Prepare to Bee amazed

Yesterday, my mind was blown. My mind was blown because I never realised how amazing bees are. I went on the first of a two day course in beekeeping at Walworth Garden Farm in central London.

In central London? I hear you say. Beekeeping and a farm garden? In central London.

Well, yes. Yes, indeed. Walworth Garden Farm is near Kennington tube station. Put your hands up if this means anything to you. If it doesn’t, think council estates, think bricks, think high apartment blocks. And you can see why a farm would seem out of place here. Yet there it is and it thrives in the midst of the concrete.

The morning was spent getting to know each other and getting to grips with the basics of bees, which consisted of the following:

There are three types of bees – a queen bee, the worker bees and the drones. They are all interdependent on each other and cannot survive unless each is present.

The queen bee, after she has hatched, will take trips out of the hive for the first few weeks of her life. These trips are to find male bees to mate with (which they do in the air). The queen bee saves up all the sperm from this mating period, as she will never mate again in her life. Her life is spent laying eggs and she uses the sperm she has saved to fertilise them. If she is laying a drone egg, she doesn’t fertilise it. It becomes an exact copy of herself. When that drone then goes out and mates with another bee, the queen bees DNA continues on.

The way a queen bee knows whether to lay a fertilised egg (which will become a worker bee) or an unfertilised egg (which becomes a drone) is by measuring the size of the cell the bees have built. The bees build bigger cells for drones so when the queen bee measures it with her legs, if it is a bigger cell, she lays a drone egg.

(By this point in the day, I was overwhelmed. I never realised bees were so mindblowingly clever.)

Bees also each go and collect one of three things when they go out – nectar, pollen or propolis. No-one yet knows how they figure out who’s doing what so that they have the rights amounts of each thing.

To keep the temperature of the ‘brood’ (the growing eggs and larvae) at 30 degrees, if it is cold outside, they will huddle together and vibrate their wing muscles (shoulder muscles, if you will) to keep warm. If it is hot, they will fly out to find water, then create an indoor aid conditioning system by spitting/spraying the water out and flapping their wings. The bees will all flap their wings in a certain direction to circulate the air one way and cool everyone down.

After sitting around being amazed all morning, it was time for a quick lunch break and wander in the garden…

Then for the afternoon, we were split into two groups, with half of us going to look at the beehives. Off we went, to get kitted out…

The guy in the blue t-shirt, Ian, is Mr Beekeeper and his knowledge of bees and their habits is so vast. He went in with no kit on and took the lids off the hives and showed us the cells and the workers and the queen bee and the honey and….

It went on and on and it was fascinating. I could have stayed there all day, in my unflattering beige suit, looking at the bees.

Anyway, after some more bee chat, some of which is mentioned above, we called it a day and will be back next Sunday to find out about how to extract honey from hives and what to do with leftover wax.

Watch this space for more bee facts. I feel another post coming on tomorrow.

The course instructors were amazing yesterday. Everyone knows their stuff inside out and is passionate about what they do and about sharing their knowledge. If you can get to beekeeping course near you, I can fully recommend it, not necessarily to become a beekeeper, more to understand and appreciate how these fabulous little creatures help us and how they work. They are very, very interesting little things.

Sorrel soup, rye bread and bluebells (or: Back to my spiritual home)

“Every day is like a day on the farm. Every meal is a feast. That’s a day in the Marine Corps.”

Well, not the Marine Corps at all. My favourite farm.

What’s that you say? You don’t have a favourite farm? Pffft. All the cool kids have a favourite farm. And mine is Waltham Place.

I went there in March on a fruit preserving course and had been itching to get back. Since getting my groceries from Abel and Cole, I am totally on the soup scene, for using up the leftover vegetables the day before my new delivery. So when I saw the soup and bread course, I booked myself in straight away!

After my last traumatic journey to the farm, this time around was relatively easy. In fact, on the bus to the farm, I saw the exact same two ladies who had rescued me last time and went and thanked them again.

Arriving at the farm, I saw the familiar faces of Nikki and Adrian, who run the courses. You feel you are in safe hands as they gently take control, ensuring everyone has tea and biscuits and helping the group of strangers to gel.

We got straight into some chat about what makes good or bad bread, the fact that bread has been around for thousands of years and about mixing your dough with the end of the wooden spoon.

Apparently that’s how the Italian grandmothers in Tuscany do things!

I mixed and kneaded and shaped and then left it to prove in the warm kitchen….

…before starting on some sorrel soup.

