Category Archives: Care Farm

It’s started!

Yes, after wrestling with a number of issues, including technology and stupidity, I’ve finally posted on the new food blog.

If you visit I apologise for the garish header photo it was one of the few I had on the camera that contained food and could be cropped to the right size. I will modify it when I have time, though it will remain garish. It doesn’t quite work with the theme, so I may well change that.

You can get very lazy (and forget an awful lot) if, like me, you start a blog and don’t alter the settings.

We had visitors today and we ate my review samples for lunch. With my palate it wasn’t possible to tell much from a quarter of a pie, so I will be repeating the tasting next week.

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As I’ve committed myself to eating soup for tea on days when I eat pork pies it looks like the soup maker will be getting a lot of use, but that’s all for the good as every soup I make is another blog post.

As I have already said, there’s a lot more to food blogging than you think.

Take photography. I was refused entry to the kitchen today because Julia wanted to use it for jam making. I set up in the centre, but then several people decided to have an early lunch and spread their food out in camera shot.

Eventually I set up in the kitchenette at the centre but it’s very hot in there and most of the greenery I was using for props gave up and wilted almost instantly.

To be fair, that’s how it’s designed. It’s a triple glazed room that faces south and catches heat for the rammed earth wall, which acts as a storage heater in winter. Unfortunately you can’t switch it off in summer …

Got to go now – only one photo today because I only took pork pies. However, if that is your thing you know where to go to find more…

Could do better…

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Sorry, I seem to have lost focus this week.

I have written several thousand words, but none of them were suitable for a blog. It’s interesting to me to indulge in biographical musings and a polemic about the waste of time and trees involved in the typical grant application, but it’s not so interesting for the people who have to read it. (I’m just having to print out a load stuff for a grant application that could easily just be submitted as links to various internet pages).

Similarly, the new outbreak of hostilities between me and the Farmer’s Sister, whilst giving me a great arena in which to indulge my sarcasm and vitriol, is not a fit subject for publication. Quite apart from the possibilities of a suit for defamation, it’s rude to talk about people behind their backs.

So, in the absence of masterly prose, I will bung in a load of photos.

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WLA and Timber Corps memorial – National Arboretum

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Swan at National Arboretum

It’s also bad policy from another point of view; if I ever describe how to make a bomb from agricultural chemicals it won’t seem so funny as it comes up in court and moves from being “a blog” to becoming “the evidence”.

Even my email box fails to inspire me, with the same old ungrammatical notes purporting to be from banks and credit card companies, and one very persistent accountant, all wanting details and money. Come to think of it the accountant could be for real – as he keeps lecturing us and adding more penalties each time he writes. Ah well, he should write a more convincing letter.

Once in a while I did get an imaginative letter from the widow of an African politician, but they seem to have dried up lately.

Poppy and chamomile

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Puffin and Kittiwake

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Instead of agonising over my lack of output, I’m going to promise to do better next week.

I usually manage to get out of trouble by doing that.

Let’s see if it works this time.

(The title, in case you haven’t guessed, is a quote that appeared in many of my school reports over the years. They probably have to be more upbeat these days but in the 1970s teachers were still allowed to be cynical.)

Bees, buddleias and butterflies

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The last week has seen a resurgence of Small Tortoiseshells, peaking at 18 this morning when I did a count. Having read a Royal Horticultural Society article on buddleia recently, where they didn’t record a single visit from Small Tortoiseshells in 2009, I was beginning to worry.

The article, incidentally, answers a question I was going to research next year – do colours of buddleia matter for attracting butterflies? It seems not – the top four for attracting butterflies were violet (2), white and light blue. They were all at the top end of the trial for scent, which may have a bearing.

It does say that “Foxtail” (number 2 for attracting butterflies) was top in the Butterfly Conservation Buddleia trial, though the 2012 Butterfly Conservation Buddleia Trial had “Dartmoor” as its top variety (which was 12th in the RHS trial).

Yes, I am confused. I’m also slightly relieved that someone else has already done the work for me. Our two main buddleias don’t seem to have any difference between them at the moment, which suggests that any difference may be down to site rather than colour or scent (as neither of them seem to be scented).

