Watermelon

Today’s harvest is a clutch of butternut squashes- these are harvested perhaps a little prematurely but I thought it may trigger the plants to set more fruit and there’s plenty more green ones on the vine. The squashes are a mixture of a named variety and some seed saved from a butternut from the Market and they seem to be performing as well as each other.
Excitingly, we’ve also just harvested our first water melon!!!! This one has been green and ‘hollow sounding’ for weeks, but I’ve been worried about harvesting too early. The results are very pleasing- the favour is deliciously sweet and fresh, I’m amazed that this fruited up here in the yorkshire hills 🙂
Most of the seeds inside the melon are still a tan colour so it could perhaps have done with a few more days. The only problem now is that I let the squash and pumpkin vines swamp the melon vines, so I’m not sure if we’ll have more fruit, but here’s hoping and we’ll be trying harder next year. Overall, very happy.

Using grass clippings to heat your home

Whilst looking at the different curing times of wood for firewood, I stumbled across the following barmy, but quite fascinating link: http://mb-soft.com/public3/globalzl.html
The web page describes how to build essentially a large wooden washing drum to heat your home. Its powdered by grass clippings, saw dust or just about any organic matter and can be self-built for around £150. A unit the size of an upright piano can apparently heat a 4 bed house. Its incredibly well thought out and detailed but certainly barmy and defiantly worth a read.
Today’s been spent cutting wood and mowing lawns. Now it’s time for tea, as always- from the polytunnel with plenty of courgette and starwberry’s.

Wet, wind and turbines

Well July turned out to be quite a damp month and August has started the same way, which is making me very glad that we have the polytunnel. Tonights tea will be garden vegetable soup or risotto followed by strawberry’s and mint cream.
As I write this, I’m sat by the glass barn doors watching a kestral struggling to hover still in the afternoon breeze. Listening to the wind around the chimney just strengthens my interest in micro-generation. The UK government has just launched a generous energy buy-back scheme, called the Feed In Tarrif (FIT), for domestic energy producers. With our wind speeds and the governments 20year fixed FIT prices, a 10kw turbine would pay for itself in 4 years and then we’d be making 10k per annum for the following 16 years- with no electricity bills and with our livestock (and assuming no mortgage, a big assumption!), the small holding would be almost 100% self sufficient. And the price for this day dream? A measley 40k. Ouch. We’ll be courting slaesmen over the next month or so to see what finance options are avalble and to see if it’s feasible for us. It’s a bit of a pipe dream at this stage, but you never know what’s out there and there’s no harm in looking…

The new ‘ancient’ arrivals

Here at the farm on the hill, we’ve just had a very exciting weekend with the delivery of our first ‘real’ livestock.  On Sunday we finally took delivery of 10 rare breed Soay sheep. very exciting!

Soay sheep are a rare breed, smaller than other domestic breeds and apparently much closer to the wild ‘mouflon’ sheep. Some have patterning but most are dark coated. Despite being quite small (which could be seen as an advantage for handling) they have some great attributes:

1. They don’t need shearing as they naturally molt. However, the wool can be collected by ‘dagging’ if needed for spinning (we’ll also be trying this!).
2. The meat is much leaner, richer, more ‘gamy’ than other breeds and apparently has some similarities with venison- we can’t wait to try it!
3. The sheep are quite personable and very bright eyed.
4. They’re rare and by keeping them, your doing your bit to keep the breed alive
5. They’re horned- both males and females, and this also makes them an attractive breed.

So, we’ve taken delivery of 10 sheep: 4 breeding ewes, 3 ewe lambs, 1 older ram lamb (looks great and huge already), 1 smaller ram lamb (for the table, later in the year). They have around 7 acres to roam in and seem completely at home in their hill side home 🙂

We’ll be breeding from these and of course eating the odd one, preferably at no younger than 2 years- although we might have to try the ram lamb this year out of curiosity…

Cucumber glut

Well, we’ve been away for a week and in that time the polytunnel has turned into a veritable jungle. The amount of courgettes and cucumbers that have set is ashtonishing. I’ve put some gherkins onto pickle, which takes a good number of days. I’ll post the recipie in a few days.

