Cally’s Homemade Christmas

 Readers I have sinned. I watched Kirstie’s Homemade Christmas last night. There. I’ve got it off my chest. Yes I know it’s a load of media hyped tosh. Yes I have calculated her probable carbon footprint as she jaunts from one end of the country to another in search of a ‘bargain ‘or help from an ‘artisan’ in her dashing red landrover. And yes, I am aware that  it’s all too good to be true. Most working mothers with smaller bank balances and less time on their hands can’t model themselves on good old Kirstie in her tartan nightie. This is feel good TV, where the media elves make it all look so ‘like anyone can do this, right? Absolutely.’ It’s a bit like listening to Wham and Chris Rea when you’re stuck in a festive traffic jam but it makes you excited about going to buy that hot water bottle for your granny nevertheless.

I find it hard to believe that there are any children who haven’t made salt dough decorations…….or is my children’s school stuck in a time warp? And what mother hasn’t experienced the joy of still  hoovering up glitter in August after an afternoon of Christmas card making? But lets accept  that watching is a harmless way to spend an hour.  It might even inspire someone to turn their back on the commercialism and spend a bit of time  with their children, their friends or their neighbours doing something homemade and inexpensive. I would have liked to see Kirstie and her friends make a pig’s ear of biscuit making  using the cheapest possible, locally sourced ingrediants whilst their children had a paddy in the corner…….but that’s evil of me and doesn’t make for escapist festive TV.

On the positive side here on the Plot we are ahead of the game in some areas. We have dabbled with a bit of chutney making for presents, made the cake and planted up pots of scented narcissi bulbs. But there are only so many hours in the day and so I have saved up my hard earned pennies and splashed out on  a door wreath from an ‘artisan’ acquaintance of mine’ Snapdragon Jane. I’ll post up a pic when it arrives. And whilst my friend Cath and I merrily chop veg for the soup at the school Christmas fair next week, we might find a bit of time to slice up some oranges, dunk them in lemon juice to keep their colour and dry them in her ancient aga to enhance our gift  wrapping experience. Great with a bit of  string, brown paper and cinammon sticks. But no, I won’t be blowing my own baubles this year or scouring antique shops for necklaces to take to pieces in search of that perfect table decoration. Though I might make it home from watching Sarah’s appearance as a fiesty cockeral in the school nativity play tonight  to watch  plucky Kirstie go that extra mile (literally) in search of a homemade Christmas.

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down..?

Unlike the Carpenters I quite like rainy days  – and Mondays. Every Monday is full of possibilities for the week ahead and rainy days give me an excuse to get on with all those indoor jobs on which  I can’t waste good weather - days when I could be outside pottering about on the plot.

This was Saturday’s job – mincemeat making after we’d recovered from a thorough soaking watching the boys play football. I have to admit to not having bothered with this for a few years. I’d never found a decent recipe and to be honest the jars sold in the local farmshop are delicious, if a little pricey. However I decided that a kitchen full of the smell of Christmas whilst the rain lashed against the windowpates was worth the effort. A friend recommended a Delia recipe and so I set to with a few adaptions and the result looks very promising indeed. I’ll even have a jar to give away as a present. My version of Delia’s recipe is below.

Mincemeat

You will need two large Bramleys, cored and chopped small, 1lb frozen cranberries (or fresh if you can get them),12 oz raisins, 24oz mixed currants, sultanas and chopped, candied peel in roughly equal quantities, 8oz shredded vegetable suet, 12oz dark soft brown sugar, grated zest and juice of two lemons and two oranges, 2oz almonds cut into  fine slivers, plenty of freshly ground nutmeg, about 4 tsps mixed spice and 1/2 tsp cinammon to taste, and a good slug of brandy.

Soak all ingredients, except the brandy overnight. in an ovenproof mixing bowl. Then put the bowl in a cool oven (about 100 degrees in a fan oven should do) for three hours. It might be swimming in fat when you take it out so brace yourself.  But at least you’ll be encouraged not to be the one who ate all the pies. Give it a stir every so often to coat all the fruit in suet. Add a good slug of brandy and store in sterlised jars. This will make enough for four quite large jars (Mine  previously held River Cottage vanilla yogurt..)

And as for Mondays… well this week I might finish the adapted script for Pride and Prejudice, get my sweet peas planted, dig over a bit more of the allotment, weed my over wintering onions, source a recycled wood bench for a memorial garden I’m working on and start a new compost heap. You see Mondays are the start of something good.

Apple chutney and Tea with the Bennets.

Well it took a bit longer than two weeks but I have cracked my addiction to Twitter and made progress on my pet projects as well as picked up a few more. I’ve decided that I have to live with the part of me which fills every space with ’stuff’. I’m just not meant to concentrate on one thing at a time – but breathing space is good for the soul and for creativity.

