http://thealmostcarlessfamily.blogspot.com/

Just to let anyone following this know, I am consolidating this blog with my new blog.
Please come along to read about how me and my family are doing our best to live eco -friendly and (almost) without a car.
Look forwards to seeing you there :)
x

New camera!!

I have ANOTHER new camera!! This one cost more than £20 so should last a little longer :P

Its been BUSY here!

Tor Croft is racing along with potato's and tomato's and strawberries and LOTS of other stuff as well (including weeds and grass...bah!)growing like there's no tomorrow.

Look here!! Remember those sad little pots outside the house that just looked like a bit of straw was chucked in there??
Huge Jerusalem artichokes and advanced Garlic now!




The greenhouse is working hard with early strawberries which taste like little packets of nectar!! Ok..but they DO taste gooood ;)



We want to make a lot more areas to grow under glass. The plan being to run a long greenhouse along the front of the house that will not only make additional space to take boots and things off, but will allow me to grow more indoor strawberries, tubs with courgettes and tomato's and other delicate plants.

Oh, the irony.

The trouble about writing a blog based mostly around gardening is that when the weather is shitty enough for you to spend a couple of hours online you have nothing to write about and when everything is growing and multiplying and such, well, you're outside doing IT.

Its a conundrum.

But then who would want to read about some fat slob who does nothing all day but blog?

Hmm.

Well, what HAS happened? (Another problem, so much has happened that you forget most of it.)
I have Peas up and potato's, lettuce and spinach in the hot bed, carrots (sort of, I am the kiss of death to carrots it seems) and beetroot. Raspberry bushes look good, as do strawberries and blueberries. Garlic and onions all on track, Jerusalem artichokes need support soon.
Oh and I found some wild garlic by our burn so I'm away to look at that soon :)

The chickens are all fine and dandy.
After a long wait Victoria started laying, so we now get 3 eggs most days. She is sneaky though. I discovered she had been hoping out of the orchard to lay her egg in the grass under the pine trees, but then she couldn't;t get back in. This hen will not allow anyone near her in the orchard, but outside she throws herself at your feet for you to pick her up and put her back lol.
We have a new addition to the hens.
A carrion crow had decided that layers pellets are the way to go and has integrated himself into the flock. He is seconds away from getting a name ;)






Well that's about it. As soon as the rain lets up I shall take more pics. Heres one of the littlies baking ..awwwww.
Peace x.

EEEEEEGGGGGGSSSS!!!!! :D

So it happend at LAST!! Eggs in the nesting box!!




The first one was laid by Sally and the kids where gobsmacked at how warm it was.
So after Sally came out of the hen house yelling to the world about what she had done I nipped in and grabbed the egg just before Emily/Enemy sat her arse down.
Much clucking later we had another....




SO we have two eggs and I have promised the kids scrambled eggs for lunch...about 2 tea spoons each I think LOL.
But as OH pointed out, so far these eggs have cost £20 each....so they'd better eat it all up!

Rhubarb muffins.

So, as promised, a recipe with rhubarb that isn't crumble ;)
You will need:-
(makes @ 12)

@5 stems of forced rhubarb, cut into small pieces.
1 cup self raising flour (white)
1/2 cup self raising flour (wholemeal)
1/2 cup of golden caster sugar.
1 egg.
1/2 cup of soya milk.
1/4 cup oil.




1)Mix the flours and sugar together in a large bowl.
2)Add the rhubarb then mix in the egg, milk and oil.
3)Place a tablespoon full into mini muffin cases.





4)Cook for @ 20 mins at 180-200oC.
5)Allow to cool slightly in the tray then turn out onto a rack.
6)EAT! :D

Sick of the chickens yet?? I'm not :)

The chickens never fail to entertain I'm finding. Why would you have rabbits or guinea pigs or hamsters when you can have chickens instead. The children are still firmly in love with them and I must admit to finding myself wasting time just hanging out and watching their antics. Lloyd is well integrated now and after spending time with Victoria, who loves a quiet life and lots to eat, is now hanging out with the more feisty Emily, or "Enemy" as Alfie calls her, ironically fitting ;)
OH fixed up the orchard fencing so we can now let them range more, something they were very pleased with as it meant plenty of young grass and bugs to eat, although after the humans went in the house I saw them out of the window, panic and hurdle their way back into the small pen like a bunch of steeple chasing old dears...very funny XD
Lots of things growing well now. The hot bed is producing spinach, lettuce and spring onion, the onion sets are planted, as well as a couple of rows of carrots and beetroot. The forced rhubarb is very nice and the outdoor stuff also growing more each day.
Potatoes going in as soon as the rain stops but I'm not complaining, we planted four more apple trees on Monday and are getting even more soon, it makes sense to try and be self sufficient in the one fruit we CAN grow and everyone will eat!

