Mmmm Custard

Yesterday, when off work feeling ill, I had a real craving for custard.

These days, 'Birds Custard' has a more literal interpretation for me.

Once upon a time, I would have got out the 'Birds' noxious looking fluorescent yellow powder, but when you have 10 laying hens in your back garden, you are morally obliged to make it yourself. And it is so easy! Seriously, if you have never tried making it, I implore you to have a bash - you will be amazed at how easy it is and how much nicer the texture and the taste is.

Homemade Custard

4 egg yolks

1/4 pint of milk

1/4 pint of cream

1 heaped tbsp cornflour

50g sugar

vanilla pod/essence

(you can skip the cream and add an extra tbsp cornflour instead)

1. Put the cream and all but a dash of the milk in a saucepan with the vanilla pod (not essence if using instead - that goes in at the end) slowly bring to the boil, stirring all the time.

2. Separate yolk from white (I think you could have worked this step out without a photo, this is really just to enable me to post a gratuitous picture of my blue egg)

3. Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour together with the dash of milk you kept back previously.

4. Once the milk has boiled, add it to the yolks slowly and from a bit of a height (so that it has time to cool a little and not cook the egg). If you are using vanilla essence instead, now is the time to add a few drops.

5.  Lastly, slowly heat the mixture on a medium heat until it thickens - no need to boil it, and keep stirring. As soon as it is lovely and thick, remove and serve. If you cook it too long or on too high a heat, it will get lumpy, a bit like scrambled egg. Leaving it to stand for a couple of minutes (yeah, right!) will also allow it to thicken.

And there you have it. Around here the correct phrase for a steaming jug of homemade custard is, I believe, 'gurt lush'.

 Please excuse the TeSco bag in the background, it wasn't from my shopping, honest!

A Quick Pumpkin

Hopefully it is not too late for these guys, pumpkin 'Big Max' (how can you resist growing a pumpkin with a name like that? Bugger how it tastes!) and some butternut squash 'Cobnut', seeds courtesy of my gardening heroine, Auntie Lis.

These are to replace plants which germinated, but didn't thrive - only a couple germinated and those that did were struck down with foot rot (where the stem splits in two and the leaves get really spindly and pathetic).

Luckily the heated propagator meant they germinated in just two days, so just in time to have them outside by the end of May. Phew!

Yes I Said Crochet

I could bear it no more. Susie at Useless Beauty, you have pushed me over the edge with all of your pictures of gorgeous homemade knitted stuff and I have decided to have a bash at crocheting something (again).

My long suffering boyfriend simply rolled his eyes and prepared himself for the coming weeks of mood swings, cries of frustration and bits of wool clogging up the hoover. You see I really do want to be good at knitting, and in my head I have visions of creating artisan pieces such as Susie and also my favourite if-money-was-no-object designer   Linda Wilson. I have tried several times and spent a fortune on wool but as yet have only created one wearable piece - a scarf. I did try a hat, but got fed up half way through and finished it off too soon, so that it is more like a Kippah and rolls itself off my head within two minutes of putting it on.

So I have started with a baby blanket. I actually bought this wool and pattern to make a blanket for my best friend Emma's impending arrival but I am ashamed to say he has just celebrated his second birthday.

The lady in John Lewis said it was quite simple so I bought the right size hook and the wool then got it home and opened the pattern...

Simple? Even the right way up it looks like Swahili to me.

I started it so many times, got lost and then gave up. This time I am determined to get it right. I re-created the pattern on graph paper using little pictures, and I think I have cracked it! I have gotten to the end of the pattern and and now just have to repeat it several hundred times.

It's a miracle! A pattern has emerged and everything!

If nothing else it is a great weight loss tool as I have so far been too busy with my fingers to put anything in my mouth of an evening.

The rest of the time bit

Please forgive the self indulgent rant which follows:

Another Monday and back to work. At the latest possible moment on Sunday nights the dread sets in. Fingernails are scrubbed, work shirts are frantically hung all over the place to dry at the last minute and the fecking alarm clock is set for a totally ungodly hour. Just incase this blog gives the impression that my life is one long pastoral frolic, I thought I would give you an idea of what the majority of the week is like:

Ah, the scenic and beautiful M4 morning commute. This is 5hrs and 45 minutes of my week.

