Month: June 2014

The season of plenty is upon us and the crops are beginning to come in, over the next few weeks it will be glut after glut, a lot I manage to sell at the farm gate and the rest is processed in one form or another for use later in the year.

As I write this I am waiting patiently for Rhubarb, Orange and Ginger marmalade to reduce down, the smell is wonderful and it’s a very easy recipe, 750g of rhubarb chopped, two oranges peeled and chopped, an inch of ginger finely chopped, some of the orange peel finely chopped, and bung it in a pan with 1.2kg sugar, bring to the boil then simmer for 1 to 2 hours, put into warmed sterilised jars! Simples

The strawberries are beginning to ripen and so I have made a strawberry torte for pudding tonight, gluten free of course as it lends itself nicely to that with ground almond as one of the main ingredients. This is also a very easy recipe, 175g of ground almond, self raising flour or gf, sugar and butter, 1 egg and 1 yolk, luckily I had a double yolker so I figured that was the same! Mix the ingredients up until combined, then put half into a loose bottomed tin that has been greased and lined, it is quite thick so needs spreading, then put 450g of strawberries on top and finish with the rest of the mix, does not matter if the strawberries poke through. Cook for about an hour at 180 degrees, when cool dust with icing sugar. It will become a favourite with the family I can assure you.

Tonight’s tea will be the first this year of entirely our own produce, a day which I am always glad to see, pork chops, new potatoes, broad beans, carrots and asparagus, followed by strawberry torte, delicious. Growing your own comes with this warning however, you will never be a size 10!

We are in the process of fitting a new kitchen which I am very excited about after spending 5 years using only one short piece of worktop!
I am considering getting a food hygiene certificate then I will be able to sell the home made produce along with the home grown, this would be very useful as there are only so many jars of home made preserves you can eat in one year 🙂

These next few weeks will be a mixture of hard work and contentment in that order, there are so many recipes I want to try, some of them will work, others probably won’t but it will be a fun process. The possibilities are endless, however Hubby’s palette is not, another reason to sell it on if possible 🙂

The rest of the farm is ticking along nicely, the geese are just beginning to honk, verbally, not smelling! The ducklings are very nearly full grown ducks although a couple more months away from laying yet, the chicks I hatched out are all doing well and I have some particular favourites in the lemon Pekins, they are just too cute for words. The laying flock are producing well as are the point of lay birds that are for sale, the chicks we bought in to rear for the table are putting on weight nicely, they have been moved to the stable so they can run around and flap their wings, I will be moving them to an outside run as soon as I have time.

The wildlife is abundant, we have Swallows nesting in the stables, a thrush that continually makes an appearance on the fence, I have tried to see where she goes but she is very good at losing anyone tailing her. Lots and lots of little birds nesting in the hedgerows, from yellow hammers to finches, blackbirds to robins. The Blue tits must have fledged in that awful wet period, I heard them when they hatched but didn’t see them go, I am just glad that the dogs didn’t get them. We have a bee nest in the side wall of the house, I am happy to let them carry on, there will be a queen and her eggs then a few workers, it won’t get huge and so we should all be able to get along nicely (famous last words) the biggest threat they have at the minute is the dog trying to bite them when they fly past.

The weather forecast is set to be fair, we just look out of the window each morning, far more reliable than watching TV, good growing weather then with a bit of luck, it has been quite cold up to now and the plants have struggled a bit but should pick up nicely from here on in.

Been busy doing the usual things over the last two weeks, plenty to do not enough time to fit it all in!

I thought this week I would tell you a little story cos you couldn’t write it if you tried, which was the first comment I made in this particular occasion. You will remember that my son in law has fixed up the chicken coop, hopefully there will be pictures of before and after if this app plays nicely today, well yesterday evening we moved it to the front paddock where it will stay for the next year at least. I got to drive the tractor with the coop attached to the back, of course I had instructions bellowed at me at all times during the operation despite the fact that I could barely hear over the noise of the engine! This then resulted in lots of hand waving in the form of useless signals from Hubby, eventually we got it into position and went indoors to relax until dusk. It is easier to move the birds when they have gone to roost, and we had forty of them to dust with lice powder one by one and move to the newly refurbished coop in the next paddock. The first one I picked up and dusted no problem, handed it to Hubby who duly let go of it, this is gonna be a long night, I am thinking by this time. Thirty nine more birds later and the job was done, it’s now pitch black and so no more can be done until morning.

The sun rises and so up we get to go and move the electric fencing from one paddock and position it around the coop in the new paddock, I am busy moving various objects, hubby informs me that one of the chickens didn’t get put away last night and was out, pick it up then I say looking straight at him, he stands looking around the paddock for the chicken, it’s right under your nose I say and he looks down at his feet where the chicken is teasing him. I know this because I catch them all the time, he bends down to pick it up and it takes off like road runner, eventually he catches it, someone else happens to be down at the farm watching this so I share the joke, you couldn’t write it if you tried to which she nods in agreement with a smirk to boot. It gets better, the next task hubby takes on is to pull up the electric fence ready to move, he goes over and grabs hold of it, a cry of pain is heard and I see him leap into the air, it’s on, I say, trying to stifle a belly laugh, remember you told me to leave it on last night to keep the fox away. He gets over that little bit of excitement and proceeds to gather up the fencing, now there is an easy way to do this so that it does not get tangled, and to my surprise he does it the easy way, I’m impressed, for a short while anyway. It’s all gathered nicely which means all the stakes are at one end and the netting is looped in turn, the loops are around two feet in length, meanwhile I am filling the feed section of the coop when I hear a profanity or two, I look round to find that as hubby is walking over with the fencing but he has got, not one, but both feet firmly entangled in the netting, WTF, and as I say, you could actually write this stuff.

I think I was pretty good, because not once did I laugh out loud, I offered the correct sympathies each time and turned my head away to grin like the Cheshire Cat. Somehow I don’t think he will offer to help do that again, even though I was very grateful and it was all his own doing not mine. And I am quite sure that this little nugget of our week was much more entertaining than letting you know how the peas are doing : D