Yoga at Great Walsingham Barns North Norfolk

New Yoga Class for 2018 on Thursday Evenings

IMG_0303After a break of over three years, I am delighted to be back teaching yoga again here on the beautiful North Norfolk coast.
My new class is on Thursday evening at Great Walsingham Barns, Great Walsingham, Norfolk from 5.30-6.45 pm. This small friendly group extends to a maximum of nine students and costs £40 for a block of five classes.

Introduction to Yoga Course summer 2018

I will shortly be running a four week introductory course – the Key Principles of Yoga Practice.  Also at Great Walsingham Barns. The class will run for four weeks on Thursdays from 7-8.15 pm.  For more details about this course see here http://www.yoga-4-all.co.uk/teaching_workshops.html
If you are new to yoga, or haven’t done yoga for a while, this would be a great class for you to join.

 

Late spring on the allotment

The high winds and lashing rain of early Spring meant that our allotment got off to a slow start this year.  Venturing out for the first time today we were met with alot of grey mud until we spied an upturned plastic bin, hastily applied in January to a patch of rhubarb.   And so, as if by magic, a burst of vibrant pink and yellow erupted into view!

forced rhubarb from the allotment

forced rhubarb a glorious site this cold, wet spring

This early rhubarb is far sweeter than its tart elder sister that has not been cosseted by being kept covered over winter.  So it needs only some freshly squeezed orange and a sprinkling of brown sugar before being roaste on a high heat until it is just tender, and not overwilted.

A more exotic variation can be realised with the addition of a bay leaf or two and some crushed cardomon.  These two add a subtle undertone that lift it of  nursery pudding fayre.

It needs nothing more than a dollop of rich greek yogurt and a few toasted almonds to create a sumptuous dessert

Introducing Kitten George!

It was a cold November afternoon to be out on the allotment but what a lucky chance it was. At first just the sound of a birdlike cry coming from some disused sheds belonging to a local farmer. Kitten GeorgeThen on further investigation a tiny fluffy bundle appeared, a kitten from one of the feral cats that live in the fields around our house and abandoned or somehow lost from its mother.

Cold, hungry and very dehydrated, the lost soul seemed quite happy to be scooped up and taken inside to warm up amidst a box of straw by the radiator.

One week on and she is the most loving little thing and we would not be without her.

New yoga classes in Wighton, North Norfolk

A beautiful sunny evening last Monday for our first  yoga class in Wighton village hall;  it was fantastic to be able to do our yoga practice outside and to see so many old faces.

I am now running two classes on Monday evenings:

Improvers’ Yoga  5.15-6.45 pm

This is a mixed ability class which combines the strength and dynamism of Yang movements with some deep Yin stretches for a fully balanced hatha yoga practice. The class ends with a period of pranayama and relaxation/mindfulness meditation.

Beginners’ Yoga – starting 11th August 7-8.15pm

This class provides a general introduction to yoga and covers all the basic principles like breathing, posture, full body awareness and relaxation techniques as well as a more careful look at some simple yoga asanas.

Looking forward to a yoga filled summer…

Summer yoga in Wighton village

After a rather long break, I’m really looking forward to re-starting the yoga classes in Wighton village hall where on fine evenings we can practice our yoga outside, overlooking the cornfields. What bliss!

The first class is on Monday 21 July, 5.15-6.45 pm and the village hall is in Buddells Lane, Wighton, North Norfolk.

Can’t wait to see everyone again!

poppies and nepeta on a summer's evening

poppies and nepeta on a summer’s evening…

 

Fresh Food from the Allotment

We have been rather neglectful of our allotment this year.  With personal and work issues taking priority, keeping our fruit and veg patch in apple pie order has rather gone by the wayside.

