Tag Archives: pizza

Doing what we’re meant to do

We had a school from the inner city today. Despite being only 15 miles from Nottingham we hardly ever get a visit from one. We did get a few in the first year or two but they seemed to drop out and only the rural schools came. We’re not sure whether it’s the cost of transport or a lack of interest.

Parents at rural schools are often associated with agriculture so we aren’t really carrying out our mission of educating people about farming. It’s a self-imposed mission so nobody is on our back about it, but you do sometimes wonder what you’re doing.

So there I was, standing in front of a class, feeling pleased with myself that we were actually spreading the message to people who needed to hear it, when one of the kids threw up.

Julia’s idea of running them round to get rid of surplus energy before passing them on to me might need rethinking.

The Fifth Day

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It’s Friday so it must be…

…another school.

Fortunately it was just a class of 12, which made things easier. The keets behaved impeccably and the dough was the best I’ve ever seen a group make. That was surprising as many of them were quite small and small people often have trouble putting enough energy into the job. It’s even harder when you have difficulty reaching the table.

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The hardest bit of the week is turning out to be finding new things to say each time, though the endless cleaning is, I admit, making me lose the will to live.

😉

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).

On the second day

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On the second day God created the sky: on my second day I supervised the making of 31 pizzas.

It’s quite clear from this that I’m slacking. On the other hand I do have arthritis, varicose veins and a tendency to need the toilet more than average, even for a man of my age. I’m well past my peak, and on a rapidly increasing downward slope which, like Gray’s paths of glory, lead but to the grave. Fortunately this middle-aged man bladder problem is cancelled out by standing with my back two feet away from four fan ovens blasting out air at 200 degrees C. It’s difficult to find any spare moisture when you are being desiccated.

But manage, I did, and the evidence was clear to see as splashes of sweat spotted the floor. I paint such a lovely picture of kitchen life don’t I?

By the end of the day I was reduced to opening the fridge door and standing next to it.

Here are some pictures, which are probably cute enough to drive my word picture from your mind. It was a great day with lots of sun and happy kids, and a great contrast to the pouring rain yesterday.

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The dark stuff in the plastic tub is a sourdough starter – we looked at dried yeast, live yeast and sourdough starter (it was having a mild day, just a trifle vinegary, quite unlike some of the acetone/vinegar blasts you sometimes get). There were a few expressions of distaste, but nobody fainted. The yellow stuff in the other pot is home made butter.

Note the Florentine-type pizzas with nettles in place of spinach. I’m finally getting back to wild food.

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It’s the first day of our marathon session – six days and six visits.

I did the shopping yesterday – enough for 100 pizzas plus various other bits. I then spent a couple of hours on the farm cutting veg for pizza toppings and set things out for two classes of 22.

It was a good thing I got a good start as we (a) got stuck in traffic for half an hour and (b) had to clean the corn mill, which had been brought back from the barn in a dreadful state.

By the time I had finished cleaning, the school arrived.

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It all went well, apart from the second session, where I forgot to write the names on the baking parchment. Despite this,the kids managed to identify their pizzas and everyone went away happy. I could have shown you a picture of this, if only Julia hadn’t borrowed my camera and disappeared with it.

The pictures I’ve used show kids handling the keets, making butter and standing outside the shed. The featured image is kids looking at cabbages. On a rainy Monday it was the best we had.

The session wasn’t brilliant, and there was a definite lack of education, because 22 six-year-olds can be a bit to excitable for that sort of thing. I’m unhappy that it was a lightweight session, but I’m happy that everyone seemed to have fun and the teachers were positive about the day. After examining the factors that lead to complaints being made against me, I’m taking a new attitude and just letting things drift along. If they don’t want to listen, what does it matter? I’m getting paid anyway, unlike the days when they cancel at short notice and I don’t get paid.

So – pluses from today – good advance planning, a cheerful demeanour and cash in my pocket. We persuaded seven kids to have egg on their pizzas, everyone identified their pizzas and we now have seven Polish eggs for hatching. Alasdair , Vicki and Kirsty all provided valuable support (they were the only 3 here to today) and I was able to work nettles into the conversation. I’m also working on a unit on the Columbian exchange as the theme on Friday is “Explorers”.

Negatives – the thought that I might have sold out, the lack of photos and the weather.

So all in all it’s been a good day.

It’s the same school visiting again tomorrow, but with only 30 children, then a group with learning difficulties, then a Brownie group for Thursday night, a school on Friday and a Guide Group on Saturday. I’m allowed a day off on Sunday.

