Ted The Shed, Chapter 17 - Bringing In The Harvest

It is time to bring in our substantial harvest of cabbages, spuds, tomatoes, pumpkins, beans and berries. Dad begs to be excused on the grounds that he is neither a 'cabbage man' nor a 'pumpkin man' but Mr MS buckles down, loading the new wheelbarrow and trundling it in the direction of the camper van. Then comes the problem of what to do with all the produce.

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Transcript

Hello there,

It's Mandy here.

Welcome back to Ted the Shed,

My memoir about my dad's allotment.

We've reached late September 2011 now and tonight's chapter is called Bringing in the Harvest.

But before I begin,

Please go ahead and make yourself really comfortable.

Settle down into your bed or chair.

Relax your hands.

Relax your shoulders.

And just try and slacken your jaw a little to relieve any tension there.

That's wonderful.

Okay,

Then if you're ready,

I'll begin.

Late September 2011,

Bringing in the Harvest.

The gift of the massive Savoy cabbage is now safely behind us.

We ate most of it mixed with mash and sprinkled with grated cheddar,

Then baked.

A simple but satisfying recipe from the website Dadfound.

During that fortnight it was terrifically windy.

It was tempestuous outdoors too and at the allotment only the crops that kept their heads down survived.

Apples and plums plummeted and there were downpours of damsons like purple rain.

Brassicas were battered and sunflowers summarily beheaded by the wind's guillotine.

On our plot we picked some runner beans before the wind blew my tower down and then picked the rest at ground level.

Now it is only the lowriders of the fruit and veg world that remain unscathed.

Blackberries,

Potatoes,

Cabbages and tomatoes that were miraculously sheltered by the fence and the pumpkin.

Actually,

I can't imagine anything defeating the pumpkin.

The stealthy rapid way it has covered the ground all summer has been terrifying.

If you sit still and watch you can almost see it grow.

It seems to be heading for the A65 to Leeds.

So there is some harvesting to do.

Dad has asked to be excused,

Not just on health grounds but because he's not really a cabbage man.

Not much of a pumpkin man either,

He adds.

Furthermore,

He is spotted buying potatoes from Tommy Tesco's.

He ate a lot of home guard spuds but doesn't like my King Edwards.

I like a nice boiled spud,

He says,

Yours go abroad in the pan.

Then dog MS begs off too.

There are some urgent sticks in her in tray and some long overdue barking to do,

Especially at the ironing board which needs taking down a peg or two.

As harvest manager,

It's obviously not my role to do the grunt work of bending,

Picking and lugging heavy veg about.

So it gets passed down the chain to Mr Mandy Sutter.

After making protracted notes in his diary,

A prelude vital to the success of any mission,

He makes it to the plot where he loads cabbages into carrier bags and unearthed spuds of pink and golden hue.

I pick a few berries and say I need to be careful not to give myself another bursitis.

We pile all the veg into our new wheelbarrow and head back to our camper van.

On the way there,

Mr MS slows to a standstill.

He has spotted a whole hammock full of onions on a neighbour's plot.

They lounge,

Enjoying an afternoon of autumn sunshine.

He eyes them enviously.

I crack a whip across his glistening flanks.

He doesn't budge,

But I have a secret card up my sleeve.

I'm thinking of making a blackberry and apple loaf when we get home,

I say casually,

And I think there's some cream left to go on it.

His eyes flare and he moves off with his load towards the camper van.

I am triumphant.

The harvest is in.

Our substantial harvest brings tasks in its wake.

We have to figure out what to do with all the produce.

The blackberries and potatoes are easy.

The berries go straight in the freezer.

The spuds are wiped clean,

Then layered between sheets of newspaper in a sack that goes into a cubbyhole at the top of the cellar steps.

The two pumpkins go atop a kitchen cabinet.

The tomatoes and cabbage,

However,

Will take a bit more work.

Unfortunately,

Dad,

Mr MS,

Dog MS and I are all pickle-averse.

Mr MS had a picklily incident aged 17 and hasn't touched the stuff since.

Dog MS tried to eat a pickled onion and had a sneezing fit that nearly took her head off.

Dad is a mono-condimentalist and that condiment is HP sauce and I've not been keen since someone put some Branston pickle down the toilet as a joke.

But now that we're allotmenteers,

We must change.

The idea that fresh vegetables only last a week must be scotched.

What can't be endured must be cured.

It has been a bad year for blight,

Or a good one if you are a blighter,

And the tomatoes went straight from green to rotten,

Leaving out that useful bit in between.

But we did rescue some of the green ones before they succumbed.

I find a recipe for chutney and chop them up,

Lobbing in some red and yellow ones from the green grocers too.

They roil in the pan together like traffic light stew.

A shame it all has to turn brown in the end.

We sample it before leaving it to mature and despite being the same colour as the blighted tomatoes,

It tastes cracking.

I use it to top a bath oliver and some cave-aged Emmental.

Mr MS,

Who finds these ingredients pretentious,

Substitutes with a Jacob's Cream Cracker and a Dairy Lee Triangle.

Pickling doesn't end there.

A friend,

Hearing about our cabbage crop,

Lends me a fermenting pot.

Ideal,

He says,

For making sauerkraut.

Mr MS is suspicious.

Yes,

But what is sauerkraut exactly?

Do you eat it hot or cold and what with?

It's pickled cabbage,

I say.

You can eat it any way you want.

I don't know why I always pretend to know everything when talking to Mr MS.

I've no idea whether you can eat it hot,

But I begin reeling off different kinds of German sausage,

Unmoved by his baffled expression.

Then I relent.

Hot dogs,

I say.

Suddenly he is a different man.

Hot dogs?

Why didn't you say so before?

That's the thing with men,

Folk.

Eventually you have to speak their language.

To be accurate,

Sauerkraut doesn't involve pickling,

But fermenting.

Also,

I discover,

Watching the exceptionally long DVD that comes with the pot,

Where a German chap with massive sideburns and a joining handlebar moustache holds forth about the health benefits of fermented foods.

It's only after about an hour of exposition that he finally begins explaining how to make the actual sauerkraut.

For him,

It obviously isn't just about passing on a recipe,

It's a religion.

That's the thing about allotmenteering.

You don't have to look very far into any of its aspects before you stumble across arcane subcultures,

Peopled by evangelical folk with excess facial hair and home-knitted trousers,

Or no trousers at all in the case of World Naked Gardening Day.

There are feature film-length DVDs and books about recycling your own pee,

There are potato days,

There are scarecrow festivals,

The list goes on.

But back to the sauerkraut,

And eventually,

After a hell of a lot of shredding,

Salting,

And pressing everything down into the pot,

Where it makes its own juice,

It's ready to leave for a few weeks.

I put it on the cellar steps,

Where it should keep nice and cool.

I plan to lift the lid on it next month.

If I can get the vision of the handlebar moustache out of my mind,

I may even eat some.

To be continued.

Reviews

The humor here was delightful! Particularly the pickle averse reactions and your getting Mr MS away from those onions! Thank you Mandy🌟💜

Food is also my husband’s language!
😆 Thank you for being my early morning companion Mandy 🙏

Oh Mandy, I love your subtle since of humor and I caught your "windy" joke. 😉 Fabulous chapter, as always!

For soo many reasons, this is my new fav chapter!! 😅Mandy, you must publish a book of Recipes From Our Allotment! This would of course include photos of the scarecrows and pumpkins and Dog MS and the hoomans ❤️

Love these readings, thank you Mandy! xx

Fell asleep so fast, I’ll have to listen again to hear about the harvest. I vaguely remember something about wind so strong it decapitated the sunflowers. Thank you Mandy for sharing this story!

You are so freakin funny!!! Absolutely love this story (being a hippie farmer myself, just loving it 😅😅💐💐