A Womble in Winter

It is normal for me to supplement our diet with wild greens, even though we have a vegetable garden. Miners’ lettuce (Winter Purslane), Pennywort and chickweed all find their way into winter salads. This year, though, I stumbled on a real find by the lane which leads into the village. Turnips. We’ve been eating them for three months and the last few days of warm weather has finished them for good. I discussed their appearance with my neighbour, who concluded that they had seeded themselves from a neglected crop planted years ago in a nearby field.
“But why have they spread now I asked, who haven’t really seen them here before?”
“That’s easy,” she told me. “It’s climate change, devastating that is, because they’ve changed look at the size of the turnip,” and she pulled one up to show me a huge white winter turnip.

“These are way better than the ones on my allotment. Let’s pick a bag from the top of the lane,” she said “If we leave the ones nearer the village to go to seed, we might get a field of giant turnips next year.” I suppose she’s right, but do should we encourage an invasion of giant turnips, but then that’s no reason not to eat them. Watch this space to see if they get their revenge next winter. (Think, ‘Day of the Triffids,’ but substitute turnips.)

My scavenging activities are not always welcome and I know that it’s not entirely normal. I remember once when my son and his wife came for a visit; they laid bets on how much junk (not how I described it) I would bring home from the beach. My husband’s still trying to get rid of the two faux leather armchairs I got, with a friend’s help, from the side of the road. I thought they were amazing, him not so much. I need to admit that the seat cushions were missing, making made them difficult to use. I resigned myself to putting them in the barn for a while until I found a solution. I do sometimes get funny looks when I bring home wild greens, I get it – it’s tricky to pick and make ’em edible (pig nuts, anyone?), and some of ’em can be too bitter to eat raw (sow thistle, dandelion, clover – all tasty, but you need some dressing and milder leaves to balance it out). I don’t like to give up though, and the autumn after finding the chairs I was hunting for mushroom and found two seat cushions recently dumped, which would fit the chairs with a bit of judicious knife work. I abandoned the mushrooms and took the cushions because I couldn’t carry both Steve would have preferred the mushrooms.

I have one chair next to my sewing table, but I see Steve eyeing it up every time he goes in there, and I’m sure it won’t survive the next renovation.

We have eaten turnips with everything for the last three months and we now have a bag of greens in the freezer and a jar of dried turnip cubes to add to stews in the pantry I don’t remember what mashed potatoes taste like without turnips added.

But they are flowering now, so that is the end of that. Still the nettles and coming along well, so this weekend I think it will be time to get my gloves out.