Yesterday the kitchen was turned into a carrot preparation zone. Whilst tidying and weeding the polytunnel over the weekend I pulled up the last of the carrots, the greenery had wilted due to all the frost, but the carrots below the soil were in brilliant condition.#I ended up with a huge box full of all sizes and shapes, so I decided to do as much as I could to preserve them. There were also a few parsnips left so these were pulled up too and with a few of the teeniest carrots I made some Curried Parsnip and Carrot Soup....truly yummy, after an ongoing tasting session by Lovely Hubby who had spoonful after spoonful 'for quality control purposes' the rest was cooled and put into the fridge for lunches this week. #Then I chose some of the larger carrots and halved, then blanched them to go into the freezer for future use. The medium sized carrots were put into a pan for tea and we had Herby Buttered Carrots with our chicken and rice last night, and finally the weirdly shaped ones were dropped into the blanching water (why waste vitamins by pouring it down the drain) with some potatoes, onions and celery to make a nice vegetable soup. #This I put into the bottom oven of the Aga and promptly forgot all about, hence the darkness of the broth in the pan in the picture above. The drawback to an Aga is that NO cooking smells escape (inside the house anyway) so you do tend to forget about things if you are cooking late at night and they are tucked away in the depths of the oven! #This morning it was fished out of the oven at 5.30 am by LH before he left for work and now I can't decide, is it rich and delicious or just over-cooked, I think I will have to liquidise it and then get my 'quality control expert' back on the job!#Sue xx

Dear friends, am shattered, have today spent ALL day being assessed doing teaching AND assessing everybody else while THEY did THEIR teaching...very hard work indeed and had very poor night sleep last night ( fire alarm battery failed, so it kept on going "beep", then cat was sick on bed, then CM got up...)

so am shattered now...(6 pm)

at moment am sorting out what I need to do to finish my teacher training portfolio..if I do it NOW I will remember all the comments etc made today about what I need to do...if I leave it till tomorrow...I won't remember ANYTHING....(rolls eyes)

trouble is, am so knackered.   tired, I can't remember anything, anyway.....
 
later...( 10 pm)
 
It is wine time!
LOTS of wine time!

I have just finished my Teacher training (part 1) portfolio!.( hurrah!)

Today was very hard work, but it is over now and I have finished my portfolio!!! (CW does a happy dance around her study)

I now have 2 clear weeks until I start the next part of the teaching stuff.....so I can get on with LOADS of outdoor stuff ( if the weather gods are kind to me...)

AM a very happy CW, tonight :-)

...Look what I got yesterday! A lovely cast iron bed surround. :-) I'm going to put this in our spare bedroom. I think I'll spray it antique white though so that it goes with the rest of the room.

I bought this Lloyd Loom corner wash basket with the intention of selling it but it has made its way into our house. Tim has a habit of dumping his clothes in the corner of the room so I put this in the corner. Needless to say, clothes now still sit in the corner but on top of this!

Good afternoon and greetings from Germany! I arrived late last night and fly back tomorrow at the crack of sparrows!
Been out to the supermarket and bought 3 pots of goose fat, gravy powder, bread and cheese. I still have a few things to finish off sewing. The crazy life of cabin crew. We know how to live!

Last week at work, I managed to burn my hand on a boiling pot of coffee. Ever since, my wrist has been killing me. It is just under a week now and it is still so sore. Loathed as I am to visiting the Doctor, I might have to later this week.

Not much going on in the garden, but did spot the first of the snowdrops


The daffs are springing up everywhere too. A sign that Spring is finally on the way.


My part time week starts on the 20th Feb and I have to do something with the back and front garden. The geraniums are a brown sloppy mess and I seem to have piles of rotting vegetation that were once flowers. I am a gardening slut and am ashamed. Have left it way too long and am now faced with a mammoth task ahead of me. Have a chicken course planned for the 21st and then I will tackle the garden. Promise.

The 3 bins need turning and should give me plenty of rich compost to spread around the garden and veggie plot.

