A few days at home
My parents live in a very rural part of Northumberland (type Falstone in Google maps to check). They bought the place a few years ago, and are slowly renovating the house, coach house and gardens. As they have left the midgie-infested north for balmy southern Sweden I was left with the task of going up there to pick berries. It’s a tough life. I lived alone in the house for a year or so and spent a lot of time out in the veg garden, re-designing, pruning and generally caring for the place. It is such a delight going back and seeing how things are going.
Falstone really is the perfect antidote to London. The vista are huge and all-embracing, the wildlife is abundant. When I first arrived home I noticed something in the drive, it was the hedgehog scurry to safey. There are deer that wander around the garden and fields, plenty of birds, the friendly cat from next door. And the garden is beautiful and wild.
Picking berries sounds like it should be a relatively straight forward task. You go to the berries, pick up, weigh them, pack them and freeze. Easy. Except in Falstone the first ‘go to the berries’ involves a real hunt for the red berries. There are wild strawberries all over the garden: all around the pond, under the rose bushes, in the path, in walls, in holding beds. The red currant I almost missed altogether as they were in pots close to the wall of the veg garden. The raspberries are also all round the pond, there are massive cans where the lupins used to be rampant, and then all along the edge of the orchard. The blackcurrants were much more obvious and I picked a lot. The first few days things hadn’t quite ripened so I decided to change the thing I was picking… I went for leaves and herbs instead.
The garden was so abundant, it was just a delight to have the task of harvesting, and I hardly made a dent in it. I picked a lot of peppermint, and had quite a few nasal enhancing peppermint teas there. The oils in the peppermint are so strong you really do inhale the stuff, and it feels like your whole nose is opening up in relief.
A few days later, I reluctantly left our paradise to head back to Hackney. But my work was done: the pantry looked well stocked with hearty bundles of lemon balm, feverfew, lavender and peppermint; I have a good amount of lady’s mantle, elderflower, yarrow that are drying ready for winter infusions; and packed peppermint and wild strawberry cuttings for my brother’s garden. But I still managed to get a good amount of berries.
