“Murphy’s the name. Siring’s the game.”

Well, that’s what he might have said if Murphy the 10-year-old Berkshire Boar who lives about half an hour from Moons Green had bothered to introduce himself to us.

Murphy belongs to Jane Howard, a farmer who’s a dab hand at the art of pig-breeding and husbandry. We met her not long ago and Bill decided to give her a shout remembering that she’d mentioned having a rare breed boar she was prepared to loan out. We have three sows waiting and none of us have been two thrilled at the notion of working with the Artificial Breeding sticks required to effect breeding the modern way. Better to have the real thing and, according to Jane, Murphy always gets the ‘business’ done.

What business?

Bill and I took my truck to Philip’s yard next door where the trailer he constructed sometime after the Boer War was waiting to be collected. Philip came over carrying a massive wrench, a length of wire and a tire foot-pump. He pointed to one of the wheels on the trailer.

“I’m giving you a spare wheel, and a few tools so if you lose a wheel you won’t be in too much trouble.”

This was ominous. I had a feeling that losing a wheel might well be a possibility.

“You’ve lost a wheel before then Philip?”

“Only once in the past 20 years so it’s really nothing to worry about but better to be safe and sure.”

Now I was really worried. “When did you lose the wheel, Philip?”

I’d put money on the likelihood that it was the last time he took the trailer out.

“Well, now that you mention it, it might have been quite recently,” he informed me, nervously shuffling around behind the gate at the back of the trailer.

After Philip had shared a few of the other eccentricities attached to the ancient trailer Bill and I ventured forth, northwards towards Stonegate where Murphy was waiting. I drove at a sedate pace, joining the legion of farmers who daily frustrated normal motorists by driving their rigs at snail’s pace along major public roads. The only good news was that the weather was fine, almost Spring-like in its brightness and dryness. No rain in sight.

We finally arrived at Coopers Farm and their really narrow, winding entrance road. When we reached the house I looked at the two road options, one of which would undoubtedly lead to the point where Murphy would board our bus. Both directions looked completely beyond my powers of reversing with a wonky old trailer. But when Jane pointed to the left hand side I took comfort in the fact that it looked at least slightly easier than the right hand fork. I started trying to manouevre the trailer around a corner and up a stock road that had two inches clearance on either side of the trailer. 15 minutes later I’d made it almost a quarter the way up the road with only fifty or sixty attempts. I was getting tired, confused, frustrated when Jane idled over and announced that there were a couple of things in life she considered she did really well. “One of them’s reversing a truck and trailer. If it won’t offend your masculinity I’ll drive it back there for you.”

I didn’t hesitate, stuffed my manly credentials under the seat and let her do it. She climbed in and twenty seconds later she had the trailer positioned at the end of the road ready for Murphy.

The paddocks on her farm were wet and the grass was soggy. It was tough going in our wellies for a couple of old codgers but Jane strode out carrying a bucket of feed and a pig board explaining that Murphy was lodging in a forest on the other side of the farm. We finally located Murphy who turned out to be a handsome, if slightly moth-eaten in places, a big black boar with the most wonderful elfin ears, quite unlike the floppy ears that obscured the vision of all our animals back at Moons Green. He was most amenable and eager to join us in a return walk across the fields to the waiting trailer providing Jane kept reminding him with a rattle of the pig feed which direction to take.

Now our pigs have never been easy to load onto a trailer. We’ve taken to parking the open trailer near their pig arks the night before we transport them in the hope that they’ll get comfortable and climb the ramp.  But it’s never been a simple matter and we always allow a few hours for mucking around trying to persuade them to take the first step.

Murphy, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate. Straight up the ramp and into the soft straw inside the waiting trailer. He obviously associated travel with girls and was anxious to get on with the journey knowing that there were rewards waiting at the other end.

