Category Archives: Green Care

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

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.

What we did on our holidays

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You can tell it’s holiday time because the roads are clear, the travelling is easier and there are groups of teachers wandering about dressed as ramblers.

So what did we do on our holiday?

Well, we started by looking at the new bantams and chicks to ensure they were OK.

Sadly there was a dead lamb in the barn. It had been found last night by a group of ramblers, having stuck its head through the sheep netting and then threaded it back through an adjacent square. You couldn’t do it if you tried. In the subsequent panic it strangled itself.

No you couldn’t make it up if you tried. The Farmer had been forced to cut the fence to remove it. That was how tight it had managed to wedge itself in.

Now, I don’t like losing animals at the best of times, and I certainly don’t like losing them to accidents, but this was so random that it is hard to see what we could have done differently.

My first job was to check the incubator and then to look up what a flashing “P” meant. Twenty minutes later I established it was a warning that it had lost power at some point. To be more precise, it had lost power when I unplugged it and moved it. So that was 20 minutes well spent.

It stands for “Power”

Once everyone had arrived we had a good handling session with the new bantams and altered the housing arrangements for the chicks.

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We collected eggs, fed the chickens, did a census of the (heat stress has seen a few of the old ladies off recently) and harvested cabbages. We planted Brussels Sprouts (or nobby greens as they are known in Nottingham), made lavender decorations, twisted corn dollies, showed two groups of visitors around (I keep hoping one of them will be an eccentric and generous millionaire). Julia brought what I thought was a small and tender beetroot in from the garden (I say tender but I have no intention of ever eating beetroot). It turned out to be a radish the size of a golf ball and I suspect it will be both woody and fiery to eat.

We also added more photos to the individual pages and did quite a bit of butterfly counting. (You may already have noticed that.)

And we brought the sun-dried peppers out of the polytunnel.

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I think that’s all.

Now all we need to do is get the shopping list ready for tomorrow, get set up for yoga, prepare the kitchen.

Number Two son had a broken tooth extracted this afternoon. I wouldn’t normally bring domestic trivia to the blog, but I had to after asking him what time his appointment was.

Yes, it was two-thirty (tooth hurty – the classic joke time!). I tried not to laugh when he told me.

It’s going to be a bundle of laughs tonight, me trying to suppress my mirth, Julia being motherly and him drinking his evening meal through a straw.

The third day

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With nine visitors with learning difficulties and our normal Wednesday six, we had a lively day as everyone decided there were no strangers, just friends they hadn’t met.

Today’s pizza count was only 14, but I had to prepare all the dough myself, ready for topping (it’s a long story featuring a glitch in timing). Actually I made dough for 18, but we only used enough for 12, and took my two emergency gluten-free bases out of the freezer. I used the extra dough, with a selection of olives and fresh-picked rosemary to make a loaf. It’s quite good, though the flour is just cheap flour, rather than strong white. I didn’t take a picture, just made a cheese sandwich. It was good.

My arthritis is now playing up, as kneading the dough for 18 pizzas is not quite what the doctor ordered. Strange how when you’re young and healthy you don’t look at a pile of pizza dough as a challenge. How things change.

The keets are looking perky, and several of them are exhibiting a tendency to have a go at flying. The grey one is actually developing a taste for showbiz by the look of things and Julia says it’s almost impossible to put your hand in the pen without it throwing itself at you for selection.

The woodpecker came back to the feeder, the sun shone, a mistle thrush did its stormcock act in a tree top and all in all it was the sort of day that makes it all worthwhile.

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Things that went badly – checking up on allergies. Things that went well – emergency gluten-free pizza bases, new friendships, Gemma’s felted teddy bear (made with alpaca wool).

Ups and downs

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Sorry, I just seemed to hit one of those patches when I just couldn’t get the blog done. A busy day followed by preparing for a school visit meant we were home for 9.30, heated up the vegetable curry I prepared on Sunday, watched Upstart Crow and went to bed. (Don’t worry, I’m not moving into the modern world and developing a conscience about killing animals, merely saving money.)

I was a bit disappointed in Upstart Crow. Though I may be wasting my life slumped in front of a TV, there are more interesting things to watch and I’m currently undecided whether I’ll watch it again.

