Polytunnel Progress

Finally, after more than a month of intermittent work on the polytunnel, it's being used! We've planted the tomato plants in giant pots, with supportive twine up to the crop bars. The pepper plants are growing exponentially too, alongside the toms, and the various squash plants (cucumber, courgette, patty pan, amongst others) are now planted out with a good portion of well-rotted manure beneath their roots. We still have plenty of work to do in the tunnel - not least digging a pathway down the middle, and holding in the beds down the sides with scaffolding planks, but it's a relief to have so many plants growing in there. The basil plants want to establish themselves in there too - my favourite herb in the world! - I just can't wait to start eating everything! :D

Ginger Biscuits

It shouldn't be a mammoth task, making a batch of biscuits, but somehow it became one.

Firstly, we don't have an oven. As we are planning to go off-grid in the coming few months (alright, it might take a bit longer!), we are loath to buy an appliance which will only be used for a short time. My parents have a little worktop electric oven/hob, and so I borrowed that. It was very heavy, and my impatience meant that I had to carry it myself, squidged against my bump. I won't be doing that again. How stupid - to risk a baby for a biscuit!

Secondly, the work on the polytunnel (Phil and my folks were down there) came to a point where everyone started losing perspective. The problem was that the instructions had not really talked about how to deal with the armfuls of spare plastic at the ends around the doorways. I mean, it was obvious that it needed to be carefully pleated to account for all the extra material coming over the hoops, but how had other people done it so that it look presentable, instead of crumpled and bunched up? That was the question being asked. As the oven heated up, I went down to the field with my laptop to quickly show some pictures of polytunnels I'd found online. They looked tidy, but when you looked closely you could see that every one of them had chosen a different style of pleating and folding. So as long as we did it nicely, it would be good. It took three of us to get the job done, and at least an hour. Needless to say, the oven was nicely warmed by the time I got back to the house.

Thirdly, the recipe asks for golden syrup, but I had none. So I used the equivalent of honey, and when the 'dough' didn't seem to be getting less crumby, I added a couple of tablespoons of water. Not knowing how the dough should feel for this recipe, I wasn't too confident, but must admit that the results are delicious! :)

Fourthly, and finally, the recipe made enough dough to make thirty eight walnut-sized balls and therefore thirty six biscuits (ha ha, just kidding, I ate two before they had a chance to cool!) which somehow meant that the baking tray went into the oven four times. It's a very small oven, and an even smaller tray!

If you'd like to try the recipe, you can find it here. I added a handful of finely chopped crystallised ginger, but next time would add two or three handfuls, and remove the ground ginger altogether. I'm so pleased to not only have the time to make treats like these, but also to have reduced my stress levels so much that I can now easily read a recipe - it may sound stupid, but for a long time I simply couldn't follow them, no matter how simple - now I'm much better!

But then, everybody knows that biscuits make everything better, right? :P

Seedling Saturday

Me and my mum went to Seedling Saturday at the school in Machynlleth, but didn't bring any seedlings home. We were hoping for some brassicas - especially purple sprouting broccoli, kale, and cabbage (due to the fact that ours have all mysteriously shrivelled up) - but somehow we must have missed them if there were any. We went to two of the talks, Adam gave a talk about hedgerow biodiversity, and there was a talk by the folks who run Incredible Edible in Todmorden - both were very inspiring! Regarding the latter, I didn't realise that guerrilla growing had become so popular, or indeed that it could work on a large (town-sized) scale. Have a read about what they're up to - it's brilliant! - they've established vegetable beds all over the town, and with the help of the locals (as well as some enthusiastic volunteers in some cases) are growing and offering free food to anyone who may wish to help themselves. They've even got the council on their side now that they've shown themselves to have such a positive effect on the townsfolk.

The day was enhanced by the fact that I bought a raffle ticket at the last minute and won what I reckon was the best prize: a little colourful envelope with a handwritten "Hello!" on the front, which contained a £15 voucher for the funky Eco Deco shop in Machynlleth (can't find a website for them, unfortunately)... I can't wait to see what I'll find in there! Maybe some eco clay paint to decorate Squiggles' room?

We returned home enthused, and lo, we did look upon our own seedlings, and we saw that they were good.




And we thought to ourselves: all we need now is a number of weed-free deep beds to plant them out in, and a finished polytunnel for the tomatoes, peppers and squashes...

We'll get there...

