Sunday 2 November 2014

The problem initiated with a visit to a National Trust property last year and concluded with the death of a food processor!

Our food processor broke down this week. It hadn't been very happy for several weeks and I knew something was afoot as it whinged and moaned more and more through the month, but I never thought that it would actually down tools!

The problem initiated with a visit to a National Trust property last year where shortly after Halloween I bought a super-sized pumpkin for just £1. This extortionate cost was funded by the sale of my own smaller pumpkins leading up to Halloween.

Well now, I kept the seeds from that pumpkins big belly, cleaned them, stored them and generally mollycoddled them for many months until it was time to sow them into little pots to germinate in my greenhouse. Eventually they were big enough to go out and do their thing in my allotment, which they did with some gusto I might add.

By late September the unbelievably prolonged warm summer had filled the pumpkin patch with all
sizes of bright orange balloons.
 I stood there looking at the answer to the meaning of life itself. There were 42 of them. The largest of which were 22lb and I had several of those. This was better than I had hoped for but there was a problem as I wished to sell these for Halloween which was still 30 days away and they would certainly not last in this warm weather.

It was a hard call but I opted to harvest the lot (except 2 green ones that were living on the pile of cow manure) and I once more called on the help of my little green truck to transport them home.
My truck is called Claire Rebecca. This is because it has a green livery just like the Eddie Stobart lorries and whose trucks all have female names painted on them. For years & years on holidays across Britain my daughter has been trying to see her name emblazoned on one of them. God knows what we would have had to do if she saw one heading north on the M6 but we'd probably ended up in some dodgy industrial estate in the backwaters of Crewe taking her photo next to it.
So to overcome this I have now named my mini Eddie Stobart truck 'Claire Rebecca' and that should put an end to her quest.

So I filled Claire Rebecca to the brim then returned a second time and filled her again until my crop was all safely in. I walked along the street with my imaginary peacock tail feathers high in full display mode with my little truck full in tow. Sadly the imaginary peacock feather display drooped somewhat as a massive tractor trundled past me with his trailer bubbling over with it's 4 tons of sugar beet. I felt a little inadequate.


Still when I got home I sorted them into two types, 'Really ripe' and 'Just ripe', placing the really ripe in to the coolness of my wood store / tool shed / pumpkin climate controlled storage facility.


























 The just ripe ones were placed outside but under cover to keep them dry.


Now all I could do was wait....
















Two weeks later.......


Having kept an eye on them I decided that most of them were fit to sell and I placed them on my front yard wall, all priced up, to see what I could sell.

After a slow start word got around and cars pulled up and people started buying them and before long I had sold out of all the small ones then the medium size ones and so it kept going.

I kept a few for the children in the family that had booked the cottage leading up to Halloween for which they were very grateful. We even lent them the carving kit and gave them the candles etc.

Naturally being the big kid that I am I kept two for me to carve too.










I put aside any that started to show signs of going soft and made soup out of those. This was my main reason for growing the pumpkins as I love pumpkin soup. As well as the Pumpkin crop my Tomatoes were going berserk in production too and in the last week of October (just days from November) I had picked over 20lbs of the things. I cannot remember such a mild Autumn. I am writing this on the 2nd of November and I have Sweet Peas and Dahlias still prolifically flowering in the garden. I have just picked 6 ounces of autumn raspberries and we had tea in the back garden in short sleeves. Global warming gone mad!

So it is my assertion that as a result of a visit to a National Trust property a year ago and the volume of pumpkin soup thereby created which my poor food processor had to liquidise, that caused it to finally give up the go. I may sue the National Trust.


The irony is that my intention was to use the £54 that I raised selling the pumpkins to self fund next years allotment seeds etc but the new Food Processor cost £109 and so instead of getting £54 I've ended down by £55!                    How is that bloody fair?!!!




Still we have had a great October and here are some photographs to illustrate how summer like it has been.....

Turnips in flower in front of Melton Constable estate church

Brinton in a warm 20 degrees C

Cley Church, not a cloud in the sky.

25th October and families crabbing at Blakeney in their tee shirts.

Blakeney........     lovely. Who wouldn't want to live here?

My prize winning Sweet corn, well they would be if we had a village produce show!!

Our latest find, Holme Beach miles & miles of unspoilt beach and not a sun lounger in sight!

My favourite 'Arty' photo of October. (I might actually print this one).

Wells-Next-The-Sea Beach huts.

Again one of my 'prize' Onions.





"And finally" as Trevor McDoughnut used to say.......

We had a visitor earlier in the month. Alison was the first to notice something strange going on in the garden whilst we were cooking the guests breakfasts. It was a Sparrow Hawk who had snatched one of our regular Collard Doves and was devouring it right in front of us. It was a Sparrow Hawk that I saw snatch away one of the fairly rare Spotted Flycatchers that were breeding in our vine two years ago and it may well be another that my children saw catch and kill a Blackbird. I know one thing for sure.... in case it thinks my grey hair is a Pigeon, I'm wearing a hard hat when I'm in the back garden next.

















Happy Halloween........


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