Spicy relish

Well, since it's tomato season, and there are heaps and heaps of tomatos (the neighbour has said we can help ourself to his he has so many) and the apples are ripened too, we decided to make some relish. It's such a simple, wonderful thing to do with tomato surplus. Here's my recipe:

Spare Oom spicy apple and tomato relish

Ingredients

1.5kg of Tomato (chopped)
4 large onions (chopped)
4-5 tart apples (peeled cored and chopped)
1 small Chilli (finely chopped)
400ml vinegar (of your own choice)
400 g Sugar
1 tbsp Salt
1 tbsp Curry powder
3 tbsp Flour

Directions

Put chilli, onion, tomato and apple in a large pot with vinegar and sugar. Bring to the boil stirring often. Reduce to a simmer for about 40 mins, stirring often, till mixture has reduced and thickened.

In the meantime, mix in a bowl flour, salt and curry powder together. Add water or fluid from the pot to make a smooth paste, mix paste thouroughly with the reduced mixture.

Pour relish into sterilised jars and seal. Put jars into a boiling water bath for 10 mins, remove and allow to cool. Store in a cool dark place.


We made 2 batches, milder and 'extra spicy'. The we topped them off with our homemade lables. Lolly (she's 7) helped me by adding the 'extra spicy'

Quacks and Honks

Well, these are our ducks and geese.















They are all up against the cage to greet the camera which they hoped was a form of food. They do have a good deal of space and they are in a mobile cage so that we can move them up and down the garden for the greenery (ducks and geese love grass and weeds)















The geese are grey french geese. They get up to a good weight and they are much less aggressive than the english white geese. The ducks are all mixed. We have 3 geese and 9 ducks. Though, we felt the ducks were big enough now, so we have one alone in a pen, fattening up for the oven in a couple of weeks time. We can hardly wait.

The temporary coop

The chickens are in temporary housing at the moment, until we move out to the Spare Oom. They were in a little box while they were getting up their weight, as it kept them a little better protected. However, they outgrew it and so we had to knock up a better living for them.


































As you can see, they were very happy clucking around in their new space....





























There are 13 chickens, they arn't mature yet, so none for the pot as yet. Though, we have put a duck aside to eat in a couple of weeks.

Woods Great Peppermint Cure

I've lost four toes in the arctic snows,
An eye in the Timor sea.
A hand and a jaw in a circular saw,
And a leg by a falling tree
But I never feel ill with a cold or a chill
My health I aye ensure
By wetting my throttle
In time with a bottle of Woods Great Peppermint cure

Pouring Concrete

A long overdue update of the house progress is in order. After ripping up the floor, digging out the dirt and laying the piping for the mains water, internal plumbing and a pipe for sewerage as well as last minute piping for a hot water boiler powered by the terracotta oven, we were ready to pour the cement.

Having decided that with only two people to do the work we payed the extra money to get the cement made and have a pump to pour it into the two rooms. However when the truck arrived the driver firstly thought he wouldn't be able to get the arm close enough to even pour it, then once he had actually used his head and got the arm in, he still didn't pour the cement directly into the backroom, only into the doorway between the rooms. So we ended up having to shovel a lot of material into the far room and also the excess out of the kitchen room to repair the porch on the outhouse, the wheelbarrow was broken so it was moved shovel load by shovel load.

It all eventually got moved and smoothed out and when it was checked on the next day it was very level. The whole process luckily was over by the time a huge thunderstoom opened the heavens and we arrived home to the house with everyone huddled into the kitchen by candle light. Probably very lucky that we were not visible considering how dirty and sore we were.

The Chicken Coop

Chicken seems to be a controversial subject these days, how much should we eat, which kind should we buy? We have made the firm decision recently that we don't want to eat intensely farmed chickens, however, we realize that's nigh impossible these days and so we also made the decision to only eat chicken we raise ourselves.

Which brings us to The Chicken Coop.... our 13 chickens who we bought as day old chicks. They cluck around happily having a peck at what they fancy. They are young yet, but we are hoping to get a couple of laying hens as well as some delicious chicken.

Admittedly, it isn't a pleasant thing to have to kill the chickens you raise from chicks, but we much prefer to eat our little chickens knowing that they have been raised fairly and we can be fully thankful for the meat we have from them.

You may well think that 13 chickens are not going to give us an abundance of meat, and you're right, it's not going to be much especially if we keep a couple of laying hens and a cockerel to give us next years chicks, then it's even fewer. But, we think quality and not quantity. We have come to depend on chicken as a daily source of food in the west and it's just not a healthy mindset. 70 years ago, chickens were farmed more fairly and eaten less often, and perhaps better enjoyed. It may be time, certainly for us, re-evaluate and learn to appreciate.

I should also say, we keeps ducks, geese and eventually rabbits for the same purpose. This way we can eat a varied, healthy amount of guilt-free meat.

A new begining

Spare Oom is our little cottage and an acre of land which will house chickens, ducks and geese as well as our west highland terrier, Hamish, our various parrots and our 3-legged cat, Tigerlilly... oh and us of course.

When naming the cottage we had several candidates, however, it seemed 'Spare Oom' was the best choice, not quite as small as 'War Drobe' and not quite as presumtious as 'Cairparavel'. It stands in a tiny little village in Romania called Dorobanti where we just had mains water placed and we are still on wood burning stoves.


There isn't much to this blog, just a seasonal look at a couple of beginners trying to run a bit of land and live as naturally as we can. Perhaps by reading along you might learn something you didn't know or see something interesting, but, if nothing else, you can have a good laugh at our attempts to get back to basics.