First egg

It's only small, but it's definitely an egg

The Builder had it on toast for breakfast - with some bacon, mushrooms and tomato

In the meantime, I made some elderflower cordial. Very tasty. But not on eggs!

Right.  That's enough about chickens and eggs.  Any further reports will be on the garden blog

And it turned out that it wasn't, after all, the turbo head thingy that needed replacing at over £800, but some valve or another which controlled fuel and air which needed replacing for something less than £300.  Much better!  And so is the car.  It drives now with a purring sound and without the jolting and juddering and coughing and puffs of black, black smoke :-)

In the meantime, I had been pondering what to do about being car-less for the weekend.  I ordered supermarket necessities online, due to arrive around 7pm on Saturday.  We can go to the market in Chesterfield for the veg and meaty requirements. Come to that, there's a perfectly good butcher in Tupton, although no greengrocer. The village shop does sell veg but not much and it's not very fresh.  But that's OK.  We can get to Chesterfield easily enough on the bus.  Sorted.

And then, of course, we weren't car-less for the weekend. So we wandered off to Chatsworth and pottered around in the countryside and called into the garden centre.  We pootled about in the garden in the sunshine and let the chickens out to play. The Builder did lots of useful things.  I did fewer useful things but did do quite a lot of baking.

Ham and sausage pie with salad

And then it was Sunday and the country stopped to watch the England football team perform quite remarkably appallingly in the world cup.  I went for a stroll around Tupton just after kick-off and found the place almost entirely deserted.  I ran across one of the elderly gentlemen who sit, in Last of the Summer Wine style, on one of the benches on Queen Victoria Road.  He was on his way from his daughter's house, where he had been having Sunday lunch, back to his flat a few doors away so he could watch the match.  I saw another of the elderly gentlemen on a bench which was not his customary one.  And I saw a lady out for a walk.

Tupton, supporting England

And that was it.  Everyone was inside and (I assume) watching the soccer.  I went home and settled down to be equally appalled and slightly amused by the England attempt to play soccer, in the Skype company of Austin in Japan and Ant, Christian and Zoy all (I think) in Melbourne.  Skype conference calls are a wonderful thing!

And then I went outside to gather in red currants.  I let the chickens out while I was about it.  There weren't many red currants but I figured we might as well garner them in.  Went off to grab my glass and came back to find the chickens having a merry feast of the red currants in my harvesting basket!!!!!!  You can't blame them.  They will have naturally assumed that tasty treats in baskets left lying about on the lawn will, of course, be for them! There won't be much red currant jelly this year!!  There should be quite a bit of white currant jelly though.  The white currant bushes are, comparatively speaking, quite laden.

I started off this year's lot of elderflower fizz too.  We opened a bottle of last year's and it fizzed excitedly everywhere.  Managed to get most of it into glasses in the end - and it was absolutely delicious.  Has the advantage of not being alcoholic so you can drink it on a sunny Sunday morning without shame or guilt!

I woke up this morning to the sound of a persistent tapping noise outside.  wondered what on earth it was.  It was only about quarter to four although it was pretty much light.  I got up to investigate.  It was a steady stream of water falling from the sky.  Not something we have seen much of recently.  Alas, it didn't last long.  The kitchen water butt remains obdurately empty.  The sun is out again now, in Sheffield at least.

Just had a message from The Builder.  When he went down to clean out the coop this morning, there was one, small, light brown egg in the egg boxes.  That's not bad going.  We've only had the chooks a week!  (He says it's sunny in Tupton now too)

Frannie covered in flour - again!

I'm beginning to think I should change the name of the blog!!

But I did spend quite a bit of the weekend covered in flour.  And there is still flour all over the kitchen floor - I ran out of time to sweep it up :-S

It was all inspired by this recipe in the July edition of the BBC's Good food magazine.  I saw it when I was reading the magazine on the train last week and thought it would make a rather nice weekday lunch addition.

So when we were at Chatsworth on Saturday I bought two pork boneless shoulder chops.  They had a bit of fat on them, enough to make juicy sausage meat, but not so much that I would end up thinking that they were simply too fatty.  I put the chops, chopped into pieces, through my mincer (this activity vastly intrigued the cat!!), and then put a couple of chunks of bread through the mincer to push the last of the pork out and to provide breadcrumbs for the sausage meat.  I diced half a bramley apple and finely sliced several fresh sage leaves, then I mooshed it all together with a little real apple cider to form a proper sausage meat.

