Wednesday 27 June 2012

Parsley Cubes...

Just for something a bit different, we had our first organic veggie box from our local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme last week (Growing Well ) We were quite excited to see what goodies there would be in our share and maybe find some things we wouldn't normally buy. We had some spring greens, spring onions, rainbow chard, swiss chard, and a rather large bag of parsley.....mmmm what do you do with a whole bag of parsley??!!

After using some in a pasta sauce, some in chard soup (great recipe here..Lentil and Swiss Chard Soup ) there was still loads of it left! So rather than waste any we decided to freeze most of it in little handy cubes, ready to be popped into soup, stews etc whenever needed.
Chopped and put into ice-cube trays, top up with water

Tada...little cubes of herby goodness!!




























 I wonder what we get this week......

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Pictures.......at last!

I know,I know it's been a whole week since I said I would put photos up of our week looking after a friends small-holding....life just took over and energy levels dipped out a bit so here we are now!!
Gorgeous old Farmyard

The pony and foal in one of their fields

These were just visiting!!

Daft ducks, followed each other everywhere!

Pinky and Blacky - they were like Laurel and Hardy...very amusing!!

The little one-eyed duckling being looked after by one of the Silkie hens

The mad geese on the rampage..

The evil ram- he had serious issues!!
It was stressful at times and we had a huge learning curve to go through but it was great and we loved it!!

Sunday 10 June 2012

Small-holding week

Well, our small-holding dream has come true......well, only for one week but it's a start. Some friends of ours have gone off on holiday (first in a looong time) and left us in charge of their lovely house and small-holding. It's been an interesting  learning curve with an escaping rabbit and guinea-pig, a ram with serious issues and chickens who didn't seem to want to go to bed! Fortunately the rabbit and guinea-pigs were thankfully caught again after a stressful half-hour and we think we've found a way around the evil ram's field to get to the lambs we need to feed! Mr Ram is not in my good books after charging us and scaring the living daylights out of B and me. He is just greedy and wants the lambs food but he needs counselling!! So tomorrow I will wave the bucket at him while I bypass his field and get the lambs fed another way!!

I'll get some pictures up tomorrow .....hope the weather holds! ...(edit: pictures may be a few days!!)

Wednesday 6 June 2012

Wasted Water.

I laughed (secretly!) at Dave's mum when she decided to keep a bucket by her kitchen sink to collect wasted water.....I thought it was a bit of a crackpot idea but I guess I have to admit that she was right!! A bucket suddenly appeared by our sink last week...... like mother, like son...... and I am actually slightly amazed (and shocked) at how much water we would normally waste just through one day. Every time we want hot water we run the tap until it warms up.....every time we want cold water we run the tap until it's nice and cold.....every time we empty and refresh our drink bottles that water goes straight down the plughole....it all adds up! We've started trying to collect it all in our handy bucket and we must be filling that bucket every day at least.

Even up here in the wet NW of England, our outside rain barrels are pretty much empty already, so this water has come in very handy to water our veggies when needed....water that would have been lost down the plughole! In this country we take it too much for granted that we will always have water readily available.

We haven't got onto all the waste water from washing up, baths etc yet but maybe that's something to look into in the near future. It must amount to a huge amount of useable water that ends up wasted......