August 31, 1938

Morning very cold, warm & fine later.

August 30, 1938

Warmer.
Leaves of the tulip tree beginning to turn yellow. Sunflowers & gladioli in full bloom. Godetias getting past their best. Mantbretias° coming into full bloom. Elderberries now ripe & bird-shit everywhere deep purple. Purple stains on logs etc. where they have been. Seems difficult to believe that birds digest much of what they eat. The man who keeps the guinea pigs here seems uncertain whether or not they sleep. Says they close their eyes sometimes, but it is uncertain whether they are asleep. First English eating pears today.

August 29, 1938

Overcast & chilly. Heavy rain last night. Dahlias now in full bloom.

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FRUIT BOTTLING
Commenting on the old-time country method of “Fruit Bottling without sugar,” B. A. Crang, Instructress in Fruit and Vegetable Preservation at the University of Bristol, says:
“This is bound to give unsatisfactory results in many cases, as cold water cannot destroy the impurities on the fruit and water itself also contains many impurities. During storage mould will probably grow and the fruit will be spoilt.
“A simple method of bottling fruit is to place the fruit in clean bottles, heat them in a warm oven (about 240 deg F) until the fruit has changed colour and looks cooked. The jars should then be filled quickly with boiling water or syrup, the rubber rings put in position and the lids fixed on securely. If the bottles have sealed correctly, the following day they can be lifted by their lids without the lids coming off.
“Fruit bottled in this way will keep indefinitely.”

August 28, 1938

Night before last an hour’s rain. Yesterday hot & overcast. Today ditto, with a few drops of rain in the afternoon. The hop-picking due to start in about a week.

August 26, 1938

Hot. Dense ground-mist early this morning. Many blackberries now ripe, very large & fairly sweet. Also fair number of dew-berries. Walnuts now nearly full sized. Plenty of English apples in the shops.

August 25, 1938, Preston Hall

Everything in Suffolk is much more dried-up than in Kent. Until the day we arrived there had been no rain for many weeks & various crops had failed. Near S’wold saw several fields of oats & barley being harvested which had grown only 1’ or 18” high. Ears nevertheless seemed normal. Wheat crop all over the world said to be heavy.
A bedstraw hawk-moth found in our back garden & mounted by Dr Collings¹. Evidently a straggler from the continent. Said to be the first seen in that locality for 50 years.
Little owl very common round here. Brown owl does not seem to exist.
Dr C. says the snake I caught was the “smooth snake”, non-poisonous & not very common.
Today hot again.
Gipsies beginning to arrive for the hop-picking. As soon as they have pitched their caravans the chickens are let loose & apparently can be depended on not to stray. The strips of tin for cloth-pegs are cut of biscuit boxes. Three people were on the job, one shaping the sticks, one cutting out the tin & another nailing it on. I should say one person doing all these jobs (also splitting the pegs after nailing) could make 10-15 pegs an hour.
Another white owl this evening.

¹The Blairs’ family doctor at Southwold from 1921. His son, Dennis, was a friend of Orwell’s; see 109, n. 1. Peter Davison

August 22, 1938, Southwold*

Cool this morning & raining most of the day. Most of the crops in & stacked. Blackberries in Suffolk much less forward than Kent, otherwise little difference in the vegetation.
When clipping fowls’ wings, clip only one wing, preferably the right (left wing keeps the ovaries warm.)
Cold tea is good fertilizer for geraniums.

*Because the previous diary entry was dated 22 August, it is likely that this was 23 August. Orwell had gone to Southwold to see his parents before leaving for North Africa; see his letter to Jack Common, 25 August, 476. The diary entry for 25 August indicates a return to Preston Hall; thus the two days at Southwold were 23 and 24 August. Peter Davison

August 22, 1938

Warmish day, with showers. Nights are getting colder & more like autumn. A few oaks beginning to yellow very slightly. After the rain enormous slugs crawling about, one measuring about 3” long. Large holes, presumably ear-holes, some distance behind head. They were of two distinct colours, some light fawn & others white, but both have a band of bright orange round the edge of the belly, which makes one think they are of the same species & vary individually in colour. On the tip of their tails they had blobs of gelatinous stuff like the casing of water-snail’s eggs.
A large beetle, about the size of a female stag-beetle but not the same, extruding from her hindquarters a yellow tube about the length of herself. Possibly some sort of tube through which eggs are laid?

