Box to Beehive

 
 
 
 
The next stage in our plans to reduce our dependency on the outside world is beekeeping. Already enrolled in the beekeper course we need somewhere to keep our bees if we aver get any. For Christmas Lisa gave me a large box full of wood and nails. In a few easy steps (over a few easy 6 hours) this was transformed into a luxury home for any self-respecting bee.

There was a surprise Christmas present of an unusual suit which is very fetching

From Beehive

Avoiding Itchy Bottom Disease

This weekend we decided to try and make something of the rose hips at the garden gate. After a few hours collecting (This must be one of the few plants which is able to fight back) we had two pounds of rosehips and only mild blood loss from the scratches. We started to split the rose hips in order to remove the seeds and hairs. This was reported as essential as the hairs are the cause of the problem described by the Aborigines as "itchy bottom disease" which might be quite unpleasant if I could work out what the symptoms are. This was laborious and fortunately we found a recipe in Smallholder magazine which came to our aid.

In this recipe there is no need to de-seed the hips.

• Take two pounds of hips and turn them into a rough pulp in the blender.
  
• Boil them with 2 litres of water.
  
• Stain the pulp through muslin and keep the liquid.
  
• Boil the liquid until it has reduced by a third and allow to cool
  
• Add a bag of sugar and bring back to the boil.
  
• Boil for 5 minutes then bottle.
  

Then taste. It is almost like Marcel and his little Madeleine Cakes - memories will flood back and remind you of your childhood.

Praise the lard

While reading Cobbett's "Cottage Economy" I decided to try bread and lard. There were two surprises; firstly it is quite palatable, secondly it may not be as unhealthy as thought.


Praise the lard | Life and style | The Observer

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Early Harvests

The dividends are starting to be paid. In addition to healthy and sweet onions there is now growth in the soft fruit are with both strawberries and raspberries making a healthy appearnace. No sign of the goosegogs yet.

The onions have been transformed into an onion tart later on, excellent with a side-salad from the garden. The recipe is as follows :-







Cut 1lb of onions and brown (about 15mins) in 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 40grams of butter. Add two beaten eggs and 6 tablespoons of double cream. Optionally (if not vegetarian) add cut up pieces of crispy cooked streaky bacon.

Add this mixture to a tart base of eaither shortcrust or puff pastry and cook in the oven at Gass mark 7 for 30 minutes.

Heroin Safe Elderflower Cordial

Seeing the clouds of elderflowers everywhere we walk this month was a prompt for us to make Elderflower Cordial. This is relatively easy and the results are very refreshing and pleasing. All the recipes call for citric acid as a preservative and we first thought that this would be a simple matter ot calling into our local pharmacy. This prove to be a mistake. As citric acid is used for cutting heroin the pharmacists have stopped stocking it. Calls in various shops and a crawl of the web conformed the problem. The recipe below replaces the citric acid with lemon juice and seems succesful but I guess the longevity of the cordial (unless frozen) will be reduced.


Ingredients

40 elderflower heads (brown flowers are fine)

2 sliced lemons

20mls lemon juice

1.5 kg granualted sugar

2 litres boiling water

Instructions

Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water. Pare the lemons and place the zest and peel in with the elderlfower heads. Slice the lemons and add to the flowers along with the lemon juice. Add the sugar water mix and allow this to steep for 24 hours. After this strain through muslin and bottle. This will freeze if placed in a plastic bottle.

(B) : Bees, Beans, Berries and Basil

We returned from holiday in the Tyrol to discover that not t0o much damage had been done to the vegetable plot by our desertion. One starwberry plant tooked too dehydrated to survive but there was little other fall out.

The garden is now staring to look productive. Flowers are appearing on the beans and the onions, as well as the non-productive but colourful inhabitants of the garden. It seems perverse, give the crisis facing bees, but we seem to have more visits from bees (both bumblebee and honeybee) than usual. Perhaps we are noticing them more by spending more time in the garden or perhaps the ecology has changed and become more inviting.


The chickens now recognise a spade at 100 yards and know it is associated with worms. Basil has not learnt how to be helpful in the garden.

Birthday Girl

There may be only a few signs if the green shoots of economic activity but at least in the garden somethings are sprouting. So far all the work seems to be done by the Alliaceae. The onions (red and stuttgarter) and the garlic are coming on strong. We have had our first produce, radish leaves are a tasty peppery component of a salad and are a pleasant by-product of thinning.

We had Emma and Richard's hens camping with us on their summer holidays. They got on well with our girls and there were no fights. However, they never truly mixed and they tended to stay in their two groups; out two and their four.

