Wood - and More - from the Trees

Last week I read what was an eminently sensible suggestion from a green lobby group, namely that in Britain we should produce less meat and use the land freed from sheep and cattle to grow more trees.


The idea was rooted (hmm) in thinking on greenhouse gases, animal farts being a significant contributor of unwelcome emissions, as it were. Trees take in carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen, so it's win-win. And win again, if the trees planted on the land in question were to be food producing species.


I'm not suggesting a vegetarian future, indeed for culinary, nutritional and other reasons I want to see us continue to farm land that's most suited to meat to produce - meat. There are plenty of upland areas in the UK where trees struggle, but make great grazing for sheep. But we've moved on, or should have, from every meal being a big lump of meat and two veg. Growing very productive trees like chestnuts - good protein and carbs - apples and pears, all suited to our climate, makes sense - I don't have the figures to hand, but I've read several times that in broad terms such husbandry produces a multiple of what meat farming can.


Walking the Dear Leader's domain* recently I counted up what we, in a very small way, had done along those lines. We have 18 trees in the ground that provide us with nuts and fruit, and a further 10 smaller ones in pots likewise giving us some return now, with the promise of more to come. There's (continued) austerity sense in investing in these plants, though we are now reaching peak tree at Pilkington Palace. About 15 years ago we spent maybe £15 then on what was a small quince tree, and after a decade of generally small harvests it is these days well established, and 2018 has seen it yield a perfumed glut. The walnut tree planted soon after our arrival here has similarly started to produce greater numbers of nuts, more to the benefit of the squirrels than us, but we have some jet black nocino maturing that we'd not have enjoyed without our own crop of green nuts. We have more cooking apples than we and several friends can cope with. We've enjoyed lemons and apricots, pears and plums, our bay tree is a cook's joy, and we hope one day soon to see cherries, mulberries, figs - even olives, who knows? There's a cobnut offshoot taken from the soon-to-be-quit allotment already doing well at the bottom of the garden.


This is the sort of action that many of us can take independently in our gardens. There are community orchards springing up in more enlightened towns and villages. But it's also the sort of thing the government should be getting behind. The cynic in me says that the meat processors and feed makers have more financial clout than the plant nurseries, well able to top up political coffers mightily meatily, and to wine and dine ministers and officials royally, so such thinking won't get much further in that direction than having a parliamentary committee established to study the broad range of possibilities - with deputations sent on fact-finding missions to... I don't know, Portugal, California, Australia, and anywhere else nice and warm.


Meantime we continue to lurch towards ever more calamitous results of climate change - the extreme events now coming thick and fast, though across the pond the Donald is keeping his piggy eyes shut to them - and a time when it won't be only distant foreign lands but our own struggling to feed itself. Planting productive trees, and beyond that permaculture, at least where it works best, is a proven solution.


*and mine

Nuts, Fruit, Blossom

One of the things I will miss most when we have given up our allotment will be the two cobnut trees planted (probably contrary to the rules) on the plot. It's not the trees themselves of course, elegant though one in particular may be, but the nuts they produce. At home we have planted a reasonably-sized sapling, the offspring of one of them, so it's to be hoped that we only have a brief gap between crops. We have a walnut tree in the garden too, though I could have counted the number we got this year on two hands and one foot. The rats with good PR got the bulk, as they generally do.


This year we've had a bumper crop of cobnuts, enough to make me feel it was right to give some to a friend and neighbour, a good cook who will accordingly have made good use of them. It's another glut, but an especially welcome one. Among other uses they have gone into pesto as a substitute for pine kernels (which weight-for-weight cost about as much as gold these days), chopped into a breakfast dish of apple puree (our own Bramleys) along with oats, honey and raisins, and as a simple salad ingredient teamed with cos lettuce, blue cheese and apple (yes, our own Discovery). I'm tempted to use those left in the basket (not the last of the year unless the squirrel bastards have had all those left on the trees) in a curry as an alternative to cashews - they are when still relatively fresh off the branch very like milky cashews.


Don't keep the shelled nuts in the fridge, btw, they sog rapidly. I've also learned to keep the stillin the shell nuts in a basket rather than a bowl, the latter home causing them to sweat and deteriorate, and to stir them about daily to keep them aired.


It is the productive trees in our (admittedly larger than average) garden that are dearest to my heart. We have a fine willow that is architecturally splendid, but other than gnawing the bark if post-Brexit times get so tough that aspirin is unavailable it has little practical, and no culinary, value. Not so the apples, quince (this should be the best year ever for them), pears, plums (admittedly they yield very little) and even in pots peach, lemon and lime. I am not a gardener - the Dear Leader (may her opponents dry to dust) is in charge of that side of things, merely assistant water carrier, third class - but they don't seem at all difficult, even the citrus trees are pretty robust, though they winter in a greenhouse or the conservatory. Trees are also great for the environment.


Free food, lovely blossom, help the environment... Shouldn't everyone lucky enough to have the space be planting more fruit and nut trees? There's also something very life-enhancing about venturing into the back garden and picking breakfast, lunch or supper, or at least major contributors to them. And it is life-enhancing too when what's picked, as is so often the case, tastes ten times better than anything you can buy from the supermarket. Our Discovery apples this year have been a revelation, their flesh tinged with pink, and eaten minutes after picking their taste clean and bright, unlike their dull imported cousins sold at the shops (even British-grown ones have probably been in storage and transit for weeks).

Beating Squirrels

Beating squirrels is not some brutally inhumane conduct towards furry creatures (though grey squirrels as the saying goes are just rats with good PR), but getting to our cobnut crop this year before the little sods raided our plot. Last year we harvested precisely zero, as Nutkin and his posse made off with the lot.

Not a huge crop this year, however, as along with our apple trees and pear the three nut bushes (they call it nut bush, oh! nut bush etc, thanks Tina) were devastated by the high winds and downpours all summer.

What we did gather on Saturday was processed that afternoon, a pleasant task while listening to the radio. We got about 100g of shelled cobs. Never mind. The milky nuts were blitzed in a spice grinder, as was about 150g of home-grown parsley and basil (the basil was perhaps a quarter of the mix, but dominated the flavour), three garlic cloves and some sea-salt, the lot mixed with a load of grated Parmesan and some olive oil to make a nice soft consistency. DIY pesto, enough for a pasta dish for three of us that evening - so simple, so good - and to 3/4 fill a jar, the pesto covered with a layer of additional oil, to keep in the fridge.

Part of Ruth's packed lunch today is a very wet bean and tomato salad with a huge blob of pesto to enliven it, and the rest will not go to waste. It is not something I'd want to eat every day, or even every week, but as a seasonal    boon it's great, and I am happy to have used up the lot. Two years ago we picked far more, but only ate a few as nibbles once they had dried out and hardened, the rest left for another day that never came. That's one of the lessons we are gradually learning, that you can only eat something once, so you might as well enjoy it at its best.

In monetary terms taking the Parmesan as bought (it was actually a gift from a recent press trip), it and the olive oil would have cost well under £1, while a jar of purchased pesto that size (roughly 400g) would have cost I'd guess £4 or more. And as ours is super-fresh and far more garlicky than shop-bought I reckon it has the edge on taste too.