Olive Leaf Extract

The cost of buying Olive Leaf Extract products is extremely high. I make extract very cheaply.

I have my own leaves of course – almost 500 trees full of them. I also offer the leaves for sale on my website www.oldmcdonaldsolives.com so anyone interested can make their own extract too if they do not have access to olive trees. NOTE: DUE TO ADVERTISING THE QUINTA FOR SALE I NO LONGER OFFER LEAVES ON MY WEBSITE. 

The method is simple – 20g of dried leaves, or 40g of fresh ones if you have them, are whizzed in a kitchen blender with one quarter bottle (strictly 187.5 ml, but near enough is good enough) of 40% vodka. Other spirits could be used but they will give their own flavour to the tincture produced. Put the mixture into a sealable container such as a jam jar. Glass jars with screw on lids are ideal for the purpose. Keep it somewhere handy, and preferably in the dark – definitely out of direct sunlight. Give it a good shake or stir (007 notwithstanding) once a day for two weeks. It is now ready to use.

I do not do it, but the leaves can be strained off the liquid if preferred, remembering to squeeze as much as possible out of the leaves. I simply take out a spoonful of liquid as required until there is none left. I also like to keep enough jars going that the leaves are immersed in the vodka for longer than the minimum two weeks which are required for the alcohol to extract the “goodies” from the leaves.

How much you take is entirely up to you. I have a dessertspoonful once a day part way through breakfast. It is not a good idea to drink even a tiny amount of spirits on an empty stomach. A dessertspoonful is more than many other people take, with some suggestions of only a half a teaspoonful.  Others suggest even less and taken at more frequent intervals. You decide.

There have been many studies on the beneficial effects of olive leaf extract. I make no claims about whether or not it does you any good, although I tend to think it helps my aged joints. It certainly does not appear to be doing me any harm. Coming up to 74 I still farm full-time, with a lot of manual work, particularly involving my olives, 800 almonds and smaller numbers of other fruit trees.

2016 - not the warmest year on record

It was not far off though. A mean of 16.33ºC for the year was marginally lower than 2015's 16.67.

A cool spring and occasional summer rain kept the maximum temperatures below those we have experience in recent years. Overall our mean of over 16º for the last three years, and close to it from 2010 to 2013 shows a definite warming trend. Ten to 12 years ago our mean was closer to 14º. Now I do not want to be alarmist and claim this is an indication of global warming, it is the result for one spot on the whole planet, although I accept that global temperatures appear to be gradually creeping up too.

The higher mean for recent years have come from higher minimums rather than higher maximums, and this has made life much more pleasant - not too hot in the summers and not too cold in the winters. We went from 9th February 2015 to 31st December 2016 between recording a minimum below zero. It has been very rare to record over 35º in the summer for the last few years, whereas the first few years after we arrived in 2003 gave us minimums of minus 6 on a few occasions each winter, and a maximum of 39º on a couple of occasions in the summer.

The olive harvest in 2016 was slightly lower than the previous year despite the trees still being young and continuing to grow. The exceptionally dry 2015 when I spent several months doing nothing but hand watering our 500 trees (losing two from dehydration) meant there was very little growth that year to produce the 2016 harvest. Nevertheless the big old tree in a very favourable spot next to the house had been given extra water through 2015 when it cropped exactly 59kgs, and with more favourable natural conditions in 2016, plus irrigation, managed to just top 60kgs. I have given it a fairly severe pruning because it was becoming too tall and very difficult to harvest the higher branches, so 2017 will not be a bumper year for it.

The annual pruning of the trees is behind schedule, because instead of beginning pruning immediately after harvest, I spent that time planting 814 almond trees. They are the self-fertile cultivar Soleta and I imported them from Spain. It was one of the cultivars bred by Sr Rafael Socias Company at CITA, Aragon and he was kind enough to have an email discussion with me regarding a choice of cultivar to plant. I had set myself a target of Christmas to complete the planting, and it was looking doubtful a week before that due to weather disruptions, but a few long days meant I planted the 814th about 20 mins before dark on Christmas Eve.

I then started on the olive pruning, but again, weather has delayed that (more rain today and much more forecast for the next two weeks) so I am hoping for a good spell of dry weather as the days lengthen over the next few weeks. Differentiation between flower and floral buds on the olives is about mid February and I like to be finished pruning before then. If I go on later I always feel as if I am cutting off fruit. I suppose we farmers are never satisfied with the weather. We need the rain, and we need the sunshine. We want both when it suits us and not at other times.

Cats

I am sure that many people reading this will be aware of Winston Churchill's statement "Dogs look up to you, cats look down upon you, but pigs treat you as an equal".

I think it is particularly true of cats. If they stay with you it is because they want to be there, and not from any sense of loyalty to the person who feeds them. Wherever we have farmed we have had cats. Never in the house, but always in the farm buildings. Cats are our vermin controllers.They always have ad lib good quality cat food and fresh water available. My opinion is that well fed cats will hunt for the fun of it.

Earlier this year our resident population of two females had a total of 10 or perhaps 11 kittens. I do not press them to be pets and the kittens always tend to run and hide when I am near them. The adults become friendly enough and seem content to be close without being petted. The numbers fluctuate from time to time due to natural causes and predators, but we have always managed to keep a few about.

At the beginning of July all of them simply disappeared overnight. No sign of anything. Then, at the end of September I had a sighting of one of the adult females crossing the river towards us. The level is low due to the long dry summer, and cats frequently cross it. Two days later both females turned up along with three, by now half grown, kittens. They settled immediately back in the large shed they had formerly occupied as their resting and sleeping place.

Obviously I have no idea where they have been, and not to sight them for about twelve weeks seems almost impossible if they were still in the vicintiy. I am out and about for most of every day and there is a good view of surrounding land from the house windows.

All were rather thin but not in poor condition, except one of the adults had lost her tail. She now has a stump about an inch long. I was really pleased to see them back, because the rains have started today - as can be expected at this time of year, and vermin will be looking for winter quarters. I have 700 bales of hay in this shed, and rats and mice would create havoc by chewing through the bale twine.

Where they have been, why they went away, and why they chose to return will always remain a mystery I suppose, but cats being the free spirits they are, I can only hope they stay.

2016 to date

2015 ended with warm and wet weather, resulting in our hottest year to date, with the annual mean at 16.67ºC. This is the third year in a row that temperatures have beaten the previous annual high. Despite the wet end to the year we also recorded our lowest rainfall at 492mm, which included 148mm in the last few weeks of the year. As I have previously mentioned, yearly distribution is as important as annual total, sometimes more so. Both mild and wet conditions continued into 2016, and we went through the whole winter without experiencing a temperature below freezing point. By early May we had passed last year’s total rainfall.

Temperatures fell below recent years’ ones in April, and the annual mean is below the last two years as of the end of July. We also had a fall of rain measuring 26mm on 6^th July with a very prolonged bout of thunder and lightning. We have never measured more than 16mm for the whole of July before, and some years none at all. After last year’s watering problems I am very pleased to be switching on pumps rather than having to fill my boom spray tank and then go and hand water the trees as I did last summer. I expect to run short very soon, but the olives will manage until the autumn rains.

Unfortunately there was rather too much rain when the trees were in bloom and pollination was not as good as I had hoped for. Nevertheless, the trees are almost all young and many have a reasonable crop for their age. There are a few trees with no crop at all. I will only know for sure how things turn out when the harvest is weighed and sold. This wet weather had a devastating effect on people growing top fruits – apples, pears, cherries, peaches, apricots, etc. and whole crops were lost in many cases. I do not have a single peach on any of my trees or any apricots either. Only one tree is bearing apples, and I have a single pear and a single plum. Grapes also appear to have suffered badly with very little fruit set. Fortunately all these fruits are just for our own use, but I do feel sorry for those growers who rely on them for an income. All farming is the same I suppose – extremely weather dependent.

I did have a good crop of hay on the few acres I cut. So good in fact that I am desperate for space. The crop, two small fields, was double the average yield of other years. I do not have any bale collectors or pick-up equipment so I have to pick up individual bales by hand and then stack by hand. I carry 11 bales at a time in the link box and 642 bales meant quite a few journeys to the field and back to the shed. It was hot work, especially when I was stacking close to the roof, but Patrick came and helped me with the last hundred or so because rain was forecast - and it did happen. He more than earned his couple of beers after we finished. Without him it would have got wet. It would have dried again, but also been just another unnecessary little hassle. Everybody needs good neighbours.

The major project for this year is planting almond trees and I have ordered 850 for early October delivery. Hopefully I will be able to plant them all before the olive harvest begins towards the end of that month. There is a lot of work in getting the land ready for them – they will be planted on raised berms and I do not have a machine to form them, so some experimentation with Patrick’s mouldboard plough has resulted in quite effective berms once I sussed out how many furrows to plough and in which direction so as to maximise the finished height.

I am also reclaiming a few hundred square metres of land that has never been cultivated before, and that means moving a lot of stones and earth. Again no machinery to automate the job, so hand stone picking and using the tractor link box as a mini-bulldozer is doing the trick. It is not yet finished, but will be by the time I need to plant trees on it.

A Vegan Farm

The following is a shortened version of part of my book How not to make millions – but still enjoy a rich rural life. I thought it might make an interesting blog for vegans and vegetarians to read.

I have never met a farmer who is a vegan. It rather runs contrary to the notion of what a farmer is, but, just to show that I am willing to try to help those who want to grow food by alternative methods to my own I have given some thought to setting up a vegan farm. I felt I should do this because despite my own views I accept that some vegans might want to produce their own food – and sales to other vegans could be a lucrative business. I know there are smaller scale vegan producers, but I am thinking in terms of a bigger farm.

Whilst grassland (or the herbage naturally appearing due to non-cultivation) that is cultivated for a while and then allowed to return to a grazing area appears to have been around as long as there have been farmers, the  4 years grass/4 years cropping rotation is, I think, a little over 100 years old. It may be older but I have not seen it documented in detail before that. It is my favourite for a truly sustainable (that overused word again!) system of farming. Robert H. Elliott developed this way of farming at Clifton Park on the Scottish/English border and it is commonly referred to as the Clifton Park System. His book is available on line if you search. It is called The Clifton Park System of Farming and is well worth acquiring by anyone interested in maintaining the fertility of their land.

I regret I cannot advise a suitable location in many countries of the world, simply because I have only farmed in four. The land must be capable of growing grass without burning off in summer or killed by low winter temperatures and since there will be no livestock all land has to be cultivatable, with the ability to grow a wide range of crops. This restricts our vegan farm to favoured parts of only some countries, but it is essential to realise it will not work if the land is not suitable. Livestock cannot be grazed on ground unsuitable for cultivation as in a normal farm.

Size is not critical for the purpose of the exercise. Let us just assume it is big enough for everyone to recognise it as a farm. There is no upper size limit. We will further assume that it has been well maintained in the past so the land is in a good state of fertility, and that the new vegan owner has the knowledge and experience to operate the wide range of machinery and equipment required. It should be noted that this would be a labour intensive farm even with a full complement of modern equipment. Land in poor condition will take a long time to become ready to use the farm in a veganic way.

It is of paramount importance to maintain the Organic Matter content of the soil across the whole farm. I would split it into eight equal sized blocks, and crop each block for four years then four years in pasture in each rotation. It may not be possible in a stockless situation to have as many cropping years as pasture, so longer in pasture and less cropping may be necessary, with perhaps an increase in the number of blocks, but we will try 4 + 4. I say blocks because to equalise the size of the areas there might be a different number of fields in each block. That is not important so long as they remain within their own one eighth of the total area.

Additionally, since I would want to avoid buying nitrogen fertilisers if at all possible I would try having the pasture phases as a pure stand of white clover. I have no experience of using just clover for this purpose, and I doubt if many other people have either, but it is worth attempting if you are a vegan. White clover will persist easily for the time required; it forms a good ground cover and roots deeply. It is also easy to keep clover mowed short (sow a prostrate variety) as it would need to be in order to allow the mowings to be dragged underground by our friends rather than smother the living plants. It is also easy to kill out for the cropping phases. It would be necessary to buy any nutrients that soil analyses show are required, and also of course to replace those used by crops that are grown. This is to ensure it remains a sustainable system. I would prefer to test before and after the pasture phase to give an indication of nutrients removed during each phase. I would make as much compost as I possibly could.

What crops are grown will determine the machinery and equipment required. The first decision is probably whether or not to grow your own fuel oil. A lot of fuel will be used in the constant mowing of the pastures phases in addition to the cultivations and harvesting of the arable crops. I think I would grow my own, partly to be self-sufficient in fuel (some tractors can be run on straight vegetable oil) and partly to avoid using fossil fuel. A reasonable crop might leave a surplus to sell so there could still be some human food derived from the crop. I must point out, however, that I would never consume these refined vegetable oils myself. I have an inbuilt aversion to any food that needs a manufacturing process to make it edible. I also point blank refuse to consume food that is fortified with vitamins or minerals, and would never take supplements. I want my food to provide all I need. In suitable areas olives could be grown for human oil needs.

The oil would be the first crop after clover, and if I did not grow it I would make the first crop a cereal. Perhaps half and half might even be a better idea. Wheat could be grown in countries where bread making quality is achievable without high nitrogen inputs. A failure to reach this quality usually means the wheat goes for stock feed, which vegans would not want to happen. The reason for using these two crops is that I would use a grassland mouldboard plough to turn in the clover, burying the clover top growth at the bottom of the furrow and leaving it undisturbed during the first year of cropping. Very shallow cultivations to prepare the seed bed are therefore necessary. Both the oil and cereal crops would benefit from the accumulated nitrogen from the clover growth. If the area is not suitable for bread making quality wheat, then an alternative cereal crop could be grown. The choice may be limited by climate but maize, oats or rye for human consumption are the most likely.

Throughout the cropping phase there will be a decreasing level of available soil nitrogen each year, so I would have years two to four growing crops that more or less allowed for this. I would avoid the very high nitrogen demanders such as cabbage and the oriental brassicas and some of the possibilities below are more likely to be grown in the kitchen garden. This is where I would have all perennial crops including fruit and nuts. Again another reason to choose a “soft” area. Many fruits and nuts need warm conditions.

Potatoes would be a good choice for years two and three, spreading the disease risk by growing some earlies as well as maincrop. I am making the assumption that vegans are also opposed to the use of herbicides and fungicides. I would use half my available second year arable land for the maincrop potatoes and use half my available compost on them. Leeks, all the leaf beets and beetroot fit in here too, and if you had the labour force available to harvest them, and the market, you could grow some on a field scale.

The third year I would grow only early and second early potatoes on the half of the land that did not grow potatoes the previous year and use the other half of my compost on these. This way one quarter of the cropping land is in potatoes each year – spreading the machinery over a long season. There is always a market for quality potatoes, they will use the compost to best advantage, and the whole area receives some compost in either the second or third cropping year. In year three the other half (that had potatoes the previous year) could take most of the non-cabbage brassicas plus squashes, pumpkins and lettuce. Year four is for the lowest nitrogen demanders – a big range, beans, all alliums except leeks, and all the root crops except potatoes and beets. Even less demanding of nitrogen are garlic and peas. Then back to pasture.

Whilst I do believe this would work for individual vegan farmers, and using correct fertilisation techniques would make the yields undoubtedly better than organic farming and more on a par with conventional farming, it is still a low productivity farm because the land is only producing food for half the time. The same system with grazed livestock produces food every year, so the vegan system is not a good one for feeding the whole world.

Olives and Olive Oil

A little information about olives and olive oil. The most common mistake is the advice that “all olives begin as a green fruit and turn black when they are ripe”. Absolute nonsense. It is as wrong as saying that all apples turn red when ripe. There are several hundred distinct cultivars of olives in existence. They are called cultivars, not varieties. This is a botanical technicality that many people ignore. It is important to botanists, professional horticulturists and others to distinguish between the two, but most of the world happily ignores it, and I am sure the vast majority are not even aware there is a distinction. Look up the differences if you wish – you may end up confused. So far as olive growers are concerned the importance is that a cultivar will not come true to type if grown from seed. In other words you cannot take the pits from your favourite olive tree and grow lots more of the same cultivar. You need to take cuttings. This applies to all cultivars.

Whilst many of the cultivars do indeed turn black when ripe there are a considerable number that do not. Some ripen to a dark red, including the Cordovil de Castelo Branco which I grow, and others a brownish colour. There are at least two white cultivars that I know of – one each on the islands of Crete and Malta. There may well be more of which I am ignorant. It does not help when supposed authorities on olive cultivars refer to all olives that have a dark colour when ripe as “black” including the Calletier of Niçoise Salad fame, and known as Taggiasca in nearby Liguria, Italy.

As with wine, many factors influence the taste of olive oil. The land, the olives, the season, the timing of the harvest, the skill of the maker all contribute to the finished product and so oils have a wide range of colour and taste. There is no “best” oil, and there is no “best” wine. Like most things in life, it is a matter of personal preference. I drink a lot of wine, and there are some I do not like. Similarly, I have had olive oil in the past that I do not like either. It just happens that all Portuguese olive oils I have had suit my palate – just one of several reasons I live in Portugal rather than another olive oil producing country.

The expression “first cold press” is totally meaningless. All virgin oils produced under the regulations of the International Olive Oil Council, which includes all of Europe and many other countries, are obtained from a single pressing of the olive paste (pulp and pits combined) without the use of heat. Heat and solvents may be used later to produce refined and industrial grade oils. Those countries which do not belong to the IOOC, such as USA, make their own rules.

The next falsehood, and a favourite of producers of vegetable seed oils, is that olive oil, and particularly Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO), cannot and should not be used for frying. Again, absolute nonsense. Virgin olive oils have smoking temperatures at least as high as other non-refined oils. Almost all vegetable oils in shops are refined, having undergone an industrial process to produce the oil. Personally, I would not use them. For the same reason I would not use margarine or other refined vegetable spreads – only butter.

Seed oils only came into being about 100 years ago, and whilst animal fats had been used in those areas where the olive does not grow, olive oil was usually the only fat available for everyone around the Mediterranean basin. It is still used for all methods of cooking.

Consumers should be aware that due to the greed and criminal activities of some people there has always been fraud involved in the sale of olive oil. Several reputable tests by food authorities and others in recent years have consistently revealed the continuation of this fraud. The information is on the Internet for those who want to check.

How do you know that you really are buying EVOO or VOO, and it is made from olives (and only olives) grown the country where the label says it originates? Unfortunately the buyer is relying on the honesty of everyone involved in the production and bottling of that particular oil, so there is no way to be certain without having it tested. This is out of the question for the average consumer, but certain countries and certain bottlers are known to be more reliable than others when it comes to honesty of production.

I do not make my own oil, because the cost of setting up a mill and oil producing equipment is prohibitive for my quantity of olives,  but I buy the oil I use from the man to whom I sell my olives. I trust him and I know that the oil is made from olives grown by local growers. I am also more than happy to use VOO and not EVOO. If you can do so, buy direct from a mill. If not then I recommend you buy Portuguese oil in preference to any other. Obviously people who grow olives in other olive oil producing countries will recommend that you buy oil from their country. The choice is yours.