[NEWSPAPER CUTTING]

Sloe Gin
The origin of this recipe is buried deep in the traditional lore of the New Forest gypsies. A friend of Lady Muriel wrote it down in the gipsy’s own words. Her people were friends with Romany folk, and a bottle of the liquer was always brought at Christmas as a gift to her mother. The gypsies expected no payment for it, and in addition used to sing some ancient songs which they called carols, but seemed to have no Christian significance.
“Pick your sloes when they be fine and ripe, with dry air, and warm with the sun. Prick each one with a needle three times. Take half a bottle of unsweetened gin and put in a fistful of sugar-candy, firm and strong, the taste of a crushed bitter almond, or the kernels of ripe apricots, crushed. Fill the bottle with the sloes and press them down.
“If you be not on the road, lay beneath the floor of your tent where you be sleeping, for they slags (sloes) dunnot like the cold. Let ‘em bide till Christmas come, when take out the fruit and let ‘em bide till you need ‘em.”

August 21

Yesterday fine & fairly warm. Went in afternoon and saw Kit’s Coty,¹ a druidical altar or something of the kind. It consists of four stones arranged more or less thus:

The whole about 8’ high & the stone on top approximately 8’ square by something over a foot thick. This makes about 70 cubic feet of stone. A cubic yard (27 cubic feet) of coal is supposed to weigh 27 cwt., so the top stone if of coal would weigh about 3 1/2 tons. Probably more if I have estimated the dimensions rightly. The stones are on top of a high hill & it appears they belong to quite another part of the country.

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Fruit Bottling Without Sugar
OLD-TIME COUNTRY METHOD
When this simple method of bottling fruit in cold water without sugar or any cooking was first shown to me by an old country-woman I was doubtful if it would prove successful.
I find, however, that it answers perfectly, and that the fruit has more flavour this way than when it is dealt with by the more usual methods.
Care is necessary in following out the directions. Use air-tight bottles with rubber rings. And now for the simple recipe.
Fill bottles of the kind mentioned with fruit, and place in pail or any suitable receptacle which will hold four to five inches of water over the top of the bottle. Now turn on tap of cold water, or have a can of cold water and pour over the bottled fruit with some force. This is to pack fruit and force out any impurities. Let water run until bottles are filled and running over an inch or two. Stop tap and wait until all bubbles have ceased to rise.
Seal up, under water. Take out, turn the bottles upside-down. If all are dry next morning all is well. If there is any leaking you must do the work over again. The fruit keeps its flavour as though freshly gathered. – T. H. S.

¹Kit’s Coty House is the chamber of a long barrow (an ancient grave mound) not far to the north of Aylesford. Peter Davison

*You can view an image of this entry here. The Orwell Prize

August 19

Ref, the stacks in the cornfield. Actually the area under wheat & barley was about the same, & the crop makes 4 stacks, 2 of 30’ x 18’ x 24’ (high) & 2 of 18’ x 15’ x 20 (high.) This works out at about 28, 000 cubic feet of stack for 22 acres. Yesterday fine and rather windy. A fair number of ripe blackberries. Elderberries changing colour rapidly. Hazel nuts almost fully formed. Valerian & mulleins over.
For improving finish of cement.

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London, W.C.1. You can, however, hasten the setting, improve the strength and wearing qualities, and reduce porosity, by treating the finished work with a special solution after the cement has set. These solutions have the effect of slowing up the drying if mixed with the gauging water, but they increase speed of curing or final setting if applied in the form of a wash. Common washing soda 1lb. To 2 gallons of water is one method of hardening. A superior result can be got by a wash of sodium silicate (water glass) by adding 1 part of liquid sodium silicate to 4 parts of water (5 parts altogether). The tiles are washed with a rose can a week after making, and the silica sinks into the pores of the cement and forms a “gel” which chemically hardens and renders the cells further water and oil resisting. A second was a few days afterwards gives still further improvement. (7363)

Weather today cold, blowy & rather wet. Haws getting quite red. Some rain in the afternoon.