Allotment Heaven: 01/09/2011

Allotment Heaven skies

If you were an alien visiting Earth for the first time what aspect of our planet would you think most beautiful? My bet is the amazingly colourful and dramatic skies... particularly if you were lucky enough to land in East Anglia, where the flatness of the landscape means the skies are so vast.

So here are some images of skies above Allotment Heaven just to prove the point. More will be added whenever I snap anything dramatic enough.

One moment each day

What did you do today that made it special? What will you remember about today in a week's time, next month, next year? And can you remember what was special about this day last year... last month... even last week?

Some days really do turn up special and untypical events that are easier to remember. Maybe you keep a diary that'll help. But I'll bet even with a diary it'll be hard to get a real feeling of what made any particular day special and different from all the other days. Shouldn't every day be special in some way? How sad if, from a lifetime of experiences, only a relatively few hazy memories survive.

I've been thinking about this problem for some time. Earlier in the year I posted about ephemeral texts and up to August I managed to faithfully archive all the texts I sent and received. But then I got tied up with our local flower & produce show and quickly found myself several hundred texts behind. It seemed a lot of tedious effort to record the occasional special text, surrounded by others that were repeated each week.

One of the blogs I enjoy reading is Mind On Medicine, and the posts on 365 Days in (Mobile) Photos got me thinking. That's it! With mobile phone cameras being so good these days and always accessible what a great way to remember one special moment from each day and describe it.

So that's how the new blog site One Moment Each Day started up. You can access it directly by bookmarking it, or there's a link to it on the right. It'll be updated every day other than when I'm away on holiday. There's the usual touch of humour on most days... but the aim is to pick out something special from every day of my life from now on so I can easily look back on it when I'm too old and doddery to do anything else.

If the idea fires your imagination and you'd like some help on how to set up your own blog to do the same thing leave me a comment on One Moment Each Day or use the Contact Me tab above.

Blackberry jam easy recipe

What better way to end breakfast than with hot buttered toast and blackberry jam. And with every hedgerow around the countryside just bursting with plump juicy blackberries, why wouldn't you want to make some fruity blackberry jam? Why not try some of the other Allotment Heaven easy recipes?

The stuff you normally buy struggles to reach 30% or 40% fruit content so this recipe is especially fruity, with 50% blackberry content... good enough to add to icecream or yoghurt as well as toast or scones. So stride forth bravely into the countryside with the kids and gather some goodness!

This recipe makes it easy... no worrying about setting point, no shoving plates in freezers and little time spent standing over a boiling pan. I don't like the pips, so the instructions below include straining the fruit and pips out and adding pectin, a natural fruit product that helps the jam set. If you'd prefer fruit and pips included you might have to adjust the pectin added and boiling time.

(Note: No family members were harmed during the testing of this recipe... whatever they say!)

Equipment needed
Suitable sized pan
Muslin bag
Jam jars with sealable tops
Long handled spoon
Oh, and a cooker hob ~:0)

Ingredients needed
Blackberries, destemmed (18oz/500grams will make about a couple of pounds)
Sugar (same quantity as you have blackberries)
Pectin (available from good supermarkets, see Waitrose)

Method
1. Sterilise the jam jars by filling with diluted Milton liquid and place the jam jar tops in boiling water.

2. Put the washed blackberries in a pan, bring to the boil and simmer until soft (about 5mins).

3. Take off the heat and, having mixed the sugar and appropriate amount of pectin together (follow manufacturers guidelines), stir this into the blackberries until dissolved.

4. Return to heat and moderately boil for about 15mins.

5. Pour into jars through muslin bag and funnel.

6. Seal jars with lids and leave to cool, will thicken over 24hrs.

Some photos from my day's berry picking below, click any to enlarge.

On a warm sunny day the hedgerows were just bursting with fruit. Here's sloes... I'll pick them later in the year for sloe vodka for Christmas 2012.

Colourful rose hips. I've tried making rose hip wine but they're hard work, being hard as bullets.

My favourite blackberry spot... in the middle of the countryside and well away from dogs and traffic.

And here are the objects of my desire... nice and plump with lots more to ripen in the next few weeks.

The end result of one hour's picking... 1.5kg of berries.

Flippin' 'eck... half way down the first jar already!

St Ives Flower & Produce Show 2011

It's the second year for the Show, and with a big increase in exhibits and visitors every sign our equivalent of the horticultural show or village show is now a firm event in the town’s calendar.

We had the advantage this year of starting preparation much earlier than the 10 weeks for last year’s Show, though the series of monthly meetings starting back in March still finished up with much frenzied activity in the last few days. But a great team effort, with everyone falling into their natural roles, saw us all go home after shutting up shop about 17:20 on Saturday with a great feeling of satisfaction and exhaustion.

I’m not sure how I managed to stay awake. Having issued the last draft of the table plan to accommodate all 378 entries, and with the response from Andie “… you’re the man with the slide rule, so I trust your calcs” I was up at 03:00 Friday morning in a sweat. What, the man trusts me. Really? Maybe I’d better check it out. So there I was tapping away in the early hours of the morning doing an even more detailed plan that showed the exact position of each exhibit on each display table. Worth doing though… the scale was exactly right and will remove any uncertainty from future Shows.

Then up 06:00 Saturday morning to pick the best raspberries from the allotment, before hurtling back home to prepare the exhibits. Why oh why didn’t I do some of this days ago… tie the onions for instance?

Finally, before getting on with the job of opening the Show with the rest of the team, a live interview at 07:45 with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire as we were gaining entry to the Corn Exchange.

Congratulations go to Mark Bottoms, clearly the Best in Show winner, taking the Preserves & Produce, Flower & Plant and Country Wine & Home Brewing Sections as well. Other Section winners were Robin Bletsoe: Vegetables, Tom Weightman: Photography, Hayley Weightman: Fruit, Melvin Morton: Bakery and Ella Braddock: Children’s Section. More detailed info below as well as lots of images.

One of the highlights for me was Mark’s offer to let me taste his wines… superb, fruity and red! Couldn’t believe my luck when other competitors made the same offer… just as well I’d completed the scoring for the Show by then.

After last year’s quality entry, this year I went for quantity, entering a whopping 26 exhibits. Here’s what I got an award for…

Fancy bread	1st
Pumpkin	1st
Raspberries	1st
Squash or gourd	1st
Tomatoes on the vine	1st
Fancy bread	2nd
Bottle of home brewed beer	2nd
Bottle of sweet white wine	2nd
Parsnips	2nd
Squash or gourd	2nd
Bottle of home brewed beer	3rd
Oddest shaped vegetable	3rd
Oddest shaped vegetable	Highly commended

You can find out more about the Show as follows…

To view all the images from the Show click here

To view a summary of the Show results for all exhibitors click here

A small sample of images from the Show are shown below, click any to enlarge

To view all the images from the Show click here

The first St Ives Flower Show was held in 1876. You can read about it's history, including transcripts of newspaper articles giving lists of winners that are searchable by family historians, at Allotment Heaven: St Ives Flower Show from 1876.

And if you’re really a glutton for punishment, listen to my live interview with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire by clicking here. And to save you counting, there were a total of 72 ‘erms’ in the interview… all from me unfortunately!

Here are the Best in Show winners, Mark & Colette, with their fantastic set of exhibits.


The night before, with all the tables laid out in the Corn Exchange by 21:00.	Let judging commence! In this case the Preserves & Produce Section.


Judging finished by 12:30, Richard lines everyone up for the official opening to the public, watched carefully by the Town Crier.	The hall fills with visitors admiring the almost 400 exhibits with their results cards displayed.