Buttercup has a strange lump

It looks like we will be having another visit from the vet. Buttercup has a strange lump on her neck. It came up very quickly yesterday. As soon as we saw it, we wormed her in case it is bottle jaw which is a swelling which is a side effect of anemia cause by intestinal worms. However it could also be an absess or infection caused by something she has eaten, so unless it has gone down tomorrow we will call the vet. Expensive business having animals! She seems to be eating fine and apart from the lump seems healthy, a little grumpy maybe.

It was hard leaving Doug to cope with the situation and run off to the airport, but such is life.

The joys of flying

I am sitting at the airport. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

We were just about to step on to the plane, when they shooed us all back in to the departures lounge because there is something wrong with on the wheels.

They guessed at 30 mins delay, but it has been more than that already with no news. No point raging :)

A ray of sunshine arrives in London

France

London

Ray of sunshine

Good luck gift from Mrs Robinson

I am flying to london today, to start work tomorrow. Thanks to everyone for the good luck wishes!

Mrs Robinson gave me a parting gift of a litter of babies. We were not quite sure she had actually mated. The father is probably Bunny boy although she did spend time with Stud bunny too she didn't seem keen to mate and we weren't sure Bunny boy had done the business - they did spend some hours together though, so it would seem so!

She seems to be spending time curled up with them which is unusual for bunny mums, they normally spend  about 5 mins a day with the babies, they rush in, feed them and then leave them hidden. Hopefully they are ok. We will see in a few days. She is quite a nervy mother so we don't like to disturb them too soon, just check none have fallen out the nest box from time to time. Hopefully she is not thinking of eating them! That has happened to some of hers in the past although she seems more settled now.

Job in London

I was offered a job in London, and after much thought we decided it made sense to accept. The job is interesting, and the extra money will help move the house forward. I will work in London 4 days and here 1 day a week. I start on Tuesday.

Lit the fire

Yes it is the middle (or maybe the end) of August and we have lit the fire. It has been cold for days and today it is raining too. We got a bit damp while out and about doing things and we were cold so we finally gave in to the temptation.

We made butter!

Well techically Doug startd off helping but got bored after about 3 minutes when it hadn't come together. It probably took 10 mins.

I maybe about 1/3 of a liter of cream in the kitchen aid with the wire beater and beat it on 10 until the butter came out. At which point it got a bit splattery and messy. Most things in the kitchen are covered in butter now!

I then strained the buttermilk off with a seive and mixed the butter with iced water a few times to rince out the buttermilk. Then i gathered it all together and added 1/4 tsp salt per 110g of butter. There was 115g of butter. Not really enough to make much with, but delicious and super exciting to have made. Takes a LOT of cream to make not much butter.

Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe

600ml Jersey milk (or 400ml full fat milk and 200ml cream)

115g sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

3 egg yolks

Bowl and pan that it fits in (or double boiler)

Put the egg yolks and sugar in the bowl and beat together with a whisk for 30 seconds or so. Add the milk. Put water in the pan so it comes part way up the bowl and add the bowl. Bring the water in the pan to the boil and heat the mixture gently. Keep stiring from time to time until the mixture thickens. As it gets hotter you need to stir more. It should look like custard - because it is custard! Stir in the vanilla and leave to cool. If you have an ice cream make that you freeze in the freezer you are best to refrigerate before putting in the mixer.

Freeze in an ice cream maker. Doug said this (made with our own cows milk) was the best ice cream he had ever tasted! Or maybe he said it was the best thing he had ever tasted he can't remember.

Making yogurt from raw milk

Raw milk doesn't make very good yogurt, it doesn't set very well (apparently). I normally use full fat UHT milk and it sets pretty well without the addition of powdered milk which is suggested in many recipes

Heat a liter of milk to 82°C and keep there for 2 mins and then cool by putting the pan in to a sink of water to about 40°C

Add a starter culture or stir in some yogurt (it is was home made you need to know whether it was a direct set starter - which won't work to reculture). The supermarket here have cultures which is very useful. I don't ever remember seeing them in the UK. Stir thoroughly and pour in to your yogurt maker (or you can put in a thermos flask or in a very low oven).

Should have a layer of cream on top and be yummy

I have made several batches and some have been better than others. If it is left warm for too long it gets very hard - I tried making cream cheese from this batch and it is quite nice. I put through a tea towel in a sieve and left it to drain for a few hours and then stirred in some salt. Would be nice with chives or something too.

Yay, more milk

The torture device has stayed on Bluebell so she is not drinking from Buttercup.

She seemed to give up quite quickly. Buttercup has a bit more milk for us now. We have been getting maybe a liter and a half each day. Which isn't much compared to how much milk she will have when she has just had a calf, but it is a lot 16 months after having the calf and a lot to have maintained all that time. I suspect Bluebell was getting a bit more than that as she suckled many times a day but we are only milking twice.

We will milk her for a few days - just for fun - and then let her dry up so she can put on a bit of weight before winter.

Not very clear picture, but you can see how much cream there is, this batch was nearly half cream, others are a lot less, it varies a lot.