An Unsettled Week

The last week has been an odd mixture of satisfying, energy-filled days, and listless days where it feels like nothing is achieved. The weather has been changeable for a start, which hasn't helped, and our focus has become somewhat fragmented. Or at least, mine has!

On Saturday, Phil and I enjoyed being here on our own (my parents were out for the day) and it felt good to be pottering around on our own little projects. It was "a day off" really, and I was really pleased to finally get around to making these ultra-simple cards (just a bit of cutting and pasting!) which have been sitting around for at least two or three years:


Phil couldn't understand why I would bother, but I think that some of the designs from tea boxes are just too beautiful to throw away. There's something sort of retro about them, like those old enamel advertising signs you see in some tea rooms and pubs.

I made a really tasty, "last minute" cous cous dish for lunch which I recently discovered on the back of a pack of sultanas (!?) and which has quickly become a staple.

Crazy Jack's "Last Minute" Couscous (Serves 4)

1. Using a vegetable stock cube, make 400ml of hot stock and pour over 200g of couscous in a large bowl. Add a knob of butter, cover and leave for 5-7 mins.

2. Meanwhile, chop and dice one tomato, one onion, one carrot, a chunk of cucumber and a red pepper. Mix together in a bowl with a sprinkle of sultanas.

3. Blend the juice of half a lemon with 2 tablespoons of good olive oil and a pinch of salt. Using a fork, stir into the couscous. You could add a crushed garlic clove at the same time.

4. Stir vegetables into the couscous.

5. It's ready but, if you have any fresh herbs - mint, basil, or coriander, chop up a really good handful and mix it in.

I have been using whatever vegetables I can find in the fridge, but olives are particularly good in this recipe. Crazy Jack forgot about them.

After the vegetable garden's recent rabbit invasion we have been especially careful to protect the young plants from nibbling teeth. We have had to be inventive! Here you can see some of our makeshift cloches - it's very Blue Peter, but it seems to do the job - not only do these bottles and the corrugated plastic tunnel protect the seedlings from hungry visitors, but they also create a comfortable microclimate which will help the plants to grow. There's some spinach in the tunnel, and individual lettuces in the bottles.


And finally, Squiggles has been growing exponentially, so the point where my tummy has been filling ready to burst. It feels a little less tight today, so I'm wondering if it was Braxton Hicks contractions I was feeling for the last few days? I keep calling them Brixton Hacks, which is very wrong... This isn't a great picture, and I look like I'm wearing a sack, but it's all I have right now!

April Smallholding Update

The much needed rain has come. Finally, a chance to get some long overdue jobs done in the house, and take stock! We've been here for just over a month now, and neither Phil nor I can believe that so much has happened in such a short time. It's been continuously sunny for the past month, with a couple of overcast days thrown in, and we've been busy outside in the vegetable garden almost every day. Perhaps it's time for an update:

The Vegetable Garden: From humble beginnings, the fenced-off area now boasts 10 deep beds for vegetables - mostly potatoes and onions at this stage, but we've also planted out some broad beans, peas, parsnips, spinach, and beetroot seedlings. We're crossing our fingers and willing the experimental row of carrots to sprout, and have sown a hopeful row of broad beans between rows of potatoes. The rabbits have already shown interest, daintily destroying half of the parsnip seedlings overnight, and leaving their telltale droppings. The battle has commenced. We were afraid we might have to invest time and money in rabbit-proof fencing, and it looks like that might turn out to be the case - but for now we have had to be cunning, creating makeshift protection out of odd bits of mesh, fleece and corrugated plastic.

The Orchard: We have planted 5 apple trees of different varieties, as well as a damson tree. They are still very young (two years old?), so we'll have a bit of a wait before we can actually harvest any fruit, but it's a good start. We are still debating the pros and cons of planting the soft fruit bushes between the fruit trees - I saw it done like that on a forest gardening documentary and it looked like a great idea, but we're not sure whether or not we should just bunch the soft fruit together in cages so that we can protect them from the birds... There are some really old apple (and some as yet unknown) trees which were already here when we arrived - they looked gnarled and moss-eaten and completely dead until a few days ago when they exploded with blossom. Their yield shall decide their fates... :)

