Hello everyone and a warm welcome to the next (free) issue of The Seasonal Supplement. We’re so happy you’re here! This is the place where we pull together snippets from our journal that don’t make it into our longer articles: a mix of short stories; simple, joyful (occasionally fleeting) moments; cooking notes; rustic recipes; and, of course, photographs. Together they will give you a seasonal glimpse into life here on our smallholding in the hills of rural England. We hope you enjoy reading.
Sunday 7 January
Sheep on the Move
There are raised voices and the sound of an engine revving outside. We rush to an upstairs window and peek out. The country road that runs alongside our cottage is full of sheep. They are thickly coated in their winter wool and baaing loudly. One is stood with her front trotters on our garden wall, nibbling a rose bush. The flock are moving fields, and it seems the quickest route to pastures new is straight up the road. We watch with amusement as their red and blue crayon-dotted bottoms trundle off round the bend at the top of the hill, followed by their shepherd and his collie dog on a quad bike.
Monday 8 January
Stargazing
We arrive home in the dark. The sky is clear, lit by a fingernail moon, and the night air is bitterly cold. Evenings like this are a good time to pause, wait for the security light to click off, and look up. The stars twinkle brightly here. There are no streetlamps to obscure their sparkle. The longer we gaze, the more stars appear. They materialise like the hidden image in a magic eye drawing; there all along but unseen until our eyes slowly adjust. A few minutes spent standing and staring is enough. Any longer and a crick in the neck will quickly dampen the wonderment. We often talk of getting out deck chairs and blankets and watching a little longer. Perhaps with a flask of tea and a stack of biscuits. Maybe next time.
Thursday 11 January
Magnolia Stems
We cut back the magnolia tree today. Just a trim to stop it growing into the garden shed. One of the snipped branches now sits in a vase in the kitchen. Its simple form of bare wood and fuzzy buds offer a calming and quietly beautiful presence on the farmhouse table.
Saturday 13 January
Leek and Goat’s Cheese Pastries
We harvested the first of the leeks today. A handful of frost-dusted, verdant green leaves with soil clinging to their dangling white roots. Sliced into rounds and cooked slowly with butter and a splash of vinegar they became the base for these simple pastries.
Makes 4
Ingredients:
25g unsalted butter
1 tbsp fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
750g leeks, thinly sliced
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
375g all-butter puff pastry sheet
100g goat’s cheese (ideally a mild variety that comes in the shape of a log), sliced into four rounds
2 tsp thyme leaves (fresh or dried)
A pinch of chipotle chilli flakes
A splash of milk
Method:
Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, then stir in the sage leaves, leeks, and a pinch of salt. Put the lid on and leave to cook gently for around 30 minutes, until the leeks are soft, sweet, and just beginning to caramelise. Stir in the apple cider vinegar a little bit at a time (taste as you go - too much will ruin the tart, but the right amount will assist the goat’s cheese in balancing the sweetness of the leeks), then set aside to cool.
Unroll the puff pastry sheet and cut into quarters. Evenly divide the leeks into the centre rectangle of each quarter, leaving a thin border around the edge. Top each quarter with a round of goat’s cheese, then sprinkle the thyme leaves and chilli flakes over. Brush the pastry edges with a little milk and bake in the oven at 220°C for 12-15 minutes until the pastry has puffed up and turned golden brown.
Serve warm, alongside peppery winter salad leaves and perhaps some boiled and buttered potatoes.
Tuesday 16 January
Herby Hens
Lunchtime today is spent cleaning out the chicken house. A quick operation of shovelling, sweeping, and wheelbarrowing. The chickens stand in a semi-circle nearby, eyeing us with curiosity. The house is refilled with soft curls of wood shavings, a sprinkling of diatomaceous earth, and some handfuls of winter herbs from the garden. Herbs can apparently help keep pests (the wormy or mite-y kind) at bay, and the chickens love pecking at them. That evening when we head back outside to close the coop, we find the warmth of the snuggled hens has mingled with the bay, rosemary, and sage to create an aroma that is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather like the smell of a Sunday roast.
Wednesday 17 January
Winter Pruning Begins
We spend an hour making a start on the winter apple and pear tree pruning. It’s a big job, so we tend to do few trees at a time. Over the space of several days (and often weeks), we’ll work our way through the whole orchard in short bursts.
Today we begin with the mystery variety of cooking apple by the orchard gate. Rather strangely it has a few clusters of baby apples on it, formed in a moment of confusion during the mild autumn, and shrivelled in the winter frosts. Next is the James Grieve, which is laden with fruit buds. It has always been a heavy cropper and it looks like this year will be no different. Then we move on to the family apple tree – an unknown apple rootstock that we have grafted with multiple varieties of other apples. Encroaching on its growing space are the branches of a birch tree, so we decide to prune that too. A little extra sunshine and airflow for the trees, and a week’s worth of firewood for us. A win-win.
Thursday 18 January
Solar and Frost
There is ice on the windows this morning. A wafer-thin sheet, coating the inside of the glass and masking the view of the frosty landscape outside. The thermometer reads -6°C. The coldest morning so far this winter. Outside, the sun is up and blindingly bright. It has defrosted the solar panels already and the array is greedily absorbing the rays we need to power the cottage. If the sky stays clear, we will be close to self-sufficient in power today.
Friday 19 January
Using up the Jam
There are five open pots of jam in the cupboard. A sticky collection situated between the honey and marmite in a wonky row. Jars of fruit, sugar, and little stories.
Plum and cinnamon, made in early autumn with the last basket of fruits from the Marjorie’s Seedling tree. A clip-top jar of bright red cherries, gathered under hammering rain, and suspended in ruby syrup on a stormy summer night. An old honey pot filled with a soft-set rhubarb and ginger jam made on the same day as the first wild garlic harvest in spring. The hexagonal jar of blackcurrant and bay jam, hastily made with 2022 fruit from the freezer stores to make space for the 2023 harvests. And tucked towards the back, somewhere behind the spiced apple jelly, is the quince cheese, made from a carrier bagful of fuzzy windfall fruits that were kindly given to us by the tree owner.
Most of the jars have only a few spoonfuls left. We decide to empty the shelf and use them up in one go. Butter is rubbed into flour until it looks like breadcrumbs, and egg yolk and icy water are added to form a dough. Then the chilled pastry is rolled and cut into rounds, which are gently pressed into the greased holes of a cupcake tray. The hotchpotch of preserves are carefully spooned from jar to tray, then we bake. The jam tarts, a little rough and ready, are eaten while still slightly warm from the oven. A joyful lift for yet another frosty afternoon.
We really hope you enjoyed reading The Seasonal Supplement. If you’re interested in hearing more of the stories, projects, and recipes from our countryside smallholding, and you’d like to support our writing and photography, you might like to consider becoming one of our paid subscribers. Our paid subscribers receive weekly emails on a joyful hotchpotch of topics centred around slow food and slow living (full details are on our about page). When you sign-up, you’ll gain access to our full archive of articles (there are tens of thousands of words there already to read at your leisure – enough to fill a small book).
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Thanks so much for reading.
Kathy and Tom
My favourite bit of Sunday - reading your article. Thank you for the jamtarts! It reminds me of childhood baking sessions with my mother... I might even give it a go again...
Wonderful again!! Thank you for lifting a drizzly morning.
I made the squash soup from a couple of weeks back, it was delicious, the recipe scribbled on a scrap of paper is pinned inside the cupboard to be used again!