How many times can a chicken be mentioned in our blog?! Well, rest assured this is the last time. Last night we had Cheeky Charlie slowly cooked in red wine with wild mushrooms from the garden and the last of our potatoes. It was one of the most delicious meals Richard’s made!
…or should I say Cheeky Charlotte. But more of that later. It all started in May. We had bought a dozen roasties which we keep until they are about 11 weeks old, then they are given the chop. Usually they are pretty easy to catch so I end up killing two a day, plucking, hanging and freezing until they are all gone.
Unbeknown to me, Cheeky Charlie had managed to avoid my grasp until the last day and when it was his turn, he escaped. Not just just from me but also out of the chicken run and into a patch of impenetrable brambles.
Jackie thought that would be it, he would either get taken by a fox or by a mongoose. However he managed to survive for many weeks and then he started visiting the runs of the other chickens. Not a good move as they picked on him and viciously pecked him. It then became apparent that the reason for his ventures into the other chicken runs was because he, or rather she, wanted to lay an egg and this is exactly what she did in the nest box of the young hens! She was, after all, now 20 weeks old. Added to that she now wanted to roost on top of the young hens’ run.
I’m afraid that was the last straw and so she went the way of a normal roastie. I’ll spare the details but I was interested to find loads of eggs in varying states of development inside her. Anyway, she’s now in the freezer and we’ll have to look for Coq au Vin recipes as although she’ll be very tasty, she’ll probably need quite some cooking in order to tenderize.
Meanwhile, Jackie has been down the market and rather than coming back with a dozen young roasties, she came home with 9 roasties and 3 ducks! I wasn’t keen on getting ducks as we don’t have a pond but I’m sure they will taste good!
We are often asked, What’s the summer / winter like? Our answer is always, It varies from one year to the next. We have just passed our five year mark and it remains true: the seasons have been different every year. However, there has been one constant: September. A few off days maybe but in general hot and sunny, perfect for the seaside or river beach. But now even September has let us down. We drove off at the start of the month in rain (a short sojourn in Spain) and for the 5 days we’ve been back it’s rained and rained. Sometimes a downpour is followed by blue skies, other times there’s relentless greyness and drizzle. Ho hum. The grass is green, there are field mushrooms galore and the fat hairy one is enjoying the puddles again. There’s a distinct smell of autumn in the air, and we’ve not seen one plume of smoke from forest fires over the whole of the summer, a first for us.
And the veg patch? Well, September is pepper month for us. This year I planted 5 different types, safe in the knowledge they’ll do well come late summer. We did have, before the hols, some large green, and even red, bell peppers which were wonderful. They were large enough to stuff (the red ones with cubes of potatoes and feta in pesto sauce, mmm). We also had a couple of dishes of some new types. Visitors to Spain may well be familiar with a popular dish: pimientos de Padrón. They’re smallish green peppers which taste wonderful fried in smoking olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. However, their fame rests on the fact that occasionally one is fiery hot – and you can never tell which one is going to explode in your mouth! I was really chuffed with those.
The others, alas, are suffering from the rain. There’s another variety of sweet red peppers, some hungarian wax peppers and some fiery red hot chillies. I’m hoping as I type this, and listen to the heavy raindrops on the vine leaves outside the study window, the weather forecast holds true and there are some sunny days ahead. That means we’ll have some more peppers and I can make some roasted chilli oil.
Meanwhile, the Cheeky Charlie saga still continues! We came back from (sunnier) Spain to discover the nice Kiwi couple who looked after our house and animals had caught him (her) and put him with the 4 new hens. Unfortunately, we got to see first hand how horrid chooks are to newcomers. Poor old Charlie was stood on and his neck, always featherless, was bled from being pecked. (It’s dog eat dog in the chicken world, as Richard would say). So I put him back in the old pig pen and made a fine hideaway in the field to encourage him to stay and not jump out and into the brambles. This did not work. He wasn’t interested in the brambles anymore, he wanted to be out and about.
So right now he’s in the third, spare hen field, next to both sets of hens for company but protected from them. He still jumps out at night into the 4 hens patch (while, they’re tucked away) but he seems ‘happy’ in his new field which has plenty of brambles growing through and plants for coverage. I have no idea why I spend so much time fretting about him when he should have been killed and with his old mates in the freezer. There’s something about his audaciousness and pluck (ha ha) which was lacking in the other ‘roasties’. I’m sure we’ll have Cheeky Charlie chicken casserole one day…
The hunting season has started again. From now until the end of February we are greeted in the morning with the sound of shots and the yelping of hysterical dogs, just Thursdays and Sundays mind. Betty doesn’t care what day of the week it is, she frequently returns from the undergrowth panting and wide-eyed, her mouth blood-stained. She chased a young deer yesterday. Apart from the wild boar traps (some of you will remember Betty’s awful experience) I am not bothered by the hunting. The very fact it exists proves that the woods and hills nearby home rabbits, deer, foxes, mongeese (mongooses?), deer and wild boar, and plenty of other things we haven’t seen. And the reason these animals exist is because their natural habitat remains: hedgerows, coppices, unfarmed meadows, deciduous and coniferous woodlands…
What’s this to do with booze? Well, it’s the hedgerows for a start. Teeming with blackberries and sloes. Which means along with the damson vodka and cherry brandy we now have sloe gin to add to our winter noggins.
