Apples, Cider and Cheese- Very Rustic!

Like everyone else, we had a bumper crop of apples this year, and I have also discovered a couple of apple trees on the valley where the fruit is going begging. I only need some new ways to use them. I have enough jam (gooseberry, mixed fruit and blackberry and apple) to last at least two years, my diet doesn't allow crumble or pie too often and the freezer is full.

So yesterday, I was experimenting with drying apples in slices.

I don’t have a dehydrator so I was planning on peeling, coring and cutting the apples into slices and then laying them on cake cooling racks in the oven. The first part was easy, I did it in the living room whilst watching Ceebeebies with Oliver. He sat on the floor beside me and ate almost as fast as I sliced. I know fruit is good for children but surely it is possible to overdo it?

Then I arranged them on trays and put them in the oven.

 I was worried about the oven, the books say to dry them at 60-70°C but the lowest temperature on my oven is 110. The books were also vague about how long to leave them in for, the advice varied between 4 and 24 hours, but I suppose that is reasonable as it will vary on the apple and the thickness of the slices. I had the oven on for three bursts of two hours, each on the lowest heat with the door propped slightly open to reduce the temperature further. Then when it was time to pick up Oliver from nursery, I turned off the heat, shut the door and forgot about them until this morning. 

They look okay, some are a bit chewy, some are crisp. They fill a jar nicely

 and I suppose time will tell if I got it right or if there is too much moisture left and they go mouldy. The books say in order to use them, soak them in water for twelve hours first and then use them in baking. I reckon I could make three or four pies with this lot.

Whilst the apples were drying I was also experimenting with juicing the apples. I would dearly love an apple press but at £200 to £300 pounds that is clearly out of the question so I crushed the apples in the food processor 

and then strained them through muslin,

 picking up the muslin and squeezing out as much as I could. Later on the internet I saw that some people use electric spin dryers, which I think is a fantastic idea, putting the crushed apples first in a clean pillow case and letting the juice come out with centrifugal force. Spin dryers can be picked up second hand for £10 to £20 so I shall keep my eye open for one of them.

In my laborious way ,I made about a gallon of juice. I put a litre of it in a zip lock freezer bag and put it in the freezer but as I said earlier, the freezer is almost full at the moment so I need to find alternative ways of storage. The rest of the juice therefore, I have put into a demijohn to ferment naturally into cider.

 I did add a campden tablet yesterday to kill any natural bacteria but decided against adding sugar as I am not wanting the cider to be particularly strong. Hopefully the wild yeasts naturally present on the skin of the apples will start to ferment in the next 24 hours, if not I have some wine yeast I can add. Already after twelve hours the apple sediment has started dropping to the bottom of the demijohn.

Hopefully this should produce drinkable cider by Christmas. I also want to make perry from the excess of pears we have and to experiment with cyser which is made from apple juice and honey, a sort of cross between mead and cider. I do also have the honey available to try a few bottles of mead. On the non alcoholic front I would like to try preserving apple juices by pasteurizing it. Having my own store of apple juice to drink or use in cooking during the year would be very nice.

Also going on in the background yesterday, was a batch of home made cottage cheese. When I’d nipped into the supermarket for milk at lunchtime, I saw that the 6 pint bottles were reduced to clear at 30% off. I bought two and emptied them into the big stainless steel pan

 and heated to luke warm and then added rennet and left it to set. Incidentally that little bottle of rennet is lasting ages and still working after its use by date. After a few hours I noticed it had set,

 so I broke it up and turned up the heat to encourage the curds to separate from the whey. I poured off as much whey as I could and then left the curds to drain further in the colander.

 With a sprinkling of salt it was delicious and like Miss Muffet I ate a bowl on its own. After that there was 1 lb 6 ozs left so it must have made about 1 lb 12 ozs. I have decided to use it in a curd tart and to experiment by adding dried cherries instead of the usual sultanas and flavouring it with a splash of kirsch.

Of Bees and an Old Joke

Just as well I've been pushing myself to do the painting these last few days, as I woke up this morning to pouring rain, I had to put my raincoat over my pyjamas to go let the chickens out. Despite the rain they came shooting out of their house as if they hadn't eaten for a month. Of course, since having to re-roof the run to keep the fox out , they now have an area to go in that is under cover although today’s rain was still coming in through the chicken wire sides of the run. None of the chickens are laying at the moment which is a bit depressing, the two chicks are still too young, although the Orpington has grown huge, the three ex batts have been putting all their energy into growing their feathers back and do look almost respectable now, Mary and Amelia have no excuse. Last year Amelia stopped laying in the autumn and didn't start again until January so I may have to resign myself to having to buy eggs for a while.

