That is the name of my website. Even if you are not interested in what I have to offer - mainly dried leaves from trees and other plants traditionally used in cooking, herbal teas and for small pets, you might be interested in some views of where I live and the neighbouring land. Use the Google map "streetview" icon for this purpose when you link from the website.
Those of you who either have, or are thinking about having their own website, should take a look too. See what an exceptional site has been created for me by my friend Patrick (mentioned elsewhere in the blog from time to time) through his site www.launchwindow.net and consider using him to upgrade or create your own site. Patrick also did the technical work to enable my ebook to be published. He could do one for you too.
Obviously the launch of my site is for my new venture for 2014 and that is offering a range of products from things growing on the quinta. I have previously remarked that I like to do something new each year. The almonds are now the favoured venture for 2015 as it is unlikely I will have the land and infrastructure ready to consider planting later this year.
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
Friday, 23 May 2014
Mediterranean Diet
Having recently read
yet another article praising the Mediterranean Diet (MD) I decided to write
this blog. Over the best part of 20 years I have read a great deal about the
origins of the term and what it means. Having known a few people from rural
areas of countries around the Mediterranean (Med) when I lived in Australia in
the 1980s and knowing what they considered traditional foods from “back home” I
always doubted that the MD was truly representative of what country people in
that area ate in the middle to latter 20th century. Having lived in
rural Portugal for the last 11 years my doubts are now beliefs.
The MD is generally
recognised as being one promoted by Harvard University’s School of Public
Health in the mid 1990s and constantly repeated by all and sundry ever since.
It is supposedly based on the typical diet of people in Crete, the remainder of
Greece and Southern Italy during the 1960s. There is quite a good Wikipedia
article on how it all came about, including some earlier research and some
subsequent studies. UNESCO has recognised the diet pattern as an integral
cultural heritage of several countries bordering and close to the Med,
including Portugal which strictly has the Atlantic as its shores, Gibraltar
being the westerly point of the Med.
The MD indicates that a large proportion of daily food intake
should be, and I quote, "abundant plant foods, fresh fruit as the typical
daily dessert, olive oil as the principal source of fat, dairy products
(principally cheese and yogurt), and fish and poultry consumed in low to
moderate amounts, zero to four eggs consumed weekly, red meat consumed in low
amounts, and wine
consumed in low to moderate
amounts". What that all means is, of course, interpreted differently by
different people.
Harvard also made the MD idea into a graphic known as “The
Healthy Eating Food Pyramid” and another called “The Healthy Eating Plate”.
These are revised from time to time to take into account recent research but
follow the same ideas as the quote above – with some notable exceptions. Dietary
vitamin supplements are now recommended by Harvard. If a diet is adequate then
supplements are not necessary. If it is inadequate then it cannot be a healthy
diet. Vegetable oils (the olive is a fruit not a vegetable) are also now recommended
as “healthy”. There have been too many adverse research reports about the
unhealthiness of vegetable oils for me to accept this. All vegetable oils are a
modern invention, say about 100 years ago onwards, and an industrial processed
one at that – nothing natural about it, and no long-standing use of vegetables
as a fat source in any of the countries near the Med. In fact I am not aware of
any country that historically relied on vegetable oil as a source of fat. I do
not have any vegetable oils by choice, nor would I (nor have ever in my life)
eaten margarine and similar spreads – always butter. Why does Harvard espouse
chemical supplements and industrially processed fats?
So what do country folks really consume? It is necessary to
generalise, there are exceptions – I have met a Portuguese vegetarian and a
couple of teetotallers. Without question
a lot of olive oil is consumed, people have told me of up to a litre a week for
their household, but it is likely to be Virgin Olive Oil, not Extra Virgin, and
from the olive mill where their, or their neighbours’ olives were pressed. It
is poured on most dishes, cooked or uncooked. Often used as a dip for bread to
accompany food. They also consume a lot of vegetables, fruit and some nuts – my
wife and I eat about a kilo of nuts a week between us. I doubt many other
people do. But these people also eat a lot of meat, cheese and eggs. In fact
they consume a lot of everything, because they eat a lot. They also drink a
lot. Almost every person I know here has wine with their lunch. I recall 4 or 5
years ago coming across two old couples (and I am 70, so when I say old, I mean
old) about to begin their middle of the day break from picking olives. On the
back of the donkey cart were two enormous loaves of bread, a huge chunk of
presunto (dried ham) a heap of fruit and 4 bottles of wine. I did not see any
olive oil but my experience is that presunto is eaten with dry bread, no oil.
Therein lies, I believe, the real reason these people live so
long without much by way of illness – they cannot spare the time to be ill
because they have too much work to do. To be fair, Harvard has always stressed
the need for what they term “regular physical activity”. Most modern people do
not have work that needs that regular physical activity, even housewives with
their modern gadgets do not get the exercise of doing such things as laundry by
hand. Although I know one old lady who in addition to working her small quinta
and tending goats, still does, and in the river at that, and all year round –
it is an exceptionally clean river. As a consequence people in modern sedentary
jobs are not burning up the calories they would consume if they lived the
peasant life, and so end up fat and often with associated health problems.
To go back to the original source of the MD, Crete, it is
estimated that there were over one million goats and sheep on the island in
1990 just before the MD was widely publicised. And people were supposed to eat very
little red meat? There were also “large” numbers of pigs whatever “large” means,
and “some” cattle. These animals, plus hens, were and are owned in small numbers
by virtually every country dweller around the Med. The number seems to vary
according to family needs, but I would say from observations, usually between
two and twenty. Some people raise more than they need in order to create some
income. There are extremely few cattle owned by small scale farmers. Lack of adequate
grazing is a prime reason.
On the other hand it seems just about everybody kills a pig
on a regular basis. Add to this kids, lambs, and bountiful numbers of eggs for
almost all the year. Further away from the equator hens need supplementary
lighting to keep producing at a reasonable rate through the winter. In all my
life, and that of millions of other rural people, nobody has ever asked how
much home reared meat is eaten. Official figures of meat and egg consumption
simply ignore this aspect of diet, because nobody knows. All animals are by law
required to be ear tagged for food safety and disease control reasons (and in
recent times an internal identification bolus in addition to the ear tags) but huge
numbers are not so identified. It is wrong, and I do not condone it. Officially
they do not exist, but their offspring are killed and eaten, as well as lots of
cheese made from surplus milk.
Add too the fact that every little block of land owned by
these people includes (apart from the necessary olive trees) wine grape vines.
Nobody knows how much home produced wine and brandy is drunk either, because
nobody knows how much is produced. Have a meal with, or just visit, any of
these people and you will soon find out that it takes a persistent drinker to
get through what they do.
I follow what I believe is really the MD, including using
Virgin not Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I take oil in exchange for olives I take to
the mill at Sobral do Campo. EVOO is for those with money who use it sparingly
– a bit like drinking good Claret and Vintage Port every day instead of equally
as satisfying less expensive wines. I also eat a lot more butter than anyone I
have ever met, but then I still do a lot of physical work 7 days a week, and
unless you do too, or exercise intensely several times a week, I think you
would be better sticking to Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate, but without the
supplements and definitely without vegetable oils.
Sunday, 2 March 2014
Weather Extremes
Forget whether you believe the world is
warming, and if you do, what is causing it. Think instead about what you have
seen and read about in the last three months. I have been confined indoors for
a lot of that time due to continuing wet and windy weather. My winter outside
work schedule has not been met, but being restricted has let me see what is
happening to others less fortunate than me – when I have an Internet signal.
The usual Australian heat and
bushfires have been reported as well as blizzards in America. Floods and gales
have made the news in Britain and some European mainland countries, and
Portugal’s Atlantic islands have also suffered. The difference this winter/summer appears to be
the severity of these events and the geographic and time extension over past
years.
