We're Jammin', we're Jammin'...

We're well into the damson and plum harvest now and we've had a huge crop, so it's been a major job to keep up with the picking. Since the oven isn't available, we've been making jam. It's something that lots of people want to learn how to make, so we've had a lot of interest. We made our first batch of jam with the NUSA group of young people, who did a brilliant job and learned some very useful kitchen skills as well, like safe knife use. We then hosted the Framework Older Persons Group, and the Gateway to Nature Group who have done 2 different sessions with us now. We've even made jam in the dark! That was with a group of young people from Killisick who were amazed at how simple it was to make jam. Actually it's been the same reaction from most groups, with the typical comment, "Now I know how easy it is, I'm going to make my own."

First pick your plums

You might find a ladder useful - our special tripod one is brilliant.

The Gateway to Nature group with the fruits of their labour

Our jam recipe is:

5lbs damson or plum flesh
5lbs sugar
1/2 pint water
knob of butter

Wash and stone the fruit. Put 1/2 pint of water and fruit into a jam pan or other large heavy-based saucepan.

Bring to the boil and simmer until the fruit breaks up and makes lots of liquid (takes about 1/2 an hour as long as you keep the pot out of the wind!). Don't worry if there are a few lumps left. If you don't have much time or hand problems, it's ok to just boil up the whole fruit, though you will need to skim off the stones when you've made the jam.

A really long-handled spoon helps keep fingers away from boiling jam.

Add the sugar and a knob of butter - this helps stop a build up of foam on top of the jam. Stir until you can't feel the sugar on the bottom any more, then taste it, because the fruit can vary a lot in acidity depending on how ripe it is. You can add another pound of sugar if necessary. Now bring it back to the boil and boil hard for about 10-15 minutes.

Lisa and our visitors wait for the jam to finish boiling

Then test for a set - put a few drops of jam onto a china plate, let it cool slightly then push it with your finger. If the surface forms wrinkles, the jam is ready. Turn off the heat and ladle the jam into sterilized jars. Keep some bread ready to wipe the last scrapings of jam off the pan and make sure to eat it!

Ladling the jam into jars. A jam funnel helps reduce spills.

Now enjoy your jam!

NB - If your saucepan is smaller than a jam pan, make sure you don't overload it, or the jam may boil over. The pan shouldn't really be more than 2/3rds full once the fruit and sugar are added. Boiling jam can cause severe burns and should be handled with care.

Picking plums at twilight with Killisick group

Environmental Note
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We think our jam may have done the fewest food miles of any, as we're cooking it on site and using UK sugar, most of which is grown within 100 miles of Nottingham!

Eventually, we intend to use rocket stoves made from re-used cans for cooking. These will be great because we'll be able to use our own wood which we've coppiced from our willow trees. However, creating the stoves is still on the to-do list, so we are using a camping stove. We're still aiming to do this in a more environmentally-friendly way, so we've been experimenting with reduced water in the jam recipe (which reduces the cooking time) and building heat-retaining structures around the stove to reduce heat loss and speed up the process, as the jam needs to reach a specific temperature before it sets.

Putting the fun back into Windmill

Well, after last week's drama, this week we managed to have some fun and get a lot of useful garden work done at the same time. There was a great atmosphere as we had visitors from Framework through their "Gateway to Nature" project who came to pick plums and damsons to make jam on site. We rewarded them for their hard work by harvesting and cooking sweetcorn for them, which was much appreciated. The jam making went really well, so well in fact  that the group leaders hope to come back next week with another group to even make more jam.

Some of our harvest

Is this our longest bean?

Whilst the jam making was going on, the rest of the group got on with more general harvesting. We've got lots of beans still - french (yellow ones and green ones), runners and "lazy housewife" beans (so called we think because they are stringless, easy to cut and don't go tough and stringy even if you are bit late picking them.) We also have brocolli, spinach, callalloo, cauliflower and courghettes, as well as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and basil in the polytunnel. Unfortunately we also have some caterpillar problems, as we left the doors open for much of the summer for ventilation. Of course, Tracey, favouring organic methods, adopts the "pick and squash" technique, everyone else is a bit squeamish or pro-caterpillar rights about it all. We just need to keep the problem in check, as the damage is fairly minor at the moment.

