Category Archives: Care Farm

Two Birthdays and a Pizza

4 Replies

When you look at my titles you can see why Richard Curtis is considerably more successful than me, can’t you?

We had a school come out for an enhancement day  so just a short post.- working with livestock, making pizza and eating a foraged salad.  I’m hoping they felt suitably enhanced by the end, though I’m a little  concerned that a couple of them looked slightly shell-shocked by the end.

At lunchtime we had a party for Emma, then after filling the incubator, we went across to visit Margaret, the Farmer’s mother. She was 80 today. We had tea and cake. Then it was time to clean up, wash, change and go to the other party – the one with the canapes and cheese board. We finally left there as dark fell.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

All in all it was a good day, but I’m tired and full now (possibly even replete) so just a short post. More tomorrow.

It’s now even hotter…

8 Replies

We’re back from the bread session, and the temperature has risen to 31 degrees. There’s a light breeze, but it’s not really helping.

In the care home everyone was so hot, despite the application of medicinal ice cream, that they found it hard to raise the enthusiasm. I didn’t get an ice cream, despite my sterling efforts at bread plaiting and various other forced jollity. However, as you can see from the main photo, I have now gathered my hot weather survival kit (fan and ice cream) and am feeling much better.

Only one lady could raise the enthusiasm to comment on my plait.

“I don’t like plaited bread.”

That put me in my place.

Another lady had been a sausage-maker in the family butchery business and many others had baked in school, so we did do some good by bringing back old memories.

However, “From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success” as they say.

Next time we are going to make sure we have a cooler day (as if we have a choice!) and we will make pizza. If there’s one thing I can do well for an audience, it’s make pizza. And, when we have our (yet to be) famous afternoon tea sessions with Quercus we are going to invite them out to the farm. Some have been to a bread-making session here and enjoyed it, others prefer not to travel. They might travel for tea and cakes. I know I would.

I’d better get planning those afternoon tea sessions…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Day Lily

 

 

A matter of Loaf and Death

3 Replies

It’s hot (29 degrees C according to the weather station) and it’s still (wind between 0 and 2 mph). Fortunately I bought a fan that works from a USB port whilst in Scarborough last week. As a result I am not actually a lot cooler (what do you expect for £2.99?) but I am quite smug.

So, sitting here smug but warmish, what am I going to blog about today?

How about telling you about my plans for the afternoon? As I was in the shop this morning I looked longingly at the cider section, imagining the bottles lightly jewelled with condensation from the fridge. What could be better than an afternoon spent in the shade sipping cold cider?

Imagine that the picture goes wavy now, as my dream disappears and reality takes hold. Instead of sunbeams, dappled shade (even a touch of boskiness) and a cold cider, we are left with reality. That reality is sun pouring in thorough windows in the stuffy communal room at a local care home.

There will be tea afterwards, and though I am quite fond of tea there will be preliminaries. These include making dough, loading it in the car and travelling to work in a strange kitchen, knead dough and turn ovens on to bake bread. Yes, my picture of cool perfection is replaced by one of hell.

Don’t judge me, I do like the ladies in the care home, and I do understand that they need something to keep them occupied. I just don’t want to bake on the hottest day of the year. Actually I don’t want to bake at all in a borrowed kitchen with limited time and resources.

It’s Julia’s idea. You may notice a pattern emerging here – any dull, grinding, boring, hot, virtually impossible, ill-conceived idea that needs putting into action usually comes from her.

Any dull, grinding, boring, hot, virtually impossible, ill-conceived idea that becomes reality is usually as a result of me getting bored, hot, annoyed, homicidal…you get the picture.

Yet she is the one with the reputation for delivering difficult and innovative projects.

She has just told me to man up and get on with it. She says that nobody has ever died from baking bread, with the implication being that fatality is a distinct possibility if I don’t do what I’m told.

 

 

A funny old day

7 Replies

It started with an early morning shopping trip for pizza ingredients.

When we got to the farm a Common Blue fluttered by, which seemed a good omen.

Sadly it didn’t continue and in the absence of a mixer I ended up making 30 pizza bases by hand. As a result I now have an arthritic hand that feels like a baseball glove. When the mixer finally arrived I managed to do the next 60 bases in half the time the first 30 took.

Meanwhile I had a few incidents with clingfilm whilst wrapping the individual portions. If you’ve ever had dealings with oiled clingfilm you will know what I mean. If you haven’t, I’m sure you can imagine it.

I converted to foil for the last 60 – far easier, though it also had its moments. It was a surprise, on knocking the roll off the work top, to find it hit my foot like a an iron bar. When you look at the thickness of foil wound onto a catering size roll you can see why this feels so heavy.

