The potager

What with training the highlands and now milking the Jerseys and having to do something with the milk every day I have not got on very well yet with planting things in the potager.
I managed to keep the plants that are there mainly week free but the other beds were full of weeds that were getting bigger and bigger and depressing me, so I went a bit mad and strimmed them all. Not sure whether this will turn out to be a good idea or not. I know need to dig them over and get things planted.

The wood round beds is starting to rot away. We will try to fit in renewing them this year...

The Verveine seems to have died, so we may need a new one of them. It is a shame and a surprise as it seemed to be doing very well. We drink some tea made from the leaves most evenings.

I have planted some chives, basil and lemon grass and a red gooseberry bush.

The rosemary looks a bit sickly, half of it has gone all black and frazzled

The blackcurrent looks to be doing well. It is the first year it has had many fruit on it. The green stick things are in preparation for netting it

Strawberries are doing well

Beer!

We do get British beer here sometimes, but not often and we miss it. Though there are many nice French ones, it is not the same.

Intermarche had some kind of beer event and were selling Brewdog Punk IPA. Very nice! So I bought quite a few...

Not Cheddar - take 2

The first attempt is here
This one was made the following day following the same Mad Millies recipe but with only 5 liters of milk to try to fit in to the mould.

1/8th tsp mesophilic culture (I used this https://www.gnltd.co.uk/goat-nutrition/cheese-making-products/cheese-making-cultures/mesophilic-type-ii-cheese-culture-for-cheese-making.html)
1/8 tsp animal rennet mixed with a 1/4 cup previously boiled water. It was a very full spoon.
5l raw jersey milk, still warm from the cow
3/4 tblsp cheese salt

Heated milk to 32°C then added the culture, left for 45 mins in warm room. Was 31° at end of time
Added diluted rennet and left for 120 mins. I put the pan in another pan with 32° water in it.
This was only meant to be 60mins but I had to go out.

Also I didn’t top stir so layer of cream on the surface AGAIN
Cut the curd in to 1cm cubes (probably a bit bigger and they were trapizoid in shape). I cut with a palette knife in one dirction, then at 90° and then again along the first lines with the knife at 45° to vertical.
Left for 10 mins for the curds to start draining a bit, else they all break up when I stir.
Temp was 30°C at this point.
Raised heat to 38°C over 30 mins in the water bath stirred gently with hand during this time.
Drained curds.
Left to drain in a cheese cloth for an hour (I hung it in the cheese cloth this time in the pan covered in tea towel.
Broke curd in to chunks about 2cm across and stirred in 3/4 tblsp salt
Put in to press

Pressed 10 mins at 10lb
Turned, then 10 mins at 20lb
Turned, then 12 hrs at 50lb
Turned and out back at 10lb without cloth to get rid of the cloth marks.

This one seems a little less wet than the other one which was still draining whey when it was left to sit for a day out of the press.

The curds after cutting

... after heating

Left hand cheese here

Making (not) Cheddar cheese

I am really hoping that this will come out as a cheese which will melt for toasted chees. Other attempts I have made have not. There is a lot of suspense with hard cheeses as you have to wait for weeks or months to see how they came out.

I am planning on making a number of these so I can try at different ages... it is a slow process inputting what I learn from the results as there is a good chance we won’t still be milking by the time I get to try the first one... so it will be a while till I get a chance to try again with our own milk. I am hoping I will write enough detail here to be able to pick it up again.

I followed the Mad Millies recipe here, but not using their culture, rennet etc
I don’t think it is a really a cheddar (there is no cheddaring!) but I needed something simple to start with.

1/8th tsp mesophilic culture (I used this https://www.gnltd.co.uk/goat-nutrition/cheese-making-products/cheese-making-cultures/mesophilic-type-ii-cheese-culture-for-cheese-making.html)
1/8 tsp animal rennet mixed with a 1/4cup previously boiled water. It was probably a little bit more than that.
6l raw jersey milk, still warm from the cow
3/4 tblsp salt

Heated milk to 32°C then added the culture, left for 45 mins in warm room. Was 31° at end of time
Added diluted rennet and left for 60 mins. I put the pan in another pan with 32° water in it.
Was thr clean break good enough? Not sure... perhaps should have left a bit longer or used a spot more rennet.
Also I didn’t top stir so layer of cream on the surface...
Cut the curd in to 1cm cubes (probably a bit bigger and they were trapizoid in shape). I cut with a palette knife in one dirction, then at 90° and then again along the first lines with the knife at 45° to vertical.
Left for 10 mins for the curds to start draining a bit, else they all break up when i stir.
Temp was 30°C at this point.
Raised heat to 38°C over 30 mins in the water bath stirred gently occasionally during this.
It actually took more like 40 mins
Drained curds.
Left to drain in a cheese cloth for about 2 hours (longer than the recipe, because I had to go out). I actually left in a colander and I think it drained less well because of that.
Broke curd in to chunks about 2cm across and stirred in 3/4 tblsp salt
Put in to press - however slight setback here as it didn’t fit v well so had to press differently to the instructions.