A very short story

A boy went to study at St Andrews University. There he met a girl who had the name Catherine as one of her Christian names. They married a while after they both graduated.

Some time later they had a son and gave him the name Alexander as one of his Christian names. Then they had a daughter who was given the name Elizabeth as one of her Christian names. Water from the River Jordan was used for the baptism.

Who was the boy’s father?

If you answered Prince Charles you would be correct, but you would also be correct if you said it was me. Everything listed above that happened to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also happened to my son and his wife – but one year in advance on every occasion. 

2015

I know it is not quite the end of the year, but it is a long time since I last posted, and the year end is going to be rather busy so I decided to write a synopsis of the events of 2015 now, at least in so far as my tiny piece of the earth is concerned.

It began very dry and rather cool although overnight minimum temperatures were just under freezing point with -2ºC being the coldest. It continued to be a year of low rainfall and it may well be the lowest annual precipitation since we came here in 2003, but 150mm before the end of the year will take us past the lowest we have so far recorded and that was 2004’s 541mm. We thought rainfall was generally under 600mm because that was what we received for the first 5 years we were here – with the exception of 2006. The last six years have been somewhat better. Of course distribution throughout the year is really of more consequence, and 2006 was also very dry, but 539mm in October and November of that year resulted in a total of 983mm. A misleading figure.

The weather has been the reason for the long delay in making another post. I was frantically irrigating so long as the water lasted, but supplies for irrigation ran out at the end of June. The next three months were a constant long day after long day battle carting water to the young olive trees to keep them alive. I lost four of the most recently planted and the crop from another three slightly older, but fortunately managed to get enough to the rest to keep them alive. Mature trees, with a similar mature root system, can withstand these few months without rain. That is the great advantage of olives; they will grow under arid conditions once they attain a reasonable size. They might not crop particularly well without supplementary water, but they will survive. For anyone familiar with real droughts as in Australia etc. it should be noted that we experience a few months of dry weather each summer, and there is always some rain in the autumn and winter.

We did not receive any really hot weather, four days at 36º being the hottest, but the nights were warmer than most years and this has resulted in the mean temperature for the year being above any previous one. 2014 was the hottest we have recorded and this year is on track to beat that, although a cold spell next month could reduce the annual figures, just as a lot of rain could alter that annual total.

Fortunately we received sufficient rain prior to the olive harvest to allow the fruit to reach a good size. Allowing for the young ages of the trees I was well pleased with the result. The quality was excellent and we sold every olive we picked. My wife and I picked 941kgs of olives individually into buckets held around our necks with bungee cords. This is the way to achieve the best quality. It also meant we did not need to run the crop over the grader to remove twigs, stems and damaged fruit.

If quality is down I need to accept that I can only take oil in exchange. I was also especially pleased that two old trees (that I retained when we grubbed out an old orchard) both topped 50kgs. A few years ago I would have considered that impossible, but as with all other crops I feed them liberally and control insect pests and fungal diseases. Many “authorities” around the world consider fertiliser should be restricted. I fertilise to replace nutrients removed in the previous year – prunings as well as the crop have to be taken into account, and the trees also need to grow and produce the current year’s crop too. Just like animals, plants need to be fed, watered and kept disease free if they are to thrive.

I kept the two trees because they had yielded consistently well in the first few years we were here, and had estimated crops of between 20 and 30kgs every year. The boxes we use for containing the olives between picking and delivering to the buyer hold 17kgs when full, and they are manufactured in such a way that each box is equally marked in three parts. If I want to know an approximate weight harvested from a particular tree it is easy to start a fresh box for that particular tree – and hopefully need another one too.

2014 showed a heavy crop on both so I decided to accurately weigh the crop from each tree. The result was 38.24 and 40.22kgs. The heavier yielding tree is quite a bit bigger. This year they yielded 53.33 and 59.00kgs. The bigger one was originally 58.98, but it is very difficult to hand pick every last olive on a big tree and when I had completed the weighing searched the tree for missed fruit. Sure enough there were a few so I managed to reach the 59kgs. I noticed two olives still on the tree yesterday, but I am not prepared to organise things for two olives. Next year will not be so heavy because I have reduced the height of them both, and pruned some branches that would lead to overcrowding in the canopy next year if left unpruned.

I built a picking platform (with safety rails) to fit in the box for the three point linkage of the tractor – along the lines of the platforms often referred to as “cherry pickers” and which you see being used to assist with putting Christmas lights in place in towns, or for maintenance of street lighting. I do not have the height lifting capacity of the machines used for these purposes and I do not need it. The platform I stand on is about shoulder height from the ground and sufficient that I harvested all trees without the need to use ladders, bending over branches too high to reach comfortably. Tree height will be kept to this maximum.

The lack of irrigation, and the necessity of keeping the olives alive, meant that the kitchen garden was a disaster. A few tomato plants kept themselves alive and that was the sum total of this year’s garden harvest. Weeds, as always, managed to keep going, and the garden is currently in a mess. Hopefully I will be able to get back to more normal management of the place over winter.

The last thing to suffer from my summer of water carting was getting in wood for the heating stove. Fortunately we have not yet had to light it, so it should be a short season for its use, and I do have some wood already prepared, so I just need to keep pace with its use and we will get through. I am still using the stumps of old olives we grubbed out a few years ago. I bust these up into suitable sized pieces with a heavy block splitter and steel wedges. Heavy work, but it is a better workout than using my home gym.  I am sure I will live longer by doing this type of work – and, of course, following the Mediterranean peasants’ usual diet of lots of meat, animal produce in general in fact, and plenty of wine.  Olive oil, fruit and vegetables are also consumed, and I have the extra of generous helpings of butter at every available opportunity. 

Simple Unhooked Living

“The Truth About Simple Unhooked Livng” is a book by Estar Holmes and published through Smashwords – the same people as my own book, and it can be purchased either by going through the link on here to my book (when I get a very small commission without detracting from the author’s share) or direct through Smashwords.

You know the expression “Been there, done that”? Well this lady has. My pet hate about lifestyle books, particularly those involving rural life, is where people with a journalistic background and friends in the right places to promote their books get an international publishing house to publish and push their writings on something they have as an idea about, or only limited years of experience. This is not one of them. Anyone who publishes with Smashwords does not have a publishing company behind them – apart of course from the unstinting help of the Smashwords team.

Although aimed primarily at the USA resident, virtually everything suggested by the author (she does not ram things down your throat and say you must do it this way) is applicable globally. All good, sound, practical advice from an experienced person. Much of it is essential reading for those people in urban areas where they are reliant upon electricity to run their homes. One power out without the information in the book will cost you a lot more than its price.