Woke up yesterday to see a massive damp patch on the beam that separates the lounge/diner. About 1.5 metres long! Just what we need. Spoke to next door and was told that there aren't any water pipes as such through that part of the house, only heating pipes. Jump to me, turning off the mains water, boiler and radiators in that part of the house. Realising that I need to change the hens' water, I climbed behind the washing machine again to turn the water back on! What a stupid place for a stop cock! I went into the loft to see if there was a problem up there, but nothing. No leaks into the office or our bedroom, so it must be the heating pipes under the floorboards.

Am away until Tuesday, so will deal with it then. Just once thing after another. *rolls eyes*

On a more positive note, the egg cosies I made have been well received and I might be selling them on line. Just need to send a couple off for inspection by the 'Chief buyer' *wink* and then who knows? Next stop John Lewis. Hee hee.

Better sign off now as my wrist is playing up again!

Have a great week everyone.

C x x

Lovely Hubby had an extra day off work last week so our weekend officially started on Wednesday night!#Thursday saw us doing all of Fridays usual jobs, major mucking out of the pigs, big clean up in the house and the million and one other things there are to do around a farm, including a major clean up session in the polytunnel. #Friday saw us having a DAY OFF....yes a whole day off, we quickly cleaned out the chickens, fed the dogs, cats and pigs and then hopped in the car for a day in Newbury. Not that Newbury is anything extra special it's just somewhere we had never been before. We've driven by many times but never stopped to look at the shops. So we wandered around. did a little shopping, had a lovely lunch of fish and chips, and then headed home just in time to feed the pigs again and put the chickens to bed.#Saturday saw us taking the van and one of the cars to the garage, the van for a service and the car to possibly sell. We have way too many vehicles (more of that on Thursday when I have a special post planned) and we are getting another new one this Friday so we need to make room.#Yesterday saw me doing lots little jobs around the place, and an hours crafting, and LH driving to Juniper Hill on a Poo Run (that's a manure pick up!). Our Poo Piles (piles of manure) are steadily growing and we have two huge mountains now, steaming merrily away under their tarpaulins and tyres in readiness for the start of LH's new venture this spring - vermiculture.#Today I am trying to lever layers of mud and dust off all the carpets and having yet another big clean up in the house and LH is having another day off work to attend a NVZ course, (that's Nitrate Vulnerable Zones), rather him than me. But it's a subject that he needs to know about ready for the future, so he jumped at the chance of a place on the course.#Now I must get back to my beloved Dyson...............!!#Sue xx

Making cheese takes several days, and once you are finished you must let your results mature for between four and 10 weeks to improve the taste. With all of the necessary kit now in place, we've started the process by making up your starter culture. Related posts:

1. We have a cheese-making deadline
2. Our first yoghurt cheese
3. Cheese Making by Rita Ash: Review

Its been a beautiful day here, a lovely sunny, if cold Sunday. I raked up leaves, before they overwhelmed the daffs poking through underneath, then finished the PT tidy up and got some seeds and plants planted out in the raised bed in there...!!!!

Have been investigating various fence options, local reclaimation yard wants an arm and a kidney for
 ?Heras? fencing ( security /building site stuff...) which I wondered if I could use to make an enclosure against the fox...ut it also looks very ugly...

Wood and wire to make is also v expensive in "one off" quantities...IF I was building a house, the economies of scale would make it economic, ...but I am not..

So....looks like I am just going to have to buy something...which at least can be un bolted and moved around as flat panels, if we want to move the whole lot...

Or I could just get rid of all the hens, except for a couple....and keep them inside the existing house and run combination......which sounds quite appealing at the moment.....!

Only joking!

But..it IS a bit of a problem for us, I am having to clean out the hen runs more than normal, because they are shut in ( to avoid being eaten by the Fox...)

So I am spending lots of time ( I don't have) sorting it all out...sigh

I love cupcakes.  Well, fancy fairy cakes. I'm not too keen on all that overly fussy icing malarkey, although it does make them look pretty.

DDIL1 made plain cupcakes last weekend, and I was reading her cupcake cook book. There was a fascinating recipe for "Carrot and Cardamom" cupcakes, which I just had to try.   I love cardamom.  One of my favourite home-made ice creams is Cardamom IceCream.  Cardamom in a cup cake sounded splendid.