I have made some very delicious ice cream and some yogurt - the yogurt is still being perfected.
It is so exciting milking our own cow. A shame we have to dry her up, but we also want to worm them and the wormer we have is not milk safe. We need to do it very soon so we can move them in to their new field as the one they are in is getting very low on grass.

Weighing the pigs

The pigs we had before we 'weighed' almost every week. I say weight, but we measured them and then estimated the weight from that using a formula from our pig book.
We finally got round to doing Pinky and Perky for the first time. Initially they seemed to be half the weight for the same age. But it turned out I should have measured from between the ears not from the bottom of the neck, I had forgotten. Even then they are about 25 kg (maybe about 30%) lighter than the other pigs at the same age. The Noir de Bigorre (they are 50% Noir de Bigorre, 25%Pietrain and 25% large white) is known for being very slow growing and they were weaned quite a bit younger than the other guys we had so perhaps those things together explains it. We have been feeding them similar although maybe a bit less as they have a much larger area to forage in. They look very happy and healthy. We just wormed them to be on the safe side.

Getting a new field ready for cows

At the moment most of the fields do not have fences good enough to keep the cows in, even though the highlands seem much happier now they have a larger herd with the Jersey's here too. The fences have been working fine for the horses, but they are quite a bit bigger and are good horses who only go walk about occasionally.
We have had a plan for a long time to divide the fields up more so now seemed a good time to start as it would save doing better fencing on the whole of a large field, and progress us a little towards the end goal.
After a lot of work strimming, them putting a new fence across and providing water it is finally ready for the cows - there is still more work needed on the fence and the water but it is a brilliant start. Doug heroically did almost all the work. I have been busy preserving various produce. We will move the cows in a few days when we know Bluebell is getting on OK with being weaned - the newly prepared field is further from the house.
To give you an idea.
The total area is about 11 hectares. The green line is approx the border of our land although it is a lot more wiggly in places - there is even a small area off the top of the picture not attached to the rest of the land that we have never located
The orange field is where the cows currently are by the house. We call it the hay field.
The pink field is where the pigs are (pretty giant area! lucky pigs!)
The red area is the new field. The pale blue shows where the stream is and the darker blue (if you can make it out) is where the new water pipe runs)
Previously the bottom area was all one field (so the red triangle and the square next to it). Eventually we will divide the remaining part in to two. We will lose a little bit off the bottom as it is very boggy and we think we will just leave it to go wild. It is pretty hard to put a fence in a bog and the wet is not good for the animals feet.
If you look really carefully you can see some little white blobs in that field. I think that is our sheep and that the satellite picture was taken last summer!

The new fence dividing the triangular field from the other part. This is where the fence is running down by the stream, viewed from the end nearer the house.

 Water capture box. The pipe goes well in to the box and is held in place with plumbing tape and silicone sealant. The entrance to the pipe is protected with bits of broken plant pot to stop a stone getting lodged in there. The bottom of the box and round the pipe is filled with sand and the rest of the box with gravel.

The box is buried to the left of the log, the pipe comes out under the log and you can see where the pipe to take the water to the drinker is attached with a grey plastic thing.

 View from further away, log is too the left and you can see the pipe carrying water going under the dog

 The sink embedded in the field with the pipe flowing in to it. The spur of fence is just to stop the cows getting above the drinker and knocking the pipe or slipping down in to the sink and dislodging it. The sink has a plug in and the water is going down the overflow in to a pipe that you can see emptying to the left of the picture. We are going to get another length of pipe and take this water back in to the stream as we are keen to minimise boggy areas.

Showing the location of the sink. It is close to the fence so the cows cannot walk on the pipes in and out. You can see the land is fairly steep and that there is plenty of nice lush grass for the cows.

Weaning Bluebell

Bluebell is a bit over 16 months old and still feeding from her mum. She should have been weaned at about 5 or 6 months old, but it seems that often calves left with their mums will just go on feeding. This means that poor Buttercup is having to feed two and that Bluebell is very fat (someone who knows Jersey cows said she was the fattest Jersey she had ever seen!). It was nice for us though as it meant Buttercup still had some milk. However to let Buttercup prepare for having a new calf and to slim down Bluebell as she is probably too fat to conceive at the moment we have decided we need to intervene.
We got this horrible torture device from the local garden center/farming shop (Point Vert).

It goes on the 'calf's' (the inverted commas are because Bluebell is bigger than Buttercup and old enough to breed, so it is hard to call her a calf any more) nose and it tightened with the nut just enough to hold it in, but so that it can flip up and down. The idea is that it pushes the teats out of the way so the calf cannot get them in its mouth. The spikes are to encourage the mother to push the calf off if it persists too much.
We have had it some days and have been worrying about whether it is cruel or not. However something has to be done and the alternative is to separate them which we decided would be worse for everyone. Bluebell can still graze fine with this on and it does not hurt her (only her mum if she gets spiked!). Apparently some calves can manage to suckle anyway, so we will see how it goes.
It was quite hard to get on as her nostrils are quite far apart. Proceedings were made more exciting by it turning out that Bluebell was in heat and she kept trying to mount Buttercup. I feel fortunate that she didn't mount me when I had may back to her milking Buttercup! Noone wants a fat warty girl mounting them from behind!
The cool punk look.

