Preserving Is A Family Affair

As our children have got older we've had to start putting more food away to last us longer. 

Luckily they all love helping and the last few weeks there's been quite a few times with  us all sat round a table prepping a harvest to preserve it. 

Big Tomato

Nothing to see here, just a 800g tomato! 

 This is the biggest one I've grown (I normally don't bother with beefsteak ones) and just half of it filled our sandwiches for lunch! 

 Tasted amazing as well. 

What's the biggest you ever grew? 

Dried Tomatoes

 I was picking tomatoes with my eldest the other day. We picked a huge basket full and I was wondering what we were going to do with them.

She suggested that we dry them and then wouldn't take no as an answer.

Polytunnel Mistakes

 The polytunnel has been a place of absolute abundance for us this summer - but it's not been a place I'd be keen to show people round! It is full to bursting and a complete jungle, next year I'm already planning to do things a little differently in there! 

I did a short video showing you round and also showing you where I went wrong. 

Let me know what you think and please subscribe to my YouTube channel if you don't already! 

For some reason you need to view this in full screen rather than on the mobile app to watch the video. 

Recycled Shelves For Canning

Because I've been doing some canning I decided I needed a few more shelves for our produce and had just the space left in the pantry for some. Not huge but enough to really increase the storage a little bit and keep it organised. 

Luckily when I had just the right wood in mind for this project. 

This wood has had a few lives already - many years ago - when I lived on the family farm and worked in site management (briefly) I was working on a site where two carpenters had come up with a problem. They were cladding a communal stairwell and had worked out they were massively short of timber - the manager ordered a load more  and pretty much none of it was needed (they were rubbish carpenters).