One foot over the pond

Trent will be off in 6 weeks. It’s a sod but even my tedious powers of persuasion have failed. I’d hoped to bore him into submission*…making his life a misery with endless reminders of exciting things happening over the next year, the dullness awaiting him him in the States…I even started a search for some loose women to try and convince him to stay but all I got was interest from the Village People (check the comments). All efforts were unsuccessful.

I think he may have wavered when we were in Malvern – the show was huge fun but it may have been the daily cooked breakfasts that caused a few moments of doubt. I even got my 5 year old daughter to lay it on thick…but that Trent has a heart of stone: he’s bought his plane ticket.

Six weeks is a long time though and we have much to do. Starting with the planting of an orchard of Japanese plums, which I’m very excited about. More about them next time (if I remember). And planting out the polytunnel forest garden with the more tender things (like this orange) that are getting tired of their life in a pot.

Next week, probably on Monday, we’ll be picking the first grapes. Those of you paying attention may remember that a month or two ago I was trying to find a way of having this year’s first, small grape harvest turned into wine without it being mixed with somebody else’s grapes. It’s no problem to have it made into wine but the harvest is too small for most wineries to want to make into its own separate batch.

I asked small wineries near here and one I know in Hampshire but no joy. A very fine man suggested I try a small, young winery near him, in Sussex.

I rang. No way, quarter of a ton? Forget it. I’d love to, but no…needs to be 2 tonnes at least…shame though, it would be fun.

We chatted some more, mostly about the varieties I was growing and where he’d learnt to do what he does. He liked the mix of fairly reliable grapes (Seyval blanc) with more adventurous ones (Sauvignon blanc, Pinot Noir and Gewürztraminer). I smelt a change in the air…we kept talking. He, Ulrich, started talking about maybe there is a small tank he could borrow…

So a deal has been done, a pricey deal, but for that I get wine made only from grapes grown here at Otter Farm and Ulrich gets what’s fair for the mess about of dealing with such a small quantity. It has it’s compromise – 350 miles added to the carbon footprint of the wine isn’t ideal but on the upside that will be spread between (hopefully) 200 bottles.

We now have to watch the grapes very closely. The balance between development of the sugars and the onset and spread of rot is critical. The warm wet patch last week kicked off a little light rot but the cold wind is keeping it from spreading too quickly. Monday looks like the day.

Trent and I will be up at dawn’s crack to pick as quickly as we can – crating up the bunches and driving away from home up to Hayward’s Heath immediately to deliver the grapes to Ulrich. It had to be the same day, so after a few hours dawn picking Trent and I will be in for that 350 mile round trip. Then a long wait….the grapes will be crushed immediately but, as we’re making sparkling wine, it’ll be over a year until we might even think about tasting it.

So that’ll leave 5 Trent weeks. Five part-time weeks to plant a couple of hundred plants into an extended forest garden as well as a couple of small orchards of plumcots and Szechuan peppers.

The forest garden expansion means these dark evenings are bein spent planning very quickly so that we can get planting as soon as possible, so that the plants get as many days of warm soil and root growth before the winter as possible. There are hundreds of plants to consider – the product of overambitious purchasing last winter (and the winter before to be fair). We also have to pick the rest of the apples, the medlars and all the autumn olive, which is looking fabulous.

And I have to keep Trent’s mind away from being on the other side of the Atlantic for a short while yet. It may not be easy. The Elaeagnus ebbingei is in flower and the scent is incredible. Five or six feet tall, right at the edge of the forest garden by the pig pen, the Elaeagnus lets out invisible clouds of fragrance that’s not a million miles away from the scent of broad bean flowers – which may well be my most happy-making smell.

I told Trent about it, urging him to have a smell. He pushed his face in smiling, like a man having a waterfall shower. He couldn’t place the smell at first. Like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, he felt for it ‘It smells like….like…Hawaii’.

* I used to be good at this. In the first house I lived in when I left home, I would have a winning strategy if no-one wanted to come down the pub. I’d stand on the stairs outside my best friend’s room with my chin on the landing level of his door. He knew I was there and couldn’t concentrate on a thing. He try and ignore me but he couldn’t. I knew I was winning if the stereo volume went up – he was trying to drown out the voice in his head that was compelling him to open the door to see if I was there. I’d stay there as long as it took. I knew, in time, I’d break his resolve and that pint would be mine. I’m not a nice man.