Marina's Organic Garden

Come join me at Co-creating Earth-based Community -- Using earth-based awareness and process oriented skills to facilitate conflict, power, rank and diversity for the wellbeing and resilience of groups and communitie on Ecopsychology UK

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:46:00 +0000

Mark O'Connell has invited you to the event 'Co-creating Earth-based Community -- Using earth-based awareness and process oriented skills to facilitate conflict, power, rank and diversity for the wellbeing and resilience of groups and communitie' on Ecopsychology UK!

Check out "Co-creating Earth-based Community -- Using earth-based awareness and process oriented skills to facilitate conflict, power, rank and diversity for the wellbeing and resilience of groups and communitie" on Ecopsychology UK

Mark O'Connell

Time: May 14, 2010 at 6:30pm to May 16, 2010 at 3pm
Location: Bowden House,
Organized By: Mark O'Connell

Event Description:
Full Leaflet: http://www.apricotcentre.co.uk/docs/Cocreate.pdf Process Work (Dr Arnold Mindell) now emphasises Earth-based awareness work for working on social and ecological issues. This approach to social and environmental problems helps us to move beyond traditional polarisations, bringing us in touch with a place of Deep Democracy from which complex difficulties can be addressed. Process Work brings together the outerwork of social activism with the innerwork of psychology and meditation, grounding it in our connection with the sentient earth. An aim might be 'how to be at home within ourselves while finding home and community on the earth'.

A seminar for those interested in 'resilient community' & the interface between Process Work and the Transition Movement; wanting to discover a sense of 'home' (ecos) while seeking sustainable change and solutions.

With complex social and ecological problems there is often a tendency to marginalise both; aspects of our inner diversity and the outer diversity of the situation.

- Can we make the needed societal changes without repeating the damage to each other and the environment in the process?
- What deeper skills and attitudes can help how we relate to one another in our families and communities?
- How can we deal with the complexities which arise when groups with different levels of privileges interact trying to make changes?

A weekend mixing theory, experiential skill-based exercises, group process, and the sharing and reflection on experiences. There will be opportunities to explore application to 'real' relationship, group or community issues as part of the workshop.

The seminar will be preceded by 2 weeks of online presentation and discussion of Process Work theory open to all participants held by Diploma holders and advanced
Co-creating Earth-based Community -- Using earth-based awareness and process oriented skills to facilitate conflict, power, rank and diversity for the wellbeing and resilience of groups and communities in Transition -- with Gary Reiss PhD (hosted by Apricot Centre)

Process Work Students. This will be an opportunity to ground yourself in some basic PW ideas before attending the course, and online access will be made available after registration.

£180 (£160 if £50 deposit received before 1st April)
To book: info@apricotcentre.co.uk Phone : 01206 230425
Cheques payable to 'Apricot Centre' 83 Hungerdown Lane, Lawford, Essex. C011 2LY

See more details and RSVP on Ecopsychology UK:

http://ecopsychologyuk.ning.com/events/event/show?id=3642675%3AEvent%3A2883&xgi=27n96rSze5iMGy&xg_source=msg_invite_event

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Gardening with children

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:34:00 +0000

It is a grey damp November morning in Harwich, and clusters of children are in an allotment perched on a small cliff overlooking the sea.

One group are watering the winter salad they have sown in the polytunnel that they have put up in the summer. Another group are pricking out seedlings for more winter salad on benches outside, and further group are trying to catch baby frogs. Squeals of laughter echo around the garden.

The children have been creating the garden for one day per week for the last year. Starting from a derelict patch, we have cleared, dug, planted, harvested, battled with the weeds, put up the tunnel and created wildlife areas. “ We” are the children, teachers, teaching assistants, parents, me a professional grower and Creative Partnerships; a national initiative to develop creative teaching and learning in schools. I go to the school every week to help develop gardening skills, Creative Partnerships help to develop the learning techniques in collaboration with the teacher. At the end of the year the project is passed over to the school to run.

The teacher has been using the garden as a way of teaching maths, literacy, science, social skills, and perhaps most importantly the building of self esteem. The teacher herself is a musician and she has used the gardening project as inspiration to create music with her class.

