Plans for the year

Firstly sorry for the break in posting. I was in hibernation with Christmas and the snow!

I really just wanted to let you all know what the plans for the coming year are going to be.

I will be continuing to try and grow as much of our vegetables and fruit as possible. The pigs and laying hens will also feature along with trying to find as much wild food as possible.. A new departure will be chickens for the table. Me and a buddy of mine are going to raise some chickens for eating so I will keep you posted as to how we get on!

The big project for the year however is going to be our wedding which is happening in June. I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew here as I want to try and have all the food for the wedding either home grown produce or wild food! At 150 people it is by far the biggest challenge I have attempted in the garden and kitchen.

We are having a marquee and the idea is to have a relaxed homemade wedding with all our friends and family. The food (hopefully!!) will be some canapes of wild food followed by a whole spit roast pig with salads and vegetables from the garden and then some kind of seasonal dessert which will feature our eggs and fruit. God its a bit overwhelming when you actually write it all down!

I will post on here as to how I am getting on with the preperations, whether it be catching a wild salmon to growing the vegetables or trying to encourage the pig to grow so it is ready for June!!

The picture above is of me and George spending some man time on our local shoot which we have been doing quite a lot of while we have been away.

Winter Garden

It is a quiet time in the garden at this time of year but that's not to say that it is not still producing veggies for us. I am not really in a position to offer growing tips about brassica such as brussel sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli because they as often fail on me as bloody grow.

We don't however starve during the winter and at the moment we have Swiss chard, brussel sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli, kale and spinach in the garden. We are lucky like that here in Ireland because the winter is not as harsh as in other countries. The Swiss chard even manages to keep a bit of colour in the garden at this time of year.

The chickens have stopped laying pretty much and between them we only get two or three eggs a week. Once the days start getting longer again that will all change. They still seem happy enough mind you.

Success

I have to admit that I felt pretty smug this morning tucking into my bank holiday fry up. It consisted of eggs from the girls, a potato cake made with spuds from the garden and taking pride of place was out own dry cured bacon and our own sausages. Doesn't get much better than this. Makes all the hard work worthwhile!

Nicoise Salad

As promised last week here is one of our staples during the summer. I sometimes substitute the traditional tuna for some home smoked mackerel as in this case. Otherwise bar the olives pretty much everything else comes straight from the garden.

You can chop and change as you please with the quantities of the varies components depending on personnel taste. I don't tend to over load it with spuds for example.

Essentially you will need:

French beans,

Baby potatoes,

Tomatoes,

Eggs,

Lettuce,

Olives,

Tuna (or smoked mackerel in this case)

And for the dressing:

100ml olive oil,

100ml sunflower oil,

100ml wine or cider vinegar,

tea spoon of mustard,

clove of garlic,

teaspoon of honey,

To make the dressing fire it all into a blender and blitz for a few seconds!

Cook the potatoes, beans and hard boil the eggs. Cool them all under the cold tap.

Next dress the lettuce with the dressing. Place at the bottom of the bowl. The potatoes need to be dressed next before putting into the bowl. The tomatoes and french beans go on top. Sprinkle the rest of the dressing over the salad now before adding some olives, quartered hard boiled eggs and fish.

Couldn't be simpler!

River Cottage Part 2

Following on from the last post Hugh arrived around midday to take the afternoon part of the course. I suppose Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall is River Cottage to most people so it was great that I managed to get on a course that he was attending. He rocked in driving his battered old Landy and did a cookery demo for us. He cooked our starter for lunch which was chicken livers on toast. Essentially it was chicken livers fried off with some sherry mustard and other bits and pieces. Anyone that would like the recipe just leave a comment on this post and I will pass it on to you.

After the cooking demo he spent some time going round having a chat to everyone, signing books and getting pictures taken. While this was going on the rest of the staff were transforming the barn where we had the morning's classes into a dining room. We were promptly called for dinner which was their own roast chicken with all the trimmings and very nice it was too. A nice touch was that they had placed eggs at various seats around the table which we were not allowed to sit at. The hosts for the day plus Hugh then sat in these seats and moved around the table throughout the meal. It was really nice to be able to have a chat with them all and was probably the highlight of the day for me.

After lunch there was a Q and A session followed by a class on how to kill, pluck and clean a chicken. River Cottage's head chef Gillon Meller or Gill as everyone called him took us through the process and gave everyone great confidence, especially those that had not attempted anything like this before. We all got our own bird to have a go at which we were given to bring home at the end of the day.

It was about 5pm by then and the day was over. Everyone was given a signed copy of the River Cottage cookbook. For those that already had it they were allowed choose something else from the on site shop. I took home a signed copy of the Beyond River Cottage DVD. This was only a small thing but it showed the effort everyone made to make the visit to River Cottage as enjoyable as possible. Nothing was too much trouble.

With that we all jumped up onto the back of the tractor and returned to the real world after our River Cottage treatment! A very worthwhile day out and a must for anyone who finds themselves down Dorset way!

River Cottage Part 1

Before I got the chickens I went over to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage for a course called "All About Chickens". I was pretty excited needless to say about the whole thing.

Anyway we headed off to Dorset the day before and spent some time at Lyme Regis which was deadly. It is a real old fashioned seaside resort which has plenty of cool cafes and arty farty shops. We ate sourdough pizza at a fantastic local bakery for lunch.

The following day we got a taxi to the River Cottage HQ car park and then made the final leg of the journey down an old lane on the back of a tractor! All very rustic.

We had some elderflower cordial and homemade biscuits on arrival and then straight into the course. The morning session was hosted by Richard Hicks and Pammy Riggs from the TV series. They went through all the basics for someone wanting to keep some laying hens and showed us around River cottage's"chickenopolis". We also got the see all the other bits and pieces including the pigs and their various vegetable gardens.

It was a very hands on kind of day and both Richard and Pammy really knew their stuff and answered any questions we had. It was also obvious that both of them were mad about chickens and their enthusiasm rubbed off on many of the people at the event.

Hugh was due to join us then at noon to cook for us and take the afternoon session. I will let you know how that went in the next post.

Hen Problems

I went out to the hens one day last week to collect the eggs as per normal and found a few ticks in their run. On closer inspection I found a fair few more. Disaster! They were mainly brown little fellas with a few of the dreaded red mite thrown in.

Only one thing for it, I had to completely gut the house including nest boxes and perches and give it a good dose of good old fashioned jeyes fluid and hot water. I left that for two days and then went at it with a blow torch to make sure I didn't miss any. I also dosed the hens in case any lice were on them.

Happily the hens have moved back in and all is well. I will have to keep a close eye on them for the next week or so to make sure I got rid of all of them.

Ice Cream

As promised I went off and bought an ice cream machine on the back of all this fruit I will shortly have. I brought it home with fierce excitement along with some cream and set about making the first batch. When it comes to ice cream I have to admit that I do like plain, so therefore I choose vanilla as my first experiment.

It is simple enough to make, you just need some cream, egg yokes, sugar, water and in this case vanilla. How I came to acquire an industrial sized bag of 300 vanilla pods is a long story but suffice to say it came from Sweden via Tahiti or some such place in the back of a smart car!

All you have to do is scald the cream in a saucepan and throw in a vanilla pod which has been cut length ways. Leave that cool while you make a syrup with the water and sugar. Next beat the egg yokes and add the syrup. Lastly whisk the cream into the egg mixture and lash it all into the machine.

It was at this stage that I decided to read the instructions on the ice cream machine and discovered you have to freeze the bloody thing for 12 hours before use. Needless to say this setback dented my enthusiasm considerably. When it was finally ready to go I simply poured the mixture into the machine and turned it on for 20 minutes. What came out of it was the tastiest ice cream I have ever had. An unqualified success!

The Girls

Over the next few days I will try and introduce you to the various characters here at Barrows Bounty.

First off here are the hens, Agnes and Betty. Betty is the one closest to the camera and Agnes is in the backround. To be honest I dont really trust Agnes there is something sneaky about her and I suspect she isnt pulling her weight in the egg production stakes! On the whole though these two little troupers are the least hassle of all and day in day out they go about their business of scratching away and making us plenty of eggs