Frugal, cooking, growing and making link love

Posted by louisa on Friday 19 November 2010 in chickens, cooking, frugal, growing, meta, wood stuff | 2 comments

It’s super foggy here this morning so I need some ace inspiration to get going – and I thought you might need some too. Here are some of my favourite reads from the last few weeks…

• Ana White makes things that always excite me – demystifying woodwork and creating fab bits of furniture cheaply and easily. I think her old Knock Off Wood blog was the site that most inspired me to pick up a saw and screwdriver – and I just love her most recent side-table – and her “paint it bright” philosophy!
• One thing I was missing when I made my meal from just things I’d grown/caught/foraged was salt – now thanks to ManUpATree, I’m inspired to try making some myself – just got to find some clean enough sea water…
• Gillian of My Tiny Plot neatly summarised Which? Gardening’s heritage versus hybrid veg article – very useful info, thanks Gillian!
• Damn the Broccoli gave us some useful tips on staying warm but keeping the heating bills low…
• Compostwoman of The Compost Bin has been writing about… composting. Specifically, how she does it – and a very seasonal post on how to make leaf mould.
• And finally, Little House in the Suburbs recently ran a seven part series asking their community about lots of aspects of chicken keeping. I’ve contributed a number of times and loved reading what other people had to say – lots of very good advice and suggestions.

(For anyone who cares, the first is from the top of our garden, looking into the woods next door/at the bottom of the garden – and our chicken coop is in the bottom right; the second is the bandy trees at the bottom of our garden, just behind the chicken run; and the third is over our wood pile to the north, we can’t see our neighbour in that direction in the summer – or when it’s foggy!)

Spicy pickled eggs recipe

Posted by louisa on Thursday 18 November 2010 in cooking, preserving, recipes | 5 comments

Keen to preserve some of the summer glut of eggs and add to the super-spicy items in our store cupboard (we never have enough!), I’ve pickled a few lots of eggs over the last few months.

We finally cracked open the spicy batch earlier this week – yum! Between the tart vinegar and the spices, they’re really quite strongly flavoured – but good. We had them with bread & cheese, instead of a chutney, and they were perfect for adding a bit of bite to the proceedings.

(Apologies for the not great photo – the full jar looked ace but then we ate half of them!)

Have you made this? What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Next year’s growing plans

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 16 November 2010 in frugal, growing | 2 comments

I think this time of year may be favourite part of gardening – when I get to start making exciting plans for next year from the comfort of the sofa. Mmm, sofa.

So far, I’m planning the following – and thankfully, it doesn’t look like I’ve have to spend too much more on new seeds.

Old faithfuls:

• All sorts of lettuce including winter gem & spicy leaves – all leftover seed & seeds bought in a 75% sale off
• Broad beans – some saved seed, some leftover seed
• French beans – some saved seeds, some sale seeds
• Pumpkins a go go – I seem to have four different types of pumpkin seeds, bought in various mega-discount sales – not sure I’ll grow them all
• Courgettes & marrow – some saved seed and some new
• Chillis – super hot birds eye ones and cooler jalapeno types – leftover and sale seeds
• Carrots – sale seed, bought 75% off
• Misc brassicas – try broccoli, kale & cabbage again, maybe not cauliflower. Got leftover seed for all
• Leeks & onions – leftover seeds
• Tomatoes – some saved seeds, some new sale seeds
• Swiss chard – leftover seeds
• Potatoes – will have to buy some new seed potatoes, probably go for salad ones

Herbs – old and new:

• Borage – leftover seed and I suspect we might get a few plants from self-seeding too
• Tarragon & Oregano – might be able to coax a couple of plants through winter…
• Mint, Rosemary and Lavender – existing plants should survive
• Sage – new seeds bought in 50% off sale
• Meadow-sweet – new seeds, tempted to try use them, and some other wild flowers, for a bit of guerilla gardening in the local environs…
• Basil – need new seeds by the look of it
• Comfrey – a little amount for green manuring, sale seeds
• Cat nip – existing seeds, existing cats

New exciting things!

• Cucumber – not sure why I didn’t do them this year, seed bought on sale will be grown next year!
• Apples & pears – trees en route, might get a little fruit next year
• Strawberries – since I don’t do fruit, I’ve not grown any but John is interested in strawberries and mmm, strawberry jam. Need to buy seeds/plants.
• Scotch Bonnet peppers – more hot hot chillis. Need to buy seeds.

Extra exciting maybes!

• Achocha – if I get organised enough to buy some seeds
• Asparagus – ditto substituting “seeds” for “crowns”
• Some sort of berry thing to grow in a planter – maybe cranberry or lingonberry – need to decide & buy
• Mushrooms – we’ve got the space, shade and wood, so we might as well try to grow some deliberately rather than just letting nature take its course. I’m thinking maybe oyster mushrooms.

What are you planning to grow next year? Anything new?

Is there something I’ve missed off my list that you think I should definitely try?

New chickens settling in

Posted by louisa on Monday 15 November 2010 in chickens | 4 comments

The remaining three of our new intake seem to be doing ok – and are already showing themselves to be funny little chicks. Add your own captions/voiceovers for these pics ;)

When I went down first thing, they were running around outside and when I went back after lunch, they were trying out the coop perches (they slept in the nest boxes last night so hopefully they’re building up to perching). Admittedly, I think part of the reason they were up there was to have a break from the others – I was down there for about an hour, only one peck happened but there was certainly some intimidation. But it has also been chuffing cold today so I don’t blame them for heading back inside. (The frost lingered in parts of the garden/woods all day, despite it being pretty sunny, brrr! I thought I’d have to break the ice on the drinkers this morning – as I had to do on the outside dog bowl – but someone with a beak had beat me to it.)

While I know pecking has been taking place, these girls don’t seem to have any visible feather loss. All three of them ate corn out of my hand and while I was in the run, the two Black Rocks stretched their legs outside for a bit and both let me stroke them. As I said yesterday, it took the ISA Browns a week until they’d eat out of ours hands or stroke them/easily pick them up, so the new girls are ahead of the curve in some ways.

Where chickens go shopping for clothes

Posted by louisa on Monday 15 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

From an IM chat with my friend Katherine…

1. New Cluck
2. Debenhens
3. Clucci
4. Henley’s
5. Hennes (old school name for H&M)
6. Cropshop
7. John Flewis
8. Marks and Hencers

And for their underwear:

1. Bwarkissimo (for big breasted birds)
2. La Henza

(I’m sorry.)

(Mrs Mauve can’t even look at me any more.)

One down – Minnie the Black Minorca chicken died overnight :(

Posted by louisa on Sunday 14 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

As I mentioned on Twitter earlier, we had our first* chicken death here on Saturday night/Sunday morning. It was the little Black Minorca, who we only brought home on Friday. Sigh.

When I went down to see them on Saturday, she was hiding under the little shelter I’d built and wasn’t interested in coming out – she was next to the drinker and I left her a little pile of food nearby. It was damp and she’d had a scary couple of days so I wasn’t going to rush her. When we got back from Southport though, she was still under there. All the others had put themselves to bed but she hadn’t.

She didn’t try to run away when I picked her up from under there – which in hindsight should have been a sign something wasn’t right. I took her to the coop and tried to place her on a perch – but she was holding her legs strangely and wouldn’t grasp it, so I placed her on the coop floor instead. I went back into the house and told John I was worried about her because she seemed really weak – and it turns out I was right to be worried: this morning, we found her dead very near where I left her.

A rubbish swap

Posted by louisa on Sunday 14 November 2010 in charity shopping, frugal | 0 comments

We went to Southport yesterday to see my mum & dad.

We returned with:

• 8 empty egg boxes
• a 2ltr ice cream tub of baked & crushed egg shells
• 4 20 year old gallon demi johns
• several small glass jars for preserving
• 5 or 6 children’s DVDs (newspaper freebies)

We should have also brought back some logs & some kindling but it was too dark/wet to get them from the garden, so we’re leaving them there to season instead. They’ve also been collecting screw top wine bottles for our home brewing escapades but we forgot to collect them.

We took them surplus rather than “rubbish”. I forgot to take any jam for my part of the swap but took them fresh eggs from our hens and some of my leftover/spare veg seeds for my dad — I gave him some carrot, cucumber, cabbage, leek, salad onion, cat nip and cat grass.

As well as the swapping, we also got to have a run around on the sand dunes behind my old school and went charity shopping/second-hand book shopping. We got six books: two fiction ones, one social theory book on how mothers are scapegoated in contemporary society, Graham Chapman’s biography, one of Steven Pinker’s books & a book on the history of Bradford (irony!) – so later today I’ll have to find 3 of ours to get rid of now, as per my recent book limiting policy.

A distinct lack of seaside rock & candy floss but otherwise a good “rubbish” swap – lots of items set for landfill/recycling, will be put to good use!