Working an allotment sorts the “glass half empty” folk from the “glass half full” ones. Every year some crops fail or are disappointing. Every year some things succeed brilliantly.
This year, one of the crops that has given us a great harvest is sweetcorn. Here’s last night’s supper, picked just a couple of hours before:
Sweetcorn, like peas, rapidly loses sweetness and gains starchiness after harvesting, so nothing bought from a shop can ever compare with freshly picked.
It’s been a great year, by and large. Bumper crops of all sorts of beans, tree fruit (although springtime storms wiped out some varieties of apple and plum), asparagus, spinach and chard, root veg, rhubarb, and much more. Our soft fruit hasn’t fared so well, although we didn’t do badly for redcurrants and blackcurrants.
It’s all down to the weather, of course. Spring was warm, but also wet and windy. We had a blazing July, then a wet August. That brought the plums on wonderfully. It looks as though we may get our first worthwhile crop of quinces this year. If nature remains kind, there’ll be quince paste to put on the Christmas table.
And the chickens have resumed laying after a pause in August. Our glass is pretty much full measure!
John Norman's Blog 