Pressed 12 hours at 10lb
Turned, then 10 mins at 20lb
Turned, then 6 hrs at 50lb

Still didn’t quite fit so just turned and pressed gently to try to get the right shape. Hopefully it will work out ok despite not being pressed as hard as it should have been.

It is the middle cheese here.

Cute bunny breakfast

After success selling Highlands and sheep we may sell some of these little guys when they are a bit older.

Happy 23 years to us

We have been together 23 years this bank holiday weekend.

This year we will also have been together for half our lives (in February for Doug and August for me) and it is our 10th wedding anniversary in July.

We went to see the Star Wars film, Solo, with some friends. Not particularly to celebrate but nice film and dinner...

This is our song so you can celebrate too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QNEf9oGw8o&list=RD_QNEf9oGw8o&t=1

Sold some Ouessant sheep

We haven’t sold the sheep before, we ate or kept them. They seem quite popular and 6 were sold in about 5 mins of placing the advert!
We are planning on eating a few of the older one (mutton is very tasty) and cutting down from 12 ewes and the ram to around 4 ewes and the ram. Less shearing, less moving, less effort!

Haïnoa and Islay are sold and gone!

We advertised them on leboncoin (French site a bit like ebay but you collect the things you buy), and really quickly someone responded. We made an appointment for him to come and see them - and were a little surprised when he turned up with a trailer!
He saw them, loved them and bought them...
We had a bit of fun getting Haïnoa in to the trailer, I was intending to spend some time habituating them to going in and out of our trailer before we had to load them for someone else. After minor setback where Haïnoa ploughed the poor guy through the cow poo on a rope then broke free, I recaptured her and we got her in the trailer quite easily (we did have to cut a bit of fence to pop her out in a convenient place, but all good).
She wasn’t very calm on arriving at her new home apparently and charged the guy, but sure she will settle down quickly!

Little bit sad to see them go but a relief also that it went relatively smoothly and that all the remaining animals will now have plenty of grass.

Fabien very bravely in the van with them

... and they are off!

Their new home is near Biarritz, we may visit one day - it is near a mini railway I would like to go on. The new owner is very friendly and nice, he has a gardening business and is planning on expanding in to conservation grazing with the highlands, I think he was intending to use castrated males for that - there are various people who do it in the center of France apparently.

We still have Bear (Islay's calf), we cannot catch him at the moment but are working on that. We will either sell or eat him depending whether we find a buyer or not.

Spring in La Mongie

We went up for a short holiday to La Mongie (we cannot stay away more than 24 hours at the moment as we are milking the cows) for a nice change of scene and to walk the dog as well as see what the snow was looking like.

This is the bottom carpark. EMPTY. So Doug parked like this.

Melt water

Many pretty flowers

Not really enough snow left for skiing.

Chairlift maintenance

More flowers

The altitude makes crisp packets go really fat. This one was quite chunky even at home... makes me laugh every time :)

Cow blood tests - DONE

I mentioned a little while ago we needed blood tests from the cows (and also a TB test this year).
It is now all done and we are just waiting for the paperwork.
The vet said they were very calm and well behaved - which they were. Although we find the highlands difficult if we don't work with them enough, in the grand scheme of cow behaviour I think they are pretty good.
It is a relief to have it done as we are a bit late with it. We only discovered last minute that it was meant to be done by the end of April. Fortunately they gave us an extension. It makes it hard to sell or abattoir animals if you don't have the tests in place.

Sushi!

A new kind of restaurant has opened in Bagneres. It does take away sushi that you pick up from a wine bar called 'La Cave', so you can have a nice drink while you wait to collect it.
Yummy!
If you are in the area we recommend a visit. Wednesdays and Thursdays only.

Lights at La Cava

The sushi

We had a set menu. This is the desert, surprisingly tasty! The jelly is agar-agar apparently.

Scones Recipe

I had to make some to go with the clotted cream!

350g self raising flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
80g butter
35g sugar
175ml buttermilk or slightly acidic milk (add squeeze lemon if needed)
Egg to glaze

Heat oven to 220C.

