Page 54 - Simply Vegetables Autumn 2021

East Yorkshire District Association
MANCHESTER AND CHESHIRE DA REPORT
We haven’t had a meeting for around 18 months now, but we are hoping to have one again
on the 5th October 2021. I’m hoping that this will be at our old venue of the Hough End Police Club in Chorlton. I will contact
all our members closer to the time to confirm this. If I haven’t contacted, you by the end of September then please email me at mcnichs@gmail.com and I will happily send you the details. It will be good to see everyone again and to start to get back to some sort of normality. As far as I’m aware most of our local shows were cancelled but we are starting to plan for next year. Fingers crossed this actually happens.
On a sad note, our DA secretary Noelle Ryder has moved on
to pastures new. I would like
to thank her for all the hard
work she put into our DA and
the Poynton show. She did a phenomenal job and will be sorely missed. I’m sure you will join me in wishing her all the best for the future and in her new adventures.
This does mean we are now sadly looking for a new secretary, if anyone fancies putting themselves forward for this role then please contact me.
On a happier note, I managed to get a large exhibition onion to go to seed and produce bulblets. Fingers crossed they grow in massive onions and I can take them to our stand at Tatton Flower Show.
I hope to see you all soon.
Sandra McNicholls
Chair
Finally, some better news to report. We held our first public meeting
since February 2020 (in the form of
a combined AGM/where do we go from here meeting) at the end of July. Provided that lockdown easing rules continue to ease, we are now planning on holding monthly speaker events in September, October and November, as well as our Annual DA Show at
the end of September. Our meetings are held at a local Conservative Club who adhere to current Government guidelines regarding social distancing, table seating and track and trace regimes. Face coverings are not obligatory although we recommend that people do wear them. We have also suspended the provision of our volunteer buffet service at meetings until further notice.
We have now launched our new nvseyda.uk website (based on the Wordpress format), together with our NVS East Yorkshire Facebook page. We hope that, as time goes on and word gets around, more and more people will develop the confidence to return to our meetings and events.
Driffield Show (which is said to be the largest one-day agricultural show in the UK) was held over a two-day period in July this year, in order to keep visitor density down in view
of the current pandemic. This is primarily an open air event in any case but, this year, the exhibition marquees were fitted with open-sided walls to improve air flow and reduce the risk
of viral infection. Thankfully, the weather proved extremely favourable and both exhibitor and visitor attendance figures were reported to be high though lower than in pre-Covid years.
At the end of July, two of our Committee members judged a local allotment site comprising some 185 allotments divided into full plots, half plots and third plot sizes. After three hours of careful examination, the worthy winner of the full plot category was selected and is shown in the photo below. I can’t help but wonder, though, how this picture might change in the years to come following the ever- increasing impact of climate change.
Hopefully, I will have some more recent news to report on in the next edition of Simply Vegetables but, in the meantime, here are some more gems of wisdom I found in an old book entitled Practical Gardening and Food Production which, according to a
hand-written footnote, appears to date from 1944.
Remember that less than 2% of UK households owned a refrigerator back then so preservation of harvested crops relied on other methods such as drying, bottling or pickling for longer- term storage. Notes for August suggest that winter storage should begin as the harvest proceeds. Do not tuck away roots in odd corners, but cover them in boxes, with sand, or store them in clamps in the open. This will keep them moist.
Marrows come in for particular attention! Marrows can be baked or plain boiled, stuffed with sausage meat or bread and herb stuffing, with cheese and tomato stuffing or with pieces of kidney. They can also be used in pickling, in chutneys, in jams and other preserves. Old marrows make excellent ginger preserve, or they can be made into a good substitute for lemon curd. Vegetable marrow boiled and placed on to buttered, or dripping- spread toast, with a good cream sauce or brown gravy over it is altogether different from the tasteless dish it can be on some tables. Other vegetables served on toast acquire a new interest, and any cook who is at a loss for ideas is advised to consider the addition of toast to the menu. Marrow on toast anyone, or will you stick to baked beans from a tin?
Reports on our Autumn events will feature in the next edition of Simply Vegetables but, in the meantime, our programme of future events
and current news can be seen on
our website http://nvseyda.uk. Our continued aim is to provide a varied selection of topics throughout the year that will appeal to our existing members as well as attract new ones. Paul Neve FNVS
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