The Polytunnel: The sheer duration of the demonstration DVD should have served as a warning to us, but our optimism knew no bounds... What should have taken a day (or two at the most) has become an ongoing saga. There have been several setbacks in the way of missing parts, but that still doesn't justify such a lengthy project! The digger came in and flattened the area, then we found we needed to gouge out more space by hand. The water and electricity pipes were laid at the same time, and the trough connected - so now we have water in the vegetable garden at least. The hoops have been screwed together and painted (so as not to absorb too much heat), and the hot-spot tape has been stuck on... Slightly prematurely... And now, finally, all the hoops are up, the crop bars have been attached - it looks like the skeleton of a giant metal beast who laid down to die amongst the freshly dug graves. Yes, deep beds look like graves. Which is ironic, given that from them life flows. It reminds me of when I was in Guanajuato, in Mexico, and we were walking up to the Mummy Museum when we stopped at a shop which sold both coffins and fresh vegetables. Clever, I thought to myself, they've got something for everyone, whether living or dead.

The Water Situation: We've got two options for water - the first is the borehole, which goes down about 300 feet and is serviced by a pump. This is the water which comes out of our taps in the houses, and it gives off a smell of sulphur and upon testing was found to contain rather high quantities of manganese. It is alkaline. Hmm. The second is the stream, which would need a good slow sand filter to purify it if you wanted it for drinking water, and due to its course through peaty valleys, it is acid. The seedlings we have been raising in my mum's house have started going yellow, perhaps due to being too alkaline, so we've had to start mixing the two waters to get more of a balance in pH. So far so good, but thank goodness it's raining, because all that carrying is hard work!

My dad just discovered that I am writing this, so has emailed me over a couple of pics (thanks Da'!)... Here's one of the men looking very proud of themselves after the first hoop went up:

And here's one of the women in action - preparing the bed for the beetroot seedlings. You can see the broad beans and peas to the left, and the dead area to the right is where the rabbits found the parsnips:


Wild Food: It turns out that we have some really pernicious weeds in the garden, and it just so happens that some of them are edible. I'm planning on cooking with ground elder for the first time, and the young nettles are looking radiantly healthy too. I have enjoyed nettle soups in the past (the trick being to use a handful of oats in with the nettle leaves - that way they don't tickle as they go down your throat!), but my dad has often spoken of nettle beer (only very mildly alcoholic) so I'm hoping to give that a go too. The bushes and trees around us are springing to life, so it's a really exciting time - in the next few months we'll find out exactly what the fields and hedges have to offer! Who knows, maybe there will be some elder trees, hazelnuts, wild damsons and blackberries, not to mention horse mushrooms, hedge garlic, and fish in the river!

Exciting times! :)

Jamaican Crunch Pie

Spent a good part of the day composing a very elaborate letter of complaint to Aviva Insurance regarding horrible mishandling of my car insurance. Stressful and beyond tedious.

So after going into town to get some plumbing bits for the polytunnel's water connection (a small plastic bag half full of plastic pipey bits cost over 70 quid!!!) and a quick stop for some essentials in Somerfield, I made a bloody lovely Jamaican Crunch Pie just like my momma used to make. (A fairly vague recipe can be found here, but I followed a recipe in a rather well-loved and ancient-looking copy of the 'Good Housekeeping Family Library: Family Cookery' book. Thanks mum!)


There was enough creamy topping to make a little baby one (though I was tempted to just scrape the bowl out and say no more about it), and they're both now chilling in the fridge. We can eat them tomorrow! Horray!

I don't know if the blogging is going to be all about food from now on (pregnancy does funny things to one's appetite!), but for anyone interested, the goats' cheese was absolutely lovely. It was a little less goaty than one might imagine, and quite subtle (so next time I might add some fresh herbs such as chives), but I was well pleased. Even Phil admitted that it was a success.

:)

Yogurt and Goats' Cheese

This morning I felt like I ought to get back into the habit of yogurt making - it's so quick and easy, as well as cheap. Two pints of organic whole milk cost about £1, so you get a pint of yogurt for about 50p (plus a bit for the gas to heat it!) as opposed to the £1.50 or so you'd pay in the shop. Living next door to my mum (who taught me the simple art of yogurt-making and bought me my yogurt thermometer) means that we can each take it in turns to make it - it's no extra trouble to make twice as much and pour it into two separate containers than to make just enough for one.

