Family and friends decorated the marquee and house, and then had a jolly good party, great fun – a beautiful day to remember ♥

They are a lovely couple and would appreciate any sponsoring you can offer for this excellent cause – you can sponsor them by clicking on this link. Good luck you two, please keep us posted on our journey and how you do!

This is a delicious soup recipe, perfect for this time of year with the usual glut of courgettes. My lovely friend Jacqui Solomon showed me how to make this many years ago in my garden, when I was inundated with hundreds of courgettes and couldn’t think of another courgette recipe….

Note: – for all my ingredients I always use organic stuff where ever possible. We are very lucky here and have a large kitchen garden where we can grow lots of veg and it really is quite easy once you get used to doing it, and even if you have a window box or a veranda you can still grow your own food.

If you need a hand, ask in your area about community growing groups, Transition projects, allotments or CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture). We will always help here if we can too, so if you would like to grow your own veg and don’t know where to start pop us an email.

Jaq’s Courgette Soup

I use the following quantities for every 1kg of courgettes – and don’t forget, they can be any shape, any colour, any size – and if freezes really well so you can cook in bulk for several meals.

• 2 x onions chopped
• 2 x medium potatoes chopped (if not new pots, then peel)
• large knob of butter
• Salt & pepper
• chopped fresh basil (optional)

Method:

• Melt the butter in a large pan, add the onions and fry gently until soft.
• Stir in the chopped potatoes for a couple of minutes and then add the chunks of your chopped up courgettes and pop a lid on over a low heat, leaving the vegetables to slowly cook through.
• This will take about 20 mins.
• Then puree with a and blender or push through a sieve, season to taste – John likes a lot of salt and not too much pepper and I like a little pepper, but its individual so add a little at a time. Sprinkle basil over if using.
  

Soda Bread

• 450g strong wholemeal bread flour
• large knob of vegetable fat
• 1 teaspoon each of salt, cream of tartar, baking powder
  
• 300 ml buttermilk or *soured raw milk

Method:

• Preheat the oven to gas mk 6 (205^o C) and prepare a baking sheet by greasing lightly
• Sift all the dry ingredients into a roomy mixing bowl (adding the wheat bran left in the sieve!)
• Rub the fat into the flour and make a well in the centre
• Add the liquid and mix in, making sure all the dry ingredients are incorporated
• Turn onto floured board and knead briefly (30 seconds) just to smooth out
• Roll into a ball and press onto baking sheet in a round, about 4cm deep
• Score a deep cross on the top with a sharp knife and bake for 35-40mins
• When time is up eat hot, warm or cold
  

Easy -peasy…and no waiting for it to double prove (…or cool down! )

We have just harvested the spelt that we grow for Roger Saul at Sharpham Park in Shepton Mallett to transform into organic spelt flour and other organic goodies. The field looks amazing, I walked the dogs across there tonight and the views are breathtaking. Spelt is an ancient relative of wheat, recorded back as far as 8,000 B.C. (read more on wikipedia).

A lot of people who cannot tolerate wheat in thier diet can eat bread and biscuits made from spelt flour, its easily digested in comparison with its modern cousin.

The ears of spelt are quite different from wheat, much tighter and harder to extract the kernal.

Our good friend John “I don’t believe in all this organic rubbish” Binnie has bought all the organic wheat straw for his cattle and sheep in Staple Fitzpaine and he is collecting the straw over the weekend.

I do love it when, over a nice cup of organic coffee or a local pint from Cotleigh Brewery he starts disparaging the credentials of the Soil Association – he thinks we’re all completely barking mad, organic fanatics – determine to take over the world! The truth is though John, its better for the whole world to be farming organically and, with massive population increases over the next 30-40 years we need to be all be working towards our food being supplied locally, organic and seasonal. These three words are the most important change that we will have to make when we eventually get around to reorganising our outdated food system, set up after the war – it just does not hold up in the very different world we live in today.

<deep breath in…….and relax> …ok, end of rant. Have a look at these pictures below – you have to agree that there is nowhere more beautiful than English countryside when the sun is shining…

We all wish Luke & Helen every happiness in their new future together xx

I can’t blame him as we do have very juicy fat earthworms, but he is going to have to go. In his tunneling exploits he has managed to snip of the roots of 80% of my spinach plants, and now he is funneling around the rhubarb, which is still doing amazingly well despite his ‘undermining’ efforts – in fact just this morning I made a huge pot of rhubarb & ginger compote to accompany breakfast – delicious with thick creamy Greek-style yoghurt.

