Will the rain ever stop?

It is the start of June and we are having APPALLING weather here - it sounds like it is nicer in Scotland which is unusual!
It has been raining pretty much non stop for something like 2 weeks. It isn't just wet, it is cold too. The garden stuff (apart from weeds of course) aren't growing much and we feel like the whole house may surf down the hill on a wave of mud at any moment.
There is a lot of flooding across roads and in to a few unfortunate houses.

The dog has stayed huddled indoors most of the time and whines and whinges when she is forced to go outside for essential toilet breaks.

The sheep and cows don't seem too bothered (Hainoa made another escape attempt, but seemed to be trying to return home by the time we noticed so she was not far away). The horses looked a bit miserable so they are in the barn with Kira and Tigi. The rabbits seem quite happy eating grass in the rain. The chickens stay huddled inside a lot and the weather doesn't seem to have encouraged them to lay eggs much. Poor Sambuca is not pleased at all and stays huddled in her house a lot - or meows at us demanding we do something to make it warmer.

We have done various useful indoors things such as make mountains of sausages

and make the second attempt at all grain beer (the first was a disaster!) as well as continue planning our renovations (thinking about plumbing layout) and doing various exciting paperwork things (tax returns eeeurgh).

Off course I am aware that as soon as it gets sunny I will be complaining about it being too hot. Never happy!

Beech Leaf Noyau Recipe

As we were out collecting sloe leaves (and having a very nice walk with the dog through the lovely spring woods) we thought we would give this a go too. Different kind of drink, but the leaves are MUCH easier to collect (they just strip off a branch where as the sloe ones are tiny and have to be individually picked due to the thorniness of the branches). You need the lovely green fresh spring leaves to make it.

A jar for the drink to mature in
Enough beech leaves to fill the jar (loosely packed)
Enough gin to pretty much fill your jar (we are also trying one with fruit alcohol - similar to vodka I guess)
200g of sugar to 70cl of gin (or adjust according to taste)
20cl of brandy to 70cl of gin (many people prefer it without the brandy - that is what we are going for this year)

Put the leaves in the jar and fill it with the gin.
Leave for about 3 weeks.
Heat the sugar in 1ml of water for each 1g of sugar (ie 200ml of water for 200g of sugar)
Allow to cool and mix in a bowl with the flavored gin (add the syrup slowly and taste as you go until you think it is right - some people say they prefer no sugar so taste before you start adding it!).
Add the brandy to the mix (if using) and bottle.
Improves with age

Épine Recipe

The French haven't heard of sloe gin, but they make a drink with the spring leaves of the blackthorn (the tree sloes come from) called épine (which is French for thorn - sometimes it is called épine noir or blackthorn as well).

4 liters of cheap red wine

50cl of cheap brandy

3/4 liter of sloe leaves (some people say with twigs and some say without - we went for without)

600g of sugar (more can be added to taste)

Put everything in to a container (we used the 5 liter bottle the wine came in - made sangria with the rest of the wine) and leave for 2 weeks. 

Then strain in to bottles and leave as long as you can. It apparently improves with age.

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...

Mowing the grass

We have been mowing the lawn stripe each day and feeding the clippings to the rabbits as their cages have a mesh bottom which doesn't really let them get through at the grass. We still had to move the cages from time to time otherwise the grass dies under the bedroom and a mountain of poo grows up.The bottom is removable, so we have decided to experiment with removing it and moving the cages along the lawn instead. They will need moving several times a day - so if we are going out we will still probably feed extra clippings to keep them going. We hope the lawn will have less splotch patches on it where we failed to move the cages quickly enough and the poo build up and bedroom killed some of the grass. I expect we will still need to even it up with the mower but we hope they will make doing the edges easier as the cage can go right up to the edge but the lawnmower can't.

There was a slight technical hitch to the experiment when one of the rabbits escaped. Poppy gave chase and there was an exciting high speed race around the lawn until Doug shouted with the voice of uber-command and Poppy actually sat and stopped chasing. The poor rabbit stayed frozen in place for a while. I called for it, not expecting it to come, but one has to do something - and it came to me! So I was able to reunite it with its cage, it seemed quite pleased and stayed in the bedroom for some time. It seems likely that it escaped through the door as I had left it unlocked. Oooops!

Owen was also drafted in to do a bit of lawn mowing while Daisy went for a little ride up the land.

This little guy was meant to be on the drive with his mum and friends but they all escaped so they have had to be sent back to their field until we can electrify the fencing.

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.

New cow's name

She is called Hélora and is very friendly, a lot less shy than Hainoa, she is not as pretty though!