Let Me Introduce Winston

This is Winston, our Light Sussex rooster. Isn't he a beauty? He's in charge of our brood of seven hens. They like nothing better than to go free ranging over the lawn, picking up insects and whatever tasty morsels they can get.

I shouldn't have started naming the hens but I did. This is Ruby, a Rhode Island Red. She's one of our oldest hens and is getting very heavy.

When we got our latest batch of hens I decided not to name them any more. They are all pure bred as this means they are much better natured.

They all lay an egg almost every day so we're getting five or six eggs a day. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with using them so I give quite a lot away to friends.

Hens love bread. I was feeding them some while taking these pictures. They run round like mad trying to get every wee crumb. They even jump up and peck it out of my hand.

Have you ever seen a chicken running? It's the most hilarious thing ever!

These two are obviously having a squabble over a piece of bread. Not a very dignified pose!

Nonem has to get into the middle of it all, hoping to sneak a little bit of bread too. If she can't get any bread then a bit of a tummy rub will do. Look, she's lying on my feet!

All the best for now. I haven't forgotten about showing you how I roll a skein of yarn into a ball. Just need to get myself organised.

What I Did With all Those Plums

This year we've had a bumper crop of plums; I told you about picking them here and here. 

 

As well as just enjoying them the way they came off the tree (washed first of course!), I spent a lot of time stoning plums and making various plum dishes so we could preserve all the fruit. Some of the fruit was stewed and stored in the freezer and some was just frozen uncooked but with the stones removed.

 

This simple dish below is made by lining a baking tin with puff pastry, laying plum halves on top, sprinkling with a bit of demerara sugar and then baking. I can't remember for sure now, but I think I made four of these.

 

Quite a lot of honeyed plums were also made. It's amazing how many plums it takes to fill a jar once they've been softened gently.

Plum crumble is a must-make.

Last, but not least, I made plum sponge. This is really a pudding rather than a cake. First I layered plum halves in a deep Pyrex dish, sprinkling some sugar between the layers. I then used a recipe that makes a very light sponge and poured it over the plums. Some of the sponge mixture made its way between the plums but most of it stayed on top. The pudding was baked until the sponge was golden, enough time to soften the plums below. This was a good way to use up a lot of our own eggs as well as plums!

Here are some of the eggs we've been lifting lately. The one on the left is a normal sized hen's egg laid by one of the older hens. The one on the right was laid by one of our new hens that have just started laying. The one at the front must be the first ever egg laid by one of the new hens! Look how tiny it is. But it had a yolk and I was able to use it!

There are many sponge recipes around so just use whatever is your favourite if you want to make this pudding. And I'm sure any sort of soft fruit - or even apples cut into small chunks - would work just as well as the plums.

I'm not quite sure how many crumbles and sponges I made; three of each, I think. But there aren't that many now as we've been eating our way steadily through them. The Aga really comes into its own for this sort of cooking or baking. It's only since moving to this house that I have got an Aga but I would hate to have to go back to a normal cooker again.

September is proving to be a lovely month so far. The early morning skies are beautiful, there are mists, there are bountiful crops and the swallows are still swooping around, preparing to leave us.

No-one sums up this time of year better than John Keats in his poem Ode to Autumn.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

 

I love that poem. All the best for now and thanks for all your lovely comments. It really makes my day to read them.

Dhaveena's Blanket Finito

First of all, let me welcome my new followers. And let me thank everyone for their lovely comments on my last post about Rathfriland. I didn't reply to every single comment but I read and appreciated them all.

Today I was working from home; an arrangement I'm mighty glad to avail of as it saves me a lot of wasted travel time. So for lunch I had half a toasted soda farl (I didn't make the soda farl so no credit there) and a boiled egg (I didn't lay the egg but one of my hens did so I deserve a little bit of credit for that). While the egg was boiling I dashed out into the garden, lifted the last of the baby turnips and delved into a potato bed to glean enough potatoes for tonight's dinner. The egg was ready by this stage so I couldn't pick any beans. The lunch was tasty though very simple and quick to make. If you don't keep your own hens, and it is at all possible for you to do so, then I can highly recommend getting some. Having your own eggs is hard to beat. My son was with us a few days ago and I invited him to help himself to some vegetables from the garden, including the beans. He took me at my word for, when I went out after eating lunch to pick some beans for dinner, lo and behold there were only three pods left! Enjoy your beans son! I noticed that there were more tomatoes ready to be picked and lots more sweet pea but that had to wait until this evening.

You probably don't remember me telling you about Dhaveena's blanket. It seems like a long time ago since I started the blanket but I haven't been crocheting it exclusively all this time; there have been other things started and even finished in the mean time. Well, I'm very pleased to say that Dhaveena's blanket is now well and truly finito. Have a look at a few photos first and then I'll give you some details about it.

