Chocolate eggs

The egg skelter is looking a little more colourful today.

Sunday 2nd December 2012

 

Life and death go hand in hand here on the farm, as indeed do fortune and misfortune. The events of yesterday serve to illustrate this better than I can explain.

For it started with the startling discovery of piles of feathers leading to a bloodied, beheaded goose. But it was not long before a positive counterbalance came along. For while I was spending some icy minutes observing the chickens, I chanced upon a chocolate brown egg lying on the floor. Of late, only one hen has been laying. I'm not even sure which one it is, but she has been laying a large, pale egg almost every day. But this latest was most definitely not from her. In fact, it was clearly from the French Copper Marans hen, a breed which we deliberately sought out for their dark eggs. Along with the other young hens, they've been a bit late coming into lay. But I guess they reached laying age just as the nights started to draw in and the short, dull days of early winter took hold.

I must admit that I've not been carefully checking every nest box daily, as our one laying hen has consistently laid in the same house. But this new egg, carelessly deposited on the icy ground outside, led me to check the other houses and there, in the high rise, lay three eggs, a pale one and two medium browns.

So it would seem that at least two of our young hens have started laying. With a bit of luck, the early winter dearth of eggs is about to come to an end.

I started this post by saying that life and eath go hand in hand here on the farm. And today was not to be without a final twist. This morning, while I was checking that all the chickens were present and correct after the fox's visit, I had been unable to find Elvis or any of her brood of ten rapidly growing chicks. After twenty minutes of searching I finally headed up beyond the orchard and found her pecking about, with her whole family. They obviously had fancied a bit of a wander today.

But as I now observed all the poultry, I realised that I had not seen Claw, that poor, friendless Cream Legbar with the deformed foot, the one which would trot over and stand next to me whenever I appeared, the one which Sue had adopted.
Unfortunately, Sue has a habit of taking under her wing the weakest, despite my warnings that nature will not be so kind to them. And true to form, the sharp frosts of the last two nights had found the weakest, for I found Claw lying dead in one of the chicken houses.

RIP Claw

Fox Attack

Saturday 1st December 2012

One of our ornamental chickens has been beheaded, a victim of the building chaos. But a little superglue will soon fix it and we can laugh about it.

But what met Sue's eyes this morning cannot be fixed.


For one pile of bloodied white feathers led to another and then, there in the corner of the goose paddock were the beheaded remains of one of the geese.

When we moved in, before we had any experience of keeping livestock, we asked the previous owners what time they locked the chickens away, only to be informed that they put themselves away and doors were not locked.


So we continued like this for about a year, with no losses, until very early one morning I saw a fox running across the back field. From then on the chickens and ducks have been locked away every night and let out every morning. This is a complete pain and it was much nicer when the chickens could let themselves out, usually well before sunrise.

The geese, though, have been a different story. They just kind of happened upon us and we started with four males and a limping female which failed to lay eggs in its first year. Not sure of their age, they have had little purpose beyond making the place look olde worldy farmy, cutting the grass (though nowhere near as good at this as the sheep) and letting me know when anyone pulls in. But they have grown on us and become part of the farm.
For a while, when they were fighting, the pair got herded into a stable every night, but the others have always been left outside. We gave them a small house, but they have steadfastly refused to use it.
I always knew that there was a risk of fox attack, but everything had been OK ... till now.

I guess we were fortunate to only lose one. Just a shame it was the female, as we were hoping she might lay next year and form the start of a productive goose flock. But nature has a way of selecting out the weakest and she did always have that limp. Maybe she just chose the short straw last night, or maybe that limp, that slowness to get moving, cost her life.

So it's back to herding the geese into the stable at night, for the fox is sure to come looking again. I guess its the cold weather which has forced it to become more daring.


Three very subdued geese,
safely in the stable for the night.

Long term, we may now give away another of the males, or try to swap it for some eggs in the new year.













 

Pulled Pork

Friday 30th November 2012
Woodpigeons flight at dawn

When it's cold, snuggle in close.

Daisy and the piglets are doing very well indeed. Despite the cold, all eleven are growing fast and have become real little chubsters.
But before you get too googly eyed over them, we must remember that they are not pets. So meanwhile, pork sales trundle along at a steady pace. This is important as Daisy's life depends on it! We have run out of sausages again, but there are still plenty of chops and leg joints left in the freezer.

We continue to try out new ideas for cooking pork, and today's little project was pulled pork. I started by taking the skin off a small shoulder joint, seasoning it and browning it. Then a long, slow cook at 160 in milk with added herbs and lemon slices.

I was not convinced by this recipe, as the lemon would surely curdle the milk. And it did, a little. But all those fresh, zingy, herby flavours actually percolated nicely into the pork. After cooling a little I took two forks to it and shredded it. The succulent meat fell apart.

Along with a few knobs of crackling I had made from the skin and a good, hearty chunk of seedy wholemeal bread, we had a very simple, very tasty meal.

Monster Parsnip Harvest

Thursday 29th November 2012

 

 

Of late we have had some very dirty geese.
For they have discovered the delights of the remains of the potato harvest and have started digging deep for them.
This I did not mind... until they discovered the parsnips!








I had been waiting for the frost to sweeten the parsnips, though last year this strategy did not work as the carrot flies delighted in the late season meal. But with no carrots this year, I thought the risk was worth it.









I was expecting good things from the parsnips this year. Even as thinnings they were close on a foot long. And I was not disappointed. Most went down further than I could excavate and were huge. Strangely, just a few had totally failed to develop any root at all - maybe they were hit by slugs when young, or is this just something that happens sometimes?







Back when we bought our first house, over 20 years ago, all the furniture we had was a dozen tea chests to serve as tables, storage vessels and seats. Some have now rotted away, having spent years in damp cellars or cold lofts, but a few have survived our various abuses. So today, one of them became my winter parsnip storage.

Any parsnips damaged while being dug up, plus the couple of 3-legged oddities, got cooked and whizzed into parsnip and ginger soup. The rest are buried in neat regiments in the tea chest and stored in the cool, dark garage.
Hopefully they'll provide us with tasty treats through the winter.

 

Piglets' progress

Hiding in the straw.
How many can you see in this picture?

Wednesday 28th November 2012

  

It's amazing how quickly piglets grow.
I estimate they double in size every week.

And with it grow their characters. In the early days they are helpless little bundles of wrinkled skin, totally dependent upon their mother. But it's not long before these intelligent creatures begin to wander and investigate.

Next comes playfulness, spurts of energy and a natural wariness.
But Daisy knows me well now and is happy for me to spend time with her young family. The initial bolting and yelping when I appear at the door are quickly replaced by a line of inquisitive noses all edging closer to nudge my hand. Then there are those that prefer to creep round the back, nibbling at my trainers or tugging at my back pocket flaps as if they were mum's teats.




If, like me, you are looking at these cute little piglets and thinking sausages, chops and slow-roast shoulder, then they will be for sale in about a month's time. Girls are £45 each, boys just £35.

 

Just call me to reserve one.

 

Or you could sponsor one of them. If taking on a pig is too daunting, I'll look after it, feed it and raise it for you until it's ready to go on its final journey. But you'll be missing out on a whole lot of fun.

Wild, wet and windy...and more wet

I do try not to moan about our good old British weather. I try to live by the seasons and accept the extremes.

But COME ON! When is it ever going to stop raining? At least we're somewhat protected here from the worst excesses of flooding, but that doesn't prevent the ground being totally sodden.

There is plenty of standing water in the fields and the dyke at the end of the land has more water in than at any time since we moved in. The ducks and geese don't seem to mind, but the rest of the poultry are not so impressed.

And the poor pigs are wallowing around knee-deep in mud, though if they really didn't like it there's still dryish ground they could move onto. As soon as I can clear a stable room I'll move them inside for a while though, if anything else to give the land a chance to recover.

 

Tuesday 27th November 2012
Grey skies after another very wet night





If only the dyke had this much water

in all the time (I'm thinking wildfowl)



Good job the chicken houses
are on stilts.

  



Imagine the wader list if it had been
like this back in late summer

 

 

35 sun rises to go.

My temporary lull in blogging has not meant that I've forgotten about seeing every sunrise in 2012. The last week has only seen one actual visible sunrise, but the weather has been dramatic and morning skies have been varied.

I now have to wait till 7:45 am for the sun to peek over the horizon, which means I often take the photo on the way back from feeding the animals. More scarily, it's only just over 8 hours later that it disappears again in the western sky. This severely limits the amount of outdoor work I can get done, though the weather is not very conducive to achieving anything at the moment.

Roll on the shortest day. From there it's downhill all the way.

So I give you the last week's sunrises, in all their glory.

Wednesday 21st November 2012
Remarkably similar to yesterday's picture.

Thursday 22nd November 2012
Today I had my second Ofsted inspection in two weeks.
So forgive me being too preoccupied
to properly appreciate this gorgeous sunrise..

Friday 23rd November 2012
An amazing low bank of cloud on the horizon

Saturday 24th November 2012
An unusual combo of fog and frost.

Sunday 25th November 2012
Ominous clouds loom.
The lying water tells its own story of last night's storm
which unleashed itself on already saturated fields.

Monday 26th November 2012
More moisture in the air.
Let's hope it stays there.

The beam

Well, it's been a while since my last post. The building work has somewhat overturned all other routines, but it will be worth it in the end. The office is gone, to become a bathroom, so the computer has been unplugged for a while. It's now re-established in the lounge, so it's blogging time again.




The beam

The subject of today's post is the beam. That huge chunk of pitch pine which we unearthed at Patrick's wood salvage yard. It came complete with nails, holes, notches and many years of grime.



Transformed.





So much history enshrined in a colossal piece of timber, not to mention the decades, or even centuries it stood somewhere in a Scottish forest.

Me and the beam spent two days in each others company last week as I lovingly brought it back to it's former glory. We had been a little worried that it would dominate the room or look out of place, but now that Jason and his mate Ernie have somehow managed to lift it into position we are positively beaming. In fact, we spent about an hour just gazing at it, we are that happy with it. And I can always look up at it and think "I did that".

Just as importantly the beam is doing a wonderful job supporting the ceiling above, which always seemed as if it was about to cave in every time anybody moved around in the bedroom above.

Southfork



Tuesday 20th November 2012

I have a new favourite place.
It is called Patrick's, a salvage yard in the village of Murrow.

It's where all the old girders, beams, gates, windows, toilets and sinks go to die. The place spreads out organically. There is no particular organisation to it. You just go and climb over things till you find what you need.
On the face of it, quite an intimidating place, especailly for a not-so-practical person like me, but the family that run the place were actually very friendly and helpful.
So last week I met my builder there and we trudged around looking for a steel RSJ to stop the new kitchen / diner collapsing in the middle. I didn't have a clue what I was looking for, but Jason's keen eyes eventually spotted a pair of U-beams which would do the job perfectly.

This fits in perfectly with two of my strongest principles in life.

1. Try to re-use everything.
2. Try to save money n everything.

The house which has been built next to the salvage yard is a wonder. Extravagantly pieced together using every characterful piece of salvage that has come in over the years, it looks like a Disney version of the Adams Family house.

But it gets even better. For at the other end of the village stand a pair of grandiose house built wiht the bricks salvaged from an old grammar school, complete with columns. This placed is appropriatley named Southfork Farm and is strongly influenced by the architecture of its namesake in Dallas.

Here lies an absolute treasure - the salvage wood yard.
An old boy called Fred runs the place and he has the same appreciation for old wood as I do.
It was here that we found the beam to go across the living room, a beautifully aged hunk of ancient pitch pine. And here too we found 10" wide floorboards and antique pine to make all the new doors we need.

On the outside, this wood shows the scars of years and years of wear and abuse. But Fred has a couple of monster machines, especially a planer that fills a whole room, which transform it, shaving off the grease and grime and the worst of the knocks, but leaving that wonderfully aged colour and grain that's impossible to recreate with new wood.

The moment Sue clapped eyes on the wide floorboards, that was it. We were destined to have wooden floors in the bedrooms! I must say, I fell in love with them too.

Absolutely Offal

Monday 19th November 2012
A very chilly breeze greeted me this morning.

 

There is a saying that the only bit of a pig you can't eat is the oink.
Well, I must say I'm a bit more fussy than that, but I do have very good intentions to use as much as I can of any animal that I raise for meat.

Having said that, the last thing left in the freezer will probably be a heart, a couple of kidneys or a wodge of liver. I think this is more because we have not been brought up to eat much offal and so we need to educate ourselves. Sue did make lots of liver pate out of the livers from the last pigs to go off, but it didn't turn out great. Very tasty, we just need to get the texture a bit finer.
We do enjoy fried liver, with bacon and onions. But a pig's liver is absolutely huge, so we need to eat it more often.
But as for the kidneys, heart and lungs...

There was a recipe on TV the other day for making faggots, which used liver, kidney, heart and even some lung (an organ which we have no idea how to use and always ends up going to a friend's very appreciative dogs).


So when the lambs came back at the end of last week, we dutifully placed the offal in the fridge with every good intention of doing something exciting with it while it was still fresh.
But please remember, this is set in the context of a kitchen being ripped apart and brick dust everywhere. Come last night, the bowl of offal was still sitting there. I decided that faggots would have to wait for another day, so sent the lungs off to the dog again.
But for a quick meal I decided we would have sausages and chips and throw in a little liver, kidney and heart. In the past, many years ago, I've cooked the latter two to oblivion in an effort to make them not appear like the actual organs of an animal!

But today I heeded all the advice dished out by celebrity chefs and just fried them all gently.

The result was absolutely delicious! I can't believe we've been missing out on this for all of our lives. Best of all was the heart - if I closed my eyes I would have thought it was best fillet steak, and I'm not exaggerating.

So offal is not so awful after all.

Now for those trotters sitting at the bottom of the freezer.