The quail are no better as regards laying and really it is time I moved their cages into the garage for the winter as they are not as hardy as the chickens. Oliver and I may go to sort out a space for them later. At the moment we are sitting comfortably on the sofa playing Ceebeebies games on one laptop, whilst I try and write this on another.

Yesterday, as soon as I’d dropped Oliver off at nursery I was out in the garden. First, I did the long overdue task of sorting the bees out for winter, feeding the hives that seemed light and removing any supers that didn't have any stores in them. If there were any supers with honey in, then I swapped them over so that they are now under the brood boxes instead of on top. On two of the hives I reduced the size of the entrances by putting a wooden block in place. I only seemed to have two of these though so I will have to buy another three and also buy more of the metal mouse guards which are pinned into place to stop mice raiding the honey during the winter. It is also time to treat the hives against varroa and then, after that, I can safely leave them alone for a while. I was encouraged at how healthy the hives were looking, all five hives were stronger than any of  the hives I had last year. I could also see bees coming in with their backs coated in white pollen which is a sign that they have been visiting Himalayan balsam, an invasive foreign plant which is much disliked by everyone except beekeepers who appreciate the pollen it can provide late in the season. It is good to know that my bees are within flying range of Himalayan balsam just as it is good to know they can access alder catkins in February for an early start to their season. Next year my challenge with the bees is to try to pre-empt swarming. Although it was good experience, handling this years swarms, and has allowed me to build up to five hives, to get a good honey harvest, the bees really need to be  able to concentrate on bringing the nectar in rather than building up a new colony after swarming.

Inevitably, inspecting the bees took longer than I thought, and it was nearly five by the time I’d finished putting everything away but as Oliver was spending the night with his other grandparents, I didn't have to collect him from nursery so I was able to zip out into the front garden and do a little more in my mission to obliterate the orange paint. Yesterday was the turn of the drainpipe,

which copying all the neighbours I painted black.

 As the drainpipe is next to my neighbours front door, it put me in mind of the pun I once heard on ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’, ‘Was it you who spilt black paint outside the front door? Well go and never darken my doorstep again!’.

In Which Our Heroine Discovers Once Again That Some Things Really Need Two People

I have been fired up to do DIY recently, partly inspired by the success of the garage door and partly driven by the knowledge that when winter is really here I won’t be stirring far from the fire let alone going up ladders.

The title of this blog is explained by my attempts to repair a hole in the plaster of the kitchen ceiling.

 

Now my plastering skills aren't brilliant and I know it would look better if a real plasterer did it but this is about frugal living, unlike one of my neighbours, I cannot call in the professionals even if ‘he was ever so reasonable, only £500’.

So there were two alternatives either a) live with a hole in the ceiling (I’d tried that option for the last 18 months) or b) try to fill the hole with plasterboard and plaster over the joins.

Oh dear.

This is where I needed a second pair of hands. I discovered that when standing at the top of a stepladder trying to balance a piece of plasterboard against the ceiling with one hand, while reaching for the prop to hold it in place with the other and then watching the prop slip out of reach and fall onto the floor.  By the end of the day, I’d discovered several more things , most importantly that the plasterboard adhesive just wasn't going to cut it and  a belt and braces operation involving screwing it into the ancient laths was also needed.

However I did manage to get most of the hole filled in.

It then just needed a couple of smaller pieces of plasterboard and the gaps filling in, but the weather has been so good over the last week that I was seduced into working in the garden instead.

When the BT engineer came last week, my garden looked like this

Now it looks like this:

I decided to sacrifice the lilac tree, which does have its moment of glory in May but then spends the rest of the year either casting a shade over the garden or demanding I prune it.

I didn't do it all by myself, I had help:

Once I have got the roots out, which will be a job and a half in itself, I want to replace it with a dwarf cherry tree which will match the lilac for pretty blossom in spring but then give wonderful fruit in summer. I will put two or three gooseberry cuttings in front of the wall where the brambles were running wild and then the rest of the garden will be filled with herbs and salad plants. I do have a hankering for training a grape vine round the doorway though which led to the realisation that I really must paint it first.

I’m ashamed to say, that I think some of it (the orange bits ) are still the way they were when we moved in twenty five years ago and not unreasonably are in very poor condition.

Yesterday, I sanded and painted all the bits I could reach with a stepladder. Unfortunately the green paint I’d used on the garage door ran out halfway through the front door.

