Above: Out collecting mushrooms in a sheep pasture, at dawn; photo straight off the iPhone, unedited. Sunup, the air as ever is sweet perfume, and no-one else about. That’s my idea of heaven. Not many mushrooms this year, though. It’s the drought.
Backend-ish.
Oops! I’ve said it again.
Invariably, by the end of July and certainly August, I’ll be the first and last in the family to make a proclamation, concerning a shift in the ambience outside, not so much based on temperature or the shortening of days, but on the appearance of tiny filigree toadstools sprouting from the grass in the lawn and along the hedgerows, pallid off-white, translucent fruiting caps, buoyed magically on upright, hair-like stems, dipped in dew and fluttering delicately on the morning breeze. They herald the start of fungi season, a feast on decay; and their smell is pungent. The fungi, pictured below, are common in our woods at this time of year.
Other clues, time-served, and just as immutable, are the robin and wren’s overly strenuous territorial war-dances and set-to’s around our perimeter, and a complete cessation of the dawn chorus. Amorous collared doves apart, nests are empty, and all creation is fixated upon garnering food supplies to bolster frail beleaguered bodies against winter’s icy blast. Spiders busy themselves painstakingly rebuilding tattered webs, gluing crosshairs from their spinneret onto the mainframe with one rear leg, at morning’s pressing birth, their silken orbs weighed down heavily and rendered highly visible by tiny beads of moisture. It’s a high-risk operation. They know their time is short.
Above: One of many types of garden spider out in broad daylight, in our neck of the woods. We have Zebra Jumping spiders, too - no web, just a long, lightning-fast leap. Amazingly deft animals, with attractive huge eyes.
Calling attention to these, at least to me, obvious pointers to autumn gets me into a fair bit of trouble with my wife, every year that goes by, as though I am some kind of prophet-of-doom, wishing my time away. Not so! It’s simply a trigger, a prompt or wakeup call that cannot be ignored, one that has the power to excite me to my marrow. There’s stuff needs doing. Spiders spin their webs, blackbirds bulldoze the borders for diverse invertebrates, and I get an irrepressible urge to go mushrooming, to process our fruit and tomatoes in batches to freeze, and pickle a few pounds of shallots for Christmas. I blame my mother and paternal grandma. The one who brought me into the world was an ardent jam-maker, blackberry-picker and mushroom fiend, and the other a hoarder of jam jars. I used to swoon, whenever I caught a glimpse inside my gran’s pantry; line upon line of Kilner jars, some of them huge. Two were filled to the brim with antiquated spangled marbles, no-one got to play with! Now, I cannot walk past an empty jar in our kitchen without thinking, does this deserve a place in my garage, and what will I use it for? Pickled onions, beetroot, or simply saving seeds or knickknacks in? Yes, I’m an addict, a veritable Stig of the dump, when it comes to making use of what is free and others choose to throw away.
Backend of the year is always just as busy as the beginning, thankfully.
Pickling.
Above: This is a Matador F1 shallot, raised from seed in a 12” plant pot, as an experiment - twenty seedlings to a pot. Firm, sweet bulbs with a distinctive red blush and packed with typical onion flavour. I’ll be growing a lot more of these, next season.
Hence, this year is historic, because for the first time ever, I’m pickling my own shallots, raised from seed last February and harvested in July. Normally, I task my daughter with finding the hardest, healthiest bulbs on-sale in the various supermarkets, roundabout now, usually ends up Sainsbury’s, so I can pickle around seven bags-worth in time for Christmas. Nothing beats a homemade pickled onion with a slice of pork-pie, ripe stilton or cheddar; or fish and chips and cold meats, come to that - a perfect seasonal garnish. I’ll still be processing five or six bags from Sainsbury’s this October, in order to see us well into next autumn. Like pickled beetroot, they store extremely well.
Above: A modest stab at my own brand of pickled Matador’s. Six weeks to curing. What shall I call them? Nota bene: do not include a jalapeño unless you want to burn your mouth off! I did and they do!
Mushrooming.
Above: This haul of field mushrooms ended up in an omelette, for lunch. Would have been even nicer, browned in butter with dry-cured bacon, black pudding and eggs.
