The fruits of our labours

It's that time of year. Everything is starting and from nothing at all we are suddenly bubbling over with things to bring into the kitchen. The asparagus, as always, started us off but we only cut the spears for six weeks so that the plants have a chance to regenerate for next year.

Then the early lettuce from the greenhouse which I planned to have ready for Easter - and amazingly it was!

Now it's the turn of the cherries. We always know when they are ready because "les voleurs" arrive in ever increasing numbers. We don't mind too much - although we used to! A lot of the trees seem to have grown from pips dropped by the birds and these don't taste great. The really deep red cherries are only on a couple of trees and we grab these when we can. I'm not a supporter of fiddling with nature but if scientists insist on modifying genes and what have you, then perhaps they could sort out the genes in the birds so that they take the high cherries and leave the low ones for us. Now that would be really useful.

Although we eat most of what we pick, this year, if we pick enough, we'll put some in jars and sterilise them so that we can enjoy them later in the year.

And of course it's strawberry time as well. We picked these this evening:

There's nearly two kilos there and we've picking the same amount every two days for the past week. I don't make jam as we don't eat it in large enough quantities to make it worthwhile. However, even I can't eat this amount of strawberries - well, not really and not without really bad consequences! - so I've started making a strawberry coulis which I freeze in plastic cups.

I've discovered the most amazing Delia Smith recipe for strawberry cheesecake ice cream however I prefer to make it plain and use the coulis to pour over afterwards. It really is delicious! If you want to try it you'll find it in the Summer Collection - it involves roasted digestive biscuits and hazelnuts...are you sure you can resist?!

A year of fruit

We have now lived here for 11 years and I can only remember one other year like this one for fruit.

There were so many cherries on the trees that even the birds couldn't eat them all, leaving more than enough for us.

Strawberries were the next delight and although we didn't exactly struggle to eat them all we came very close to striking strawberries from the luxury fruit to be savoured list. We only had a few raspberries but then we only planted them a few short months ago so they are forgiven.

For the past two weeks we have been gathering mirabelles - small yellow prunes with enough flavour to eat raw but not enough, in my opinion, to bother cooking with. We had so many that this year we squeezed a lot and now have about three litres of juice in the freezer ready for sauce on the ice cream. The pigs love mirabelles and we gather about half a bucket for them each day. (They also loved the strawberries!)

Our peach tree, which has struggled to provide more than one edible fruit per year, has this year gone mad and there must be at least 30 peaches which, if I don't pick them today, will be devoured by the wasps - I just hope they will finish ripening off the tree.

The pear trees are in danger of breaking their branches despite the fact that I thinned them vigorously.

And finally the fig trees are promising HUGE amounts of fruit.

Our real worry are the six new trees we planted in the autumn - four apples and two plums. They are showing severe signs of thirst despite having masses of water during the winter and regular watering by Max and I now. If we can get them through to the winter I think they'll survive - but there's August to deal with first.

This week's harvest (so far!)

I'm a relative beginner at all this home growing. I've grown summer veg before - tomatoes and lettuce mostly - and of course we have fruit trees that just seem to do what they do, but really working it out and getting the most from the veggie patch is still new enough to make any produce look and taste REALLY good! Perhaps it wears off after a while but in the meantime this is some of what we've been eating during the past few days.


I have to admit that these cherries (there were three times as many) are not from our garden but from a friend. We have come to the conclusion that cherries belonging to English gardens in France have a certain "je sais pas quoi" and are irresistable to birds.


Not exactly a ton of broad beans but SO good and tender. The coriander self-seeded from last year.

These Mirabelles are the sweetest little things imaginable. In 2003 we had so many we just put a sheet on the ground and shook the tree. I think it's still recovering from such a vast harvest five years later as we've not had a particularly abundant crop since. They are delicious!


This garlic doesn't look like much (understatement!) but it just appeared in the garden. I planted some last year but it was so wet nothing really happened. Well, clearly it did because this is what has appeared this year.