Courgette review

Well it’s that time of year. We’ve got to the stage where courgettes are being smuggled into every dish. They are delicious and we’re big fans of deep fried stuffed-courgette flowers, but we’ve discovered that not all courgettes are created equally.
This year we have only three plants, 2 ‘traditional’ types and a round type. The round type looks good, but the fruits don’t grow to a good size and the flesh is watey and no way near as rich as standard types. However, they are good with the flowers still attached and deep-fried whole. This round variety also has quite a rambling habit.
All in all, standard courgttes have far more flavour, are more prolific and grow larger. It’s good to try variation (we have over 12 tom varieties this year) but round cougettes are not one we’ll be growing again…

Small scale silage making with lawn clippings

Here on the farm we’ve got a lot of paths/lawns to mow, which has the benefit of generating huge amounts of lawn clippings. We’re using these as quick as they come for mulching various veggies, making hay or just topping up the compost bin. However, this week we’re experimenting with making silage and you can to. To make silage on a small scale, you’ll need:
1 a lawn mower
2 a lawn
3 a dust bin
4 heavy duty plastic bags
5 time
So, after mowing the lawn, gather your clippings. Incidentially, it’s best to do this when the lawn is a little damp so there’s enough moisture for the curing process. Line the bin with one of the plastic bags and add the clippings- then climb on top and stamp down the vegetation into the bag. at this stage you want to push all the air out and tie-up the bag to keep out as much air as possible. Once tied, the grass will expand as the down-pressure is released and this will give the bag the impression of being vaccum packed. Now, it’s time to leave the bags until they’re needed in the winter.
The idea is that the grass begins to rot in anerobic conditions by bacteria, essentially pickling the grass and preserving the goodness until it’s needed, later in the year.

Stock fencing and the draper expert

Here on the farm we’ve been busy preparing for some new arrivals and enjoying the summer sun. Most of the preparation has been fixing-up the old stock fencing around the main field. Orgionally dry-stone wall, the edges have been mostly replaced with post and wire fencing. This must have been great at one time, but now it’s in such a state that I doubt it could hold back a geriatric one-legged sheep. Now , I’ve only done stock fencing once before so it’s been a long and fiddly job. However, a new tool discovery has been a great help- the Draper Expert! Pincer, hammer head, staple remover, gripper, wire shearer- it does the lot. The fencing is medium stock wire with two lines of barb and this little Draper has been great- highly reccomended. We’re now nearly ready for the new arrivals, in just over a week…

What a difference a month makes

Its been around a month since we started to dig out the beds in the polytunnel and get things planted. My back won’t be sad to see an end to digging over new ground and looking back at photos, its amazing to see the difference a month makes! We’re now having strawberries, salad and radish nearly every night and the herbs have gone crazy. Potatoes look like they’re nearly ready to dig-up (starting to flower)- compared to the outdoor spuds, that are just starting to break through. Our pampered-indoor spuds have romped away. I wonder if this excessively quick growth will be at the cost of flavor? It also looks like a courgette glut is just around the corner…

Adopted- chickens and cats

When we first moved to the farm on the hill, we inherited a chicken and, as it later transpired, a cat. The chicken is a spotted, flighty bantam- quite attractive but not the best egg layer and after we brought-up our two old pet bantams it took them a while to mingle. The two older banties, who I should probably refer to by name, Rose and Spike (named after their relative comb types) have been with us for around 5 years which includes a 2 year sabbatical at my parents farm whilst we were in a house with a garden too small to accommodate them along with a large veg plot. Now, being bantams, Rose and Spike go broody at the drop of a hat, so around 4 weeks ago we decide to let them hatch a brood. Whilst at a rural wedding, we found eggs for sale at an ‘honesty box’ stand and had a sneak peak- they seemed to be a mix of marrams (dark brown eggs) and a greeny/bluey type (possible aracuna or legbar). Over the fence, we saw the marram hens running with a cockerel and decided to chance a purchase of 12 eggs (a bargain at £2!). Once home, it took Spike around a week to be convinced to sit, she only accepted 10 of the eggs and if we’ve got our sums right, they should be due to hatch a week today, that’s IF they’re fertile 🙂

Our second accidental adoption, was a farm cat. On the 3rd day of staying here, I entered the chicken coop to find a cat in there and promptly chased the little blighter off! A few days later, I entered the coop and found the cat and chicken curled up together- as soon as the cat (now known as Jiggles) saw me, she bolted and disappeared for days. Eventually she reappeared and we enticed her with food. We’ve now firmly adopted her (or rather, she’s adopted us) and she lives outside in the coop still and spend her days hunting voles in the fields with her diet topped-up with a little dry cat food.Great, until she tried to climb the outside of the polytunnel, but that’s a different story.

Whilst we’re on the subject of animals, I should also mention that we’ve got 6 quails in a section of the chicken coop- busily laying away. Remember the old place I mentioned that was too small for chickens? Well we had a quail run for eggs and brought them with us to the farm on the hill. They’re prolific little layers and keep us in eggs, even without the chickens. Although, if all goes to plan and we have a good hatch we’ll soon be overloaded with eggs!

A quick snap of Rose, nearly tempted to sit: