The Comfort-Lover's Veg

This is my veg box.

I did start to grow my own veg when I first moved into my house. Great beans, rubbish carrots. When I became ill, that was the first thing to go. And by the time my energy was coming back, I had discovered the wonderful local farm which grows everything from potatoes and leeks, to tomatoes and sweetcorn, with the usual assortment of squashes thrown in.
Which leaves me with a dilemma. I want to grow my own veg, but I’d be growing the same things at the same time as the farm, and I fill my freezer with veg stews and soups as it is. Plus the veg in this veg box is about as fresh as you can get. Everything is dug up or picked the day before you collect, and you can’t get much fresher than that.

Okay, so it’s a fifteen minute drive away. But, like most people who get their veg there, I’ve gradually joined forces with others who live near me (i.e. within walking distance), so usually no one collects every week. Veg share. If I gave up the veg box, there would be plenty of people to take my place and not let me back in. An eighteen month waiting list of people at the last count, and I’m not going back to the end of that queue. No way.

So I’m not giving up my veg box. Despite never quite knowing what’s coming next, the weird squashes and vegetables you’ve never heard of and haven’t a clue what to do with, and curly kale coming out of your ears when it’s in season. And Jerusalem artichokes, which, in my opinion, should be allowed nowhere near polite society.
Sad to say, this is my last veg box but one of the season. This veg is so fresh the boxes only appear during the growing season, from May to January. Hence a freezer packed full of stews and soups to carry me over the lean times when it’s a return to the supermarket or a scurry round the health food shops in search of an organic potato fix. It would, of course, would be exactly the same with any veg I tried to grow here in my garden. In fact worse, because I’m higher up and on much poorer soil to start with.

So I think I’ve just talked myself out of digging and watering and the eternal non-chemical war with slugs. Or maybe not. I was thinking of getting a greenhouse, and pottering about with a few tomatoes. But now I think I might be brave and go for a polytunnel instead. A small one, of course. I like the idea of its own little eco-climate and growing things like grapes and melons and experimenting with the slightly more exotic. I assumed that all polytunnels were of the strictly commercial variety. But apparently not. They come in all shapes and sizes, and I’ll still have room left for a few fruit bushes and trees and an a home for three or four ex-battery hens. (If I get that far). And keep the flowers, of course.

So that’s my plans for the spring sorted out. Which will have to wait as there’s no way I’m digging in soil that’s only just recovering from being snowbound and deep frozen for the past weeks. Meanwhile, I shall do the winter thing of staying in the warm cooking up lots of swede and carrot and potatoes with a few leeks into a big pan of soup for next week. The best packed lunch in town!

And I know spring is on the way. This week, I only had my own veg to collect for once, so I walked down the little track to the farm, on the principle that every walk can be a dog walk and with a youthful collie the more walking opportunities the better. We strolled back with the veg in my arms, dog sniffing happily in the undergrowth. It was one of those still winter evenings when you can just smell spring in the air. A pale sky stretched above us, laced with the black branches of trees. A bird was singing. Can shopping possibly get better than this? Then I discovered that funny thump, thump noise was the sound of me leaving a trail of potatoes behind me in the mud....

Perhaps it was as well there were only the squirrels there to see the ensuing scrabbling about in puddles in the dusk, and they had other things (as in dog) on their minds.

Right, time to cook that veg and have another go at making yoghurt. I was all set last week, but as everybody up here in the mountains had been snowbound for weeks, last weekend was when everybody caught up with each other. It was like Christmas all over again, which was great, except by the time all the visitors had gone, so had the milk. So I had the rest of the chocolate and a glass of wine instead.

It’s still raining outside, up here on my bit of mountain, and plain nasty. So soup and yogurt-making, here I come.