The important lessons of life.

One of the things I feel very strongly about is the education of the next generation.
Many people visualize this as pushy parents pouring over school league tables and running children to endless after school clubs to learn mandarin and Suzuki violin.
They hire tutors and buy CD's of subliminal learning for their kids to listen to whilst sleeping.
My failure to do all this makes me a bad parent ;)
This Easter I have given the boys their own "garden" to plant and tend.





The sad demise of a large chest of drawers (to damp and woodworm) left me with three very big drawers that just begged to be turned into raised beds...if only for one season.
Eldest son was given the job of digging muck from the old-er muck heap and once they where 3/4 full we tootled off to the garden centre.
This is usually a trip punctuated by whining, crying and pouting, but this time OH behaved himself (HAHAHAHahahahahahahahHAHAHAhahahahAHAHAHAhahahah! ah dear...)
The promise of choosing a plant of their own made the trip for once ALMOST enjoyable.
They each picked out a small heather, each a different colour so they could tell who's garden was who's.




They reverently dug their hole and carefully took the plants out of their pots then they sowed carrot, pea and garlic plus the bonus of a leftover strawberry plant each.




It will be interesting to see what comes of this, if they are keen to do the same next year, to stretch their wings a little and plant a little less haphazardly.





The raising of plants and animals can only teach the very important life lessons, patience, tolerance, kindness and the rewards that come with that, but also it teaches them how to handle the inevitable disappointments that come in life, the death of a pet, the failure of a plant.






We owe it to our children and our planet to push these lessons....maths can wait.

The great Free range myth.

So my first Hens are here :D
As the kids are going through a Tim Burton stage at the moment they are names Emily and Victoria (From corpse bride) and Sally (From the nightmare before Christmas).
I thought I would use this post as an opportunity to debunk the free range myth.
In the UK (and else where I expect) Eggs are graded in 3 main ways, caged bird, barn reared or free range (lets leave organic out of it).
As everyone knows caged birds are kept in cages, unable to stretch, dust bath or scratch about as nature intended. Barn reared birds are usually free to roam inside a large barn but are not allowed outside. Free range birds get to frolic in the sunshine, pecking for worms and generally have a fine old time right?

Erm..no actually.

In THEORY this should be the way it happens but it has to be remembered that even free range commercial flocks have to be run at a profit.
The free range set up is similar to the barn set up but with ACCESS to enclosures outside. But lookie here, we have a barn with 300 chickens in it...but only 10 (or less) pop holes. What usually happens is that the dominant hens go outside the prevent the lower ranking chickens from leaving the barn, so your free range bird may never have seen the sun light and is no more free range than her barn reared cousin.

OH BUT ...its FREE RANGE!! So the price tag upon the box of eggs goes up steeply, but you the consumer are being played for a mug....you are paying for the box, the one that say's free range...the one that implies you care.

There is also the fact that as a commercial flock even the free range hens will be culled at the first moult. No farmer is going to loose money feeding a non productive bird that will then lay slightly fewer eggs.

I read a feature online a while back about the Battery hen welfare trusts work with farmers. Many farmers they are working with are moving away from caged hens and into barn rearing but are frustrated at the problems that go with it.
At great expense they convert their buildings for barn rearing, letting chickens spread their wings and scratch and interact with each other...but no one will buy their eggs...Why??

Well...the person who doesn't care will buy the cheapest and producers of food that include egg or egg products will also only use the cheapest (cakes, mayonnaise etc).
The people who DO care mistakenly think that free range is far superior to barn reared and so will bypass the barn reared eggs.

The poor farmer is left loosing money and then possibly his lively hood...all because he wanted to farm in a kinder way.

So for the record, the next time I have to buy commercial eggs I will save myself some money and buy local barn reared ones and hopefully support a farmer who is working towards a better standard of welfare for his flocks.










All calm so far :P

RHUBARB!!!

Ah Rhubarb!! Funny weed like vegetable...and I think it IS rather than a fruit but DO correct me if I'm wrong.
It starts to poke its head up this time of year and even though it does this every year we still get excited by it....and how quickly we forget how SICK we are of eating it, freezing it and turning it into jam.
If only all vegetable growing was thus easy.

THIS year I have rung the changes by trying my hand at forcing some to try the more delicate flavour of the paler stalks.
To start with I had two plants under buckets and freshly mucked out straw thrown over the top for heat and to block out all the light.
It quickly became apparent that this wasn't an ideal set up though. The straw encroached on the other rhubarb plants and the buckets where too small.
As luck would have it I was trying to think of something to do with my old council bought plastic compost bin.
This useless lump of moulded plastic was no good for making compost and in despair of 2 years of brown sludge and whole pieces of vegetable matter, I have gone back to the good old muck heap properly made and situated in the veggie garden.