I have practiced what might be called “Simple Hooked up Living” for decades and still learned from the book. My wife and I have had the need to collect, melt and boil snow for a cup of coffee; we have had need to make 190 miles round trips for shopping; bathed under roof runoff in a rainstorm, and a waterfall, etc.; but we prefer an indoor bathroom and toilet (yes, we have carried buckets of water for flushing it too) and my wife likes her washing machine and dishwasher. We have never had to do the things Estar Holmes has merely to survive. I admire her, and others like her, who either by choice or necessity have managed to do so, and I thank her for the information on the numerous things included in the book that we have not had to do. I hope we never need to, but at least we are now armed with the information if the lights go out quicker than I planned for in  earlier posts – Dec. 2012 and Feb. 2013.

Estar gives a very generous free sample, but as with all books, this necessarily includes the background and introductory portion – nevertheless with very sound information and advice. There is a wealth more in the remainder of the book. Go on, buy it. Then read it thoroughly, even twice as I did, and then remember and apply the information in there that will take you through the next failure of your electricity supply. A few readers might even take things further and decide to follow either my planned survival strategies for longer term power failures, or even Estar’s no fail methods whatever happens.

One of the highlights of the book for me was the ability to get by in life with the minimum use of potable water. The world at large wastes more than it uses, and there is a shortage. It is even affecting parts of mainstream USA at the present time. Think about how you can help to conserve this dwindling essential of life.

I take every opportunity to try to persuade everyone that a daily morning shower is one of the worst modern phenomena ever to have been inflicted upon the planet. I grew up in Britain, being born at the end of WWII at which time enormous numbers of houses did not have a bathroom, many not even running water, and those that did, did not have a shower. Sometime in the 1970s or 80s people began to fit various contraptions above the bath and were able to shower. When we bought our Australian sheep and cattle property in 1979 the house had two bathrooms containing a bath and sink, but no shower. No indoor toilet either. That was soon fixed. There were people around about who we knew did not have a shower in the house, sometimes barely enough water to drink either, but it was commonplace for them to say “I am off home for a shower” as if it was expected of them to say so.

My present house did not have a shower cubicle until 2 years ago when we extended the living space and added an ensuite bedroom. There is another bathroom with a shower head over the bath. It was 1993 before I owned a house that had a shower and that was a house we had built for us. None of us died from not having a shower. So far as I recall nobody smelled particularly bad either.

I have recently had the misfortune to be hospitalised for a few days (not life threatening and I will recover) and it was considered essential that every patient had a shower immediately upon rising in the mornings. Since tens of thousands of Portuguese houses do not have running water it seemed weird to me that they expected people who had never showered in their lives to suddenly have to have one every single morning. Obviously I did not comply with the expectation. I did wash thoroughly. I was spending the day lounging about on a bed in a pristinely clean environment so how could I become dirty enough to need a shower every morning? I was really impressed with the place. Apart from the cleanliness, the food was good, the staff were good, and the beds were comfortable and fully adjustable by the patient for inclination and height.

For those of you who do shower every day, why do you do it? I suspect peer pressure began it all. Somebody somewhere decided they would boast about their new shower a few decades ago. Everybody else has to keep up with them, then somebody decided they would claim to shower every day. Soon everybody had to claim to shower every day and some people thought they actually had to do it. Talk about lemmings!!

Potable water is not in infinite supply. It is extremely costly and wasteful of other finite resources to make some supplies from really unsuitable water sources. Take a stand. Stop having as many showers (or baths) and encourage everyone you know to do likewise. I am not looking forward to the time when I expect that the lights will go out, because the world is using its resources far too quickly, but running out of potable water is certain death to all it affects. We must have water to survive.

Some reasons why I like Portugal

I read, see or hear about various aspects of life in, and the culture of, different countries around the world, and it makes me remember the good and the bad of countries in which I have lived.

Perhaps because we have always lived on our farms in rural areas, sometimes a long way from a town, my family and I have met some extremely nice people in all of them. Portugal is no different – except that the townspeople are as friendly as the rural folk. During the summer my wife and I were in a supermarket, the bananas were of poor quality and I only picked up three, asking my wife if she would weigh them whilst I went back to the wine section for a bottle I particularly wanted to try and had forgotten. A Portuguese lady had obviously heard us talking, assumed we were tourists and, by gestures, indicated to my wife (who speaks almost no Portuguese) that she would weigh the bananas for her on the slightly complicated electronic scales this particular supermarket uses. The lady said nothing, just did the weighing, affixed the price ticket to the bag and smiled whilst returning them to my wife.

On our next trip to town we were in the same supermarket looking at several large jars of spices (from which you shovel out what you require) because my wife wanted to memorise the names of one or two she had forgotten – she reads Portuguese reasonably well, especially recipes. A young lady nearby said if we told her the English name for the spice we wanted she would identify it for us. My wife explained why she was looking at the labels, and the lady quickly went through them all, translating into English. In both cases typical Portuguese, always friendly, always giving useful help.

Portuguese roads are the best maintained of any I have ever seen. Little frost throughout most of the country is a great help. I drive to Lisbon airport, 236kms, half a dozen times a year to pick up and return family visitors. The A1 motorway ends about a quarter mile from the terminal buildings and it is rare not to be travelling at the permitted speed limit (it drops from 120 to 100 to 80kph in the final kilometre or so) when I exit for the terminal. The underground car park adjoining the terminal always has free spaces, and I have never been more than 100 metres from the arrivals/departure areas.

As with many countries Portugal has toll roads. I paid €25 for a little gadget that sticks to the windscreen behind the rear view mirror, and tolls (plus parking fees at certain parks including the airport) and any ferry journeys are taken direct from my bank account on a monthly basis. I do not have to stop at barriers to take a ticket that is then used to make payment further down the road, there is a lane without barriers purely for those who have these little gadgets.

Speed limits within towns and villages are readily controlled because there are traffic lights over the road that measure the speed of an oncoming vehicle and any over the speed limit are red-lighted and held up for about half a minute. I have never met anyone who has not exceeded a speed limit at some time, but few will go through a red light, so everyone observes the limits. The police use radar for spotting speedsters, but they publicly announce on which roads the radar traps will be for the following month. Again it means that people obey the limits along the roads where they know there will be traps somewhere.

