A year on the allotment: December 2016

In December it's all about the sprouts. The plot is looking very sparse at this time of year, but this crop thrives in cold weather. We've never grown sprouts before and I'm so chuffed with the amount each stalk has produced.

We wanted to eat homegrown sprouts on Christmas Day this year. Having an allotment means planning ahead, so we were thinking about the festive dinner way back in April when we planted the tiny plug plants.

It was so lovely to walk to the plot on Christmas Eve as a family to pull up our sprouts. They are tough plants and take some effort to get out of the ground. It's amazing to see the small seedlings transform into these tall, tree-like plants.

On Christmas Day my Mother-in-Law and Mum set to work preparing our homegrown brussel sprouts. Mr. M was in charge of cooking and he decided to lightly fry the sprouts with onion and bacon. I prefer this way of cooking them to the traditional 'boil 'em to death' method. They were delicious and couldn't have been fresher.

This is my final allotment post for 2016. I have written a blog post for each month of the year and gathered them all together over on the "Our Allotment" page. Looking back through the posts brings back so many fantastic memories. I love watching the seasons change and to see all we've achieved over the past twelve months. We don't have masses of time to dedicate to the plot due to work and home commitments. But even so, we've managed to harvest lots of tasty homegrown veg.

Back in January 2016, I wrote a post about "Five ways an allotment makes family life better". I still strongly believe owning an allotment gives you a better understanding of food production, contributes to health and well being, promotes a nurturing and patient attitude, you get to eat fresh produce with low food miles and you feel part of a community.

I've posted lots of pictures of our harvest over the past twelve months, so I'll finish this post with a rare photo of me and my gorgeous girl together on the plot. Here's to 2017 and hopefully it will be filled with lots more muddy boots, seed planting and harvesting...

This week I'm linking up with these lovely blogs:

"How Does Your Garden Grow" over on mammasaurus.co.uk

"Country Kids" over on www.coombemill.com