I’m already seeing pizza every time I blink, so I don’t know what it will be like by Sunday!

A day to remember

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Subtitle: In which I meet an award-winning journalist and set fire to my own hair

I’m moving in rarefied circles these days. I’ve also learnt how to spell rarefied, I think. If you search for rarified it also seems to exist. Does anyone know which is right? If I’m moving in those circles I should at least be able to spell them.

Yes, award-winning journalist Andrew Cowper has been down to the farm to film an item on healthy eating. It seems that kids in Nottinghamshire are 38% heavier than kids in the rest of the East Midlands. Clearly, as obesity is thought to be a Bad Thing, I wasn’t going to feature heavily in the filming. I left that to Julia and Gail the Bread Lady.

I was allowed to construct the figures “38%” in salt dough and to load up the pizza oven. That was a drama in its own right. First of all it burned too well (which is unusual) and second, it set fire to the oven door. When I came to rake the embers to one side there were too many of them so I had to push them all round the perimeter, which prevents convection currents moving round the top of the oven chamber.

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This led to burnt pizza, pizza with ash on it (though that was my fault due to inept handling of the peel) and pizza that wasn’t cooked in the middle. It also led to pizza that was all three. As events have shown over the years, there are few faults that I cannot produce when left alone with a pizza oven and a load of dough.

Despite this, everyone ate their pizza and said they loved the outdoor pizza experience. In the interests of accuracy I have to report that the ones who had theirs done in the electric oven seemed pretty happy too, and didn’t have to spit as many bits of ash out.

It wasn’t all drama, of course, there was comedy too. I have no hair on my arms now (a sign that the oven has reached 600 degrees Centigrade. I have also managed to get rid of the bushier bits of my eyebrows and make the quiffy bit at the front of my head look even more ridiculous. Tonight I will be shaving my head.

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That’s about it.

I will be watching Notts TV tonight. I won’t be making the 5.30 show, but 8.00 or 10.00 could be a possibility. I’m a bit hazy on details but it will be a short excerpt followed by something more substantial next week when they can get hold of a local councillor.

I’m tempted to end with a note about broadcasters who keep their promises (like Andrew and Notts TV) and those that don’t. But that wouldn’t be nice, would it?

Anyway, I have burns to see to and a head to shave…

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The Jackdaw news is that having found the fat balls under the hedge they managed to empty the fat ball feeder (four balls) between 3.30 on Monday afternoon and our arrival at 9.00 this morning.

The new feeder has so far proved secure against Jackdaws. All four remain in the feeder, and are just a little pecked around the edges. Looks like small birds are eating them, so all is going according to plan.

At 10 pence a ball it’s not really a financial decision, it’s just that they do tend to frighten the smaller birds away. And, to be honest, I don’t like the idea of being outwitted by birds.

The home made loom (made by Men in Sheds following a photo of the wool workshop) seems to be successful, though it’s not quite as large as the ones we used for snood and it looks like it will end up as a scarf.

We’ve planted a few things, though the wind and temperature are, once again, against us. Today’s seeds include some tomato seeds from Heinz that ASDA sent in the shopping on Monday. We’d ordered so many vegetables for the pizza toppings that they obviously took pity on us so it’s thank you to Heinz and to ASDA.

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Ah yes, the pizzas. I made dough for 40 pizzas. I put it in the fridge to chill overnight, having reduced the yeast content to ensure we didn’t have a repeat of 2014 on our hands. Don’t ask.

According to the note in the diary they had to clean the fridge out after the dough…

…I’m not quite sure what the last word is but I get the idea of a last scribbled message as a tide of dough engulfed the writer.

More parcels!

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As I took things out of the car this morning Julia unlocked the centre and called across to me. I wasn’t able to hear her because of the noise from singing birds and bleating sheep. That’s not a bad start to the day.

What she was trying to tell me was that we have had another parcel delivery. We now have our Open Farm Sunday posters and volunteer badges, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand it’s good to have the resources, but on the other it’s a wake up call. We now have two months to go and I haven’t started getting ready yet. I’m doing the poultry display in the education tent, the Scarecrow Competition, helping with Breadfest and, as of yesterday, designing the traditional fete games for Men in Sheds to build. Thinking of it, I’m not actually sure why I’m writing this instead of getting on with my other jobs.