It's so simple (though you must be careful to wash and rinse everything first to keep a good level of hygiene) - pour your two litres of organic whole milk into a pan along with a milk saver (so you can hear when it reaches simmering-point), heat until it simmers, then remove from heat. Put your yogurt thermometer in with the milk, and wait until the temperature has dropped enough (between 43-49 degrees C). Then put your starter (a teaspoonful of live yogurt) into an insulated container, thoroughly mix in a tablespoon of the warm milk, then stir in the remainder of the warm milk. Put the lid on the insulated container and leave for 8 hours or so - that's it!

The goats' cheese was a new experience for me. A week or so ago, Phil insisted that we buy a litre of organic goats milk (so that he could try out making some cheese), and it's just sat there in the fridge making us both feel a bit wasteful and guilty. So I asked if he didn't mind me using it, now that it was almost out of date, and he readily agreed.

I had a look in our new Cheese Making book (bought as a Christmas present for all four of us on the smallholding, in the hope that it might be useful as some kind of a textbook) and couldn't find a recipe which simply required goats' milk and lemon juice - the book wants you to buy some sort of cheese starter for everything (first fail right there), so I did a quick Google search. I came up with this - English is definitely not a first language for the author of this site (judging by the references to the "Diary Goat") but the milk and lemon juice recipe was there. You heat the milk until it simmers, add some salt (and any herbs you fancy), take it off the heat and gently mix in some lemon juice (half a lemon for a litre of milk) so that the curds separate from the whey, then pour the mixture into some cheese-cloth (lovingly draped over a colander) and drain. Then you can bunch it up in the cloth and squeeze - makes for a deeply satisfying sensation! The book might have come up trumps with its note regarding being gentle with your goats' milk - if you pour from a height or stir too violently it will end up tasting goatier than ever - uh oh!

Hmm, I shall be reporting back on how the cheese turned out - though it doesn't look like there's going to be very much of it after all that... I must apologise for not having any photos lately. I think what been happening is I've been getting really involved with the things I/we've been doing, and completely forget to take any before or after pics... I shall work on it! :)

Feels like Summer!

What an amazing day - an example of how the warming presence of a full-bodied sun can really make a huge difference to everything... My day started with an early awakening as the sun crashed blindingly through the skylight and burned holes in my eyelids. I washed quickly and put on my new (charity shop) dress, which made the day feel special from the very beginning, then took my tea and muesli outside onto the patio. It was warm enough to sit in short sleeves! :)

I raked all the leaves off the lawn and revealed the huge horse-hoof holes beneath. Hmm, at least the grass will get some light now, and some air, but I will have to get around to filling in the holes if I don't want any twisted ankles in the near future. The tonne bag of leaves started off our leaf compost project - we plan on composting as many leaves as possible annually so that within 3 years or so we'll have our own seed compost.

I spoke with BT and ordered our phone connection. Apparently these days you have no option but to sign up to a 12 month contract :( The actual connection will take place next Tuesday - much later than the 24-48 hours which had been promised in earlier conversations, but the Scottish BT call centre guy assured me that "never in all creation has it been 48 hours, let alone 24 - it's a three day turnaround" which made me snigger, despite feeling somewhat annoyed. As if BT had been around since the very beginning of time.

Feels so good to be working outside, as well as being able to relax in the sun. We were prevented from sitting outside while we lived in our previous house, as the neighbour had a horribly aggressive dog which would launch a snarling attack every time we tried to walk to the end of our garden. It's been two, almost three years of being confined to the house (or brief forays into the park) on sunny days, so you can imagine how heavenly it is to finally have the chance to enjoy being outside in our own, private space! :) We've been busy digging and weeding beds in the vegetable garden too, there's plenty (read: mountains) of work to be done down there if we are to be able to plant out the seedlings we have grown, and sow the seeds we are itching to get in the ground, but many hands make light work.

I have caught myself searching the recesses of my mind for something stressful - until Ember ended I was so used to there being great threatening shadows of deadlines and stressful tasks at the back of my brain that it seems like a dream to search and not find anything of the kind... Phil says he's found himself doing the same thing, thinking "what am I supposed to have done/be doing?" and then realising (with surprise) that those things have gone now, we can chose what to do day by day. There is so much to be done, but we have the rest of our lives ahead of us in which to do it all. That's the idea, anyway! :)

March Madness

Sorry about that. That was a long pause!

Since I last wrote we have been stupidly busy.
Rebecca and I went to Holland to play our last foreseeable performances as Ember, and we've not seen much of each other since. The album has been selling well thanks to her mailouts to the people who support us and value our music. We still have to work out what to do with the many boxes of Emberobelia - theatre programmes and magazines featuring write-ups about us, reviews, stacks of live recordings on CD and DVD, data CDs full of photos, as well as all the excess office materials we have left over. We can't just throw that stuff away!

