How environmentally-damaging is your cycle ride to work? How long will it take a home wind turbine to pay for itself? The New Scientist knows. Related posts:

1. Can you save money while charging your phone? We all know you should unplug your mobile the moment it's finished charging, but if you plug it in when you go to bed and then undock it next morning as you head out to work, the chances are you'll have left it trickling all through the night. So why...
2. Are energy saving light bulbs dangerous? Energy-saving lightbulbs can induce migraines, epilepsy and skin rashes, and are dangerous when it comes to disposal as they contain tiny amounts of mercury. Well, that's what the papers are saying, anyway. It's been a bad week for the one-time darlings of the green lobby, which can save 26kg of...
3. Home-made power I had a somewhat romantic notion that when I move I'd be as green as I could with my energy consumption. Central to that idea was solar panels, photovoltaic cells and a small wind turbine strapped to the chimney. They'd provide at least some of the electricity I'd need. Proper...

Planning on making your own Christmas cards this year? This site of templates for making 3D pop-up greetings could be all the inspiration you need. Related posts:

1. Recycle your Christmas cards Tonight is 12th night, so it's time to take down your decorations and cards. That leaves you with the question of what to do with all those greetings now the festive season is over. In theory you could drop them into your cardboard recycling bag, but it would be far...
2. Frugal Christmas tree Christmas branch Rather than buy a tree this year, we headed out into the woods to pick out own. It would have been wrong to hack one down, of course, so we walked through the trees until we found a pile of cut branches drying by the path, and...
3. Frugal Christmas Hot on the heels of this week's posting about the hampers we're making for our neighbours this Christmas, the Telegraph notes that 'sewing machines, buttons and craft equipment are flying off the shelves as consumers start preparing a make-do-and-mend Christmas'. So it sounds like we're not the only ones. Other...

After a week and a half fermenting, the wine is ready, and with two barrels, a syphon and some corks, we set about bottling it up for drinking and storage. Related posts:

1. Bottling our homemade beer Our first batch of beer. We made 29 pints. After two weeks in the fermenter, it was finally time...
2. Still waiting for the wine It's been seven days now since we started off the wine, and really we should have been adding out mix...
3. Home-brewed wine A new venture. This week we're making wine. We're cheating slightly, as we're using a kit, which yields 30...

I thought Indian and Chinese food was a bit of a no-brainer - particularly as you can so often do your whole meal in a single pan by building up your flavours in turn. Apparently not everyone sees it that way. Related posts:

1. Cornish pasty recipe Cornish pasties Cornish pasties are very easy to make - much easier than you probably realise. If you can...
2. The Allotment Cookbook : review It's logical, isn't it. If you grow your own food you also want to eat it, so what could be...
3. Frugal Christmas Hot on the heels of this week's posting about the hampers we're making for our neighbours this Christmas, the Telegraph...

You may remember that we went on a course and learned how to dispatch and dress chickens. You may further remember that one chicken ended up in the freezer. I've been referring to this chicken (to myself) as Charlie.

We're having a Goose 3 bird roast for Christmas, and it's coming tomorrow so we needed some freezer space. Time to defrost and eat Charlie.

So. Saturday morning, Charlie comes out out the freezer in his ziplock bag, and is placed in the fridge to defrost. Sunday morning, he hasn't defrosted thoroughly, so we put him in a sink of cold water. He finishes deforsting nicely.

Sunday afternoon..... This is the first time I've prepared a whole bird for...well, probably since before I started keeping chickens. (Remember the last one from the Course was boned and rolled, so he didn't look like a chicken anymore).

This one, sitting on my worktop, looks like one of my Girls, especially when they are moulting and are a bit bald. In fact, now he's defrosted, he feels like one of my girls. Except they are warm and he's cold.

Wobble.

Weigh him to calculate cooking times. 1.4kilos, 3lb. And he was only 9 weeks old. Milly was 11 weeks old when I got her, and she only weighed 500g.

WOBBLE.

