Gardening with Children

The purpose of this blog entry is to link to a piece I wrote for Gaijin Mama, Suzanne Kamata’s blog (Suzanne is editor of Call Me Okaasan). It’s a “day in the life”, a series Suzanne did featuring contributors to the anthology. I meant to post the link when it came out in May but I was busy and distracted and time passed.

I post it today because it mentions my gardening efforts with the children at B’s nursery – we planted carrots when I wrote that piece, they all died. Only two out of nine sweet pea plants survived transplanting. The slugs ate all the lettuce. Gardening with toddlers, I wrote, is a balance between the children enjoying the experience and successful growing. They have to participate therefore the planting won’t be perfect. They might eat blue slug pellets therefore you can’t use them (and the organic child friendly ones don’t work!) They love to water so some plants are swamped – or poisoned by the bubbles in the water-play water they all enthusiastically used one day!

Today, at last, was different. I decided it was time to harvest the potatoes (the second batch we planted because the first lot rotted!) The children loved groping around in the soil and were so excited to pull out potatoes and carry the basket of our harvest proudly into nursery. I’m glad to be passing on my burgeoning love of gardening. I find it therapeutic and satisfying (when things grow). I’ve found that being interested in the garden helps me accept different weather and enjoy all seasons – I’m now pleased when it rains! Right now it’s boom time; raspberries, broad beans, sweet peas, courgettes, gooseberries, all picked with Baby J grizzling at my feet because she’s yet to appreciate their appeal.

Elderflower Cordial

This is one of my favourite times of year: the smells and associations of summer; enjoying the first hot days or the anticipation of those to come (not that they’ve materialised over the last two years); the rumble of a hay-making tractor; looking forward to Wimbledon. I love seeing the bright green of a grass tennis court on the television screen and hearing the comforting crack of balls being hit. When I lived abroad it was a sound which made me homesick for an English summer. With Wimbledon comes harvest; I usually harvest our soft fruit listening to the Women’s Final. This week I’ve made my Elderflower Cordial.

I think I enjoy making Elderflower Cordial more for the smell while making it than actually drinking it. Without trying to sound too like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I enjoy the rawness of such a fantastic ingredient from nature. There’s no boiling or cooking, you just shake the heads to get out most of the insects (you do strain it later) then plunge them into sugar syrup. This retains the delicate sweetness which I love in elderflowers, their soft yellow pollen dust which gets everywhere when you pick them. For the twenty-four hours the cordial is infusing, the smell pervades the house, a fantastic scent of flowers and lemon.

It’s a great product of the hedgerows, which are looking fantastic at the moment - sadly I’ve been studying them closely recently, out looking for our lost cat. There are buttercups, honeysuckle, red and white campion, tall pink foxgloves, sprays of cow parsley, balls of purple clover, drooping heads of oats, thick moon daisies, tall wavy soft grass heads, hay fever for my three-year old.

There is always something to remember about making the cordial. The first year I tried to make it I realised it was not as easy at seems - I couldn’t find any citric acid anywhere as all the old dears in the district had bought it all. Now I’ve turned into a country bumpkin myself I’m one of those irritating people who buys their citric acid in May so I can smugly have full supplies when the elderflowers come out.

This year my one-year old daughter came to pick the flowers with me in her buggy, grinning while I ducked into the tree for the best heads. When shaking them over the sink a little maggot like grub dropped out, that was a bit too much nature, even for me.

My cordial is successfully made for this year and T (the five-year old) has developed a taste for it. My husband has caught the elderflower enthusiasm – he’s currently brewing some elderflower champagne. I’m expecting to be woken in the night by the shed exploding.

The very simple elderflower cordial recipe I use is by Sophie Grigson and can be found at:
http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/516164

Cider making in the West Country

Recently, with the world as we know it apparently crashing around our ears, I said to my husband "I think everyone just needs to calm down and concentrate on the basics". "There's the voice of the housewife," he replied.

I don't really understand any of the complex economics but I do think that we have lived too fast; we've wanted everything quickly, cheap and now and it's not sustainable, economically or environmentally. I wonder if my world will become fashionable, a simple life where a blackberry is free and grows in the hedgerow where you can pick it and, with a bit of work, turn it into jam.

Here in the West Country it is The Goode Life. We try to grow as many of our own vegetables as we can, hard work but very satisfying. Last weekend we took it to the next level by trying to make cider.

Cider making is a tradition within my local group of friends. When we were younger and without children, the boys created "Ole Lug", a brew so strong I drank one cup and thought I'd become paralysed - I'd passed out and they'd rolled me up in a duvet to keep me warm so that when I woke up I couldn't move any limbs.

Having not made any for a while we set out to re-kindle the tradition, a challenge as most of the helpers were under five. We started by crushing the apples, pounding them in a bucket with an old fence post. This felt very rustic, but therapeutic, I thought I should be wearing a home-spun gown and be ready to churn butter next.

The apple pieces were wrapped in cloth and put in a press which one of my friends had made for his A'level CDT project. We pressed down and brown liquid ran into the plastic drum. It was very satisfying.

Sadly, I had to leave to feed the children and put the soup on for lunch. There was talk about the sterility of the apple juice but one of the boys had got bored of pummeling apples with a log and was stamping on them with his wellies so we decided the concern was misplaced.

Gallons of apple juice are now bubbling away in an outhouse. Goodness knows what it will taste like - the last stuff we drank tasted like sherry and was best suited to unblocking drains. But in a way I don't care. We've made an effort to use our produce and had lots of fun doing it. And if the financial situation gets any worse, at least we'll be able to afford to drown our sorrows.