Bah, Humbug.

Well, it's nearly that time of the year when two days take over the whole of your life! Sadly, we have no children within which to foster feelings of greed, gluttony and nausia (usually in that order!) so we are substituting adults with the self-same aim! The Soays continue to be very tasty - see Pot Roast below, and the levels of extreme storage are beginning to subside - although we are awaiting delivery of our fifth(!) freezer!
Jam has been the order of the day for some time now, here's a shot of the Crabapple and Blackberry Jelly in its earliest form. The colours are truly beautiful - as is the finished article.

Speaking of which, this is what the finished "Gift Baskets" looked like when they went to the Beccles Christmas Lights Switching On Street Fayre. What a shame about the weather! I did do a Good Deed, tho, purchasing a cheap mug with a few sweeties in the top from a lovely young Artful Dodger from the Youth Enterprise group. He was so determined and so VERY wet - it was worth the £5 to see the look on his face! That's what Christmas is about!

As you might notice the stall was a little low for The Bloke, but a fine job was done on the lighting! I feel a little more Point Of Sale Material might have meant a little more in the sales effort, but it was a fun night with So Call, his Daughter and his Fiance turned up to show support. They are now not taking our calls in a most childish and ridiculous manner - and I thought they were grown ups!

Not the most successful business venture - but has solved most of my Christmas Present problems, which was the original intention - and I think they are really nice!

I'm sorry that the updates to this blog are few and far between at the moment - it's merely a reflection of the comparatively slow time of the year. Although The Bloke has spent all day today slaughtering, plucking and hanging huge chickens and a couple of medium sized turkeys, so he's a bit too busy to come to the phone! Many of these dicky-birds are off to new "homes" over the next two weeks, I'm sure they will be the tastiest Christmas Fayre in the county!

Incidentally, since starting this update Waveney Freecycle Yahoo Group has been taken over by Fascists intent on controlling everything in the World. They didn't like the fact that Rachael and I were a bit anarchic and tried our hardest to post things. Apparently, it is a cardinal sin to post something on two Freecycle Groups at the same time - meaning that you have to search every local group before you can let someone offer a wardrobe! Also, you are not, either, allowed to post more than one "want!" a week. So if you forgot to add something to your post, you have to wait a week to do it! Nasty, nasty people snuck up on Rachael and took over her group. May they Rot! In any case, we are going to start our own freecycle-alike group with even fewer rules! Watch this space!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all those who's cards have got lost in the post (like those two DVD's) MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR - see you in 2008!

Shameless Self-Promotion - kinda!

What a lovely day! Kind of makes you want to sit by the fire, make toast and put some nice jam on it! Doesn't it? In any case, I have been very, very busy lately. I've been making jams and jellies! Oh, and how! I happened to be in the right place at the right time and came across a supply of Pears, Quinces, Tomatoes (from our garden with the Peppers), Apples and so on. Our little tree has also come up trumps in this dreadful year with about a million crab-apples.

You might be interested to learn that we have slaughtered the Soay Sheep that remained of our original flock. Sad, isn't it. Still, we had pot roasted leg of mutton tonight and it really was wonderful!

One more thing, please boycott anything that will make a profit for those filthy, perverted, whale-murdering, pig-dogs that are the Japanese Government. May they rot in their own private hell for all eternity.

Happy days, only http://mysite.verizon.net/vze201j5/countdown.htm to Christmas!

Cheerio!

Mary is Working At Last

We had cars, diggers, demolished fences, huge spoil-heaps, very large holes, digger drivers, cups of tea and endless ingenuity but it was all worth while. No chicken was harmed during the making of this blog, no dogs squashed, turkeys remained intact and sheep distracted.

My lovely Landlord was not killed, maimed nor damaged in any way and his very tall sons drove diggers, shovelled and stood about making helpful suggestions,all without dying.

The garden has had a little "mulching" with yellow clay that has turned to a skid-pan in the rain showers we had yesterday, but has been "whacked" down to permit the application of topsoil and should recover in time.

Really the only casualty has been my Mint plant, but it was uncovered by a contrite digger driver and will probably make a full recovery - I'm just glad that I harvested and froze all the leaves I am likely to need over the winter!

