Quinta das Abelhas

Its that time of year again - harvesting, preserving and storing of our summer crops for winter use - and we have just gotten hold of a copy of the new River Cottage Handbook, Preserves.

Although I havent actually followed any of the recipes yet, reading through the book has made me want to recommend it. Its got some very interesting ideas, including nasturtium capers (damn, we let our nasturtium dry out and die a short while ago!)

Definitely a useful addition to our kitchen bookshelf, and I know I will be thumbing through its pages, and making most of the preserves listed there at some point.

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This years unusual weather has meant that our tomatoes are very late giving us ripe tomatoes. Although the late cold weather wiped out 3 different plantings, we still have quite a few tomato plants in fruit now, and lots more coming on.

Most of the developed plants are ones that we bought from market in Tabua, thank goodness for markets, or we wouldnt have many tomatoes at all, despite my investment in seeds from the likes of tomatofest.

We are only a week into august, and the nights are getting chilly, with a definite hint of autumn in the air. I really hope we get enough sunshine to ripen some of these tomatoes, sundry some, and bottle plenty for our winter stores. We have plenty of green beans, peppers, and courgettes in the freezer, but we usually manage to bottle up lots of ratatouille, plum tomatoes and basil, and tomato passata type stuff, which makes cooking in winter often a very easy practise.

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We are awash with beans. Small bushes, big bushes, climbing beans, trail of tears, lazy housewife, metre long beans, yellow ones, purple ones, green ones, spotted ones. Almost every meal has a load of sliced green beans (or purple or yellow) in it, and quite a lot are going into the freezer for the winter.

Next month I will stop picking them, and let them grow to full size & dry out. Then we’ll store them for winter, and stop buying those jars of precooked beans (so convenient, and we get the jars for storing stuff). It will certainly be reassuring to have lots of dried beans stored away, which when mixed with some grain, rice or seeds makes a full protein source.

Heres a photo I took that conveys the ‘jungle’ that is my garden. I love it, and wouldn’t be as happy in a garden full of straight beds, orderly crops etc. Watering, weeding and harvesting involves clambering through the undergrowth, barefoot. The closest thing to a hunter gathering lifestyle?

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Aren’t pumpkins, squashes and courgettes amazing. They come in so many different shapes and sizes.
Here are a few that we are growing this year.
Patty-pans:

An ugly looking thing.

Neck squash.

Guatamalan Blue pumpkins.

Some kind of rocket squash.

Heirloom pumpkin.

And a stripey one.

And of course, we have tons of butternut squashes growing, and some other varieties of pumpkins and squashes that I didnt take photos of. Plus quite a few different heirloom courgettes (and a few normal black courgettes, planted late because i didnt think we had many courgettes!)

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We never seem to do very well with cucumbers. Normally only a few plants survive the spring and the heat of early summer, and only one or two plants go on to develop very well. But we do normally get quite a few cucumbers from those few plants.

This year we only have one very good plant, a few that may get some fruit late in the year, and half a dozen strugglers. The best plant, in Sophies garden, is buried in beans and seems to like the shade. Its produced one cucumber so far, but plenty of tiny ones on the plant.

There are also some very well developed aubergine plants in Sophie’s garden, plus quite a few strugglers in mine. The first aubergine is growing. The need the heat to do very well, and this year has been cooler than normal.

We’ve been eating trail of tear beans for some time now, and also have a few bags of chopped up beans in the freezer. All the books say to blanch veg before freezing, but we never do, and they seem fine. Anything that cuts down on work is good. Heres a pic of some of the beans. They are very prolific and even the dried beans taste fantastic.

The rhubarb we brought back from the UK seems very happy, under a tree in Sophie’s garden. We recently we offered Rui Barbo at Vale dos Amores Restaurant. ‘What’s that?’ we asked. ‘Its a vegetable’ was the reply. We scratched our heads, and ordered to see what it was. Rui Barbo, someone’s name? Their special dish? N0. It’s rhubarb! Duh!

We love rhubarb crumble!

In amongst our courgettes and pumpkins, there are a few rather strange plants. They are the shape of a courgette plant, but the fruit looks more like a gourd or squash. I bought so many different things in the spring and so much that i planted got cut down by late frosts, that I simply dont know what this is. I dont want to cut them as courgettes, and they dont cook all that well. So I will wait and see what happens to them over time. If the plants stop producing I will cut them to encourage more.

Our seeding wild leeks and leeks and onions are being visited by these big scary looking bees. I’ve not seen them before, but we have loads of them buzzing around the allium flowers. They are about an inch long. I wonder if they have stings (but dont really want to find out).

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