A few weeks back I read that the UK is losing millions every year from foreign registered vehicles that are used there and do not pay road taxes. They are also often uninsured because of the problems of insuring non-registered vehicles. I know that some ex-pats, particularly British ones, bring vehicles here and fail to register them in Portugal within the 6 months grace period allowed. It is particularly prevalent in the Algarve, and so the police stake out places like supermarket car parks, record the date and number of foreign vehicles, and eventually take action if necessary, including seizing the vehicle. I have no sympathy for those who suffer from this attempt to cheat the Portuguese. I left my vehicle in the UK and bought a Portuguese one immediately upon arrival.

There are some drawbacks, of course, and we have had dealings with some businesses where the proprietor or staff make promises that they have no intentions of keeping. We have had four lawyers, two accountants, and four banks since we came here. I still use a firm of solicitors in England that I have been associated with for more than 50 years; use the same bank in Scotland that I joined more than 20 years ago when we returned from Australia, and the same solicitor there for the same time too although hopefully that firm will not be needed again until we eventually retire and go back. We have had dealings with a few other small businesses that accept work and fail to do it, or do not follow instructions. This is not a language problem. I am aware of a German couple who left the country because of the number of times this had happened to them.

Despite these few problems, many businesses and their staff have gone out of their way to help us, and so far as possible we pass on the names of these businesses to new immigrants. Many people from northern Europe move to Portugal to buy a plot of land and they want to grow some of their own food. The Remax estate agency in Castelo Branco often sends these people out to talk to us as we appear to be the only “estrangeiros” with previous farming experience.

The Remax people helped us with the language problem in the buying, registration and insuring of our vehicle in January 2003. It was 10 years old then. It failed to start one morning early in September.  Having little mechanical knowledge, I only knew it was a serious problem. When it happened I had to go along to the village a few kilometres away, and so took the tractor instead, thinking of what I could do to fix my problem with the car. In the village was a vehicle belonging to the place I bought the car from in 2003. I explained my problem and they took care of everything, including seeking us from home and taking us to the railway station a couple of days later so that we could travel to Lisbon for a flight back to the UK for our grand-daughter’s Christening. The car was ready when we came back, and I was very pleased with the bill. I had had no dealings with the business since buying the car and I consider that what they did went a long way beyond after-sales service.

Apart from the extremely pleasant and helpful population I also thoroughly enjoy excellent food and wine at almost giveaway prices. Just a few of the reasons why I like Portugal.

Old McDonald's Comfrey

As promised in my previous post a few days ago I have set up a new blog called Old McDonald's Comfrey - www.oldmcdonaldscomfrey.blogspot.com purely for the purpose of giving some suggestions on the use of dried comfrey.

More about Comfrey

Comfrey is never far from me – either physically or mentally. It is one of those neglected crops that every now and again have a very limited number of enthusiasts to promote their virtues, and yet they never become popular with many mainstream farmers. It is not a difficult crop to grow on a large scale, but it does need different management to most other farm crops grown for animal feed, and either needs to be fed fresh or mixed with some other crop for silage.

A few stalwarts carry on in a small way, but many growers neglect it after a while. Over the years I have seen sellers of root-sets and offsets, dried leaves and roots either cease business or show “out of stock” as a permanent notice and very few who continue. I am continually thinking of suitable mechanical methods of cutting and carting on a farm scale as livestock feed, but have not devised anything better than using a forage harvester that chops and loads directly into a wagon. This is suitable only for immediate feeding or ensiling. An alternative, when used as a mulch and fertiliser is to cut then pick up after wilting, although applying fresh cut leaves around trees in dry situations such as I have in the summer is my preferred use.

The best way to dry comfrey is to keep the leaves whole in a very shallow layer and turned frequently with great care to prevent shattering. Ideally they should be individually separated, but this is impossible except with only a few leaves. Bunched and hung up in a tobacco barn is feasible, but extremely labour intensive, and only suitable if you have a tobacco barn or something similar. I wilt in the field then use my numerous small olive harvesting boxes that have perforated bases and sides. Again, very labour intensive but the boxes are only used for olives in November and December when the comfrey is going into its dormant phase and not harvested.

The great problem for users of comfrey has often been that sellers and advisers do not know much about it, writing the most utter rubbish (often simply copied from other writings) about comfrey in general; Henry Doubleday and Lawrence Hills. I see the same misinformation time and time again, some even repeating articles that purport to be the writer’s own experiences of the crop. Sometimes sellers offer a specific cultivar, usually one of the Bocking series. I am always extremely suspicious of this in countries other than Britain, where Bocking 14 has been readily available for many years. Where did the plants originate? Who identified them?

I know comfrey is a wonderful plant, but I am sure it is not capable of making people into time travellers. I found one site referring to Doubleday in WWII - 40 years after he died, and here is an example from a site claiming to be a Herbal Encyclopaedia:

During the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, an Englishman named Henry Doubleday became convinced that the world could be saved from hunger and suffering by using comfrey. He established a charitable organization to research the cultivation and use of the plant that exists to this day and continues to publish pamphlets and books on its usage.

Henry Doubleday’s interest in comfrey was as a source of glue that could be used on postage stamps. He did not import what a century later became classified as Symphytum x uplandicum from Russia until about 1870. His earlier connection with potatoes was that he set up a factory in England to make starch from them. It was some years after his glue idea that he apparently saw the possibility of it as a source of human food, but it seems it remained only an idea. Unfortunately all his notes were destroyed after his death and it is not possible to know what his thoughts were. Lawrence Hills, in the 1950s, founded the research association to which he gave Doubleday’s name because of his work with comfrey.  For accurate historical information use Lawrence Hills’ works as your source, although it appears the botanic nomenclature was not settled when Hills wrote his books.

Many sites show photographs of a comfrey plant in its red or blue flowering phase and refer to it as S.officinale (Common Comfrey) when it is most obvious that it is not. They then claim that it does not set seed. Common Comfrey, as can be guessed from its name, sets seed profusely and will rapidly spread in a garden or field. Its flowers are white/cream/yellow. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that you will come across the red/purple flowered variant. Most other comfreys also set large amounts of viable seed. If you are growing comfrey to use either for animals or plants it should never be allowed to flower anyway. Flowering seriously reduces the productivity of the plant.  

Further misinformation arises when the writer has no idea about fertilisers. They confuse ratios of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium with percentages, comparing them as if they were the same thing and then spout forth about this being better than that, and how to make use of them. This is especially true of those promoting the use of comfrey. Part of the reason for this, although inexcusable by anyone who claims to advise on fertiliser use,  is the habit of some fertiliser sellers showing analyses of their products as, for example 5:10:10. The sign : between two numbers means that they are in this ratio to each other.  Agricultural and horticultural convention is 5-10-10 and also to show the constituents as N-P-K in that order, with other nutrients also shown as their elemental symbol, e.g S and Ca for Sulphur and Calcium.