Some parts of Australia that normally receive
summer rainfall are in drought conditions – and unless you have seen first hand
what an Australian (or similar country) drought looks like, then you cannot
imagine it. People in places like Britain talk about having a drought. No they
do not, they have a short spell without rain. Where I now live it does not rain
between May and at least the end of September. Every year. That is just a dry
spell. Drought means absolutely no grass whatsoever, and water supplies drying
out completely. No food, no water and the inevitable outcome is that enormous
numbers of farm livestock and wild animals die.
Drought is particularly bad in the SW of the
U.S. “Natural disaster” status was
declared for counties in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Kansas, Utah,
Arkansas, Idaho, Oklahoma and California. California has been dry for 3
years and is running out of drinking water. Hawaii is included in the natural
disaster status too and other countries worldwide are similarly suffering. The
Eastern part of the U.S. suffered from winter storms with unprecedented snow in
some southern states. As I
post I am aware of temperatures in at least one area of Kansas being close to
zero Fahrenheit. One thing I came across that many will have missed is the
flooding in Bolivia. More than 40 people killed and about 50,000 homes totally
destroyed in January, plus an estimated 100,000 cattle lost. I saw one aerial
photo of an isolated higher bit of ground tightly packed with a large number of
cattle that would obviously starve to death.
It seems a lot of vegetables have been lost
around the world, including those in large numbers of glasshouses and plastic
tunnels for out of season supplies. We can feel as sorry as we may for all the
farmers worse off than ourselves, and indeed those non-farmers who have lost
their lives or homes and possessions, but there is little we can do. I am sure
that more than one reader has suffered losses themselves in recent weeks due to
the weather. It is not so long ago either that many in Scotland had
sheds collapse due to excessive snow. Recent wet seasons have caused havoc too
to farmers’ cash flows. For a couple of years I have been half-heartedly
planning future action in the event that extreme weather and declining supplies
of petrochemicals make what we now consider normal life to become unobtainable
and/or unaffordable.
I have made a couple of posts already
about “what if” scenarios, and these were on the basis that I did not really
expect to need to resort to putting the ideas into practice, just a sort of
insurance policy. If these extreme conditions continue for another couple of
years there will be severe shortages of several food commodities for those in
“developed” countries. Millions are already starving and an inability for other
countries to supply food aid does not bear thinking about, but we should.
Along with some farmers in other countries
I had noticed that weather patterns were staying around longer, meaning that
when it is wet it stays wet for longer, and when it is cold (always relative of
course) it stays cold for longer. The only difference is that in this part of
the world it definitely is warmer than even 10 years ago. We have not had what
I would call a "hard" frost (that is below minus 5ºC here) for about
6 winters. I have the old records but it takes some time to search them all. We
have not been below freezing point since 10th Dec and that was only minus one.
Soil temperatures have been in double figures at 9.30 a.m. and the mean
temperatures for January and February 2014 were well above anything we have
experienced in the past.
I have also noticed in my trawling of news
and general agricultural sites around the world that more and more large scale
farmers are switching from traditional livestock and crops into so-called niche
markets. I think it has always been this way, but probably on a smaller scale.
I wonder if this shift means that grazing livestock numbers will fall rather
quickly and that staple cereals acreages will also fall around the world.
This would give opportunites to some - but
who? Similar opportunities will arise for those not into broadacre farming,
hence my interest in the lack of water in California, which produces more than
80% of the world’s almonds. Growers there are struggling with the lack of rain
and snowmelt. Little snowmelt will be available this spring. California also
supplies virtually all of several different vegetables consumed in the US.
Monday, 23 December 2013
August to December 2013
August was a
relatively mild month, temperatures fairly steady in the mid-30s C without any
high spikes. The river ceased flowing on 10th August which meant a
cessation of irrigation. It has ceased for the last few years now, and I am
beginning to expect that to be normal. The first few years we were here it was
more reliable. Fortunately, having bought the tractor mounted sprayer as
intended I was able to cart some water to the most susceptible olive trees –
young ones bearing a heavy crop, and keep them from losing their fruit.
What a
difference that sprayer has made. It was not off the tractor for over 3 weeks
from when I bought it. I sprayed against weeds all along the tree lines in less
than a day. It used to take me the a week with knapsack sprayers. I also had
complete protection from olive fly and gafa with the first clean crop I have
harvested.
I know many
people are opposed to using chemical protection of crops, but there really is
no alternative here. Neglected groves abound and they are a permanent source of
spreading diseases and pests. A loss of table quality fruit and the resulting
low oil yield from the damaged fruit that is harvested is simply not an option,
so spraying is necessary. I used the sprayer too to clean up the edges of the
tarmac drive where weeds, and particularly couch grass were beginning to damage
the surface. It also proved useful in spraying in and around buildings against
insects, as well as treating the goats for the same problems. Biting and
sucking insects, as well as flies, are a great problem for livestock in the
summer.
In the garden,
we continued to harvest lots of gherkins and then a year’s supply of the
peppers which were just beginning to fruit when I posted in July. They are
indeed a welcome new crop and very pleasant. To save anyone checking back to
July, Marconi Red is the variety we used. I only had nine plants, but they
cropped for many weeks. It is not a big blocky pepper, but has a very small
cavity and is easily prepared for cooking or freezing – so my wife tells me. I
just grow and harvest crops, she does the rest.
The potatoes
followed their usual form of not being particularly brilliant. The property
just seems not to be suited to grow them. Mona Lisa definitely outperformed the
Picasso – both potato varieties, nothing to do with art. I will try Mona Lisa
again next year, and maybe something else new. I just cannot accept that with
all my experience I am unable to produce our own potatoes for all year round
supply. Those available in the shops are of such poor quality that we eat them
much less frequently than we like, using rice or pasta instead.
The olive
harvest was rather late with very slow ripening of crops around about. I was
picking ripe fruits as I could because I knew it would take me too long if I waited
for full trees to ripen. The days become shorter and rain always stops picking.
I was storing the picked fruits in vats of water until I had sufficient to take
to the mill, when we received a sharp frost on the morning of 21st
November. This was followed by a mild few days and then a string of frosts
right through to 12th December. The first one had damaged all the
olives remaining on the trees so it became a race against time to pick them,
whatever their state of ripeness, before they disintegrated. Our son and family
were visitng for a week and I was almost finished, with only one remaining to
be picked, a very old and very tall tree, close to the house on the west side,
that acts as a sunscreen to the cellar entrance and shades part of the house too.
The day after their arrival we finished the tree, with my son doing all the
climbing. I did not purposely plan it that way but I was pleased not to have to
spend an hour climbing amongst the branches. His wife and I took care of the
lower fruit.
As expected the
oil yield was very low because of the frost damage to most of the crop,
Fortunately due to a total lack of insect and fungal damage the fruit had
retained a reasonable amount of structure and was acceptable at the mill. After
allowing for the miller’s 18% processing deduction we ended up with 10 kilos of
fruit to the litre. This meant a production of one litre to approximately eight
and a half kilos of fruit. Very acceptable under the circumstances. At first I
thought I might have been looking at a loss of much of the unharvested crop,
and if I had not sprayed the resultant lower yield of even the sound fruit
would have been a disaster.
Saturday, 5 October 2013
Flying Ants
2nd
October was “Flying Ant Day 2013” here. That was the day when the ants with
wings left their nests. The day varies each year because it always follows the
first rains that end the summer dry spell. Every summer is always dry, but
they are not droughts such as are experienced for example in Australia and USA.
The first rains also bring a drop in temperatures.
Weather
forecasts are much more accurate than they used to be and I knew about a week
in advance when the rain would begin. This is very useful information because
it allows time to deal with work that absolutely must be done in advance of it
happening. For me that meant removing the irrigation pump from the river as the
first priority. I always leave it in position until immediately before local rain,
because being an optimist, in the years when the river stops flowing I hope for
sufficient of a thunderstorm somewhere in the mountains at the top of the
catchment area will begin the river flowing whilst we are still dry. It did
happen one year. Harvesting fruit and vegetables that are ready comes next.
Figs and tomatoes are particularly prone to splitting with a sudden influx of
water after they have been dry for so long. Olives are also at risk, but I had
been carting out water in the tank of my boom spray to supply a little to those
trees where the fruit was beginning to shrivel and I hope I have prevented
damage.
There was a
little rain early on the morning of 27th September with another 53mm
falling during the day and a further 50mm over the next couple of days.
Temperatures tend to be fairly static on a daily basis, changing little from
one day to the next. It is rare to get a change of more than two degrees on
consecutive days, but the rain makes one of the two exceptions in the year.
Temperatures had been a degree either side of 31ºC up to the 23rd
with slight falls as the clouds moved in and a drop to 21º when the rain began.
It felt decidedly cool the first day, despite the fact that I consider that
temperature to be very pleasant most of the time. There is a similar fairly
sudden change each year in May when we begin to receive warm southerly winds
and the shade temperatures increase. It is always warm in the sun, even in the
depths of winter.
On the 2nd
October around 10 am the ants began to take to the air. I had seen the numerous
holes that appear around nests earlier in the morning and a few winged ants
coming out of them. For a few hours they were on the wing, but not as numerous
as in other years. Perhaps my efforts at destroying nests on the quinta is
beginning to have some effect. Our biggest problem is the Seed-harvester Ant
and they cause considerable economic loss so I spend some time searching out
nests and killing the occupants, but many nests have only a single entrance/exit
that is often covered through the summer heat and it is difficult to find them.
These ants do
exactly what their common name suggests – they harvest seeds. Millions of them.
I have lost all seeds sown in the garden on more than one occasion, and when I
can spot the ants in the process I follow them to their nest, but a hundred
feet of small seeds can disappear overnight. They also cart away many kilos of
grass and clover seeds when fields are sown. They have no problems whatsoever
with cereals, maize, smaller beans and even White Lupins. I have not yet seen
an ant carrying a Broad (Fava) Bean. I have also lost about 20 young olive
trees to ants building their nest in the rootball of newly planted and young trees
and the tree dies. The Seed-harvesters are not the only culprit in these losses
though, because there is a much smaller ant (no idea what it is) that likes to
do the same.
In previous
years there has always been an ant to approximately each square foot after they
land. This year it was less than one to the square yard. They always drift
downhill on this property whereas it seems they normally swarm towards higher
points. Their behaviour is similar to that of the honey bee when a new Queen
emerges and drones fly to mate with her in the air. Whilst the male ants still very
much outnumber the females, there are many potential Queen Ants on the wing.
Fortunately most of them fail to establish a nest. As with bees, the males
merely die.
There is a lot
of information on the internet for those interested, simply search the term
“flying ants” and included, for those specifically interested in Portugal or
Spain, there is a very good and easily readable paper with the title beginning
“Nuptial flights of the Seed-harvester Ant (Messor Barbarus) in the
Iberian Peninsula………” by Gomez and Abril of the University of Girona and
published in the Myrmercological News of January 2012.
Sunday, 1 September 2013
Feeding and watering olives
Olives will grow and fruit in a wide
range of soils, even under arid conditions. Tree spacing is less in modern
groves than it was historically, when trees were frequently planted around the
Mediterranean at 12 x 12 metres spacing. Ignoring super high-density groves
where the trees are close spaced for “over the top” harvesting with machines,
it is currently usual to plant at distances between 5 x 5 to 7 x 7 metres.
Temperature
constraints are that damage will occur below minus 6ºC. Severe damage, and perhaps trees killed,
occurs very little below that, but, like many species of fruit and nuts, olives
have a chilling requirement – i.e so
many hours of temperatures below 7ºC,
(45ºF for those who use Fahrenheit) before they will flower the
following spring. How many hours each cultivar needs is variable, and it seems
extremely little research has been done. No doubt cultivars evolved to suit the
environment in which they are found naturally, and a failure to reach the
chilling requirement of any cultivar means that flowers will not bloom. A mean
daily temperature below 12ºC for several weeks seems sufficient to meet the
chilling requirement of all cultivars. How many weeks is open to debate.
As with all
plants, better quality soil, adequate nutrients and adequate water lead to much
more production. Soil is usually a “given” for most people, and, within the
temperature ranges required, almost any soil can be made to grow olives.
Millions of trees have been planted in individually terraced planting spaces on
very steep hillsides. If looking to buy a new property specifically for
planting olives, then somewhere with a good depth of soil, say at least a metre
and not solid clay, and plenty of available water for irrigation are the main
requirements.
With limited
knowledge of olives, and a desire to begin a non-animal enterprise when we
first bought our present property, I was led to plant a grove at 6 x 6 metres
spacing. I am quite happy with that and have planted more since at the same
spacing. This works out at 277 trees/ha of planted area. Over the last 10 years
I have read an enormous number of articles, research papers and advice from a
huge number of people and organisations involved in olive production in
probably every country in the world where olives are grown, as well as spoken
with several knowledgeable people. I have made decisions, based on all this
information, that I use to provide food and water for my trees. Whilst at least
one expert agrees with each individual decision - because I have chosen to
follow at least one expert’s advice in everything I have decided, some will
disagree with my overall management, but then they disagree with each other,
ranging from extremely little fertiliser to extremely high levels, and from
allowing quite severe moisture deficiencies (at times) to maintaining full
moisture profile of the soil.
Note that being
in the northern hemisphere the calendar year begins a few days after
mid-winter, so southern hemisphere information that refers to dates is in the
reverse production cycle position. Based on soil analyses, fertilisers used and
crops grown in the groves since the previous analysis, I apply granular
fertiliser as soon as practicable in the year. I top up phosphorus(P) and
potassium(K) if necessary. I apply Nitrogen(N) according to a personal
assessment of how much to apply. I may have grown a winter leguminous crop for
harvesting or for incorporation as a green manure. Alternatively, a crop of
maize may have been grown the previous summer and the stover left on the
surface as an overwintering mulch; or a summer leguminous crop may have been
sown and either harvested or ploughed in. I am also conscious of the
requirement for adequate trace elements without fertilising to excess. I have used foliar feeds, sometimes called
foliar fertilisers, this year and propose to make them an integral part of my
fertiliser programme. I will use high N early in the year and low N as the
fruit matures. I may apply a second dose of N granular fertiliser in the spring
too – again depending on a personal assessment of need. I prefer to split
fertiliser into smaller doses rather than apply a full season’s requirements at
once, but this is not always practicable. I will aim to have a pH of 7 or
slightly above. Somewhere in the range of 6.5 to 8 seems to be preferred, but
as I said, the experts do not always agree on the ideals
The groves are
irrigated, either through drip irrigation or overhead sprays. The drip system
is a single line with four litres/hour drippers at one metre spacing and laid
on the ground. The different irrigation methods determine what I can and cannot
grow in the summer. With overhead I can grow crops between the rows. With
drippers I am limited in summer, but not winter. I still intend to grow comfrey
on these lines (to be cut and used as a mulch for the trees) but this might be
delayed for another couple of years because the weed seed bank in the soil is
still too high.
There is nothing I can do about the
texture of the soil I have except to increase the Organic Matter(OM) content.
Higher OM means a soil that is more capable of retaining both nutrients and
water. Many semi-arid and arid soils have an OM content of 1% or even less but,
from anecdotal information only, it seems that the highest yields come from
trees grown on land with OM of several percentage points. I will also avoid
bare soil as much as possible, endeavouring to maintain some ground cover to
stop the possibility of water erosion in winter despite the fact that I have not
experienced this happening, and to ameliorate high soil temperatures in
summer. This means cultivating as
infrequently as possible – anathema to some growers who insist on permanent
bare land cultivated regularly throughout the year.
The sole reason behind my decisions is
the way in which the olive tree grows and produces its fruit. The following
three paragraphs are a combination of information in a University of Cordoba,
Spain publication and a paper by Razouk et al, with the long title of
“Optimal time of supplemental irrigation during fruit development of rainfed
olive trees in Morocco” with some additional comments based on other
information I have sourced.
Yield of
olives is the result of three main developmental processes that occur from
flowering to harvest: fruit set, fruit
growth and oil accumulation in the fruit pulp. Vegetative growth is critical in
terms of olive fruit production, because flowers are borne in inflorescences at
the axil of leaves of one-year old wood. This means that flowering and fruit
set originate in the axillary buds of last year’s
growth. So, the big problem is ensuring that this year’s fruit crop has
sufficient nutrients to yield a heavy crop of large (for the variety) olives,
but at the same time producing sufficient growth of new wood for next year’s
crop. In less than optimum conditions one or the other, or both, will suffer.
This is one of the reasons why there is so much biennial bearing in olives. New
growth is restricted by the demands of a heavy crop on the tree, but flourishes
when the previous year’s poor growth carries a small or nil crop, and the tree
produces another good crop in the following year. A vicious circle.
The reproductive cycle from flower bud
initiation to fruit ripening takes 15-18 months depending on cultivar and
growing conditions, as initiation starts in one summer and fruits from this
initiation ripen in the autumn or winter of the following year. The terminal
bud of a shoot is almost always vegetative and shoot growth starts with this
bud break in spring, when temperatures rise above 12ºC. Growth continues as
long as temperatures are below 35ºC, and there are no soil water deficit or
other environmental stresses. Growth begins pre-flowering, but natural soil
water supplies are almost always sufficient to avoid the need for irrigation at
this time. Critical stages for the tree are flowering in April/May; a time of
rapid growth about mid June; pit hardening about the end of July or early
August, and a second rapid growth about mid September. The first rapid growth
stage occurs just as most Mediterranean soils are becoming water deficient for
the summer. Pit hardening and the second rapid growth stage are well and truly
in the dry summer and early autumn before the winter rains begin. Some fortunate
areas receive some summer rain. Pit hardening is about the time of flower
initiation for next year’s crop too, so a lot of stress on the tree at this
stage. The growth stages and fruit development were the factors considered by
Razouk and his associates.
So, back to why
I do what I do. I rely on soil analyses in preference to leaf analyses. The
reason for this is simple – the chemical and nutritional composition of any
particular leaf changes throughout the year, and younger leaves have a
different composition to older leaves. Because of these changes I believe that
leaf analysis is of less value than soil analysis for long term planning. We
could obviously become super technical and do all sorts of tests, but that is
for research scientists, not your average grower. Some sources of information,
particularly those selling foliar feeds, insist on using leaf analysis (taken
in July each year) as the decision maker in fertiliser requirements. Following
the work of some researchers, maintaining the soil at adequate levels of all
plant nutrients is recommended – bearing in mind that an excess of some can
prevent an uptake of others, even although they are available. I take an
approach that if levels of the macro nutrients are considered adequate by most
authorities I am probably offering my plants the best that can be reasonably
done by any farmer.
I agree with
those who say that applying foliar feeds shows an almost immediate response,
whereas granular (or liquid) fertiliser applied to the soil may not. At the
same time it is not a lasting effect – similar to the application of prilled
lime, which is a very finely ground limestone that is formed into prills the
same as granular fertilisers and break down rapidly after application to the
land. This gives a quick fix to a low pH but does not have the ongoing pH
correcting ability of coarser ground limestone. The same applies to the foliar
feeds, they raise nutrient levels within the aerial part of the tree for a
short period of time. I do, though, go along with the school of thought that
foliar feeds assist the plants to assimilate nutrients from the soil. P in
particular can be a problem for plants to take up because it is fairly immobile
in the soil, and it appears that applying foliar N can assist with that problem,
although it also seems sensible to have some P in the feed. Foliar feeds do not
replace the soil nutrients, they complement the soil supply. You cannot feed a
tree just through its leaves.
I apply N
fertilisers to the soil so that the tree has the nutrients to produce fresh
young growth in early spring, and will apply a high N foliar feed, containing
P, K and trace elements, as a booster pre-flowering, possibly a second high N
foliar feed too. Some authorities believe that Boron(B) should be applied
pre-flowering. Both compound fertilisers and foliar feeds that I use contain
some B and I am not inclined to add more as a special feed unless I apply only
N to the soil when I might mix some additional B with the foliar feed. B is
toxic to most living things at fairly low levels – it is used by people who do
not like “poisons” in order to kill ants. It certainly is a poison (as are most
things) above certain levels. If I think the pH level needs raised, I will
include lime when filling the fertiliser spreader with the granular N or
compound fertiliser. Lime spreads easier when mixed with granular fertiliser.
Provided the
trees are growing well there will be no further fertilisers applied
specifically for the olives until late summer, but any crops grown between the
rows of trees will be fertilised independently of the needs of the olives, and
some of this is available to the trees. After pit hardening I will apply at
least one and probably two foliar feeds with lower N and higher levels of P and
K, plus trace minerals. It is convenient to apply these foliar feeds with
sprays against olive fruit fly – a necessity where I live. There are so many
untended groves that all olive pests and diseases are able to proliferate and a
failure to treat against them results in enormous crop losses, sometimes total
failure. It is also necessary to spray against a fungus that can cause total
crop loss too and this is done nearer harvest. Again it is convenient to add a
foliar feed with these sprays if desired.
I use the overhead
spray equipment for irrigation primarily because I have it and it suits me to
use it in a grove which I can summer crop. The drippers were installed to meet
the needs of a new grove, but using existing pumps and underground main lines.
I have the dripper lines on the surface because I prefer them where I can see
them and I make an inspection as soon as I begin an irrigation. That way I can
spot any problems along the lines and fix them immediately without switching
off the pumps. An underground line that suffers damage will not show up until
the water begins to puddle on the surface, which undoubtedly means some trees
have missed out on their water, and it is necessary to dig up the line to mend
it. There is also the problem of where to bury the line. In the early years the
trees occupy only a small area of the soil so the drippers need to be
relatively close. As they grow, the lines are moved back from the trees and the
trees make use of additional drippers as they spread their root zone.
Not all the
water I currently pump is utilised by the trees, but it will be in time, and
until then I make use of drippers outside the root zone by sowing pumpkins and
squashes as feed for the goats, as well
as some household use and also tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, etc. immediately
adjacent to a dripper. In previous years I have also sown the drought hardy
black eyed peas between the rows and they have benefitted from the water from
the drippers, particularly those peas close to the drip line. The site is a
very slight slope so the water naturally travels downhill and the drip line is
uphill of the row of trees it supplies. Both types of irrigation are left in
their permanent positions. Hand harvesting means there is no need to move the
lines off the fields.
Irrigation
commences around mid-June every year for the whole property, which makes it
convenient for the first irrigation requirement of the olives – unless there
has been a particularly dry spring when an earlier start to the irrigation
season may be required. There is always plenty of water available in the early
summer, and this first irrigation has been found to be the most beneficial from
an economic perspective. It assists both the current crop and the ability of
the tree to produce growth for next year. It is more valuable than the water
needed at pit hardening and the second rapid growth stage. This is a most
fortuitous situation, because those relying on natural water supplies, as I do,
may run out of water if the winter and spring rains were low or ceased early.
My strategy then
is to maintain a good soil moisture level as long as possible, and of course
other summer crops grown in the groves need this water. My theory behind this
is that if I run out of irrigation water, then the more there is in the soil
the longer it will be before moisture stress affects the crop. I know from my
2012 maize crop that it was successful without irrigation from silking onwards.
