Month: April 2012

Today I will be writing the blog while on my coffee breaks, so this may not get published until late, the reason being that today is the first dry day that we have had in well over a week and I really need t get some jobs done while I can!!

The week seems to have gone by very slowly and some days all I could do was look out of the window in despair wondering when the heck is all this rain going to stop, and apparently it isn’t, not just yet anyway we just have a respite for a day so I need to make the most of it. During the early part of the week I decided to do some cooking as there was not much I could do outside. I picked an armful of Rhubarb and set about finding a recipe, I settled on a Rhubarb and Custard cake as this sounded delicious, the first thing to do was roast the Rhubarb which I had never done before but the flavour is much more intense and would definitely recommend it, basically you just pop it in the oven with sugar and roast until the juices are sweet. I didn’t have any ready-made custard which the recipe recommends (it is thicker) so I made some from scratch which was delicious also 🙂

Rhubarb & Custard Cake: 180c/fan 160c / gas 4

400g of Rhubarb – roasted

250g butter

150g pot of ready made custard

250g self raising flour

1/2tsp baking powder

4 large eggs

1tsp Vanilla extract

250g caster sugar

Icing sugar to dust

Reserve 3tbls of custard in a bowl for later, beat the rest of the custard with the butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, vanilla and sugar until creamy.

Spoon one third of the mix into a 23cm tin, add some Rhubarb, then dot with another third of mixture and spread it out, top with more Rubarb then spoon over the rest of the mixture, put the rest of the Rhubarb on top of that layer then dot the custard that you kept back over the top. Bake for 40 mins until risen and golden then cover with foil and bake for a further 15-20 mins, dust with icing sugar when cool.

You should end up with something like this ! It was delicious, even Hubby ate it although I told him it was just Rhubarb cake because he does not like custard 😉

 

 

 

 

Just come in for another coffee break, although its dry today the wind is still fairly strong, I discovered that I had lost a roof panel from the greenhouse and I eventually found it, however I can’t replace it at the moment because the gusts of wind are too strong for me to do it by myself so I will have to wait for reinforcements later. The ground is still pretty waterlogged so still can’t get on the veg patches to do any weeding, roll on some nice dry weather. We decided this weekend that as the long-range forecast is dismal we are going to get a poly tunnel, a 20ft x 10ft will enable us to keep growing no matter what the weather and also extend the growing season at both ends. In future years we will be able to get the crops started early and also keep growing some crops right through the Winter months, including potatoes for Christmas 🙂

The title of today’s blog ‘ oooo Ducky’ is dedicated to the duck that got stuck in the water bucket! You may remember I told you that I had wandered up the back with my in laws one afternoon and she was stuck in a bucket, you would think that as she had done it once she wouldn’t bother again, no, she has no brains! When Hubby came in one night after shutting everything away, he reported that we were a duck missing, he had a look but was unable to find her as it was getting pretty dark. The next morning after I had finished feeding and letting them out I went to look for her or signs that the fox had got her. I went down to one of the bottom paddocks and there she was sat in the horse water bucket, she had been there all night and was clearly weak and cold. I took her in and put her in a box next to the Rayburn to warm up, she was still shivering a while later so I got out the hairdryer and gave her a blast with it. We decided that the warmest place was the bathroom and so I left her in there while I went shopping, meanwhile my eldest daughter returned home from work and got a bit of a shock when she went to the loo 🙂 Eventually she was warm enough and strong enough to go back out with the others, none the worse for her all night antics.

 

 

 

 

I have a little farming story that I would like to share with you although it’s not mine but my youngest daughters. She is travelling in Australia and has been in Perth for the best part of 4 months. She decided to go to Brisbane along with her friends and get an agricultural job to extend their visa, they flew out there one day and started work the next day, apple picking, unfortunately after 9 straight hours of picking with no breaks they realised that the job was not what it seemed, the money they earnt in the 9 hours was not even going to cover their accommodation. When they went back to their bunks at the end of the first day they decided to leave, they packed their backpacks left under cover of darkness and got the first bus to Melbourne! LOL if you are going to run away, do it in style I say 😉

Hopefully next week I will be able to report that we have at last had some half decent weather, but I wont hold my breath, I may just go Blue!

Well clearly ever since the hosepipe ban was announced we haven’t needed it anyway!!! The water butts are full to overflowing, the fields are very quickly saturated each time we have a downpour and everything we planted in the garden over the last few weeks has not dried out at all. According to the weatherman its going to get worse next week, now if anyone is listening I really would like a Spring please 🙂 Having said that the patches of Sun we get in between are also doing wonders for the grass in the paddocks although we have been keeping the horses off because with all the wet they would just trash them and turn them into mud within a couple of hours.