I have a cupboard stuffed with pots of delicious apple chutney, a family recipe inherited from my granny which I am delighted to share with you. I love the fact that I can follow a recipe written in her hand from a book which bears the wear and tear of generations of my family’s exploits in the kitchen.

Apple Chutney                                                                                                                                                Mince together 6lbs apples (I use Bramleys, peeled and cored), 3lbs onions, peeled and roughly chopped and 3/4 lb sultanas. Place into a preserving pan with 4lb sugar, 1 teaspoon mustard, salt, pepper and 11/2 pints spiced vinegar. Give it a good stir, boil it up and cook for about an hour on a low heat, stirring from time to time. Ladle into sterilied jars, seal and store in a cupboard or pantry to mature a bit, although it doesn’t matter. It tastes delicious immediately. It should make about a dozen medium sized jars.

Having tickled my digestive juices with the chutney I then headed off to nearby Lacock to enable the creative juices to flow. Meryton in the 1995 BBC adaptation  of Pride and Prejudice – and still the best as far as I am concerned and not just because of the delightful Colin Firth, lacock is one of my regular haunts for garden inspiration at the Abbey. This time however I was looking for inspiration of the Jane Austen kind and decided to take tea at King John’s Hunting Lodge. Inevitably I didn’t have my camera with me so you’ll have to make do with one I took earlier in the year at the venue for the meryton Assembly.

I even came away with a cookbook inspired by the filming of P and P, written by Margaret Vaughan who runs the tearoom. ‘Tea with the Bennets’ is a delightful read and as we have a sufeit of eggs and rather a lot of satsumas rolling around the fruitbowl today I might try ‘Mr Wickham’s Indelicate Pudding’ for tea.

More about my latest expoits with School Gardening Club, the allotment and the other projects I have been catching up on in subsequent pots.

Take a break……

Being busy is an overrated virtue as far as I am concerned. I have several exciting projects on the go at the moment and I can’t say I’m enjoying any of them. Wouldn’t it be great to devote myself entirely to just one or two for a while I thought. And so I’m taking a break. Not to jet off to sunnier climes and lie on the beach but to concentrate my energies whilst the apprentices are at school. The next two weeks will see me finishing off the adapted script for the outdoor production of Pride and Prejudice next July, and putting in the final push on a client project. And as it’s a sorry state of affairs when you finish your last jar of Apple Chutney I”ll be spending at least one day chopping and standing next to a steaming preserving pan in an effort to put this right.

See you in two weeks.

C x

Angels with dirty faces

Feast your eyes on my two angels off on their school trip . They are studying the Victorians at the moment and it has given us the chance to dig out quite a few photos and family hand-me-downs to enhance the experience.

Later in the term I am heading into school to help out at their Victorian Day where we’ll be learning about Victorian kitchen gardens – although I’m still pondering the horror of gardening in a corset!

But for today it was off to work at t’mill with an authentic lunch wrapped in a tea towel and a homemade drink in a corked bottle. It’s the easiest packed lunch I’ve made in ages and I have to admit to having more fun with this than in assembling the costumes and blackening their faces. Home baked bread took a bit longer than usual because I did it entirely by hand rather than using the breadmaker but the ham and butter came from a friend’s farm, the eggs were from our own hens, the apples from a neighbour, swopped for squashes  and I managed to find my great great granny’s recipe for pound cake.

Here it is…….

Victorian Pound Cake

1lb each of butter, sugar, flour, eggs and currants with a pinch of nutmeg. One of my angels doesn’t like currants so I made two cakes, left out the currants and nutmeg from one and added a couple of teaspoons of rose extract instead.

Beat the butter and sugar together until very light and fluffy, by which time you’ll be able to enter the shot putt at the 2012 Olympics. Presumably this is how my great great granny made her cakes so light and was able to lob bales of hay around with ease on the farm.

Weigh the eggs – you’ll need about 6-8 depending on the size of your eggs. Stir the eggs, flour, nutmeg and currants (or rose extract) into the creamed mixture  until thoroughly combined.

Pour into a greased loaf tin  – I used a 2lb tin.

Cook in a moderate oven –  gas mark 4 or 180C for around an hour. Test with a  knife or skewer. If it comes out clean, the cake is done.

We’ve had a ball getting thoroughly into the spirit of the age – simple, feel good family time. It’s what life on the plot is all about.

Sneak preview

This is where we’ll be strutting our stuff next July in ‘Pride and Prejudice’.  Working on adaptation of script in between planting of alliums, daffs and over wintering onions. Ah the rich tapestry of life on the CG Plot!