RECIPE: Chop up rhubarb into 2cm sticks in a saucepan, add a couple of tablespoons of water, lots of sugar to taste (John likes it quite tart, I prefer it a bit sweeter) and gently bubble over a medium heat until tender. I chop up preserved ginger to taste – maybe 3 pieces for a kilo of rhubarb, but you can add ground ginger instead if you prefer. Another delicious compote is to miss out the ginger and add some vanilla extract and orange zest – heaven!

All is good on the farm. With this wonderful weather you just wouldn’t want to be anywhere else! Here is John on the left, turning over some ground for a new fertility ley in Home Field, next to the farmhouse (closely pursued by a huge flock of seagulls!). We use rye grass and clover for this, and the wonderful, nitrogen fixing clover works its magic over the ley period leaving the soil rich and fertile, ready for the next wheat or barley crop. Fertility building leys are a key element in the organic rotation and naturally improve the soil.

This is our crop of organic spelt (with the lovely John) he’s 6′2″…so its going to be an impressive amount of straw! We usually chop the straw and turn  it in during the autumn or spring cultivations (depending upon which crop is being grown) as this adds fertility too. This year straw is going to be very scarce and several of our farming neighbours have asked us to sell the straw. It’s a difficult decision – I mean, straw will fetch a good price this year but (to quote John again) you don’t want to sell your shirt only to have to buy a jacket – and if we don’t chop the straw in we may be left with a nitrogen deficient soil in some areas, and as you will have heard me say before: successful organic farming is all about the soil.

One of the best plots of soil is in the kitchen garden – but sadly it is being savaged again by dratted rabbits!

John has suggested before that we give up growing our own veg and just grow organic rabbits for the pot…but, I’m not going to be beaten by a rabbit on this! and, even though they have munch their way through my celery, fennel, beans, carrots and lettuce (depsite the ’soporific effect’ to quote Beatrix Potter) we have re-planted and have moved the dog run inside the kitchen garden – and we are about to re-fence the whole area (and try not to fence them actually inside with the vegetables). So watch out Peter & friends…your days are numbered!

The wild life pond is looking beautiful. New leaves in the pretty green canopy reflected in the natural spring fed water- it’s just lovely. Whilst walking the dogs last night, we were so pleased to see the tadpoles are present still in good numbers – the whole pond will be hopping if they all survive!

The mass of black below is in fact all tadpoles – they have gone from skinny little ones to chubby little marbles with tails

Its big in America and Canada and its growing in popularity across Britain. It is a proven way of making local food work benefiting both farmers and growers and the local community.

This is what the Soil Association website has to say:

“Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a social enterprise model that is based on an approach of mutual support through a producer-consumer partnership. CSA offers an innovative business approach where a food or farm enterprise has members who own ‘shares’ in the harvest and therefore also share in the risk.  CSA enterprises range from allotments on farms and sponsoring apple trees, a community making an agreement in advance to purchase a particular crop from a producer, the community members making regular input of labour, to the purchase of land or related holdings or renting land and employing the producer. These enterprises engage and empower community members in the supply and/or production of their own food in a close relationship with a primary producer.”

What, you may ask, is the benefit of a CSA? The truth is there are many benefits – these are just a few:

• improving the local economy – keeping the money local – not sending it to a faceless supermarket HQ miles away
• more food for your hard earned cash £££ (no middle men/transport/unnecessary packaging)
• fresher food with less food miles – grown just around the corner!
• less traffic on motorways = less pollution
• less pollution = healthier environment = healthy people!!!

In fact – it seems like a win win situation all around, and just think: LOCAL food for LOCAL people! If people of Bridgwater could get together and have a share in gowing Bridgwater produce like carrots, strawberries, leeks, apples, flowers and potatoes, sausages, eggs, chicken, ham, bacon, steak, lamb chops – even the mint sauce to go on top!  Woudn’t that be a wonderful thing to be able to do for our town?

So, what’s the first step? It’s quite easy – start small:  if you have a patch of land you can just get together with a neighbour and start doing it – you don’t need a huge amount, it can be 6 chickens (fresh home produced eggs!) and 4 rows of beans to start with and you can let the movement grow ‘organically’   – get more people on board, increase the size of your plot. If, on the otherhand you are thinking big then you probably need a professional on board, and that where someone like John or Richard Plowright (the organic veg box man) a grower/farmer/producer would be a great help – someone who can grow veg on a bigger scale and has the necessary equipment (like tractor, plough, harrow etc.).

I suppose the first step is to talk to people – see if the project is viable. Would we have enough customers to make it work?

Go on, get chatting with your friends – and get this thing moving!