The olives did not receive their pit hardening and mid-September water that
year. Provided I have the water I will continue to irrigate past the second
flush of growth, but in 2013 the last irrigation was just after pit hardening.
Reducing irrigation earlier in the season does not prolong my season, being
dependent upon a river continuing to flow.
For those with
water storage, Razouk showed that a large quantity applied at the first rapid
growth stage (he used 500 litres per tree, on mature trees) can be followed by
the next at pit hardening, and preferably a third at mid-September. If there is
storage for only one irrigation, or natural supplies only into the early
summer, then apply water in June. Whether water is available or not I will
cease irrigation at the end of September. This allows time for the fruit to
mature without containing too much water - which would result in a lower oil
content, giving a poor yield of oil for the fruit weight. This is extremely
important for anyone paying a contractor crusher to produce their oil and
charging, as apparently many do, on the weight of fresh fruit rather than yield
of oil.
Thursday, 25 July 2013
2013 to date.
I do apologise for the last post not really being a blog, but I
felt I had to post something after almost three months since the previous post,
and I had those snippets ready in a document intended to be used in an
advertising campaign.
Weatherwise, 2013 began as 2012 had ended –
very mild. 2012 had a mean temperature of 15.33ºC for the year, the third
warmest since we came here in 2003, with 2011 at 15.90ºC and 2010 at 15.75ºC
being the two warmest. Overall, the 2012/13 winter was very pleasant, with extremely
few frosts, and only a couple of recorded negative temperatures, with the
lowest minimum only –1ºC. The first few years we were here we regularly
recorded minus fives and sixes each winter, with one minus seven. Temperatures
elsewhere were even lower that night and there were widespread losses of olive
trees and eucalypts across the whole country. Virtually everyone thinks of
Portugal as a prime holiday spot in summer and few realise that skiing is
possible in the winter. The Serra da Estrela (about 40 miles from us) has a ski
lift.
As I said at the beginning of the previous blog
we had a prolonged spell of wet weather. In the 8 weeks from 18th
February we had 352mm of rain, and just as things were looking hopeful for a
very late start to spring work, we had a downpour of 15mm in a few minutes on
the 27th April. It then turned cold and we had overnight minimums
down to 6ºC into the last week of May, with little progress upwards until well
into June.
Conditions in March, April and early May were
so wet that at the lower end of underground land drainage pipes the water was
being forced to the surface because it could not flow sufficiently quickly
through them. Being at the bottom of the river valley means there is a
considerable amount of underground water moving through the property from
higher up the hill. Then, of course, it stopped raining as it always does for
the summer.
Growing cold weather crops is somewhat easier
than warm weather ones where the soil temperature needs to reach a certain
level before the warm season seeds will germinate. The long cold and wet spring
also meant that the broad beans (Vicia faba) continued flowering and
growing on when they should have been maturing. It meant a heavy crop, but also
primed the late spring weeds – mainly a very large crop of corn marigolds and
several species of the daisy family. I always find it interesting on the farms
I have owned to see the way the weed spectrum changes with the improving
fertility of the soil. I do not recognise the different species of these daisy
type flowers (several of them are possibly types of Chamomile from the scent)
but they come in all sizes up to about 1 metre tall and have masses of flowers
each containing an enormous number of seeds.
The prolificacy of the weeds, insects and
fungal diseases of crops, plus the relatively mild winters so that they all
thrive, has left me deciding to forget any ideas about being organic (even in
the kitchen garden) and I now spray as necessary. The winter beans in particular
benefited from a fungal treatment early in the year. Some were left untreated
due to not being able to walk on the ground because of the excessive rain, and
they succumbed without producing anything. I have lost previous crops to the
same problem. I have three knapsack sprayers, and it is heavy work and very
slow with constant refilling of the sprayers, so I am purchasing a tractor
mounted one.
Unfortunately producing the crop is only part
of the process, and due to an old and ongoing knee problem that has been
exacerbated by the hand picking of the beans I have been unable to complete the
harvest. The unharvested portion of the crop has been cultivated into the
ground and will produce a green manure crop when the beans germinate with the
autumn rains. I have a horrible feeling I shall have to accept that old age is
catching up with me and that I can no longer do everything to which I have been
accustomed. I usually walk several miles in a day working the quinta, but the
knee problem has meant that I have been using the tractor just for travelling
around the place. I have decided that I will not grow any more “close to the
ground” field scale crops for hand harvesting, with the exception of
pumpkins/squashes where a heavy weight is soon collected. Maize and olives are
both at a much more acceptable height to save my legs.
The olives had a very large amount of blossom
and on the whole have set a good quantity of fruit. I usually spray against
olive fly and a fungal disease known locally as gafa and caused by an organism
that research people seem to disagree about the spelling, but one of them is Colleotetrichum. A failure to spray against both often
results in a total crop loss, and at best a very large decrease in the crop
harvested as well as oil quantity and quality in those fruit which are picked.
The number of fruit bearing trees is increasing each year and I could not
possibly manage with just the knapsacks.
I sowed two hectares of Piper Sudan grass and
it is growing well with irrigation, but because it was late sown I will take
only one cut (probably the first or second week in August) for hay instead of
the usual two. The quality will be more than adequate for the goats. I was
unable to get a maize crop in due to the late and incomplete bean harvest. I
did manage to sow pumpkins and winter squashes along some of the olive tree
lines so, with the usual winter grazing I should be able to meet the winter
feed needs of the goats, but I will buy some concentrates if needed.
In the kitchen garden we had the best garlic
crop I have ever grown and good results with all peas – Kelvedon Wonder, my
favourite for flavour, Douce Provence and Rondo. Overwintered onions were very
poor, failing to bulk up, and we will need to buy some later. I saw some fresh
in the supermarket in May that looked good, and they were an excellent sweet
flavour too. The variety was Reca. They are still being sold now. I think it is
Spanish, and I will look for seed for overwintering this coming season. The
late summer sown cabbage Spring Hero also cropped well. Asparagus was nice
whilst it lasted, but a lesser crop than previous years.
I bought new seed potatoes this year, and Mona
Lisa was quite early for a maincrop, beginning lifting after 12 weeks, and
these will be followed by Picasso, a potato with one parent being Cara that I
grew in Scotland and they look alike, white with pink eyes. Both varieties will
store through the winter, but insect damage in storage is a major problem here
and I will have to be vigilant.
I could not find any fresh peanuts to sow, so
will have to do without our own, but several other crops are looking good –
melons, Jerusalem artichokes, gherkins, cucumbers, and tomatoes (Ailsa Craig,
F1Shirley and a determinate San Marzano). The curcubits and tomatoes are
cropping well so far, the gherkins in particular have an enormous number of
fruits – and despite a quantity having been pickled there are far more than we
can use off only four plants so I have begun feeding some to the goats. They
are not all fond of them at this stage, but that is not unusual with a new
food. Like everyone else in the locality we have very few apples set, no
peaches, plums, apricots or almonds. I know someone who grows tree fruits on a
small commercial scale, and apart from cherries (apparently a low volume crop
this year) he will have no other fruit.
The only new crop I am trying is Sweet Pepper.
We have always eaten a very small quantity if offered to us, but both of us
have usually found that they have been too hot. As previously mentioned we do
not consume any spices. I found a variety, Marconi Red, that is supposedly
extremely mild. So far, only a couple of “tasters” in a stir fry, and still
green, it is indeed very mild. We will see how they fare as they ripen.
Friday, 28 June 2013
Snippets
I have cheated in the preparation of this
article. A long spell of wet weather up until mid-April and low temperatures
thereafter left me with a very late start to a spring and summer work schedule
that I cannot complete, but I must do as much as possible. That has left me no
time to write a blog and the next few weeks will be no better as I have begun
hand harvesting about 1.6 hectares/4 acres of beans. It is almost three months
since I last posted, and that is far too long. I have been thinking what I could
do instead and have a brief opportunity to post now.
Since publishing about my almost 70 years of
rural living, a huge number of people around the world have accessed the book’s
home page at Smashwords, and many have taken up the option of a free sample,
but this sample is the opening pages and does not properly reflect the whole
content of the book. So I decided to post a few later snippets that I have “on
file” for proposed adverts. These snippets give blog readers an opportunity to
learn about where I have been and some of the thoughts I have on rural living
even if they have no interest in the book. When things slow down I will prepare
a blog reporting on the year to date at the Monte.
…..
With the combined resources of
ten years shining the seat of my pants on various office seats, and some help
from my friendly bank manager, I was able to buy nine acres, a few buildings
and a large house that would benefit from some improvements.
…..
The Church of England Commissioners decided to
sell this small hill farm they had acquired with Queen Anne's Bounty. Now Queen
Anne died in 1714, and I doubt whether the Church Commissioners had spent any
money on the place since they acquired it.
…..
The first Monday morning after I
ceased being an employee was undoubtedly one of the happiest days I have ever
experienced.
.....
We found a sheep and cattle station in the
Bingara/Barraba area we thought would suit. 3006 acres. A typical weatherboard
Australian house that was in decent condition, sound, with mains electricity,
water from tanks and a deep borehole.
.....
Christmas Night, 1982. My wife announced she
was going to have a baby. Well, I knew that, I thought he was due to arrive in
March sometime; but she meant NOW.
.....
Out of idle curiosity one day I had called in
at a goat sale. The first animal into the ring was this Angora buck that had
not only been Supreme Champion at the Sydney Royal two years previously, but
had sired the Champion group of doe, buck kid, and doe kid the following year.
The auctioneer tried to start him at $A8000 failed to do so and began
drastically reducing the opening price, but could not get any takers. I offered
him $A200 to get the ball rolling.
.....
We had discovered on our visit from Australia,
and another occasion immediately after returning permanently, that we both felt
we were home once we were north of Pitlochry. You know when you are
somewhere you will feel happy to live.
.....
We had help in the growing of the mushrooms
from what we referred to as our Mushroom Ladies. These were some local
schoolgirls who would work on Saturday afternoons and were extremely adept at
the precision work of mixing growing mediums and inoculating with precise
amounts of spawn. Another area where I feel the female of the species is likely
to be better than the male.
.....
We had already decided we were unlikely to find
anywhere better than one of the places we had seen near Castelo Branco.
.....
You will be restricted in what you buy by the
amount of money you have available or can borrow, but there is one thing that
it is imperative to remember before you buy. Someone, sometime will sell it
again.
.....
That is the purpose of these Chapters, in fact
the whole book – not to force my opinion upon you, but to give you information
that allows you to make decisions when you consider your own particular piece
of soil and what you will do with it over the next few years.
…..
Think of your land as a series of
accounts at a bank. Every time you grow something you write a cheque.
.....
Bare soil is never a good idea.
Bare land is more subject to erosion by wind and water, and is doing nothing
towards improving your property.
.....
Weaver’s research, which involved
digging pits as deep as necessary, showed that almost all plants we are likely
to grow on the farm and in the garden will send their roots to six feet deep,
and some to more than twice that depth – if they are able to penetrate the
ground.
.....
If you have livestock that are
housed then they will as a matter of nature produce the finest organic material
there is, and mixed with the bedding for them I believe it is the absolute
pinnacle of feed for your soil and underground workforce.
.....
Having land permanently stocked,
even if very lightly, is not the correct approach. There has been a fair amount
of research on this topic in several countries confirming that rotational
grazing is required.
.....
There is not much point in
cutting down a healthy tree and turning it into charcoal just for the purpose
of making a carbon sink. About 50% of the carbon in the tree will be released
into the atmosphere in the process of making the charcoal.
.....
Personal experience of ploughing
out a grass ley that has been down for four years has given me great confidence
in the system.
.....
If it is true that energy is
wasted for one crop, say maize, then it must be true too of tomatoes,
cauliflowers and all other directly eaten food crops which the anti-grain
feeders are telling us to grow instead. There is not a lot of energy in a 95%
water content lettuce.
…..
My experience of Mediterranean
diets is that the old country folks living their simple lives consume a lot of
high quality animal meat and fats, and enormous quantities of eggs.
.....
A lot of the existing forage in
these upland areas is really only suitable for some classes of ruminants
because of its lower feed value. This lack of choice by farmers is, of course a
major stumbling block to the theories of non-farmers on how to produce food.
…..
POULTRY. We will start with
something that I am confident to claim I know a lot about, and I have a great
deal of experience, so have no hesitation whatsoever in destroying some widely
held beliefs and myths. I will go into much more detail than with other
species, but I repeat my warnings that this is not a text book, so what follows
is an extremely long way from containing everything that a poultry keeper needs
to know.
…..
Advice on machinery is even more
difficult than livestock. One thing is certain, and that is that all machinery
will cost you money to buy and keep on costing you money every time you operate
it.
.....
Simply sowing nuts can be a very
cheap way to produce the trees. I planted some almonds, as well as walnuts and
sweet chestnuts, in the first Autumn we were in Portugal, 2003, had a harvest
of almonds in 2010 and planted more nuts from this harvest so have numerous
trees for a few cents and some time.
…..
Garlic. A necessity of life. I
would like to believe the miraculous powers attributed to garlic as a
preventative and curative of all sorts of illnesses and diseases.
.....
For those who want to know, the
order of courses is Hors d’oeuvres, Soup, Fish, Entrée, Remove, Game, Entremets
Sucre, Entremets Savoreux, Cheeses, Desserts. We harvested olives in the
November and the Hors d’oeuvres were our own olives with home baked tomato
bread (incorporating tomatoes we had grown and sun-dried ourselves) and the
first tasting of our first vintage.
.....
I really do enjoy specific wines
for specific courses, but at the same time I have no objection whatsoever to
those who drink only whites or only reds with everything. If that is what they
prefer, then that is fine by me.
…..
SEAFOOD WITH PASTA
This can be either a starter dish
or a main course depending upon quantity served. Any seafood you like, garlic,
parsley and cream. Heat the lot whilst the pasta is cooking. Drain the pasta
and mix everything together. Some like ground black pepper over it. Can be
eaten cold as well as hot, and with a lot of cream and only a little of the
seafood and pasta it makes a good thick soup course too. For a soup you could
replace some of the cream with milk so that it is not quite so rich.
Friday, 5 April 2013
More about food and drink
My post about Portuguese wines continues
to be very popular, so I thought I would write something more general about
food and drink.
Having lived in several countries my wife and I
have had the opportunity to discover a variety of dishes that are popular in
certain parts of each country even though they may not be common across the
whole country, and often never heard of or known internationally. This applies
even more so to table and fortified wines.
I will begin with a dish that, to me, was the
worst I have ever eaten. I have been presented with, and failed to eat, tripe
boiled in milk, but I did manage to consume a Buckie Whelk. Now in case you are
not familiar with the term Buckie Whelk, Buckie is a Scottish word for the
common whelk Buccinum undatum. That is only the beginning. Buckie is a
town on the Moray Firth coast of Scotland. So, combining the fact that the town
is named after a whelk, and this particular species of whelk is named after the
town, one can begin to imagine the size of these things. One of my idols, Max
Boyce, talks about a pig coming in three sizes - big, huge and…. Duw! Well,
these Buckie whelks are, as Max would say, Duw, Duw whelks. They were a gift,
along with a lobster and some crabs from a Moray Firth fisherman.