So, I followed the recipe.  Rather strange, as it used sunflower oil instead of butter, but, hey, what the heck.   When I'd finished combining the ingredients, my mixing bowl looked as though it had an orange coloured curry sauce in.  It wasn't very appetising, as far as cake mixes go.  It only vaguely smelt of cardamom.  It only vaguely tasted of cardamom.   Maybe I grated the carrot too finely?
I spooned the mixture into the paper cases, and put the tray in the oven.

I'm waiting for them to bake as I type.

I'll report back later.

There must be about two feet of snow on the ground. I just trudged outside to check on the chickens.  (They’re royally p*@@ed, by the way.) I also broadcast another 15 or so pounds of bird seed onto the snow in the back yard.  Can your ankles get frostbite in ten minutes? I’m back inside and [...]

What is it with cats and boxes?

Whenever we have a box in the house, one or other or both of the cats just has to climb in it or on it.  It  doesn't matter if said box is empty or full, thery seem to have this compulsion they cannot help. This extends to the laundry baskets, washing baskets, collapsible crates, chicken carriers,  anything in fact.   We indulge out cats (probably too much), so if they happen to take a particular liking to a particular box, we keep it around for a bit.

Our coffee machine came back from being repaired in a big box, and the cats spent ages lolling about on it.

Here's Izzy taking her turn..


The box has some shredded carbord packaging in, and we're amazed it holds Izzy's (not inconsiderable) weight.

It's gone from the kitchen now as we didn't think it would hold out much longer.

DH grows fantastic parnips.  There is something so..so..different about a parsnip that goes from garden fork to kitchen fork within a couple of hours.  The sugars stay sweet and don't turn to starch.

DH fancied trying parsnip crisps (US=chips).  We've had them before, both home made and shop bought.  He doesn't like the shop bought ones very much.  So, we dug out the deep fat fryer, which hasn't been used since we did this last year,  and set about making crisps. 

Do parsnip crisps count towards one's "5 a day"?  

We had a few bits of parsnip left which were too small to be turned into crisps, so I steamed them until they were completely mushy, and we had mashed parsnip with our dinner.  Anyone who knows my DH will be scoffing in disbelief at this point, because it's a well known fact that he doesn't eat vegetables.    (He does eat some vegetables, provided they are completely mushy and provided they never had chlorophyll in them, ever).

This morning I thought I'd see what the Girls thought of mashed parsnip.  Hi-larious!  If they were kids they'd be beaming at me with parsnip all round their faces.

I've been looking for suitable pics of my Girls to cut down and use to illustrate the edges of my Blog.  I have, literally, *hundreds* of pictures of them, but it's been a challenge to find the *right* pic of each Girl.

Yesterday was quite sunny, so I took the camera out into the garden and tried to snap them.  Delilah was very interested in the camera...
     
 Isn't she gorgeous?  

She's over 3 years old now, which is quite old for a Bluebelle hybrid.

I am hoping that my new incubator will arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week as my eggs are being sent on Wednesday and hopefully arriving on Thursday.  This will give me a day to set it all up and check the temperature.

Back from a lovely day out at a social gathering of Herefordshire and Worcestershire Master Composters held at Worcester Woods Country Park. We had a fabulous talk from a member of the Countryside Services, Senior Greenspace Officer Wade Muggleton, on his amazing recycled garden

Wade is a local award winning gardener and writer. His talk was titled "Gardening like a Womble! a talk on permaculture and gardening"

Wade has travelled extensively in New Zealand & Australia, visiting and working on organic farms and permaculture projects. He ?walks the talk?, having spend the last 7 years developing his own small garden into an intensive food producing plot that contains more than 23 kinds of fruit and about 20 types of vegetables. ?Grow It? magazine awarded him their coveted ?plot of the year? award in 2009 and he writes for Permaculture magazine.

It was a really good talk, as Wade said, ?if we use small garden plots and allotments we reduce carbon emissions, waste, transport and pollution.? He is the most amazing skip diver, vegetables and fruits were flourishing in an amazing variety of containers and raised beds. As you might expect from an audience of Master Composters, we then had a lively question and answer session .

We had some lovely lunch, followed by a workshop, again headed up by Wade, on making willow structures such as obelisks and hurdles. We all had a really good time and, as always ,I came away enthused and energised by these gatherings with like minded folk.

Wade demonstrating how to make a willow obelisk

Also no hens were killed today and it was lovely weather.

