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Snow

Finally another lot of snow for the year. The house being dumped with snow.












My snow gum finally getting a dose of snow. It is a bit sick at the moment, I am hoping it will survive until spring and pick up a bit.

Chick Hotel

Well, we have had extra work with the little chicks this week. We decided to remove them from the coop where their mum and the rest of the hens are as there were too many dangers for them there. So here's box life for a chick.

The first thing to remember about little chicks is that they love to be warm, they cope much better without water than they do without warmth. It's pretty hot here in the summer, so our chicks don't need much additional warmth, certainly they do not need a heat lamp, though if you live in a colder climate or raise chicks in colder months of the year they will need a substantial heat source. We are quite amused as our chicks are being warmed by an energy saving lightbulb..... it seems to provide just enough of a heat boost for them.... very comical. Really they need 35 C (which is about 95 F), especially for the first week of their lives, but you can usually take it down to about 30-32 C (which is 90 F) in the second week....and more later.

I wont write a long post about raising chicks as there are millions of websites which do a far better job of it that I would. There are a few things that we feel help though....

• We like to give our chicks sugar water for the first few days, it helps them get a little energy boost and cope that bit better with life outside the egg.
• Raising chicks is not as complicated as it seems.... the best thing to do is remember to keep them warm and watered, food can be simple too, there are plenty of places that will sell you starter food for chicks, or you can make your own mix of corn and grains (if you can grind them)
  
• Don't worry if you lose one or two.... in fact the general recommendation is to have 25% more chicks than you need, to allow for losses
• If they make a lot of noise, loud peeping... something is wrong, this can be as simple as being stuck behind a feeder or being too cold. You'll know, just think of babies, they get noisy when something is wrong.

Of course, if anyone wants to know more about our simple and pain-free chick raising methods... or would like to critisise them.... feel free to contact us... We arn't very complicated people and we are generally good at replying.

The most important thing is keep it simple and in the words of the great Lance-Corporal Jack Jones "Don't Panic, Don't panic!!"

chicks and chutney

Well, it's been a busy week for us here, chicks hatched all last week to a grand total of 9.... not bad for our first home hatched batch. All 9 of them are currently cheeping away happily in a warm box in the house, except when they are helping with knitting...

This is the oldest chick, the little black smudge from last week... they grow so quickly and we are very pleased at how strong they are.



This weekend marked the end of the apricot season for us, finally our huge tree had dropped her last fruit and we thought we would make the jam. I have been collecting, preparing and freezing apricots for weeks, using only the really squishy ripe ones to make ensure the best possible jam.

Our end result was this ...


Lovely thick, really tasty apricot jam.... 34 jars of it.... woo hoo!



We also felt this weekend was a good time to make our chutney. We used about 7 kg of tomatoes, 2kg of onions and 1.5 kg of apples... you can imagine, that makes a lot of chutney. This is it at the 'Giant Salad' stage, before it started to boil.... The recipe is here from last year

To make our jam we only used the sweetest ripest apricots, as that makes for tastier jam and we always like to keep it simple. By using the ripest apricots we used very little sugar as it didnt need much sweetning (added on a 'taste it and see' basis). We dont add artificial preservatives to our food, so, for the jam we took the cores and peel left from making the chutney and we boiled them in a pot and pressed them through a seive to extract the thick pulp and pectin mixture and we added this to the jam, it's a natural way to add a setting agent. Anyway, we dont like the jam too thick, we like it to be what my gran always calls 'french jam'. I am aware that this isnt a recipe, but it seems a little silly to pretend that we use a recipe just so I can blog about it.

Our first birth.....

A couple of weeks ago, one of our hens got a little broody and just decided she was going to sit on all the eggs that were laid in the coop. we didn't move her to a broody coop and we wern't even convinced that she would keep sitting, but she did, so we left her, on about 10 eggs in the end.

TodayI walked down the garden and heard a "cheep cheep"..... I went to go check on our little broody hen in the coop who we estimated was due at the weekend.... Lo and behold, this little one apparently couldn't wait that long.



Of course, after an hour of warming and drying he looked a little more like this....



Hopefully we will have next years laying birds from this batch of chicks. The broody mum is still sitting determinedly on the rest of the eggs, who will probably hatch for the rest of the week now.

Turning 18.... 'Majorat'

Well, we went out to the car yesterday and realised that there was something going on up the street, we were fortunate enought to witness another of the interesting traditions of village life here. We soon found out that the girl was turning 18, and apparently this is how you do it.



They went on horse and cart to all her relatives and danced in and out of the courtyards for beverages and cakes. It was actually quite lovely, so we photographed and videoed a little to share.

Ploughing the Field

Ploughing the Field with a horse
Originally uploaded by Philip More

The neighbour has planted our field with corn and it needs weeded. So he and someone with a horse and plough have dug it. However it also needs the weeds dug out and then the soil piled up around the corn. So still a lot of work to do.

Goose egg

As a kind of payment for using our land, the neighbours bought around a breeding pair of geese for us. We put them in the pig sty and the seemed to be happy enough. I thought we would be waiting ages before getting any eggs but this morning Johanna came in to say we had an egg.

Not sure what we will do with it, perhaps wait for another one and then make scrambled eggs.

Spring and the garden is overrun

We are finally back at our house and the courtyard is full of grass though probably taller than what we really want. The fruit trees are doing well, in particular we look like we will get a great crop of apricots.

The grass has been cut in the hope that one day we will have something like a lawn here, It is also full of bind weed, nettles and other such weeds, hopefully the grass will over grow all this.






We also have some flowers which brighten the place up. I have no idea what these are so if anyone knows please let us know. We have three of these bushes. The idea is to have a flower garden under the apricot tree as I can't imagine we are going to get a decent amount of grass to grow under there.





It would of course be useful if we could get the pump working but it needs a new seal which we have not managed to get going again. Just yet another of one of those things that needs done.

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.