For those who do not know, 5-10-10 means that the package contains 5% Total Nitrogen 10% Phosphate and 10% Potash. Nitrogen is the total of Nitrical and Ammoniacal; Phosphate is Phosphorus Pentoxide and Potash is Potassium Oxide. I suggest you read professionally written technical fertiliser articles if you require more detail about mineral or organic fertilisers and their availability to plants. A good starting point is the online available UK DEFRA manual RB209 “Fertiliser Recommendations for Agricultural and Horticultural Crops”. It is highly recommended to commercial growers, but only to those dedicated home growers with a thirst for knowledge.

The ratio of N:P:K in a 5-10-10 fertiliser is 1:2:2 but a ratio is meaningless if you want to know how much of that particular fertiliser to apply. You need the figures 5-10-10 or whatever the analysis is. Knowledgeable people can make use of the information and then make their own calculations based on the N-P-K percentages. Occasionally it will be found that some writers put Potassium in the middle. I have even seen this in agricultural books when the author discusses various fertilisers in the order Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus. This is also inexcusable, and has given rise to some articles where I have seen the symbol for Potassium given as P and Phosphorus as K. Organic fertilisers (such as comfrey, meat and bone meal or seaweed) are described in the same way as mineral fertilisers so that users know their analysis and can make use of the information.

I use fresh and dried comfrey. I have made liquid from comfrey but found it did not suit my management systems. Liquid is obtained from the pressed leaves and stems. A favourite instruction is to dilute the liquid obtained from comfrey until it is “the colour of weak tea”. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen this quote. It is sometimes accompanied by “that is about 10:1” or 20:1 or 40:1. There is a big difference between 10:1 and 40:1. Even well-known gardening personalities come out with this nonsense. It is equally as bad as advising the use of a manufactured fertiliser by saying put “some” on your land. You have no idea what you are feeding your plants. The nutrients in a concentrated comfrey liquid are variable to begin with. The amounts in any given sample of fresh material will be different to another sample (more so if grown on a different site) and the moisture content, up to 90%, will also differ. Wilting the leaves is generally advised before pressing, but again how much water is left?

The agricultural college in Castelo Branco analyses comfrey leaves for me in the same way as they analyse olive and almond leaves to assist in assessing fertiliser requirements for the grove or orchard. It is unable to analyse the liquid and that is another reason I do not use it. It is possible to have a liquid analysed, but not locally. I would need to do some calculations based on the dried material of a wilted sample used for pressing in order to have an idea of the liquid analysis. Highly inaccurate, but the best I could do, and given the variability in starting water content of “wilted” leaves it is not good enough for me.

At the same time, if you grow comfrey on a garden or allotment scale, then making liquid concentrate may suit you rather than using the leaves fresh or drying them and a few years experience of using your own materials and methods should be enough that you know how to use it for your own crops. Analyses of leaves and liquid are very expensive (several times more than soil analyses) and possibly not justified for home use. I am on a bigger scale and using it for commercial crops. I am about to offer dried leaves for sale too, so I need to be able to calculate my own applications to plants, and to guide customers. Consequently I need the analyses.

I took samples from August and September cuts of the 2014 crop, did a thorough mixing, and had some analysed. These are the dried leaves I will be selling over the 2014-15 winter and spring. There will be a little variation in the analysis of a plant between the several cuts in a season and I will analyse more in 2015. It will take me a little while from posting this blog before the website is updated to include the comfrey. I will make an announcement here and also set up a dedicated blog that will give some suggestions on using the dried leaves – based on the latest analyses I have. I do not expect them to change to the extent that general advice needs to be changed, but it will be of interest to some amateur growers of comfrey to see if the analyses change.

What the present analyses have shown me is that I can provide all the P and K I need for my trees, and I expect (but do not know for certain) all the trace elements too, solely from comfrey. But not sufficient N. A large quantity of comfrey is required, and my original thoughts were to grow comfrey in the tree lines to make use of the fertilisers applied to the land and not utilised by the trees and also to eliminate carting of the cut comfrey used as mulch for the trees. Unfortunately despite my best endeavours to keep the tree lines clean, I am finding that birds are bringing in seeds and dropping them as they roost in the tree branches. I like to see the wide range of birds that inhabit my olive groves but blackberries and some of the bigger perennial and annual weeds are particularly troublesome.

I have reluctantly decided I would be unable to keep the olives, almonds and comfrey sufficiently weed free, and need to grow the comfrey on a dedicated area. If you have a few fruit trees, then you probably have the space for comfrey too. Think about growing a few comfrey plants close to each tree, specifically for the purpose of mulching the trees. 50kgs of fresh leaves is the minimum amount you will need for each medium sized productive tree. 

PICCALILLI

Those of you who have my book will know that the simple recipes at the end have been modified by my wife from more complicated ones. They are quicker, cheaper and easier to make than the originals. They taste better too, because they have been adjusted to suit us. You will also know that whenever possible she makes the recipes flexible so that you are not tied to specific weights or ingredients and you can change them to suit you.

It does mean you need a little cooking experience, or are prepared to experiment. You will soon learn how to modify them, and there are always opportunities to change things as you go. Building in the safeguard of being able to make changes part way through means that tips on how and when to do it need to be included in the instructions.

One important point to note is that unlike almost all recipes for piccalilli this one does not have the vegetables coated in salt overnight. In fact there is no added salt. It is not necessary because of the other flavours. It is also a lot healthier than the salt laden versions. The amount of sugar in many recipes is also excessive. This is the typical “bad” manufactured food scenario - lots of both salt and sugar.

If you are in the northern hemisphere, now or in the next few weeks is the time of year when you (or a friendly neighbour) can supply most of the ingredients from vegetables in the garden – or buy them at their cheapest if you have no garden.

The two things you need to make vegetables into piccalilli are vinegar and spice. We use white wine vinegar because that is what is available in Portugal, but use whatever you have. The British brown malt vinegar is what my mother always used and the only difference is that it makes the sauce darker. The one essential spice is turmeric powder. Everything else is optional. I prefer some mustard seeds too, or you could use powdered mustard. Coriander seeds, powdered ginger and other spices are frequently used in more complicated recipes. The choice is up to you. Use what you like.