I did grab a few minutes in the middle of the day – seeing three Small Tortoiseshells on the buddleia – it’s just coming into flower and the weather is coming right for butterflies.

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to take photographs.

I used the new Hobart mixer today.  Once we got it in the kitchen, and once we worked out the way to fit the guard so that the fail-safe let us switch on, it worked well. Our old one doesn’t have much in the way of safety equipment so this was all new to me.

Then the new incubator arrived. More about that later.

Finally, we rushed off and got Julia to work with four minutes to spare. She had been on the farm all day preparing a grant application and we had hardly seen each other. It’s the European grant, which is now corrected, completed and polished. We had an email yesterday telling us the fund may not exist now, but nobody is sure, so all that work may be for nothing.

It’s not quite the relaxed lifestyle we were hoping for, though at least the goats didn’t escape today.

 

 

 

Nanny McFlee

2 Replies

Well, it was either that or Billy and Clyde. tarnegolita has suggested a few others so I’m in  a good position with titles now.

Even as I was writing the last post the goats were out again. The only one that doesn’t escape is the youngest one: she just stands by herself and bleats. We think it’s possibly because she’s the youngest and may have been weaned too early. The rest of them are now fully recovered from being taken from their mothers and are enjoying a rebellious youth.

The mothers all seem happy and relaxed now the kids are off their hands.

On the subject of goats and relaxation, the Kenyans are coming at the weekend. They will make a big fuss of the goats, which is one of the reasons we keep them, as they feel it is a way for children to keep in contact with their culture..Although we never use the term I suppose the goats are culturally appropriate livestock. I may start calling them that, as it sounds more important than goat. Being constantly outsmarted by culturally appropriate livestock also seems more respectable than being outsmarted by goats.

One of the big attractions on Saturday will be the traditional nyama choma.

That’s the other reason we keep goats.

So far nobody has told them they are invited.

 

 

 

Running out of titles

10 Replies

We’ve had The Goat Escape and we’ve had ‘scapegoats so I’m running out of goat-related escape references.

That’s the trouble with goats, they can escape quicker than I can think of new puns. I’m thinking of Kidnapped and Do Androids Dream of Electric Fences? but neither of them are quite right.

We were on the way home last night. I stopped and looked left to check it was safe to drive out and…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

…I was close to driving off, but my conscience got the better of me. At 7 pm I have better things to do than round up livestock for farmers who can’t keep their fences in order. On the other hand it isn’t fair on the goats or passing drivers to let livestock wander free.

Once we got them trapped and moving they went back in the field without too much trouble, which was good because they had escaped via a neighbour’s orchard and it could have been complicated to get them back. Instead we just got them moving in the right direction and waved a few branches (broken from nearby hedges) at them. They love eating hedges so they just followed Julia back to the field to chew on the branches.

It’s simple when you know how.

I’ve included a couple of pictures of the village pinfold. Under the 1959 Highways Act it is still lawful to detain an animal in the pinfold if it is found wandering on the road. This happened to us once – we had a phone call to say there was a goat on the road but couldn’t find it. When we did track it down someone had shut it in the pinfold, where it was busily chomping its way through the floral display. We were multiply unpopular after that.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

 

Poppies and Partridges

10 Replies

Sorry it’s a blurred photo of the partridges, but they made off as soon as I stepped outside. After a season of being shot at they are a bit sensitive about people pointing things at them. They pottered across the yard, but were disappointed to find that we are now keeping the poultry food more secure – no more free feeds!

They are eating grit from the roadway to help with digestion. Because they don’t have teeth birds break their food down by using grit in a muscular stomach known as the gizzard. This grit eating behaviour is used in medicating red grouse.

As a result of that link I now know much more than I want to know about gizzards and their traditional culinary uses. Having only ever used them in making gravy I’m amazed at the variety of uses. I say “amazed” but maybe in the case of pickled turkey gizzards “appalled” may be a better word.

The grit used to grind (known as insoluble grit or flint grit when you feed it to poultry) is different from the grit fed to laying hens to help with egg shell production (known as soluble grit or oyster shell).

Yes, as I wrote that I too was wondering what sort of person knows these things.

And then there were the poppies. I’m trying to photograph poppies at the moment but wind and rain and poor light are all making it difficult.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Poppy and chamomile
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

A touch of cookery

10 Replies

Apart from the weather (see previous post) it’s been a good day, with a possible new member coming to have a look at us. It was a good day to visit, as we had had a cooking session planned, which ended with us eating cheese scones and lavender biscuits.

