I’ve had a fabulous Christmas and New Year, thanks for asking. It was dominated by more than my share of Christmas pud, our nation’s finest sportsman winning his 15th world title (which I think made him quite happy, the ref perhaps less so), my 4 year old asking me to marry her, and receiving a very fine preserving pan. Not quite all the ingredients for a film with either Martin Sheen or Michael Sheen playing me, I know.
Talking of Hollywood stars (seamless stuff eh) Warren Beatty reckons he’s slept with getting on for 13000 women. After calculating my own slightly lower tally (he is a few years older than me after all) it got me wondering (in that end-of-year way) about a couple of other tallies – how many plants I’d sunk into the soil in the 5 years of Otter Farm, and the visitors to this website.
Apparently Warren deems it beneath him to include “daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on” in his total. Oh the luxury. Upon such rocks is my own (currently) less-than-Beattyesque total built. But when calculating the Otter Farm inventory I will take a leaf out of his book and discount all passing fancies and commonness – so there’ll be no annuals, broadcast-sown perennials, or anything vaguely falling near to but not quite into those two categories.
Handily, Warren’s list doesn’t exclude any that are no longer alive, and I feel to veer away from Warren’s guiding path at this point would be churlish. I’ll find an evening to add them up this month and let you know, avid reader.
Like Warren, I do like to make a clean breast of things once in a while and as we stride happily into New Year it seems as good a time as any. In Spring last year I mentioned that some of the olives had died, others were doing ok, and probably more interestingly the debt I owe a researcher on ‘Richard and Judy‘.
Before the coldest weather arrived this last month I decided to take some action. 120 olive trees went in 3 years ago – a third are now dead, a third ok, a third thriving. Some died due to wildlife and my dimness, most departing due to the combined effect of a couple of disappointing summers – olives keep much of their energy in their leaves, so even if there’s a harsh winter they tend to be fine if they have the chance to put on good new growth in a good summer. Two years on the trot they didn’t.
6 varieties were planted, some hardier than others, and the split of ‘dead’ to ‘so-so’ to ‘happy’ follows the varieties pretty well, and I now know where the lines between ‘viable’, ‘reasonable gamble’ and ‘too vulnerable’ lie.
Up came the dead third. Excellent kindling they make too. One in the eye for Warren: I bet he doesn’t start his open fires with olive wood. Read em and weep Mr B.
Which left me a choice – infill the grove with other olives, infill with other trees and make a mixed orchard, or think more creatively. Uncharacteristically I went for the last option.
Up came all but the end two rows, where the happiest variety is growing. The rest are now in pots in the polytunnel, awaiting Spring, when they’ll be scattered around the farm in ones and twos – a few in the forest garden, one by the veg patch, a few as you come into the first field, one or two in the perennial allotment etc. Already it feels like sense – the place needs a little random character, and although I sometimes give the impression that it’s otherwise, Otter farm is (amongst other things) supposed to be a sensible business – and as an acre-sized grove the olives weren’t pulling their weight.
So, a spare acre. Not only that, the best acre of the 17. South(ish) facing, with well-drained soils on river gravels dumped many thousands of years ago as the path of the river moved east.
It took me about 4 seconds to decide what would go in its place: two hundred of the very promising new Spanish olive variety (of which more soon) and 750 vines for dessert wine. We make precious little of it in England and I think that way something lovely lies. And a cheeky 100 or so Riesling vines just to see.
The rest of this year’s plant wishlist has already started to arrive – more about them soon too.
In the meantime, I should come clean about one more thing: for the last 2 months I’ve done little else but write the book. So all the digging up, the repotting, and the vine pruning has been done by Trent. Happily I’ll be out there more when the big planting starts. Until then, out in the cold, two days a week, Trent has made himself indispensible.
The other tally: the visitors to this website. There were almost 60000 unique visits to the Otter Farm website last year. A person coming to the site and looking at 10 pages counts as one visit; that person coming back the next day counts as 2. I suspect that this total isn’t made up of 60000 people making one visit a year, or 3 people making 20000 visits a year. It seems to me to be a rather large total, especially given that nothing is sold here.