There are some areas of the farm that I have to use weedkiller on, the farm tracks and the front drive etc otherwise we would be overrun with them, but I can’t even do that at the minute as I need a 2hr dry window which certainly is not happening at the moment. The only occupants that are totally happy are the ducks, they are in their element, the pond is full and there are plenty of puddles for them to dabble in and fish out worms and slugs.

The Hens on the other hand are hating it, they tend to hide inside when its raining as their feathers are not waterproof, if they stay out they end up looking like drowned rats! I have a couple of hens that are showing signs of going broody which is good as I decided not to incubate any this year, two of the hens I have to keep moving off the eggs as they have no hope of hatching anything because they don’t run with a cockerel, one is happy to get off when I move her and run out to eat with the others, the other one makes the most terrific racket you would think I was killing her, if she shows signs of true brooding I may put in some fertile eggs for her to sit on. The only one that would be able to hatch is the Gold Laced Orpington, every time I go in to collect eggs she is sat on them, in the morning she gets off to go and eat, eventually when she goes properly broody she wont get off at all and then providing all goes well she will have a hatch 21 days after that. The only problem at the moment is that all the other hens are still laying in the same place and so there are about 15 eggs under her, what I will need to do is mark hers and possibly put in some laying boxes for the others to lay in so that she is left alone.

Two failures so far this year appear to be the Geese who are not laying, just continuing to terrorise the chickens and the Tortoises who sadly have not woken up 😦 I know we are in for a cold May and it is possible that they somehow sense this but I have my doubts as they really should be awake by now. For some reason although they have always survived Winter before this year has been different maybe it was the prolonged cold or maybe during a warm patch they woke up which can be fatal whatever the reason I will miss them more than I thought I would.

The dogs don’t usually get a mention apart from their incessant barking or when they have killed something but this week the oldest dog Max escaped, nothing unusual in that except that it was at night this time. I normally let them out of the back door and side gate but as I had just come in from putting the animals to bed I decided to let them out the back and down the side, not realising that someone had left the other gate open. I went inside to make a cuppa and went to get them back in before I sat down to drink it, I called them, silence, nothing, I then realised the gate was open and they had run off, Milly will come back when she is called and I found her standing near the access to the side paddocks, this told me that Max had gone that way. By this time it was pitch black and starting to rain, so I get my coat and wellies on and grab a torch and go looking for Max, there I am in the fields, in the dark, looking for a black dog who is deaf and can’t hear me!! After 20 mins or so I catch a pair of eyes in the hedgeline of the field that belongs to the farm next door, I scramble over the fencing and through the hawthorn, under their electric fence, which thankfully is not on, and into the field only to find that he has disappeared, now anyone that knows me will know that by now my face is like thunder and the amount of expletives are rising steadily!! I decided at this point I needed extra help, so I stomp off up the field back to the house to call Hubby who is off playing pool with his Dad, ‘ok I will be home in five minutes’ he says, and he was, luckily for him! I am still down in the field when the lights swing round the corner and a couple of minutes later he comes down to the field, I explain where I think Max is and he takes over with the torch, locates him within a couple of minutes, calls him, and the bloody dog comes wandering over to the fence!!!!!! It takes us a couple more minutes to coax him under the fence and lo and behold within ten minutes of himself arriving, the dog is back in the warm and dry, ‘what was difficult about that’ he asks, arrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The thing is that this is a dog who hates the rain and barks like a big girl the minute a drop touches him, I guess with the thought of total freedom he threw all caution to the wind 😉 I know one of my readers is going to completely identify with this topic, don’t laugh too much G, it will be your turn again before long, I think we should invest in flashing collars!!!

Mr ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth’ Max!!

 

 

 

 

 

I took the home brew to the family birthday and it was given the thumbs up by Bitter drinkers so I class that as a success, trouble is I now have about 4 gallons of the stuff!! If anyone would like to try some give me a shout and I will bottle some up for you 🙂 I am keen to start some more brewing probably wine this time and the cider can wait until we have our own crop of apples in the autumn, we don’t actually drink very much but I have a feeling that is all about to change 😀

That last week seems to have shot past, the weather has not been up to much has it, cold winds, very cold nights and only one or two days when we saw the Sun, still we make the best of what we have got because we can’t change it!