I drove even more slowly on the return, terrified that we were going to end up in a ditch with a missing trailer wheel, a broken trailer and a pissed off old Berkshire boar on the lose. But it was an uneventful journey and we arrived at Moons Green 45 minutes later, unhooked the truck and moored the trailer to Philip’s World War II tractor for the short passage to the waiting girls.

The ladies were waiting, eager to meet the contents of the trailer. The Old Spot mother of last year’s babies was standing at the front. When Murphy alighted he sniffed around a bit and found that our Old Spot Mummy was eager to make his acquaintance. No wallflower, she. The two will certainly pursue a romance. But our young girl, the product of a mad run through the electric fence last year of a British Saddleback young stud anxious to make his mark with the ladies, was frightened of Murphy and held back.

The business end of Murphy

Murphy’s here to stay until the business is done. It’s unlikely to take more than a month. (The pig cycle is just 21 days.)  And then we shall wait 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days to see what glorious magic he has wrought with our three lovely girls.

“Fancy lunch in France sometime?” asked Bill, definitely not a founding member of Francophiles-Are-Us.

“Why not,” I responded, dreaming immediately of Alain Chapel’s truffle-stuffed chicken tightly enveloped in a pig’s bladder and poached in a rich chicken broth.

We decided right there and then to do it the following week which is how I found my alarm screaming at me at 5.00 in the morning last Thursday. Friend Sue had descended from London for the event and Ingrid, Bill’s wife, had made saucisson sandwiches for those empty moments after breakfast as we were flying through the Eurotunnel bound for Calais. I’d had the truck cleaned inside and out (for the first time in over a year – it’s a farm, truck after all) by the Latvians in Northiam and organized a single day’s breakdown cover with the AA for £25. I think Bill insisted on the insurance cover because of observing the long list of disasters that English country roads had bestowed upon my valiant Japanese vintage truck.

A little research had uncovered a village with an appropriate restaurant and a Thursday market. It seemed to be about half an hour from the tunnel exit in Calais.

Our early start was good humoured despite the apparent discomfort suffered by the two women being placed in the back seat so Bill’s fragile and post-operative knees could be stretched in the front. (It took half an hour before I realized Sue was in genuine pain and a quick investigation revealed that the tyre iron was stuck at a nasty angle behind the seat about where the middle of her back rested.)

As we approached the Eurotunnel entrance Bill called for everyone to hand their passports over. Naturally one of us had forgotten to bring the bugger. Me, the most seasoned and ancient traveler in the truck. The air went electric with abuse, some of which was even well-intentioned. Despite being almost at the tunnel entrance we were able to turn around and head back to Moons Green, a 45-minute journey each way.  It was a quiet trip and despite profuse apologies only Ingrid forgave me unconditionally. I will remember her kindness.

I can only imagine what an horrific trip this could have been had the weather been cold and foul. Instead it was one of those fantastic English mornings with dew clinging to the hedgerows and the rising sun revealing landmarks that permitted Bill to recite long historic briefings that may or may not have been tinged with fact.

An unpopular yet defiant Doig

We finally arrived at the Eurotunnel station and were directed to park right beside the bacon sandwich and hot coffee shop. What a fine piece of town planning that small hut represented. I was reinvigorated and hot to trot as we drove into the train and under La Manche.

Bill spent most of the tunnel ride programming his Tomtom navigation device so by the time we emerged from the dark into France he had the thing speaking impeccable Spanish and telling us that we mustn’t exceed 130 kilometres, something my old truck had little hope of ever achieving.

The village of Ardres was our destination and as the flat, dull French countryside sped past we were all of us primed with high expectations of a culinary and vinous nature. As we approached Ardres a massive sign proclaimed that a warehouse called “Boozers” catered to foreign visitors with major thirsts. We decided to call in on our return so we could load up with a few cases of cheap red.