Then there follows 37 hours and 30 minutes of this...

I know, Diet Poison - I hate myself, really.

Then, as a reprieve, if I can drag my sorry backside out for a run at lunchtime, approximately 3 hours a week of this:

Bristol Harbourside is a gorgeous place to run.

Then it is back in the car for a mind numbing 5hrs 45 mins a week of this:

And if I am lucky, the weather holds and it is still light I squeeze in an hour in the evening, of this:

Nude tights and a pencil skirt - ideal and totally practical gardening attire.

May update - lambs

A couple of posts ago, back in March, we picked up our three orphan lambs, with a view to raising them for meat.

Bottle feeding lambs is not something to be attempted if you are keen on sleep - the first few weeks, the lambs were on 6 hourly feeds. This generally took place at 12 and 6 o'clock, every day. As there are two of us, we each took either a morning or midnight feed to minimise sleep deprivation.

Warming the bottes in hot water first. The biggest inconvenience being that we had nowhere to chill the champagne, Tsk!

Then they were weaned at about 5 weeks old. This requires real willpower - as the noise they make when they are crying for milk can be utterly heartbreaking. We started by giving them a small amount of creep feed (little pellets of balanced feed) and fresh water alongside the milk during the day, which they sucked occasionally and gradually started to nibble at it. Sprinkling lamblac over the pellets (the powdered ewe milk replacement) helped.

Lamlac - other ewe milk replacers are available and might have slightly less menacing sheep on the packet.

 

By this time they had quit our straw lined stone garage and were outside in our paddock, which already had stock fencing from our pigs last year. Note - 5 week old lambs can jump straight through stock fencing! So we added chicken wire as well. They started to nibble the leaves from the trees and the hay which we used for their bedding - the pig arc doubled up perfectly as a little nightime shelter.

Then one day, we just stopped abruptly with the milk. This is widly touted as being the best way to get them on solids, but I know others who have phased them out gradually with success. Within a day they had started chowing down the pellets and drinking water.

What about grass I hear you ask? I am neurotic at the best of times, but no neurosis has gripped me as badly as 'Bloat Neurosis'

Sorry to the squeamish - a bloated sheep.

Bloat is a potentially fatal condition, prevelent in lambs, whereby a bacterial imbalance in the stomach produces excessive gas, which bloats the stomach and puts pressure on lungs causing suffocation. It is particularly common where new lambs with immature stomachs start to eat moist, lush, spring grass, clover and alfalfa. To avoid this we introduced them to older, longer grass very gradually, a few hours a day at most. Much to Oli's annoyance, I have rushed out at the slightest hint of a bump on their upper left side (where the stomach is) with natural yoghurt (said to aid the good bacteria and avoid gas) and to massage their stomachs to disperse any gas - sometimes at midnight, as I lie awake fretting that they will all be dead by the morning. (This can be quite amusing as they do fart if you push too hard!)

Needless to say, they were perfectly fine and are now permenantly on the pasture, so an absolute doddle to care for, only needing us to check they are OK twice a day. 

They really are eating machines and spend their days sleeping in a big pile, or moving from one tasty patch to another. I hope they enjoy a summer of sunshine and munching in this lovely spot. 

As soon as they spot you they come running - how bad do I feel?!

They are still desperate to be around us, even though we no longer have bottles on our person and like a good neck scratch. They are also still desperate to get through the stock fencing to the veggie patch, but are far too big for that now!

"Hmm this grass is so much greener!"

A May Update - Veg

Oh dear, like all of my intentions which start off well, I have let things slide on the blog front and realised it has been almost 6 weeks since my last post. Must try harder! It has been busy, busy busy here - here are some shots of the patch to give you an idea of where we are. Excuse the funny lighting - these were taken after work as otherwise I wouldn't have gotten around to it and another 6 weeks would have flown by.

