf – all of which have turned out well, so I thought I’d try a few more.
First of the year is Gorse Flower. Gorse is my favourite flower (smells devine – go sniff some and see), so I’ve been after making some for a while. Friday the flowers were picked and processed:
It’s now just about ready to be strained off into a demi john.
I’ll keep you updated.
