A Years Hair Care Sorted

        

     

A mystery parcel arrived the other day.

At first I was baffled, and then I remembered a short email the other week telling me that I had won one of the prizes offered for filling in a short vegan survey.

My prize was a years supply of Faith in Nature shampoo and conditioner.

Brilliant, that's something else we won't have to buy for well over a year ... we both have very short hair so each bottle of shampoo will last us well over a month each.  And as I rarely use conditioner one bottle of that should last to go with each of the three shampoos of that 'flavour'.  Meaning I can sell two of each flavour conditioner at the next car boot sale we do and use the money I get to buy me a couple of boxes of hair dye ... a very necessary expenditure  ;-)

With selling in mind I went on the Faith in Nature website to have a look at how much these shampoos and conditioners retail for and was astonished to find it is £6 a bottle!!  Then I checked with Superdrug and found that they usually sell them for £5.99 but at the moment they are on offer at £2.99.  Whichever way you look at it I have done very nicely  :-)

So that's us sorted in haircare for at least a year, and another thing we can't produce ourselves ticked off the list.

Sue xx

The Plum Production Line

The other day we set up the plum production line, washing, stoning, skinning and then freezing a huge tray of our homegrown plums.

The Plum tree in Chicken World has done us proud this year, last year was a bit sadder and we lost most of the plums to the wild birds, but this year it would seem they have their minds and their feeding habits elsewhere and our crop is just brilliant, and all for us.  I think it helped a lot grease-banding the tree at the beginning of the year to keep codling moths and other bugs from crawling up the trunk, meaning that so much more of the crop is edible and in very good condition.

Anyway even after making two demi johns worth of plum wine a couple of weekends ago, taking plums to Mum for a couple of weeks and Lovely Hubby eating them whenever he passed the tree we still had this lovely lot to harvest and make good use of.

The rinse, cut in half, de-stone, peel from skin and put onto open freezing tray department.

And in no time at all with two of us working we had four trays ready for the freezer.

We still had enough to fill the jam pan almost to the top with what was left and add a litre of water.  It was all brought to the boil and left simmering for half an hour.

And then transferred to the jelly bags to drip through slowly overnight.

The next day it was all measured out, tipped back into the clean jam pan and I added 450 grams of sugar for each 600mls of plum juice.  It was brought slowly up to temperature so the sugar dissolved completely and then boiled rapidly for 15 minutes until it reached jam temperature and setting point.

Then it was poured, hot jam into hot jars and with lids put on it was left to cool, before labelling the next day.  Nine jars of Plum Jelly which now reside in the home preserves larder cupboard, and one in the fridge ... well you do have to sample the wares don't you ;-)

And in the fridge we have two and a bit jars of Plum Cordial, which is even easier to make.

Just add 350g sugar for every half litre of strained plum juice and heat in a pan until the sugar is dissolved, then bottle into warmed, sterile bottles and allow to cool.  It can be kept in a cool dark place for a couple of months.  If you want it to last longer you can continue and use the water bath method, but I doubt it will need to last that long in our house!!

So up to now we have :

2 demi johns of Plum Wine

10 jars of Plum Jelly

Two bottles of Plum Cordial

... and two 1.5 kgs of prepared Plums

Now we have one last picking of plums to do from the tree before leaving the last few for the wildlife and the chickens who are moving back to their original Chicken World later on tonight.  I'm not sure what they will become but it will add nicely to our little stash and keep us on our journey to fruity self sufficiency.

Sue xx

Leek Seeds, Strawberries and Washing

Watering in the net tunnel last night I spotted these lovelies all in a row and couldn't resist getting a quick photo of them.  

The leeks all went to seed in the intense hot spell we had a few weeks ago, my fault really I should have over compensated with lots of water but with them being in the net tunnel I forgot.  Still all is not lost, I used some of the leeks that I had to pull up for soup, the ones that weren't too woody that is and these I left in situ to develop into flower heads which will soon be followed by a mass of seeds that I can sow next year.

Also manically sending out runners for the next generation are the strawberries.  Someone asked me about strawberry runners so I'll nip out and get some photos and do a post about them tomorrow.  

 Now I have to brave the intense heat of the sunshine to go out and peg out some more washing, it's lovely in the cool of the house, but it's also lovely getting all the bedding washed, dried and back on the bed in the space of a few hours.

Sue xx

I've Come a Long Way

I did something this morning on the way to the paddock with the dogs that made me realise what a long way I've come in this 'new life in the country'.

Yes I grow our food, (I'll have to take a more up to date photo of the net tunnel it's looking nothing like this at the moment), we are pretty self sufficient in veggies at the moment, it's just the peppers that have failed me completely this year.

We have lots of our own and our neighbours fruit nestled in the freezer ready for use.