I’ve not eaten – and certainly never cooked with – sorrel so I was a little nervous but Adrian ripped off a leaf tip and got munching, encouraging me to do the same. And it was surprisingly tasty – lemony but not sharp. More like a salad dressing which had been made with lemon. It was bursting with flavour. I couldn’t believe I’d never eaten it.

After making and straining the soup…

…the bread was also finished proving and baking. Mine was a rye bread made with a sourdough starter Adrian had been brewing up for five days.

We each then quickly threw together another loaf. I did a plaited white loaf next (which I got started on before I could photograph it, sorry!).

Then we had a fabulous lunch of our own soups and a previously baked loaf for dipping. It was so good. Sorrel soup, people! It’s the way of the future! Lemony but savoury. It didn’t need any seasoning as it has such a rich rounded flavour of its own.

Then we went for a lovely walk around the estate, which was much greener than my last visit…

The chickens!

One of the cows! (Danda says I can have a cow, although it’s still a no on the chicken.)

Any day now, this place will be head height with long grasses and colour!

The Japanese garden will soon be looking lovely too.

The lime tree lined walk.

The blanket of bluebells starting to cover the forest floor.

We returned to the centre, oversaw the baking of our second breads (one person had decided to mark his with what can only be described as a nipple, a bread nipple, if you will….)

…and sat down for some well earned tea and cake…

A coffee cake on the left and a fruity tray bake on the right. Both were delicious, obviously.

A lift back to the station from a fellow course student would have finished the day off nicely, apart from the 3.5 hour journey home because of train delays. But even that couldn’t ruin the loveliness of the day 🙂

A day at Waltham Place (or: I want to live on a farm too!)

Yesterday, I had the most fabulous day out. Someone had got me an early birthday present, which was a place on a course about preserving fruit. The course was on a farm called Waltham Place just outside Maidenhead.

The journey there was quite eventful, after coming out of the station, seeing a bus already at the bus stop, leaping on and being what I can only describe as ‘adopted’ by two ladies on the bus. After I had asked if the bus went in the direction I needed, the ladies said it didn’t but I could get off near an airfield and take a short walk to get to the farm. I got out my purse to pay and the driver reminded me I needed the exact money. After scraping around among my change, the ladies almost got into a fight offering me the 20p that I was short of!

The journey to the farm then was smooth, after another man getting off at the same stop, pointed me down the right road. As I approached the main entrance, there didn’t seem to be any signs of where I should be…

I was once again thrust on the mercy of the locals as I helplessly ran after a man I saw in the distance and asked where the course was being held. He pointed me up the road to the Ormandy Centre which, of course, I now remembered reading about in my notes before coming.

I found the centre eventually and was greeted by Adrian, the chef, and Nicki, his ‘gopher’ (her own words) and three of the other women on the course, for of course it was all women! The other women arrived and we started the day with chitchat, tea and biscuits.

Everything they gave us was made (and often grown too) on the farm. Adrian does all the cooking there. And that means everything. Absolutely everything. No help. He’s surprisingly calm and good-natured for a man who’s responsible for the feeding of a family and entire staff of such a big estate.

So our teas and coffees contained milk from the cows in the next door fields and the only non-farm ingredient in our macaroons and Viennese whirls was the sugar. The flour is milled on the farm, the milk from the cows is turned into cream, butter and cheese, and the eggs are harvested daily from the chickens who live in the next field to the cows. It was like taking a trip into the past, all the things we were offered to eat were homemade with produce from the surrounding fields. I started planning what my own small garden might be capable of and, so long as I don’t mind living on tomatoes, chillis and herbs, I could totally do this self-sufficient thing too. Maybe.

After tea and biscuits, we got stuck into a bit of teaching. Adrian gave us notes and talked us through the process of jam-making, the essential components and what does and doesn’t work. It wasn’t quite as ordered as that though. There were regular delightful tangents off into the obscure – long discussions about what goes into commercially produced jam, whether to keep one’s jam in the fridge, what fruits work and how long to keep jam for (a jar of Adrian’s, made in 1996, is still going strong today).

We were then given aprons and invited into the kitchen. We approached cautiously and told that this morning, the jam tasks were: raspberry jam, three fruit marmalade, lemon curd and blackcurrant jam.

The other women piped up, excited about one of the other of the jams. They were paired up and given lemon curd, marmalade and raspberry jam. Finally there was just me and the blackcurrant, which Adrian said he’d help me with.

I was presented with a pot of blackcurrants which I went off to a corner with and put on a hob to heat.

I heated my blackcurrants for quite a long time as they needed to reduce down by quite a lot before I could add the sugar. While the others were lemon zesting, butter melting or draining their fruit out….

