Our long weekend

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 26 April 2011 in chickens, DIY, growing, wild food, wood stuff | 8 comments

Cor, I feel like I’ve not written here for weeks! Like Christmas, Easter doesn’t mean anything to us here – not even the consumption of chocolate – so we’ve just had four days of doing nothing. Well, not doing nothing…

On Friday, I spent a lot of time reading about Square Foot Gardening. It’s something I’d heard vaguely about before and suspected I’d borrow it’s spacing principles when sowing/planting in my various wooden planters, but Friday was the first time I sat down and read about it. Then fully converted to the idea, I built a 3ftx3ft raised bed from our old bathroom cupboard doors (4ftx4ft is more typical but my doors were 6ft tall so 3ft-square was easier and also tucked away better into a space next to the pond).

I reused the former hinge screws to mark out every foot around the frame, so I could easily divide it into those magic foot square sections with twine. I haven’t decided exactly what I’ll plant in it yet but looking at the planting guidelines, my nine squares could be a rather productive space.

We did have a rather lazy day on Saturday – mostly reading in the sun – but Sunday was productive again: we painted the bathroom. I’m holding off talking about our bathroom renovation until its finished (two long months and counting) but I will say, it’s now rather blue.

It needs some more filling/sanding then a second coat, but it’s feels like it’s finally starting to come together. Hurrah.

Yesterday, we had the bathroom flooring fitted (hence the rush to paint at least one coat on the walls on a sunny Sunday) then went for a dog walk at Shipley Glen. When we came back, I pottered in the garden – chicken chores and potting on (the third batch of tomato plants, the two types of courgette, some lollo roso lettuces). I’ve decided that I’m not allowed to sow any more stuff until I’ve dealt with the stuff currently growing – stuff that needs pricking out or potting on – so I don’t get overwhelmed and leave things in too small pots for too long, as happened at some points last year. I can’t wait until stuff can be planted out in the garden en masse though – the greenhouse is just about full of seedlings and the sun porch is pretty packed too. It would also be useful to be able to start clearing space in the salad troughs/pots – grow faster lettuces, I want to eat you!

On the chicken front, Ginger is still broody – I’m kicking her out of the nest box whenever I go down there to make sure she gets food and water regularly, and I’m getting some harsh bwarking in return. I think I managed to talk Blacks out of following her though – she was acting a little hot & bothered for a couple of days but I cooled her down a bit and she’s back to normal and laying again now.

And while we were down near the chickens yesterday, John spotted what he called “the biggest mushrooms I’ve ever seen in my life” – a slight exaggeration maybe but they are pretty sizeable:

They’re on the tree trunk marking the division between our and our neighbour’s gardens and since we walk past there at least once a day, I’m pretty surprised how they got so big without us noticing. I think they’re Dryad’s Saddle (Polyporus squamosus) – edible but only really when they’re young. These guys are probably past it now but I’ll keep an eye out for future fruiting.

So our four-day-weekend was a decent combination of laziness and productivity, how was yours?

Things from yesterday and today

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 8 February 2011 in growing, meta | 3 comments

I started my potatoes chitting yesterday. Well, they’d already started chitting all by themselves but I took them out of their nets and put them in egg boxes. Now to remember which is which…

Today is the first time in about a week when it’s not been blowing a gale so I’m tempted to spend the afternoon away from my computer and sow some seeds. Weee!

I collected six eggs this morning – we usually get five max. Being realistic, I think it was probably just a late one from yesterday and today’s five – but one was a little small, so maybe Lime’s coming out of moult.

(Buff has yet to provide us with a single egg (she’ll lay white ones, the rest lay light to mid brown ones so it’ll be clear when she does get around to it) and is getting noisier. From what I’ve read, it’s not uncommon for Leghorns to be late starters, and I guess winter will exacerbate that, but I’m worried she thinks she is a boy – or actually is a boy. Nothing obvious yet but *paranoia*.)

Our meal planning made it to Day Two before failing completely. Yay us. There is a reason though – we had both completely forgotten that John’s attending a talk in Manchester tonight so not only will be out for dinner but will need more substance at lunchtime than soup will provide (he’s unlikely to be eating dinner until after 9pm). And also half his company came for lunch today either en route to the talk or just because there was mention of fish and chips and everyone loves fish and chips. I will probably still end up making the sausage & lentil casserole because the sausages will go off otherwise, but I’ll freeze tonight’s portion instead.

