Seeds, Bees and Slippers

The bee hives our now in our field and due to the dry weather there was no problem moving the heavy hives into position in the paddock.  Although we have had a heavy frost every morning for the last week, the warmth later on has meant the bees are flying. However, I did make fondant for extra feed this weekend. They are visiting snowdrops, heather and daffodils.

As our house has slate floors throughout which can be a bit hard and cold for no shoes, I am making "Visitors' Slippers". Having boiled a few jumpers in the washing machine to make felt, I am sewing simple mule type slippers in various sizes. My first prototype pair are a bit untidy but the photo shows the general idea. I made mine with three layers of felt for the base but am told that a more waterproof sole can be made from an old yoga mat!

Seed sowing continues. The propagator is jam packed. I love sowing seeds, sieving the compost, using a presser board to firm the compost (or a jam pot lid when sowing in 9cm pots)before carefully placing the seeds and then more sieving. The very best bit is floating the trays and pots in a bowl of water and waiting for the surface of the compost to glisten! Tomatoes have been pricked out and the chillies have just germinated, even the ones from Home Bargains! This weekend, I have sowed chard, leeks, broccoli, beetroot, Nicotiana mutabalis ( a beautiful small flowered variety with marshmallow colours, guess what the variety is called!)  various Primula, Monarda and .....Cotoneaster! The seed was saved  and chilled from a lovely bunch of Christmas greenery my sister gave me! I was delighted when I came to sow the leeks that Carl, my seedy penpal sent last month had included an early and a late variety  'Jaune de Poitou' and 'Bleu de Solaise'. I have only grown Musselburgh before so am looking forward to trying these.

We planted red, white and yellow onion sets as well as shallots today. We decided to cover the bed with floating film as our Catlings are now experiencing the outside world. Freshly  raked raised beds are the ideal spot for their toilette it seems!
Next post will be a bee  gallery!

Seeds and Sunshine

It's impossible not to feel optimistic after a day of blue sky and sunshine in February! Today the propagator was switched on and I sowed chillies, tomatoes, basils,  coriander, Clematis,, Kniphofia and Tagetes. In the greenhouse I sowed extra sweet peas and Rhubarb Victoria as I want lots of plants!

Yesterday, our cockerel Humphrey more than earned his keep by shrieking and crowing so loudly that I ran out  to the paddock expecting to find a fox. Instead I found a stoat with a Silkie bantam in its mouth! I kicked it off and poor Hilda jumped up and ran off, she has a small wound but seems fine and laid an egg this morning. We shall have to see if she goes off lay now, poor thing. I read of the need to plug any small gaps in the hen house as stoats, weasels etc can get in and cause havoc. I shall add a photo of the ducks, a more tranquil scene from today!

We spent all day outside, even eating lunch in the sunshine so there was plenty of opportunity to look at new growth and flowers. I am very pleased with the Helleborus orientalis and daffodils in ground and pots. 'February Gold' is living up to its name. Pruned the roses today, watered all the sweet peas and cold frames and Paul mowed the paddock with our 'new' mower... Given to us and coaxed into life.

Now our Internet is working again, I have been checking out Oca and Mashua cultivation and shall leave planting for a while yet. These tubers are such an exciting part of my Seedy Penpal parcel from Carl Legge. I am so looking forward to eating the harvest and I adore perennial Nastutiums.

Cake and Seeds

Marmalade and Fruit Cake Recipe

Uses up left over dried fruit and last years marmalade

225g whole wheat flour
150g soft brown sugar
150g soft butter
325g mixture of any dried fruit, make up any combination to make the weight
50g of any nuts chopped, I have used almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts
grated zest of a lemon
400gof chunky marmalade
3 teaspoons of baking powder
3 medium eggs

I put I a 7inch square cake tin, greased and base lined. I am sure a round tin of similar size would be fine.
Oven, 170C

Put all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and beat everything with an electric whisk. Place the mixture into the greased tin and bake for about an hour and a half. A skewer inserted should come out clean when the cake is ready. It takes longer to cook in my Rayburn, more like 2 hours. If top becomes brown before cake is done, cover top with greaseproof paper.  Cool in tin for half an hour before turning out to cool completely on a wire rack.

This week I sent off  a parcel to my seedy Penpal  and received mine from Carl. I had been warned to expect the contents to be all shapes and sizes and what a fantastic assortment arrived! A thyme plant, a just perfect addition to the herb garden and for our bees.The foliage was very fragrant asI unpacked the plant. Tubers of  Oca and Mashua, which I am very keen to try and loads of seeds for interesting edibles, all packed up with a beautiful Llyn sunset card! I am intrigued by Par Cel, a leaf celery that I have not come across before. So, I have a whole lot of new varieties which I can try out in my new garden and shall write of my progress periodically.