I've not had to buy an egg in years.

I seem to be best friends with one of the sheep :-)

I evict spiders from the house, okay with the use of a jug and cover, but hey years ago I would have just screamed and ran.  I reuse, recycle and re-invent all sorts of useful and helpful things around the place.  I remove dead chickens from the house when nature has helped them off this mortal coil.

And then this morning .....

... I carefully extricated a big dead rabbit that had got itself completely stuck in the fence, possibly after a mad dash across the road in the dark.  I hope it died quickly poor little thing.  

But I managed, with a struggle to get it's poor soft body out of the fence and throw it over the fence onto the grass verge where hopefully it will go to feed the wildlife.  I didn't want it to decompose in the fence and perhaps risk our dogs eating it at a later date when I wasn't around to tell them to 'leave it' which they did straight away this morning.

Touching dead rabbits with my bare hands ..... yes I've come a long way!

Sue xx

The Weekend

This weekend saw us doing something we don't normally do here ..... praying for rain!!

Lovely Hubby has been working for the last couple of weeks bringing soil over from our giant soil piles in the paddock and levelling the ground at the back of the house.  It's been a mammoth task even with the use of his little tractor.  Finally this weekend saw things contoured enough for us both to set to with rakes and then fertiliser and grass seed.

Those of you that have been reading the blog for a while will notice that there is something missing from this area ..... the flower bed that we installed by the hedge the Summer after we moved in has now gone, meaning that mowing of the grass will be a quicker and simpler affair in future ... and when you have as much grass as we have this needs to be the case.

We sheltered once from a heavy downpour just after we started and then worked for a couple of hours until all the fertiliser and seed was down, then it started really raining.  Smiling we went in, got dried off and cleaned up and then had lunch .... there was no need to get the hosepipe out as we had been planning.

In the post on Saturday was our second FIT (Feed in Tariff) payment .... it's so much nicer to be paid by British Gas than us paying them  :-)

A reader asked if the solar panels only work when it's sunny .... thankfully as we live in rainy North Wales it is powered by daylight rather than sunshine ... phew!!  And as it is almost the longest day it's working very efficiently at the moment.

Sue xx

New Birds - Self Sufficient In ... Eggs and Chicken

This is another in a series of posts about what we are, or are on our way to being, Self Sufficient In  ...

Saturday evening after tea we went to pick up four new birds to add to our now slightly diminished chicken flock.  With this year's natural deaths we were down to just sixteen birds, one cockerel, Jack and his fifteen wives, a couple of which are now barely laying due to their age.  

We don't cull our birds when they have stopped laying at the moment. but we have discussed this long and hard and from now on most of the birds we buy will be dual purpose to give Lovely Hubby a few chickens a year as home reared meat.

With this in mind we set out to purchase four Light Sussex hens which are large dual purpose hens exactly as we need.

(both these photos are from Google Images, I will photograph ours soon)

But then I got tempted by the Calder Rangers ... aren't they just a glorious colour, so we got two of each.

We are just in the process of setting up a schedule of buying four birds, once or twice a year to bring fresh laying capability into the flock and ease out the sparser laying older girls.  I have to grit my teeth and go along with this as it makes much more financial sense and will seem a bit easier to me than rearing a whole flock of birds separately that will all go to meat after a few months.  We also do not currently have the space to keep two flocks on the go at once as they couldn't live together, birds being bred purely for meat are on different food to those that are egg layers.

I sat and worked out our entire chicken keeping journey in financial terms the other day to see for myself how 'self-sufficient' we actually are in eggs, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that including our purchases of the five hen houses we have had over our lifetime of chicken keeping, adding back in the proceeds from the sale of two of them, the cost of the birds, the food, the vet bills for Daisy and all the other paraphernalia involved in hen keeping we come out nicely in the black .... just!!  It helped to balance the figures when we had our large flock of rescued free-rangers, and sold masses of eggs to regular customers at Lovely Hubby's workplace and also at the Farmers Markets we had monthly stalls at and the regular car boot sales in between markets.

Now we sell a lot fewer eggs but there was enough in the chicken kitty to buy the new girls and pay for feed for the next couple of months ... and of course there are eggs here still waiting to be sold.

So I can hand on heart say we are Self sufficient in eggs ... and one day, hopefully we will be self sufficient in chicken meat*.  

Sue xx

* Chicken meat will be supplemented by Lovely Hubby culling the rabbits on our hillside ... it's supposed to taste pretty similar, or so I've been reliably informed by the man himself, so he will use this in lots more of the dishes he currently uses chicken in.

Tomatoes LOTS of Tomatoes .... Potentially

Today is seeing me a drippy, sweaty mess in the polytunnel, working at 30 degree temperatures to pot on my tomato seedlings and put the larger ones into their final resting place in the Gro-Pots.