Bonkers for conkers

I live with a family of squirrels. It’s hard work getting any of them to ruthlessly sort and recycle. And so at this time of year we are usually sinking under a pile of horse chestnuts. It started me thinking about the uses for conkers,  other than the knuckle bashing delights of the game.We’ve been fairly creative in our use of conkers over the years.

• Use them to decorate the church for Harvest Festival or your home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. They look great in a seasonal display with some beech nuts and candles.
• They make great additions to the dressing up or craft box – medieval currency, word art, counting tools, necklaces…..
• Dry them out and use them as fuel on the fire, but remember they do have a tendency to be a bit explosive.
• Use them as an alternative to mothballs in drawers and wardrobes.
• Apparently you can keep spiders at bay with them. We love spiders as they eat flies but if you have a ‘bit of a thing’ about them, like my friend Deirdre they’ll come in useful.
• Feed them to cattle, deer and horses (obviously!) but don’t try them yourself.
• We are conducting a trial use as alternatives to pencil erasers this year.
• A herbalist friend of mine tells me that horse chestnuts were used traditionally to treat malaria, varicose veins, diarrhoea, ringworm and frostbite. Fortunately we are not afflicted by any of these.

If you have any ideas to throw into the pot please let me know. We have plenty to use up, believe me. But if you just want to master the art of Conkers here’s our advice for reaching the dizzy heights of success.

1. Float your conkers in water. Those damaged internally will float because they are less dense. Choose only those that sink to the bottom.
2. Make your hole as cleanly as possible, no jagged edges. A cylindrical shaped hole is best and use shoelaces rather than string to suspend the conker.
3. I’m not sure this is sportsmanlike and definitely out for serious competition but you can make your conker more robust by baking it in the oven or soaking it in vinegar. Better still, use last year’s batch. Rolling it in handcream also seems to work as it softens the impact of any blow and is therefore less likely to break up.

Happy conkering, if that is indeed the word.

Birthdays on the plot

It’s not all work on the plot you know. We know how to party. And September is birthday month for two of the apprentices. Here on the plot we are into all things Famous Five at the moment. Consequently any outdoor picnic is not complete without  several children in shorts and fairisle tank tops, a dog, bicycles,  a picnic basket, plaid rug, homemade lemonade, iced buns and cake. Cherry cake is the preferred choice but on birthdays we bring out the  chocolate cake made with eggs from our own hens but newly collected from  a local farm will do just as well..

Celebration Chocolate Cake   makes enough to feed five very hungry children and their parents but strictly not for dogs!)

200g plain flour; 200g vanilla sugar; 3/4 tsp baking powder; 1/4 tsp bicarb; 1/2 tsp salt; 200g soft unsalted butter; 40g good quality cocoa; 150ml sour cream; 2 large eggs (I used 4 of our hens’ eggs. If you don’t have vanilla sugar just use caster and add a large spoonful of vanilla extract to the cream and eggs.

Combine all the dry ingredients except the cocoa in a large bowl and cream in the butter with an electric mixer or by hand..

Whisk together the cocoa, sour cream and eggs and slowly add this to the ingredients in the bowl, beating thoroughly.

Pour the batter into 2 buttered and lined 20cm  sandwich tins and bake in the oven at 180C/gas mark 4 for about 30 mins. The cakes will start to shrink from the sides of the tin when they are ready. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins before turning out onto a rack.

To make the icing melt 80g milk chocolate and 80g plain chocolate with 75g butter in a double bolier or in the microwave. When it’s cooled a bit stir in 125ml sour cream, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1 tbls golden syrup. Add 300g seived icing sugar a a little hot water and mix until you have a smooth, thick consistency which spreads easily but doesn’t run.

Use half the icing to sandwich the cake together and swirl the rest on top.

Decorate each slice with whatever takes your fancy. We  used minstrels, sugared pansies, chocolate buttons or sprigs of mint. Enjoy. It won’t last long.

I’ll let you have my recipe for lemonade at another time. We’ve made lots during the Summer holidays. The apprentices love it.

Here come the girls!

At last we’ve moved from organic gardeners to smallholders here on the plot. Our four girls are now settling into their new home and laying well. So far, so good..

Keeping hens in our garden is a far cry from my own childhood experiences where our flock was entirely free range in a nearby field. This is the ideal and I have to admit to having struggled to see how a small garden flock might happily and safely share the space  we use for growing, relaxation and play. We have come up with a semi-free-range solution, where the girls occupy their run in the daytime, keeping them safer when we are away from home but roam free around the garden for a few hours after school. We’re sticking to the same routine at the weekends  as this will reduce the potential of stress for the hens……..and on me,. No chasing hens around the garden to get them back into the run whilst making packed lunches and checking homework .

