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First published 2025 by: Bustle & Sew Station House West Cranmore Shepton Mallet BA4 4QP
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WelcometotheAugustMagazine
This summer seems to be absolutely flying past and I can hardly believe it’s August already. But the wheat planted in the field next to our house has turned from green to gold and I expect the farmer will be out harvesting before too much longer.
August is, I always think, a month of green and gold. The trees are are dark dusty green, there are blackberries in the hedgerows and the first signs that the season of Autumn will soon be here. But the days are still long and warm, and the chickens that live in our Kitchen Garden are still laying plenty of eggs, though Betty is moulting madly - her tail is reduced to a single feather - and she looks quite ridiculous, though I haven’t the heart to tell her so!
Green and gold is the theme of this month’s issue, from nasturtiums, to Miffy’s jumper(!) And I’ve included just one of my Twelve Days of Christmas designs - the Partridge in the Pear Tree, with golden yellow pears of course! I won’t be including any more of these in the magazine but I thought this made a nice stand alone project. I do hope you’ll enjoy it this month’s issue and the September edition will be published on Thursday 28 August in four weeks time.
Until then…
Very best wishes
August
August, and the coast beckons whilst all around the countryside shifts hue once more, this time to purples, greens and ochres as the heather begins to bloom and under the August sun, wheat fields change to a deeper golden brown. As the wind rustles the ripening ears, it is like the sigh of a tide on some distant shore. In the drift of clouds across a sunlit sky, barley and oat fields are a patchwork of yellow and white, while the hills are massed with purple heather. In orchards, plums of every size and colour grace the trees. On cracked plums black and yellow wasps play the freebooter, and the red admiral butterflies come to feast on fallen pears. In my childhood this stubble would then be burned, a practice that has
long since been discontinued due to environmental and safety concerns.
If you’re on holiday, this is the nicest time to enjoy a traditional fish and chip supper. There’s always a queue at the best fish and chip shops - the sign is on the door - “frying tonight” and you can smell the warm paper, sharp vinegary tang and almost feel the crisp salty batter on your lips as you wait in line for your own order. You lick your lips and wait for your own hot, paper-wrapped parcel.
The best place to sit and eat your prize is the harbour wall, perching on the stones still warm from the day’s sun and looking out across the sea as you finally peel back the paper to reveal your delicious supper. The batter should still be crisp, and the fish should come away in thick white flakes. Delicious!
It’s harvest time in the kitchen garden and greenhouse too as everything seems to ripen at once in the warm summer sun.
There is no month in the whole year in which nature wears a more beautiful appearance than in the month of August… orchards and cornfields ring with the hum of labour; trees bend beneath the thick clusters of rich fruit which bow their branches to the ground; and the corn, piled in graceful sheaves, or waving in every light breath that sweeps above it, as if it wooed the sickle, tinges the landscape with a golden hue. A mellow softness appears to hang over the whole earth
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers (1836)
TheFashionableLifeofBarbara Johnson
During her lifetime Barbara Johnson (1738-1825), the daughter of an English cleric, kept a meticulous record of the dresses that were made for her, attaching swatches of fabric and including images from ladies magazines. She was just 8 years old when she began her journal.
Each fabric sample was carefully placed into a little scrapbook, alongside notes about price, yardage, and where she wore it. She continued this practice for nearly 80 years. . Impressive in many ways, her book.
Not only did Barbara keep a detailed record of fabrics she bough and the dresses that were made for her, but she also described the sewing process. Luckily for us now, Barbara also wrote notes on current hairstyles, accessorize and she posted fashion plates with matching descriptions and her own comments.
Now preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum, her “material account book” offers one of the most personal, detailed looks at 18th and 19th century fashion ever discovered.
Free from Sprouting Wild Ones: Leaf Imprint Jewellery Dish
IntheKitchen: Gatheringin….
This month, the last of our too-short English summer, brings the time of the garden harvest as we gather in the crops so carefully sown in spring and nurtured through the summer months. But some of us, for whatever reason, aren’t able, or don’t want to devote time, effort and garden space to growing their own produce, especially as there are so many opportunities now to purchase fresh, local, seasonal produce - farm shops, farmer’s markets, independent greengrocers and the like.
But still for many of us, myself included, when time is short or the budget tight, we turn to the local supermarket or home delivery. So I thought you might be interested in this early foretelling of a different way taken from “The Country Life Cookery Book” by Ambrose Heath, first published in 1937…
“Even when I was a child, forty years ago, the smaller country house had not yet been entirely divested of its domestic splendour. Food and service were cheap and there was a lavishness about country life which was very different from the present time. The intervening years have changed all that.
Today the country housewife is no longer at an advantage when compared with her counterpart in the
towns and cities. As a result of the development of transport and cold storage, it is the same goods that she buys, only she finds it rather more difficult to buy them. She no longer makes her own bread and butter, and homemade butter is difficult to get and then inordinately expensive. Instead of half an hour spent shopping almost round the corner, and tradespeople delivering all day long, she has to motor to the nearest town, which means a morning’s work, and then must bring her purchases home herself or leave them for the local carrier.”
But, putting these serious thoughts to one side, August is also a month of days spent by the sea, childhood holidays storing up memories for life, golden afternoons and hazy sunsets, salt-tangled hair, sun-kissed limbs and recipes for delicious new delicacies to discover.
So this month we include lots of seasonal goodies, both from garden and coast that don’t involve spending too long in the kitchen, for after all who wants to be inside when the sun is shining and there’s a whole world outside the kitchen door waiting to be discovered?
TomatoGalette
Ingredients
● 500g tomatoes (use a mixture of sizes and colours if you have them), cut into ½cm pieces
● 50g gruyère or vegetarian alternative, coarsely grated
● 1 garlic clove finely grated
● 1 tbsp chopped oregano or thyme
● 225g plain flour plus extra for dusting
● 100g cold butter cut into cubes
● 2 eggs plus extra beaten egg for brushing
● Method
● Tip the tomatoes into a colander set over a large bowl, sprinkle over 1 tsp salt and set aside for 1 hr to draw out the moisture. Meanwhile, make the pastry. Tip the flour, butter and a good pinch of salt into a food processor and blitz to a fine breadcrumblike consistency. Beat the eggs in a jug, then tip into the processor and pulse to a soft dough – if it seems dry, add ½ tsp cold water at a time until it comes together. Shape into a disc, then wrap and chill for 20 mins.
● Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Tip the tomatoes into a large bowl with the cheese, garlic, herbs and a good grinding of black pepper. Gently combine using your hands and set aside.
● Roll the chilled pastry out on a lightly floured surface to a roughly 30cm circle. Pile the tomato mixture into the middle, leaving a roughly 5cm border around the edge. Brush the exposed pastry border with some beaten egg, then fold the border up so it slightly overlaps the tomato filling. It doesn’t need to be even or neat.
● Brush the pastry with more beaten egg, then bake for 40-50 mins until the pastry is golden and the tomatoes have softened and are tender.