Mary, as you can see, has been supplied with electricity and lids and is now bubbing away, doing her job with quiet efficiency. All I can really add is, "Thank you" to The Landlord, Landlady, their Offspring, friends and contractors - also the Balmoral Company for their fine product!

It strikes me that there has been little other news here since Mary came into our lives, and that is because nothing has really happened apart from the harvesing of pumpkins! We have 15 Crown Prince - all about a foot across, which is just about the right size and 10 Butternut Squash

that were grown from the seeds in a supermarket fruit. Since we only had four and three plants respectively they have done really well. If you look on my Yahoo! Group (there's a link on the right of this post at the top) you can get my recipe for one of my favourite vegetarian dishes. Please have a look.

The runner beans are finished and I have left a couple of pods on the vine to produce seed for next year and yesterday set some tomato seeds to ferment prior to storage for next Summer. I decided that 31 plants was far too many and so we are only having Black and Marmande (Beefsteak) toms next year.

I'm hoping to get the second greenhouse* up over the next couple of weeks and we are (again!) moving the small one. This time they are going at the side of the house, now that the hedge has grown tall enough to keep the wind away from their fragile bits. I plan to use the little one for tiny, baby seedlings and move them to the big one once they are out of trays and into fair-sized pots or grobags.

* This is the second Freecycle'd greenhouse I have been given! It's 6' x 10' and in wonderful condition, we are planning to put this one on railway sleepers so that it will be higher on the sides to allow for the really big things like melons(!) My "crop" was one galia melon the size of a cricket ball. Ho hum.

Think it's been a bit wet in your garden? This is where the swede are supposed to be growing!!

The perpetual spinach seems to like the wet, tho.

Likewise, the marigolds that were planted near the broad beans (which drowned and were a disaster!!) to prevent blackfly. It worked, too. I shall do it again next year - although I don't expect the marigolds to be flowering in October!

I promise not to mention Mary again,although I shall probably go on at length about the mud problems we are going to have this winter. Still, I have actually BOUGHT some meat! I have ordered a forequarter of beef from Chambers The Butcher in Beccles, which they are hanging for five weeks for me. Also a whole rump! This is being paid for with Pig Money (that's what we raised by selling pigs, by the half, to friends).

I really can't wait, so till then,

Cheerio!

Ho hum. Autumn est arrivee!

Well, Rosie, that was the Summer!? We've had a nice few days since the beginning of September - and a couple of downpours - but it would appear that the chill in the air does not mean the end of Global Warming, only the end of the rather disappointing British Summer. Still, we might get a proper one next year, so it's out with the old ones and in with the new seed catalogues and a whole new plan for the Veggie Patch for the next growing season.

Until we get that underway, the "biggest" thing in our lives at the moment is the New Septic Digester Malarkey. After the previous "Investigation Stage" came the beginning of the "Installation Stage" with the coming of the really, really big digging machine.

Big. Very Big - wasn't it Rosie?

A truly enormous spoil heap was created - despite shed-loads of stuff being carted away during the digging process. I'm hoping to have a naming ceremony for Suffolk's Only Mountain - I was thinking of calling it Doris!

Soon, our doughty Landlord arrived and began his toil with a transporter carrying mixer and shovel, creating a cushion of concrete for the lovely lady Digester to sit her sit-upon on. And so it was.

He even brought his own water with him - we're metered! - to help with the filling that was to come slightly later when "She" arrived:

And what a beauty she is! This picture was taken after the ready mix concrete was poured up to her waist soon after she was filled to her middle with water to hold her down. I am calling her "Mary" after Queen Mary, who had the same demeanor! Not long now and we will no longer have to check that All Was Flushed Away after every - ahem - "operation". Oh, what joy unbounded!

On more interesting note, the turkeys are growing nicely. Well, they should be, too! The amount of food a dozen turkeys can put away is astounding. Still, we do want them to grow and they are looking a lot better than last year's - mostly due to the new, improved, bigger run, and living in a Horsebox! Well, yes. I know, but they seem to be ok and (touch wood!) we haven't lost any to the vixen that lives in the wood beyond the field next to us!