The Ardres weekly market was a bustling affair with traders’ tents arrayed in four or five lines along the village square. We parked, grabbed a few Euros from the bank, and hit the market. Naff clothing stalls abounded as they do at all French markets. Do people really buy those garish £2 shoes and £5 pairs of embroidered jeans? There were horsemeat stalls, a couple of fish places with prices similar to those we find in Rye and Hastings. We bought fetid cheeses from an archetypal French fromagier – which turned out to be delicious, and local lager and apricot nectar – which turned out to be horrid. I bought Jerusalem artichokes that looked perkier than anything back at the ranch – but sadly were weird of texture and taste when roasted. And then one of us noticed the Bar du Commerce across the road that seemed to be doing a roaring trade. We’d been up for more than five hours and thirsts we were all parched. The usual suspects including the village bookie and a quartet of vivacious school mums were crowded into the place and we quickly ordered some pressions.

Around this time I think we all realized that we had driven for a couple of hours and found ourselves in a culture very different to what we’d left behind. Even me, with five year’s residence in the South of France before moving to England,  found it dramatic and beguiling. It was great to warm our rusty French accents and attempt meaningful conversation that quickly disintegrated. It was even better to absorb the culture through cold beer and to savour the lunch to come.

It took us a while but we found our way to Le Fontainebleau after fifteen minutes wandering the small village. It was a plain looking inn, a traveller’s respite, a classic rural auberge. When we opened the door I thought I detected a tired mustiness and I wondered if we’d made a mistake. But once inside we saw that there was one other table occupied and the hostess, almost certainly the wife of the chef-owner, was charming and welcoming.

She immediately understood the gravity of the situation and that wine was required immediately and certainly before any mineral water was poured. We chose cheap unpronouncable wines and they turned out to be more than acceptable. The daily inexpensive menu had several choices we liked so we launched into lunch without much ado.

The appetizers were simple, rustic and  perfect with the  white Savoie wine I’d ordered. A humble duck paté, a gibier and foie gras salad and Bill’s choice of a salmon mousse gateaux that tasted much better than it sounded.

Bill and Ingrid

Already we were convincing ourselves that this lunch, at about half the price of a favourite local pub back in Kent, was better value than anything in England. And then the steaks arrived with their peppercorn sauce. Leather-soled shoes might be a distant memory for some of us but the allusion was immediate and compelling. The steaks were thin, tough and chewy. Not a bad taste but the texture was a serious challenge. The vegetables were watery and overcooked. But do you know what? Our enthusiasm remained undampened, spirits were generous and no word of complaint was to be heard. Besides the coffees – rich dark pools of thick black syrupy java – were free and gratis.

Back in the truck we decided that a giant Carrefour hypermarché looked seductive and we stopped for a look. We loaded up with groceries (cheaper by far than home), saucisson and chorizo samples for me, and of course wine, which at 3-Euros a bottle was thoroughly convincing. Then we headed for the ‘Boozers’ superstore.

Turning into the shopping centre under the ‘Boozers’ sign it was quickly evident that the liquor shop had been long gone. Only the sign remained. Oddly no one seemed upset. We’d been up since sparrow fart and it was time to return under the channel to Moons Green.

On the return journey we discussed where we might lunch next. Two options are currently being considered; Troyes in the Champagne area and Belgium.  I’ll keep you apprised of which one wins or whether another contender appears.

We had a great crop of Conference Pears this year at the Moons Green Smallholding. They don’t usually last as well as apples but miraculously a few survived and Ingrid produced this the other day.

• Serves 4
• 750 g firm pears
• 25 g butter
• 50 g sugar
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 tbsp brandy
• 300g puff pastry

1 Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

2 Peel, halve and core the pears.

3 Melt the butter in a cast iron pan, 26 cm and stir in the sugar. Heat until the sugar melts. Arrange the pears in the pan, cut side up and sprinkle with lemon juice. Roast in the oven for 10 – 15 minutes. Add the brandy.

4 Roll out the pastry and fit it into the pan over the pears. Return to the oven for 25 – 30 minutes.

5 Turn the tart out onto a plate while still warm.

We made this soup the other day from the stored vegetables, grown last season on our smallholding in Moons Green in Kent. The South East of England has the perfect climate for market gardening and it is just great to eat fruit and vegetables, which we have grown ourselves.