So it seems even more of a miracle to be enjoying  an abundance of tasty home grown produce this summer.

green and purple artichokes

green and purple artichokes

Top of the list are the artichokes.  We now have over a dozen sturdy plants – both green and purple varieties, and each plant gave us ten or more tasty fruits.  Truly these are the vegetable for lazy gardeners – resprouting energetically every year on even the dryest untilled soil. They are delicious  steamed or boiled and served with a garlic and herb vinegarette.  The glut can be bottled as hearts and enjoyed in the winter months.

habas con jamon

habas con jamon

Broad beans are another  favourite;  and like all really fresh organic veg, need only the simplest of preparations to transform into a flavoursome meal.  Our favourite is Habas con Jamon.  Start by  browning some onion, garlic and pork (bacon or ham will do).  Then  add a couple of handfuls of shelled, blanched  broad beans.  If the beans are young and fresh they can be eaten  without removing their grey overcoats.  Otherwise slip these off after blanching.  Cook for another 10 minutes then add a handful of chopped mint.  Voila!

rainbow chard

colorful rainbow chard

Chard and spinach have done very well this year. The colourful chard stalks can be steamed and eaten like asparagus.  Then combine the cooked leaves with onions, garlic, dill and some feta cheese for a Greek style filling for pies and frittata. It also works well in a lasagna, with the pasta layer being replaced with slices of grilled courgettes.

spinach pie filling

spinach and chard mixed with dill and feta make a tasty filling for pies and frittatas

Our courgette harvest is only just getting started.  Young courgettes can be eaten raw  and combined julienne style with strips of peppery raw turnip and some shredded courgette flowers for a colourful salad bowl.

courgettes-and-turnips

Wighton Scarecrow Festival

Wighton great train robber scarecrowsIf you come down to the village of Wighton over the Mayday bank holiday weekend you’re sure for a big surprise!

wighton scarecrows viewer crowThis sleepy North Norfolk hamlet is transformed into a surreal stage set with disconcertingly lifelike scarecrows of all shapes and sizes peeping out of gardens, riding bicycles … even taking a nap over a copy of Farmer’s Weekly. Think Wicker Man meets Bill and Ben and you get the general idea … seriously though it’s a real hoot.

wighton scarecrow festival

McGregor crow

wighton scarecrow festival

Gordon Ramsay crow

wighton scarecrow festival

zzzzz crow.

Ever since we arrived in Wighton five years ago, we have loved taking part in the festival – and that means making scarecrows. As we live in the old station house, our crows have had a railway theme – and this year, what better than the 50th anniversary of the Great Train Robbery.

Now making scarecrows worthy of the Wighton festival is not so easy as you might think  – something we discovered in our early attempts as enthusiastic newcomers to the village when driving wind and rain left our valiant crows sagging and bedraggled on the station platform.  Planning and props were surely the key.

wighton scarecrow festival

Lots of lolly!

Luckily, also to hand were the considerable creative talents of our friends Paul and Laura who arrived from London late on Friday night with  a stash of realistic and waterproof pound notes; then next morning armed with masking tape and spray paint, they quickly transformed two common or garden t-shirts into eye-catching striped apparel, befitting the most villainous of crims.

wighton scarecrow festival

Going for stripes.

wighton scarecrow festival

what a good looking fella…

ighton scarecrow festival

With these fabulous props we set about creating our characters – this time, wind and rain  proof.  As we stepped back to admire our handywork –  well we surprised ourselves by how good they looked!  Had we finally cracked it?

wighton scarecrow festival

gangster’s moll

The proof of the pudding came in the whoops of delight and applause from passengers chugging past the platform as they made their way between Wighton and Wells on the miniature steam train.

Thus emboldened (and after quaffing a glass of two of champagne to celebrate Laura’s birthday) a plan was hatched to send a picture of our marvelous crows to the BBC urging them to run with the story.  Imagine our surprise when we emerged sleepy eyed the next  morning to find it on the BBC news website!

As if this wasn’t enough excitement, mid afternoon we faced the serious task of judging the children’s scarecrow making competition – and having awarded first prize  to a most innovative one legged pirate, it was time to retire back to the garden for a  plate of fish and chips from our local chippy, the Riddle in Walsingham.

wighton scarecrow festival

sunset crows

 

A late spring on the allotment

asparagus-on-woodoptToday – a moment of pure joy!  We harvested our very first home grown asparagus from the allotment.

Asparagus needs patient tending as well as lots of of water and manure; but now in its third year we can finally start picking  – this first bunch provided a late al fresco lunch with some lightly poached eggs and rosemary bread. As any grow your own enthusiast will tell you, there is nothing to beat the taste of freshly picked produce. And the asparagus was a case in point – totally delicious.


Asparagus aside, we have been late getting started on the allotment; but some spring sunshine (as well as the prospect of the asparagus) was enough to tempt us outside for some planting.  Three years on, the task of preparing the ground is much easier.  Regular bucketloads of horse muck last season really improved the soil so it is now crumbly and soft; and covering the beds with black plastic last autumn was a really smart move as it prevented the pesky weeds from taking hold.

On our first forage we returned with armfuls of salad – rocket, mizuna and mustard greens that were sown in the autumn and overwintered in a covered cloche.  Despite evidence of rabbit attack (the cheeky rascals had actually tunneled inside the cloche!) the tasty leaves were intact – their peppery flavour plainly not to the taste of the burrowing invaders.

But then came another unexpected visitor – an adventurous lamb, escaped from its enclosure opposite the allotment, came to see what we were up to.  Doh!  how cute we thought … until we found him tucking into the new growth on our artichoke plants and trampling the freshly sown seed beds.  For now, a hasty application of  twiggy borders has held him off.  Constant vigilance it seems is required.

a visitor to the allotment…

Elsewhere in the garden, spring is only just coming into view – so the contrast of pink tulips against purple sage provides some uplifting colour in the herb garden.

tulips and purple sage

tulips and purple sage provide a splash of colour in the herb garden

Seeds of distinction

A series of colds as well as the inclement weather have seen us huddled fireside these past few months with little inclination to venture onto our wintry and wind battered allotment. Instead, a spot of indoor gardening – poring over seed catalogues and planning the year’s growing selection.

Plus this week, sowing a batch of sweet peas in individual seed pots for germination under cover.

Sweet peas are my favourite of all the annual flowers and an abundant sowing means armfuls of heavenly scented blooms to adorn the house all summer.  They can be sown directly outside from April, but germinating them indoors gives you a head start when it comes to flowering.

Sweet Peas have long trailing roots and so need to be germinated in deep pots. You can buy special “root trainer” plastic pots for this purpose, but I find that the insides of toilet rolls work just as well.  Because they are biodegradable you not only avoid adding to the throw away plastic mountain but you can plant the cardboard roll straight into the ground, thus avoiding disturbance to the nascent root system.

One word of caution if you use this method, the roots really are very tenacious and will colonise the whole seed tray if you are not careful.  To avoid this, place each roll or group of rolls in a larger pot with a firm bottom to it two to three weeks after germination.

For vegetable seeds, we have a handful of favourite seed suppliers and seed varieties that we order year after year.  But then each growing season it’s fun to throw in a couple of newcomers.  Sometimes these are successful, like last year’s Thelma Sanders winter squash; now a firm fixture on on the allotment.   Just as often they are not (Sarah Raven’s beautifully packaged but disappointing purple peas to give one example) and you just have to put it down to experience.

With some vegetable seeds, there are a whole tranche of things that seem to grow reliably from any supplier. Things like perpetual spinach, turnips, radishes and broad beans to name a few.  But with other things we’ve found a considerable variation.  So with these varieties, we stick to a particular supplier for seeds that:

  • provide high germination rates;
  • grow reliably on our exposed and often dry allotment;
  • result in superior tasting produce.

Franchi Seeds of Italy

Seeds of Italy is a family run seed company with interesting seed varieties including many for alpine climates.

Climbing French Bean Trionfo Violetto – Best of all the purple beans we have tried,  even in dry conditions.
Tromba of Albenga– Amusing trombone shaped courgette that can be eaten as a summer squash or hardened off and kept for up to three months in the winter.
Snow Pea Gigante Svizero – beautiful mauve flowers and tasty pods that stay sweet and crunchy throughout the whole growing season.

And the newcomer we are trying is Cima di Rapa which is a type of turnip grown specifically for its peppery green leaves.

Simpson’s Seeds

Simpsons are a great value brand and I love their simple packaging

Salad Leaf Mixture Mesclun 2 and 3 – I’ve tried lots of varieties of cut and come again salad and this has proved the most successful with a long harvesting period and slow to go to seed in dry weather.  Mesclun 3 has an added sprinkling of oriental greens.
Crown Prince Winter Squash – Simpson’s is one of a handful of suppliers of the beautiful and ever reliable Crown Prince but to my mind they are the best.
Jacob’s Bright Lights Chard –
This colourful chard variety looks pretty enough for the flower border and is good value, providing firm ribs which can be steamed and eaten with butter like asparagus as well as spinach like green leaves.

Plus we are trying for the first time Spring Onion North Holland Blood Red Redmate, a purple spring onion which can also be left in the ground and harvested as a full sized bulb.

The Real Seed Company

The delightfully curvacious Themla Sanders is still keeping well after four months in storage.

Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash – one of the newcomers to our allotment last year and we would be placing an order for more…except that The Real Seed Company is fantastically generous with the number of seeds they provide in a packet – so we easily have enough for another year, maybe two.

Hedgerow Harvest

The sight of hedgerows bedecked with berries is one of the glories of an autumn walk.  It is also a fantastic source of food for free. And since we arrived in the country five years ago, I still get childishly excited about this.  All that food just waiting to be picked and eaten.  Amazing!

elderberry jelly

a batch of elderberry and apple jelly to see us through the winter months…

This year, nature’s abundance has been badly affected by the weather with all  fruits – apples and plums as well as wild berries  giving a poor harvest. Not a sloe in sight on the blackthorn bushes that line the field margins next to our house.  Elderberries too are thin on the ground.  Nevertheless, we managed to gather enough of these for a batch of elderberry and apple jelly.  This has to be one of my favorite preserves.  First because it can be made entirely from hedgerow fruits – so the only expense is the sugar.  Secondly elderberries give the jelly an incredible depth of flavour and colour – neither of which of deteriorate over months of storage as is the case with most fruit preserves.

elderberry jelly swirled into porridge

Elderberry jelly swirled into breakfast porridge

Now  it’s true that jelly making is a bit more fiddly than jam as it requires straining the cooked fruit through a jelly bag before combining with sugar.  But the smooth velvety texture you end up with is an utter delight.

The absence of sloes and damsons meant that our traditional trio of fruit gins is this year limited to blackberry.  Fruit spirits are a doddle to make and are best drunk fireside in the chilly months; either neat, in bijou glasses, or drizzled over pancakes for an impromptu and warming desert.  The base spirit can be either gin or vodka – any cheap supermarket brand will do.

blackberriesOur first blackberry forage in late September produced only a pound or so of smallish fruits and these all went into the gin.  I’d more or less given up on gathering any more until a bright morning at the end of October and a walk along some quiet lanes revealed a fine horde of plump fruit.  As we had come out without any bags or containers, we filled our pockets to overflowing.  Then decisions as to how  to make the best use of the prized harvest.

Blackberry ice-cream is definitely top of the list.  It is custard based, so less rich that other ices that use a lot of double cream. I plan to make a triple batch as it keeps in the freezer for a couple of months and works well with all those appley puds we eat in the winter with the fruit from our orchard.  It’s also good on its own with a slug of blackberry or sloe gin.

This will leave just a handful of berries to add some colour to a classic eve’s pudding.

Blackberry icecream

Place a pound or so of blackberries into a shallow baking tray and drizzle over 12 oz of sugar. Place in a warm oven and leave for half an hour until the sugar has dissolved and the berry juices have started to run.

Meanwhile, make a custard with the yolks of two eggs, a dessert spoon of flour or cornflour, the same of sugar and half a pint of milk.  Leave to cool once thickened.

For a truly velvety icecream, sieve the blackberry mix to remove all the pips.  This takes quite a while and can be hard on the hands but the end result is sublime.  Alternatively simply stir the unsieved blackberries into the cooled custard.

Whip half a pint of cream and add this to the blackberry custard.  Tip the whole lot into shallow plastic trays and pop into the freezer for a couple of hours until ice crystals start to form.  Once this happens, take it out of the freezer and give it a good beat with a fork until it is smooth.  Return to the freezer until fully frozen.