Marrows or courgettes tend to overwhelm anybody who grows them, and many gardeners have a few plants. They soon grow bigger than is suitable for a single meal and piccalilli is often the only thing that these fruits are used for in a household. They are also very cheap in shops that stock them. Onions, cucumbers (or gherkins) and cauliflower are traditionally used in addition to the marrows or courgettes. I think it would not be the same without onions and cauliflower. Further options are green tomatoes, French beans, runner beans, peppers (either sweet or hot depending upon your taste) capers and garlic. Omitting the overnight salting means you can have the piccalilli ready in under an hour after you have prepared the vegetables. We do feel that a small amount of sugar enhances the flavours.

Before making the first batch this year we did an internet search and looked at numerous recipes. Most had far too much salt, and only one confirmed our opinion that salt should be omitted. That was on the website of the supermarket chain Waitrose. We saw recipes that use nasturtium pods instead of capers. Carrots occasionally appear in recipes too. Some used weights, others referred to large, medium or small vegetables.

You might want some guidance on quantities to use. The ratio of vegetables to vinegar varied a lot in the recipes we saw, from less vinegar than vegetables to twice as much. Have available a bit more than half the weight of vinegar to vegetables for your first attempt, although it is unlikely you will need it all. Vinegar weighs 1kg per litre, 20ozs (one and one quarter pounds) per British pint, and one pound per US pint. We also suggest no more than 1oz of sugar per pound of vegetables or 55g per kilo – and use a lot less ourselves. We are not being diet goody-goodies, we just think that sweet piccalilli is not right. If you want sweet pickles then make chutney and not piccalilli.

Make sure you have sufficient sterilised jars with non-corrosive lids for the batch being made. Know the capacity of the jars and allow one spare over the combined weight of vegetables and vinegar. You might not need it. They must be kept hot because the newly made piccalilli will be close to boiling point when it is transferred to them.

Our main purpose for a recent batch was to use up an overgrown courgette and excess cucumbers. So, we used 1 large cauliflower, 250g/half a pound of French beans and 2 big Onions in a total weight of 6.5kgs/14lbs of vegetables in their fresh natural state. The single courgette we used was close to 6lbs (2.5kgs) so comprised about 40% of the total weight. Cucumbers brought the total to 6.5kgs. We had not previously used French beans and are not impressed. They add nothing to the flavour and we will not use them again.

We had added 5 large garlic cloves to an earlier batch of about half the quantity plus about half a jar of leftover capers, and I like that. We decided on 2litres of vinegar which is a lot less than any recipe we have seen, and is about one third of the weight of the prepared vegetables. We made the decision because the courgette and cucumbers were harvested from the garden immediately before being prepared and we knew they would contain a lot of liquid. With other vegetables you might need more. The starting amount is not critical to success.  

You will see how to use the dry ingredients during the instructions below and we used 1 heaped tablespoon of Mustard seed, the same of turmeric powder, about 3ozs/90g of flour, and 150g/5ozs of white sugar. All these are less quantities than other recipes will state, but it was enough.  Keep the flour handy in case you decide to thicken the sauce some more, when a tiny further amount of turmeric can also be added.  More vinegar should be available to increase the quantity of sauce if you think it necessary at a later stage. Some prefer the sauce runny, and others for it not to drip off the bottom of a spoon dipped into a jar, and the quantity of liquid in your chosen vegetables will have some effect on the consistency, and quantity, of the sauce. 

 

Take some notes on what you use and how long various stages take. That way you can decide whether you want to change anything for the next batch. You will make more.

If you intend to weigh the vegetables do it before preparing them – it is easier. Cucumbers and large gherkins are best skinned, as the skins tend to be bitter and the bitterness can persist in the piccalilli. Small courgettes need not be skinned, but if large like the one we used they have tough skins. We peeled most of it but left the skin on a few pieces for additional colour. We also removed the central pith and seeds. Break the cauliflower into small florets and prepare and cut all the other vegetables into the size of pieces you want in the finished product. Keep each vegetable separate from the others. About half an inch or 1cm cubes suits most people, except for garlic if used, which many will like sliced small, or even crushed.

Heat the vinegar and sugar in a pan big enough to take all the vinegar and vegetables. Whilst the vinegar is heating mix the mustard, turmeric and flour into a smooth paste with some cold vinegar. Other seeds or spices that you want to include should also be mixed in this paste. Extra dry spices, or including peppers, will change the flavour. Bulk up the paste with hot vinegar from the pan. This ensures you have a smooth paste that will not go lumpy. It also thins the paste and makes it easier to pour.

Pour the paste into the pan of hot vinegar before it comes to the boil. The mixture, now a sauce, needs to be stirred continuously and heated to boiling point. It should be adjusted to the consistency you prefer. I am happy with it quite thin. You do not want it too watery, nor do you want too much of it. You want jars full of vegetables in sauce, not sauce with some vegetables, so be careful about adding extra vinegar, and remember the liquid that will come out of the vegetables, especially the cucurbits (marrow, courgette, cucumber). You can always add more flour and a touch of turmeric later if you want to thicken it more. The sauce should not quite cover the vegetables when all have been added to the pan, and you can increase the quantity of sauce at later stages. You always have room to manoeuvre.

Do not tip everything into the sauce willy-nilly. The reason for keeping them separate is so that you can add them in order to achieve equal crunchiness in the piccalilli. Onions are always first, and the sauce will drop in temperature and stop boiling. Stir each vegetable into the sauce as you go. When one is thoroughly coated, add the next, but there is no need to rush. Cauliflower follows the onions, then any other hard vegetables such as carrots. These are followed by (if used) beans and peppers. Next comes the bulk - the cucurbits and finally garlic and capers. If the sauce is too thin for you, add more flour and turmeric paste, but remember you have to keep stirring it, so not too thick. 

   

Continue heating and stirring until the sauce returns to the boil. Liquid from the cucurbits will increase the amount of sauce, and the vegetables should have enough sauce to just cover them when boiling point is reached. If not, merely add some vinegar - and more flour paste if you want. Make sure it reaches boiling point again if you have added more vinegar or paste. You now have piccalilli. It can be removed from the heat now, which is what we do, or left to boil some more, but you must remove it from the heat before the vegetables become soft. A small number of minutes should be sufficient for anybody. Put the piccalilli in the hot sterilised jars immediately. Fill them right to the top and close the lids firmly. It will keep a long time. Some folks like to let the flavours mingle for a couple of weeks or more before using. As soon as it cools is long enough for me.

www.oldmcdonaldsolives.com

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.

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 20^th 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.