The other vital part of the project is the life skills that are learnt; growing cooking and then eating the vegetables has lead to the children trying and eating a much wider range of fresh produce in one short year. We regularly cook the produce, starting off with simple soups, we have moved on to jams, cakes, (carrot and courgette), elderflower cordial, chutney. The children sell the produce at the fete and Christmas fairs and are currently making a cookery book with stories of the year. This links the project to home, and many parents come in to help with the larger tasks like digging. We have run the garden and cooking on organic lines, with the seeds, compost and gardening methods used, and most of the ingredients where possible have been organic.

This learning style is tactile, and practical, outdoors and grabs the interest of most children. Going back into the classroom the teacher can draw on these experiences to reinforce learning. This project has had remarkable results.

There are also the magic moments, all of us can remember some of these from our own school days. On the day I have mentioned here, there was a thin ribbon of migrating birds silver and white flying against the grey skies, the children all stopped and stared. Half an hour later we were admiring the work we had done when one of the children noticed a rainbow across the sky. This was beautiful drawn in at least one child’s garden diary the next week. An extraordinary moment for an ordinary day.

Marina O’Connell is an Organic fruit grower in Essex, she also runs the Apricot centre, a small training venue on her farm. She works as a Creative Practioner in many schools in Tendring setting up gardens and projects and farm visits in collaboration with teachers.
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk

Dreaming the Vegetable garden into being – and Sowing seeds

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:31:00 +0000

At the time of writing it is deep in the sleepy time of the Solstice and Christmas.

As a grower I find it important to give myself a break like everyone else, and use it as a time of reflection on the up and coming year and the mania that spring brings to the organic grower.

The seed catalogues come plumping through the letterbox, I rescue them from the kids before they get cut up and made in to collages. It’s a time to flick through and dream of the growing season to come, what worked well last year and what I want to have a go at this year. I always chose from the organic and biodynamic options, which are quite wide now, and find over the years I am growing more and more unusual varieties of salads in my glasshouse and polytunnel. With the advent of farmers markets my experience is that people want fruit and vegetables they cannot find on the supermarket shelves and will happily buy knobbly tomatoes, Asian leaves; mibuna, tatsoi, namenia, texel greens, frilly endives from Europe, old fashioned cucumbers that are ridged and huge. And my surprise crop last year was Chinese celery. It grew to be enormous, about twice the size of other celery and people staggered off with it excited about the prospect of celery soup, braised celery, celery cooked the Indian way with gee and spices, and even used for juicing.

I start seed sowing in February, or March, depending upon the weather. If it is too cold the slugs will graze them all off, or the mice collect them from the seed trays and store them for later. Too warm and there is a danger of a cold snap and they will all be frosted when they are at their most vunerable.

The seeds are sown according to the biodynamic calendar, leaves when the moon is in a water sign, roots when the moon is in an earth sign, flowers when the moon is in an air sign. The Biodynamic calendar tells you which is which; it changes every 2-3 days. It requires a convergence of the moon with the right sign of the zodiac, reasonable weather (not snowing, pouring with rain, blowing a gale, or freezing cold), my youngest daughter being in the right mood to come out with me, and the arrival of the potting compost to get the seeds sown, it is quite a quick job once the alignment is correct. If not I often just sow them anyway and hope for the best! Last year it took four goes and it resulted in the best fed mice in the whole of Essex and a huge seed bill. This year I will try to do better.

The other reflective job at this time of the year is the application of preparation 500. This is a Biodynamic preparation that is applied to the soil in the winter months to sensitise the soil to the cosmic forces. I buy in the preparations as my garden is too small to make them myself. It then requires potentising by stirring for an hour before application to the soil. A small amount, enough to fill the palm of the hand is mixed with a barrel full of water, stirring in one direction and then the other to create a vortex and then a moment of chaos as the direction is changed. I do it in my glasshouse, with some friends. I usually make tea and we have a chat. It is hard physical work to do alone but with a few people it is very social. The preparation is then flicked on to the ground in small quantities. I fill buckets and load them into a wheel barrow, and trundle up my long and thin orchard. Even though I have planted hedges it is not a very private place and on both sides there are holdings of a similar size with my neighbours regularly walking up and down about their work. It is winter as well and the leaves are off. It is a deeply satisfying task; the children love it and understand it intuitively. But it is difficult to explain to conventional growers if they are not of the same mindset. In this context I have become a covert Preparation 500 applier. I like my neighbours and I don’t want them to think I am a witch; I want them to let their children play with mine. This is after all the village where the witch finder general found his first witch 400 years ago. So I tend to do it when it is getting dark, and I walk down the middle of my orchard flicking as far as I can reach without going to close to the edges.

