Apples

Wyld Life

news from monkton wyld court

autumn 2010

We've been blessed with abundance these past months: long, hot days of sunshine followed (finally) by buckets of rain; a surge of volunteers surpassing keen; families, friends and other guests stopping in with compliments; a full calendar of courses, events and workshops; lovely cows making lots of milk (and a calf!)... And of course the bounty of the garden, at much-touted 100% cultivation, providing an ever-changing array of multicoloured delights and challenges for the cooking and preserving teams. (And also for residents: "The problem with Monkton," one reportedly holds, "is all the vegetables are the wrong colour: yellow cucumbers, pink tomatoes, purple sweetcorn..." But that's just the way he talks. He loves it really. Surely.) It's been a summer to remember, that's certain, and to learn from. So we send out our thanks again to all who've been a part of it. Especial love and thanks to Hannah for keeping everybody well fed and for having a smile and a hug to share even when it hardly seemed possible. We hope the wide world offers all you ever wanted from it (or something even better), and we hope to be seeing you and hearing all about it again soon.

This summer we welcome Gill Barron, and welcome you to check out her work)! (That's Gill's on our Open Day flyer below as well, kindly permitted by Simon, who holds the copyright as it's a postcard for The Land magazine, itself now based at Monkton. But I digress.) Gill's doorway frame's a fresh contender for the Best View at Monkton title, and her outlook's an inspiration to us all.

And it's not over yet! Charlotte and Nieevie have joined us from Tinker's Bubble (and we can't believe our luck), Kindy's growing up fast, and there's a grand new vision developing for the orchard across the road. Oh, and everyone who's ever asked what it's like for us here in the wondrous winter months: read on for your pick of opportunities to find out!

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vegan marshmallow

Upcoming Courses

Phone us or email to book!

Biodynamic Gardening

with Marina O'Connell of the Apricot Centre
8-10 October
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Stress Reduction through Mindfulness

with Sue Howse
8-10 October
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Sacred Drumming

with Doug Blacksmith
15 - 17 October
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How to Have a Low-Impact Smallholding

with Simon Fairlie, Jyoti Fernandes & Rebecca Laughton
15 - 18 October
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Hedgelaying Weekend

with Jean Pierre Le Bretton
12 - 14 November
§

Firebird Trance Dance

with Leo Rutherford
26 - 28 November
§

Latest listings always available on our website!

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Old Kitchen Diary

Autumn Open Day Menu at the One Day Cafe*

We show off our wide range of organic garden-fresh veg this Saturday with a One-Day salad bar. Choose three (go on, try) from the following to enjoy with fresh bread or jacket potato:

§ Mediterranean salad with roasted summer veg and halloumi-style cheese
§ Purple sweetcorn salsa fresca
§ Bella cheese cubes with olives
§ Root veg coleslaw with yoghurt dressing
§ Discovery apple salad with beetroot, pear, celery, salad and nuts
§ Green garden salad
§ Slow-dried tomato Hummus
§ Bean stew with spinach and chard

Or perhaps you'd prefer tea and a choice of seven cakes? Or scones with cream and five fruit spreads to sample? You might want to think about it on the way!

*subject to minor changes in content but never in quality or abundance of choice

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Events Report

In the months to come Monkton offers a lively mix of activity, entertainment and relaxation. Which ones make the right balance for you?

Dinner & Music : FOLKADELICA

October 30th
A sort of of acoustic folky fusion drawing on British and other European folk music, with an African strand featuring previous members of the MWC community. Including three course dinner and hot drinks.

Holiday Willow Weaving

with Norah Kennedy
November 13th

Winter Work Week

December 17th - 22nd
Join us in turning inwards this festive season: sanding the floor, painting the walls and just generally showing the old house some loving kindness (and making a party of it).

Christmas at the Court

December 23rd - 27th
It'll take more than a few of us to eat through Catherine's Christmas baking! Bring your celebration here on this special seasonal package holiday with all the fixings (all prepared for you).