The white and the blue are struggling to establish themselves after last year’s massacre so it’s hard to make any comment on them.

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I’ve also lost the tickets for the buddleias we planted so I can’t tell you what cultivar they are.

The mint was also doing well this morning, with Small Tortoiseshells and Mint Moths. It was also heaving with a selection of bees, which makes me wish I knew more about insects.Truth is that I’m at an age where it’s harder to learn, so I may never know much about bees. It’s a gap in my knowledge, but it’s not likely to be too much of a problem, unlike my lack of knowledge about football and horse racing, which are both deadly to my hopes of ever winning Pointless.

Chickens, chintz and a confederacy of dunces

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It’s been hot, and the poultry and the polytunnels have both needed a lot of water. So did I by the time I’d spent the best part of twenty minutes in the tunnels.

However, I did get a reasonable picture of an angle shades moth, as featured in the opening picture. We had one about two years ago. It was blown onto a table outside while I was having a drink on a blustery day, clung on for a few minutes to allow me to take a blurred picture, and then flew away at high speed as the wind took it again.

This one was more leisurely.

We’ve had an attack of chintz in the cafe, which is starting to resemble my memories of my grandmother’s front room. Apart from the piles of sugary snacks and the juice drinks, and the notices. Looks like we’re having a turf war again, as all my pizza ingredients and the emergency gluten free bases have all been moved to the ice cream freezer. Apart from the notice banning me from the fridge freezer I’ve had another one ordering me not to move anything round.

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I’ve also had to move out of the store cupboard I was using so they could fit an extra table in.

Jonathan Swift wrote: When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

It does seem that there is a confederacy of dunces ranged against me, but I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

They have a group of specially invited people coming round on Saturday to test the new look cafe. Now, I’m not a marketing genius but, as I’ve been telling them for a while, the people we need to talk to are the ones that don’t come, or the ones who come once and don’t come back. The friends who come for a chat every Saturday morning are nice people and loyal customers, but their opinions aren’t going to help us appeal to a wider customer base.

Needless to say, I haven’t been invited. It must be something I said…

We’ve had a good showing of Small Tortoiseshells in the last week or so, which is a relief as they seemed to have almost died out. There is a parasitic wasp that attacks them; it arrived from the continent some years ago and in some areas has almost wiped the Small Tortoiseshell out. We’ve also had several pairs of Painted Ladies, some silver Y moths and an upsurge of mint moths.

So far we haven’t had any hummingbird hawk moths this year but they only started to show in late August last year so there is still hope.

500, and the Red Arrows came to mark the day!

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Yes, it’s post 500 and I’m feeling a little bit smug. However, the smugness is kept in bounds by the realisation that 500 posts isn’t the same as 500 good posts.

Despite this, it was nice of the Red Arrows to drop by and put a display on for us. The photos aren’t great, but the camera wasn’t very expensive and it’s fine for butterflies and flowers. Seeing as I photograph the Red Arrows about once every 20 years and butterflies nearly every day I think I have the balance about right. I’d hate to spend £1,000 on a camera and then wait 20 years to use its full potential.

In fact, being tight, I’d hate to spend £1,000 on a camera.

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The day was the usual mix of heat, work and complaints about working in the heat. We watered polytunnels, collected eggs, made cards, plaited corn dollies from drinking straws (modern stalks are too short) and served a couple of passing walkers with ice creams.

In addition I put poultry up for sale on Preloved, Gumtree and Pets4Home, (for which I don’t get paid) wrote several rude emails (which I resisted the temptation to send) and one which I didn’t. I dealt with Men in Sheds (for which I don’t get paid) and queries about the Agroforestry Project (for which I don’t get paid).

We also had to extract a growling pig from the water trough. She’s developed the habit of inserting herself into the water trough to cool herself down and this is the second time she’s got stuck under the top bar.

She tends to get annoyed that she’s stuck, and even more annoyed when we have to pull her out, hence the growling. I didn’t get paid for that either, but it’s not every day you get to hear a pig growl so I’ll settle for that.