The results are now, in my opinion, becoming evident. The soil is fantastic, the crops healthy, the produce tastes great. Customers at the farmers market come back week after week and tell me how fantastic the fruit is. So I will continue my covert Preparation applications.

Seasonal Notes

Sowing seeds
The seed packets give instructions of sowing each type of seed. To ease the confusion however most seeds fit into three categories;
1. Those that must be sown direct into the soil are mainly the root crops such as carrots, parsnips, beetroot, Broad beans they can be sown from February onwards.
2. Those that cannot withstand a frost must be sown first in a seed tray and then transplanted after the last frost is over. Sow in March transplant late April, this includes pumpkins, courgettes, sunflowers, tomatoes and peppers, French beans.
3. Those that can withstand a frost but do better sown in seed trays and transplanted later, start sowing February and March plant out mid April. This includes Lettuce, Brassicas, and Leeks.

Catalogues for organic and biodynamic seeds
Suffolk Herbs / Kings Seeds (01376) 570000
Tuckers Seeds. (01364) 652233
Stormy Hall Seeds. (01287) 661368

Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar 2006 by Maria Thun and Preparation 500 available from the Biodynamic Agriculture Association. (01453) 759501

Marina O’Connell
January 2009
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk

Starting out at Hungerdown Lane

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:29:00 +0000

Just before the millennium my partner and I were fortunate enough to find a house and four acres of land that we could afford to buy. It was virtually derelict, the land had been left untouched for fifteen years, 300 square meters of glass was a home to a colony of rabbits, known locally as “Centre Parks for rabbits”. The orchard that had been planted in 1949 was still intact but overgrown. The house was horrid and filthy. It was our dream come true.

We moved to Essex in order to be close to our parents and about to become parents ourselves we wanted grandparents on hand. After ten years of living in Totnes in Devon we suffered from culture shock. Where were all the cafes and where were all the bookshops? Although living in Totnes had been wonderful for some reason that time seemed to be over and here we were in the mainstream world. We were a bit shocked by our decision as were many of our Totnes friends, moving to Essex is not somehow part of an alternative lifestyle. This part of Essex is very beautiful, close to the Stour Estuary it is the home of Constable and those beautiful paintings, tourists are rare, and we are close to a still fully functioning small market town.

Our new home was on a Land Settlement Estate, these are dotted about the country and were build for unemployed miners in the 1930’s. They are made up of small semi-detached houses with four or more acres of land per plot, with outhouses originally intended for pigs and machinery. Ours were also planted with small orchards. Close by is a co-operative originally intended to market the produce from the 60 holdings on the estate. These holdings were privatised and sold off in the Thatcher years and they are now populated by high-tech growers, in this area predominantly out-of-season strawberry growers, where a four acre plot of high-tech glass still just about works as an economic unit. The rest are still occupied by the original “old boys” who have been growing for 30 odd years but cannot now make a living from it and more and more by people with horses.

I however planned to plant an organic orchard, at a time when most people were grubbing out their orchards. I also planted half an acre of woodland and extensive hedgerows. In all, I have planted 3000 trees in five years, 500 of which are fruit trees.

The glasshouse was cleared of rabbits in the nicest possible way …. By digging and watering the soil, they moved out to find another holiday destination. I started to grow salad leaves to put into salad bags.

The field was ploughed and sowed with clover to improve the soil structure and provide nutrients and the trees planted. The contractor who ploughed the soil could not sow the clover for me as the seed was too fine for his machines so we sowed it by hand. The contractor could not quite understand that I, being a woman, was the grower, and referred all of his questions to my partner, who, being a psychotherapist didn’t understand what he was talking about and referred him back to me !

I chose to plant 25 varieties of fruit, apples, pears and plums to spread the picking season and to slow down the spread of pests and diseases through the orchard. These were mostly new varieties bred to resist scab, a disease that puts spots on the apples and makes them unsaleable. Most winters I add a few local old varieties such as “Chelmsford Wonder” and “George Cave” and “Peasgood Nonsuch” ( which is not local but just has a lovely name).

I used permaculture methods to plan the layout of the holding, and biodynamic preparations to enliven the otherwise dead soil.

Growing Communities invited me to sell weekly at a Farmers Market in Stoke Newington, now I pick and sell there over the fruit season. I am not rich but it does mean that when the orchard comes into full cropping in another few years I will earn a decent living via direct retail sales in London. Out grades, or produce not good enough to sell I make into jam or juice and sell in the winter months. In fact I am doing what the original market gardeners did here 50 years ago.