We live in the land of wine so why I’m tempted to make our own is beyond me. The quince effort, some years ago now, wasn’t tooo bad. The elderflower last year was actually quite quaffable, except for the last bottle left to share with friends which had suffered from the heat of the barn.
But while it’s never as good as the bought stuff that’s only made from grapes, there is something romantic about country wines. So this year it’s the turn of the elderberry, something I’ve always wanted to try. I just couldn’t resist those tempting black berries. We’ll let you know in a year or two!
I have to admit though that lurking in the pantry are two bottles of walnut liqueur, a kind of nocino. We had a try after a year and it was horrid. So I added some sugar, replaced the tops and shoved them back in the pantry. I’m convinced that, when we remember to try again and wipe off the cobwebs, it’ll be superb. Cheers!
Oh, by the way: the hedgerows are also home to Cheeky Charlie. Yes, still on the loose among the brambles and wild roses, popping in for food and water occasionally and then back to the shade. Don’t count your chickens, Charlie!
Way back in mid May we bought our last crop of roasties. We got 12 of them aged 2 weeks. By mid July they were about 11 weeks old and ready for the chop. They were a bit different from our usual roasties. The big difference was that they were brown rather than white. I’m not sure of their exact breed but the white ones really put on weight fast and when I kill them at about 7 or 8 weeks they can be 3kgs after plucking and dressing. However, they are quite ugly and often can only stagger about because they are so fat. Actually not fat but their legs are just enormous. Therefore this time we decided to go for the more aesthetically appealing brown ones, still heftier than the egg laying chickens but much cleaner and seemingly fitter than the whities. They’re happy to walk and scratch about unlike the white ones who are reluctant to stand, even for a drink. I can also confirm they are just as tasty. 
As per usual with this latest batch when they were ready for killing, I grabbed two per day, killed, plucked and hung them in the barn. However when it got down to the last few they seemed to know what was coming and were a little bit more difficult to catch. And now we get to the point of this story. The very last chicken, Cheeky Charlie as he has become known, savoured his freedom and life a bit more than the rest and escaped! He managed to get out of the chicken paddock and escaped into the bramble patch. However, that was not the end of it. A few hours later he thought it was safe to come out but he hadn’t reckoned on Betty who lay in wait. With a quick lunge, she had Cheeky Charlie and was soon to be seen strutting through the garden with her prize hanging limp between her jaws. Eventually Betty let go of Charlie who sprang into life and headed back to the safety of the brambles. A few feathers missing but apparently none the worse for the experience. 
But there’s more! A few days before the Cheeky Charlie incident, we were having breakfast in the garden when we heard a huge furore coming from the laying hens. I ran to their paddock to find a mongoose in the chicken run! It was then a case of the Keystone cops with me chasing the mongoose, the chickens running with feathers flying everywhere, the dogs barking and Jackie yelling on the other side of the fence. Eventually the mongoose managed to escape over the wall. As the hens were unharmed, we thought that the mongoose had only come for their eggs – this time. And that is how we leave it – Cheeky Charlie still ‘free’, Betty on the prowl and a mongoose on the lookout for any opportunity.
After last year’s dearth, the plums are something of a mixed blessing this time round. The yellow plum tree has gone mad. We’ve made plum crumbles, plum jam, plum jelly, plum cordial, frozen whole plums, frozen stewed plums, bottled plums, plum chutney and even dried some for prunes.
Oh, and a new one for us – plum leather! To make plum jelly you only need the juice so the remaining pulp we laid out in a thin layer on a baking sheet which dried in the sun – 3 days later you’re left with plum leather. It’s basically just a healthy snack. Not bad to chew on. Has anyone else tried this?
We are exhausted but they are still falling from the tree and rotting on the ground faster than we can put them on the compost pile. Even the chickens and dogs have had enough – and that’s just the yellow plums! 
The red plums have also finished but there weren’t too many of those. Next up is the greengages. There aren’t quite so many of those which is a bit of a shame as they are Jackie’s favourite. She’s already made a greengage and vanilla tart from those. There are also quite a few damson trees around here – a number on the plot of land next to ours. So we’ll be grabbing those shortly as well.
Above are greengages and damsons, left are the Stanleys – they are still pretty hard and will be the last to come on line. They’ll used for the plum liqueurs which’ll be ready for Christmas.
Meanwhile, I’ve also been busy on the woodworking front and have made a new bench and table (left, below). Perfect for breakfast outside in the morning sun.
…ups and downs, swings and roundabouts. Whatever way you look at it the first of the ‘summer’ months has been erratic: from over 30C and then down to single figures at night, glorious baking hot sunshine (too hot for breakfast outside) and then cold, drizzly days with autumn mists. There are field mushrooms popping up! The well is full! Tomorrow is July and the forecast is 19C and rain! Climate change? Who knows but it’s certainly meant losses and gains in the veg patch.
Starting with the positive it’s been great for the soft fruit. Our red currants, gooseberries, black currants and raspberries have given us bumper crops. The gooseberries, along with the elderflower cordial, were turned into jam and ice cream. The rest have been flash frozen (or are being, the raspberries and black currants are still coming) and then packed into bags for future jellies, jams and cakes.
I’m sure the blueberries tasted nice but only the birds can tell. The plums, that we moaned about last year (not one!), are dripping from the trees. The first of the yellow plum jams have been made, with a dash of vanilla this year, and there’s a weekend of bottling ahead. The cucumbers, sweetcorn and green peppers have been unaffected, and there are plenty of onions and garlic again. This year I decided to have a go at flash freezing the garlic as last years crop lasted well into the spring but then started to sprout. So this year only half are being dried and the rest, as an experiment, are in the freezer.
All sounds tip top. But then the potatoes… in fact they did ok but I chose, perhaps not unreasonably, a warm morning to dig them up. Which then turned into a boiler and I left them out to dry in the sun. The next day many had turned black, we tried to use them up as quickly as possible (freezer is now also full of potato cakes) but alas many were destined for the compost bin having got rotten before we could use them. Well, you learn by your mistakes.
The brassicas loved the rain. Huge great cauliflowers, enormous cabbages and giant calabrese started to appear. But then the leaves got bigger and bigger and, as the song goes, “if I only had a heart”. I peered in through the foliage hoping for a glimpse of something not leaflike – nothing.
Eventually, we did get some cauliflowers and calabrese but really quite small which was so disappointing. Especially as this year I remembered to put plastic collars around the base of them all to keep egg-laying moths away (which worked brilliantly, I didn’t lose a single plant). I’m still hoping that the sprouts, which form later in the year, and the purple sprouting broccoli, which we get next year, will be ok. Not sure how much more patience to have with the cabbages, and I really wanted some of those mammoth lombardy heads like we’ve seen others growing. At least the smaller cauliflower heads were put to good use, as along with some of our beans, courgettes, onions etc there are now 4 jars of piccalilli in the pantry too.
And it seems crazy that July is tomorrow and we haven’t had any toms yet. Last month all the plants were doing well, especially the roma ones sown in January, and by mid June there were loads of green toms. And there are still loads of green toms. Only green. And perhaps most worrying is that many of the new flowers above have fallen off unfertilised. We have both noticed the lack of insects in general this year. In fact, amazingly, the purple sprouting broccoli from early spring came and went without a single, horrid grey aphid in sight. We haven’t put the fly curtains on the doors yet. As for honey bees: nada. The bumble bees are happy with the buddleia and lavender but really very few flying creatures to marvel at and be bothered by. Perhaps when summer really does arrive…
Meanwhile, the countryside is still lovely and green and full of wild flowers. Even the field next door which was sprayed has bounced back with poppies and chicory. So the toms and peppers can wait, there’s plenty of courgettes and chard and beans to keep us going. And it’s perfect walking weather too 🙂
Our orange tree has certainly seen some bird action this spring. First we had the linnet nest, then we had the wrens utilising last year’s goldfinch nest. The wrens all fledged successfully and now this nest is being used for a third time. This time for greenfinches. The transformation is all the more remarkable as finches have the regular “cup” nest but wrens make an all enclosing nest with a side entrance. So the wrens made their nest underneath the original goldfinch nest using it as the roof. And now the wrens have gone, the greenfinches have just moved in to the old roof top apartment! Even better news – they have already laid a clutch of eggs.
Here is the wren nest that I took out of the pig pen. I must admit it looks very different to the “two-in-one” nest in the orange tree as that is well hidden amongst a load of branches but it does show what a regular wren nest looks like.
Yes, the wild boar are back, this time with some youngsters. How do we know? Because we managed to capture some of them on our wildlife camera and you can clearly see their stripes. There’s no sound but we’re sure you can add your own David Attenborough commentary and audio effects over the top. These shots are from last night so ignore the date and times. We won’t be giving up the day jobs (whatever those are) but it’s fun capturing the wild nightlife.
And Richard was really excited when, a few nights ago, he was out looking at the stars and the barn owl came and stood right next to him and was staring at him for some moments before flying off. We can hear the young screeching and rasping in the night – now that would be something to film!
Our garden seems to be very popular with the birds this spring as we’ve had nests popping up all over the place.
First there was the blackbird nest where we saw two little ‘uns fledge, then the linnets in the orange tree. From here 4 fledged.
Also in the orange tree we’ve got a family of wrens, building on last year’s goldfinch nest.
Meanwhile in the nest box we have a family of blue tits. Here’s mum (or dad) bringing back a tasty grub.
But that’s not all. After we dispatched the roasties we noticed that there was a nest inside the roastie/pig pen. We think it is a wren nest but there’s no one home at the moment.
And finally (for now!) we have discovered another nest. This time it’s in the pergola amongst the grape vine and right above where we often have breakfast/lunch. As yet we haven’t see any comings or goings. Watch this space.