I’d already decided that this green was a bit too bright and I was going to find a darker one but then when I went to the shop this morning, there was my paint at £6.80 a tin or the market leader at £17.95. Maybe the brightness will fade over the winter.

So today’s task is painting, but tomorrow I may well be back up the ladder wrestling with the kitchen ceiling as the weather forecast is rain for the rest of the week. It doesn't really matter which I’m doing, either will move me closer to the sort of house I want to be living in.

I'm Back!

Technology has been conspiring to keep me down over the past week. My phone line, by which I get my not very reliable broadband, was knocked out completely by a storm ten days ago. The cable broadband company from  whom I ordered at the start of August, decided that there was an Obstruction and they wouldn't be able to finish installation until the end of October. My internet life was not looking good.

The  phone engineer came out quite quickly and checked everything (thank God I did the big clear out of my bedroom in August) but was rather flummoxed by the position of the telegraph post.

If you're having trouble actually spotting a telegraph pole I will give you a clue, that towards the top right hand corner of the photo you can see the telephone wires leading to it. On the unseen side of the pole there is a steep bank leading down to the church and the scout and guide hall.

Now I should explain here, that the front of my street is completely grassed over. As I understand it, before the war, the front street was in use but only on special occasions, such as weddings or funerals when the gate at the top of the street was opened and carriages driven down the cinder covered road. For everyday use, people came down the back, as they still do. During the war, the cinders were cleared away and the road was used for growing vegetables. After the war when this was no longer needed, the road was grassed over. Ten or fifteen years ago, when lots of us in the street  had small children we used this for an annual communal party with bouncy castle and barbecue and putting tired children to bed in the houses behind whilst the adults sat on into the night with cans of beer and glasses of wine. Those children are now aged 16 to 30 and there isn't so much call for bouncy castles or parties where you don’t need a babysitter and the front street is mainly just a quiet green space all the time now.

 However this doesn't alter the fact that it is a quiet green space that a BT engineer cannot drive up to, so all ladders and equipment have to be carried quite a distance. Also to add to the complications the telegraph post was standing in an area of the street that had at some point been illegally fenced off to give the house opposite more garden. 

All reasons why the first engineer shuffled off saying he was going to refer it to the planning department.

I then heard nothing for a week, during which I was having to go up to the library everyday to check my emails and realised how dependent I had become on the internet. To make a recipe I had seen on television for example, I had to go up to the library with pen and paper to write it out longhand. For the first time since Christmas, I bought a copy of the Radio Times to find out what was on television instead of just checking online. I had to remember to switch the television on in the morning as well, so that I could check the weather forecast for the day. And then there were all those idle arguments which normally send us to Wikipedia or Google, ‘Wasn't he in that series with thingy? You know the one in Africa?’ ‘No that was whatshisname’ ‘No, it was him, I'm sure!'

usually do and I started my own novel before deciding as usual that if it was boring me then it wouldn't do much for any other readers.

Then on Tuesday, another engineer was sent out, who was prepared to carry his ladders down the street. We knocked on the door of the road-stealing semi, and they were fine with letting us have access to the telegraph post  (they could hardly be otherwise but you never know).The old lady who lives there said ‘You won’t need me to come and unpadlock the gate will you?’ and we agreed not, although this did add to the engineer’s difficulty and inconvenience as he had to squeeze himself and his gear through an 8 inch gap between gate and hedge. Having sorted the line out at the telegraph post, he then discovered that his ladders weren’t long enough to take the new cable to my bedroom window and had to send a call out for reinforcements.  Finally after four hours, struggling in the warm sun, he had finished and I was connected to the world again. And it seems a much better connection than the old on. I look forward to filling you in over the next few days on what has been happening around here with hens, bees, apples, blackberries, soap, girls and toddlers

Fox Alert !