You may see a theme developing here. I am feeling jaded and put upon, a feeling that increases when talking to the ex-farm apprentice, who is now in a new job with a local nursery and thoroughly enjoying himself. He also gets paid for the work he does. I’m jealous.

Then, as the day drew to a close, we had a visit from the Red Arrows.

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Like eating soup with a fork…

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After an active morning, with a lot of poultry work and watering, we had lunch and settled down to some serious outdoor education with a trek in the woods and the making of nature memory sticks. I would say “and picking blackberries” but someone has got there before us, for the second year in a row. The sticks are on willow, but despite repeated soaking most of them stayed defiantly unbent.

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Here are the results. They look pretty good in real life, though possibly not quite so good in the photos. The sticks, that is. The group, of course, when faced with a camera look shifty, bored or anywhere but the camera. That’s what suggested the title. I’ve just deleted about half the group shots because people moved, looked away, closed their eyes or opened their mouths unsuitably wide. The surviving shots then needed weeding for ones where they have greenery sprouting from unexpected places.

As you can see, it wasn’t the most successful of group portraits – long on character but short on technical skill is a kind way of putting it.

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Part of it was my fault, I suppose, as I kept asking for different sorts of cheese to encourage them to pay attention. It may not have worked, as shouts of “Boursin!” and a discussion on paneer proved not to be advantageous to the job in hand. So, by the miracle of coincidence and cheap digital photography, here are some pictures.

The Green Cathedral

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We visited an orchard yesterday with Men in Sheds and Byron the farm apprentice.

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I’d been told that we would be visiting a Permaculture project but, once more, I discovered that the farmer isn’t quite clear on what Permaculture is. There were no ponds, no zones and no ducks. There were, however, bees, bullfinches and a feeling of peace so it was still well worth a visit. This was particulalrly true of the more mature, less intensive end of the field, where arching trees and unmown wild flower meadow provided an experience like being in a green cathedral.

It may not be permaculture, and it’s not even organic, but it is run with a feeling for nature. Despite some clear ill-feeling on the matter of Bullfinches the owner was still able to tell us he had seen a group of them using the bird baths he provides. There’s one variety of pear tree, and I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which one, where the bullfinches don’t just eat the fruit buds but actually cripple the tree by taking the leaf buds too.

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I forgot most of what I was told about the number of varieties he grows – though I did manage to photograph a list of 33 gooseberries. (He actually claims to have around 60 varieties of gooseberry in all) There are 17 varieties of cherry. He also has blackcurrants, redcurrants, white currants and pink currants, plus apples, pears, fourteen sorts of fig and a medlar. That’s just the stuff I can remember.

This is a picture of a plum tree with Plum Pox Virus (or Sharka virus if you want a more interesting name for it). I hadn’t heard of it until the visit. Treatment is to take the tree out and destroy it.

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Incubator Diaries (Part 7)

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This is the final report.

We hatched seven chicks from fifteen eggs and, although I’m very pleased with the seven chicks that hatched, I’m not very happy about the overall result.

Of the eight that didn’t hatch, three (the two brown eggs and one bantam egg) were infertile. The brown egg layers are all old birds, which might be a factor, but they share a cockerel with the hen that laid the green eggs (all three of them hatched) and were collected clean and fresh so I had expected better.

The other five were all bantam eggs and come from just one hen. The infertile egg may well have been caused by the fact we had to store the eggs for two weeks to get enough to hatch. I should have marked that laying dates on the eggs so I could check the correlation with hatchability.

The ones that didn’t hatch were a mixture of mid to late term fatalities and were rather black inside.

Looking at all the possible causes I think we can ignore temperature, humidity, power failure and poor turning as they are all taken care of automatically (though I will test the temperature next time I set it up to check the accuracy of the built-in thermometer). They are on a good ration so I’m going to ignore poor nutrition for now.

That leaves inbreeding, poor ventilation, diseased or infected eggs and lethal genes.

I know what a lethal gene is, but I haven’t a clue how it would show itself.

I can’t vouch for ventilation – I will probably ventilate more in the next attempt and see what happens.

However, as the weight loss from evaporation was what we expected I’m assuming that humidity and ventilation were about right.