We prefer crabmeat to lobster, but only
just, and there is a lot more on a lobster than a crab so I am quite happy to
eat them, and this one was delicious, but the Whelks (there were two on my
plate) were a different matter, and I only managed to down one, and that with
copious amounts of Chablis. To me Chablis is the wine of choice with all shell
and white fish, and essential with lobster. My wife prefers Champagne. We very
rarely drink either, simply because both are expensive. For more oily fish such
as salmon, trout and mackerel I prefer a red wine – not too powerful otherwise
it will outcompete the flavour of the fish, but there is a very extensive
suitable range in most countries.
Second worst is a particular Portuguese
sausage. It is an anaemic white before and after cooking because it is made
only of pig fat and cornflour. It tastes every bit as bad as it sounds and
looks. I admit to not being a great fan of sausages, but I quite like all the
other of the vast array of Portuguese ones I have tried. As with southern
Europe generally these sausages are mainly eaten raw, but the white one is
cooked. I doubt if there is any wine that would make it acceptable.
Although I failed to eat the tripe on its own,
I do enjoy a dish local to the immediate area where I live and very slightly
further north in Oleiros and Pampilhosa. It is called maranho and uses tripe.
It is similar to haggis, except that goat meat and rice are used instead of
sheep and oatmeal. Presunto (Portuguese dried ham) is also included, along with
the usual onions and some flavourings, with parsley often included. The bag
containing the maranho is made of the goat’s stomach lining (i.e. tripe), replacing
the sheep’s in a haggis. I do not eat the bag. Note: Ready made haggis as
bought in butchers’ shops is bagged in synthetic skins. Recipes for maranho
vary slightly from household to household, but in the immediate locality mint
is included. Several species of mint grow wild here, and there is only one that
is chosen for the maranho. I am no botanist and have been unable to identify it
with certainty.
Just to add a bit to probably most readers’
knowledge, the four different chambers of a ruminant’s stomach – the rumen,
reticulum, omasum and abomasum have different types of lining and this give
rise to different styles of tripe. In many cultures only the linings of the
rumen and reticulum are used for human food, and very few use the abomasum
lining. The river that runs as my boundary and very close to my house is called
the Tripeiro. The origin of the name is said to be because the river is so
clean that people washed their animals’ tripes in it. They still do and it is
still that clean. Some still do their laundry in it too. The people of Oporto
are sometimes known as tripeiros, or tripe eaters, because that was all they
had left to eat after they had supplied Christopher Columbus’ 1492 journey with
meat. It is then possible that the river is so named because the people on its
banks have always been tripe eaters too.
I am aware of a meal that two of my cousins and
their mother were to have but could not. My eldest brother called to visit them
one day and on the way up the garden path was met by their pet, a very old,
very fat, three-legged dog, and my brother said it was running flat out. Now
this dog only moved when it was absolutely necessary, and waddled with
difficulty. He knew there was something not quite right. He entered the house
to find the occupants sitting shocked in the kitchen/living room. The reason
for this was that the old fashioned range – a fireplace and oven, were totally
demolished and there were pieces of food, debris and soot all over the room
walls, floor and ceiling, as well as coating the occupants. Miraculously none
of them were injured. It seemed that they had intended to have a few vegetables
to accompany a pie. Somehow, the instructions on cooking the pie had not been
followed. It was in a tin, and the tin had been put in the oven. The lid of the
tin should first have been removed.
My mother was renowned by friends and relatives
as a superlative cook of “afternoon tea” dishes. Of course I could never
understand the raptures of other people at our always very large Sunday afternoon
gatherings (never less than a dozen people) because I had the same things for
tea every day of the week. Meals at home were breakfast, lunch (the main meal
of the day), tea and supper shortly before bed-time, and supper always just a
snack. Father worked permanent night-shift down the pit so that he could run
the smallholding during the day and needed his main meal when he was at home to
eat it.
Probably mother’s best was her Girdle Scones,
similar things being known as Griddle Cakes in other places. Following my usual
system of giving recipes, I assume that the lady who is to make these already
has some cooking knowledge. Plain flour, butter and currants in the ratio of
4:2:1; baking powder (bought as a propriety product that is a mixture of Bicarbonate
of Soda, Cream of Tartar and some starch), the smallest amount of salt you are
comfortable with, and enough milk to make a crumbly dough. The girdle is a flat
plate of iron that is heated from underneath, either an open fire or modern
means. The Australian style of barbecue that has such plates, and not these
silly grilled bars of metal that others use, would be ideal. Roll out the dough
to three-quarters of an inch (20mm) thick and no thicker! Cut into rounds.
Butter the girdle to stop the scones sticking and cook quickly on each side,
turning only once. How well done you like them is up to you, father liked his
as the outsides were beginning to go black, whilst others seemed to prefer mid
to dark brown. I liked the lot. Some prefer them warm and whole, others split
them and butter the insides of both halves. I liked them cold and split because
I could put more butter on. Strawberry jam is good – on top of the butter of
course.
I have eaten in an enormous number of
restaurants and hotels in quite a few countries of the world. Ownership and
management of these places change through time, and chefs even more quickly,
but places worthy of mention are Canberra International, Australia; Morangie
House Hotel, Scotland and the Buçaco Palace Hotel, Portugal.
The Buçaco is the most recent we have visited,
and I am sure the standard of the hotel will have been maintained, its own aged
wines (although expensive) will still be in top class order, and the
surroundings are magnificent. Napoleon’s troops suffered their first defeat in
the Iberian Peninsula at the Battle of Buçaco. The Canberra International is
remembered for its extensive menu, the quality of the food and the fact that
the Head Waiter and Chef both went out of their way to provide for a seven year
old boy who liked his food, knew what he wanted, and had what the Head Waiter
said were “sophisticated tastes”. In fact it was him who suggested that the boy
try a strawberry flambé and cooked it with great flair at the table. When we
returned six weeks later the waiter said to him “I remember you sir.”
Morangie House is situated in a beautiful part
of Scotland not far from my favourite whisky distillery of Dalmore, and very
close to my second favourite, Glenmorangie. There had recently been a fire in
the kitchens when we were there and rented field kitchens were in use, but the
food was still superb. The thing I remember most was that the hotel offered
several of the better wines from their list as single glasses at the equivalent
of the bottle price. I know most places offer wine by the glass but that is the
only place where I have seen the better ones offered, and nowhere with such a
wide choice. In the room was a bowl of fresh fruit, a carafe of sherry and some
mints. The usual chocolate on the pillow too. Not a lot of extra cost to the
hotel, and undoubtedly that cost is allowed for in the room charge, but just
those little additional touches that all hotels could provide, but fail to do
so.
I sometimes wonder if my wife and I are alone
in enjoying our meals so much. I hear so often about people eating whilst
watching TV or “eating on the go”. What a way to live, or more likely to cease
living at a much younger age than necessary. Proper food is cheap, time for
preparing and cooking it is minimal, enjoying eating it takes a little longer.
It is possible to have a top rate meal on the table in under half an hour from
entering the kitchen. Obviously you need the ingredients in the cupboards
and/or refrigerator, but it really is that quick. Even urbanites would be hard
pushed to pick up their car keys, go to the local takeaway and have the food on
the table in less time.
Saturday, 23 February 2013
..... you will have to provide your own.
In truth, providing your own lighting is
probably the easiest task to be performed if and when modern services fail.
Various types of lights were around for a long time before gas and electricity.
At the time I last posted I was working on
plans for increasing the amount of food we produce for ourselves as well as
feed for the animals. We are fairly well along the route of providing for the
goats (the only four-legged animals we presently have apart from the essential
farm cats) but buy some compound feed and this ensures an adequate supply of
all necessary vitamins and minerals, as well as providing a higher protein
level than the hay and maize that has until now formed the bulk of our home
production. The bought in feed is also an eventual source of additional plant
nutrients once it has passed through the goats and become incorporated with
their bedding. I have not previously been able to grow sufficient pulses, nor
have I grown as much comfrey due to previous stock not being inclined to eat
it. The rest of this blog is written on the assumption that we will not be able
to purchase compound feeds from agricultural suppliers, and that we need to
supply all our own feed for all livestock plus food for ourselves, and as much
of our other requirements as possible.
