Moving & Harvest as Therapy

They say moving house is stressful, more stressful than a divorce even. Well thankfully I haven't a clue about divorce but moving, yes. This will be our seventh move and we pray our last.

This one has been the most stressful in some ways. We know how much can go wrong and before we've been relatively laid back. If this one falls through then we'll find another has been the attitude. This time we're moving to our dream and whilst we know logically there must other places as good or even better that we could afford, this is the one we're in love with.

So much stress, a lot of sorting out and packing with more to come. We've signed contracts, monies are organised and fingers crossed, the contracts will be exchanged on Thursday or Friday followed by us moving on the 15^th October. I'll post more about the new place when the contracts are exchanged.

Today having been spent in frantic phone calls, arranging dates and re-arranging dates with removal companies, solicitors and our buyer, I'd had enough and was ready to blow. So off to the plot.

For now all I have left to do is to try and get the allotments in some semblance of order for the new tenants and harvest remaining crops. Over on plot 29 I've still got courgettes, a few runner beans, tomatoes and peppers.

The plum tomatoes and peppers are the same varieties we're giving away with our books. I've got to say the Incas tomatoes are brilliant. They're firm and the skins come of easily after scalding which makes them ideal for bottling or just cooking as a breakfast tomato. The flavour is superb, quite sweet yet very tomato-ish.

Normally I grow Roma as a plum tomato, I've tried San Marzano and another variety whose name escapes me, but this is the first to beat Plum Roma.

The chilli peppers, "Hot Stuff" are very productive but they're a bit slow off the mark. If we'd had started earlier, it would have been fine but we've a lot of green chillis that won't have time to turn red. Not that it affects the flavour much, but we do like dried red peppers.

Back over to plot 5 where I got out my kneeling stool and sat down by the carrot barrels to finish those off. Considering we've been having carrots from them all year, an amazing carrier bag full.

More important than the carrot crop was that, by the time I'd finished, the steam had vented and my shoulders un-knotted. Some people pay for therapy, I harvest carrots.