The most eventful time on the farm this week was of course the ‘sonic boom’ heard and felt over five counties it was a once in a lifetime experience I should think. My very first thought was a colossal clap of thunder, we were sat at the kitchen table when the whole place shook accompanied by a tremendous noise, the horses shot across the fields and I went outside to see if I could hear any more, it was dead silent, no birds singing or flying just silence. The next thought was to check out the back in case of explosion on the neighbouring farm and my daughter suggested I check the home-brew in case that had exploded from its pressurised barrel! Eventually the official explanation was given that two jets were given permission to go supersonic over land and that’s what it was, most people I have spoken to who have heard sonic booms, me included, are sceptical and I guess we may never know, however it gave us a talking subject and an event to remember 🙂

As the home-brew had not exploded and was still firmly in the barrel I thought I ought to test it this morning to see what it was like, not much to report really as I have never drunk a glass of bitter and so have no idea what it is supposed to taste like!! I can only tell you that it does not taste off, or like vinegar, it is drinkable and kind to the palette, I am assuming then that it is a success 🙂 We have a family birthday today so I will pour some off and take it with me, no doubt I will find a couple of bitter experts to give me an opinion. Once I have the thumbs up I will be embarking on my next batch and will probably try lager or wine, something I am a bit more familiar with!

According to the weatherman we are due to get quite a bit of rain this week and it is badly needed all over the South, we had a good rainfall last week, good for the crops anyway and I was informed by my local farmer that it saturated 5 inches into the ground which means that the crops got a good drink, not enough to fill up the reservoirs but at least it did some good. We have put up another water barrel next to the shed in order to collect as much rainwater as possible over the next few months, last weeks rain filled our 1500 litre tank and it began to overflow so I put buckets underneath too, don’t want to miss a drop!

Even though it has been cold I have still been busy outside and have now planted all the potatoes, 1st earlies and main crop, I noted with interest that Monty Don had a bad crop of Red Duke of York last year as did a lot of people including us, apparently due to the weather patterns, they were ok but they just went to mush when they were boiled, so this year I have gone for the old reliable names, King Edward and Desiree for the main crop and Swift and Rocket for the earlies. Mum came over on Friday and planted a few more rows of carrots and parsnips, only the swede are left to go in now at the end of the month. Everything that can be sown into seed trays has been done, some have even been potted on to bigger pots, such as the broad beans, usually these would go straight in the ground but it is too exposed here so this year almost everything will be grown under cover first and hardened off to prevent too much loss. I planted a row of peas straight into the ground, covered them with fleece apart from one patch where the fleece didn’t reach, I inspected it this week and there is no sign of anything growing under the cover but the three that were out in the open are growing fine, I have yet to search in the ground for the seeds but I suspect that this was mice nicking them from under cover! To get over that we have started some off in the greenhouse and they will be planted out later, hopefully by then the weather will be much warmer and they will romp away, providing we can keep the pigeons off! The Asparagus I planted last year had just begun to come through when we had that very hard frost which made the shoots wilt 😦 not to worry though as plenty more will come through over the next few weeks, being only the second year of growth though I can only harvest a third of the shoots, the rest need to be left to help the roots strengthen and provide us with a good crop for the next 20 years!

I have been trying out Eco balls to wash my clothes in this week and I have to say I am quite impressed, obviously they don’t come out smelling highly of anything but cloth but they do actually work! My skin reacts to anything highly perfumed so I thought they were worth a try, I think they would struggle with anything heavily stained or dirty such as Hubby’s work clothes so they still get the chemical treatment but very good for lightly worn and soiled clothing and very economical at £5.99 with they last for 150 washes plus the box came with refills. They work with harmless chemicals such as washing soda and lime and you don’t need any fabric softener as they also contain sodium silicate, they still carry a carbon footprint as they materials are obviously quarried and the balls are plastic but it is a very much smaller footprint than washing powders and fabric conditioners so better for the environment as well as my skin 🙂

The forecast is for quite a bit of rain over the next few days, the weeds will be growing like mad, we did make an effort to weed most beds at the weekend but they are relentless at this time of year especially the thistles 😦  Today however seems to be a bit warmer than the previous few days and the sun is shining so I had better go and get on with a few outdoor jobs while I can, including more weeding!