Winter Gathering

with Mary Elliott
December 28th - January 3rd
Bring and share activities, circle time, yoga, therapies, walks, family games, inside and outside fires, handicrafts. Share in karma yoga, cooking and taking care of group areas.

Family Work Week

February 20th - 25th
Bernard Graves of Pyrites joins us for cob oven building and other family activities and crafts chosen to help us share skills, benefit Monkton and keep cozy together.

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and now, an exciting new feature:

Ask Nieevie

Q: Nieevie, what's your favourite thing at Monkton?

A: The little school.

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Gardener's Grove

by Rachael Moss

The days are drawing in, blossoms are beginning to fade, the harvest is in all full swing, and a fresh wind soothes its way through the trees that have, as yet, not lost their leafy cladding, bringing the first stirrings of autumn with it. The swallows will soon be gone on their long journey to warmer climates, but for now they still swoop and glide, their chirpy chattering bringing joy to us humans but minor irritation to the troublesome-looking magpies dive-bombed by these graceful birds.

The blackbirds have also been looking a bit troublesome of late. They have taken a fancy to the tomatoes that colourfully hang juicy and luscious in the polytunnel. They dash about pecking the tasty fleshy fruit, sometimes daring to scurry close to take a beakfull.

The tomatoes, rather sadly, have become infected with tomato blight, tomato leaf mould and a secondary infection of grey mould. It is upsetting to see. Until very recently the tomato plants were bursting with life and full of vitality, with cucumber and melon plants glowing green climbing behind and above, the whole tunnel looking healthy and full of promise. Now it is full of withered yellow and brown leaves, becoming more and more withered and brown by the hour. It is difficult to treat blight organically. A preventive spray of dried equisetum (horsetail) or nettle tea may help.

Unfortunately our potaotes have also suffered from blight and did not provide much of a crop this year.

Fortunately we have not had a problem with slugs or snails this season, perhaps because the cold winter reduced their populations and they became discouraged by the dry weather following. Cabbage white butterflies have been a nuisance though, their squirming yellow and black offspring providing us with the unsavoury job of picking then off, despite our efforts at companion planting. We have inter-planted celery and celeriac with our brassica plants this season because these aid in deterring pests – perhaps masking the scent of the brassicas. Tagetes marigolds, Calendula pot marigolds and hyssop have also been planted nearby for this reason. I would suppose that the proportion of these companion plants to the crop would need to be very high for this to be effective. I am pleased to see, though, that so far our combination of onions and carrots seems to have worked against carrot root fly, and mats around the base of the brassica plants has been effective against the cabbage root flies that lay their eggs there.

We were one step ahead of the destructive teeth and claws of badgers this year with the construction of a fence before the sweet corn set fruit.

We have been blessed with the ample presence of predators that prey on pests, so we have much to be thankful for. There has been a vast number of hoverflies; these beautiful insects graceful in thieir flight, attracted to the spashes of flowers, and also a wonderful amount of ladybirds, clothed in all their varying number of spots. The curious-looking offspring have been metaphorphozing all over the garden pupating on leaves and stems to emerge as these bright glossy red and black beetles. Both larvae and adults feed on aphids but it is the larvae that have the most ferocious appetites.

wyld abundance

Happily, despite the very dry period during May, June and July, most of our crops have been doing very well. Some of our beetroots are huge glossy dark red globes; the kohlrabi looking even more martian-like in its largeness; the squashes giant- size and magnificent; the runner beans ravishing; the swedes bursting in their voluptuousness; the hamburg parsley so tender I cannot think of a more scrumptious root vegetable; the salsify so beautiful with its purple flowers we forgot to harvest its roots this year; the martian sweetcorn stunning in its purple-coloured hue, and all vegetables providing bountiful harvests and looking and tasting delicious.

The garden has proved be very productive this year, allowing us to gorge ourselves silly on organic fruit and vegetables. We also have a very small local vegetable box scheme feeding a select few of our friends and neighbours.

