Should we get more chickens?

Posted by louisa on Sunday 19 September 2010 in chickens | 2 comments

And on a related should-we-shouldn’t-we matter, we’re currently trying to decide whether or not to get more chickens.

We’d always planned to get some Point of Lays in the autumn – the healthy spring chicks all growed up. According to my chicken guy, they are the best chickens to get – healthier in general and don’t go into moult as quickly as those born at other times of the year so stay productive for longer.

The original plan had been to get our chickens last autumn, job done, but when the coop & run were delayed, we got our four girls in the early summer – winter chicks come of age. Now it’s autumn again and we’re thinking whether or not to expand our collective.

For expansion: More eggs, especially over winter when they’ll all slow down.
Against expansion: We don’t use the four a day we’re getting at the moment. It’s nice to give the spares away though. Over winter, it’ll be nice to have a good supply but in more clement weather, we might get overwhelmed!

Read More

£100 for lie-ins: to get an automatic chicken door or not?

Posted by louisa on Friday 17 September 2010 in chickens, frugal | 2 comments

Since we got the chickens in June, I’ve been thinking, on and off, about getting an automatic door for their pop hole. Light-sensitive, it’ll open first thing in the morning and close again after they’ve put themselves to bed when it gets dark. It’ll allow the chickens to live to natural rhythms rather than our rhythms, and in the winter, it’ll mean they get the maximum daylight possible.

But we don’t really need one.

Left to our own devices, we stay up late and sleep late. I list “sleep” as an active hobby: I like the feeling of lying down, of being snuggly warm, and my vivid often lucid dreams are engrossing, often interactive, movies personalised for an audience of one. And nothing beats a lazy morning in bed, surrounded by animals, and reading a good book. Sadly that sort of lifestyle isn’t conducive with having a dog, let alone chickens and while I’m quite adept at running down to the coop in my robe, then jumping back into bed for a couple more hours of snoozing, it just isn’t the same. To be fair, we do get up in good time during the week but to not have to get up that early on weekends or days off, that would be great. An automatic door opener would allow us to wake up in our own time then go down to check on the chickens after breakfast.

But we don’t need to have lie-ins, we just like them.

Read More

Spicy marrow chutney recipe

Posted by louisa on Thursday 16 September 2010 in cooking, preserving | 23 comments

Here’s the first recipe from my preserving marathon on Tuesday: spicy marrow chutney.

With all the different spices, it’s got a very full taste rather than a one-note blast of chilli heat.

It’s not the texture of either smooth jelly-like jam nor chunky like Branston — although it would be possible to make it like that – just cut the marrow a lot smaller to start with, blend the onions etc and skip the mashing stage. I did it my way because I wanted something more spreadable for sandwiches. Plus chopping up so much marrow into teeny-tiny pieces? yawn.

It’ll be amazing with ham and beef.

Spicy marrow chutney recipe

Ingredients

Read More

Adventures in Preserving: insert your own hilarious jam pun here

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 15 September 2010 in cooking, growing, preserving, wild food | 4 comments

I had yesterday largely away off work/from my computer in order to catch up on my preserving.

As I tweeted last night:

Today I’ve made 5.5lbs of spicy marrow chutney, 3lbs of marrow & chilli jam, 4lbs of blackberry & apple jam, & 3lbs of spicy plum chutney.

Also made 3lbs of ratatouille & 2 giant marrow cakes. All using stuff from the garden; recipes for everything to follow on the blog soon!

And as I added this morning:

I have a blister on my hand from hacking up all the marrow yesterday. It’s like when I got a blister from too much spinning. I’m hardcore!

All the courgettes/marrow were from the garden – I used five out of six of the marrows I harvested the other day, and had collected 2.5lbs of courgettes for the ratatouille. The ratatouille also included tomatoes from the garden.

The spicy plum chutney was made from the remainder of the plums from the tree outside the kitchen, the ones that are either wild plums or cherry plum but either way, tasty plums. And the blackberries are from the field next door to our house. (Both fruits had been frozen for a couple of weeks but needed to come out to make room for the ratatouille and marrow cakes.)

I was truly exhausted by the end of the cooking session and when I count it in jars, it doesn’t feel like I’ve got a lot to show for all the work – but when I think that along with the last batch I made, it’ll more than fulfil our jam & chutney needs for a year, it feels like a lot more worthwhile.

Some of the recipes I kinda made up on the fly, others I tweaked from existing recipes – I’ll post them all with my modifications over the next week or so — let me know if you have any preference for ones to see first!

Read More

The last of the marrows

Posted by louisa on Monday 13 September 2010 in growing | 0 comments

On Saturday, I harvested the last of the marrows – just under 10kg in total. We’ll get some more courgettes yet – a dozen more or so at least – but they’ve slowed down their production enough that we’ll keep on top of them now so no more massive ones.

I decided to bring them in because a couple of their compadres had started going soggy (the non-soggy bits went to the chickens) and I thought it would be better to use them, not lose them.

We’ve probably had another couple went chickenward earlier in the year, and we’ve picked probably four or five marrows to use ourselves (for cakes, jams or actually as a vegetable) or give to others. It’s crazy to think we’ve possibly had 15-20kg of produce in marrows along – let alone all the courgettes we’ve had over the last few months!

My plans for these guys: chutney, chutney, jam and more chutney; and also more marrow cake to freeze – storing the marrow & summer egg glut together as one tasty cake!

Read More