So far as I can ascertain from agronomists and
feed and fertiliser suppliers there is no known problem of any trace mineral
deficiency in the local soils. If there is a deficiency this could possibly
lead to sub clinical trace mineral shortages before it was noticed, but we do
have some control over intake. I would rely on average analyses of feeds for
calculating that we would be supplying sufficient vitamins and trace minerals
in the correct ratios. There are some good sources of feed analyses on the
Internet. One that covers a very wide range of feeds across most of the world
is www.feedipedia.org and it is
produced by the French organisations CIRAD, INRA and AFZ together with the Food
and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations. Consequently I expect the
analyses to be accurate – given the limitations that analysis of a growing crop
changes throughout its growth to maturity, and seasonally.
My wife and I have never come to any harm from
our present diet and we do not even consider our intake of vitamins and
minerals. We certainly see no need to take any “supplements”. I would expect
all livestock to be reasonably productive from an adequate provision of energy
and protein even if the ration was not perfectly balanced for maximum 21st
century levels of production. Every farm is different, and everyone else’s
requirements would be different, but hopefully by outlining what I would do on
my present property it will allow others to consider what they could do on
theirs.
I am taking a very long-term view – to the
extent that the systems put in place might have to be continued for several
decades until new technology replaces that which we have lost. At the same time
I am being practical and making a feed self-sufficiency plan even if the lights
do not go out. If the increasing world population is to be fed then extreme
increases in the cost of animal feedstuffs can be expected, with similar rises
in the cost of human food. Large rises have already happened in the last few
months due to reduced grain harvests in several areas of the world during 2012.
So far as possible, half the land will be in pasture and half cropped at any
given time, rotating through 4 years’ pasture and 4 years’ cropping. This way the
pasture phase rests the land from cropping and builds up organic matter and
fertility through the grazing livestock. Hay will be cut from part of the
pasture land, although the goats do not need a great deal due to being able to
get out all year round unless it is raining. They do not like winter rain so
stay indoors by choice when it does rain.
Cropping will be based upon growing grains and
pulses for concentrated feeds. Pastures, comfrey, other forage,
squashes/pumpkins and root crops will be grown for bulk and Ca:P balancing
since the grains and pulses are much higher in P than Ca. It should be noted
though that some roots share this reverse ratio and it is well to have a record
of the analyses of those crops that can be grown to ensure the correct balance
can be supplied. Maize will be the standard grain used and a wide range of both
summer and winter cropping peas and beans will provide the high protein pulses.
By using different seasonal ranges of pulses the harvesting period is greatly
extended and less storage is required.
There is an overlap between feed for livestock
and food for ourselves, since we eat many of the crops grown primarily for the
stock. Amongst these crops are all the leafy brassicas, some of the pulses and
squashes, plus the root crops Jerusalem artichoke, beets, swedes and turnips. I
grow a red beet known as Bull’s Blood which is a very quick maturing crop ready
in mid-summer and has a large root. Mangels and fodder beet are also grown, and
since we are considering maximum self-sufficiency then sugar beet would replace
some of these.
We may need draught animals in our proposed
survival group in addition to cows for milking. High producing dairy animals
are not required. The milk from traditional beef or dual-purpose breeds is just
as good. I think one cow to each couple (plus children where appropriate)
should suffice – staggering calving so that milk and butter are always
available. Cheese making is a natural part of this plan and whey plus surplus
milk, if any, is relished by pigs. Cows do not have the pulling power of
equines, so a horse or large pony capable of being ridden as well as used for
draught may be worthwhile. Donkeys are easily fed and the larger breeds (such
as already exist in Portugal) are strong enough for both jobs too. Merino sheep
are common here and provide a heavy and fine fleece. Goats may not be required
if we have both cattle and sheep, so at this stage I am non-committal on the
need to have them. They are more difficult to keep fenced in, and I am not alone
in not liking goats’ milk except as cheese. Pigs, bees and poultry would make
up the remainder of the livestock, although rabbits can be fed very cheaply
too. One hen per person will provide enough eggs in its first laying year,
after which it should be replaced. A heavy breed provides meat from surplus
chicks and discarded hens. I eat meat or fish twice a day, but not large
amounts since I enjoy vegetables and, unlike when I was younger, prefer several
smaller courses of food rather than just a large main course, consequently I
have an annual requirement of about 60 kilograms of meat/fish. Other people
will have a different requirement, but some idea of total need is essential.
Cereals for baking would be a necessity, and
based on our current bread consumption and other uses think that 100kgs of
grains (mainly wheat with some rye and oats) per head is more than enough. Many
of the vegetables would be taken from the livestock crops, but in addition we
would grow whatever we could to suit the individual tastes of the group
members. Potatoes are the first that spring to mind. I have always found it
difficult to sow exactly the right quantity of seed to produce the number of
plants we require, but generally aim for a slight surplus on the basis that
stock will consume any we do not. Not all stock like the alliums (onions, leeks
and garlic) but they will generally clear up the remnants of all vegetables we
consume, and I do believe a feed of garlic every couple of months helps to
control intestinal worms. My theory is that the garlic creates a hostile
environment for the worms and they move as far away from it as possible down
the gut until they are voided. Just a theory, and others claim it kills the
worms if fed fresh or the extracted juice is used. I do not normally grow
carrots specifically for stock due to the high sugar content, but have no
qualms about feeding some on a regular basis.
Textiles would come partly from wool of course,
with leather from the skins of sheep and cattle. Pigskin makes very fine leather
too. Linseed (flax) used to be a common crop in these parts, and nettles can
make fibre through the same process as flax made into linen. Cotton is probably
marginal at current temperatures, but they are close to where we lived in
Australia, although a few degrees short of maximum summer temperatures, and
there were vast acreages of cotton grown not too far away, so it could be worth
a try, especially if temperatures rise slightly as they have been doing in the
few years since we moved here.
In the previous post I covered our means of
providing fuel. Electrical power can be provided too, although almost certainly
not to the extent I now use it (two 3-phase pumps for irrigation) but a
re-arrangement of pumping requirements, using old-fashioned methods to fill
some storage at the high points, and this is easier on Patrick’s property than
ours, will provide some gravity fed irrigation water. The means of pumping
water without electricity are so vast that they would fill a book, and I
suggest anyone interested in more information does a little bit of searching on
the Internet – look for things like hydraulic rams, Stirling engines, spiral
pumps and windmill pumps. Heat can be provided through fires, stoves and simple
water circulation pipes and radiators. Gas is also an option. Not automatic
full-scale central heating perhaps, but we do not have that now. Light within
the house is fairly straightforward without electricity. Beeswax candles are
probably the cleanest, re-using the wax that melts and solidifies again; and
even rushes dipped in oil, wax or grease can provide sufficient light in a
room. Oil lamps are so easy to make too. Any fireproof container with a wick in
it will suffice, but they are not as clean burning as beeswax. Some power would
be useful in the buildings and it should be reasonably easy to maintain
sufficient for lighting in the buildings when required.
On the same theme of providing for yourself I
have found many articles relating to small-scale home-made tools and equipment
on the ‘net simply by diligent searching. Much of this information is from
sites in places like Indonesia, Nepal, Ethiopia, India and Pakistan. Pedal
power is another area with fascinating human-powered tools and equipment.
Decide first what you must have, then what you would like to have in addition,
and do some research to find out how to do it. With modern knowledge I am sure
it will be much easier to survive than it was a few hundred years ago.
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