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Liz Wright is Editor of Smallholder Magazine, which she compiles from her smallholding in the Cambridgeshire Fens. In her spare time, as well as keeping bees and growing fruit and veg, she works with her Exmoor ponies, which include a stallion, and sometimes even gets to ride her Welsh cob. She also covers Cambridgeshire for the Donkey Sanctuary, which is based in Sidmouth. She's a parish councillor and a school governor for a local secondary school and her friends say that she clearly spends more time outside than inside to judge by the state of her unfortunate house! Liz says she doesn't mind if one of them offers to clean it for her but so far no one has! Liz really enjoys visiting other landscapes and is very fond of Wales where she has always felt very welcome during her time of involvement with the RWAS Smallholder and Garden Festival held in May. Her really big vice is second hand books - she collects farming and gardening books from the pre and post war years - and sadly ebay has fuelled this rather space occupying habit so that the books now have more room than the family!
This picture shows Liz with Duckle. Her book, Choosing and Keeping Ducks and Geese (available from Amazon), is dedicated to Duckle. Liz's latest books 'Self-sufficiency: A Practical Guide for Modern Living' has just been published and is available from Amazon.
An archive of Liz's articles is available. Read on for her latest news...
September & October 2011
From Liz Wright (with apologies to John Keats)
‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’
Autumn once more and with it a sneaky sigh of relief that the long summer days are coming to and end and that it may once more be possible to sit down for an hour or so in the evening rather than stay outside until the very last light has gone. We frequently eat at ten or later in the summer – there really isn’t time for barbequeing as we garden, do summer maintenance, fetch in hay and bee keep. Although I hate the extreme cold and find the days where it is dark by four pm unbelievably tiresome, I am not much keener on the high days of summer where I find we work so hard every evening after our daytime jobs. So I am a huge fan of Autumn as its normally warm enough without being hot, the days are still a good length until the clocks go back and there is not quite so much to do. I love the smell of the first mists and the foraging in the hedgerows of blackberries, crab apples and hips and haws. I like the first signs of the ponies getting woolly – no rugs for my ponies, they are native ponies and have better coats than I could provide. And finally there is time to jar that honey from the summer and not having so much outside work with the bees.
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells
On the subject of bees, on EH Thorne’s Facebook page there is an important message from Andy Wattam Head of Bee Health – FERA in which he says he has taken to carrying sugar syrup in his car as some bee keepers have starving bees with no stores. He says “ Please, please – heft hives to check for weight, look inside and see what is happening, Feed now to ensure winter survival unless hives are so heavy you can hardly lift them.
Keep an eye on the wasp situation and reduce entrances/set traps where necessary.
He added, “We are now into a dearth of nectar, unless you are within flying distance of a specific crop which is providing something of value, and from what I can see in most areas it is a few days before the Ivy comes properly into flower to be of use (early September).. Please, please – heft hives to check for weight, look inside and see what is happening, Feed now to ensure winter survival unless hives are so heavy you can hardly lift them.”.
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
In the November issue of Smallholder magazine which is due out mid September, we devote several pages to apples including a straightforward but effective recipe for brewing apple wine. Celebrate apples with us! I have four trees and thanks to an apple day identification I have identified them all and know which ones are eaters and which ones are keepers (eg keep through until the new year). They date from 1910 and I have never pruned them but they yield a huge number of apples. It’s staggering to think they are a hundred years old now.
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours
Mostly we make cider from them but I do try and make some blackberry and apple pies and chutney as well though September and October are always exceptionally busy months both on and off the smallholding. Mick, my partner, goes to ploughing days and matches at this time of the year with his grey fergie and newly acquired Massey 35. I started off being not all that interested in these but they are growing on me and I may even have a go at a ploughing match for women in November.
I judge at the City Harvest Show at Enfield in September which is an exhausting but very satisfying day. It’s so amazing the range and quality of the vegetables grown on City farms and the young people are highly competent at handling and understanding their animals – from cattle through to guinea pigs. It’s always a difficult choice as the animals are in such excellent condition and some of the best pure bred poultry including some cracking Aylesbury ducks can be found at this show. www.farmgarden.org.uk
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Have your swallows left yet? Most of ours have now gone but we still have a few stragglers raising broods in the stables. I do hope they will make it back safely across the seas on their long journey. My thoughts turn to the bird table and the winter. There is plenty in the hedges at the moment but I still put out some sunflower seeds and peanuts and the robin is making himself known twittering around wherever I am. Must buy some meal worms. I have put away some feeders from last winter but left a few out which I will now take down and clean before refilling ready for a bird feeding winter. Already we have seen the Woodpecker on the nuts and the Long tailed tits have returned.
Not so much demand this year as last year for my hybrid POLs but I hope they all find new homes in the next month or so together with the Welsh Harlequin ducks that we bred this year. They give excellent value with the POLs laying all through the winter and the ducks beginning early in the new year and being very prolific.
We finished our last hay 10th September which was from a nature reserve and contains some lovely grasses and plants (carefully checked for poisonous ones of course). The Exmoor ponies love it and we are pleased to have some extra to get us through what could be a cold winter.
Liz Wright is reading Alexander’s Schwab Mushrooming with confidence (Merlin Unwin books) – there will be an extract in November’s Smallholder magazine and the delightful children’s book, Hannah and the Honey Bees by Alison Simms and published by Beecraft. Extracts from John Keats “Ode to Autumn” as relevant today as it was well over 100 years ago.
Words and Photos by Liz Wright
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