I've just started on the 'Gardener's Delight' Tomato seedlings.

And I really wanted to show those of you who are a bit dismayed at the lack of growth on your tomatoes compared to the plants you are seeing in the shops that all is not lost.  I have lots of tiny little seedlings that are only just going into their first sized pots after being started off in toilet roll inners.

The variable weather and chilly nights in the polytunnel has kept the growth checked but they will soon pick up now that we have had a few days of sunshine, even though they do look so ridiculously teeny, tiny now they are potted on individually.

These are just some of my 'Golden Sunrise' tomatoes.  I grew these last year and the flavour is amazing ... and they won me a couple of prizes at the two flower shows I entered with them.

This year instead of staking them I am going back to my 'greenhouse' method of allowing them to grow up strings that I have tied to the polytunnel cross frame bar.  They will need tying in a little bit as they wind their way around the string but it means that there is no mass of bamboo canes cluttering up the polytunnel.  We'll see if it works as well en-masse as it did in a single row in the greenhouse.

I have to admit to sowing far too many tomato seeds once again, and there are lots more plants waiting to be planted.  Some of them will be going in the net tunnel when I have hardened them off slightly,  and some if they put on good growth in the next month will be taken to the car boot sale with us to make some extra cash.

Oh well this has been a nice little computer break ... but now it's back to work.

Hope the sun is shining for you today too.

Sue xx

In the Fridge and Reverse Bills

Everytime I open the fridge I smile at it's contents ..... a pack of Nematodes is not what you expect to find on the cheese shelf!!  

I have just enough left in the pack after doing the poly and net tunnels just before I copper-banded them, to be able to do a couple of watering cans full of Nemaslug on the pots and the tin bath on the patio.  It needs to be used up by 5th April so I had better get a shufty on tomorrow.  Up to now there has been no sightings of any slugs or slug babies in the polytunnel and I've been digging over most of the beds so it seems to have worked very well.

And here it is ... our very first 'reverse bill'.  

A payment to us from British Gas for supplying the National Grid with some energy.  Lovely Hubby thought it should have been higher, but thinking about how dark and dismal it has been up until the last couple of weeks, and knowing that our battery backup system has only been fully in action for the last month or so I think  to get this much and more importantly not to get yet another quarterly bill for £450 or so pounds is very good.  Well I'm happy ... it's another step forward in our push for self sufficiency.

Sue xx

A Time of Hope ..... and Sowing

It's that deliciously hand rubbing together, gleeful time of year when I get all my seeds out and start to make the plans of what we will grow, harvest and eat in the months ahead.  

The packets of free seeds gathered together each month from the copies of my subscription magazine have been mixed with all the seed packets leftover from last year and from years previous.  Some packets go as far back as 2011 and are the ones inherited from Mum and Dad's seed collection, I know which ones these are as they have Mum and Dad's handwriting on them.  Bearing little snippets of descriptions and information.  

It links me with my past, anchors me in the present and gives me hope for the future.  There's a lot of hope in a tiny seed.

Some packs that didn't germinate last year and were seriously old have been thrown away, the small selection in the basket have picked out for planting next week, a smaller handful of things I have no intention of growing have been popped into the car boot sale box and my great big wooden drawer is on standby for the coming weeks.

Spring is on it's way .... I can feel it in the air.  It's time to throw off the blanket of Winter, time to dip my fingers in the compost and set to, we have earth to tend, seeds to sow, food to grow  :-)

Sue xx

The Log Store

One of our many aims in our quest to be as self sufficient as we possibly can be, is to successfully manage our woodland to give us enough wood to see us through the colder months of the year.  This year with the long damp period and now this sudden, although very welcome cold spell, we have almost used up our supply of our own cut seasoned logs.  

Knowing that any wood cut now would be much too wet to burn well and give off any heat we have bitten the bullet and bought in a supply of logs to replenish the log store and see us through these last few weeks of cold weather, and of course what we don't burn now will give us a head start in our gathering together of next Winters wood.

Kindling we have lots of  ... as Lovely Hubby has a mammoth chopping spell every month or so and fills up a large builders bag of  wood chopped from the many pallets and scrap wood we have gathered. We also have buckets of twigs and smaller bits of wood that I collect when I'm out and about, especially after windy nights.  A few days in the log store and these dry out wonderfully and can be used to start the fire each night.

One tick of the list of self-sufficiency .... if you manage your woodland well .... which is what we intend to do now that we are almost at the end of sorting out the house and land around the house and we will finally have more time.

Sue xx

There are Many Ways to Self Suffciency

I'm currently reading the last chapter of one of Lovely Hubby's Christmas presents, the book 'Pigs in Clover' by Simon Dawson .  Don't you feel special when someone lets you read their brand new book before they've even peeked inside the cover ... I do.   I'll have to return the favour to him one day if he can prise a brand new book out of my fingers  ;-)

Anyway, this book as well as being very entertaining has made me think a lot.  

