My not so secret, secret addiction. (updated)

My name is Monika and I am a Rayburn-a-holic.

It started when we were in the process of talking ourselves into buying a permanent home in rural France as opposed to a fixer-upper to use in our summer holidays, in amongst all the mental bargaining and deal making we had decided on wood fired heating incorporating a stove and a means of meeting our hot water requirements.  The perfect solution was a Rayburn (ours is a no.3 built in 1953), with an integral back boiler, multi fuel so coal as well as wood, and a kitchen classic from the 1950s, right in keeping with a stone rustic farmhouse from the 1850s.

We bought the carcass of a Rayburn from ebay for 99p.  I still remember clearly the guy's face when we turned up with the Land Rover and trailer and he asked us how we thought we were going to lift three quarters of a tonne of cast iron onto a trailer and we replied that we were going to dismantle the Rayburn first!

The Rayburn we bought had excellent enamelling however it was pretty rotten on the sides and back, but the back boiler was in good order and it had all of its door handles, hinges, plate rack and stove tops.

So started the restoration.

We had the good fortune to be living about 50 miles from the home of Aga and Rayburn (a Rayburn being the solid fuel incarnation of the more well known Aga), so finding replacement firebricks was a doddle, then the rotten sides and back were replaced by shiny stainless steel, the gaps filled with Rockwool, a few screws and some fire cement and my beautiful stove was reborn.

This is the point at which some photos are called for but the battery is on charge again.

My beautiful Rayburn now runs two bedroom radiators, provides our winter hot water, kitchen heating and I do the majority of my cooking in it.

So why am I telling you all this? -  because I was going to light it today to get started on my beetroot pickles and marrow jams, and then went and got all distracted tidying up my greenhouse instead - it was a bit Day of the Triffids in there.

 Having cut back all the tomatoes, weeded and harvested those lovely little cherry tomatoes ready for cooking I then came back inside and tackled all those housework things that Brendan had been blind to whilst I was away, hence the stairs got swept, dusting got done, floors got mopped and bathroom had a proper clean round.

If this wet weather that I have bought back from the UK persists I may light the Rayburn tomorrow and start pickling then.



So - updated - Saturday afternoon while I was busy hacking away in the greeenhouse it started to persist it down, coupled with Brendan declaring all the plums being ripe, I decided to light the Rayburn and get on with the first lot of autumn harvests - feels a little odd to be doing this in August but hey ho - funny old weather.

We picked a row of beetroots and set them to boiling for the pickled beetroots.  I always scrub mine very clean before boiling because I preserve the water afterwards to make Barszcz for Christmas.  This beetroot soup is a good old fashioned Polish addition to our menu.

To preserve the juice, once I had claimed all the beets out of the water, I simply poured it into a freezer bag held upright in a measuring jug and put it in the freezer, then I can remove the jug and just have a solid block of purple-y beetroot stock ready for use.

 With 7 jars of beetroots pickled, I also managed to bottle up 9 jars of plum and elderberry jam, delicious.

This is only the second year that our plum tree has fruited, they are small dark purple plums but so juicy and tasty.  I have no idea what variety they are as the tree was already here in the garden when we arrived, and even our neighbour does not know what sort it is - although he has told me on several occasions that the tree won't fruit.

It overlooks the chicken pound and as they get ripe and fall the chickens fight over them.  They wolf them down to the point that they end up with discoloured poops everywhere - today all the poops are a virulent shade of red due to them eating beetroot peelings and drinking the last of the beetroot water, then scoffing elderberries and plum skins.

We also had a go at pickling some of our quail eggs - but in red wine vinegar to stain them pink - no I don't know why it just seemed a good idea at the time.

And of course in the background you can see some plum syrup heavily doused with vodka ready for autumnal cocktails!

Lunar planting - root veg

Following from the fruit planting weekend, the moon now moves into Virgo, an earth sign, so a perfect time for planting rooted, earthy veg.

Once back from work and after a quick lunch, I set to with my trusty trowel and a bunch of seeds.

I do not believe in planting root veg for transplanting, the roots are so delicate that unless you spend hours and hours making paper seed pots or cutting and stuffing toilet rolls which you can put straight into the ground, you risk damaging the roots and stopping plant growth.

I wait until the soil temperature has gone up to about 10 to 12 degrees, then plant straight outside when the risk of heavy frosts is over.

Today I planted parsnips - taken from seed from last years crop, carrots - an organic strain called Jeanette, beetroots, kohl rabi and onions from seed. I normally plant my onion sets a bit later, but this year having had a few onions bolt and go to seed last autumn, I thought I would try sowing some of these seeds to see how they do.

I companion sow my carrots and parsnips with my onions to help protect against carrot fly, sometimes sowing in the same row, or, as this year, alternate rows of leek, parsnip, white onion, carrots, and red onions.

I tend to sow my carrots much denser than advised, as I like to harvest baby carrots rather than thin out and waste any plants. A pinch of about 3 to 4 seeds every 10 cms gives good growth and a chance to harvest the baby carrots when they are about 10 cm in length, leaving just one carrot behind in each clump to grow on. To preserve I harvest, wash the dirt off, cut into julienne strips or rings and freeze in large bags as fast as possible to preserve their goodness, normally doing 3 large carrier bag fulls this way will see us through until the first baby carrots are ready to eat in the summer.

I sow my beetroots in a similar fashion, smoothing the earth in the row flat with the back of the rack, I then use the stave to create little depressions in the ground about 15 cms apart. Into each depression I drop about 3 to 4 seeds, water in and then lightly cover. When they start to grow, I harvest the beets when they are about golf ball size, again leaving behind just one beetroot to grow on. The baby beets are lovely roasted whole with garlic or pickled. The larger beets will be made into chutneys.

When I boil up my larger beetroots to make chutney, I wash them thoroughly then boil them whole leaving the skins on for about 45 minutes to an hour so that they soften up and the skin peels away very easily. This red beetroot water is never wasted, once drained I keep some for dying wools and cottons, and the rest I freeze into plastic pop bottles so that I have a ready supply of beetroot base for making barszcz in the winter.

With my root veg from seed sown today, that just leaves some potatoes to go in, some onion sets to get, and lots of patience waiting for the coldframe seeds to sprout and grown on ready for transplanting. April is nearly over and the garden is nearly done.