Читать книгу Woodsman - Ben Law - Страница 16

Collect ripe crab apples and leave them in a plastic bag to sweat. After a few days press out the juice and then bottle it, leaving cotton wool in the top as it will ferment because of the natural yeasts. It will be ready in about a month and makes a traditional substitute for lemon juice. It is particularly good in salad dressings and stir fries.

After eight good years of growth, I laid the hedge and now sheep graze in the fields without any fencing, the hedge successfully keeping them within the field. Planting hedgerows and laying hedges that I can return to as I walk the parish, harvesting wild food and produce that I know is there, form part of my farming of the surrounding countryside.

The common also has a good amount of self-seeded ash and this, entwined with honeysuckle, makes some of the most attractive ‘barley twist’ sticks I have ever made. In my early years at Prickly Nut Wood I sold walking sticks in the village pub. They sold well and it made a good talking point, helping me meet many people and further integrate into village life.

Bordering the common is one of the orchards I have planted over the past 20 years. Now the trees are producing well and the orchard provides cider apples for the village pressing. I planted ‘Harry Masters Jersey’, ‘Crimson King’, ‘Yarlington Mill’ and ‘Kingston Black’, and they all make a fine cider, whether mixed or fermented out to single-variety ciders. The trees are pruned as standards, which allows sheep to graze beneath, a traditional silvi-pastoral system that I expect we will see more of in the coming years. Lodsworth has always been a cider-making area and throughout the village well-established old trees can be seen, now enclosed in gardens from parts of the old orchards of days gone by. I remember old Ted Holmes telling me before he died of the mobile press that used to turn up outside the Hollist Arms pub, and the excitement he experienced as a young lad on apple-pressing day.

Within the village we have revived the tradition, and each year we set up the press and ‘masarators’ outside the Hollist Arms. People bring apples and take away apple juice, and the remainder goes into barrels. This is fermented over the winter months in households throughout the village. The resulting cider is brought out for village celebrations, such as the village fête, or an anniversary or public holiday. Apple-pressing day is increasingly popular, with all ages mucking in and getting involved. At the end of the day the pulp from the apples is taken off to be fed to pigs, which in turn will taste fine with a glass of Lodsworth cider.

I remember the tasting on the first night we revived the tradition. It was election night when we brought the cider to the bar of the Hollist Arms. Nick Kennard was the landlord then, and with his wife Sally they ran the house well (although the beer was sometimes interesting!). The cider was strong that year and I noticed after a couple of hours that tongues were loosening, quite literally in the case of a respectable couple who worked for the European Union. The evening evolved into a party and the next morning Lodsworth was one place in England where many of the residents had no idea that Tony Blair had been elected for his first term as prime minister. Since that time our cider making has improved and the quality of the drink is more refined. Many a good winter’s evening has been spent racking and blending to ensure the best quality is available for village functions.

* * *

Ted Holmes was a forester/coppice worker who worked mainly on the adjacent Cowdray estate. Ted would nod at me but rarely spoke – I was a different type of coppice worker, I lived up in the woods. One evening in the Hollist Arms, I bought Ted a beer or two, and he told me the story of his life as a boy in the village and the work he would do. His descriptions of village life painted a vivid picture for me – I could see his early-morning work in the bakery, then, moving on to the wheelwrights, how he would throw water over the metal tyre to cool it before it burned the wood of the wheel. Traditionally the metal tyre would be heated so that it expanded, and when it was glowing red it would be fitted over the wooden wheel rim and hammered into place. Once in place it was doused with water to stop burning the wood and the cooling process would shrink the metal tyre tight on to the wooden wheel, compressing it all together. A wheelwright was an important profession and with three blacksmiths all working in the village it was a thriving small community.

Ted talked to me about the cider, and in particular the plum and gage orchards that grew to the north of the village and the abundance of cob nuts along the eastern edge. Fruit picking formed part of his day as a boy as it does mine now. I’ve planted plums and gages in similar areas of the parish to where Ted mentioned they grew, and so far the trees have grown well and crops have been good. There is a lot of knowledge of our localities locked up in the memories of the older generations that will be useful in the future, when we are likely to need to become more locally based and self-supporting, and need to be able to turn our hands to a variety of different skills.

The cob nut orchard that ran along the eastern edge of the village has been lost amongst the many houses and gardens that have been built. Some gardens have one or two established nut trees remaining, but in a couple of places the orchard has remained intact and I’ve been fortunate to spend time restoring these areas.

When I first cut the derelict orchard, or ‘platt’, as a cob nut orchard is often called, it was a matter of cutting back thick, overgrown stems and reshaping the cob nut trees to form a goblet shape. The re-growth is then ‘brutted’ (snapped so that the branch is stressed and left to hang, still well attached to the mother tree by the fibres that are so strong in hazel wood). These goblet-shaped trees then produce an abundance of nuts. Commercially, most cob nut orchards are grown well away from woodland, in areas where squirrels are less likely to risk crossing open pasture to reach the delicious nuts dangling from the ‘brutted’ trees. I have now pruned the cob nut orchard on a couple of occasions and the trees are producing well once again.

Restoration of old fruit trees has kept me busy over many years and, by working in many individual gardens on the old trees, I’ve been able to see the patterns of the orchards that were once so much a part of our village landscape. Identifying old varieties is not easy; some are clearly distinctive but as many varieties have a similar ‘parent’ apple, identification can become difficult. One or two of the local Sussex varieties are easier to identify. ‘Sussex Forge’, an old cottagers’ apple, dates from 1923. It is a small, yellow apple, streaked red with a red flush and is a good dual-purpose apple, as it cooks well and is of good flavour eaten fresh. The more I have worked with apples, the more respect and fascination I have for these wonderful fruits and the regional history that so many varieties bring with them. Our wild crab apple, Malus sylvestris, can often be found amongst ancient woodlands and was no doubt an important food and fermentation source for generations past, as were so-called ‘wilding apples’ (grown from discarded apples or cores) and cultivated varieties, the earliest of which recorded is the ‘Pearmain’. This was the first named variety recorded and is noted on a deed of 1204. Since that time we have bred and crossbred apples to have a vast variety of cookers, eaters, dual-purpose, sliders, girlies and keepers – in fact the National Apple Collection in Brogdale, Kent, lists over one thousand varieties.

Planting new orchards is a favourite activity of mine. One must select a succession of varieties that will produce over a period of time, yet be part of the right overlapping pollination groups to ensure bees and other insects carry out their gift of duty. Some apples are tetraploids as opposed to diploids, so they need two other varieties to pollinate them. ‘Blenheim Orange’ and ‘Bramley’ seedlings are two well-known tetraploids. Most apples are then grafted onto a root stock, which dictates the height and expected lifespan of each tree. Most apple root stocks now used are root stocks that were developed at East Malling Research Station and hence have the name M from Malling, followed by a number. M25, for example, forms a large tree, whereas M27 forms a tiny tree. Which all makes it quite difficult when I’m asked that common question: ‘I’ve got an old apple tree. Can you tell me what variety it is?’

Most small apple trees in gardens are on M26 rootstocks. These provide a relatively short-lived tree that will grow to about 10 feet (3m) in height and produce fruit at a young age. At Prickly Nut Wood I have a few apples on M26 rootstocks near the house and around the vegetable garden. Further afield I grow apples on the medium-sized MM106, and my largest apple trees are grafted on to M25. There are similar rootstocks for pears and plums. Most of my pears are on Quince A rootstock, which produces a large tree, with a few on Quince C, which produces a smaller, productive tree. Most of my plums are on the semi-vigorous rootstock St Julien, with a few near the house on the dwarfing rootstock Pixy, and a few larger plums on the vigorous Myrobalan B rootstock. Choosing the appropriate rootstock for the right situation – and visualising the heights and varieties – make planning and planting an orchard one of my favourite seasonal countryside activities. I am often asked for advice on what to do with one field or another by a local landowner. In most cases I advise planting orchards. By planting standard trees (or planting maiden trees and pruning them to become standards) on large, vigorous root stocks well spaced out across the field, the orchard will establish well, allowing for grazing by sheep or geese below. These orchards are a beautiful landscape feature in their own right, brightening the fields every spring with blossom, the promise of fruit to come. The planting and establishment of orchards throughout the countryside will leave an important food legacy for the next generation.

Some of the most interesting work I did with apples was when I was working for Oxfam as a permaculture consultant in Albania. The mountain district I was working in was poor and inaccessible, and the choice of fresh fruits was very limited outside of the main growing season. The apples in particular were very poor. The local varieties were at best similar to low-quality English crab apples, so any improvement in the varieties grown would be beneficial to the local people. Working with Brogdale, suitable scion (grafting) material was obtained and sent out to Albania for grafting on to the local Albanian crab root stocks. ‘Ribston Pippin’ was chosen for its high level of vitamin C, while others were chosen to survive the long, cold winters and the short summer growing season in the mountains. These materials are now cultivated in the permaculture research centre in northern Albania, and hopefully improving the lives and diet of many people living a sustainable lifestyle in the mountains.

Restoring old fruit trees and orchards, as well as planting new ones, have helped me to cultivate many plants in the surrounding landscape, although I can’t exactly claim that I am farming them.