They seem mostly unperturbed by the upheaval and the arrival of Mary in their line of sight.

We did have a little bother immediately before they were moved from their "poult" (baby turkey) run, with one of the white ones getting "boredom" pecked in the wing. Since the move, about three weeks ago she is now fine again and is growing nice, new, clean feathers. Another disaster in the move was that The Bloke broke a turkey and it had to be euthanized. We ate it and it was lovely - small, but lovely. And then there were 12!

On a lighter note, I was talking to Trojan The Grey, who is a 17-year-old, 17.2hh gentleman who lives on the land to the East of ours and he posed for a picture or two that I thought I would share with you. Isn't he lovely? And such a kind, gentle soul!

I love him!

Chow, Amici!

News!

In the absence of any significant activity in the food producing parts of the household, I have had some time on my hands. This has resulted in the birth of a new forum called East Of England Slow Food. It's a Yahoo! group and is dedicated to the proposition that there are always gluts of foodstuffs such as courgettes and pumpkins (my current concern) and it would be nice to hear if anyone has some good ideas as to how to cope.

So, if you have a great recipe, would like one, know a good food/seed/knowledge source or would like to have a chat about anything to do with this stuff, click on the button on the top left of this screen and you will be welcomed into the fold!

Oh, and, just in passing, Rosie, The Smallest Dog In The Area, found and bit a huge rat on the field yesterday. It didn't go much on that and bit her back, on the nose. A subsequent visit to the Vet set me back £40.68! Just for a course of anti-biotics! Out-bloomin'-rageous, innit?!!

What ho!

Summer Is Slipping Away

In a "fruitless" (geddit?) attempt to preserve the Summer for a little longer, I have been making jam, chutneys, jellies and relishes like a mad thing. I am getting quite good at it, so it seems that my objective of giving pretty jars of home-made stuff for Christmas prezzies may possibly be achieved.

Who'd have thought that the most difficult thing I have had to make has been strawberry jam - everything else has been very straightforward.

Even the Banana and Pineapple jam is tasty, so is the Curried Banana Chutney, despite the strangeness and its ability to make you screw up your nose with its very name! Don't deny it, I saw you!

We have transferred the 13 remaining turkeys to the large enclosure, ready for the huge digger that is going to solve all our septic tank problems by digging a huge hole for the new "digester" tank on Monday. The only problem we have had, so far, is that one of the turkeys broke her wing in the move and is to be lunch tomorrow. I don't think I have ever been so sorry for anything, despite the fact that she did it herself against the side of the run. Daft bird!

The tiniest of the sheep has had fly-strike, where blow-fly larvae eat away at the flesh of sheep and, I'm told, rabbits with long fur. The adults lay their eggs in the wool and they hatch to a ready food supply. It is the most horrible thing imaginable. I won't publish a picture. Eugh! It must ITCH like crazy, poor little girl. But she has been treated, wormed and released back into the fold, so should improve by leaps and bounds.

We only have the five Welsummer babies and Silkie hen, Fluffy, left in the chicken department. The cockerell is poaching nicely as we speak and the other hens have gone to the great coop in the sky - we are getting new ones once the digging is over with. I was really sad about this, but the mite-treated polecats were delighted! It's an ill wind .......!

Mabel the Caravan, The Bloke and I went to The Oyster at Butley for a weekend with friends over the bank-holiday weekend and found it a delightful experience. The Bloke had a moment, but The Camel enjoyed a nice few days in the Suffolk countryside. He likes to come with us on caravanning trips and days out and is becoming quite well-travelled. Quiet, tho.

As you can see, the weather was most kind and we rushed home on the Monday so that we could go away again to North Walsham by ourselves. Camel was busy that week, so couldn't come, which was a shame because we were introduced to a beautiful lady camel, Camelia, who came home with us and is looking forward to meeting him.

Since returning from the break, we haven't stopped working! There was a fence to put up between where the pigs used to be and the rest of that half of the field, which took all day yesterday and burnt my shoulders in the sunshine and there is much stuff that The Bloke had to move out of the way for the Digger on Monday. He's had to mow the lawns twice, they were so long! Still the Dahlias are still blooming beautifully and we now have ornamental fruit on the Passion Flower plant.