As you can see in the tunnel, the broad beans which were sown early, are flowering nicely. I may hand pollinate these with a paintbrush as there is a a lack of pollinating insects under cover. We have had lots of early lettuce and radish from here, as well as dill and flat leaf parsley, which has spruced up the endless omelette's we get through! The pots contain blueberry bushes which are loaded with potential fruit and enjoying the murky water from the duckpond instead of ericacous fertilizer which is (in my view) too strong for these semi-bog plants. They are in the tunnel while they fruit to try and outsmart the birds.

You can't see clearly, but on the left of the tunnel there are some potatoes (planted mid March), with deceptively large halums and a few flower buds. I impatiently dug up a Red Duke of York the other day but they were only the size of Maltezers - a few more weeks to go. The Brassica seedlings are started off in here but will soon go out to make room for overflow tomatoes.

Excuse the mess. No point pretending it is ever anything but a mess.

In the greenhouse - still love it - we have cucumbers (by the door as they don't like to be too hot), sweet peppers, chillis, aubergines, melons along the back (a variety which grows to the size of an orange - great for our climate but never tried them before). Five tomato plants are coming along nicely along the right hand side. I still break into a sweat at only having 5 plants - more may go in the tunnel - but ALWAYS overdo it and end up stressed out at a mountain of rotting tomatoes festering in the fridge, because I can't use them all fast enough and can't face any more roasted tomato soup!

You can't see from the photo, but there is basil and coriander sown in the bare spots between the pepper plants, which will be transplanted at the foot of the tomato plants to ward off white fly and to chuck into pasta sauces and salads.

  

Yet again, I have gone WAY OTT with the potatoes - some are salads, (Pink Fir) some are first and second earlies and a maincrop of Wilja. Also some heritage hebredian black potatoes given to me by a crofting friend on the Isle of Lewis...can't wait to see how they turn out.

Onions, shallots and garlic that went in last October are looking good.

In the legume bed, peas. french beans, broad beans (the second round) and runners have all gone in.



I personally think peas are very pretty.



  

Er...yeah. Excuse the very unattractive squash bed, below. I am trying something new this year. Unfortunately the weeds won over and I didn't get around to digging over the squash plot before it became a major undertaking and now I just don't have time. So, bearing in mind that last year, the most successful squashes I grew were just the leftovers planted on the compost heap, I tried a little experiment. It goes something like this:

I have a friend who thinks this could be a potential Turner Prize Winner.

1.    Empty contents of compost bin - in varying stages of decay, onto newly strimmed patch of weeds and grass.

2.    Cover this stinky and messy mound with about 1/2 ft all over of well rotted horse manure (for which I am eternally grateful, we have in abundant supply).

3. Cover horse manure with old curtains, cutting planting holes. Make planting pockets with normal compost, and plant your squashes. Water well.

4.    Weigh curtains down with rocks and hope for the best!

The idea being that the compost/manure/curtain lasagna will, over the summer, kill all of the grass and weeds growing underneath, and the worms will help to work the manure into the bed for potatoes next year. It could be a disaster, but it will be no worse than the alternative, which is not growing squash at all and watching the thistles and grass take over completely. So far so good, although it dries out extremely quickly and needs watering most days.

I am doing something similar with sweetcorn, but will report on that another time.

Last night, we had our first strawberry! They are early this year and there are LOADS of them. 

Within tantalizing reach of the hen coop (bit of a planning oversight) the autumn Bliss raspberry canes are coming up nicely. These were an afterthought as I was given a divided clump last year but as it happens they did OK and an extra mulch should keep the weeds down.

Here is our rhubarb. These were planted last year as smallish plants, so should be established enough for a respectable harvest this year, but unfortunately all but one flowered (I have never seen a rhubarb flower before but they are nothing special). On the flowering plants, the stems were far too weedy and miserable to bother cooking, so I removed the flowers and left them to it. I think this may be because of the drought last year and this spring - causing the stressed plant to try a last ditch attempt at reproduction. However, we had a crumble out of the one 'Timperly Early' that didn't flower, so I don't feel too deprived.

So the news from the vegetable garden is 'nearly, but not quite' and I can't wait until I can stop buying veg and go back to just wandering into the garden to pick dinner.

Next time...a lamb update.

Thanks for reading!