Some of our happy jam makers.

Re-covery!

After the sad and frustrating incident involving the polytunnel at the weekend, we are delighted to announce that we have managed to re-cover it in record time! Tracey was joined by her team of regulars (Ellis, Dan, Helen, Ray and Lisa) and also by our fantastic polytunnel expert, Mike Gosnall. We all made very little work of removing the slashed covering and, Tracey very quickly went away and came back with a new skin, along with an extremely generous and much appreciated offering of ice creams!  We all sat and ate these before beginning work on the 're-covery' process.  The whole team got together to unfurl and lift the new skin onto the metal framework, ensuring it was level at all sides. 

Pulling the new cover over the frame

We then armed ourselves with hammers, nails, staple guns and planks of wood in order to secure the skin in place. We nailed the planks to the horizontal wooden supports on each side of the polytunnel attaching the skin with the nails.  The doors were then revealed by cutting the plastic around the frames and the remaining flap of plastic was folded inwards and secured with staples.

Mike assesses the site while Ellis, Dan and Ray work out how to help

All hands on deck

Before the rebuilding work could commence however, the ongoing tasks of harvesting and weed removal continued.  Helen and Lisa carried on as they left off the week before, digging out all manner of weeds including dandilions, cootch grass and YET MORE horseradish! Dan also did a brilliant job of weeding the raised bed containing the soon-to-be ripe pumpkins.  Ellis and Mike however spent the morning preparing the ground for the rebuilding work of the polytunnel. A group of highly enthusiastic residents from Framework Older Persons Group also joined us to harvest another large crop of plums, and because we wanted to cheer ourselves up, we harvested and cooked some of the second batch of sweetcorn, which was yummy.

All in all, this was a highly successful day and the team did a brilliant job of lifting spirits and rebuilding the polytunnel - and once more we will never let the thieves and vandals win at Windmill!

More sad news from Windmill

After all our hard work and great fun from the last week, we are very sad to report that our polytunnel has been vandalised.  It is thought that the incident happened sometime between  Sunday Lunchtime and Monday and it involved the polytunnel covering being sliced, either with a knife or scissors, leaving the roof open and the contents exposed.  After all the dedication and graft which was put into the building of the tunnel we are very keen to see that the perpetrators are caught.  The police have been informed and we would kindly ask that if anyone has any information on, or saw the incident taking place to contact them as soon as possible.  Meanwhile, the task of buying new covering and rebuilding the polytunnel begins from now on and we hope to restore it as soon as possible.

Exposed - equipment and produce within the damaged polytunnel



Sliced apart - polytunnel covering



Mindless vandalism - roof bars can now be seen after the polytunnel covering was cut



Anyone for some lovely fresh fruit and veg?

Today was a thoroughly enjoyable day at Windmill! Tracey, Ellis, Helen, Ray and Lisa were joined by two groups of children along with their mentors from the Groundwork office: Sarah Briley, Nicola Liburd, Daniel Davis and John Haslam.

The first group who were accompanied by Sarah were from BOBS, a residents' group from the Bridlington Street Park area of Nottingham who plan activities to keep the young ones entertained during the Summer holidays.  Activities included a guided tour of the allotment with a fantastic talk by Tracey as to what we do and what we grow.  They picked many different fruits and vegetables including courgettes, beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes and plums.  They had also arrived just in time for lunch so Helen, Ray and Ellis fired up the camping stovesso we could boil up some of the freshly-picked home-grown sweetcorn.  This went down an absolute treat among the children and adults alike.  It had a delicious, fresh sweet taste along with a gorgeous sunny golden colour.  There was a general consensus that they were far better than anything you could ever get in the shops!

A young lady picks some sweetcorn with Sarah's help!

Tracey explains how to remove the husk from a corn cob - pictures from two directions at once!

Ellis and Ray fire up the stove

Could this be the largest ever lettuce?!

One little gentleman certainly enjoyed the sweetcorn!

