Month: November 2015

What has been happening for the past two weeks? Well we have had a mixed bag of weather, rain, wind, mild, freezing you name it we have had it. The wind bought a tree down in the front driveway and to be honest we were lucky to get away with just that, at one time I did think the roof was going to go it was banging about so much. The rain has of course made the mud much worse and a new pastime of mud skating has been invented, it takes much more effort to get too and from the paddocks and at times with a horse in each hand it’s downright hairy stuff! 

Hubby had flu, not really but you know what they are like, a sniffle and a cough and anyone would think the insurance policies needed dusting off 😉 obviously his legs were incapacitated because of it and so not much got done that particular weekend. 

The geese have been my main focus over the past few days, the grass is fast running out now and it’s time to turn to other forms of feeding for them. The large quantity of fallen cooking apples that are too small for using in cooking have been a godsend, at least 6 wheelbarrow fulls have kept them going, there is grass in the front paddocks but it is not stock fenced and right next to the road and they can’t be trusted not to roam, the fencing is on the list but we have not got round to it yet. In the meantime I have just ordered some waterfowl feed and some ingredients to make a poultry spice, you can buy it ready made in pellet form but it’s much cheaper to get the ingredients and mix them. I have been sat today making notes to make the best use of the herbs I could use from the garden next year, the trouble is that when they are growing the grass is abundant and they are not needed so I need to look at drying them or harvesting the seeds to grind to a powder ready for Winter use. I have sweet cicely growing and I can probably grow fenugreek and ginger and use those next year, well that’s the plan at the minute.

The dogs are filthy every day and need to be bathed before they come in, luckily we have a great set up in the form of a plastic bath and hot and cold taps with a shower attachment, they don’t know how lucky they are but judging by their aversion to the word ‘bath’ you would think they were about to be whipped 😝 We did reach a milestone however when Patch finally got in the bath by himself instead of having to be dragged out from the back of his cage, he was rewarded with much praise and treats 😄

I have made my Christmas mincemeat, I almost forgot which would have been sacrilege as I haven’t bought shop mincemeat for years. I had a quick look through the cupboards, gathered together odds and sods plus my homemade glacé cherries and voila, four jars of mincemeat ready for the feast of mince pies which I traditionally start making on the 1st of December. I normally make the Christmas pudding as well but this year we are at our eldest daughters so no need to do that and I gave up making Christmas cake a few years ago when it took longer to eat it all up than it did to make it and feed it for a few weeks.

With the shortening of daylight hours comes the drop in the number of eggs laid by the chickens, fortunately they are still laying enough to cover the cost of feed at the moment, not much longer until the shortest day thank goodness and the nights will draw out again, it is one of the dates during the year that is firmly set in my memory as we limp through the colder months. 

Have a great week 🐶

Hands up if you have been watching Hugh’s programme about waste food that is still perfectly edible, I have and frankly I am appalled! I am aware food is wasted both by the supermarkets and in homes but the scale has flabbergasted me. All of us have busy lives and it’s easy to slip into that kind of behaviour but we need to make a concerted effort to use up what we buy instead of throwing it away.

With that in mind today’s dinner is made up of yesterday’s lamb bones, a sweet potato that was in danger of drying up, tomatoes that have been in the fridge for a couple of weeks, some bits of veg (and the stalks) and some Oca which is a new veg that I have just harvested. I also scraped up the meat juices that have solidified in the roasting pan, it smells great and makes me feel good for using everything up. 

Going back to the new vegetable I trialed this year, Oca is a tuber from the Wood Sorrel family and is highly nutritious, vitamin c, iron, zinc and vitamin B to name a few of the beneficial components, it can be boiled, fried, stir fried, roasted or eaten raw a good all rounder. The type I grew are a golden colour but they also come with a pink tinge, the young leaves and shoots can be eaten early on as well if you prefer. As yet I have only put them in today’s soup but I will be experimenting with them over the next few weeks.

  

When Dad went home last week I sent him off with some pig trotters that I had in the freezer, I’ve never tried them and they don’t really appeal to me and I usually give them to the dogs but I know he loves them and so I had a phone call in the week to say he had cooked them and they were delicious lol. He was also amazed that you can find just about anything at the touch of a button on the Internet and after a conversation about a bread my Nan used to make we found the recipe, it’s called Stottie Cake although it is a bread. When he was a boy they used to eat it warm with treacle and he phoned the following day to say that he had made some and that it was just as good as his boyhood memory, I have not had a go yet but I think I will, there are numerous recipes on google and we went for a more authentic version without olive oil as I doubt they had it back then! 