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The chocolate picture shows the picture of the chocolate I bought Julia at the weekend, working on the basis that chocolate is a well known universal medicine. I don’t really like dark chocolate but I took hit for my beloved. The Orange and Geranium was quite pleasant, with a taste like rosewater Turkish Delight. The one with Dragon Ginger was less successful. I was expecting something a bit on the fiery side, which I think is fair when you consider the image of the dragon. Don’t be fooled, it’s mild. Very mild. In fact you notice the texture rather than the flavour.

I was also disappointed on Tuesday morning when the teacher who visited on Saturday emailed Julia to say that they were going to cancel their booking. It seems that the school has decided it will be too dangerous for one of the kids in the class, who has a number of medical problems.

It’s a tricky ethical question, should a whole class miss out because one child has a problem? I wouldn’t like him to feel left out, but I also feel bad about the rest of the class missing a fun day out.

One thing I’m less equivocal about is the loss of a day’s wages.

However, we were visited by a group of teenagers with special needs later on Tuesday, and they were one of the best groups we’ve ever had, with great manners and good discipline. They threw themselves into all the activities (though the rain did stop a few plans) and after being disappointed by Ben Elton and the thought of lost money I found myself quite upbeat after a day with these kids.

(In fairness I also have to point out that the teachers were excellent too and if I had a Hall of Fame I’d put them in it).

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The coloured tiles are salt dough. Apart from the picture of Julia’s demo area (it’s not the result of an explosion in a classroom in case you were concerned) it’s one of the few I got today – they were so keen to eat the pizza that it was all gone before I had a chance to take a picture.

Ah, salt dough!

That’s another story…

I managed to spend Tuesday night without adding the photos to the blog, so it’s now Wednesday morning. I’ve altered the post to reflect this and hope it still makes sense.

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The lead picture is a Roesel’s Bush cricket. We spotted one last year in a cosmos flower and this one (as you may be able to tell from the pipe and water droplets) was disturbed as I watered the polytunnel.

If you go to Resources then Insects, there’s a link if you want to find out more. There’s also a picture and a link to something that scared the life out of me. We have a feverfew plant growing from a pile of tyres by the verandah at the back. There seems to be a wasps nest in it, judging from the number of wasps disappearing into it and I was checking it out as it will have to go. I’m all for biodiversity (even if it does sting) but there’s a limit, and the limit comes when wasps build a nest with a flight path that crosses a wheelchair ramp.

Anyway, there I was, with wasps flying past me and disappearing into the tyre stack, when I saw something decidedly scary. It was at least twice the size of a wasp, with red eyes and an air of menace. You can see a picture of it and find more details on the Insects page.

Meanwhile the group progressed with their task of measuring 53 trees and, as you can see from the pictures, found a broken bird-scaring kite. I know that birds are scared of snakes, but I’m pretty sure it only works if the snake is on the ground.

Scarecrow winners – secret scarecrow preview

Wild? Yes, I am

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That’s chickweed in the picture – also known as winterweed because it was a mainstay of the Mediaeval diet through the winter. It’s fatal if eaten by the kilogram, but trust me, you wouldn’t want to.

Last night I went to the supermarket and in a moment of weakness spent the best part of £4 on a magazine that purported to contain an article on eating wild salad (or weeds as I call them). Having been talking about them all Sunday, and forcing them on members of the public I thought I’d like to learn a bit more. As I like reading off paper I thought I’d treat myself.

Turns out I needn’t have bothered, I seem to know more than the writer. Considering that I’m a mere novice compared to the dozens, if not 100’s, of people who write about foraging on the internet I feel seriously cheated. It took me two minutes to find several better articles on the web this morning.

As the title says, it wasn’t just the salad that was wild.

I’m going to start a new page on the blog about foraging. There may be one or two unprofessional entries, because I’m not at all sure I want to eat sweethearts/cleavers/goosegrass/stickyweed or whatever regional variation you call it. It looks stringy and it has hooks on. If you’re so interested in it YOU eat it.

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Life after the Care Farm

Category Archives: Green Care

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

Like eating soup with a fork…

What we did on our holidays

The third day

Ups and downs

Scarecrow winners – secret scarecrow preview

Wild? Yes, I am

Scarecrows and free tea

Another windy day