In truth, I can’t remember the parentage of the breeding stock, as they were passed on to us without much detail. The bird that laid and hatched the clutches of 11 and 8 on top of the coop is a half sister to the bird that laid these eggs but the “half” may make a difference.

That leaves diseased/infected eggs, which was my fear from the beginning. Our nest boxes aren’t brilliant so there is often dirt on the shells, which can allow germs into the egg via pores in the shell. That, plus the length of time we had to keep the eggs, is probably the cause.

I’m going to do some calculations now and see what I can do to improve.

Soda Bread

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I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before but I have a love/hate relationship with soda bread.

It’s simple to make, and it was the first recipe we used with kids when we started doing the education work. Even though I’ve not made it for a while I can still run through the patter without rehearsal and almost make it in my sleep.

The hate bit comes from the fact that I’m not very good at baking soda bread and it often fails to live up to expectations. At times, particulalrly if you don’t get the soda mixed in (use a sieve), it can taste downright unpleasant. Everyone says it’s nice when they bake it but I suspect it’s a case of Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome. I also suspect that the Emperor’s Old Socks would taste better most of the time.

To be fair, the loaf we made today worked well and tasted very good (if a bit salty).

Soda bread uses baking soda instead of yeast as a rising agent and is a lot quicker to make as you don’t have to wait for it rise. In fact the rise starts as soon as you mix the dough (when the lactic acid and the baking soda react to form carbon dioxide) and you have to get it in the oven as fast as you can.

It’s seen as a traditional Irish bread these days but it is first mentioned only in the 1830s in Ireland was once popular in the rest of the country. It is also baked in Austria, Poland and Serbia.

So, you may ask, why am I writing about it?

Well, it all started with us being given a bucket of wheat from the field. Julia decided that we should bake bread using our own wheat (as we did a few years ago) and it went from there.

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We even cut a bit from the plot in the allotment to thrash and winnow it. In our case that meant sticking it into a bag to bash the grains free, then rubbing it between our hands and blowing the chaff away to winnow. We didn’t produce much that way, but at least a small part of it was done from scratch. We also sieved it to take out some of the bran, leaving a nice cream-coloured flour. We didn’t really need to take out the bran but it served to demonstrate a bit more about bread and flour.

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Here is the recipe. Julia got it off the internet and forgot to note where, so apologies if we’ve ripped off your recipe. Apologies for the ancient units of weight, she seems to have gone back to the 1950s for the recipe.

6 oz Self raising flour

6 oz plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 pint buttermilk

We used 6 oz of our own flour in place of the plain flour and stuck the juice of a lemon into fresh milk to sour it, a traditional way of making soda bread in the absence of buttermilk. You can also use yoghurt and even fresh milk according to other recipes. I’ve tried them all and they all work in various degrees.

Combine the ingredients and sieve to make sure the baking soda is properly dispersed (or you can get horrible, bitter green bits in the bread. You can also sieve the soda into the mix but that can lead to some uneven results.

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Add the milk bit by bit and use your hand (holding the fingers stiff) to stir it all in. #

Pat into a round loaf about an inch thick, slash a cross on the top and put it in the oven. We did 25 minutes with the fan oven at 200 degrees C, though the recipe called for 30 at 200 degrees. I suppose ours was quicker because we forgot to reduce it by 20 degree to allow for the fan.

We checked it by tapping its bottom (cue for juvenile humour) and prodding it with a thin knife because we wanted to be doubly sure.

The cuts are to let the faeries out, or the devil. Or to bless the bread, to make it easier to divide into quarters or to let it bake more evenly. That’s the trouble with Ireland, so many stories.

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The proof…

Yes, it would be better if I could finish off with a shot of cheerful people chewing soda bread but by the time I’d grabbed the camera for that bit they’d all finished it.

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Life after the Care Farm

Category Archives: Care Farm

It’s started!

Could do better…

Bees, buddleias and butterflies

Chickens, chintz and a confederacy of dunces

500, and the Red Arrows came to mark the day!

Like eating soup with a fork…

The Green Cathedral

Incubator Diaries (Part 7)

Soda Bread

Seven healthy chicks!