Rhubarb Fool Recipe

300g rhubarb
100g sugar

150ml cream
1 dessert spoon sugar

Put the rhubarb and sugar in a pan and heat gently until rhubarb softens and falls apart.
Whip the cream until stiff, add the spoonful of sugar and whip a little but more.
Swirl the cream and rhubarb mixtures together.
Chill and serve sprinkled with brown sugar or with some crushed up biscuit (specaloos is good) on top.

Lorne sausage

1kg pork
1kg beef
200g breadcrumbs
2tsp nutmeg
2tsp black pepper
1tsp ground coriander
4tsp salt (or to taste - better to add to little then add more)
250ml water

Some people do all pork or all beef or even lamb. But to me this is the ‘real’ mix of meat needed. Presumambly it was origionally whatrver scraps were left over from other things...

Mix everything together
Fry a little bit and taste to test the seasoning. Add more ass required...
Press in to a bread tin and chill
Slice in to slices around 2 cm thick
Fry until crispy on the outside and serve in a roll or with an egg on top or as part of a fried breakfast.

New Cockerel

Someone gave us a cockerel to eat. He is the same breed as our two ginger chick (which are Warrens) who are super friendly, so we decided to keep him instead of our current guy (who is for the pot now) so that when we have chicks hopefully we will get a few more friendly chickens. They are meant to be good egg layers too. We do like the Marrans (we have three, and the old cockerel is this breed) because they lay well in the winter, maybe half Warran half Marrans will lay in winter AND be friendly.

Hay field flailed

It is clearer in real life, but you can see that the upper part of the field has been done. There is no before picture, but there were quite a few small gorse bushes and trees as well as brambles which have now been turned to DUST! It is amazing to see it go over a sapling (maybe 1.5 cm thick the ones here were) and there is just nothing left. No identifyable bits, nothing. We were keen to get this done before the grass really starts growing as we want to make hay here in perhaps June and it will be a lot better for not having all those bits in it. The flailing also smooths the surface quite well, so hopefully that will make it easier too although it may need a few more years with a go over each year to fully improve that - and having the cows on it doesn't help th surface.

Better photo of the mini tractor

As you can see the snow has melted a lot, but there is still quite a lot around. The drive is a lot more accessible thankfully though.

Doug has now been able to get time to take the new two wheel tractor out for a test run. It needed a bit of a run to burn off the oil that had got in to places it should not in transit, so he just took it for a little walk. Soon he will unpack some attachments and try them out too. There is a trailer for moving wood and the like as well as a sycle mower for hay and a flail mower for mowing and mulching (chopping up really fine) the weeds in the fields.

Two wheel tractor

We ordered a two wheel tractor ages ago, before Christmas, and it has FINALLY arrived. There was some issue with supply of the engine of something.

Our land is two steep for a real tractor, we did ask one of the neighbors if he would be able to make hay on it but he just laughed!

So we have bought what is called a two wheel tractor, it is like a rotvator but you can change the implements in it. We have got with it a flail mower (for generally mowing the fields to try to reduce brambles and weeds), a scythe mower (for cutting hay) and a trailer. Doug managed to get it all unpacked and in to the garage, but has not yet had time to unpack it all and put it together. Given the weather it hasn't seemed a priority!

You can't really see it, its handle bars are folded back on themsleves and somewhere there must be some wheels.

Testing the soap

It is now 3 weeks since we made the soap. It has been on a rack drying and curing for that time.

Today we tried some for the first time. I found it to be exactly like soap! It wasn't a very foamy lather, but felt nice and creamy. I only tried it on my arms, just in case, and they seem just like normal after a shower. It is a bit of a worry because the caustic soda that goes in to soap is very... well... caustic... which you wouldn't want to be rubbing on yourself. But the saponification (chemical reaction that makes soap from alkali and fat which apparently an acid) seems to have happened.

The bar seemed nice and hard but not so hard you had to scrub to hard to get any off. 

We plan on making some more. Silicon molds would be easier.

Making Soap

I mentioned a while ago that we rendered lard to make soap. The lye arrived recently so we have given it a go. It is currently drying for 3 weeks before we can try it.

This is the recipe we used

600g lard

80g lye (sodium hydroxide)

228g water

1tblsp lavender oil

We used the cold process method. I won't go in to detail here as there are a lot of sites better qualifed than I to describe how to do it.