Well. Am I an omnivore or a vegetarian? Make my mind up time. Omnivore. But I still give Charlie to my DH to put an onion in, and to put butter under the breast skin. Charlie goes in the oven.

Dinner time. Now he's cooked, Charlie looks like a roast chicken, and doesn't resemble one of my Girls. DH carves. We try to get three pairs of meals out of a chicken, starting with breast meat with the roast. Breast meat is very dark. I eat some roast potato, some roast veg, working my way around Charlie. Then I try some. A bit dry, we overcooked him really, but really packed with flavour. Very strong chicken flavour. Finished dinner.

Now the rest of him is sitting on the side, waiting to be turned into meals 2 and 3. 2 will probably be a curry; 3 might be risotto.

Slight Wobble. More of a Wob that a Wobble.

All of our summer crops are coming to an end, so today it was time to harvest the chillis. We don't use them at any great rate, so the number we snipped off and froze should see us right through winter. Related posts:

1. Harvesting the beans There's something quite magical about being up and about before the rest of the world, harvesting your vegetables in the...
2. The plot in 2008 Today being the first day of the new year, we sat down with the seed catalogues and planned what we'd...
3. What seeds should you plant in March? Today is the first day of March. Things are starting to warm up, the earth in the plot has...

Overall, the chickens are doing well. They have worked out their pecking order so there is a minimum of pecking. When they go out in the afternoons for their walkabout to pick bugs, they co-mingle nicely and keep together as a single flock rather than as two separate flocks. Judging from how they strategically position themselves [...]

Seven days in and the wine brewing is running a little slower than scheduled. But then slow food and drink is half the fun of self-sufficiency, isn't it? Related posts:

1. The wine: three days in The wine is very active now. The fermenter is sitting a the corner of the kitchen, bubbling away like a...
2. Bottling our homemade beer Our first batch of beer. We made 29 pints. After two weeks in the fermenter, it was finally time...
3. Home-brewed wine A new venture. This week we're making wine. We're cheating slightly, as we're using a kit, which yields 30...

It's now Autumn and the chickens are doing their best to camouflage. Katy posed shamelessly for the camera, even perching next to the ever unpopular Megan.

Abbie did her best to disrupt things as best she could. It took me ages to take a photo as she kept a) looking away or pecking at the ground b) moving c) coming towards me rapidly and filling the frame d) sneaking up behind me.

Then the pecking started. She pecked my knee, my side, my back and realised Katy (below) was interested in my rubber glove so joined in (above).

Then they investigated the clean nest. Katy had a look in despite not being interested in laying eggs, and Abbie looked like she was settling down to lay one even though the egg port was open.

Megan was just Megan and looked nervous generally. She is feathering up nicely after her moult and her "ginger" phase seems to be passing.

Katy has been in a bit of a strop the last few days. Abbie pecked her and she took revenge by shoulder barging her off the log roll. Quite a feat considering the size of fat chicken. She then pecked Megan who shot 2 foot in the air then was chased the length of the garden for no apparent reason. Abbie joined in when she saw something happening. On the egg front Abbie is our sole egg laying chicken and I counted 6 eggs in 10 days. I did wonder if one or two this week were from Megan as slightly darker and rounder. I worked out I spend £7-8 per month on feed and use aubiose in addition and in return get maybe 4 boxes of eggs a month. In terms of performance Abbie is doing really well but over the whole flock is quite shocking. It's lucky I like them more for entertainment value. Who needs that many eggs anyway?!

Hot on the heels of this week's posting about the hampers we're making for our neighbours this Christmas, the Telegraph notes that 'sewing machines, buttons and craft equipment are flying off the shelves as consumers start preparing a make-do-and-mend Christmas'. Related posts:

1. Frugal Christmas tree Christmas branch Rather than buy a tree this year, we headed out into the woods to pick out own....
2. Recycle your Christmas cards Tonight is 12th night, so it's time to take down your decorations and cards. That leaves you with the question...
3. Christmas presents… already Six weeks today it'll be Christmas. That's a scary thought. I've bought one present so far, but there are some...