I had intended to use shortcrust pastry for the base of the pie but simply couldn't be bothered making it by hand (my food processor has upped and died on me, you may remember). So I lined my springed cake tin with ready-made puff pastry.  I lined that with slices of boiled ham, put in half the sausage meat, topped that with more boiled ham then finished off with the rest of the sausage meat and a puff pastry lid.  And cooked it at 150d for around an hour.  It is extremely delicious.


I was thinking that next time I might add hard boiled eggs or maybe dried apricots, just as a variation.  The possibilities are pretty much endless :-)

Picnic Pie, as inspired by Good food

I used the left over puff pastry to make pasties.  These are not austerity pasties.  I used rib-eye steak :-S  But only a small piece and the potatoes, carrots and onions were much more plentiful and also much, much cheaper!  The pasties are in the freezer, ready for lunches and picnics.

I made this year's batch of elderflower fizz too.  And we broached a bottle of last year's.  It was EXTREMELY lively and fizzed everywhere when I opened the bottle.  But it was also extremely delicious and has the extra advantage of being alcohol free.  So we could have some mid-morning with the first of the raspberries from the allotment

Alas, poor Vixen. I knew her, dear reader

Shall we take roses when visiting the patient?

No, no.  It's OK.  The car isn't actually dead, just very sick :-(

For some time now, it's been losing its oomph.  Not taking off at intersections or pulling away at roundabouts (a bit of a worry that one). Feeling like it wants to cough when driving along.  And, from time to time, actually coughing and emitting clouds of blackness from the exhaust.  Highly undesirable.  Especially as we're going to Axminster next Friday.  We don't want a dodgy car if travelling long-ish distances!!

It's been in a couple of times and had expensive new parts fitted.  These have not helped and the situation has got steadily worse.  After I had brought the car into work and back on Wednesday and not been entirely confident that it would manage to get up the hill towards Dronfield, I declared that I wasn't driving it again on my own until it was repaired!! 

It went in for investigation yesterday.  Nick and his pal sucked their teeth and declared it to be the turbo head (or some such thing).  £850 for a new one.  EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  They'd better be damned sure that it really is a new turbo thingy that is needed. 

They called for a second opinion and The Builder seduced a nice lady at the bank.  The nice lady came good with a small loan.  The second opinion thought that it probably wasn't the turbo head.  So now the vixen is properly in hospital, having lots of tests to determine a diagnosis.

I came to work on the bus and the train.  Was quite nice, but then the sun was shining, I walked onto a bus and onto a train without having to wait for any length of time. It's not quite as enticing in the depths of winter. And the bacon sandwiches they sell at the station don't smell quite as unresistably tempting during the summer as they do in the winter!




I went out this morning for a potter in the garden before coming in to work. It was extremely difficult to drag myself away again.  It was one of those mornings that are described so eloquently in novels and children's books from the 1950s, describing summers that probably didn't really exist then and don't often happen now.  The sun was shining and there was the gentlest of gentle breezes.

Cheerful cornflowers

The birds were singing and the bees were buzzing around lazily.  The flowers were beautifully scented.

Poppies growing happily among the cabbages

The cat was asleep in the sun on the little table by the pond.  The chooks were clucking in their run and munching on clover. The strawberries are pretty much ready, there are oh-so-nearly peas ready for snacking on.

Ideal weather for a cat

Why, oh why would you throw yourself on the mercy of buses and trains and workplaces when you could don your apron and bake things in the kitchen, or get your garden shoes and a wide brimmed straw hat and potter about deadheading the roses and picking herbs and sorting out the cabbages, or gather in rhubarb and make rhubarb jam ...

Fairly acceptable for the chickens, too

Something about contractual arrangements?  Oh - OK.  And so to work I came

:-)

Chooks. And Fruit

The chickens have arrived!

We drove up to somewhere in the countryside, outside of Barnsley last evening and collected them.  Two Lohmans and two Black Rocks.  They seemed quite happy when we let them out into their run when we got back.  The cat was less happy.  He hasn't seen chickens before as far as I am aware, wasn't sure entirely what they were and wasn't hugely delighted to find them in his back garden!

We'll keep them confined to the run until they've got used to us, then let them out when there's someone around to keep and eye on them.  They are so far showing no huge interest in the outside world (other than wondering what the noise is when the passenger trains hurtle past on the railway line!).


I was going to call the Lohmans Sage and Onion (so encouraging them to lay eggs in order to avert being filled with the aforementioned sage and onion!!) but then I realised that this might well cause confusion should we happen to be referring to my niece who is also called Sage (There was a notable time when Roger at work dolefully announced the death of George and was a bit surprised by the reaction of the people around him.  We thought he meant our colleague George who happened to be off sick at the time.  In fact, he meant his son's hamster!!!!!)  So I have abandoned that idea and called them Marjoram and Parsley.

The Black Rocks are called Kiev and Schnitzel  :-)

You may remember that I said that the fruit trees weren't doing very well this year.  It's true.  They're not.  But here are some sights to make us happy.

And I noticed yesterday evening that the strawberries are nearly ready to pick.  No chickens out loose until after the strawberry season is over!

The intention had been to spend the weekend mostly in the garden and on the allotment.  There is, after all, lots to do, the forecast was set fair, and the flower garden in particular desperately needs rescuing.

Somehow it didn't happen that way.

I seemed to spend quite a lot of time covered in flour. 

The Builder built the chicken run.

I spent Saturday afternoon watching the soccer (which is emphatically not something I habitually do!!)  I watched the Australia match with: The Builder in Tupton with me, Austin in Nagoya and Simon in Melbourne - all down to the magic that is SKYPE.  Was rather a nice way to watch sport :-)  Can't say that I was mightily impressed with the quality of the soccer this weekend, though.  England hardly seemed to be trying in their match and certainly didn't seem to care.  Australia was trying and did care but couldn't quite pull it off, having been reduced to ten players when one was sent off - a bit unluckily, I thought.  And Japan went down in a valiant game against the Netherlands.  But Japan remains the only one of "my" teams to have won a match.  I might have to adorn the house with Japanese flags!!  (Many of the houses in Tupton are adorned to some degree or another with St George's flags.  There's one house up by the school which is absolutely swathed in flags and has lots of red and white garden windmills (the  little plastic ones you dot about your garden beds to deter birds) about the place.  And when England is playing, they have a twice life-sized inflatable England football player in the front garden.  It looks amazing!!)

We have found a whole new pet supply and garden centre tucked away just beyond the Brimington roundabout.  We bought supplies for the forthcoming chickens, admired the snakes, gawped at the koi carp, boggled at the parrots and ambled around the plants and trees and landscaping materials. It was amazing!  And we had had no idea that it was there.  A useful find.

I researched the availability of chickens in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire.  Found a couple of likely suppliers.  Emailed one and got an almost immediate reply saying that they had black rock and lohman chickens available at point of lay.  I ordered two of each.  We're hoping to get them tomorrow after  I finish work.  I wonder if they will all fit in the cat travel box.  I wonder what the cat will think about his travel box being converted into a chook travel box.  Come to that  I wonder how he will take to the advent of four chooks into his orchard?!?!?!?

I wasn't expecting anything to report from this morning's trip to work.  There is so seldom anything much to say about coming to work.  This morning we were passing through Chesterfield in a line of traffic.  There was a bicycle in front of us, a car in front of the bike.  Proceeding along, we were, when all of a sudden the bicycle abruptly flew to the right and the rider flew to the left and collided with the wheel of a car parked alongside.  We came to an abrupt halt so as not to run him or the bike over.  It seemed that his chain had snapped and got tangled with the front wheel.  He assured us he was all right, although he thought he had hurt his neck a bit.  His helmet was smashed to pieces!  Just as well he was wearing it.  You should always, always, but ALWAYS wear a helmet when riding a bicycle.  You just never know when your steed will chuck you off and you will connect with a stationary object with your head.  But I hope the rider gets his head and neck checked out.  He gave the car a mighty whack.  The bike, I think, will need replacing.  The helmet certainly will.