A productive weekend

As anyone knows who heats their home and cooks with wood, quite a bit of time is spent on wood related activities! Cutting kindling, stacking logs indoors and wood chopping are frequent Saturday morning activities. The kittens first day outside was made far more interesting by them having a pile of newly split logs to climb over and explore.

We have been concentrating our efforts on the kitchen garden as it is dry under foot and we are keen to get growing again! Derek the Weather on BBC Wales said on Friday that he would eat his hat if it rained on Saturday. Well, he must have had a bit of indigestion on Saturday as we were out gardening in freezing rain and hail. It did pass and we had a few warm minutes in the sunshine!

 One of the first things we discovered when we moved in was that we don't have much soil! When wanting to grow your own fruit and veg this is a bit of  a disadvantage! Fortunately we have been able to use some well rotted compost from the garden and topsoil dug out to make a driveway from a member of Anglesey Freecycle to replenish old raised beds and fill up new ones. I have also been planting some herbs that I have been growing in containers, the Bay having been in containers of ever  increasing sizes for about 5 years. I planted the first of many Rosemary, as it is so good for bees. Unfortunately, we have not moved our bees yet as the land we have been keeping them on is too wet to get on .

I had some leek plants that I had grown in the hope of planting at the end of last summer but ended up bringing them with me and so they have all been planted. I have also begun my cut flower bed with Digitalis Excelsior Hybrids and Snowy Mountain I grew from seed last year planted out at last. They would have been better planted out 5 months ago but I hope the plants are bulky enough to do
their stuff! Last year, as they were visible from the road, I had a photographer stop his car and ask to

take photos of my 'giant foxgloves' I don't think they will be so giant this year! I have acquired 3 varieties of rhubarb and potted them up to bulk up before I get the fruit patch sorted.

One of the good things that happened this week was contact with #seedypenpals.  This is great way to share seeds and make contact with others organised by Carl....  http://www.carllegge.com  . So I am anticipating a package of seeds from @CarlLegge and preparing to send an interesting selection to Danielle in The Netherlands!

We finished off last years marmalade by making a cake and the house has been smelling like Mrs Coopers kitchen as I simmer some Seville oranges for a new batch. Just off to complete the final stages now! More pictures and less text next time, my hands have been muddy most of the weekend so just a few quick snaps when the when the sun was shining!

January Snow

Expecting a spattering of snow, we made a few half hearted preparations... Getting in a bit more wood in, buying an extra pint of milk. We just about made it home on Friday before the road became impassable and watched the snow fall and fall and fall! On Saturday we woke to 26cm of snow magic. So, a weekend of helping a friend with a new turkey house  and making a wind break for our apiary turned into an indoor weekend with a few forays out to care for hens and to enjoy walking in the snow.

Snowy weather calls for a bit of comfort cooking so made  two stews and a cake. Good old Delia's Last Minute Mincemeat Christmas Cake is a great recipe and I always change it according to how much mincemeat I have left and chuck in all sorts of odds and ends of fruit and nuts left from Christmas.  I think its what a 1970's cookery book would call a Farmhouse Fruit Cake, pictured with a Laura Ashley apron, terracotta pot and wooden spoon. This is the first time I have cooked it in the Rayburn and my official cake taster informs me it's the best ever. Now I am getting used to how to control the heat, I think it is the most amazing oven. The kittens think so too and have their own special place in front of the fire box, the warmest spot in the house!

Our hens got stranded in the field when it started to snow on Friday so they have tended to stick to the henhouse since. Glad the attached run has a felted roof. Photos of paddock and kitchen garden at first light.

Since its not possible to do any gardening I am off to grow some oyster mushrooms!

30th October 2012-13th January 2013

We sold our previous house in August and almost immediately saw Ty Hen Cottage, realised it was ideal for us and after a little negotiation the sale was agreed and we moved here amid much excitement. We had been living in an ex local authority house with one of the best views on Anglesey and reasonably sized gardens where we had a greenhouse, cold frames, chickens, vegetables, soft fruit and lots of flowers but we had outgrown the space and fancied the challenge of trying to grow more of our own produce, keep more poultry and somewhere to keep our bees (the hives are kept elsewhere as we were too close to our neighbours thoroughfare!).

So we now have a smaller house but we have a kitchen garden, flower garden, outbuildings and a paddock with a myriad of sheds! The first few months have passed very quickly and a quick run through will suffice as this blog will be my diary of growing stuff really and there hasn't been too much of that going on apart from tending everything I brought with me and sowing the sweet peas a couple of days after we moved in.

So, 2 months in we have extended the raised beds in the kitchen garden, removed van loads of unwanted items from the field, renovated a chicken house complete with automatic door on a timer (luxury!), learned a bit about cooking on a wood burning Rayburn, killed an enormous number of rats, acquired two kittens, started work on the track to our house, decorating, bookshelves and major hedge cutting and now it all feels like we are moving forward with our exciting project. I shall get the propagator set up  soon and begin the seeds!