… I stood next to my blackcurrant pan and watched. I started to feel like the slow kid at the back of the class, still trying to work out times tables while the others progressed onto long division….

It boiled for quite a while before Adrian gave me the ok to add the sugar and mash the blackcurrants a little bit. By the time I was pouring out my jam, even the slower lemon curd lot were long finished and on their second round of tea and biscuits. They do say, though, that good things come to those who wait, and my pot of blackcurrants yielded the most jars. Check out my harvest!

We then stopped and had lunch, made by Adrian, of course. It was leek and potato soup and bread, fresh from the oven, spread with tasty yellow butter from the farm.

After a long chat about recycling with the other ladies and me digging in to the bread, again and again, Nicki finally cleared away lunch, thank goodness, and Adrian talked us through different ways to preserve fruit.

So the afternoon tasks were ketchup, tomato chutney and bottled fruit. I ended up on the bottled fruit but had someone with me this time. We chopped and peeled the fruit and packed it into the jars to wait for our syrup, which was just a basic mixture of sugar and water. This we poured over the plums and rhubarbs. For the pears, though, we did white wine, sugar and cinnamon. Once all the fruit and syrups were in the jars, we put the lids on loosely and baked them on a very low heat for an hour.

In this hour, we all donned wellies and coats for a walk around the farm. We saw the chickens who provide the eggs…

…the cows who’s milk was in our tea….

…and the gardens which are beautiful and colourful in summer…

By the time we got back to the kitchen, our fruit was ready, the chutney was thick enough to go in jars and our day’s work was put on the table for admiring.

By this time, there was nothing else to do but to have another round of tea, accompanied by two gorgeous homemade cakes (a tea brack and a Victoria sponge)….

….and to chatter about what a brilliant day it had been and what other courses were they running and could we come on all of them please and how I wish I could become a lady of leisure and just spend all day homemaking everything I wanted to eat and not have any processed food in the house and o, if only! If only! Get thee behind me, Heinz, for I shall consume only homemade ketchup from this day forth!… Maybe… If I get the time to make some tomorrow after work… If I’m not busy practising piano and trying to become a world famous concert pianist.

A lovely Irish lady who was rushing off a little early to pick up her son from school had heard the story of my arrival and offered me a lift to the station. So all of sudden, in a bit of a rush, I was accepting her kind offer, grabbing my bag and running off. The journey home was fuss free and Danda looked very pleased when I arrived home with my crop from the day….

We then spend an evening, nibbling some of each, especially the beautiful beautiful lemon curd, which is thick and spreadable and divine on bread.

I honestly can’t think of anything about this day that I didn’t enjoy. If you are anywhere near Waltham Place Farm, I can fully recommend their day courses, for the experience itself, even if you’re not actually going to become the best jam maker the world has ever seen!

Why Kingston University probably hate me

My relationship with Kingston University has been strained, to say the least. I first applied for a course there way back in 2006, when I was looking at undergraduate courses. I visited it one day, to have a look around and will always remember passing somebody on a path and overhearing them say something like, “This uni is so rubbish…” as they passed me. It felt like an omen. My first choice uni accepted me anyway, so I didn’t go to Kingston, as they were my back-up.

Then, late last year, I decided to apply for a PGCE with them, as they had quite a good reputation for the course. I again put them second and a different university first. I was surprised, therefore, when I got a letter from Kingston University asking me to come for an interview, before I got anything from my first choice university. I called up UCAS, the people who process and send out your applications to universities. I asked if something was wrong and if my first choice uni had my form.

And of course they didn’t! On the application form, you list your first choice UNDERNEATH your second choice. So I had put my choices the wrong way round.

UCAS said they would have to withdraw my application from Kingston Uni before they could send it to the other one. I would have to call Kingston and tell them to stop my application.

The phone call went something like this.

“Hi, I just need to speak to someone about my application for the PGCE.”
“Yes, I can help you with that.”
“Ok, I need to withdraw it. There’s been a problem on my form so I need to correct the mistake and then send it out again.”
“O, right. What’s the problem on your form?”
“I just, erm, it’s a problem with my choices.”

(Awkward, don’t want to say, “I put you first by accident but I don’t want you, I want someone else.”)

“Right, so what’s the problem with your choices then.”
“….Erm, it’s just… Erm… They’re in the wrong order.”
“Ok, so what’s the problem with the order.”
“…Erm. I, erm, put Kingston first and I meant to put the other university first.”

There it was. I’d said it. I’d said, you’re my back up, I don’t really want you. Now can you give me my form back so I can take it to the university I actually want to go to.

Awkward phone call.

