I spent most of the morning saving the seed off my favourite
bush cabbage plant. I'd grown a patch of them on the area we spread the
humanure on a couple of years ago, so I was rather fond of them as it felt like they'd already been a part of me once. There was one purple cabbage, which grew straight and tall and strong, and, as I'm a bit of a purple-breather, this was my favourite and I wanted to gather its seed separately. I liked the idea of how something that had once been part of me was then part of this seed, and would again be part of the next cycle of cabbage, maybe for many generations to come. I also rather liked the stem, which seemed to be just asking to be left to season for a year and then turned into a staff, so I stood it up behind my chair and told it to be patient.
My other half was dividing his time between making up more bits for his top-bar hives and gathering our first
gingas, which are a small, sour cherry that the Portuguese use to make a liqueur rather like sloe-gin. Ideally you use home-grown firewater, but we haven't bought a still yet, so he improvised with store bought sugar and a bottle of gin to make our Christmas treat. He also made up a few jars with apricots, as our trees are finally giving us enough so that I don't just automatically pig them all as they ripen. I think next Christmas is going to be a good one!
Then we had some visitors arrive who wanted to buy chickens, and it turned out they were into permaculture so we had a great chat about mulch and swales and hugelkulture and bone-sauce and chicken breeding, and they left with ten of my home-bred hens.
I think, finally, it's all starting to fit together!
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