Basically though we warmed everything a bit and then mixed it all together and blended it with the stick bender for about 10 mins until it thickened a bit at which point we poured it in to moulds and left to set overnight. After which we popped the set soap out of the moulds and have left to set.

Lye is strongly caustic so lots of the instrutions involve how to handle it safely. Having read them all I expected a small explosion when I added the lye to the water. The water did heat up quite a lot, but nothing dramatic. Disappointment! But relief too!

I killed a rabbit!!

Doug has been the rabbit slaughterer up until now and I have stuck to chickens and quail. But I decided I needed to 'woman' up and do rabbits too - yes they are cute and fluffy, but they are still FOOD! We have a lot just coming up to slaughter size and it would be a long and lonely job for Doug to do them all on his own.

I klonked it with a stick - like chickens it is hard to be sure when it is actually dead ie whether all the struggling is just muscles twitching or the poor thing still struggling. Quail I kill by chopping the head clean off so there is no doubt...

It is dead already in these pictures.

Doug did one at the same time so he could show me what he does. I had also watched planty of you tube videos, so I was READY.

I didn't get pics of the gutting and skining you will be pleased to hear. Maybe next time!

I cooked them in a cream and mustard sauce, see seperate post for the recipe.

Weeds weeds weeds

It sometimes feels like we are under siege from the weeds. If we turn our back on an area of the land for more than about 5 minutes it will be engulfed. There are three that feel to be particularly encroaching, brambles, nettles and bracken. All three can be dealt with by regular cuttings, but there is so much area to be covered, it is not possible to do it all by hand. The animals do help, but they cannot do under fence lines, none of them eat bracken (just as well as it is poisonous) and they are not very good at clearing an area already engulfed - although the cows do quite a good job of forcing their way in to things.

Apparently bracken is more likely to be killed by being crushed rather than cut, so we will try that this year in the orchard. We are getting some more pigs who will live in the woods and hopefully crush the bracken there.

The brambles grow so fast it is scary, even over the winter they are green and growing very slowly. We have cut and fed some too the cows which they seemed to enjoy. The fields are slowly developing a few more patches of them as the animals fail to keep up with growth. The fences get engulfed and dragged down if you don't keep an eye on it. I recently went round one of the fields with shears and cut them off the whole fence line. Doug can now go round with the strimmer - if you don't cut the brambles of the fence first you can't see where the wire is and it gets cut through. Ideally we need to go round every field twice a year like this. It is something like 1.5km round that one field, not sure how far round all the fields. Pretty tiring! Maybe one day when the house is finished we will manage it all. 

The nettles, animals will eat them if they can stamp them down a bit and they aren't as numerous as the bracken or as destructive as the brambles but they can make accessing certain places in the summer very painful. We tried eating them, but they are a bit weird and hairy so we haven't bothered again. I may try making nettle pasta at some point. I have heard of people cutting and drying them for winter animal feed. We have also made some fertiliser by letting them sit and fooster in a bucket of water.

Butchering a Mini Pig

We swaped a yet-to-be-born female ouessant for a vietnemese pot bellied pig carcus. It was a great opportunity for the first time butchering a pig, as they are about the size of the bigger lambs, so it is easier to handle - and easier to keep the bits you are not working on cool.

I cut it up in quite a simple way. Each half was cut in to three. The front part - front leg and shoulder was boned out for sausages, the middle part was boned and made in to bacon (back and belly) and a tiny roast. The rear part - back legs - was salted, one wet cured for honey roast ham, and the other dry cured for a mini dried ham. The head I made in to brawn pork pies.

All this pork processing also inspired me to do something with some bits from our pigs that are still waiting patiently in the freezer. I put on some belly to become bacon and made lard from some of the backfat (needed for the pork pie pastry) as well as adding some more meat and fat in to the sausages (the mini pig was a bit skinny so it was useful to have some extra fat hanging around)

No it didn't have two heads!