She tried to persuade me to come to the interview I’d already been offered, because if my first choice university didn’t want me, it would have to go back to Kingston anyway, so that way, they’d already know whether they were going to offer me a place on the course. I said I’d try to change my shift at work because it was the next day and a bit late notice. Someone could cover but from 9am so I called back to ask if I could come a bit late, she sounded irritated but said it was fine. Then there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with workmates and I realised I couldn’t take the day off at all. So I called back and said I couldn’t come. So I’ve annoyed them. I’ve really annoyed them.

Then my first place university DOES reject me. And so my application goes back to Kingston Uni! They offer me an interview but when I call up to accept, they say there’s no record of them offering me an interview. Their system tells them I’m down as having been rejected.

I email someone to ask what the confusion is. I have a letter for an interview. Their system says they’ve rejected me. In the end, they kind of say I can come to a group interview day, I think to get me off their backs.

I go along and spend the day using three words to describe myself and what I feel makes a good teacher and other such nonsense. I felt like I did ok. We were told we’d get a letter in a week.

The next day, I get an email from them saying no thank you.

Whoops.

I think they hated me by the end of it all…! I’ve also got a feeling I was allowed on the interview day just to get me to shut up and stop calling and emailing!

The moral of this story? Don’t be an idiot with your application form. And don’t make it really obvious you don’t want something, if you might need to later pretend you really do want it.

Getting Excited, Being Sporty and Being Friendlier, all in one day!

Yesterday I went to watch the Olympic men’s 50k walking race. This encompassed the three things I’ve been making concerted efforts to do since my liberation from exams.

It covered Getting Excited About Stuff. In fact, I think I might have been the most excited person there. Or maybe just the most supportive. Certain people would always get a cheer when they went past – the leading group of about ten walkers, the British guy and, since I found myself in the middle of the Irish contingent, the Irish guys. A group of Japanese supporters opposite cheered the Japanese competitors. Finland had a following who would cheer for their competitor. But there were about 60 people in the race. So that’s a lot of people not being cheered. I took up the cause on this one and clapped and wooped and bashed on the railing thingy to show support for e.g. the lone very tall Polish guy who would often be adjusting his shorts awkwardly as he passed so I was unsure whether to clap or leave him in silence to readjust, the extremely hairy Norwegian competitor whose shoulders looked like they were covered in carpet, the two Ukrainians who shared their water bottles every time they got one and the Latvian in a little crop top who stuck with them the whole time, the Portuguese guy who looked determined, if a little grumpy.

All these people would pass by unnoticed by the crowd or, if noticed, not cheered. So I clapped extra hard for these people, risking serious hand injury. In my mind, they felt a bit deserted, unloved, appreciated the sound of someone supporting them. In actual fact, they were probably just thinking, omygoodness I’m so hot and thirsty, I really want to win, I wonder if I’ll catch up.

I got there bright and early, in my excitement, and found a spot at the front. It was a 1km stretch that they walked up and down to complete one lap of 2km. As the walk was 50km, they did 25 laps of the course. As they started to spread out, there was constantly someone passing by to watch so it kept the excitement levels high. And my hands constantly in action!

Being at this event also kind of covered Being Sporty because it was the Olympics. So although I was not active myself, I was involved in a sporting event, sort of. Would you say that counts as being sporty? I would.

It also covered Being Friendly, as I was alone in a big crowd and so ended up chatting to loads of people. I had a fascinating discussion with one man about women being tested for testosterone levels to check if they’re too ‘manly’ to be allowed to compete. We wondered whether the men ever have to get tested for oestragen levels to check if they’re too ‘girly’.

Later I came home and finished a book. This is a big deal. I’ll tell you why.

Now that I’ve got Getting Excited, Being Sporty and Being Friendlier sorted, I need a new thing to try and I thought I might try Finishing All The Books I’m In The Middle Of. My main problem is that if I feel like reading, I want to read right now. I don’t want to go and dig around finding the book I was last reading. That might involve going all the way upstairs to my bedside table. I want one now, here, on the couch, downstairs. So I pick up a different book and start it. So I have a few real books I’m reading, two or three on my Kindle app on my phone, one on my actual Kindle and one on Audible.com. I need to streamline. Finish off all the ones I’m in the middle of and just have one or two.

This may be the hardest challenge yet. I have books I’ve been reading for over a year (The Innocent Man by John Grisham), some that I’m reluctant to finish because I love (the complete short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald), some that I keep losing (one about the history of Highgate in old photos) and some that I’ve forgotten the storyline of so will involve major backtracking (Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed).

This one may take a while. Wish me luck!