With much work undertaken in the cellar and shelving constructed, we now have a wonderful storage place for our squashes, beetroots and apples. The carrots and swedes we hope to make clamps for to store outside in the garden.

We have fed the walled garden with a generous amount of local horse manure, and this has, along with our compost and nettle and comfrey tea, provided the garden with all the minerals and nutrients that it requires to grow healthy plants.

The garden is now 100% in cultivation with another vegetable bed having been created where before there was unproductive “lawn”. Leeks are adorning this bed, and are also growing in another three to provide us with comforting leek soup throughout the cold winter months. (Our leeks have fared very well after their ordeal of having been trampled upon and munched on by two of our resident cows one night whilst still in their nursery bed, young leeks being a bit of a delicacy.)

Medicinal herbs – gromwell, chamomile, milk thistle, Echinacea, ashwagandha, wood betony, black cohosh, Japanese eupatorium, golden rod, white horehound, motherwort, gotu kola, and others, have been added to the collection of useful plants in the gardens of Monkton Wyld Court and we hope to expand further on this, to grow yet more unusual (and well known) edible and useful plants.

Other plants have been successfully sprinkling themselves around the walled garden. The naughty thorn apple, Datura, has been happily germinating and growing into glades of spikiness. These plants are quite poisonous – and this may well be why they chose to grow specifically amongst our rows of oriential salad leaves! Fortunately they do not disquise themselves too well amongst these. We have also had many tobacco plants magically appearing, germinating amongst our newly pricked out seedlings. These are larger than the usual varieties, growing to over a metre in height, and we have no idea how they managed to introduce themselves, but we are glad they did.

An area of land below the garden has been cultivated and planted up with potatoes, along with a green manure crop of clover and trefoil which, with the aid of certain bacteria that live in their roots, help to fix the atmospheric nitrogen, transforming it into a form that plants can take up. This improves the soil ready for the next crop. Another area of land next to this is also in the process of being cultivated, the docks that have dominated gradually having their deep strong roots unearthed.

The apple trees are bearing a generous heavy crop this year, branches straining under the weight. Many of these apples will be stored in our cellar, others juiced, and some hopefully made into glorious apple pies and crumbles.

Our grapevine that gracefully stretches itself across the roof of the greenhouse has been providing us with the sweetest and most wonderful tasting grapes that many of us have ever tasted.

Seed saving is in full swing. We have been selecting many plants for their vigour, size, shape or colour, to save their seeds for the net generations. Processing some of these seeds – de-husking and de-chaffing, has been the joyful work of patient volunteers during rainy days. For me it is a wonderful thought that each of these seeds contains all the potential for an entire new plant that will itself set seed and bring forth future generations.

As a gardener, during the long and hot summer months, I long for this time of year, with the touch of its crisp wind and freshness, the darkening days drawing in the mysteries of the night, the promise of the deep rich earthiness after leaf fall. It also means, of course, that I can begin to wind down with a shorter day length – a bottle of real ale at sunset whilst sorting through seeds that contain all the potential of the future provides a way of relaxing after a day’s work as the seemingly eternal busy summer days wind down.

***

Permachicks explore the herb spiral

News from the Chicken House

We are pleased to report that one of our hens started to behave in a very broody manner during the summer and even began to brood a pot egg! Before long she had a clutch of real eggs and brooding began in earnest! Unfortunately despite hers and our best efforts the eggs did not hatch successfully. Being left with no eggs did not deter our broody and within 24 hours she was starting to sit on a new clutch. This time we put her into her own special ‘broody’ house and left her in peace except to feed and water each day. Three weeks later we heard a cheeping coming from outside the broody house and were thrilled to find mum with her newly hatched chicks - 2 lovely little balls of fluff – one yellow and one black. The proud mum was as pleased as a mother hen can be and very protective. She was also extremely relieved to be able to leave the nest. As soon as she could she treated herself to a very well earned dust bath. Five weeks on and the family are doing very well – they still sleep in the broody house but free range with the rest of the chickens each afternoon.

and finally, Floyd.

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