The products of 6 hens is about 6 eggs a day so we needed to find ways to use up eggs. They best we found so far was creme caramel. This was a very successful recipe :-

Ingredients:
20 g butter
4 eggs
6 Tbs Sugar
1 ½ Tbs vanilla sugar
500 ml milk

Melt the butter in s saucepan add 5 tablespoons of sugar and the same of water. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until the mixture is a light brown.Do not let it darken to much or it will be bitter. Pour the caramel at once into 4/6 warmed individual heatproof moulds and rotate until the moulds are coated.

Preheat the oven to 180c or 350f or gas mark 4

In a bowl whisk the eggs with the rest of the sugar and t the vanilla sugar until frothy. Bring the milk to a boil and pour it a little at a time into the beaten egg mix stirring continuously. Strain the custard through a fine sieve into the prepared moulds.

Stand the moulds in a shallow roasting tin. Fill with hot water two thirds up the sides of the moulds and cook for 25 to 30 mins in the centre of the oven.

Mixed fortunes

The first worry of the new year has arrived. The tomato seeds planted have failed to germinate. One solitary wispy stem pointed its way out of the tray with all its siblings pots being empty, the still-born seeds hidding under the compost. These were Mr Fothergill's Red Cherry tomato seeds are are perhaps not hardy enough for up here. They have been hastily replaced by a tray of Moneymaker courtesy of Lidl. Perhaps it will not be too late for a crop of tomatos this year.

On the positive side there are signs of life in the garden. The Garlic has sprouted and stubby green thumbs stick up through the soil. The beetroot has given a small red band of germinbating seedlings, too small to photograph without a serious macro lens. The onions are looking healthy and pretending to be a bumper crop. Fingers crossed.

Last days of freedom

Potatos and more

 

The last day of the holidays and back to work again tomorrow. Fortunately the weather has held up and a lot was possible in a few days. In addition to the first potatos going in (Sante) we have also managed to get spinach, fennel and broad breans in. In the potting shed (living room and Daniel's bed room) cauliflower, tomatos, courgettes, celeriac, runner beans, cabbage, kale, celery and peppers are all hopefully germinating. On the floor the maris piper and sante seed potatos are chitting.

I estimate that so far this year we have spent approximately £28 on seeds. This makes Aldi's seeds at 35p per packet very attractive and we will need to look at them. We have also registered at the BBC's Dig It site for 5 free packets of seeds.

At the momemnt the garden looks quite good and thanks to the www.growveg.com software I am able to show a schematic of where we are.

Dove of Peace

We have been very fortunate with the weather during this Easter weekend. Both days have been warm and sunny, blue skies with white clouds and not a drop of rain. Perfect weather to get a lot done in the garden.

An unusual Easter visitor was a dove which spent some time in the hens' run while the girls were out helping me turn over the ground. When the chickens' discovered that they had an intruder they became quite aggressive and wasted no time in letting the dove know that it had to leave their patch. It was comical watching the hens strut aggressively, pushing out their breasts and pushing the intruder around the hen run.

While looking for advice I came across a very useful site. Allotment Growing is a very full site packed with helpful information and active fora. In one of the fora there was discussion on growing beans and positive discussion about the Munty Frame as an alternative to more usual supports. 34000 people have read the thread and it is difficult to argue with that amount of positive opinion. So to that end we gathered up our sticks, canes, twine and waste frames and had a bash. The end result looks quite good and seems strong and stable.

However, time will tell.

A new year, a new intention

Good Friday seems as good a day as any to declare that spring has started. We are now officially off on our horticultural adventure. This will be similar to last year, but unlike 2008, in 2009 we expect things to be subtly different. We intend that this year we will actually do it properly. This year we will grow a full range of vegetables and even amongst them those villains of last summer - beetroots and cauliflowers. These are described as "easy" vegetables in the books but they have defeated us two years running. They have either bolted (beetroot) or just failed (cauliflower). This year will be different. They should have suited our acid soil but we were only playing last year - this year it will be very different.

In out new, professional, industrious and energetic 2009 these prior failures will not be tolerated. We will not be happy with peas, beans and potatos. We will have leeks as thick as a baby's arm, beetroots like footballs, carrots like rolling pins, courgettes in abundance, salads you could drown under, onions that will make our neighbours' eyes water and cauliflowers as big as your head. We have the seeds, the ground, the intention. All we lack is the skill and knowledge - what can go wrong ?

Today the row of garlic went in and two rows of beetroot as its neighbour. This is later than last year so hopefully less chance of bolting - we will see.