I made the spicy butternut squash soup before we realised the change of plans so I’ll have that for dinner tonight. I made approximately 3litres of it. I might freeze some of that too ;)

A book on vegetable-oil soap making that I’d been umming and aahing about buying for ages arrived this morning – can’t wait to give that a go.

Some embroidery fabric (bought on eBay) also arrived so I can start on my next big stitchery project. Going to wait until I’ve finished the blanket (which is now wide enough to keep me warm while I’m crocheting it :) ) rather than get distracted but I’m working on my pattern. It’s going to be an evolving piece actually – it’ll never be finished-finished – which makes planning interesting!

We shaved & bathed the dog last night. (Not a euphemism.) She feels like silky velvet at the moment and while it’s not a perfect job, it’s certainly passable. It would have cost us at least £45 if we’d paid someone else to do it. She slept through all the clipping and got an egg afterwards for being a good girl.

There has been a few clumps of small brown mushrooms growing on the garden steps (covered with wood chippings) recently and I picked one to identify yesterday. It looks very much like a Deceiver (Laccaria Laccata) but it seems far too late in the year/early in the next one to be those. I will keep looking through my books to see what else it might be but any other suggestions would be gratefully received :)

What have you guys been up to?

Summer will come again, it will, it will

Posted by louisa on Friday 17 December 2010 in growing | 1 comment

Hurrah, in the midst all this fervent frugality and frozen frigidity, I’ve been reminded that summer – and growing – will come again.

Yesterday, as the snow was coming down pretty hard, the postman delivered an parcel of live plants which I ordered back in November – a baby lingonberry bush, a baby cranberry bush and 12 strawberry runners (not pictured).

As I’m new to fruit and as it’s pretty damn chilly out there, I post an “arggh! what do I do with them?” message on Twitter and on UKVegGardeners, and the wonderful Jan told me exactly how to look after (but not molly-coddle) the strawberries. Thanks so much Jan!

I have a bit more faith in the lingonberry and cranberry making it through the winter in one piece since they’re both cold climate plants – I’m going to keep them in their current pots during this cold spell, and in the unheated sunporch rather than the greenhouse (it gets a little heat from the house but more importantly, it’ll be easier for me to keep an eye on them) and plant them into bigger containers when it gets warm enough for me go into the garden without my teeth chattering. I’m expecting a dwarf cherry tree as part of the same order – I’m kinda hoping it doesn’t arrive this side of Christmas now as that’ll involve digging out a big old shrub thing — not going to happen in this weather!

As well as those arriving, on Wednesday, my also-ordered-weeks-ago oyster mushroom dowel spores. I’m very excited about these – I’ve spent the last year reading and learning a lot about finding and identifying wild mushrooms, but not finding a whole lot of edibles near here. These will allow me to cultivate some of our own – and hopefully further utilise the shaded far end of our garden. Although as it’s currently being used as part log store/part bonfire-in-progress, I’m going to have to clearly mark my inseminated logs!

Speaking of which, I have to find some logs for inseminating – they need to be a hardwood, ideally oak, beech or birch, about 10-15cm in diameter and cut within the last six weeks or so. I’d hoped I could use sycamore as we have several thin-and-pointless sycamores that I could cull but apparently sycamore isn’t advised. I think the neighbours have a silly, never-going-to-grow-up silver birch in the neglected bit of their garden so I might ask if I could have in return for the promise of mushrooms at a later date.

(In other food-from-the-garden related news, the chickens seem to have succumbed to the winter – we’re only getting one or two a day from the four layers now, and the new girls still haven’t offered up anything, not even a wonky shelled one, even though they’re probably about 21 weeks old now. (They’re noticeably bigger than when we go them.) I’m going to give the original girls a good fondle this weekend to make sure nothing is wrong with them physically – I don’t think there is, just the lack of light. Hopefully they’ll pick up again as the days start lengthening.)

Mushroom hunting at Ogden Water, Halifax

Posted by louisa on Monday 1 November 2010 in wild food | 1 comment

Yesterday John, Lily-dog and I went on a long awaited funghi forage, led by Jesper Launder and organised by Slow Food West Yorkshire.

We went on another wild food walk with Jesper & SlowFoodWY in May – mostly tasting different greens and crayfish – and as our interest in wild food and mushrooms has sky rocketed since then, we were very much looking forward to yesterday’s walk. Unfortunately some local rapscallions nearly caused us to miss it at the last minute – on leaving the house to get into the car, we found someone had nicked one of the wheels! We were grateful, again, that we have a cheap runaround car that we don’t really care about – and that they’d left all the nuts etc, so we could fit the spare and get to the walk just half an hour late.

We met the group in the woods just over the dam at Ogden Water. We’d not been to the reservoir before but will return again – it was misty so unearthily beautiful – and the woods a combination of broadleaf and conifer tree, making the mushroom picking extensive and varied. The group had already picked a few different types of mushroom but between us we found many, many more as the walk went on.

As with the considerably warmer and dryer wild food walk earlier in the year, Jesper enthusiastically identified every ‘shroom we took over to him, and told us how to use them or cook them, or whether to discard them unless we wanted hallucinations and painful death. There were too many different types to remember but I did get confirmations on some that I had been unsure about – and got to try eating some I’d seen & identified previously but not wanted to cook up for fear of that painful death stuff.

Some of the ones we got to eat and I’d happily pick & eat again:

• The Deceiver (Laccaria Laccata) – something I’ve seen before but not concretely identified, small and unsubstantial but good in a mixture
• Amethyst Deceiver (Laccaria Amethystea) – something we’d found before and identified, because nothing else is quite so purple
• Honey Fungus (Armillaria Mellea) – we found a full stump of these just near the end of the walk
• Grisettes (Amanita Vaginata) – something not included in my little pocket mushroom book so not something I’d really heard of before, but a decent size so well worth looking out for
• Wood Blewit (Lepista Nuda)
• The Blusher (Amanita Rubescens)

I also got to ask questions I’d been wanting to ask since I started identifying mushrooms such as “is there anything so poisonous that we shouldn’t pick it up?” (no, even licking your fingers after a death cap is probably ok) and “how much do you need to eat of the poisonous ones before the painful death thing?” (depends on the mushroom, some it’s a lot but death caps can sometimes kill after just half a cap so it’s well worth being careful).

I also got a book recommendation from Jesper – Mushrooms by Roger Philips – which will hopefully be a useful definitive guide in comparison to my existing not great ones. If nothing else, I find it very useful to cross-referencing potentially identifications (the more pictures the better).

All in all, despite the wheel-stealing-stress and the rain, it was a great day. We met some lovely people, learned a lot about funghi and found a fab new place to take Lily-dog. I’d highly recommend a walk with Jesper and will definitely be going on the next SlowFoodWY wild food walk.

(Apologies for the lack of pictures – I forgot my camera in all the where’s-the-wheel-gone hoohah. I’m hoping someone else will post some freely licensed pictures soon!)

Spotted – foxes and fungi

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 5 October 2010 in wild food | 0 comments

On our lunchtime dog walk today, the dog ran through the beck into the meadow – the steep hill of grassland a short way from our house – and stopped.

From the ridge at the top of the slope, two burnt orange foxes were staring back down at her – they looked between her and me, then ran off into the woodland between the meadow and our house. I wish I’d had time to take a picture – John’s yet to see any foxes around here and also, the contrast between their fur and the green grass was extraordinary.

Lily *needed* to thoroughly smell where the foxes had been so while she was busy with her nose, I looked for mushrooms. There were a number of different tiny bell cap type mushrooms around in the grass – I think the bigger one (which is about 10mm in diameter) is a brown bell cap (Conocybe Tenera), and the darker one is possibly a hay cap (Panaeolus Foenisecii). Not sure about the little one – possibly a baby brown bell cap?

I also spotted one of the biggest mushrooms I’ve seen around here – a Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria) about 20cm in diameter. It had been knocked off its stalk and the gills were damaged – either by the heavy-heavy rain from the other day or by foxes wanting a trip.

Finally, I saw a couple of interesting bluey-grey mushrooms on the edge between the woodland and grassland. This one is pretty badly damaged so I brought it home to identify it – and I’m pretty sure it’s an Aniseed Funnel Cap (Clitocybe Odora) — the smell is really quite distinctive.