Autumn should be the time of foraging and harvesting, plus spending lots of time in the kitchen doing stuff with the results of said harvesting and foraging. This week I got into the swing of that a bit more, and we peeled loads of chestnuts so I could get creative with the results. A savoury fish crumble with a chestnut and cheese crumble was very good indeed. The sweeter apple and quince crumble was a bit too sweet and sat in the tummy and on the hips in a rather alarming manner - less sugar, and more flour could be the answer. But that means peeling more chestnuts...
In addition I had another go at the fig tree, which seems aware that it is going to be massacred soon, so is putting out more figs than the local starlings (the top ones), the chickens (the bottom ones) and we (those in the sweet spot in the middle) can comfortably get through. I am now up to a dozen pots of fig jam made, and as we haven't finished last year's, I'm making no more!
I should also be digging up potatoes, but the ground is currently still sodden thanks to Kirk and then another few depressions that have been passing through during the week. I'm waiting for the promised dry patch next week to do more of that. There are no frosts predicted, so the cristophines continue to produce a huge crop - this lot are on a new plant John planted to protect the asparagus bed. I like to think that the row of diminishing fruit are reminiscent of the pottery flying ducks so beloved of sitting room walls in the 1970s!
The foraging is going less well, and the view locally is that it is not a year for cèpes, as no one has seen one. I did find what looked like one, but it was under a birch tree, which is wrong, so I discarded it. There are strange bits of fungi around, like these yellow threads we found in the One Acre Wood - inedible and also not clear from our array of mushroom identification books what they actually are! Quite attractive though.
Less peaceful autumn pursuits include trying to get the dense thickets of bramble and old man's beard under control. While I don't mind odd pockets of it, when you get banks that are taller than me and cover a third of a field, it is not good and it doesn't create valuable habitat. The density is so great that most plants can't grow, the cover defends some animals (hares and pheasants mostly) from hunters, but doesn't provide a dry or comfortable holt for winter, the plant quality is poor, as they all strive for sunlight, so there is little if any fruit, and not much by way of insects as there are no flowers. And it grows and grows upwards and then outwards, taking over flower meadow and pond edges to the detriment of a wide range of flora and fauna.
So we are punching paths through the big bank with strimmers and hedge trimmers and then using the big yellow Beast to mulch through the cut stems to create walkways that may be easier to maintain next year, while providing some shelter and routes for our non-human visitors to move around more easily. It's all very much a work in progress, but I am pleased with how it is going.
With bad weather forecast for much of the week, I brought in Trail Camera 1 to see what had been going on in its line of vision. It was as well I did, as it had over 2,000 files on it, and the batteries were pretty well dead. It had been out since late July and the batteries, which weren't the best quality in the first place, had been used for a few months before then too, so weren't fresh. It took a while to prune down the 2,018 files to just 252 that had some interest, and they will require further triage and editing and videos put onto YouTube, but as a taster of what there is, here is our fox in the open.
I did also load just one video onto YouTube today, as I wanted to show how robust the cameras need to be - turn the sound up for the full effect and yes, those are tusks!
I did also promise a bit of coypu action - I am ambivalent about them. They are an invasive, non-native species with no natural predators and cause a lot of damage, and I don't like their tails, but their whiskers are magnificent!
That's enough coypu for the moment! Have a good week!
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