Month: October 2011

Apologies for the lack of a blog last week, but Hubby was off and we were busy getting a few jobs done before Winter. It also happened to be the week that he gave up smoking and so it was best to keep him sweet and not sit on the computer while he was busy working!!

We managed to get a few clearing up jobs done and the weather is still being kind to us, I can’t believe how mild it is, we don’t even light the Rayburn until the evening as it gets too hot in the rest of the house! However I am quite sure that Winter will arrive with a vengeance any day soon. We  also began to dispatch our meat chickens this week, we have 18 to do altogether and each one takes about an hour for one person to pluck, I would like one of those fancy plucking machines but at around £400 I don’t think that will be any time soon!! I try to do 3 at a time which is plenty long enough to be standing out in the cold with only the radio for company, occasionally someone brings me a cup of something hot, and stops for a quick chat, of course that’s not the end of it and the next day they all need to be gutted and prepared. It sounds like a horrible job but there is something strangely satisfying about presenting a bird for the table that you have reared, killed and dressed yourself. If anyone ever wants a lesson, let me know and I am happy to show you, you never know when the skill might come in handy 😉

The veg garden is all but at a standstill at the minute, there are a few things still to harvest and I have some Winter lettuce growing in the greenhouse but in all honesty we are not salad eaters in the cold months so they may go to the chickens. I have been busy carving pumpkins and the chickens love the insides and the seeds so no waste there. Even though my brood are all grown up we still like to mark Halloween (and all the other festivals) and have a family get together with Nieces and Nephews etc, tonight we will be eating hot dogs and baked potatoes, play a couple of games and sit round the firepit telling spooky stories while we toast marshmallows and do a bit of apple bobbing. I have not yet moved into the world of cupcakes, for me it is still fairy cakes with iced spiders!

I love the Autumn programmes on TV  at the moment and have taken to watching Kirsty’s Handmade Britain,  envious of  all the craft making and wondering what I can have a go at. Then I sat and thought about all the things I have tried over the years and forgotten about, I usually bought the kit and it is probably in the loft somewhere, the list includes, Candle making, Lace making, Glass painting, Quilling, Flowerpressing, Calligraphy, even bath bombs which were probably the most succesful of my long list of dismal failures! Ah well maybe I will stick to chicken plucking and wistfully watching other people on the telly creating marvelous things. One of the thoughts I had for the farm was to have a space where craft and skill classes could be held, just think of the all the other things I could fail at, pottery, basket weaving, woodturning, wool spinning :p

The lambs all came back from the butcher and were safely delivered to the customers, it is always good to know how they did in terms of quality and I was informed that they were just right, good weights, not too fat, not too lean, so I was pleased that we had got it right. I have no idea how they taste this year though as our two are still alive and kicking in the field, and as we are not sure if the ram got at them before he went, they will not be going until well into the New Year just to make sure! We did however take delivery of our half of the cow which fitted nicely into the new freezer, it is very tender and delicious and the amount of meat you get is colossal. I felt I had to do the first roast some justice and we had it with all the trimmings, plus Apple pie and cream for pudding it was a superb meal even if I do say so myself 😉

I hate to say the word but, CHRISTMAS, is approaching faster that any of us would like, while I love the festive season, the amount of preparation leading up to it seems never-ending. Even though we don’t go mad at Christmas there are still presents to think about and purchase, food to prepare, some of it can be done well in advance, but I find that no matter how many mince pies you make, it is never enough for my lot. We are not religious but for me it is about the atmosphere of the day, the excitement of opening gifts, the hustle and bustle of preparing dinner for guests and the contentment of the evening when everyone is full up and happy, one day of the year that is dedicated to being together as a family, and so much easier now the children are older and don’t fall out!

Sometimes I actually do leave the farm, although not very often!! This time of the year I will be away more than any other time, luckily it is a fairly quiet time as far as work goes and so I am able to take part in a local Pantomime with the Acting Community Thingumybogs in Carterton. I first went along with the children about 15 years ago, they have long since given up but I am still part of the group. We have been rehearsing since the beginning of September on a Thursday evening but from this week onwards it will step up a gear, Sunday rehearsals begin as well as scenery painting evenings etc. This year we are putting on Hercules, not your average traditional panto, but then there is nothing average about our group!! Look out for the posters, the performances will be the weekend before Christmas so just the thing to get you in the festive spirit and I promise you wont be disappointed 🙂 All the money raised (apart from the the money needed to pay the insurance) goes to Save The Children, so you get a feel good factor all round!

 

 

Apologies for the lateness of my weekly blog, I had a very busy day today painting the kitchen and reorganising my files in the office. It didn’t help that when we took the clock down to paint, the battery worked slightly loose and I didn’t realise that it had been half past three for at least an hour!! This put me well behind schedule with the animals to feed, the horses to do, the tea to cook and pop and get a bit of shopping 🙂

Well the weather has certainly changed and we are fast moving into the dreaded darker months of the year, time to assess what animals to keep and what to move on, one way or another. Most of the sheep will go this week, although for the first time ever we will be keeping two of them through the Winter, this will no doubt throw us some new challenges and give us a few stories to tell. As the temperature drops we start to feed the sheep and horses hay to keep their body temperature up overnight, it’s not just the price of food in the supermarket that has gone up, animal feed is creeping up too with the hay wheels going from £15 to £20 this year. Our friendly farmer is good to us though as I have heard reports of wheels costing up to £45 in other parts of the country. We are also able to bulk buy grain from the same farmer after he has sold his quota to the big boys, we had a ton of wheat last year and will have the same again this year plus a ton of barley, it saves us a fortune in animal feed and just about lasts untill next years harvest.

