Welcome to the July 2020 blog, where we look back at life in the Bridge Cottage garden and kitchen over the past month, and our attempts to live a more sustainable life in this summer month.

It’s been a wet and cold July up here in Northumberland, and we’ve been wondering where summer went to. I think we had it back in May! I hear the south is basking in hot sunshine, but as I write this, it’s grey and windy, and two of our sunflowers have just blown down. Never mind, we have sunshine to look forward to this weekend, and the garden is in full bloom, with dahlias and lilies coming into their own, and tall sunflowers reaching for the sky, turning their faces to look for the sun.

We are very grateful for our garden during these difficult Covid-19 times. Growing your own food has never been so important, and we’re delighted to hear of many of you planting out allotments and veg plots for the first time. We’ve continued to support our local Food Bank, dropping off donations for the Hexham Fresh Food Bank Group. This is a great scheme; food poverty being a tragic part of life for so many in our communities

The lockdown was eased after a fashion, but we still kept ourselves very much to ourselves. Having kept out of the supermarkets during the lockdown, we found our shopping habits continued in this vein, and with so much ready in the garden, we have been eating very simply indeed. In Hexham, we have some great independent shops, which have seen us buying cheese, butter, olives & cream for our local Deli at Number 4, and rice, pasta, coffee and other basics from the new Refill Shop on Market Street. We have a fabulous Farmer’s Market in Hexham town centre too.

July saw us engage with Plastic Free July, and whilst we’ve always been keen to reduce our use of plastic (one of the reasons we steer clear of supermarkets where possible), this month we really looked at the plastic in our home and made a few more changes to our habits.

 

Toilet rolls are an ongoing debate with many, and discussions took place over on our Facebook and Instagram accounts about where the bamboo is sourced, that so much of ethical toilet roll is made from, where it is made, and how it is shipped. We bought a box of ‘Who Gives a Crap’ and very much like that their rolls are made from recycled paper, and that this past year they donated 3.2 million pounds to help provide sanitation in communities where it is lacking.

Refill shops are a great way of saving plastic, and we’ve made the switch to solid shampoo bars, and refills for washing-up liquid and other household cleaning products. We’ve also now got a pile of reusable wipes in the bathroom for when our granddaughter has her nappy changes or if we need a freshen up, made by cutting up an old towel. A handy bag hangs on the loo roll holder, and they are washed, ready to be used again.

There are so many other ways single-use plastic can be reduced – our local Eco Home shop, Matthais Winter, will take toothpaste tubes for recycling, and has a huge range of products. We recently needed new clothes pegs and found some wooden ones there.

The garden is now being bountiful, with so many wonderful veggies and fruit. We’ve eaten some glorious meals using spinach and kale and discovered Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipe for Spouffle in his book, Veg. The Bridge Cottage chickens are laying well, so spinach quiches and omelettes are regulars on the table. Courgettes are coming thick and fast, and the red onions and shallot lifted, thanks to our little helper, the Lady of Shallot.

 

 

 

 

 

Pam Corbin in her book, Preserves, gives a wonderful nasturtium pesto recipe, which we had with roast chicken, cooked in our outdoor wood-fired oven.

 

July is the month for soft fruit, and we’ve picked pounds of raspberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants. I discovered a great recipe for a redcurrant cake from Mrs Portly’s Kitchen, and an equally wonderful blackcurrant cheesecake from Gill Meller’s fabulous book Root, Stem, Leaf, Flower. We have enjoyed some warm days, and homemade ice-cream – so much better than shop-bought!

• growing raspberries
• homemade ice-cream

Many have been jam and jelly making in earnest – I’ve made a batch of redcurrant jelly, but apart from that have been too busy gardening or writing content for this new website, so all the soft fruit picked has gone into the freezer. Tim will soon be making raspberry and blackcurrant vinegar, and I’ll make up batched of summer fruit compote to have with our homemade yoghurt in the mornings, or on porridge. You’ll find a recipe for Raspberry Jam over in The Bridge Cottage Kitchen.

• jam and jelly making
• raspberry jam

We’re continuing to dry herbs for use over winter and make our own herbal teas. July is seeing me use calendula, borage, mint and lemon balm in a delicious tea. We’re also drinking a lot of cucumber water – with a bit of fizz from the soda stream. I had a friend over for a socially distanced cup of tea (how I’ve missed my friends during lockdown) and took this as an opportunity to make a batch of herby shortbread. This time I used calendula and borage, but have also had great success with calendula and thyme or lavender shortbread.

• drying herbs
• make your own herbal tea
• herb shortbread

Now is also a great time to sow winter salad, bulb fennel, winter cabbages, all year round cauliflower, spinach, kale and sprouting broccoli, which will sprout in the early Spring. The long days are still here, and once onions are lifted, and potatoes dug, there will be space for these late summer sowings. I think we get so excited in Spring and can plant massive amounts of seeds, then successional sowing can sometimes go out of the window. I’m off this afternoon to pop some fennel seedlings in the ground, next to the squash. I wrote about companion planting this month. our vegetables are like us, they have friends they’d rather be with than others, That is one reason for all the nasturtiums, borage and calendulas in the garden, They make great companions for many plants.

 

 

 

Tomatoes are ripening nicely in the greenhouse, and in next month’s instalment, I’ll let you know how we make our own passata and ‘sun’ dried tomatoes. It’s a daily job to keep everything watered and fed. We’re so glad we took the time to make our own organic comfrey feed. We’ve been adding borage to the bin too, and this provides so many good nutrients. The tomatoes love it!

• Make your own organic comfrey feed.

I think I’d better go now, I could waffle on forever! I hope this has given you a snapshot of life in July here in 2020, a year that will go down in history for many reasons. Will this be the year you started to grow your own food? I hope so!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As ever, we’d love you to share your thoughts, either by leaving a comment here or on our social media pages, where this article will be shared.

You can find the Bridge Cottage Way on Facebook Twitter and Instagram.

You might enjoy some of the writing and ideas in other sections of this website, as we look towards leading more sustainable lives by growing our own food and creating dishes in line with seasonal eating, or head to our handy ‘Month by Month’ guides to find out what we have been doing here at Bridge Cottage as the months go by:

• Sustainable Living
• The Bridge Cottage Garden
• The Bridge Cottage Kitchen
• Month by Month
• Recipes
• Foraging – Food for Free

Many thanks for reading.

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