We have had another freezer delivered today which we shall need when the Soay ewes go to slaughter soon. We will have the highest electricity bill on the planet with all five freezers going! Self-sufficiency, My Eye!

Our lovely Brother and Sister-in-Law are coming to visit for the weekend - unfortunately not bringing any of their gorgeous offspring - so The Bloke wants the Laminated Flooring Complete and Tidy Before They Arrive. No chance! NO chance at all!! They'll be lucky if I remember to make up the bed in their room! Can't wait to see them, tho', haven't seen them since Anne-Marie's Wedding!

Pip! Pip!

All is Happy Again!

Well, here's what my beautiful Saddle-Backs looked like the day before they left. Please note the state of the pasture they had as loveley green grass - and turned into a muddy wallow! That's Violet at the front, then, left to right Daisy (still here), Winston (also still here) and Lilly. They had a wonderful life!



You will have to turn your head to the right to see this picture of Violet and Lilly when I went to pick them up from the Nice Butcher Man. This huge amount of meat includes all the bones and feet (the bones went to a friend's dog) the feet are in the freezer awaiting slow cooking for my own doggies, together with lights (lungs) and ears. The hearts, livers, kidneys are all packed and in the freezer, alongside half a dozen huge pork joints and FIFTY packs of sausages - the best I have ever had!

Today I spent the morning cutting up the two squares of belly-pork that I cured myself in 5 days into the tastiest streaky bacon I have eaten in my life. Here's a picture of some of it in muslin, yummy!

With the foot and mouth outbreak we were concerned that we would not be able to send Winston and Daisy to slaughter, but that's all cleared up now and all I'm worried about is that we will end up having to store another Lord knows how many boxes of pig until we sell another two "halves"! So, if you know anyone who would like to buy about 45 - 50 Kgs of prime, English, extensively-farmed, peach fed, spoiled and indulged pork, get them to give me a call!! Sorry, but you won't get trotters, ears, lights, or hearts!

To Lighter things - I went to the giant strawberry on the A146, just before you get to Morrisons and asked the lady how much a punnet of strawberries weighed. They were £2 each and are about 500g. She asked me if I was going to make jam with them and when I said yes, offered me a tray (4.5Kg!) of lovely strawbs for a Fiver! With my delivery of 84 jam jars safe in the utility room, this was just what I needed. We now have 19 jars of beautiful strawberry jam!



The veggies are coming in thick and fast now. We have plenty of tomatoes of all different colours and sizes - even I like the black and cherry ones. We have runners by the hundred every day, sweetcorn is coming along and each one has two ears! Stereo! The little purple french beans are delicious, but lose their colour when they are cooked, which is disappointing.

The baby sheep are growing and not nearly so frightened of us. I think we will be parting with the Soays, tho'. They bully the babies a bit and they are too tiny to stick up for themselves.

Baby chickens are growing, as are the Christmas Turkeys! The whisper is that a free-range turkey will be costing about £50 this year! We might even break even on the food bill and the two new feeder/drinkers.

Oh, Happy Days!

Woe is me!

Violet and Lilly are converted to pork. It's so sad.

Violet and Lilly had brilliant, natural lives, enriched with good food, companionship, space and the Five Freedoms. They were curious about the trailer and stuck their snouts thru the narrow windows on the side to sniff the countryside in a very un-panic-y way. They stopped in a nice shady place, went for short walk and then .... nothing! No stress, no fear, a quick and painless end. We should all have such a final chapter.

I'm still sad. But not as sad as Winston and Daisy!

More later with pictures of the remaining sad pair!

Tally-ho!

Hello and Goodbye!

We've had some new babies! I took grateful delivery of 5 baby Welsummer Banties today! Four of them are tiny like this one.

And then there's the bigger one - hatched a few weeks earlier than the others. Difficult to photograph, just like the little ones, tho!

And the goodbye goes to Lilly and Winston, who will leave next Tuesday to become wonderful deliciousnesses! Oh, and sausages!

That's the way it goes. Sad, isn't it?

Sheeps! New ones! Aaah!