On Monday I didn't want to get out of bed, it was warm, I was sleepy so it was half past seven before I was trekking across the road in my dressing gown to let my chickens out (one of the many peculiarities of my street is that the gardens are across the road from the house). I was stopped in my tracks however by the sight of a fox and chicken dodging round a car not 6 ft apart from each other. I chased the fox away and the chicken disappeared up the street. Feeling responsible I knocked up two of the neighbours but neither claimed ownership.
So I carried on seeing to my chickens, until I  heard a chicken commotion from two gardens away. Clearly the fox had come back.Like the cavalry coming to save the day, I was in time to scare the fox into dropping the chicken that was in his mouth, and make him run away. There was a scattering of feathers all over the garden, but no bodies thank goodness. The chicken that had been in the fox's mouth was surprisingly perky, but I picked her up and shut her in an empty hen house along with another one and one that seemed very traumatised. I fetched them food and water but by then the traumatised one was stretched out on her side looking as if death was imminent and she did indeed die during the morning. During the day however 4 other chickens came out of hiding. Still Kevin's flock which had been in the region of 12-15 birds was down to 6.
As a result, all the chicken keepers in the street, decided to keep their birds shut up in their runs for the day instead of giving them the run of the garden as they usually do.This morning however, even that precaution wasn't enough, as the fox managed to leap to the top of Nicky's 7ft fence and then find a weak spot in the netting and actually get into her chicken run. Fortunately he was spotted before he had time to do more than terrify them. Her two new chickens, who were actually bleeding, have been put into secure confinement for the day, whilst her other three chickens have sought refuge in my run.
I tried to take a photo of them, but they seem to be in shock and are spending their time huddled under the floor of the hen house.

But whilst I was taking photos I thought you might like to see pictures of the chicks who are getting on for 10  weeks old now. Here is the Orpington who is now the size of a bantam,

 And this is the Brahma who has the most ridiculous feathery legs and seems to be a bit of a slower developer than the Orpington.

Note I haven't given them names yet, I am really hoping that they are both female so that we can keep them. So far so good.
The ex battery hens are also looking much better.

One of them in particular had a bright red bald bottom when she arrived rather like a gibbon (or is it baboon?) but is now beginning to get a decent covering of feathers.

 However, I don't think that my run is adequately fox proof. I partially roofed it last year, but the pvc panels gave way under the winter's snow and the rest of the roof is just netting, more aimed at keeping chickens in than foxes out. Sorting out the chicken run roof, was on my list of jobs to do before winter, so I don't mind that it has moved sharply up the priority list. I am going to strengthen it with more wood and then half of it will be pvc, to give the girls protection from the rain and snow of winter, and the other half will be covered in chicken wire. One of my chicken keeping neighbours has offered to pick me up 4 pieces of 8ft long timber when he goes to buy his own chicken run strengthening wood. Until that arrives, I thought I should cut back some of the forsythia which hangs over the run. I set out with the secateurs and cut enthusiastically,until I realised that the pile of branches was so large I had trapped myself into a corner.

Hmm.
Not to worry , we jungle veterans know that the only thing to do in these circumstances, is to cut a alternative path out, which I did.
Having done this immense pile of pruning (which is by no means finished)

is no bad thing as it will make it much easier to get that corner of the garden under control next spring. So it is an ill wind as they say.
Still I was glad when it started raining and I could honourably retreat inside to a cup of tea and the computer.

Piccalilli

I find the more I make at home, the less I want to buy in the shops. I am appalled by the prices and dissatisfied with the quality. This can lead to the odd crisis, when I fancy something that we have run out of. I can't bear to purchase an over priced substandard substitute from the supermarket so I have to do without until I can find the time or the ingredients are ripe, to make it.
Piccalilli is a gardener's pickle really, as it infinitely flexible in what can go in it and in what quantities. My recipe book only calls for 6 lbs of mixed vegetables, suggesting beans (dwarf, broad or runner), red or white cabbage, cauliflowers, cucumbers, celery, gherkins, marrows, onions, shallots, peppers and green tomatoes. You get the picture, ideal if you have a glut of something or alternatively not enough of something else to make a meal out of.
This year my gardening has been deficient so I had no runner beans to put in and as I only have about four green tomatoes left, I decided I would rather leave them out and coax them into ripening instead. So I was left with an overgrown courgette and a bought cauliflower, cabbage, pepper and onions. They have to be chopped up small and left to soak in brine. The book says 'cut into uniform small pieces' but I prefer to judge it by what size vegetable I would like to meet in a cheese and piccalilli sandwich. As for the brine the book recommended a pound of salt to a gallon of water but I probably used half of this, and then left the vegetables soaking in a bowl with a plate on top to hold them down.
I actually did them on Monday, but was then occupied with garage doors and Oliver until today (yesterday's outing was only slightly more successful than last week's by the way, I got stung by a wasp, we only had time for half an hour on the beach and ended up lost in rush hour traffic in Hull).
So here are the vegetables ready in the pan with the brine washed off :

Now to make the sauce.
For a hot sharp piccalilli which is how I like it blend
 3 teaspoons turmeric
 8 teaspoons ginger
 8 teaspoons mustard powder
and 6 ounces sugar
with two pints of distilled vinegar and put it all in a large pan with the vegetables and bring to the boil and cook for twenty minutes. Then using a slotted spoon, scoop the vegetables out of the spicy vinegar and pack into jars.