When my parents had a caravan on Spurn Point, I used to relish getting up at 5am and going out with my dog to hunt for mushrooms in Mr Clubley’s field, across the way. It was cold work, with a harsh sea-breeze blowing across the narrow spit of land; but, believe me, it was a lot colder in the caravan. By the time I’d have my first half-dozen mushrooms safely tucked under my belt, wrested from beneath the tight tussocks of sheep-shorn grass, I would no longer feel cold, just the pleasant glow of success and the prospect of bacon and eggs and mushrooms, rustled up in the galley. Olfactory heaven. I still get that same buzz, today, hunting in the sheep pastures outback.
Making a generic tomato sauce.
Above: A great way to use up or save surplus tomatoes. This batch has been spiced up with a jalapeño out of the greenhouse - adds more than just heat. Their flavour is truly superb, almost indefinable.
At the time of writing, we still have quite a surfeit of ripe cherry tomatoes and mounds of herbs growing in pots, plus one of the deep-beds, and they’re in their prime; basil, oregano, cutting celery, curly parsley, chervil, rosemary and thyme. Most gets eaten fresh, soil to pan to plate; but there comes a point when it pays to lay down a generic base-mix tomato sauce, whilst they’re all still available, by frying off a couple of onions and/or shallots with half a garlic bulb and working in a bowlful of tomatoes, skins and all, before finishing off with those listed herbs in generous amounts, and a squirt of tomato sauce and Lea & Perrins. The result would grace any pizza topping or curry, every bit as much as a bolognese; and frozen down in batches, it can be used to punch flavour into similarly delicious, easy-to-prepare meals, out of season.
Fruit compote.
One of the best decisions I made, some fifteen years ago, was to add to the Ashton Cross blackberry bush that I brought with us, when we bought this house, with raspberry canes (various) and strawberries (superb pot-grown plants from Chris Bowers) to fill every last bit of free space in the garden. The strawbs are the perfect adjunct to Wimbledon fortnight, a treat, and rarely make it to the compote stage; but on those few occasions when they do, stewed for no more than three minutes in a tablespoon of sugar and a pinch of water, along with a handful of freshly picked raspberries, the result is nothing short of amazing. A family favourite, it’s devoured in a jiffy as a topping to yoghurt, ice-cream, fresh cream or rice-pudding. Any fruit that survives a day in the fridge, and Wimbledon, gets the same treatment and is then frozen for Christmas.
Above: These berries were hiding underneath a canopy of leaves, low to the ground. It pays to forage and get a bird’s-eye view, the lower the better. These blackberries are interlopers from next-door.
Above: Break out the ice-cream. Djokovic is playing Alcaraz in the semi-final.
What applies to strawberries and raspberries applies equally well to blackberries and plums. Certainly, a glut of blackberries is worth processing and freezing, ready for the Bramley apple harvest in late September. That, too, is a match made in heaven.
Looking out of the window, today, I noticed three or four handfuls of autumn fruiting raspberries, ripe and ready for picking. It pays to buy several autumn-cropping varieties of both strawberries and raspberries, because they’re so easy to propagate. Quids in.
Last week in September, the longstanding drought of five months ended with well over two inches of rain. All of it has soaked into the parched, cracked ground and there’s been no flooding, no puddles and no mud on the farm track worth talking about. What we did get though, next morning, was scores and scores of mushrooms.
And they were as sweet as a nut. I bumped into the farmer, with his dogs. He had a bagful, too, every bit as impressive as mine. So, we swapped stories, instead.
Next morning, temperatures had dipped to near-freezing. Went out to fill my boots with mushrooms - not a one!
Ditto the next day.
However…
Off barbel-fishing with my mate, on the river Wye. Let you know how we get on…
Next month, I’ll be foraging in the woods, amongst the thick carpet of leaf-litter, and filling my wheelbarrow twenty-times over, so as to mix with horse manure to make fast-tracked leaf-mould blend - eight months in toto, no more. That’s super-quick. It’s wonderful stuff; and it’s free!
Feeding the soil, feeds the family, fully twelve months of the year, year-in, year-out, no detriment to the soil. A modest amount of work that costs me nothing but calories, also keeps me fit, gives a massive return on our food supply, in terms of yield and flavour; and the quality of my soil, two spits down and even further beyond, is a true testament to it. I’m an unapologetic pro-dig enthusiast. Next post, I will show you why.
Those lilac tones in the first photo! So pretty.