Parcel Delivery

Now when I go out and come home to find a parcel on the doorstep it is usually a new book, or some kitchen gadget that I have succumbed to, so you can imagine my delight when I got back from the shops the other day to find a box waiting for me on the step.

I couldn't remember ordering anything, I've been so good recently, so I was pretty excited .....

... until I looked a bit closer at the label on the corner.

Yep, this is one of Lovely Hubby's orderings!!

Oh well, we are a bit short of worms in the polytunnel, and on the hillside, and some of them are destined to be tipped into the compost bins.  :-)

I found this little cutie when I was picking yesterdays tomatoes.  Two tomatoes sharing one calyx ... awww how sweet.

Sue xx

What a Worry

What a worry these chickens cause us sometimes.

 I spotted Caldwell snoozing in the sun the other day ... he stayed there for hours.  Hunched over and not responding to any movement around him.  I went over and checked him once and although he was very still with his eyes shut, he was warm and seemed to be just sleeping.

Then a few hours later Lovely Hubby shouted to me that Caldwell looked worse.  By the time we got over into Chicken World he as lying down and appeared lifeless.  LH picked him up and there was no resistance, he passed him over to me.  I stroked his feathers and his eyes opened, he seemed to pull himself together and sat himself more comfortably in my arms.

After a thorough looking over and checking every bit of him I sat him back down on the grass in the sunshine and he seemed to have perked up a bit.  I put a small handful of corn in front of him and he did his usual thing of calling the hens over to him to eat their fill.

They came and soon the corn was gone.

Then all through the day the hens took it in turns to come and sit by or simply loiter by the man in their lives.

Fussing around him and encouraging him to nibble at grass and the things in it.

He seemed to have a hen near him all day, which is unusual, he usually sits alone slightly apart from the girls and their clucky female busy-ness.

At the end of the day we kept an eye out for him in case he wasn't well enough to make it into the henhouse unaided, but by dusk he was on his usual perch on the top row in the henhouse.

And then this morning 48 hours after causing us lots of worry, he's back to his normal fighting fit self, strutting his stuff and most definitely being the head of the flock.

Now I only have to wait for him to attack Lovely Hubby and I know he completely back to normal.

Sue xx

Polytunnel Progress - August

The polytunnel this month is looking very green .... AND orange!!

No wonder Lovely Hubby keeps going in there, he loves orange ... did you guess the other day  ;-)

The 'Dwarf Marigolds' are anything but dwarf, and lots of them have already been dug up and put into pots, a couple of which flank the conservatory doors back over at the house.

The view from the other end.

Outside it was looking rather forlorn as I had just harvested the last of the peas, so I decided to pull up the plants,  Normally I would have pulled off the few dried out pods that were left to save for seed next year, but I wasn't impressed with this batch of peas so I decided not to bother.

The pea plant on the other side was almost hidden behind the now almost fully recovered Magnolia tree.

The Tomtato plant next to the pea tyres is doing well ...

... but not quite as well as the other two at the far end of the tunnel which gets much more sun throughout the day which radiates back off the polythene of the tunnel and warms them on both sides.

So to get some of the 'orange out of the polytunnel and to make some more space for the soon to be planted Winter crops I decided to fill the tyres on both sides with some of the Marigolds.  Four in the tyres and two yellow ones in the Artichoke tub.

There are two in this set of tyres along with my new Blackberry bushes, which will have the tyres to themselves once the marigolds have finished flowering.

There it looks a bit brighter now.

So it's looking slightly less orange inside now and I have a bit of much needed space.

At the moment from the tunnel we are eating -

Cucumber

Radish

Lettuce

Tomatoes

Herbs

Spring Onions

Courgettes

Spinach

Kale

Beetroot

Peppers

Carrots

... and the Chillies are almost ready for picking, including some lovely ORANGE ones  ;-)

Sue xx

Building Work, Spinach and Shows .....

The building work is really ramping up a pace now, yesterday the back of the wall was neatened up, load after load of our topsoil was brought back over ready for a flower bed on this side of the wall, and Lovely Hubby has been busy sifting the soil for the net tunnel so that we could have some of the stones that he sifted out to weigh down membrane that is being placed at the very front of the wall, nearest the road, so that the weeds will not grow through where it will be quite inaccessible to get to.

Lots and lots of hard work.

AND.... the walls are almost up on the garage and workshop, the windows are ordered and even the white masonry paint for the inside has been bought.  Today has seen us crawling with builders and brickies, all doing their own thing and needing regularly watering with cups of tea, coffee and cold drinks. but it's nice to see things finally coming together.  

Hopefully by the end of the month it will be done and things will once again return to normal, although to be honest I've forgotten what 'normal' is.

Meanwhile, our usual day to day jobs go on, cleaning out the henhouse, walking the dogs harvesting the days food.  The Perpetual Spinach that I planted must have been our best crop this year.  Every couple of days I pick this much, we've been pretty much keeping up with the supply thanks to us having a Nutriblast at least once a day, but soon I have to start thinking about stashing some away for the  Winter months.