The wide necked funnel is a left over from my chutney making days and is really useful for any preserving job.

After all the vegetables are out of the vinegar, mix two ounces of cornflour with a couple of tablespoons of vinegar and add to the spicy vinegar in the pan and boil to thicken it. 

Looks a bit like custard in the photo but I can tell you it smells nothing like custard!

Then pour the sauce over the vegetables in the jars until covered . I jiggled about a bit with a spoon to make sure the sauce was distributed equally and that there were no air bubbles in the jar.

The book recommends that the piccalilli should be left four to six weeks to mature and I think this is reasonable because at the moment the sauce is very sharp and vinegary, it needs time to mellow.So there we are, 6 and a half jars to add to my store cupboard. That should see me through the rest of the year and possibly the year after.

Of Garage Doors

Well they are finally finished, and I am hugely relieved.They started out like this:

And three days and much hard labour later, they ended up looking like this:

More important than what they look like, they now open and close and are not in danger of blowing down in high winds. The area in front of my garage is used by the district nurses visiting my next door neighbour and I didn't relish any of the complications of having a garage door fall on their cars. 

Anyway, I couldn't afford new doors and my carpentry skills aren't up to completely making new doors, so my only option was to  do a make over on the old doors. I knew from when we repaired the dormer roof that  sheets of 18mm exterior grade plywood came in 8ft x 4ft which is exactly the size of each door, and cost around £20 each. From that it seemed a simple idea to take the doors off their hinges and glue and screw the new wood over them and then give them new heavy duty hinges.

By Saturday, I had given each plywood sheet two coats of paint  in the garage where I could do it in the dry without having to use a stepladder. I had also sanded and painted the wooden surrounds, which meant by Sunday there was nothing left I could do without taking the doors off.

The trouble was that the doors were already up when we moved into the house twenty seven years ago, so I was trying to remove rusty bolts that could have been in place for forty or fifty years.

 I got them all off except two, which I struggled with all day. I went off and bought a metal blade for my jigsaw and then realized I couldn't get the blade close enough to use. I tried to drill it through but my drill ran out of battery. Eventually, once the drill was recharged, I drilled the wood round it and pulled it out that way. The second bolt just needed the wood drilling a little round it to let me get a spanner to it. Then I was left grappling with a completely free 8ft door. 

There was a distinctly wobbly moment when it looked like the door was in control over me, but then I got the upper hand and lifted it on a trestle table. The actual gluing and screwing process wasn't difficult apart from the old door was warped out of line and I think the new wood had  warped during its time in the garage so the two pieces had to be clamped together before I could screw them. By the time it was done it was about seven in the evening and I was too tired to have confidence in my ability to measure the spaces between the hinges properly so I had to call it a night leaving the garage missing a door which was not what I wanted. 

 On Monday, talking with a neighbour, convinced me that I would be better off using bolts rather than screws, so I set off for the ironmongers on the other side of Leeds.I had a meeting in the afternoon so it was evening by the time I had the hinges up, and was ready to ask neighbours to help me lift the door into place. Unfortunately the measurements had not been quite right and the door was too high up to close properly.

 Tuesday morning, I had to try and take the hinges off and drop them by an inch without taking the door off or putting too much strain on the new hinges. With the help of David, my neighbour, and using blocks of wood as levers we managed it,
And I was free to start on the second door. After all the trouble of the first door, I can't say I was looking forward to the second door but it was easier second time around. For one thing, I had borrowed an angle grinder which made short work of cutting through troublesome bolts. The only hitch came at half past four, when I realised I was a hinge short, which meant another trip across Leeds, driving through rush hour traffic to get to the ironmongers before it shut. Then I should confess, that I screwed that hinge in the wrong place so when with the help of the neighbours again, we lifted the door into place, it would only rest on the top two hinges. I needed to move that hinge and cut a inch of plywood off the bottom. I was getting distinctly tired now but I wasn't going to give up so close to the finish, and by eight o'clock it was done. I'd even screwed a bolt on the door to keep it shut.
There are a few more bits to do, the paintwork needs touching up and there are two battens that are still to be screwed on the bottom but they can wait. Today is going to be spent relaxing with Oliver (hopefully a happier picnic than last week) and then tomorrow I am harvesting my first honey!