The second group who arrived with Nicola, John and Daniel were a youth group from Killisick, a housing estate in Arnold, Nottingham.  They were given the task of harvesting some plums from the very well laden trees. It is believed that they are actually plums crossed with damsons.  Once again, the regular volunteers took up the task of firing up the stoves and we successfully made some jam with the fruits of the childrens' labour.



In addition to the wonderful help we have had from the children, the regulars did a brilliant job of weeding (including yet more horseradish, sigh), harvesting and watering. With fantastic weather it was a brilliant day all round!

Helen and Lisa take a break from weeding!

A Sad day at Windmill

Windmill Commnity Gardens mean a lot to us, and we love being there, but today was a sad one because it was the funeral of Paula, a great friend of the Gardens. Last year, whilst we were waiting for the Climate Friendly Gardens project funding to come through, Paula helped Ellis and Dan to keep things ticking over at Windmill. She was always full of energy and enthusiasm, and we were delighted to welcome her back to the Gardens only a few weeks ago at our celebration event. Paula wasn't one for sadness, so we let off a few party poppers that we'd been given and said some words then cut some of the red and yellow sunflowers she'd been promised on her last visit to give to her daughter Mikayla.




In memory of Paula Dixon, our dear friend and colleague


There is a plan to put a bench in the garden in memory of Paula, so we'll let you know when it is installed.

Of course, harvesting has to continue, and the crops keep coming, so we were kept busy. We had to harvest yet more plums and damsons, to prevent the trees from loosing even more branches. These fruit should be perfectly ripe by next week, but we can still make some great jam with what we've picked today.

Ellis with a large collection of onions from one of the beds

We also got lots of french beans, spinach, callaloo, runner beans, lettuce, tomatoes and blackberries, as well as picking the main onion crop, which we hung out to dry in the polytunnel.

Lisa picks some yellow French beans

The Brandywine tomatoes are now getting massive, so we made little hammocks for some of them and shored up the rest  with string, also re-inforcing the current top support string to spread the load.


 

Ray tends to the tomato plants



Brandywine tomatoes reinforced with netting

Helen waters one of the vegetable beds

We are also aware that, fox partying aside, we might be harvesting the sweetcorn next week, which will be a lovely treat. If we get it right, it will only take 10 minutes from harvesting to eating, so it should taste amazing.

Harvesting here we come!

Much of today was taken up harvesting and sampling the fruits of our labour, literally and metaphorically! The moment we have all been waiting for came when we noticed that our lovely damson and plum trees (and possibly some plum / damson crosses) are nearly ripe so we need to start planning for a proper harvest in a few weeks. Unfortunately, the crop is so huge this year that a lot of the trees are breaking their branches despite us thinning them over the last few weeks. We thinned them again, taking any soft fruit and fruit from branches that looked most likely to break. We'll make jam and chutney with these ones. Hopefully next week they will be wonderfully ripe so we can enjoy lots of fresh fruit, as we have some groups coming to see us who will enjoy that.

We had a bit of fun with one plum with a smaller twin plum attached - now known as "nosey".

Dan with new friend, Nosey!

Elsewhere, we found that there were lots of vegetables ready, including cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuces, radishes, kohlrabi, courgettes, calaloo, carrots and broccoli.  There have been wonderful reports regarding the cucumbers, radishes, lettuces and broccoli across the Groundwork office!



Here we come a-harvesting!



Tracey and Khaled also managed to take some veg to the Acorn Day Centre to let the folk there have the chance to get some really fresh veg.



Khaled guards the produce!



Sadly, however, it had been found that foxes had attempted to uproot the sweetcorn plants to see if they were ready to eat.  Most plants escaped unscathed, although Tracey has been forced to create makeshift protective cages out of wire, bamboo and willow.  We hope that this will have been successful in preventing further attacks!

In addition to harvesting, other tasks included the usual watering, weeding and plant maintenance such as re-tying the tomato plants, as well removing side-shootings to keep them in check. The Brandywine tomatoes especially are looking like triffids, and as their fruit can weigh up to a pound each, we will have to make efforts to help the plants hang on to them.


 Helene has offered to water next week while Tracey is away, so everything should be in good hands.