Yes, the same lavender biscuits and cheese scones we have been cooking for a couple of weeks now, but people like them and we have the ingredients.

This is the recipe for the scones – it’s an easy one because it uses rapeseed oil (or canola if you want the American translation)  instead of butter. It’s therefore probably healthier for you (though these food fads could be reversed next week), cheaper and considerably easier. My scones never reach that “fine crumb” stage, on account of having hands like bunches of bananas.

Please note at this point – I’m using the cheapest oil for this recipe as it doesn’t need a quality oil. In fact I use the cheapest oil for most purposes – we are self-sufficient in it and that’s a good enough reason for me to think of changing from olive oil if all else is equal.

As usual, it’s difficult to tell where  the truth lies because the we internet contains a web of science, lies and stupidity that makes it tricky to see the truth. Good luck if you’re the sort of person who likes to base decisions on all the facts, because you’re going to have plenty of hard work  looking for them.

The lavender biscuits contain flour, sugar, lavender and butter.

I can’t link to the recipe because Julia has it on a scrap of paper, but there are plenty of recipes about if you want one.

Next step for the scones is to try blue cheese and pear and Stilton and date. Next step for the lavender biscuits is to try a recipe with rosemary.

If you don’t hear any more about them you can take it that they failed.

If the blog stops, you can take it that they were fatal…

Meanwhile, here are some pictures of our fruit and veg, which is finally coming to life. And a cricket – we don’t actually eat them.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Finally, on a sadder note, we lost two chicks today and we aren’t sure why. The keets are looking well and if they are still OK by Wednesday they should be safe. Fingers crossed.

 

 

That monsoon feeling

3 Replies

It was raining when I woke up on Saturday morning, just as dawn was breaking. It carried on raining until it was nearly lunchtime, and when I say raining, it was proper rain. The gutters were full and life as a pedestrian was complicated by the amount of splashing from traffic.

It stopped about mid day but by that time I’d put the rest of the day on hold. I didn’t fancy driving to Peterborough and the chances of finding butterflies or poppies to photograph was minimal.

I went shopping instead and cooked  the normal vegetarian curry (sweet potato and chick pea) for eating later in the week. That’s another advantage of vegetarian food (apart from cost) – it stores easily and rarely poisons anyone. In the evening we had seafood spaghetti (because we could – Number One son hates it, but he is away). Seafood is about the opposite of vegetarian food – I’m always very careful cooking that after an encounter with a bad batch of cockles in the late 70s. Bad memories can linger a long time.

Sunday passed, as Sundays do, with dropping Julia off at work at 6.00 am and an assortment of housework, Pointless and good intentions. We had pork and mushroom casserole in the evening, with stir-fried kale and baked sweet potatoes.

That brings us round to Monday morning. I’ll cover the other events of the morning in another post – for now I’ll just describe the rain.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After a promising start we had lunch, and the rain literally started to hammer down. We were eating lunch at the time, and could see it bouncing six inches back after hitting the roof of the car. I did try to take a photo, but that sort of thing never shows up well. After ten minutes it tailed off, only to hit us again for another session about twenty minutes later.

As you can see from the main picture, it’s clearing now.

We’d been saying that we could do with some rain.

Ironically, the group is outside now, watering inside the polytunnels.

There must be  away of catching it and channelling it inside…

 

 

Fedge, feathers and flutterbys

11 Replies

The pollinators have been active today, but the butterflies haven’t been about much. The difference is that a stiff north westerly breeze leaves plenty of room for a pollinator to operate, but it doesn’t do much for a butterfly. If you have generously proportioned wings they are going to act like sails in these conditions.

As I see them zip past I’m reminded of a story I once read as a child where a small sailing dingy was blown off course by a storm. I can’t recall the name of the book, though I suspect it was probably a device used by several writers, as I’m thinking both C. S. Lewis and Enid Blyton.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Main job of the day was tidying up the willow work in the central area – tucking some back in and trimming the rest. The ones that are woven back are mainly secured with plastic cable ties. Even professional willow weavers seem to use them. The fedge is starting to look good, though I’m still not sure it’s so far from being a hedge we need a new word for it.

The trimmings are a great favourite with the goats, who prefer hedges to grass. As a youngster, having read that Native Americans chewed the bark of willow to deaden pain, I gave it a go. It’s probably the bitterest thing I have ever tasted. It’s worse than sloes. The goats love it.

Incidentally, they are in disgrace after breaking out of their pen last night and invading a neighbour’s garden. I think that makes them ‘scapegoats.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA