Seedy Penpals August 2012

Autumn, Permaculture, Seasons, Seedy Penpals, Summer 5 Responses »

Aug 312012

Seedy Penpals is go

Our inaugural Seedy Penpals exchange appears to have been a great success. We had over 40 people join in and I’ve seen some truly great Seedy Packets. What’s more new friendships have been forged and a new online community is born. Very many thanks to all of you who contributed, helped and joined in.

There have been a few glitches and Mel & I are learning from the things that didn’t go quite right. I think the most difficulties arose from Penpals not communicating with each other, or from misinterpretations of communications. From my point of view, the best exchanges occured where Penpals emailed/tweeted well & often to keep each other up to date and clarify things. Hardly surprising from a ‘Penpals’ scheme you’d think…

So well done everybody, we’ll link to your blogs below and then link up monthly progress reports with forthcoming Seedy Cuttings.

My Seedy Packet

At the top of this post is a picture of my brilliant and thoughtful Seedy Packet from Lucy at Offally Good (worth a visit).

Lucy’s choice was prescient for a number of reasons.

Bee things

Lucy sent me some Bee things: some seeds for a bee friendly garden, a booklet from Neal’s Yard about the Save the Bee campaign and a test pot of gorgeous Neal’s Yard honey hand cream. Now this is prescient because we’re developing a 250 square metre part of our land to host some bees in Top Bar Hives. I’ll blog more about this in the coming weeks. What’s more, we’d made some of our own Calendula Salve. The little honey hand cream has inspired us to have a go at making our own and some honey lip balm too. More of this later…

Healing Marigolds

It’ll be (no puns here – Ed) obvious then, that the marigold seeds from Lucy’s own garden would be very welcome. We’ll grow these next year and make some more balm from them: OffallyGood Balm anyone?

Mum’s seeds to cherish

We certainly think that the seeds saved from penpals gardens are the most touching to receive. It’s like getting a piece of someone’s life that they cherish & want others to share. So it was really touching for Lucy to have included some seeds from Lucy’s Mum’s garden in Lincolnshire. There are seeds for melon, squash & runner beans. We will look after them like our own and hopefully have seeds to pass on to others next year.

Kohlrabi

Lucy said that she’d not had a lot of luck growing kohlrabi even though she really likes it. Well we love it too: raw, cooked or fermented. And we’ve had success with purple varieties in the past, so some white kohlrabi will go down very well here.

Nasturtiums

Another great choice. We love them for their colour, the way they attract bees & other pollinating insects and because they are super edible. The flowers, leaves & seeds are all lovely & peppery. I’ve just made some nasturtium ‘capers’ too. So these new ones to us will give us some welcome variety and colour.

All-in-all it’s obvious we’re delighted with our Seedy Packet. Our heartfelt thanks to Lucy. I’ll keep you up to date with progress through Seedy Cuttings.

You can add a link to your Seedy Penpals blog posts using the form below. The form will be live from the 31st August 2012.

Foodie Penpals – July 2012

Foodie Penpals, Summer 5 Responses »

Jul 312012

This is my first Foodie Penpal reveal. I joined the scheme after some of my twitter followers had started. It’s a lovely idea to allow people to spread foodie delights around to new friends and contacts.

This month, Anna from Nottinghamshire sent me a parcel and I sent one to Caitlin in Cornwall.

Anna was a good find for me as she is also a forager who makes the best of the free ingredients around her. In her note to me she said:

We love foraging and, with my assistants’ help, I make a lot of jams & preserves.

So the two jars you can see are of dandelion marmalade and blackberry & apple jelly. I am delighted with both and especially the dandelion marmalade. I had seen a number of people on Twitter had made it this year and never got round to make it myself. It’s a rich, fruity conserve, with marmalade bite and smooth sweetness. It went really well on some fresh wholemeal & spelt bread I made.

The blackberry & apple has a lovely hedgerow flavour and colour with a delightful soft set. We’ve yet to try the Stilton cheese. I’ve just made some digestive biscuits which will go really well with it. We’re looking forward to that very much.

We were also fortunate that Anna loves smoked fish & charcuterie. Anna also has a smokehouse local to her. So we received some gorgeous locally made preserved goods.

The fennel sausage smells as good as it looks and was to die for in flavour. A treat indeed.

Also, Anna sent us some gorgeous smoked salmon pâté. I’m afraid it didn’t last for my collected picture of the parcel goodies, as we ate it. It was only once we were tucking in that I remembered to photograph it. So apologies for the dodgy iPhone picture of my plate.

All-in-all, I’m very glad I signed up for Foodie Penpals. I had a lot of fun putting together the parcel for my penpal. The goodies I received from Anna were a delight and gave me some tastes that I would not have otherwise had.

I recommend the scheme if you love food and would like to try new things. If you do, click the badge below to find out more…

Llŷn Peninsula – cloud waves

Permaculture, Photos, Seasons, Summer 6 Responses »

Jul 242012

We had a very nice cloud formation this morning. Air currents had formed these pretty waves in the lower cloud. Here seen above Mynydd Rhiw looking south-west from where we live.

And here looking south in the direction of Abersoch.

And this slightly further west.

It’s a dull day light-wise but we have some good weather. One of the benefits for us to live on the side of a mountain is that we get a lot of sky to look at. Bendigedig!

Seedy Penpals

Autumn, Permaculture, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Winter 23 Responses »

Jul 012012

Yesterday, Mel at Edible Things tweeted a link to a great idea for food bloggers and blog readers to get to know each other, by sending a lovely parcel in the mail every month. I re-tweeted the link to the US & UK schemes and soon got into a chat with Mel and Karen at Samphire Shop. Karen suggested that we should set up a similar scheme for seeds. It’s a brilliant idea and this blog post is about that.

In brief the Foodie scheme works like this:

Anyone that wants to take part signs up using a contact form available on the host blog
Participants are then matched. It’s not a swap: so penpal A will send to penpal B; penpal B will send to penpal C.
Penpals send out thoughtful, food related parcels. The parcels can include home baked treats and/or shop bought treats (especially local or unusual things). The price limit for the boxes is £10.
Penpals open their boxes and rejoice!
At the end of the month, everyone blogs about their box, or writes a guest blog post if they are usually a blog reader and not writer. Everyone reads one another’s posts and rejoices some more. Posts are made available on the hosts’s blog.

The idea for the Seedy Penpals is that we do the same sort of thing with spare seeds. These could include you favourite commercial varieties, heirloom seeds and home-saved seeds. It’s a great way of discovering new things and making new friends.

We would like to see whether there are enough people interested in the idea to make it worthwhile. And we’d also like to find out how you think it should be run. So I’ve put together a little survey which we’d like you to complete. It’ll only take a couple of minutes, so please, please fill it in. There are 7 questions, so please scroll to the end.

UPDATE 9th July 2012:
I have closed the survey. We have had a great response. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond, share the link with friends and tweet a link to this post. Mel & I will discuss the results later this week and work out how to take things forward. I’ll post more in the very near future about Seedy Penpals.

UPDATE 11th July 2012:
Mel & I have now had a long discussion. We think this is a great project and we have started to work to make it happen. ~~If you’d like to be updated by email when we have more news, please fill in the form below. Make sure you don’t miss out!~~

UPDATE 25th July 2012 – Time to launch
We’ve done it! Seedy Penpals is now ready to go. Please visit my Seedy Penpals Page or use the links in the top navigation bar.

Let’s get Seedy!

Tarragon vinegar recipe

Forest Garden, Permaculture, Photos, Preserves, Recipes, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Vegetable 11 Responses »

Jun 182012

My friend Emma has started Project Nosh to eat as many of the edible plants in her garden before she moves.

One of the plants Emma wants ideas for is French tarragon (artemisia dracunculus). The dracunculus in the Latin name means ‘Little Dragon’, perhaps referring to the teeth like shape of the leaves or its serpent like roots. I promised to blog a recipe for tarragon vinegar so that Emma could take the wonderful warm anise flavour with her.

To find out more about how we grow tarragon and for the recipe please read on. Continue reading »

Versatile Blogger Award

Permaculture, Seasons, Spring, Summer 16 Responses »

Jun 162012

May seemed to be a good month here at Legge Towers for awards. Cath who blogs at For Bella and Will very kindly nominated me for this Versatile Blogger Award. So thanks very much to Cath for that. It’s also a nice opportunity to give some love to some blogs I read and to tell you some things about me that you may not know. My obligation to do this is clear from the Rules of Acceptance:

Thank the person who gave you this award
Include a link to their blog
Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly
Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award
Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself
In the same post, include this set of rules
Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.

My Liebster Blog Award

Permaculture, Recipes 1 Response »

Jun 112012

My heartfelt thanks go to Misky of Misk Cooks for this award. She very generously said:

Carl is a renaissance man, a masterful baker and cook, and a constant surprise and inspiration. I’m sure he’s masterful at many things, but that’s possibly too much information. This man has gathered more knowledge into his head than what’s contained in an encyclopaedia. He is also generous beyond belief with that knowledge.

Her nomination is all the more generous because I have been a tardy blogger & tweeter of late.

As the spring/summer has arrived on the calendar (if not with the weather) we have worked very hard to make some big changes in our permaculture garden. This has taken a huge amount of our time. I will blog about these soon.

The Rules of the Award require me to nominate up to five blogs with less than 200 followers for the Award. I do this with some pleasure.

My first nominee is Andrew McFarlane who blogs at The Tao of Food. Andrew’s blog is a new venture which ranges across foraging, food, permaculture and herbal & oriental medicine. Andrew is on a very interesting journey of discovery which is good to read.

My second nominee is Urvashi Roe who blogs as Gujerati Girl. This is another relatively new blog. Urvashi gives a fascinating and information filled insight into the joys of Gujerati food. I’m learning a lot from her posts which she illustrates with great photography.

My third nominee is Paola Andreoni who blogs at Orto di Casa Cecconi. By way of disclosure, Paola came to stay with us for a few days last month to do some sourdough & other bread baking and to look around our permaculture plot. Paola was delightful company and very hard-working. Her blog describes her journey in permaculture and organic gardening. There are lots of really good posts there and I hope this award encourages her to continue to share .

For their information, the Liebster Blog Award Rules are as follows:

1. Thank the person that gave you the award in a post on your own site

2. Nominate up to five blogs with less than 200 followers

3. Let the nominees know they’ve won by leaving a comment on one of their posts

4. Add the Liebster image so all your readers know that you are a recipient.

Tree flowers and more, the forest garden in May

Forest Garden, Permaculture, Photos, Seasons, Spring 5 Responses »

May 132012

It was a gorgeous summery morning yesterday. Many of the trees in our forest garden were looking gorgeous. Also the sound of the birds was incredible. We could hear grasshopper, sedge & willow warblers and chiff-chaffs back from their foreign trips. The insects were enjoying the tree flowers. So I decided to take a few pictures to show you the beauty.

Please click on the picture to see a full size one. And please let me know what you think in the comments below.

Tree flowers and more, the forest garden in May

This gallery contains 26 photos

Asparagus, tarragon and piave tart recipe

Dairy, Forest Garden, Permaculture, Recipes, Seasons, Spring, Vegetable 9 Responses »

May 102012

People have enjoyed the luxurious taste of asparagus for millennia. The Ancient Egyptians ate it. And it appeared in The Roman Cookery of Apicius in the late 4th & early 5th Century CE.

Asparagus seasonal right now but only for a short period. Also in season is the wonderfully aromatic, anise flavoured french tarragon. As with many things that are seasonal at the same time, these two ingredients make perfect partners. We grow both of these ingredients on the smallholding, so I had a ‘free’ meal in the making when paired with eggs from our chickens.

In this recipe I complemented these ingredients with some wonderfully sweet and full tasting, 24 month’s old, piave cheese. This is a cow’s milk cheese from a small area in Italy with the same name. I was lucky enough to receive some from my Twitter friend in Rome, Carla Tomasi.

The finished tart tasted really smooth, rich and special. The fragrance of the shoots, herb and cheese was subtle: our senses were gently stroked. We had the tart with new potatoes lightly dressed in wild garlic mayo and steamed brassica shoots the first day; and with lemony cous-cous and tarragon marinated tomato salad the next.

If you’d like to know how to make this tart and see some tips for how to grow your own asparagus, please read on…

Snowdonia snow and sun

Permaculture, Photos, Seasons, Spring 2 Responses »

Apr 052012

Snowdonia was beautiful wreathed in snow this morning as I travelled into town. So I stopped to take some pictures with my iPhone. The panorama extended all the way across Cardigan Bay down to mid-Wales. Glorious and another bonus after yesterday evening’s crepuscular ray sunset.

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Carl Legge

Seedy Penpals August 2012

Seedy Penpals is go

My Seedy Packet

Bee things

Healing Marigolds

Mum’s seeds to cherish

Kohlrabi

Nasturtiums

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Foodie Penpals – July 2012

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Llŷn Peninsula – cloud waves

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Seedy Penpals

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Tarragon vinegar recipe

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Versatile Blogger Award

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My Liebster Blog Award

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Tree flowers and more, the forest garden in May

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Asparagus, tarragon and piave tart recipe

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Snowdonia snow and sun

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Seedy Penpals is go

My Seedy Packet

Bee things

Healing Marigolds

Mum’s seeds to cherish

Kohlrabi

Nasturtiums

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