Cutting down a tree

Doug has cut down some very small trees, some of the hedge in front of the house, and cut up various fallen trees. Having planted some new fruit trees we have a number of old trees we need to take down plus we need to start cutting wood for the winter after next so we tackled a larger tree.
My mum might not approve (gender stereotyping or something...), but I am afraid of the chainsaw, and Doug is scared to let me use it too as I can be a bit accident prone so Doug does the cutting and I provide the required tools (wedges etc) at the appropriate time. Plus watching (from a safe distance) and warning if the tree is starting to fall before it should or whatever. V stressful. It all went smoothly though and it fell where Doug intended. We may tackle slightly larger than this, but don't plan to do enormous trees without professional help. Dangerous business - all the locals seem to chop trees down willy nilly, only the odd one gets squished.
There are some behind the house we need to cut before they get too big and another which may touch the electricity cables if it gets much bigger.

Christmas food

Christmas Cake only iced on Christmas Eve

Started eating it soon after

Only batch of mince pies I got round to making, the mince meat
was left over from that I made last year. Keeps well!

Lamb for Christmas Eve

Cooked and served with boiled potatoes (home grown) and
roast salad (not home grown)

Self sufficient breakfast - eggs, fried potatoes and bacon (super
chunky at the top of the photo - really yummy, we didn't make much
unfortunately due to misunderstanding with the butcher most suitable
cuts were made in to chops) all home grown

Enjoying a Christmas present from Kirsty and Terry

Now started on leftovers

Alternative to pearl barley which you can't seem to get here
Tastes just the same to me but is wheat. Not sure what
the difference between the two packets is apart from the name
the contents seem identical to me.

No photos of Christmas Dinner. It was roast cockerel out of the freezer, we killed him at the same time as the previous one we ate. With chestnut stuffing, roast potatoes, carrots, parsnip and beetroot all home grown. The onions and garlic where not - we did grow some, but they didn't go very well. We followed it with Christmas pudding from Tesco.

Tree planting

We finished planting our nee trees today. Yesterday we did four apples, today a peach, a plum and two cherries (a cooking and an eating one).

Fruit tree arrival

We ordered a Bramley apple tree from the UK, also a couple for friends and 3 other apple trees, 2 cherries, a peach and a plum.
You can't get Bramley apples in France, they cook with eating apples. Baked apple, crumble and apple pie just aren't the same without Bramley's so we really miss them. The French also seem to like apples that are less sharp and crisp than we like, we also ordered some other trees. Then as there was still room in the box we ordered the other trees too. Of course we can get those here but it worked out a bit cheaper anyway.
They are mostly just sticks at the moment, or sticks with a few little branches. They need to get growing if they are going to have any fruit.
We have been super keen and got the 4 apples planted already. Luckily the ground is quite soft at the moment as that is a lot of hole digging.

The orchard lawnmowers looking on

Surprisingly small box for ten trees

Planting a Bramley twig in the ground

The veg

The veg is growing quite very slowly in both the potager and the cold frame, the weather has been wet and cold. The slugs haven't helped either, they have eaten most of the kale and half the broad beans as well as some of the peas, mange tout and sugar snaps.. We have planted more of each in the cold frame and plan on letting them get bigger before planting out. When they are too small it seems a slug just takes one bite  through the stem and that is the plant gone but we hope if they are bigger they might survive a bit of nibbling.

Even the uneaten ones aren't growing fast

Remains of a mange tout

The shallots and garlic are doing well (the onions less so for some reason)

 The potatoes are doing well

 The carrots less so - there seems to be one small one growing from about 200 seeds in 10 rows...

I killed a chicken!

We didn't eat it though.
A friend's chicken has been ill for quite a few days and as it is at least 7 years old she decided it needed putting out of its misery. She couldn't do it herself and for some reason we sprung to mind as cruel heartless people who could! Well to be fair she knows we are planning on eating some of ours and will therefore have to manage to do the deed.
Initially I volunteered Doug for the job. But as I was staying home while they went out for a ride  I decided that I shouldn't be such a wimp. If I can't kill someone else's chicken I am never going to be able to do one I hatched from an egg and have fed and cared for for ages... Plus this one I didn't then have to pluck and gut as we decided not to eat it given it's great age and unknown illness.
I used our 'culling pliers' for the first time.

You put them round the chickens neck and squeeze, the spikes are to stop the neck sliding out the edge. The 'blades' are not sharp, they are rounded and blunt. The theory is that they push between the vertebra as you squeeze, forcing them apart and snapping the spinal column. If you are going to eat the bird, you wait for it to stop twitching madly and then chop its head off and drain the blood out before plucking and gutting.