But I digress....

AhA, I think..a perfect match! So compost bin with lid has gone over the top of the plants and for good measure I have heaped some straw around the sides to guarantee total darkness (poor little roooobarbs!!).
It is DEGREES warmer in there and the stalks are already stretching up to find their way out of the dark and are @ 4 times as far along as their outdoor brothers.
So we'll see what the next couple of weeks bring.




The forcing bin.




The outside rhubarb.

The Fertilisers aka the ponies ;)

Time to meet the ponies :)
If you want to read more about the equine part of Tor Croft visit http://ponymum.blogspot.com/
....BUT...Where would our garden be without the never ending supply of poo from what would otherwise be known as walking money pits. This way I get to pretend that what we spend on horses goes back to out pockets in saved grocery bills :)
Well I never said it was flawless logic but Im sticking to it ;)




Jo and Mouse..."stop taking photos and pick the damn stuff up WOMAN!!"





OH and Eldest breeze Badger and Mouse...gotta keep the guts moving!



Comet the ex-colt..no one told him about the EX bit yet though :P




...and it all winds up here...ready to help the veggies along...now..what WOULD we do without the horses?? ;)

Just for fun :)

Lock up your chickens.....

So last month we ...acquired a chicken.
Its a long story but in short, my neighbour runs an organic, free range**coughmehcough** chicken farm. He has day old chicks delivered then at 4 weeks old they get packed into crates and taken to the other farm for another 3-4 weeks before becoming someones dinner.
Everytime he packs them up he looses a couple...they scape and hide under the sheds then later the fox or the crows or (sometimes) my dog will pick them off.
Way of the wild blah blah blah.
However one lunch time I am sitting chatting to OH when what should I spy but a chicken in my garden, I slept up and set off in pursuit and with the OH's help managed to capture the beast! HAHA!
So I became the owner of a chicken the size of a cooking apple with very sparse feathering and now all alone in the world.
Should we have given him back?
Well, he would have been written off anyway so maybe I didn't technically STEAL him, just....picked him up?
Anyway he now has a run and is a cutie and loves a stroke and to feed out of the kids hands....all we need now are some girl friends and I'm on the case aiming to get some ex-battery girls.
More soon, in the mean time here is a picture of Lloyd the bird (sounds better if you come from Brooklyn I guess? ;)

The Hot bed!! (Not QUITE as much fun as it sounds ;)

Its been a long time since I posted here, there ARE reasons...1) it was Winter and nothing happend and 2) My camera broke and I was putting things off until I could take some pics ...so here I am...and spring has SPRUNG!! In Scotland for the last couple of years we seem to have got our summers at the end of March until mid may, then it rains until September so I am determind to make the most of all the good sunny weather I can.
So the hot bed has been made :)
We used an old concrete trough which for the last 5 years has done sterling service as a normal planter giving me an abundance of courgettes,peas and onions. For the glass top we used part of an old shower which we had aquired from freecycle some months ago and promptly put in the shed and forgot about it. Would you beleive it fitted exactly!
The OH made a wooden frame so the whole thing sat level, and made up the end peices. All that we need to do to it now is run a couple of bungee ropes over the top to secure from high winds.
The filling is made up of a straw and manure mix with @ 3 inches of potting compost on the top.
I'll let you know what I decide to plant in it this year. Next year I hope to have my eye on the ball and try to grow some early spring / late winter salad in it.

January...well, there must be life somewhere...

So...whats hiding under the earth then?? In the top picture you can see a pile of leaves and straw..."Ah" you say "A small compost heap or maybe you're getting ready for a bonfire." Nope! Under that pile grows (I hope) two forced rhubarb plants. My first time so who knows whats going on under there! I covered each plant with a bucket then stacked straw (from the horses stables, so there is poo in it as well) and raked leaves over them. In theory it should be warm and dark and by March/ April we should have some pale sticks to cook and sell.
We'll see what spring brings.




The second pick is a rather uninteresting study of two plastic troughs and some straw. Nestled a few inches below straw and compost sleep 2 heads of garlic (right) and 4 Jerusalem artichokes (left).




And my lonely cooking apple tree....Last year he yielded 2 apples ( it would have been 3 but an over enthusiastic child picked it!), enough for a very tasty, if a bit small, crumble. He's sleeping now and has been trimmed back so fingers crossed for a more abundant crop next autumn.



Here you can see the trough I plan to turn into a mini hot bed. Hot beds are made by filling a vessel with horse poo and straw and compacting it down, then covering with a layer of compost and finally a glass lid like a cold frame. The idea is that the poo generates enough heat to enable seeds to grow earlier than they would outside or in an unheated greenhouse. They where very popular with the Victorians and as we live so far north it will be very interesting to see how it goes.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION call back soon :)