At the moment I pick wash, spin it dry in the salad spinner and then store on kitchen paper in a 'stayfresh' bag in the fridge.  To save it for longer it will have to be frozen.  To do this I usually just wash it, put it into a pan with just the water that clings to the leaves and wilt it down quickly.  It only takes a minute or so for each panful to reduce to a couple of handfuls of soggy spinach.  Then I just squeeze it either in my hands or push down on a sieveful to get as much excess liquid out as possible before open freezing in usable size clumps in the freezer.  Then once frozen it can be tipped into a freezer box or bag ready for use.

We must have saved a fortune on buying Spinach over the last few months, I even said to LH the other day, if I only had a tiny back yard or garden this is one of the crops I would make room for.  It's so ridiculously expensive to buy washed and bagged, considering what it cooks down to.

Oh ... and I've just emailed all my entries for the Llanrwst Show which is on Saturday of this week, another 19 entries to mollycoddle for the week :-)

Sue xx

Shucks .... and Possibilities

In the comments on yesterday's blog post Barbara asked ' ...  what was the judging criteria for the hard boiled egg?!' 

It's the strangest  thing I've ever done, hard boil an egg lay it on a plate of shredded lettuce and leave it for someone to judge.  I don't know the criteria for sure, maybe John can comment with some more information, but I'm guessing a good quality egg, cooked to perfection, with the yolk dead central in the white.  That would be what I would look for anyway.

Mine wasn't quite there, once it was cut open by the judge, the yolk was almost at the bottom of the egg .... I've a thought on how to rectify that for next year :-)

But it's weird, the night before the flower show I suddenly woke up, I don't know what time it was but it was still dark, and thought to myself 'what a shame we haven't had a double yolker for ages'.  Then  I went straight back to sleep.

And yes, you guessed it ...... this morning I went over to the henhouse and there lying in amongst the other eggs was the one on the right, a guaranteed double yolker .... shucks!!

Then later on this morning these arrived .... my next set of Tesco money off coupons.  I noticed the date on using them up by isn't until the end of August 2017.  It's got me thinking again, well the coupons and something Lovely Hubby said to me the other day about us 'eating for free' next year.  

I have all the free seeds that have been accumulating this year through my magazine subscription.  This months magazine arrived the other day with three more packets of free seeds, three kinds of herbs this time.

So with free food to grow, maybe I should save up any usable vouchers and coupons for next year and see if Lovely Hubby's challenge to me of us eating for free would be possible.  I'll dwell on it for a while.

It's a Challenge that needs thinking about .... I've loads of time anyway, there's no need to rush into anything  ;-)

Sue xx

And I'm Off ..... The Trelawnyd Flower Show

There's a lot of photos on today post, you might want to make yourself a cup of coffee, or pull up a carrot to nibble!!

Firstly though, thank you for all the comments on yesterday's post, it would seem we are all on the same wavelength.

Now to the Trelawnyd Show ....

We called by on Friday evening with our entries, it would have been too long a day to have got them in first thing Saturday and then hang around for the official opening at one o'clock.   We finally met  the lovely John Gray, from Going Gently, he's the one that persuaded me to enter.  I did need some persuading because although I've been growing properly for the last seven years, I have never entered a competition or even grown to that standard.  I am a 'grow it to eat it' veggie grower and really I don't go out of my way to grow things for their good looks. 

(Click on the link to his blog to see lots more photos from the show, keep going back on 'Older Posts' to see lots of various blog posts showing all the categories of the show.)

Now .. my entries ...

... my potatoes are in the top photo, then my pods of peas, here are my two tomato entries, the red 'Baby Plum' and the yellow 'Sungold' tomatoes.

This was nice to read on Friday night while I was busy displaying everything, with a bit of help from John who supplied me with envelopes and paper to fill in all the details needed, a good swap I thought ... I supplied him with a Scotch Egg .... as you do.

My trug of five vegetables, the first one to arrive and placed in front of some of the blog entries for the novelty vegetable photo competition.

My cucumber .... doesn't it look lonely, within ten minutes though it had a companion :-)

Can you guess which Jam is mine?

My scones, the ones at the back, they were Cranberry Scones.

My 'any vegetable not on the schedule' entry was the Green Pepper at the front.

My beetroots are the sad looking specimens on the right, but we were soon both eclipsed by the arrival of the winning entry.

My hard boiled egg.  The strangest competition entry I have ever encountered.

My little carrots, small but perfectly formed!!

The next photos are all from Saturday afternoon when we went back after the judging.

The basket of vegetables to the right of my little trug, won First prize AND Best in Show, it was lovely.

The winning Novelty Veg Photo entry from John's readers.

My herbs are in the brown jug.

Yay ... I got a Second place for my Sungold tomatoes!!

And another Second for my potatoes ('Swift').

My competition, some very nice spuds!!

Breaking News .... John's cake got Second!!

But his lovely Quiche got First!!

And who's this we spy with a 'Second' next to her !!

So I was really chuffed, my first EVER vegetable show as an entrant and I got two Seconds.  I'm really pleased, now all I have to do is nurture a few more veggies through this week and I can have another go ..... the Llanrwst Country Show here I come!!

Oh, and we got to bring all our entries home ... and most of them have been eaten already :-)

Sue xx