A last note is a big Happy Birthday for yesterday to my youngest daughter who is discovering life in Australia at the moment, if she gets bored reading this before she gets to the end she will never know, but we hope you had a lovely day, love you lots x x x

You will remember that I wrote last week about never being able to recall what I had been doing even though I had been busy all week, well this week I decided to write everything down, so now I know exactly what I have done 🙂

Monday started off with writing the blog then going on to do the cleaning and washing, after that I decided to bake that Tea Loaf I told you about, It turned out a bit stodgy so I will have to try again before I pass the recipe on, it still tasted good though and was soon eaten up. Later in the afternoon I thought I would get the brewing kit out and start my first ever brew off, I followed the instructions which were fairly easy although sterilizing a 5 gallon bucket in a tiny sink proved a bit of a task, especially when I had to empty it back out, trying to decant 5 gallons into the sink where the tub was already sat was a bit of a messy mission but in the end the brew was sat nicely with its airlock on and it was not long before it began to bubble away and according to the instructions as long as it is doing that then something good is happening 🙂

On Tuesday as the weather was still quite nice I decided that the lawnmower could do with a service before cutting the grass for the first time this year, it needed a good clean, the air filter was checked and the blade taken off and sharpened, I checked the oil level which was fine, the only thing I could not do was the spark plug as I couldn’t get it off, but as the lawnmower started up with no problems, I figured it didn’t need looking at! I was all ready to cut the lawn but had to abandon that as there was not a drop of petrol in the can 😦  There were plenty of other jobs to choose from and so I filled the rest of the raised flower bed with compost from last years heap, sorted out and connected up the watering system for the vegetable beds and creosote one of the chicken houses inside and out. Luckily I had just finished doing that when the heavens opened and the last of the Sunshine disappeared for a few days.

Wednesday was cold and rainy with a measure of hail thrown in for a laugh so that was the day to spend sewing 🙂 I had ordered the material a few weeks ago to make some new cushion covers and bunting to create a vintage look to the new seating area in the garden, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it and ending up with something pretty at the end of the day was a real joy, as the weather has yet to improve I have not tried them out but the minute it does I will be out there with a cup of tea admiring my handy work 🙂

Mum came up to give me a helping hand on Thursday and together we filled the other flower bed, and planted it up, built a cold frame, potted on the courgettes, planted more salad crops in the greenhouse and made the greenhouse warmer by insulating it with bubble wrap to get the crops growing and also weeded the potato bed which due to the cold still has not been planted.

On Friday morning we woke up to a very hard frost, later inspection around the farm revealed that the Pieris, Buddlia, and Dicentra had all been affected by the frost but they should recover, I was glad to see that the blossom on the plum and pear trees seem to be unaffected and hope we don’t get another frost that hard or it will have an impact on the fruit quantities. Some of the animals had an alternative breakfast that morning, it is good to vary their diet now and again especially if they are on pellets of any kind. The rabbits had a bowl full of carrots and apples, plus some hay instead of their usual food and the dogs had duck eggs.

According to the instructions I could now test the brew as the bubbles had stopped in the airlock, trying to understand the instructions was not so easy this time! I had to use a hydrometer to test the gravity of the brew, according to the meter it was ready to rack off into the barrel but I was unsure if I was using it correctly and the explanation that came with it was beyond my scientific understanding! So I dumbed it down to my level, tipped some of the beer away, added more water thus watering it down and the hydrometer gave a different reading, with my logic I knew I was on the right path 😉 I did decide to leave it another day though just in case :p

I finally managed to get some fuel and cut the lawn, I say lawn but it was really just a bit of rough ground near the veg patch that conveniently grew grass, and it is the only bit of grass in the place that is not grazed by animals thus it became the lawn! I also mowed the grass all down the front driveway and swept the drive so that it looked all nice and tidy for Easter, and it did look lovely especially with the daffodils out. In between mowings I had a couple of people arrive to buy chickens, two little girls who had chosen theirs before they went away on holiday had arrived back and were very excited about collecting thier Easter present, we managed to catch the right ones which had been leg ringed for easy identification, I hope that at least one of them laid an egg for them on Easter day 🙂

On the Saturday I tested the brew again and this time I was confident it was ready, so I sterilised the equipment and racked of the brew into the barrel, I added the sugar as per instructions and it now has to sit for 7 days before we can drink it, by new Monday I will have tasted it and will let you know if it is any good or not!

After the week being fairly quiet, Saturday was an explosion of people at the farm all doing various different jobs, Hubby was busy cutting up wood as always, although I did give him a new job to try, which was sieving the compost that had been dug out from the heap, I knew he would like it even though he says not 😉 My Stepdad was busying bagging up a pile of ballast that we had been given, he keeps his holiday home down here and he is working off his rental. My daughters boyfriend was here with his quad bike dragging the rest of the paddocks so while all that was going on I creosoted the goose house, potted on the Tom’s aubergines and Melons, and paunched and skinned a rabbit that the BF shot at the end of the day.