There is a lot of debate on the internet about the most humane way to dispatch a chicken. I would say that the consensus is that chopping it's head off with an axe is. However the downsides of this method is
a.) It takes some practice to manage to get the chicken in a suitable position without traumatising it (easier with 2 people)
b.) Blood tends to be sprayed everywhere because of the mad convulsive twitching that happens after death. There are some quite gruesome videos on youtube. I would not advise watching them unless you want a lesson in 'how not to'. There is one with some hillbillies demonstrating chopping the head of and then the headless body bounces and runs around the garden spraying blood is a quite delightful way. Euurgh.

As long as you use a firm squeeze (I doubt you could squeeze too hard and mush it's head clean off unless you have a really strong grip) this method seemed pretty quick and not too traumatic (for killer or chicken).

Still not sure I can do a rabbit though. They are awfully cute.

Paths in the potager

We have had a giant (and growing) pile of branches sitting on the concrete for months waiting to be chipped in the wonder destroi. We use some of them for chicken bedding, but the main plan for the wood chips is to keep the weeds down on the paths in the potager.

Doug had a heroic session with the chipper and got it going enough to show it will look look GORGEOUS when it is done (in a few years time!).

There is still a teeny weeny amount of work to do before it is perfect - specially as we want a path round the edge too.

The pea/bean supports look nice huh? It is a shame the slugs have eaten the peas and beans.

Lorna did some weeding between our beds last year, and we got a tiny bit of wood chip down. I think she would be delighted to see the step forward things have taken, although a tiny bit distressed to see just how fast and giant the weeds have grown. 

Second sheepskin rug

Having slaughtered and butchered Bro we then started curing his skin. This was a few days ago, but I haven't got round to blogging it. The abattoir salted is, so it sat with salt on it for 3 days, we scrapped this off the day we got it back and had a little go getting off remaining fatty and fleshy bits (the abattoir did a slightly less clean job getting it off this time than last). We then washed and rinsed it in the bath and then ran it through the washing machine on wool wash a few times. After that we pulled of any remaining bits and left it to dry a bit until the flesh side was damp but not wet and the wool was pretty dry.
We mixed 4 tbsp salt, 4 tbsp alum and 1/2 a pint of water together and then added white flour until the mixture was a thick paste (a bit thicker than pancake mix and something you could imagine staying in place when smeared on the skin and not running off). We then smeared this all over the flesh side of the skin.

Then folded the two sides together with the paste between and rolled the skin up in to a neat bundle which we tied together with skin. It is now sitting for 7 days, we will turn it from time to time.

Chantier collectif

Our Architect is building a house in Bagnere (our nearest town), he is having various 'Chantier collectif' (collective building work) sessions where people help him and he will help them back. Apparently there are many such works in the local area. We agreed to help because he is using various eco insulations and finishes that we are interested to learn about.
Today was straw and earth insulation (and the rest of this week and next week - we may do another day next week too so we can see how it is getting on).
We spent the morning dunking straw in to watery mud (or muddy water depending how you look at it). 5 buckets of mud (washed from stones in the local quarry) and 8 buckets of water was the recipe in this case, it depends on your mud how much water you want. Apparently you want the resulting mixture just to stick to your hand if you dip it in, making a 'glove of mud' and when you coat the straw you don't want it to be too muddy, just a thin coating of mud. The insulation won't be very good if there is too much mud/clay in the mix. We were told some stuff about telling how clay-y the muddy mix is too.

The house and garden

The mud and water mixing station

The covering mud in straw station

In the afternoon we swapped over and moved on to installing the straw in to the walls. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of this as I kept getting distracted by peacocks every time I got the camera out. They were very loud, if I lived there they might suffer some kind of tragic accident.

Basically we were filling in the holes in a timber frame wall with the wet muddy straw. Planks are screwed to the front of the frame while you pack the straw in and removed afterwards leaving the straw filling behind. This will eventually be plastered with earthen plaster. It was hard work as it had to be really packed down so it doesn't settle with time leaving a gap at the top of every section.
Despite the effort involved, we enjoyed it, as it was a chance to meet some new people (French and British) as well as rule out one type of insulation for our house! Far to labor intensive. The five of us probably did 2 feet up one rather small wall in the whole day - although we did make much more of the muddy straw than we used.