We have been trying to get the veg patch cleared and ready to put muck on, this will be left over Winter for the worms to do their job, ready for the new growing season in Spring. I have been harvesting the Pumpkin patch and have a good amount of all different shapes and sizes, those that are not used for Halloween will keep nicely for the chickens to eat over the next couple of months. I am not a squash fan myself but they grow very well here and are a useful feed for livestock. I am still harvesting a few small heads of broccoli and to my surprise the cauli stalks I left in the ground have started to throw out new tiny little cauliflower heads which I am very chuffed about. At least the caterpillars have all turned to chrysalis now and wont be munching away and ruining them. I ordered the new freezer which arrived on Friday so I can begin to freeze a few more ver and the rest of the cooking apples which are still raining down each time the wind blows.

This Winter will be a 100% improvement on last year, we have central heating, some insulation in the walls and a roof that does not let in the rain, it’s almost  a 5* resort!! All in all I am kind of looking forward to the cold this year, at least when we come in it will be warm and dry, and I have bought some snow gear on E-bay so am ready for whatever the weather throws at us 🙂 The Spring and Summer are great but you do find yourself working from morning till bedtime, at least in the Winter we get our evenings back to relax and watch the rubbish on TV 😉

My eldest daughter has been away on holiday this week (lucky so and so) so I have had the added extra of feeding the horses in the morning, although a friend of hers has been coming in the evenings to feed, ride and clear the field of poo. Yesterday while out riding there was a bit of an incident and the horse went backwards over the wall down near the local pond, he came back with a few scrapes and is a bit sore today but he will be fine. She was supposed to be home by this evening, but text earlier to tell me that her flight had been delayed because of thunderstorms and she wont be flying until the morning, there was me thinking I was off the hook as far as the horses were concerned, lets hope she is not delayed any further or has not secretly booked two weeks and not told me!!

Well the squirrel made an appearance this week and I caught him nicking my nuts! I had assumed he was no longer around and left them under the Ash tree to lose their skins naturally, I went out to the greenhouse and caught him sneaking up the tree with a Walnut in his mouth. He sat stock still, hoping I couldn’t see him, I told him no matter how still he sat I could see him plain as day and that would be his last one 🙂

I have finally sorted out the lambs, I now have the replacement tags and a date for them to go, I have made the decision to keep the two small ones back until the new year, they don’t have enough weight on them yet and I don’t have room in the freezer so they get a short reprieve 🙂

The unseasonably warm weather is still causing a problem with the tortoises, they are still eating but as soon as the weather breaks it will be cold enough for them to want to hibernate and they can’t do that with food inside as it will rot during hibernation, as yet I am undecided on how to tackle the problem, answers on a postcard please :p

The veg patch has all but come to an end, next years catalogues are arriving in the post and it will soon be time to decide what  grew well and what new things to try. We will have to build a permanent runner bean frame as this is the third year in a row that the wind has blown them over, they get very heavy with all the foliage and beans and the wooden poles can’t hold them up so it will be a metal structure that hopefully will do the job. There is a lot of clearing up to do in the vegetable garden, they need to be cleared of old foliage and any weeds, then certain beds will be manured ready for whatever crop they are having next year. The crop rotation plan has already been finalised, it is important to rotate so that pests and disease do not build up, and although the runner beans fix nitrogen into the ground and so are an important part of rotation for other crops, they can have a permanent bed without too many problems. The only things left in the ground now are Parnips and Sweet Potato, the latter is a new crop for me this year and until November when they are dug I have no idea how they are doing or even if there is anything there at all, it will be a pleasant surprise if there is 🙂

I made a mental note this week that it is time to think about making the Christmas cake and pudding!! It always seems so early but the longer you leave them to mature (and add copious amounts of Brandy to) the better they taste. I usually start making batches of mince pies around this time too, I make them up and freeze them in the bun tin then put them into bags and, if as in our house you eat dozens of them, you can just get them out of the freezer and pop them in the oven when required. I went to a cooking demo not long ago and was shown a simple way to do mince pies, take a block of buttery flaky pastry, roll it out, spread mincemeat over the top, roll back up and cut into slices, cook and dust with icing sugar when cool. These are quick and easy, they also work with chocolate spread and you can keep the roll frozen untill you need it  or slice a few off at a time. This time of year is also a good time to start batch baking too, this morning I have been making fruit cakes, apple pies and victoria sponges to go into the freezer, ready for those cold days when you need a bit of comfort food when you come in from outside. We will have enough in the freezer to see us through the Winter, just in case we get snowed in for three months!! In fact I have had to order another freezer, as we are expecting our half of the cow any day, we now have 4 freezers of various sizes and the plan is to turn one off at a time as they get emptied, I don’t think I will need to go shopping for months, except for Chocolate of course 😛