• Serves 4
• 2 shallots
• 1 celeriac about 600g
• 1 potato about 140g
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp butter
• 800 ml stock
• 200 ml milk
• salt and pepper
• 2 slices white bread
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• coarse sea salt

1 Chop the shallots and dice the celeriac and potato.

2 Heat the oil and butter in a big saucepan and gently fry the vegetables for about 5 minutes without browning. Add the stock and simmer for 20 – 25 minutes.

3 Liquidise and add the milk and seasoning. Heat gently.

4 Preheat the oven to 200°C. Dice the bread roll in 1/2 cm cubes. Sprinkle over the parsley, oil and salt. Bake for about 10 minutes until golden brown.

5 Add the bread croutons to the soup when serving.

• Serves 4
• 700 g pollack fillet
• 2 tbsp five- spice powder
• 1 tbsp flour
• 4 tbsp groundnut oil
• juice of 1 lime
• 2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
• 1/2 red chilli
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp water
• 2 pak choi
• 1 tbsp groundnut oil

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Cut the pollack fillets lengthwise along the natural break in the flesh. Mix the five- spice powder with the flour and liberally coat the fillets. Heat the oil in a frying pan and quickly cook the fillets, a few at a time so that they become a nice colour. Put them on a roasting dish in the oven to finish cooking for 10 minutes.

Mix the lime juice with the fish sauce and the water. Finely chop the chilli and garlic and put them with the sugar in the sauce. Stir well and put in individual serving dishes.

Quickly stir fry the pak choi in the oil and put on 4 plates. Break the fish up a little and arrange on top.

“So what,” you’re thinking, “has this got to do with scallops?”

Well from time to time when the going gets truly tough and the weather starts to take its toll on our various psyches we get off our arses and head around the corner to our local hostelry, ‘The Swan’, for a pint and a bite of lunch from their fine list of bar snacks.

Yesterday they had the blackboard  propped against the bar to advise patrons of the arrival of fresh Rye Bay scallops. (Rye’s about 20 minutes away where we have the Moons Green stall at the weekly Farmers’ Market during the season.) Ingrid immediately suggested that scallops sounded right up her street. Bill responded, “Sure that’s a good idea, Love? You know they’re made with chillies?” Ingrid hates heat in her food. She’s a fabulous cook but avoids anything Indian or Thai or spicy like the plague. “ I think I’m up for it today, and I’ll ask them to tone it down a bit.”

Fortunately I’d ordered the chicken goujons. So when Ingrid took her first mouthful of a very plump and lovely looking scallop and instantly went bright crimson I knew that the decent thing to do was to effect a swap. “You have my chicken, I’ll take the scallops.”

They were lovely and the chillies were beautifully balanced so you could taste the fish and the searing heat.

After we returned home from the pub I sat down to work. The first email I opened advised me that supplies were coming online (in the US) of the famous Naga Jolokia pepper. I’d never heard of them so I immediately went to Wikipedia where I discovered that this just might be the most famous chile pepper in the world, something that Ingrid would need to avoid at all cost.

Back in 2005 the Naga Jolokia been investigated by scientists at The New Mexico State University Chile Pepper Institute. (This is the Oxford of  chile science.) Regents Professor Paul Bosland found Jolokia grown from seed in southern New Mexico to have a Scoville rating of 1,001,304 Scoville Heat Units by High-performance liquid chromatography.

What does it mean? If you take a bog standard chile pepper like the Jalapeno – which is the base of so many spicy Mexican dishes – you’ll find that it scores about 4,000 Scoville units. Tabasco red pepper sauce checks in at between 2,500-4,000 Scoville units.

To put it simply, the Naga Jolokia checks in at somewhere between 250 to 400 times hotter than Tabasco! Little wonder that the in 2009, scientists at India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation announced plans to use the peppers in hand grenades, as a non lethal way to flush out terrorists from their hideouts and to control rioters.

Me? I’m wondering what my favourite Thai curry would taste like with a few drops of Naga Jolokia added before serving. Ingrid’s agreed to grow some for me in her glasshouse if I can locate some seeds. Anybody know where I can get some seeds?

It took five months to build. (My calculation, not Bill’s.) It involved the importation of outrageously expensive special firebricks from Lancashire and an eBay bid for a terracotta chimney that won the day at less than twenty quid. There were templates and plans spread across the flagstones outside the house for most of this recent, very hot summer. There were huge altercations with some internet hardware store who sold Bill cutting blades that were supposed to slice through his firebricks “like a scout knife through butter” but disintegrated within moments. But most of all it featured Bill’s nitpicking, Bauhaus-obsessed  attention to detail and in the end this is probably why it is such a success. Making a dome out of bricks and fireproof mortar a perfect hemisphere is no pushover. Getting the bricks to settle and then conform to Bill’s rigid template involved much hushed strong language and the occasional hurled bucket. The mixing of various mortars and plastering required the additional advice of both Bill’s sons (dentist and doctor) and their professional talents.

In the end it’s heroic. It looks like a real folly, and it cooks like a chef’s orgasm. There’s a black marble bench that is perfect for kneading and forming dough, and for the preparation of the most elaborate casseroles and roasts. But it’s what goes on inside the oven that makes it magical.

Bill bought a yellow plastic gun device that when you point its rather alarming red laser beam at anything immediately tells you the temperature of the spot where the red dot alights. Needless to say nobody was safe when the thing first arrived. Women ran away when Bill took the gun from its perch, not wanting to know the temperature of their anatomy. After the fire had been permitted to slowly build inside Bill’s oven and he pointed the laser inside the inferno we literally doffed our caps to the man. Inside that pink mound the temperature rose past 500, 600, 700°C. And then the device ran out of readings. The heat inside Bill’s oven goes off the scale. Our first pizza, gingerly pushed inside the dome, was cooked in less than three minutes. Bill quickly got the hang of the beast. We could cook as many pizzas as we liked when the oven was hot, but he let the temperature drop for an hour before he started on his sourdough loaves.

Pizza night is now a regular bi-weekly event and has no trouble attracting eager diners. Bill bakes bread every week and those of us who are regular recipients of his bounty vote it unanimously outstanding. We’ve roasted the rear end of a pig, countless joints, casseroles and stews. And nowadays, when I drive back from collecting my children from school in the middle of these now familiar snowstorms, the beacon of Bill’s oven shouts out to me as I navigate my truck down the rough track that leads to the farm. I can’t wait until the next firing.

OK, we didn’t grow any of this on our Smallholding at Moons Green! But it is a great recipe and one that my friend Gillian is very keen to try out.

Serves 12

• 250 g prunes without stones
• 100 ml tea
• 50 ml brandy
• 300ml cream
• 400 g dark chocolate
• 5 eggs
• 50 g sugar
• 200 ml cream

1 Coarsely chop the prunes into the tea and brandy and soak for 4 hours.

2 Whip the 300 ml cream. Line a 2 litre freezer proof mould with  a layer of the cream. Freeze, while you prepare the chocolate mix.

3 Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a bowl suspended over a saucepan of hot water. Mix with the prunes and brandy.

4 Separate the eggs. Whisk the egg whites.  In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar and mix in the melted chocolate.

5 Beat the 200 ml cream and combine with the chocolate mix. Lastly fold in the egg whites.

6 Pour the mixture into the cream lined mould and freeze until set, preferably overnight.

We had surplus crops in our market garden at our Moons Green Smallholding in Kent this year. We researched and dug up this recipe. We did intend the crisps for John’s kids but somehow the bowl just disappeared, helped down with a glass or two of Wolf Blass!

Makes a big bowl

• 1 large carrot
• 200g celeriac
• 200g butternut squash
• 1 parsnip
• 1 sweet potato
• 2 medium beetroot
• 800 ml oil
• sea salt

1 Peel and finely slice the vegetables about 1 mm thick.

2 Heat the oil to medium heat. When a cube of bread browns in a couple of minutes the temperature is right..

3 Deep fry the vegetables, a handful at a time for a couple of minutes. Keep the different vegetables separate as they take different times to cook.. You know when they are ready as they stop sizzling and brown slightly at the edges.

4 Remove the crisps from the oil and drain on kitchen paper. If they are slightly soft when they come out from the oil, they will crisp up quickly as they dry.

5 Serve with sea salt

Charlie’s a young and spirited 71. Ron’s 65 and a former gamekeeper in these parts. Add it up and they’ve been practitioners of the art of using ferrets to hunt rabbits for more than 125 years. Yesterday they visited us here in Moons Green to go to work on what is becoming a burgeoning rabbit problem. On this grey and chilly Autumn morning they decided to start around the pond.

Slashing the brambles around the warren

They came with a full kit consisting of two boxes each containing a pair of animals, in this case three ferrets and a polecat. According to Wikipedia the European Polecat is the wild ancestor of the domesticated ferret.  According to Charlie Polecats have dark eyes and Ferrets have pink eyes. These animals like to hunt underground and have finely tuned hearing and olefactory senses.

Ron's polecat

They also brought their long-legged Jack Russell, a hard-working three-year old lad going by the name of ‘Digger 2’. (I didn’t ask but presume ‘Digger 1’ was a canine ancestor.) Digger knows his stuff and is a vital member of the team as we were to learn quite quickly.

Digger2 and Charlie checking it out…

The key to the art seemed to lie in the positioning of the nets and ensuring that every entrance to a rabbit warren was covered with a net. The nets are ‘purse nets’, hand-made by the late Ernie “Poacher” Knowles of Burwash from rolls of hemp and bequeathed to Charlie as a sign of respect for his rabbit hunting prowess.  One corner of the net is pegged into the ground so that a bolting rabbit tightens the net around itself as it attempts to escape.

Purse nets covering all holes from the burrow

It all happens very quickly. The ferret slips into a rabbit hole and slithers around following its nose and ears. Digger 2 stands guard, attentive to the slightest sound. Suddenly Digger 2 rushes towards one hole and seconds later a rabbit hits the net at full speed. Charlie dives for the net and secures the rabbit. Ron dives for the ferret that emerges seconds later. The rabbit is dispatched quickly and painlessly by the old ‘chinning’ method and joins the collection laid out on our lawn.

Ron's own method of dispatching rabbits

What amazed me was the amount of labour involved. These two rabbiters were not teenagers yet they willingly launched themselves full-length into tangled nests of brambles in order to ensure that the rabbits were captured. Once the ferret even managed to turn himself around somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath us and became what experts call, “a lay-up”. They had to start digging and send another ferret down on a rope with a collar around his neck. Once latched into the neck of the rabbit the one who turned around was likely to stay down the warren, eat his fill and go to sleep. His colleague was there to persuade him to return to the top.

The rabbits they caught were big, healthy looking specimens, perfect for the pot. Charlie said he’d been selling a lot of rabbits to pubs. There are apparently more rabbits this year than last year and hardly any Myxomatosis in sight, thanks to the cold winter last year which interrupted the spread of ‘myxi’. On a good morning Charlie and Ron have been known to return home with more than 40 rabbits, a nice little earner when it happens.

I wonder why we all continue to eat the sad and sorry, shapeless chicken meat we buy from our supermarkets when our fields around here are teeming with delicious bunnies. How much more responsible would it be to raise our children on rabbit rather than the hapless product of the global chicken factories with all its hormones, antibiotics, growth enhancers, cruelty and savagery?  I’ve developed a raft of easy recipes for rabbit if you’re interested. Just send me a response through the blog. (And if you want to find Ron and a couple of his rabbits go to the weekly farmer’s market in Rolvenden on Thursday mornings.)