The yarn is Stylecraft Special DK 100% acrylic in Pale Rose (pink) and Meadow (green) plus Stylecraft Extra Special DK 100% acrylic in Spring Marl (pink and green mix). Using a 4mm hook I needed seven balls (100g) of the Spring Marl and three balls each of the Pale Rose and Meadow. The blanket is made up of three-round Granny squares, joined as you go. There are seventeen squares across and twenty five squares down. That's a total of four hundred and twenty five squares! There are five "Granny" rows round the blanket, in the Spring Marl, to make a border. Then there's just a very simple chain and picot edging, using the Meadow, to finish it off. The blanket is single bed sized; I didn't measure it exactly. Since there are four hundred and twenty five squares there must have been more than twice that number of ends to sew in. Not quite, as I crocheted over the starting end of each square and cut it off. That means there must have been about five hundred ends to sew in! That's what happens when you make such small squares but the finished result is worth it, in my opinion.

This blanket won't be given to Dhaveena until her baby brother or sister is born and I give him or her the blossom shawl and little matching cushion. Ah!! I've just realised I didn't show you the filler I made for the cushion. The cushion cover that I crocheted is about 10" square but I couldn't get a small enough cushion pad to fit it. So I just decided to make one. I bought some fabric; as close a match as I could get; cut it and sewed almost the whole way round, turned right side out, stuffed it and then closed the gap. Here it is.....

The colours in the first photo are really weird for some reason. That's more than you bargained for -two finitos in one post - a blanket and a cushion.

By the way, look at the size of this bee that I spotted on one of the dahlias. It isn't a honey bee of course; it's a bumble bee.

I had to hold the flower to stop it waving about in the breeze.

On the subject of bees, last night the clearing boards were put into our bee hives. This means that when the bees move away from the honey into another part of the hive they can't get back to the honey again. After a few days all the honey frames should be clear of bees. Then we can extract the honey! We've that to look forward to at the weekend.

Hope you all have a good weekend whatever you have planned.

Fruitfulness

This is the time of year when the garden becomes more and more fruitful. There has already been rhubarb pulled, chopped and frozen. I told you about that way back in May in this post. And there has been a good harvest of strawberries which, unfortunately, is now over. There's been a post about using the strawberries too.

I feel I should now tell you - as I finally feel able to share it - that while we were away on holiday at the end of May, my dad accidently turned off the freezer where all my rhubarb was stored. It all had to be disposed of along with the rest of the freezer contents.

Well Monday past (a holiday here in Northern Ireland) saw me out in the rhubarb patch again. Another 15 pounds of rhubarb was pulled, washed, chopped and stored in the freezer. The husband picked about half of the blackcurrants. That's them all in the three pots below - a total of 19.5 pounds. I washed them, put them in bags (two pounds to a bag) and put them in the freezer. Later in the year I'll use them to make blackcurrant jelly and cordial.

The raspberries have started ripening plentifully as well. We eat some and freeze some for another time.

There have already been two ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse but the rest of them are still green. A 'prepare for a bumper tomato crop' warning has already been issued so I can tell I'll be making a lot of pasta sauce.

These peas were part of our dinner - straight from the pods and given a quick boil. The husband grows lots of peas but not very many of them get into the kitchen as he stands and eats them in the garden!

So this was what we had for dinner: steamed new Rooster potatoes, baby turnip (boiled and then fried), peas and a fried egg (laid by one of our own hens). The slice of fried pineapple didn't come from our garden but everything else on the plate was home produce. That's gardening success I'd say. It was delicious!

 

Sorry I didn't think to take any photos of these but last weekend I cooked the first of the beetroot. They were small but that's the way I like them to be. More tender I think. Not that I eat any of it! Yes, I know it's very good for you; I've tried it many times and I just don't like it. I also roasted shallots and some of our elephant garlic.

 

We got a new rose and five hens but I'll tell you about those another day. The hens are taking a few days to settle in but they seem to be getting used to things now.

 

All the best for now!

A Bit of a Garden Update

This is the time of year when the garden changes every day. There's always something new to look at, some progress towards the harvest of fruit and vegetables.

Here are some photos to let you see what's happening in our garden. There are still lots of flowers and the poppies are really great this year.

I love that photo of the pinks; our wee Jack Russel managed to get in the picture and I didn't even realise she was there!

This is a new climbing rose we bought at the weekend. It's planted at the front of the house.

There are lots of pots with flowers too.

We bought a small thistle when on holiday a few years ago in Scotland. It grows really tall and produces lots of baby thistles for the following year. This is the first time we've had one in this particular flower bed. It will grow taller before the summer is over - usually they top six feet.

The apples, pears and plums are still tiny but there's going to be a good harvest (I hope!).

Lots of tomatoes in the greenhouse - the most we've ever had so far.

We also have a vine in the greenhouse which provides shade for the tomatoes while they are growing. Once the grapes are ready they are used to make jelly and cordial. The vine leaves are given to my brother-in-law to stuff; he uses his own traditional recipe.

There's a vine outside too but, if it ever produces grapes, these are quickly eaten by the birds.

Let me introduce you to some of our flock. This is Winston and below is Winifred. They are both Light Sussex and very mild tempered.

 

We need to get some more hens and hopefully we'll do that very soon. Possibly some ducks as well. That will be fun!

 

I'm still picking strawberries but I think they will soon slow down and finally stop for this year. I hope to dry some of them to see how they turns out - I haven't dried soft fruit before. It would be nice to have some to add to the muesli when I make it.

 

Bye for now!