I was walking along Llandudno prom with Mavis and Rosy thinking, then I was stood thinking on the six foot width of sand ...  all that was left as the tide was just starting to go out ... while Rosy did her 'I'm doggy Canute and you will retreat from whence you came when I tell you to' baking frenzy at the lapping waves.  Running in and out getting her feet wet and timing it carefully so the rest of her stayed dry .... she's absolutely barking mad that dog!!

Anyway going round in my head was the happy thought that we've done our self sufficiency thing a little bet better than Simon and Debbie did, well if you count animal fatalities, money woes and planning as a criteria for a good go at self sufficiency.   I'm not smug ...  just happy that thanks to our careful planning, learning as we went and more importantly learning before we needed to things have worked out pretty well.

We went on a chicken course before we got our first batch of ten rescue girls so we'd know what to expect, we made sure the house was finished before we picked them up .... it was with hours to spare, although the run as you can see from this photo wasn't quite finished!!

How we possibly thought putting a kneeling mat across the doorway was going to keep them out of the house .....

... I have no idea  :-)

Yes, some things we learnt as we went along, but a week after getting the girls we took ourselves off on another course a more medical based one to learn about chicken health and the rules and regulations of selling eggs to the public.  If there's one thing about Lovely Hubby it's that he likes to do things properly.

These girls, Cappuccino, Latte, Mother, Milly, Molly, Little Lovely, Big Lovely, Lovely, Jemima and Mona were with us from when we 'rescued' them at 14 months until their deaths, most of them natural, a couple by Mr Fox and one by a Red Kite strike, and taught us so much about chicken keeping, as well as bringing their laughable antics to our lives when we needed them most, and driving our Border Collie, Sophie mad trying to round them up.  At last she had come to a place that needed her unique skills ... that her flock were inside a fence and she was running in huge rings round it had nothing to do with anything!!

Looking back we have learnt so much over the past few years, and reading this book about someone else's struggles, accidents and happy animal moments made me realise this even more.

I have both  :-)

Sue xx

A Trip Down Memory Lane

A trip down memory lane.

Yesterday looking for the image of the 'Cowavan' to share on the post I went into my photo 'album' from 2010.  I found myself spending far too long browsing the pictures.  I think it was the sunshine, the fresh greenery and the idyllic pictures of our southern England farm.

Oh, how I'm missing some sunshine at the moment .... I bet a few of you are too so I'll share some of what I was looking at, all taken in June 2010 ... the year the chickens had two houses, well we had over 50 chickens!!

The year the veggie patch at the back of the house was lush and rampant.  We had huge crops of onions, carrots and all sorts of fresh foods to eat.

The year a certain little Rosy was almost one year old.

The pigs lived in the orchard.  This picture shows Betty, the Berkshire, with Lottie and Lulu the Large Blacks at the front of the shot.  In the distance you can just about make out Maud and Martha the Middle Whites.

And this lush area is my original polytunnel.

A trip down a very sunny and green memory lane.  Oh well time to pull on the wellies, trudge through the mud and clean out the henhouse, and I must of course remember that we had some of the deepest, slushiest mud when we lived there on Jointers Farm in Oxfordshire .... it wasn't all so idyllic, far from it!!

But on an icy cold January day it's nice to put on your rose tinted glasses for ten minutes :-)

Sue xx

Flicking a Switch ..... or Keeping Warm the Cheaper Way

It's been cold here this morning, and I mean really cold, so much so I was almost tempted to flick a switch and set the central heating in motion ..... almost!!

Instead I decided to go out to the wood store and bring some more logs and wood into the house.  There was already enough at the side of the log burner to have a fire tonight, but I don't like filling up the log basket in the dark, spiders, moths and screeching birds make for an eerie time late at night, and anyway wood at room temperature burns so much better and warmer.  So I thought I should stock up now so I could light the fire early to warm up the house.

Once we do get the house warm it holds onto the heat really well thanks to the excessively thick insulation in the loft and the Aga ticking over twenty four seven.

Two loads of wood like this and I was happy I had more than enough wood to last the afternoon and the evening.

Oh, and did you spot the little visitor in the top two pictures .....

... I thought I saw movement as I stepped back with my bowl of wood and when I stood still and watched he started hopping about.  A cheerful little chappy in his red waistcoat.  He made my day.

After all the gathering and carrying of the ood and then stacking it beside the log burner I was lovely and warm so I didn't end up lighting the fire but I will be lovely and cosy tonight .... and hopefully somewhere outside in his nest or den so will my little feathered friend.

Sue xx