The new posters and badges

Of course, things never run smoothly and within minutes I was on toilet duty. The farm is concentrating on lambing and nothing else gets done, not even emptying the toilets. I will spare you more details. Let’s just say my day failed to live up to its early promise.

At least it didn’t get any worse.

On a more appetising note, yesterday’s group session went well – with 18 children plus carers having a great day out in the fresh air and making pizza. There’s an inevitability about making pizza when you come here. Actually, 17 of them had a great day out, one spent most of the time asking when they could go home and why the day couldn’t have been organised at a theme park. There’s something about teenage girls that doesn’t work well with a day on the farm. We had some eggs left over, as you can see.

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Yesterday once more

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Once again, I’m a day behind, so I will do two days in one.

It was the bread group yesterday and we had a bit of a sad one as we broke in the middle to plant a tree in memory of one of the group who died recently. It’s in the area where we sit to drink tea in the summer, so we’ll think of him regularly and in years to come we’ll also pick the apples off the tree.

This is one of those times when I’m not really sure what to say as I’m not a great one for displays of emotion. The sun shone, we read a poem and the birds sang. It was as good as it could be when you consider the reason for the gathering.

Back in the kitchen we made a simple wholemeal loaf. There’s a comfort in gathering to make bread, and as one of the members said, we’ve had births and marriages in the group, and now a death, so we’re just like a family. Well, better than a family really, as none of them ever raid my fridge or hog the bathroom.

As I locked up I walked out of the front and surprised two red-legged partridges dust bathing in the middle of the yard. It really must be getting sunny for them to do that.

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Friday started well with a big flock of fieldfares on the way down the lane and a good sighting of a group of finches that included half a dozen reed buntings (first sighting of the year for them). There were rooks on the sheep field and a single cock pheasant standing in the middle, looking like he owned the place.

We then had a group of 12 kids come out from the city. They come three times a year and they are always a good group as they are brought out as a reward for good behaviour and their hard work in ecological matters. It’s also a lot easier to have a good cooking session when you can get round the kitchen properly.

You also feel that you are actually teaching them something as most of our groups are from local schools and they know quite a lot about food and farming.

The best pizza was the owl, though they all seemed to taste good, judging from the way they laid into them at lunch. We haven’t had olives for a while (I’ve been feeling tight) but they do make a difference to pizza designs. I must make a note of that for future reference.

The bread is excellent, by the way. We ate some as soon as I got home, spread with the home made damson jam. I’ll put the recipe on the recipe page later.

Another Pizza Tuesday

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Another week and another pizza session.

Many of them merge into one and only a few stick in my memory. There was one last week where all the kids seemed really switched on, and knew the answers to the questions involving mummification and Christopher Columbus. Yes, it all relates to pizza…

Then there are others where the helpers decide to take their own session at the back of the class or where the teachers think they are still taking the class. The two sessions this Tuesday both had helpers who wanted to take their own sessions, but the first session also had a teacher who stepped in to contradict me. I can’t help wondering what would have happened if I’d visited her class and told them all she was wrong in mid-sentence.

For the record, if I’d been allowed to finish what I was saying she would have seen I was correct.

She’d already corrected me for using the term “groups of two” – it seems they are “pairs”. She then went on to answer for various children when I asked if they wanted more water for their dough. She said they didn’t, and though I did eventually manage to get extra water in most of them we still had some very hard, dry dough.

Some adventurous pizza shapes

We didn’t do the questions about mummification or Christopher Columbus, because it seemed like every time I asked a question I was told “We haven’t done that yet.” or she pursed her lips and shook her head.

I could go on…and on…

Now, I know from past experience, that if I had objected to any of this it would result in a complaint, it always does. I don’t get many complaints, but I am now at a stage when I can predict them. I’m also at a stage where I’m getting fed up with this sort of stuff, to the extent I’m seriously thinking of stopping.

So the question for today is, do any of you polite, tactful readers know of a way to handle this sort of situation? Are there any secret code words I can use to make myself part of the teaching fraternity? Or any special ways of saying “be quiet”?

I already start the lesson by telling people what we are going to do, that we are going to do it stage by stage at the pace of the slowest group (I’m a little more tactful than that) and that I will issue instructions for each phase, but it doesn’t seem to help.

All suggestions gratefully received (even from teachers!).

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Life after the Care Farm

Tag Archives: pizza

Doing what we’re meant to do

The Fifth Day

The third day

On the second day

A day to remember

Subtitle: In which I meet an award-winning journalist and set fire to my own hair

More parcels!

Yesterday once more

Another Pizza Tuesday