I love gardening, hate cooking. After five years learning how to grow fruit and veg, I’m now stuck with, well, a load of fruit and veg. Can I get my own tradwife to make them edible?
I’ve spent much of the last week picking, then sorting through berries, making, straining and freezing various compotes and conserves, washing and batch-cooking chard and spinach, podding and shelling broad beans. I’m not having a granny summer, a Sydney Sweeney summer or a nun girl summer (all of which I’ve seen suggested as themes for 2026); I’m having a tradwife summer. It’s basically Ballerina Farm here, without the rosy-cheeked, tousle-haired children, raw milk or plane-company-heir husband – and my tomatoes aren’t even ripe yet.
It’s taken me five years as the genuinely grateful, happy guardian of a garden to fully appreciate the issue with growing fruit and vegetables: once you’ve done it, you have lots of fruit and vegetables. I understand that’s a privilege, not a problem – and indeed, the whole point of the enterprise. And some produce is pure, easy pleasure: strawberries and raspberries, mangetout and lettuce (at least if, like me, you accept the occasional surprise protein bonus in your salad, thanks to slapdash washing). But other stuff that thrives here requires prepping and cooking to be edible, and with my family and friends dodging my calls offering my various gluts, I find myself resignedly donning an apron and doing what I imagine my ancestors spent centuries wishing they could avoid.
Continue reading...
I love gardening, hate cooking. After five years learning how to grow fruit and veg, I’m now stuck with, well, a load of fruit and veg. Can I get my own tradwife to make them edible?I’ve spent much of the last week pi...
See more