Hi, everybody! Still suffering from the effects of the rain here. How about where you are?
Never mind, tho' the "beefsteak" tomatoes (as recommended by Chef Roux) "Marmande" are growing and looking quite good in the greenhouse. The Son sent me some dosh for my recent umpteenth birthday and part of it was spent on an automatic window opener for the greenhouse. Since then, everything has been doing much better - what with me not remembering either to open or close the thing at least once a day!
Outside in the hanging baskets, the little cherry tomatoes - kindly donated by a very good friend, a landscape gardener of my aquaint, are coming along nicely. I tasted one myself this morning and, guess what, it's true! Homegrown tomatoes are nice! I don't like 'em but these are so sweet and non-acidic! I was amazed and can't wait for the other 30 plants to start ripening!
Some plants are not doing so well. These are in a large planter just outside my office window. They have "Leaf Curl" problems. There are plenty of fruits, but they don't seem to be very healthy plants. I'm not holding out much hope, but am still feeding weekly - as with all the other toms.
Harvey is settled more now. He will allow certain people into the house without performing a full inspection of their genital area, sometimes forgetting to bark! He's still a bit anxious about some of the farmer types, tho'!
Others of our creatures are doing well, too. This little cock canary is prone to singing his little heart out - even at this time of the year, he sings first thing in the morning and in the evening. We had a hawk try to get them the other week and so the roof of the aviary was changed to discourage this - so far, success!
Sharon (left) is not too perky at the moment, so I have started giving them both Ferretone in their food. Known by a local keeper as Ferret Heroin, they absolutely love the stuff - and her coat is improving by the day. Harvey still wants them - BADLY!
On a surprisingly small plant, cucumbers that actually taste of something are growing. We've eaten one, and these three are still swelling up. There are other babies on the way and plenty of flowers.
Peppers are swelling and looking very exotic in the greenhouse. These are those long, finger-shaped, very sweet capiscum-type ones that will turn red in the end.

Lilly and Daisy are taking the air. Nothing like a good wallow to improve the complexion and lower the risk of sunburn to the ears, apparently.
A snooze makes the time between feeds go more quickly. So it's worth a go. I bet she's dreaming of peaches!
Shy ears.
This nasty weather has had one good facet. The apples are doing really well! These are only babies, tho, so we are hoping for a bit less rain for a while so that they don't split and get diseases. Pretty, tho, aren't they?
The Soays are looking really scruffy as they self-shear this year. They don't get fly-strike because they shed their coats in a series of lumps!Twothree is now bigger and more dominant than both Mother and Auntie, the other two ewes. Incidentaly, can you see one of the next-door-neighbour's emus in the background of this picture? They have proper dinosaur's feet! Very scary indeed!
Now then, this is what we have been waiting for! The baby sheep arrived during the week and they are SO pretty! They have little faces just like Rosie!
They have little round tummies and are absolutely terrified of everything. Strangely, this includes a bucket of lamb creep-nuts (baby-sheep food). They are escapologists, an have been in with the pigs a couple of times - this is dangerous because pig nuts tend to include small amounts of copper and that's poison to a sheep. That bottom rail on the fence is about 18" high!

We also have had another 8 turkeys arrive - replacing the white ones that David sold on - at cost, of course! - to some very nice people. There wasalso another bronze in the bunch. We're hoping to get four more sold off, to the sheep supplier man, over the next week or two.

It has been (sadly) decided that two of the pigs, Winston and Violet or Lilly, will be going to slaughter at the beginning of August, when we get back from the Wedding we are attending in Southampton. Our niece is getting wed! Good luck to her! I shall, of course, cry at both of these events - the wedding and the demise of the piggies!

Freecycle continues to come good - such nice and generous people! We have collected two fridges, one that works and one that does not. The latter is to be converted into a smoker for the bacon we will be, hopefully, producing shortly, however, the former is to go into my tiny shed! Not so that I can enjoy a cold one without the long trek to the kitchen, but because I have finally been authorised as a DEFRA End User. This means that I am permitted to collect and use (for dog food!) any and all parts of the pigs that we slaughter. Also, horns and fleeces for sheep - although I wouldn't bother, really, that's a lot of work!

What ho! Till next time!