The farm in general is ticking along as usual although a lot muddier now, I just have to remember that it’s not forever in fact I will be looking forward to frozen mornings although they bring their own problems such as frozen water buckets and frozen finger tips. I have noticed rat holes under the chicken house and so have put down bait to knock those on the head quickly, I have not seen any all summer and so they must have moved residence to be nearer to an easy food source i.e chicken feed. The last of the veg have been harvested, artichoke and the oca and apart from windfall apples that’s this years crop done, next month it will be time to work out the crop rotation for next Spring and think about what I want to grow. Next year will be a busy one as I will have not one but two grandchildren, one due in five weeks and  our eldest daughter and her partner are also expecting a baby in April, just think how many hands I will have to help when they get older 😁 I hope they find the farm a wonderful place to visit and grow up around and that when they are in their seventies like Dad they too have memories of freshly baked bread and cakes as well as muddy wellies and mucky hands. 

Have a fabulous week and don’t forget to use everything up, it’s great soup weather 🍲

My Dad came over from Wales to stay for a week last week and so apart from the basics of feeding, watering, egg collecting etc, I didn’t get much else done including blogging as we spent a great deal of time chattering and making tea for visitors who had not seen him for a while.

Dad used to live here before we bought the place so was very familiar with everything, the sad thing is that he has got a bit too old to do anything now but he did go around oiling and sharpening tools because they hadn’t been done. On Friday afternoon Hubby went to get the tractor out to move the muck heap but on starting it there was a noise that did not sound good! Dad was in his element, it seems that the fan was hitting the casing this was caused by the engine having moved on its mounting, Hubby is very good at a multitude of tasks but machinery is not one of them. If it had been left entirely to Hubby he would have just bent the fan so that it no longer hit and not bothered to find out why it had moved, luckily Dad was here and pointed out that the engine was loose! When I took out a cup of tea to them I found them both up to their elbows in greasy, dirtyness and big grins, they were having a great time. In time honoured practice a ‘temporary repair’ was made using bale string and a spanner as a tourniquet to hold the engine in the correct position, I must add that the bolts were tightened as well but it appears that the bushes have worn? While the tractor was out I had a lesson in tractor maintenance from Dad, honestly with just Hubby and I looking after  the tractor it’s like the blind leading the blind. Although I can look after and service my lawn mower, even sharpen the blades, a tractor is a whole new ball game. We found an old grease gun left behind when dad moved, and I had a lesson on using it to grease the nipples, who knew there were even such things on a tractor lol, not me that’s for sure. 

The next thing we learnt was that the small covered area was built to house the horse box (we usually keep the tractor there) our box had been parked round the back of the stables and tarpaulined up for the Winter but someone wanted to borrow it one evening last week and after trying to push it out in the dark we decided to park it in the intended spot, it could then be towed straight out and back in again, easy, Why hadn’t we thought of it before? However our box was a little too tall, literally 2″ too tall, so Hubby got the pick axe and set about digging out two ruts for the wheels to go in. I found the whole scenario quite amusing, you know how it is ladies, your trying to do something and the other half is always giving instructions on how he thinks it should be done, a bit straighter, quicker, higher, lower, whatever the task there is always a comment, well in this instance Hubby had a taste of his own medicine as Dad was giving instructions on straightening up a bit or needs to be deeper or too deep or too close to the uprights. I could tell by his face he was irritated but too polite to say anything, I stood watching with my tea in my hand giving him a ‘now you know how I feel’ smirk. 

Needless to say as I didn’t get much done last week I have a fair bit to catch up on, this morning as well as the usual jobs, I have deep cleaned the duck houses and the quail house, cleaned out the goose hut, wormed and fleaed the dogs and cat, bought the horses in to clean off the mud from their feet, raked up fallen apples from the front drive and captured an escaped Guniea Fowl! Just got time to write this, have a spot of lunch and then it will be time to light the Rayburn, feed the animals, collect the eggs and cook the dinner!

Dads parting words to Hubby were “don’t forget to get those bushes sorted, it’s only a temporary repair”, we will see how long it stays like that or if anyone knows a good tractor mechanic send them our way 😜

Have a great week and enjoy bonfire night 💥