Solstice report

We are not going to do very well for fruit this year, I fear.  We had lots of blossom, but the high winds earlier in June have blown off all the baby fruits.  I think we will do all right for apples and maybe the morello cherries, but there's not much left on the other trees.  A small number of sweet cherries, one plum that I can see, no pears or peaches.  And not many black currants for some reason, although the red and white currants are looking quite well-endowed.  And we should be fine for raspberries and even gooseberries.  The blueberry plants got busried under a wilderness of grass.  I've cut the grass back and we dug some rhododendron feed in around them - blueberries like quite acidic soil.  So no fruit this year, but I am hopeful of next (assuming I remember to feed them again in the autumn and spring.

We were beginning to despair of the cabbages and cauliflowers.  They were doing absolutely nothing at all.  The cabbages showed a slight tendency to heart, but nothing very exciting.  So we began eating them anyway.  The leaves were nice and tasty, just not very prolific.  But now - the cauliflowers are finally flowering and we are getting very tasty small caulis from them.  And the cabbages are finally, finally hearting properly.  They're still on the small side but I don't think they're going to get much bigger.  Well, they're definitely not going to get much bigger because we're eating them!!!!

We are doing extremely well for carrots.

And I have taken to growing the saladings in the wooden boxes The Builder made for me a couple of years back.  They're in the driveway along the house wall and the wall dividing us from next door.  We've also inherited the wooden boxes The Builder made for Barb.  She has no further use for them.  I am using them to grow pea shoots and pak choi and basil and lettuces.  I've got tumbling tomatoes in the hanging baskets by the back door.  It's so much easier to keep them watered and safe from slugs and snails in the boxes.  And so much easier to harvest them in the mornings when I'm doing the lunches.

Kudos to Tozer seeds, by the way.  I ordered 500g of pea seeds at lunch time on Friday.  They arrived in the Saturday morning post.  And were accompanied by a complimentary packet of purple basil seeds.  I was deeply impressed.  The Builder is going to plant the peas up on the allotment this afternoon.  I shall press him to make me another wooden box to plant the basil seeds in!!

You remember the poor orange tree, frozen to death in the greenhouse over the winter?  I went to pull it up this weekend so I could prepare the ground for a replacement.  Seems it's not dead after all.  It's shooting again from just above the graft.  A dilemma.  Will be years before it grows properly again.  But it seems a bit harsh to rip out a plant that is doing its damnedest to survive!

I have a problem taking the solstice photos this year.  We've replaced the window with one that doesn't open outwards!  I am going to have to be more inventive when I get home this evening

Frannie, covered in flour

I mostly spent yesterday baking.  I made:

Bread rolls (there were six but The Builder had one with cheese and chutney for lunch)

Sticky bread with an orange and cinnamon glaze

And carrot fairy cakes, covered in a lemon icing

I also broke the food processor and had to make the Yorkshire pudding batter by hand!!!!!

Not sure what to do about the food processor.  I don't really want to buy a whole new one.  All the bits for the existing one are working perfectly.  It's just the base unit that has gone doolally.  And I'm not sure if you can buy base units on their own.  Will have to investigate.

On the other hand, it would certainly be in keeping with George Osbourne's austerity program were I to do my mixing in a ceramic bowl with a wooden spoon.  Might keep me quite fit, as well!!

Freyja has also joined the ranks of the newly promoted ...

... and also not by application or request.  She was talking to her boss the other day and mentioned that, given the new projects they had undertaken, they could do with another body or two to deal with the office admin and stuff.  Hmm, said he.  In that case we really also need a team leader to keep the bodies under control.  Should probably be full time.  But that's OK.  You can do it 4 days a week until such time as you happen to leave and then we'll put someone on 5 days a week.  Now ... How much extra should we pay you?

How come I never get jobs like this?  I'd be happy to have new jobs at extra pay if I didn't have to fill in job applications!!

Chicken coop

Not really sure which blog to put the chicken coop on.  I think in future I'll put chicken related matters on the garden blog.  But that is in serious need of updating and I don't have time at the moment.  But just so as you know ...

... The chicken coop has arrived :-)