It has taken seven years to develop the garden, and I now have two young children and a thriving orchard, and apples and plums in the summer drop from the sky !

What I have done with my holding seems counter intuitive for many of the local high-tech growers that are my neighbours. Low turnover, but most of it is profit, low tech (one rusty tractor mower) but setting up a system that does not need technology to function, low energy (or carbon) input because I have chosen plants that function at different times of the year to provide continual cropping. It all makes sense to the person versed in organic or permaculture methods, but is somewhat strange to the grower who supplies the supermarkets. I was initially trained myself this way so I can understand how and why they do what they do, but it is a meeting of two worlds. Four acres of glass covered in white plastic with strawberry plants grown on table tops and fed with water and fertilisers in peat, planted every year, sitting next door to a clover field with a wonky orchard (ever tried planting a straight line with young children about ?) a woodland, and a glasshouse that is home to at least 25 crops grown in succession with very few straight lines. But it works, we get on fine, the children play together and we swap produce.

Marina O’Connell
5.1.06
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk

Communing with Nature – Planting Raspberries

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:27:00 +0000

Today it was warm and cosy in the kitchen, outside it was a cold autumnal day with huge grey east Anglian skies and biting cold. Today, however, was the day to prepare the soil for planting Raspberries. I know being outside and communing with nature is good for me – it is proven – stress levels decrease, heart rates slow and blood pressure drops when people go into or even glimpse a natural wooded area. But all I want to do is commune with my coffee (organic of course) in the nice warm kitchen.

Finally after an hour of procrastination, I go outside; it starts to rain. I have a Ferrari rotavator and this roars into action and chugs away and after a short while 100 meters of Raspberry furrow is roughly carved out between the rows of plum trees. Then it stops and I can’t get it to start again, no matter how I poke it with a screwdriver. So I get out the fork and start digging, I am really communing with nature now. I meet 23 worms, 1 millipede, 1 duck, 2 seagulls and quite a lot of couch grass roots that I pull out. I am not over-whelmed by deep and meaningful thoughts but I am hot, my back aches and the sun has penetrated the deep grey. My headache, from too much red wine the night before (probably not organic) has eased up. I feel good.

The digging has given me a chance to look at the soil – it is in good condition nice and crumbly even though it is damp, not a huge number of worms but it is winter and they go down deep. Steiner says that the life forces draw down into the soil in the winter, the soil is at its most vital in the winter. This is the time to apply the Biodynamic preparation 500 in homeopathic doses to the soil to draw the cosmic forces into the soil so in turn the Raspberries can become imbued with the cosmic forces, and then of course we eat the Raspberries and we too then become imbued with cosmic forces – or so the theory goes. My community has expanded even further and now includes the cosmos. I am no longer alone in my field. I cam imagine hundreds of thousands of bacteria and fungi working away there to carry out the myriad of functions to keep all the plants growing, well actually I cant imagine them at all it seems so amazing to me that it all happens at all.

The Raspberry plants (organic of course) are arriving next week to be planted out, on a fruit day – when the moon is in a fire sign. Next July I will sell the fruit at the farmers market in London. It makes me think of summer and heat, ummmm how lovely. Wendell Berry said “eating is an agricultural act”, the Londoners that will eat my Raspberries next summer are probably sitting in a nice warm office or home right now not very agricultural! But they are supporting me financially to farm this way and they are now a part of my community along with the worms, millipede, duck and seagulls and the cosmos in my field.

The Raspberries once planted will need mulching to keep the weeds down. I can buy plastic or use my ever growing pile of duck manure to carry out the same job. The orchard is home to 200 ducks running up to Christmas. The manure will not keep the weeds down quite as much as plastic but it is free and more environmentally friendly than plastic. As I dig I decide upon using the manure.

Finally the ground is ready for planting. The Ferrari miraculously starts again ready to go back in the shed, and I head in for lunch feeling hot and hungry and connected to my by now huge community. I realised that I did feel less stressed, and the day seemed brighter, so, as I knew, fresh air, exercise and time in nature is good for you. Even on a cold grey day.

Seasonal notes;

• Winter is the time for ground preparation and planting of perennial plants, trees, shrubs. Soil can be dug over roughly and preferably mulched so the rain does not damage the soil structure. The soil structure is important to allow the fungi and bacteria to function properly and this will help the trees to establish better.

• The first three years after planting bare root trees are vulnerable to drying out and competition from weeds. Mulching will suppress weeds, and keep moisture in the soil helping the tree to establish.

• Bare root plants can be bought from nurseries and garden centres between November and February and are cheaper to buy than pot grown plants. They also use less resources, such as peat and plastic and water to produce. Bare root trees and shrubs need to be planted before March but can be stored in the garden by heeling in, covering the roots with soil so they do not dry out.

• Pruning of fruit trees and shrubs can begin once the leaves are off during the months of December to February. Plums should be pruned in June to prevent infection from Silver Leaf.

• Many studies have found that contact with a natural environment increases healing in hospitals, and wellbeing in other settings. A recent report found that exercise in the green environment lifted and improved the mood.

Marina O’Connell
Autumn 2007
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk

Building the Apricot Centre – Building with Shipping Containers

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:13:00 +0000

In 2006 on taking redundancy from my lecturing job, I decided to use the money along with a grant and a loan to build a small training centre in the middle of my organic orchard in North Essex.

I had a top budget of £36,000 and wanted to build a space of about 80 – 100 square meters to house training room, food processing kitchen for jams and cordials and an office. I was applying for a redundant building grant and for this reason could not go over the £36,000 thresh-hold. This gave me a budget of between £360 - £450 per square meter, and seemed to me more than enough money, having carried out a number of house renovations before. The difference this time was that being a mother of 2 including a newly adopted baby, and my husband working full time we didn’t have time to do much of the work ourselves.

Discussing the plan with a local architect I found out that normal building costs would be about £800 per square meter, and if we wanted a “green” breathing wall construction the first plan, then were looking at a much higher price than that. His solution was to go and find a lot more money. However with the permaculture adage “the solution is in the problem” ringing in my ears I kept asking for more quotes, and casting about for different types of building. Of course the solution was right on the doorstep!

We live not far from Felixstowe docks where mountains of old containers are piled up, they are a waste product of globalization where products are shipped around the world. A local company modify them for offices and mess rooms for buildings sites. With this company we came up with a design that fitted our plan – 2 x 40 ft containers cut down to 30 ft welded together with the walls removed, the ends sliced off and fitted with sliding door windows a bit like a huge box. Another 40 ft container cut down to 24 ft with the end sliced off and fitted with sliding door windows is the kitchen and the forth similar container contains the office. Doors are cut through and a toilet built in the end of one of the rooms. The whole structure was welded together and clad and stained to fit in to the orchard, and a sedum roof was installed on top of a roof decking to provide insulation. The inside was insulated and lined with plaster board and wooden floor and painted in the normal way.

The whole structure sits on a plinth of engineering bricks 2 wide, and 4 high, the foundations are relatively shallow – in our case there was an existing concrete pad where an old building had sat. (In fact the Machinery shed and Battery chicken unit of my predecessor). In other circumstances the foundations need only be dug around the perimeter of the building greatly reducing the amount of concrete required and therefore carbon budget of the building.

The building was ordered in February and craned onto site in April 2006, it took a further 3 months to clad, paint, hook up to amenities, (water and electricity), and have a ceramic stove installed. No trees had to be removed they simply hoiked the containers over the existing trees so it now sits nestled amongst a group of established trees.

The cost of the building on site was £27,000 for 82 square meters, £330 per square meter. The cost of the plinth, and the hooking the building up to services was extra, as was “greening” the building, the sedum roof, the ceramic stove and a small wind turbine were added so the building could run more or less carbon zero. It came in one budget and on time. The heating is provided from wood from the orchard, the wind turbine providing electricity for running lighting and small water heaters for cooking and cleaning. We had permission to install a composting toilet, but complications with building regulations – composting toilets and disabled access ( as we are open to the public) could not be resolved and as the toilet was yards from an existing drain we installed a conventional one in the end.

The whole process was taken through planning permission and building regulations with surprisingly little problems.

It is in no way a deep green building, we deliberately used mass produced materials to keep the cost down, but overall the materials used were considerably reduced by using the containers as the structure of the building. We were also using up a waste product – the containers. The low cost has in turn helped us to install the equipment we needed to run the building as much as off the grid as we could. It is also a surprisingly beautiful building, box like it has beautiful space and light, it had incredible passive solar gain all year round because of the huge windows and N/S orientation and high insulation. I would be very happy to live in it.

The containers are incredibly versatile, they come in 20 ft and 40 ft lengths, but they are all about 8 ft wide – probably the worst draw back as this can be a bit narrow for some rooms. They can be stacked on top of one another, have walls removed to make them wider, and windows can be cut in the sides or whole ends removed to provide doors and windows. They can be clad have pitched roofs put on top, and made to look not like containers! They can in the end be easily removed from a site leaving only narrow concrete plinths behind. And they are incredibly cheap !

Marina O’Connell

November 2008

Starting with Compost

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:12:00 +0000

Last week my daughter asked me (it was Halloween) why the witches and magic happened on that night only? I found myself explaining that it is because it’s the end of one year and the beginning of the next. As time bends around the two ends of the year don’t quite meet up, allowing the past years to pop through the hole, bringing with it the witches and ghosts. She looked at me blankly and then went about her own witching and off we went trick or treating.
A pagan friend once explained this to me some years ago and I have often reflected how this story fits perfectly with the growing or agricultural year (I suppose the pagans were earth based). As an organic fruit grower my growing year is coming to an end, the apple harvest is in store, all 4 tonnes of them, I am pulling out the last of the summer crops, digging over the soil and “putting it to bed” with straw or black plastic. I am planting crops for next spring, in the glasshouse; Rocket, Mizuna, Pak choi, Namenia, Spinach, Corn salad, and Purslane. These will be welcome salad in February and March. Outside I am planting bulbs; Tulips, Daffodils, Anemones and Fritillaries for spring flowering and soon the broad beans and garlic will go in for spring cropping.

The garden is in it autumnal shagginess, which I love. Full of rosehips and spiders webs, red and yellow leaves, and piles of rotting fruit and weeds and leaves that need to be built into compost heaps.

Which brings me to my point; composting is, in my mind at least, the beginning of the gardening or farming year. It is making fertility for the next growing year, it is bending around the end of last years waste, to provide fertility for next years growth. The rotting process is the beginning of the cycle of sustainability and fertility as well as the end. It is a cyclical process not a linear one. This is the core difference between conventional and organic or sustainable farming.
Even if you are not a grower or farmer, 35% of waste from a household can be composted. So composting it on site saves on landfill space, and provides fertility for even a small garden.
If you want a go here is how its done.

Quick recipe for a Windrow compost heap;

Many people won’t be able to make one of these unless they have an allotment or large garden, this type of heap will break down in time for use in spring, and will heat up killing the weed seed and pest and diseases. High Carbon layers are stalky vegetable waste, straw, paper. High Nitrogen layers are grass cuttings, fresh manure, rotting fruit.

Alternate layers 1 m wider, and about 1.5 m high and as long as you like. Cover over to keep the rain off and nutrients in.
The heap will heat up and then cool down, at the cooling stage turn the heap over and it should heat up again.
Ready when brown and crumbly
Apply liberally to the soil
Hopefully a few witches will turn up to help me build the compost heaps as its really hard work!

Quick recipe for small garden composting;

Make or buy small container to go in the corner of the garden
Put in household and garden waste (not cooked food)
Leave to rot down on its own, will take 12 months, and will not kill the weeds seeds.
Apply liberally to the soil

You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk

Organic Duck Farming

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:05:00 +0000

I have a 4 acre organic orchard and once a year I raise a flock of 100 organic ducks for the table (to eat!). They complement fruit growing and create a very small mixed farming system that functions very well. I normally start them off around Christmas time so they are ready for Easter.

It is classic case of the benefit of multiple yields; the ducks graze the grass, eat pests of the orchard, leaving manure as they go. This saves me a job of moving 3 tonnes of manure every year, if I could source it. I cannot buy in manure and compost it anymore as most animals are now fed with GM soya, and this is not allowed under organic rules. I could buy in organic manure if it were for sale, but of course most organic farmers keep it to raise their own fertility of their own fields.

The Ducks are also very sociable animals, people come to visit them, they play with them as fluffy duckling’s and chase them as huge beautiful ducks. The children try to name them and count them spending hours in the barn. When they start to graze the orchard my 2 daughters will herd them and chase them around laughing, the ducks perhaps not enjoying it so much, quacking. Once “dressed” and ready for the table more people come to collect them and stay for a chat and tea, and of course we cook them ourselves and share them with friends for special meals. They taste delicious !

I also make a little bit of money from them, and have to remind myself when it is a shockingly low amount of these multiple yields, that the flock of ducks is not just about money.
I buy them as day old ducklings from a hatchery, as there is no local organic hatchery I have to buy non organic ones. They are housed in a barn on organic straw and fed with organic feed that I buy in and once they are a month old I start taking them out in to the orchard daily. They have to be kept in with electric fence to keep the foxes off, and I get up at 6.00am to take them out before the school run. They get put to bed and fed when its going dark. It takes only 14-16 weeks until they are of a size to eat. They are then humanely killed on site (not by me- cant quite manage that bit yet!) and “dressed” in a local tiny game abattoir.

Ideally I would have a permanent flock that I bred my own duckling from, but then I would need a mobile house to move around the orchard that would cost £1000’s and I would then have to be on site 365 days of the year. Something I am not quite ready for just yet.
Anyhow I am not raising duck this year ‘cos of the outbreak of bird flu in Suffolk, I live a mile from the Suffolk border in Essex and I couldn’t bring the baby ducklings across the border into Essex and out of the restricted zone. Also the price of wheat has gone up 40% this year because of the wet summer last year, so I would make even less money or have to put the price up so high I am not sure anyone would buy one.

So I am having a quiet January and get to lie in until 7.00 am !

Making Medlar Cheese

noreply@blogger.com (Marina's Organic Garden) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:09:00 +0000

I am making medlar cheese today, it is a long drawn out business and I was thinking about the blog …. I haven’t done one in ages what shall I write about ? So I thought I would write about what I am doing.

A few weeks ago my mother in law was visiting and I asked her to pick the medlars, an old English fruit you hardly see anymore. It can’t be eaten off the tree it has to “bletted” that is, it has to kind of go soft and brown. Wikipedia says “ this process can cause confusion to the new medlar consumer as softened medlar can give the appearance that it has spoiled “ … a lovely turn of phrase to say it looks like it has gone rotten. The Tudors ate them a lot, they can be eaten as a paste out of the skin, which I don’t fancy myself, but then they didn’t have chocolate or ice cream.

Yesterday 10 kg of the 20 kg picked had gone soft and brown so I cut them in half and cooked them with some water. When it had gone all gloopey I pushed it through a sieve – this took me 4 hours at least.

This gave me 10 pints of sieved medlar goo, so today I have added 3 kg of organic raw cane sugar and some organic lemon juice and it has to boil down until it sets. I always find this the hardest bit, as it is a cheese and not a jam. A cheese needs to set to an almost solid consistency – membrillo in Spain is a fruit cheese. So it needs to be boiled and boiled for a long time and be solid or almost solid in the jar.

The setting point of jam is quite easy to spot, you put some on a saucer in the freezer and it kinds of goes wrinkly when cool. The setting point of a cheese is when you can draw a line in the pan with a spoon and it remains there. The thing is I have to do the school run and after a while I just want it to be finished so I start imagining the line staying – did it stay long enough ? Or is it still too runny? I need to put the cheese and jam in the jars scalding hot to get a good seal and stop mould forming so I don’t want to turn it off and start again. So today to stop getting impatient with it I thought I would write the blog in between stirring so it doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pan. It is now gently blubbing on the stove, exploding bits of medlar goo all over the cooker. Its not going to be ready in time for the school run.

Once I have made all 20 kg into cheese it will make about 50 jars, these I sell for £3.50 at a Farmers Markets in Stoke Newington London. The cheese / jam costs me 50 p per jar in costs for the sugar and the jar itself. 50 jars will net me £150 “profit” to pay for the fruit and my time. I reckon it will take me 12 hours to make all 50 jars, and then I will sell them over quite a few markets leading up to Christmas. Along with lots of other jams and butters (another type of old fashioned jam made from fruit) and jellyies as well as apples. Not a huge money spinner! I can pay myself about £10 an hour for making jam and cheese at those prices, and the real bonus is I can multi-task, I can look after the children or write a blog at the same time.

I could put the price up, the only other place I have seen Medlar cheese for sale is in the Toast Catalogue for £4.75 and it wasn’t even organic. The Toast catalogue sells very expensive and lovely women’s clothes that I can’t afford to buy being an organic grower. The wonderful thing about the farmers market is that you can tell very quickly if you have pitched your prices right, by reading peoples expressions and by the sales. If the product doesn’t sell basically you need to put the price down. Perhaps I should try to put the price up then I could afford those Toast trousers!

You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk