Hangover Cure

I was chatting with my Uncle Roger the other day about hangovers. I didn’t have one and I presume that neither did he but he had written a very amusing article about the perfect Hangover Cure and how there is actually no such thing. Since then I have done some research.

Last night Dave came home with a few half full bottles of wine left over from a wine tasting at Hove Tin Drum earlier in the day. Obviously, it’s quite important that I give a second opinion on certain matters so I gave the wine tasting my full attention – and, well, they all seemed rather lovely to me in the end…but that was last night.

Getting up this morning was a very nasty business. I crept downstairs for water expecting a few more hours sleep to discover that the morning had already set in: the sky was aluminium grey and a bullying wind pummelled the house. Dozens of black birds were being tossed about in the air; up and down they went as if on an invisible roller coaster. I wanted to be one of them, frolicking in the gale rather than wondering whether I was about to die.

There was no question of going back to bed and calling the day off: children had to be chivvied to school and we had people booked in to come and help outside, although I did think – as I watched the majestic oaks bowing under the force of the gale – that a nice mug of cocoa, a fire and a good book might be more sensible. I was just working out how to put this brainwave to Dave when he came into the kitchen with an agenda: it was far too wet to plant broad beans and garlic so Charlotte and I were to clear out the greenhouse, and move pigs again, whilst chef Matt – out from Hove for the day – would help Dave with more manly stuff.

The pigs have to be moved to fresh ground every week at the moment because in wet weather they can turn a vegetable patch into a swamp in a couple of days. Still, we have evolved a very efficient procedure for moving them. Pigs have the intelligence of a three year old child, apparently, and they do seem to know exactly what is going on and how they are supposed to behave. We have a holding pen in one corner of the field which is quite a walk from where the pigs now live. To move them, we wait until they are hungry and then I lead them with a bucket of food. It is all very straight forward and they follow obediently behind while I chat to them in a soothing way to keep them focused on me and the little walk that could go so horribly wrong if they had a mind to take a diversion.

The walk to the holding pen went without a hitch and we all blithely chatted about how easy this pig moving routine has become. Charlotte and I then grappled with the electric fencing string in the gale but eventually set the pigs up with a nice L-shaped floor plan bordered tantalizingly by parsley, celeriac and chard. It was then time to move the pig ark which is best done with four strong people and a lift from the tractor loader (although last week a frisky gust  lifted the ark out of the mud, flung it in the air, twisted it around a bit and dropped it back down in a crumpled heap narrowly missing the pigs). Just as we needed an extra pair of hands Sam arrived in the field still dazed and blinking from youthful slumber. Sam is related to Mary Poppins. He blew in to Starnash one night on an east wind and here he still is  - tending, mending and lending a hand wherever the need arises.

We set up the pig ark in its new location and then off we went to bring the pigs to their new home before lunch. Sam came with me and I gave him their bucket of food and opened the gate of the holding pen. I remember the words, ‘Just keep in front of them…’  drifting off on a breeze as three hungry pigs crashed through the gate, bypassed Sam, and broke into a combined 30 stone gallop heading straight for Dave. Seeing this tricky situation hurtling towards him, Dave did what any self-respecting bar owner would do and leapt into an assertive star shape. I don’t think the pigs noticed. Into the vegetable plot they thundered and by this time I had the food bucket and was trying to run ahead with the shrill cry of, ‘Piggies…Piggies!’ which  means ‘Food…food!’ But hey, why eat pig nuts when there is a kitchen garden spread out before you? And, come to think of it, why confine yourselves to a kitchen garden when there’s the world outside? So that is where they headed: one for the orchard and the fields that lead to the Cuckmere River, one for the main road via some ponds, and one to the next door neighbours house.

Golden rule: never chase a running pig – they think it’s really funny. And they’re nippier on those little trotters than ever you would believe. So, we all chased the pigs. All around the field they darted, round and round the house, through the back yard, flummoxing the chickens, and off to the orchard where the whole escapade was suddenly arrested by a glut of windfall apples. After about half an hour of running round we had all three in the orchard.  We filled the bucket with apples and acorns and offered it to Big Sow. Big Sow was pleased. A couple of grunts from her and the other girls fell into line and off I ran, leading them with the gentle call of,  ‘Piggies…piggies!’ through the garden, up a wooden plank, past the greenhouse and the huts, and into their new quarters where they settled down to a nice pile of pig nuts. On went the electric fence and we all heaved a small sigh of relief, and then I realized that not only was I feeling relieved, but that all signs of a hangover had completely disappeared and that I wasn’t going to die after all.

The Pig Run

November is a stroppy month. It comes flouncing in with its winds lashing, throwing fitful rain storms at us,  and then all of a sudden it is over and out comes the sun sparkling off the slippery mud as if nothing of the sort had happened. Things are beginning to look  pared back but not clean and bare as in mid-winter. There is a scruffiness about this time of year. I open our back door to the yard and there are the hens in a huddle on the door mat, looking dismayed, their feathers bedraggled by rain. Overhead fly the ducks in formation, their feathers oily and sleek, quacking mirthfully. My urge is to light a fire and snuggle up indoors and I am tempted to think that it is all over now until the spring but when I step outside there is still such a choice to be had. It is a time of year when there is no longer a confusion of produce, so we have to think more creatively about how to use what is out there.

 Here are the Tin Drum Land Army – Mark, Harvey, Magnus and Abbie - clearing the kitchen garden for no more than the price of a Guinness and some cheesy chips down at the Local. The bean poles are now down, the courgette plants are on the compost heap, the ruby spinach and salad rocket have gone to seed.

One day last week when the sky was white and the air was dry, Charlotte and I gathered seeds and laid them out to dry in the sheds. Seed gathering is an  intimate procedure and one of ultimate satisfaction - remembering the moment the initial seed was planted, thinking of all the food that has been consumed from a single plant and then saving for next year dozens of seeds borne of that first one .

Thistles and nettles have now taken over where once there were lettuces, broad beans and potatoes. At first sight it looks uninspiring and yet you walk around and look a little closer and there, right at our feet, are still box loads of vegetables. I set the children onto the field, hunting down Paris Market and Rainbow carrots, golden beetroot and rubine sprouts. Hidden away under giant dock leaves each find became a treasure. And growing in the field we still have our rainbow chard, spinach, Brussels sprouts, celeriac and more. Then there are the winter hardy herbs – parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme and bay. And medlar fruit now perfect for harvesting and bletting.

 

Early one morning last week I was drinking tea and looking out of the bedroom window while my bath was running. It was too early for thought, let alone running round a field in my pyjamas chasing a tractor with a trailer load of steaming manure. And yet that was how that day started, and every subsequent day for the rest of the week the same thing happened – a local farmer…'friend of So’n’so down the road – heard you wanted some muck’…would clatter up the drive unannounced and tip a few tonnes out onto our muck pile.

We now have thirty tonnes of the best manure from local farms; it ranges is colour from black to sepia and knowing what it is going to do to our soil and next years crops, it is really quite a beautiful sight to behold.  After a fortifying pint at the Plough Inn, the Tin Drum team set to work on the muck pile, laying it out thickly on the field…oh how they worked – and look who got to sit in the tractor!

November is a time to think about meat. Traditionally a pig  would be ready for slaughter at this time of year so that hams could be salted and preserved in time for Christmas and the winter.  It is also when we eat wild meat – pheasant, pigeon, rabbit and venison - that has reached maturity naturally. Sometimes, when I am cooking supper, the local game man turns up at the door with his catch of the day. We don’t order specifically from him, we just see what he’s got and then it goes onto the Tin Drum specials menu.

We have three Gloucester Spot-Middle White cross pigs at the moment. They have been working on a rhubarb patch for us for the last month or so, but we decided it was time to move them to fresh land and put them to work digging up the vegetable plot for us whilst rooting around for all the goodies we have missed. The pigs are a fair size and quite feisty now. Pigs are not slow and cumbersome, on the contrary, they are nippy movers and will knock anything out of the way in the pursuit of food. Our three acres isn’t stock fenced off from neighbouring properties and to a ‘Tamworth Two’ escape while we ran them the distance between their old home and the kitchen garden we had men, women and children on hand with boards to guide them should they stray. That was the plan, anyhow, but the great thing about pigs is their love of food and in the end a bucket of pig nuts was as good as any lead and they trotted along obligingly into their new quarters.