You can kind of see it working here. Poor Bluebell is drooling like mad trying to get her drink

This makes it clear that if she is clever enough just to turn her head on it's side she will still be able to suckle! Let's hope she is not...

Stuffed Vine Leaves Recipe

Rice mix

1 cup of rice

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1/2 onion

Some mint leaves or whatever other spice you prefer

2 tblsp olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup sultanas

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pine nuts (not chopped)

Approx 30 vine leaves

Juice of 1/2 lemon

4 tblsp olive oil

1.5 cups water

Oven proof dish

Cook the rice and cool then add all the other ingredients in the rice mix. Allow to cool.

Blanch the vine leaves (or if they were preserved in some way they are ready already).

Line the dish with a layer of vine leaves (use the duds that are torn or whatever)

Roll the rice mix in to the vine leaves

Place some vine leaves in the bottom of the dish then put the rolled vines on top. You can stack one layer on top of the other.

Pour over the water, the oil and the lemon juice and cover the dish with vine leaves and then foil.

Cook in a 180C oven for 45-60 mins until most of the liquid has been absorbed.

Serv hot or chilled with a squeeze of lemon.

Amaretti sweet and sour cocktail

Serves 2

30g lemon juice

30g grapefruit juice

60g Amaretto

Crushed ice

Lowball glasses

Some kind of garnish like a maraschino cherry or a coil of lemon peel.

Mix together the lemon, grapefruit and amaretto.

Fill the glasses with crushed ice

Pour the juice over the ice and drink!

Sorry no picture, too busy drinking!

Preserving vine leaves

We have a crappy vine that never has any grapes (except about 3 tiny ones last year that never ripened). To try to make it useful in some way (no slackers on the farm - and that includes the plants!) I have preserved some of the leaves to make stuffed vine leaves. I have never tried making them before but I need to now to use up those vine leaves!

For the preserving liquid (you need somewhat less than the total volume of your jars)

1l water

3 tsp citric acid or vitamin C (ascorbic acid)

2 tsp salt

Boil the water and add the acid and salt and boil for another 30 seconds

Vine leaves

Preserving jars - they need to be reasonably tall, although it is fine if they are a bit shorter than the leaves.

While the water is boiling prepare the vine leaves by washing them.

Then make a pile of 5 leaves and roll it up. Before rolling fold down the pointed ends so the roll will fit in your jar. You can tie with string if you want, but no need.

Make all the leaves in to rolls and stuff the rolls upright in to the jar. You want them fairly tightly packed so the leaves don't float up in the jar.

Once all the jars are packed pour the hot liquid over the leaves.

Put the lids on and process for 10 mins in a pan of hot water.

As the jars cool the tops of the lids should pop down. If not then reprocess.

This jar is about 500 ml, there are about 30 leaves in there. It could have been tighter packed.

Spooky sky

We have had a fair amount of stormy weather this summer. This has made for some good sunsets. This one gave a pretty weird colour to the sky.

Welcome to Raasay the Ram

You may remember that our Ouessant ram Tyson died recently. We have replaced him by swapping our boy lamb with another one that we found on leboncoin. We have called the new ram Raasay. He is about 5 months old and should hopefully be ready to do the business come mating season (in a couple of months time). He is quite friendly which the one we swapped him for was not. His horns are in a different style and I think will not curl right round like Tyson's did.

Marciac Jazz Festival

Although the Marciac Jazz Festival happens every year, it is the first time we have been. Marciac is about an hours drive away. Some friends were going, so we tagged along, otherwise we probably would never have got round to it.

The sun was shining and we had a very pleasant day out. In the evening there are various paid concerts, but during the day there is a stage in the middle of the town square with free jazz. We had lunch in a restaurant overlooking the square with the jazz as a nice background. Then we wandered around various market stalls (reminded us of our old home in Camden!). We didn't actually sit down at the stage and watch any of the music, but it made a very nice background to a lovely sunny day shopping (window shopping - didn't buy anything).

Marciac is about an hours drive away from the mountains. Round here they grow mostly maize (for animal food I think). Away from the mountains, where it is dryer they still grow maize (they have to water it) but also a lot of sunflowers. Fields full of them look very impressive.

Green Tomato Soup Recipe

The tomatoes got blight just before they ripened. They did better than last year though when they got blight earlier on and didn't even have any tomatoes. Very annoying, but it seems a shame to waste them.

Some green tomatoes

Some onions (about 1/4 the weight of the tomatoes)

Spices (i used a chilli)

A bit of brown sugar

Chicken stock (amount depends whether you want a thick or thin soup)

Chop the onion and tomato in to large chunks and put in a baking tray. Sprinkle with brown sugar. Cook at a medium temperature until everything is soft.

Put in to a pan and add the chilli or whatever spice you are using along with the chicken stock and boil for a bit until the spice is integrated. Liquidise.

To serve reheat and stir in a little cream.