Monthly Archives: October 2015

Signs, gin and Christmas puddings

It’s been days since the past post – sorry about that. I’ve been locked in a cycle of work and sleep that doesn’t seem to have left time for anything else. Well, to be accurate I suppose work, sleep and staring at the TV in a trance-like state. I can’t tell you what I’ve been watching but I’ve failed to see the end of a lot of it.

After one day, where we had a group in, meetings and ran a craft session we eventually left the farm at 10.30 one night, only to be stopped by a neighbour who wanted to know what we were doing.

“Going home.” I said.

It wasn’t the politest of answers but after 13 hours at work I’m not the politest of people. Actually, I’m considered “direct” at the best of times. In my world “direct” is good and saves time but other people don’t seem to see it that way. .

So, to sum up, since we’ve last blogged we’ve had 50 kids in for a day on the farm, the Quercus group, a project meeting, a craft session, Men in Sheds, done enough paperwork to choke a hippo, made sloe gin and had a day off to do personal stuff including sorting the Great Car Purchase Debacle.

Going back to the old hamster analogy, I feel like a hamster in a wheel that’s been put in a cider press – not only going in endless circles but being pressurised at the same time.

I’m going to put some effort into relaxation over the weekend and hope that normal service will be restored next week.

😉

Sloe Gin

Felting – ready for Christmas

Catching up

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You wouldn’t believe how many small steps there are in producing a decent bottle of apple juice.

Apart from the preparation and pressing there’s the bottles – wash, dry, heat to 140 degrees Centigrade, fill, put lid on loosely (after boiling lids for 5 minutes), pasteurise, screw tops down, put bottles on side so that hot juice covers the inside of the lid, wash so that you don’t get sticky bottles or mould growing round the cap, apply labels.

That’s eleven operations. With Saturday’s production that’s over 700 individual operations, without taking temperatures, stacking, moving, burning fingers, swearing and mopping the floor. And printing the labels, recounting the labels, realising you don’t have enough and ordering more from Amazon.

And I thought it was all about good quality fruit, the right scratter and plenty of elbow grease. How wrong can you be?

It’s the same with sloe gin. What is basically a simple process – bung sloes in gin and add sugar, shake, wait, drink – becomes much more complex when you start reading the various recipes.

How much sugar, whether to prick the sloes and whether to wait for the first frost are all matters of debate. Extensive debate,

Here’s my answer. Do what you want. We used to buy sloes from a grocer in Bakewell at the end of the summer holidays, drop them in gin or vodka (we often didn’t prick them all because it’s tedious, and possibly even dangerous), shake them when we remembered, leave them till Christmas and it always tasted good. Once someone told us about freezing – thereby splitting the skins and simulating frost – we never looked back.

There is no mystery to sloe gin. There is no need to spend two hours looking at recipes. All I learned from that two hours is that I know all I need to know about sloe gin (that’s not being boastful – there just isn’t much to know) and that it is very easy to waste the best part of an afternoon browsing the internet.

Coming back to bite me…

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If you look at the last line of my last post you will see the words “I’m slightly worried that things are going too well.”

That state of affairs lasted for around 12 hours, until the car ground to a halt on the way to work. It started again fairly easily, cut out a few more times and then didn’t miss a beat for the rest of the journey. Annoying, perplexing and, as the interval between incidents is decreasing, worrying.

That was just the beginning.

The cook for the Saturday cafe, who is supposed to be there an hour before me was decidedly not there. |As I turned into the drive I noticed the absence of car, which wasn’t a good sign. The kitchen, when I walked round, was dark and cold and quite clearly not open for business.

Time for a decision. I opened up, consulted my list of numbers and woke up a man who sounded like he had been having a lie-in until some idiot woke him by ringing a wrong number.

Not a good start.

The second attempt was almost equally fruitless – right number but they were already doing something else.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we did get a stand-in, I got the sausage and bacon ready for them and it all went reasonably well for the rest of the day. We did another 55 large and 10 small bottles, plus two demijohns for cider. In just three pressing days we have now produced as much as we did in the whole season last year. Modesty prevents me saying that the new man in charge of pressing is more efficient, harder working and better looking than the one we had last year. However, if you want to draw your own conclusions feel free…

People brought a lot of Bramleys and Lord Derby , taking away gallons of healthy juice and leaving us a lot of apples donated for our own use. So all in all the day turned out to be productive, enjoyable and worthwhile.

Well, it will be as long as we can sell the juice.

Whatever happened to Poets day?

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By “Poet’s day” I refer to the “Push off early, tomorrow’s Saturday” variety (and its less polite derivatives), not National Poetry Day, which is something completely different.

What starts with preparing a set of international breakfasts (England, Scotland, France, Germany, USA) and ends with preparing for apple pressing on Saturday? That’s right – Friday.

International breakfasts

The kids, as usual, voted for the German Breakfast – salami, cheese and rye bread. The French (pain au chocolat), was second along with the American (pancakes and honey). English (toast and marmalade) and Scottish (overnight oats with fruit) came bottom.

I could have added a further breakfast by doing toast and Vegemite and calling it an Australian breakfast but it didn’t work out well last time we tried it.

They may not be the best examples of national breakfasts but we have time and cash constraints with these presentations. I’m not about to cook a dozen Full English breakfasts, for instance, and last time we made proper Scottish porridge the kids put so much sugar in it the healthy eating message was well and truly buried under a heap of calories.

So – shopping, breakfast for 12 kids, Men in Sheds (where we had tools, mugs and jam jars donated), back for apple pressing demo, replace fuse in electric scratter, press juice for someone in return for donation of apples and pears, clean up, blog, get ready for tomorrow’s pressing, set Saturday Cafe up, make overnight oats for cafe, home, sleep in front of TV. I think that’s all.

Routing the arrow signs for the footpaths

I’m slightly worried that things are going too well.

Liquorice Fields, memory and progress

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Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack’d
The strongest legs in Pontefract.

John Betjeman – The Licorice Fields at Pontefract

The evening meal passed off without incident and nobody has been in touch with threats of legal action so I’m assuming all is good. It wasn’t my best planned meal but people seemed to like it, the plates mostly came back empty and we got it on the table while it was still hot.

By the time we’d tidied and got back home it was just past 11.00. Number One son was already in bed after a trip to the theatre (oh, the student life!) and we had a sandwich because it was all we felt like. That means it’s minced beef cobbler for tea, with thyme and mustard dumplings.

This morning called for a trip to the Citroen dealer, where we looked at cars (including one where my head touched the roof and the sun visor cut into my forehead). That figure hugging second-hand car could be mine, it seems, for slightly less than a brand new Berlingo.

It’s a sobering thought that any car I would like costs far more than I can afford. And any car that I can afford isn’t necessarily one I would like. It’s only a box on wheels and if you strip out the frippery (and the computer) it’s technology from 100 years ago or more – just a stagecoach with an internal combustion engine.

Meanwhile things like trays for your change become design features and they no longer have spare wheels. I note that the cup holders on the new Berlingo are now much shallower than the ones on ours – meaning that although they will hold a cup they won’t hold it at 30 mph whilst cornering.

That is what they call progress.

This afternoon we did the apple presentation at a local care home, where people were mesmerised by the Applemaster and started giggling after an inch of apple juice, as if it was a gallon of cider. A 95-year old lady told us about the first time she went to Goose Fair (in 1926) and another told us what she remembered about her father growing liquorice in Pontefract – one of our once great (though slightly strange) industries that have fallen by the wayside. Checking for links I see that one man is looking to restart commercial liquorice growing. Good to see.

Sadly, each time we go back it seems like one of the old characters is missing.

Good things happen to people who make tea!

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The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

Dolly Parton

Just a short one for now.

We had a meeting last night (and you know what I think about meetings) but half-way through, seeing that the light outside was quite dramatic, I nipped out (after offering to make a round of teas) and took a few photos.

This may be my only post today as the group is quite busy and we have 20 people coming tonight for an apple pressing demo and Harvest Supper.(minced beef cobbler with veg off the allotment and apple puddings from the new trees).

The one with the failed experiments…

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Overwintered runner beans

We planted the beans just before a rather windy cold spell. The overwintered plants, which were a bit soft after a winter at rest, seemed to suffer more than the new plants, though neither of them looked particularly good. As the season drew on the old plants came back to look every bit as good as the new ones.

In terms of yield it’s difficult to say because the group tends to mix the beans and even if we can prevent that we can’t tell what has been harvested unofficially, which has happened several times. You can tell that when you leave with beans on the plants and return next day to empty plants.

Judging by eye I’d say that yield was similar in size and total weight and the only difference between the three-year-old plant and the new one was that we saved pennies on seed and didn’t donate any nitrogen back to the soil when we took the roots out.

The half-manured bed

There was a definite difference in number of fat hen plants and their size – loads more plants and they were round about twice the size on the half that had been fed.

We had several losses due to wind/cold (see above) and couldn’t count the crop properly (also see above).The plant that appeared to do best was on the mid-line between the two treatments, and that was probably because its neighbours had died and left it with more room and light.

The Accidental Permaculture Bed

This was the same bed as the half-manured bed, but when the fat hen started growing and a crop of self-seeded rocket showed itself we decided to see what happened.

What happened was that the fat hen grew so well that it began to interfere with the beans. This was more noticeable at the manured end, where the plants were thicker and taller.

I cropped it severely once it was established, taking several crops of salad leaves and making two lots of soup. I actually put some in the freezer, which was fortunate, because one weekend someone (I assume someone from the Allotment Group) ripped all the “weeds” out and left me with nothing for a group the following week. We had the frozen fat hen and it tasted just as good.

Fat Hen from the freezer – not something you find in Tesco!

That was demo salads for about fifty, six or eight lunchtime salads for me and soup for around forty – not bad for a weed that grew by accident.

The rocket is still cropping though it’s getting a bit strong now and the beans are also continuing to produce.

We grew the beans on a frame that crossed lower down than normal, producing an “X” shape and allowing the beans to dangle in the open for picking. It worked reasonably well, although it would have been better if I’d managed to cross the canes lower down. Note to self – next year step back and look after getting the first few canes up.

So there’s three that didn’t quite work out for various reasons, though we did learn a few things. Due to the advent of the Allotment Group we have lost a lot of land and may well lose the raised beds too so my experiments and learning might focus on different subjects next year as I retreat to the polytunnel.

Ginger, jars and jam

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We’ve cleaned our polytunnel, taken a few final cuttings, caught up with some jobs that have been hanging around and done a final collection in the farm tunnel. I also took the opportunity to make ginger in syrup and wash around 50 recycled jars and bottles.

Obviously when I say “around 50” I mean 43, but it sounds better.

I’ve also made ginger in syrup.

The recipe is from the October issue of Home Farmer. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t chase women. (That’s not really a choice, as I’m too slow to catch any, but I thought I may as well include it.) The one vice I do admit to is buying magazines on the strength of their glossy front covers. They are often a disappointment but they don’t leave me out of breath or lying in the gutter, which is more than can be said for some of my former activities…

I’m not sure what the copyright situation is regarding recipes, but I’ll stick it up on my recipe page, add my comments and see what happens. It’s quite a simple recipe compared to some on the internet, and the results look quite respectable.

This post was over 800 words with the recipe and words of wisdom on how not to burn your hand with molten jam; it’s now a more manageable length (around 240) and people who want a ginger recipe or a discourse on jam burns can go to the recipe page.

Weekly round up

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Well, it’s been a reasonable week.

We had a review of one of our clients and when we sat down and talked it through we had to say that although they have problems, three years with us has made a big improvement in manners, use of mobile devices and willingness to work outside. I’m not saying everything is perfect, because none of us are (not even me, and I have the advantage of writing only the good things about myself) but we’ve definitely made a difference.

Whether it’s a warm glow of satisfaction at a job done well, or just a touch of false pride, I couldn’t say. However, for now I’m feeling happy.

We ran out of eggs today because so many people bought them yesterday and the chickens failed to turn up the production overnight couldn’t take the shine off my good humour. Though when the volunteer cook melted the egg poacher I did feel a momentary wobble in my good humour. She boiled the pan dry, wasted four precious eggs and melted the plastic pots you poach the eggs in. Then she threw the pan away. As I said, pulling it out of the bin, it will clean up and even if it isn’t fit for kitchen use it’s good for garden or farm.

Reuse, repair recycle. We’ve been doing it on farms for years. I’m going to send her one of these as a gentle reminder.

I’m sure Men in Sheds will have a use for it.

On the natural history front we’ve had a good flush of butterflies this week in the late sun, with Speckled Woods putting in a strong showing on every day. You’ve seen enough of them on the blog so I won’t add another photo. I don’t know if it’s fact or just my observation, but they do seem keen to get themselves trapped inside. They did the same thing last year – coming in, perching on ledges and eventually dying.

Apple pressing went well with plenty of bottles on the shelves;apple sorting went less well so we admitted defeat on that and just put them into a big pile for pressing.

One of the few that went right

There are some truly beautiful apples amongst them. Speaking personally, if I was Snow White I would eat some of these apples even if I did suspect my stepmother. They are just so appley.

That’s not a word according to my spell-checker. Let’s say that they look like the very essence of appleness then. No, that’s not a word either. Ah well…

The plan was to pick them and to bag them up with a note of the variety so I could photograph them for the website.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Hence the big pile.

The group that visited us on Friday still enjoyed the apple pressing even if I couldn’t identify the varieties so it doesn’t really matter.

Finally, I started another of my ill-fated experiments. I have three jars of carefully weighed apple waste and water. With luck it will become cider vinegar. Regular readers may recall that my experiments often fail to work, often because I forget about them,so we will have to see what happens.

There are three jars – one has cores in (which should take a couple of months to become vinegar if the internet is to be believed), one has apple pieces (which should take longer) and one has pomace from the pressing process, which is a bit of an unknown quantity as we’ve already squeezed a lot of the goodness out of it. If it works, it will give us an alternative to feeding pigs with the apple pressings.

If it doesn’t work I will merely have expanded my repertoire of disastrous experiments.

Apples, cores, pomace. Yes, I stick labels on later

To get the right conditions of reasonable cleanliness, freedom from interference, darkness and temperature, I’ve hidden them behind books on the bookshelf in the office.

What could possibly go wrong?

Men in Sheds – the journey continues…

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it was time for Men in Sheds again today and I managed to make it this time, avoiding the need for dentists and car mechanics. Hopefully this situation will continue, though with an intermittent fault in the car and a mouth full of ageing teeth nothing is guaranteed.

One of the members brought his lathe in today – he says it’s been gathering dust for the last twenty years so it looks like we’re already doing some good by enthusing people to take action. Once it was going he soon got back into the swing of things and turned out a replacement hammer shaft for one of the farm’s impressive stash of defective tools.

Later we covered the basics of bowl turning (is there no end to our ambitions?), spoke of mahogany, shellac and long case clocks.

There’s not been a dull day in the shed yet!

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Life after the Care Farm