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Rub the butter in to the flour.
Stir in the sugar.
Warm the milk a little
Make a dough by gently mixing the milk in to the dry ingredients. Don't over work and don’t add all of it at first, keep adding till you have a stiff dough.
Turn out on to floured surface
Roll out to around 2.5cm thick and use a 6cm cutter to cut out the scones - or just cut in to squares or smaller or bigger, whatever you fancy... Press down quickly and cleanly so none of the sides are squished so the scone rise neatly.
Reroll the dough/pastry as needed.
Careful not to work the pastry too much as the scones will be hard if you do.
Glaze the tops with egg

Put on to a baking tray and cook for about 10 mins.

St.Sebastian, Basque Cheesecake Recipe

We LOVE San Sebastian. It is a lovely town with a beach and chock full of the best food in the world.

It is in the Basque region and they have their own style of Tapas called Pinxos. Most of the food is savory but there is the occasional desert. The best of these being the cheese cake at La Vina (there other Pinxos are all v good too)

There are various attempts to work out what the recipe is. This is my attempt at something similar using home made cheese. The origional uses philadelphia, according to this blog http://www.thisnewview.com/basque-burnt-cheesecake/

18cm spring form cake tin

600g of cream cheese (I used kefir cheese)
235g sugar
4 eggs
280ml cream
20g flour

Mix everything thoroughly - ideally with a stand mixer. Probably cream the cheese and sugar first then add eggs and other items.
Line the tin with grease proof paper. It should go beyond the top of the tin by a few inches because the cake rises quite a bit during baking then sinks back down.
Put the mixture in to the tin and bake at 200°C for about 50 mins until brown and it only wobbles gently in the center. ie you want it cooked and set right through, but not overcooked as you want the center to be very soft and creamy. The outside should be browned and almost crusty.
Allow to cook before serving.
I guess it would be delicious with some kind of fruit ot jam, but that is not traditional!

Lancashire Cheese (again - finally)

It is nearly 4 years since I last made this. We didn’t even have the Jersey cows then! I got disappointed making hard cheeses, some of the soft ones I made came our REALLY well, but the hard ones were never great - the thing I wanted (and still want!) most was one that would melt like cheddar for toasted cheese. As a result I stopped making them (it is a lot of effort so hard to continue for disappointing results) and so this is the first time making with our own Jersey milk.

We are getting 7 or 8 liters a day at the moment, so I have to find something to do with it all which makes trying again a good idea, it may waste my time if it doesn’t work out, but we had the milk anyway.

I have read many things about cheese making recently, so I have made a few adjustments.
1st is making sure things are really really sterile. I took a tip from somewhere and have two bowls of water, one for rincing and one with a suitable steriliser for dipping spoons etc in before they go in the cheese. Unfortunately dog hairs have magic powers and can gt ANYWHERE. But trying to minimise this.
2nd I have adjusted the rennet for using fresh home made milk. I have dropped 30% off the amount used.
3rd I have added calcium cloride which is meant to make the calcium more accessible again after pasurisation (or something like that).I did this because I had it in a kit I was given and I pasturised the milk first.
Finally I was more gentle with stiring and handling the curds than previously as I have read they are very fragile and you lose good things like fat if you are not gentle.

I am also going to press at a slightly lower weight - which is frustration with the cheese press rather than because I thnk it will be better. I have a new one on order as the one I have is USELESS (no calibration and it tips over unless clamped down - which is tricky to do somewhere the whey can safely run off). It is ‘artisanal’ apparently, maybe it is just meant for decoration!
http://laviealapetiteferme.blogspot.fr/2014/06/lancashire-cheese.html

I can’t remember how I managed the temperature befor. This time I had the water in the bottom pan at about 35°C and look the top one in and out to keep it at 31°C. Ove the time the temperature in the bottom pan dropped and I just let it so it was cooler for the draining of the whey off the curds.

4l pasturised fresh Jersey milk - very creamy - perhaps 1/3rd cream (I heated to 70°C then cooled in a sink or cold water)
1/8tsp (0.625ml) animal rennet (possibly should be even less according to the recipe I am copying, but went for somewhere between that and the instructions on the rennet as rennet can be different strengths)
1/8th tsp calcium cloride (added with the rennet - maybe should have been with the culture)
Mesophilic culture for 4l of milk (according to the culture instructions)
14g salt (not iodised) 3/4 tblsp

I followed the same process as before (which is described best in the original recipe that I link to).

The curds didn't quite fit in to the mould! But one they have drained overnight they hopefully will... (unfortunate brown colour of the cheese cloth is because it has also been used brewing beer which has stained it - it is clean, honest!)

Mozzarella Cheese

Made using ingredients from kit I was recently given.

This Mozzarella was made using citric acid then adding rennet. The recipe is here.

The curds

Curds after heating a bit and stirring

After draining the whey

After heating stretching and forming in to balls - they are soaking in salt water (which is the reason for the water looking greyish as the salt was like that)