To Trent and all you visitors, thank you: I rely on you.
An odd choice; Adrian Chiles singing "I Rely on You" ?
And is that Will Self (when he had more hair) on guitar?
And what vines will you be planting for the dessert wines? Muscat? Semillon? And will you be counting on botrytis to come in (any morning mists during autumn perhaps?) or go for the more 'vin doux naturel' style dessert wines?
13,000 women- that's just greedy, really.
Most of us would at least have to include quickies to get close to that figure.
60,000 people is an awful lot. Did they hang around or just take a quick look and head off to Tescos?
I really enjoyed reading about your olives. Surprised that Spanish olives might do better but dont know what I'm talking about. As for Warren Beatty – how old is he does that work out as one a week? Not sure if that is something I would boast about
Had no idea darts involved such hot boy-on-boy action! Tongues and all, i reckon. I particularly love the classic comedy just-been-snogged angle of the ref's glasses.
'Fraid the Warren Beatty total just makes me feel a bit nauseous. I am envious of your vines though. I keep trying to persuade myself that some might grow up here (South facing slope, quick draining soil) but handily ignoring the height and the northerlyness. And how do they cope with snow? We are doing good snow up here just now. Are you?
Richard – Sieggerebe for sure, Ortega maybe, plus a couple of marginals we are thinking about. Got to be careful as you're after something that ripens early that you can take a gamble on into autumn but not have to finger-cross too much into the very wettest times. That way trouble lies in what is already an already interesting gamble.
James – agreed about the quickies. Said to the Mrs: any chance of a quickie? She replied : As opposed to?
PG – the spanish olives are a particular very old variety that the Catalan government spent a shedful on improving – taking allthe great qualities and encouraging it to produce well, and high up the mountain, disease resitance etc. It's one of two or three varieties that are being planted in the big new olive plantations in Argentina and California. They are definitely precocious – I have a hundred or two in the open-doored polytunnel, a couple of years old, 18 inches tall, waiting til they get to a size to plant out – they're already producing handfuls of olives that ripen purple. Can they do it outdoors? Who knows, but encouraging
Lai – see, I told you it was the sport of kings
Elizabeth – the most northerly vineyard is in Shropshire I think – altitude probably a real limitation where you are though..how high are you? The vines are fine in the snow once they are dormant – which after such a mild autumn was late this year
Hello Joy – glad you like it. I cnt seem toget along with setting up an RSS feed – always goes doolalley. Or rather I dont set it up properly Im sure. I think you some followers get alerts via googlereader though.
Must agree with Elizabeth on this one, Warren Beattys total makes me shudder particularly as he has got a face like a bag of spanners!
Congratulations on all of your visitors, I am amazed when a couple each day find my little blog!
Natalie.
Oh, I would go for Martin rather than Charlie Sheen – better actor!
I notice from this weekend's papers that Mr Beatty's conquests number more than the entire population of Milford Haven.
It would probably be quite interesting to actually set out to sleep with an entire town provided one was neither too fussy nor too ambitious.
Honiton is a possibility if you didn't want to travel.
It really is no wonder his films are rubbish!
ok, I'll take your advice JAS. I'm neither fussy nor ambitious…and your suggestion means I have the suitable recovery/warm up time required for a man of my increasing years.
Natalie – Bonnie and Clyde is truly marvellous, although you are right – there are many crimes against filmmaking with his name attached to them. And…..if you're after more blog visitors it may be worth adding your blogurl to your sign-in ID when commenting – that'll send nosy folk like me off to your blog for a look.
Came across this by chance and it will be good to follow your progress to see how things pan out.
It's bad luck that we've had such lousy weather over the last 3 years or so, but don't get disheartened – it can only improve!
Here's wishing you well and it's good to see such a mad-cap and quintessentially English attempt at living the Mediterranean dream.
May your olives be forever saturated in the booze of your choice. Cheers.