Since Ember finished in early March, Phil and I have been racing to complete the remaining work on our house so that we can put it on the market and go to the smallholding. It felt so good to get involved (finally!) and complete jobs such as sanding and oiling the stairs, cleaning up the revealed copper pipes, and thoroughly scrubbing the entire interior. Phil has been doing so well - he's finished putting the new roof on the annex, painted most of the window frames and (almost) fixed the front door. I feel rather out of my depth with the actual building work, so have been signing up for any and all of the cleaning tasks...

I can't believe we are planning on moving to the smallholding on Thursday! We have two more valuations taking place on Wednesday, before we decide on an estate agent, and we're planning on leaving most of the furniture in the house while it's on the market. Life at the smallholding will be pretty basic to begin with, but my parents have offered to lend us some chairs and a patio table for our kitchen in the meantime.

Today I hit the 19 weeks mark in the pregnancy - halfway through, according to the updates I get from the BabyCentre.co.uk - and the time has been racing by! For the last three weeks or so I have been feeling little Squiggles moving about inside, and the little cartwheels are getting stronger all the time. When I think about the fact that there is an actual baby inside me, it makes me feel strangely ticklish and a bit giggly... Exciting times! :)

The downside of the pregnancy has been a hugely increased emotional sensitivity - I've been getting really upset over small things (they seem so massive at the time!) and sometimes in the evenings it can all become too much. The depression can last until I finally fall asleep exhausted. I am not normally one to cry, but some nights have seen me weeping inconsolably for hours. :( There is such a thing as Ante-Natal Depression apparently, though we don't hear much about it. The positive thing to bear in mind is that usually the depression passes once the child has been born. I'm hoping it will pass when we get to the smallholding - life has been so stressful these last few months, slowing down can only help!

Hormones though, they can drive you mad! How are you supposed to remain a nice person whilst being dragged around on a nightmarish emotional roller coaster? Poor Phil has been through the mill as well, he has no idea when I might snap next... (Well, nor do I...!)

I shall do my best to get some photos of our beautiful, tidy house for you to have a look, and while I'm at it, I might even ask Phil to take a photo of my little bump...

Goodnight! :)

PS - Oh yes - the One Hundred Days? I reckon it's over, baby. I did 54 posts out of 100 - pretty poor! - but I can appreciate what it did for me. It got me started on this blog for one thing, and helped me to connect with others who were involved - without it I would never have found Tammy, or Beth... It's brought me closer to my Kellee... Not to mention the fact that it's allowed me to share my daily mundanity with my mum, who checks the Tangled Yarn regularly and will be pleased to see that I've finally posted another update - oh - there she is now - HELLO MUM!

Pregnant Pause

Thursday 18th Feb.

Sorry for my silence lately, I realise that I am now at least 25 days behind in the 100 Day Project, and I am soon to add several more days to that number. This has been a hectic couple of months, finishing off Ember's 5th album, planning and organising our 10 Year Celebration concerts, and generally trying to tie up loose ends before we take a long break from playing together at the end of the month. We're excited about moving on to other projects, but I expect we'll be doing some grieving too, once the reality sinks in.

This morning I am preparing to leave home for our last UK tourette - taking in Burnham-on-Sea, Camden, Cambridge and Hitchin over this weekend, and then we have two final gigs in Holland on the 27th and 28th. It's impossible find time and internet access to update the blog when we are away, so I am resigning myself to catching up in March, hope that's OK with you! :)

There is another exciting development which has been partially responsible for the pregnant pause, which is just that - Phil and I are 14 weeks pregnant and have been given a due date of 16th August. So a new life beckons, in more ways than one! :) I've been thinking (and worrying!) about the blogging (and all of the catching up I might have to do!) and have realised that this 100 Day Project has fitted almost exactly with my pregnancy - no wonder I quickly developed an obsession with de-cluttering - isn't it all about nesting, somehow? The early exhaustion makes sense too, no wonder Christmas was so draining... We are both really happy (and nervous!), and hoping that it all goes smoothly.

Well, I shall be back at home next week, but won't promise anything, but you never know, I may surprise myself. Early March (once I return from Holland) will see me with more time, and that's when I hope to catch up properly.

Bye for now.
:)