Many families thinking about garden hens  have the same issues over space as we do. If you’re thinking about it, here are a few tips to help you on your way.

• Get a chicken buddy. Books are a great starting point. I found this book one of the most helpful but first hand face to face advice from an experienced owner is best. Your buddy will be there in the future if you need help.deciding whether there is something to worry about or looking  after your hens if you’re  away. Advice is also available free from The Henkeepers’ Association or you may prefer to attend a course or workshop on keeping hens. Some are run by local colleges whilst others are of the Country Living variety with lunch thrown in. Whatever you decide, choose on personal recommendation.
• Location, location, location. I’m not suggesting you get Phil and Kirstie onto this one but do have a good look at the space you have available and how convenient and secure it is.  It will help you decide on the kind of housing to go for.  We can’t accommodate a static ark which is entirely fenced off for the hens in our garden so we opted for an ark with a run attached which we can move easily around the garden. This will allow us to reseed areas of grass where the chickens have been grazing – a boon for our ‘lawn’ which also doubles as rugby practice area.
• Home is where the heart is. You can adapt an old shed or buy a top of the range coop depending on your budget, ethics and aethetic taste but you’ll need to make sure that it is warm but well ventilated, and has sufficient nest boxes and perches. If nest boxes are inviting (warm and in the darkest part of the coop) you won’t have to hunt around to collect the eggs. Aim for about 30cm perch space per hen and about 30cm off the ground. Make sure it’s sanded down and smooth, making it comfortable for your hens and less easy for mites to hide in. The deciding factor for me was how easy it was to clean the ark. I can remove the floor and nest boxes entirely by sliding them out – a boon when trying to clean out every nook and cranny  and dousing with Poultry Shield. on a Saturday.We use wood shavings for bedding. They’re warm, soak up a lot of moisture and available in bulk, tightly packed at a reasonable price from the local feed merchant.
• TV dinner or silver service – how and what to feed your flock. We’re feeding our girls on organic layer’s pellets once a day. I don’t have massive amounts of storage space and four hens are not going to get through the huge and therefore more economical bags quickly so I share a bulk bag with a couple of other hen keepers. We do the same for grit. We haven’t spent a fortune on feeders and drinkers but have ensured that they are the right size for a small flock, are weather proof and raised off the ground to avoid soiling and spillages. I find the bell drinkers difficult to fill and they do get soiled so I think I might switch to a tripod drinker in future.
• Taking a bath. Because our girls are not entirely free range we’ve made them a purpose built dust bath to have some fun. It has a roof to keep the dust dry and should avoid them scratching up my prize plants.
• Unwelcome guests. Any semi- free range hens are not going to be entirely safe from Mr Fox. We are adopting a range of deterrants  including the proximity of next door’s dog. Male urine and human hair are apparently effective too. Having two small boys who are more than happy to oblige with the former and  a daughter with plenty of hair to stuff into old tights and tie up around the perimeter means this might work. I’ll keep you posted. And on that note I’d have a chat with your neighbours and check the deeds of your property to ensure that you are allowed to keep hens before you take the plunge . Some people have real concerns about the proximity of hens feeling that they’ll attract rats to their own gardens. And I wouldn’t keep a cockeral if you live in a residential area in the town as we do or you really will be unpopular!

 Starting with a few hens in your garden needn’t be too costly and I suspect you never get over the delight of collecting eggs from your own flock. What’s more they eat slugs and provide great additions to speed up the compost. A perfect solution for any kitchen gardener.

Family values

I’ve always wondered whether my desire to ‘go slow’ and live off the land is a product of my upbringing or something more innate, inherited over several generations. We popped down to Wales for a quick trip at the end of the school holidays and it turned out to be a much bigger adventure than I’d imagined. The showers held off long enough on Monday for a trip to Colby Gardens and a very muddy walk along Long Lane to the beach at Amroth.

The reluctant gardener has been researching our family tree for as long as I have known him. Recently he discovered that  Long Lane was the birthplace of my great great grandmother. The cottage is long gone but it did give me a thrill to be walking along the lanes that she frequented both as a child and later as a redoubtable old lady in her pony and trap, delivering milk, cheese,veg and pickles to her neighbours

I come from a long line of Welsh farmers and I suppose that may be one of the reasons why working the land is so important to me. Sarah’s love of all things horsey seems to stem from there too. My family bred shire horses and used them on the farm. Sarah was delighted to learn that my great grandfather used to ride a pony to school every day and came home with what has become her most prized possession – his stirrups,  donated by a very elderly aunt during the weekend.

School’s back tomorrow and it’s going to be very difficult to convince one of the apprentices to walk there. I don’t think stables are part of the school’s development plan for this year.

What do you think? Is it nature or nurture that makes keen gardeners?