As I turn and head south, with the sensual curves of the South Downs silhouetted in the distance, I join the small, winding waterway – the River Lod. Rising north-east of Lynchmere, and picking up many streams along its journey, it skirts the village of Lodsworth before joining the River Rother at Lod’s Bridge, which in turn joins the Arun and continues on out to sea at Littlehampton. As the Lod winds south through the parish it makes its way through mixed coppice woodland – hazel, ash, field maple and willow – below which can be found abundant bluebells, yellow archangel, early purple-flowering orchid and wood anemone in late spring. Preceding this flush of colour, the wood is carpeted with the dense mass of foliage of wild garlic. A walk this way in spring and you will be aware of the wild garlic before you see it. Its poignant aroma fills the air well in advance of its physical presence. I harvest the wild garlic for stir-fries and salads, a cheese sandwich for lunch is greatly enhanced by a few leaves, and it makes an excellent pesto. I have supplied pubs and restaurants with the leaves over the years, and in my early days at Prickly Nut Wood I would often trade beer for wild garlic at the local hostelries.

The Lod is a healthy, clean river and salmon trout spawn as far up as the mill pond at Lurgashall. Brown trout are common, as are bream, roach, chub and pike. As a small river it is not often fished, with the nearby River Rother being more popular with anglers. One part of the river that seems never short of water is near the bridge at Lickfold. The road regularly floods here, and after heavy rains it can be hard to make out what is bridge and what is river. There have been a number of civil engineering works over the past couple of years to try to improve the regular flooding, but so far I have seen little evidence that they have made much difference. I am astonished at how often we seem to throw money at trying to find a solution to a problem that is part of nature. Water has clearly always flooded at Lickfold, which is a low point for water collection and is well fed from surrounding fields. It is not a major route, is only impassable for a few days a year and there are alternative routes, so it would seem to make sense to leave the river to flood when it wishes at Lickfold Bridge and focus our civil engineering energies on more useful projects.

Where the Lod reaches halfway bridge, I have found many good giant puffballs in the adjacent fields. Creating a fungi map based on wild mushrooms that I find is a useful part of farming the surrounding landscape, and there are many areas that I visit purely to collect mushrooms for the table. One of my favourite is ‘horn of plenty’, or the ‘black trumpet’. I have a favourite picking spot heading west from Prickly Nut Wood. When found in abundance I have picked baskets full, and as I often find them near to Halloween, they are an ideal mushroom to market to local restaurants for ‘black trumpet soup’. Another favourite I find throughout the chestnut coppice is ‘chicken of the woods’. This is a great find, as one orange bracket of ‘chicken of the woods’ can feed a good number of people. I’ve walked through the woods to the Duke of Cumberland pub at Henley, and found and traded ‘chicken of the woods’ for beer on a few occasions. ‘Chicken of the woods’ gets its name mainly from its consistency; follow a recipe for chicken pie, substitute ‘chicken of the woods’ for real chicken, and few people will notice the difference. When cooked, ‘chicken of the woods’ looks exactly like chicken, and its texture and taste are surprisingly similar.

As a lover of mushrooms, I have taken to cultivating my own. I have been growing mushrooms on logs for about 12 years now and have had good success with Japanese shiitake mushrooms and oyster mushrooms. I buy in the mushroom spawn growing on sawdust and then drill holes out in a log, fill them with the sawdust spawn and seal them with hot wax. In my first year of inoculating (as this process is called), I used beeswax from my hives and the bees visited the logs and took back every bit of the wax. Since then I have used a vegetable-based cheese wax, similar to what you will find surrounding Edam cheese.

The log is left to stand within the woodland for a year to 18 months, depending on the species of tree. A birch log, for instance, will produce mushrooms more quickly than a sweet chestnut log, because the mycelium can colonise birch more easily as it’s less durable than chestnut. Once the mycelium has spread through the log, the log will fruit (produce mushrooms naturally) when the appropriate weather conditions arrive. In autumn, with heavy rains following the warmth of summer, the conditions are perfect to stimulate mushrooms to appear in great numbers throughout the countryside. The same applies with mushrooms cultivated on logs. One great advantage of inoculating logs is that I know each log contains mushrooms and therefore I can simulate the autumn rains by throwing the logs into my pond. I leave them there for 48 hours and then extract them. About five days later the mushrooms will start appearing. The log should be rested for about six weeks before shocking it again. This process can be repeated so each log can produce mushrooms three to four times a year. I think of the process of shocking the log into fruiting as being that the mycelium inside the log feels like it is drowning as it lies in the pond partially submerged. When nature is under stress it reproduces, so naturally the mycelium sends out its reproductive parts, these being the edible mushrooms.