On Sunday, after feeding the animals, I HAD A DAY OFF 😀

And that is what I did last week!! On top of that of course there were the 11 animals and 75 poultry to feed and water every morning and evening, eggs to collect and box up, the fire to light and wood to get in to keep it going all day, washing, cooking, putting the dustbins out, getting them back in again, cleaning and bits of paperwork to do, the question I am asking myself is, what the heck does everyone else do around here?? 😉

I love the weekends when everyone one is home and the activity level is high, but I also quite like Monday mornings when normal routines resume and peace and quiet are all that is heard once more.  The dogs especially get more vocal over the weekend when there are lots of comings and goings, a visit from the puppy always causes havoc as the other dogs would love to get out and ‘eat’ him!

The weather has still been pretty good despite the threats from the met office and I have been continuing to plant rows of vegetable seeds, some of those in the greenhouse have shot up enough to pot on so at the moment it’s all going according to plan. Traditionally the potatoes go in on Good Friday, don’t ask me why as the date changes from year to year but Hubby likes to stick with tradition on that one 🙂 He who must be obeyed 😉 has worked very hard this weekend, there is still a mountain of wood to chop and move from the conifers that we took down and he is slowly making his way through that whenever he has a spare day.

Very often when I sit down to do the blog, I have to think hard about what I have done over the last week, I know the days are always full but I can never remember what I have been doing! Towards the end of the week my Mum came over and we have been busy making the seating area look nice, we have built some nice long boxes to mark out the area and they will be filled with the perennial plants that the girls bought me for Mothers day, along with a few bulbs and some annual flowers seeds. It will be nice to have plenty of flowers this year instead of just veg and it will also benefit the pollination by bringing in the bees and butterfly’s etc. When it is in its full glory I will take some photos and put them on here, talking of photos, I opened the door the other morning to see some Fallow deer grazing in the next field, but by the time I had run in to get the camera they had gone 😦 hopefully the will return again soon and I will be ready for them!

We lost a chicken this week and I automatically blamed a Fox, but the next day we saw two huge Kite circling very low over the house and the paddocks, so it is possible that it was taken by them, normally when a Fox has had a chicken there are tell-tale signs everywhere that the chicken has been chased before being caught. In this instance there were just a bunch of feathers in one place on the ground , so it is possible it had just swooped down and took it, they are magnificent birds but now it looks like the chickens are under attack from the sky as well as the ground 😦

My daughters boyfriend came over with his quad bike this weekend to drag the fields, dragging breaks the cap that the winter weather has formed, it also breaks up any lumps that have formed and lets in the light and the moisture giving the grass a better chance to sprout. The lack of rain however has meant that even at this time of year the ground is very hard and difficult to break up, we managed to do three of the fields but will wait for rain before we attempt the others. The chicken houses were also moved at the same time, they are just pulled to a clean area of grass as the underneath of the hut gets very full of chicken droppings which sours the ground. the drag then rakes over these and they are scattered and will hopefully, when the rain comes, fertilise the ground a bit more.

We had a trip out with friends to another local farm on Saturday to pick up a calf and three piglets, we go halves on these but they are kept at our friends farm for the duration. The calf is an adorable little Aberdeen, she is jet black and as I had the honour of naming her I called her Ebony, I left the naming of the pigs up to them, I will get some photos of them when we go over to visit next Saturday. While we were at the farm we had a look at the other piglets that had been born only 36 hours before, they were so cute, she had 11 altogether and they were all huddled up fast asleep under a lamp, they looked very soft and cuddly, there were other calves there too and I am glad the one we were having was not the one that decided to jump over the wall in an attempt to escape!

We stopped for a coffee with our friends and the lady of the house had just made a delicious tea cake, you can tell it was delicious as Hubby had three pieces!! I was very graciously given the recipe and will be trying that out sometime this week, as soon as I have had a go to make sure it turns out ok I will put it on the recipe page for you all to try yourselves 🙂

Today’s job is not so nice, cleaning! I have barely had time to sling the hoover round this week and so need to have a bit of a deep clean, then we have the end of year paperwork to do, the not so nice side of business 😦 I have still not received the paperwork from Animal Health to send the lambs off so I need to chase that up and I need to do a bit of research into a plucking machine, we have decided to buy one so that the job becomes quick and easy, it is rough on the fingers when you are plucking a few in a row and I always tend to do it when the weather is cool so that the meat stays chilled, but it does mean I am stood for a few hours, this should make light work of it and I may be inclined to do more! I am determined to start off my brewing some time this week as well, the kit has sat there since Christmas and I would like it to be ready for the Jubilee celebrations in June so I need to pull my finger out 😛