So all in all a good day!.



Master Composters cutting willow.

Finally, if anyone reading this lives in Herefordshire or Worcestershire, the Waste Management team are looking for some more people to train as Master Composters? So, if you are interested, give me an email and I can give you more details?Me and my lovely willow obelisk.

I’m not even sure how much snow we have, but we have a lot of snow. So far the power is on. But I don’t think the 100 lbs. of birdseed I bought in preparation for the snow is going to hold out long. The birds are arriving in droves. See for yourself.

Congratulations to the lovely ladies who won my giveaway over in my blog shop. Thank you to all the lovely comments and words of encouragement. I'll be selling a mixture of handmade items, painted furniture and old china.


I want it to be like the shops I enjoy shopping in - a bit of this and a bit of that! :-) I will start making some Mother's day (14th March) soap sets and some Easter gift sets shortly so do keep an eye out.


I've listed some more items in my shop so pop on over if you'd like to have a peek.


Thanks very much.

Sian x

Chickens lay fewer eggs as they get older, but how much does production drop off after one year? In our case it seems to be a massive 66% after comparing our January eggs counts for 2009 and 2010. Related posts:

1. August egg count
2. The final egg count for 2009
3. June egg count

Its been a lovely day here today,
My day started well, with a meeting in my "office" ...a walk around the wood with a prospective client (grin)
I then spent a pleasant hour walking around Ledbury taking photos and thinking up clues for a trail I have been commisioned to write.....so got to have a wander around a historic market town, in the sunshine and get paid for it...my kind of work...!
Then had lunch out in pub with Cm.

This afternoon I have been making twig hearts and stars and writing a lesson plan and tutorial sheet on how to make them, for a class I am teaching next week.Also let the hens out to have a wander in the sunshine, I stayed close by and kept an eye open for the Fox. The feathery ladies seemed very pleased to be out of the runs!

At last i have finally made the decision to buy an incubator and hatch some silkies, something i have wanted to do since i began keeping chickens 9 months ago. I have gone for a Brinsea Mini Eco incubator which holds 10-12 hens eggs depending on size.  Its a manual machine so i will have to [...]

Got an email this morning from Anne who works in the audience department at the Martha Stewart Show in NYC.  They're taping a show on urban farming in March 2010 and are looking for urban chicken farmers (among others) to be in the audience.
If you're interested in being there, you have to request tickets and help them understand why you should be in the audience. The details are in Anne's email:If you or someone you know have recently turned your backyard space into a chicken coop or turkey pen, we have a special show that's just for you! We're filling our studio audience with individuals who raise livestock in urban environments as we celebrate the backyard farming movement. If you're interested in attending this show, please be sure to tell us about yourself and your backyard farm, as well as why you'd like to be part of this special audience. Please feel free to spread the word and request tickets as soon as you can if you're interested! The link to request tickets is www.marthastewart.com/get-tickets; scroll down to ?calling all urban farmers.' 
I hope to see you there next month (if they approve my request to attend, that is... fingers crossed!)

The government is set to make solar power a lot more attractive, while one homeowner in the Cotswolds has built himself a house that costs just £60 a year to heat. Plus The Guardian is highlighting easy to grow crops. Related posts:

1. The cost of solar power
2. Home-made power
3. The wind-powered iPod

We ate the two Lady Sandstorm eggs today!  That means today was the first time since August that we had real eggs!  They were really good and extremely orange!  Pure happiness!  We thanked Lady Sandstorm, of course.

The weather guessers tell us that there’s yet another snowstorm headed our way. We’re preparing for 12 to 18 more inches of snow on top of what we already have still sitting around. Oh joy. Snow is pretty. But it’s darned inconvenient. Even after the roads are plowed we are still stuck way back here until [...]

Only a quick post, I just had to share this with you.  Daniel’s just discovered he’s got a wobbly tooth – this may have been helped along by Oliver pulling something out of his mouth, but anyway – I’m ridiculously excited about this.  Daniel though, when he discovered it, cried his eyes out saying he [...]

omlet: SPRING CLEARANCE... We're cleaning out & sprucing up our nesting boxes http://bit.ly/9DhWhX to make way for some eggciting 2010 products!