Probably Random

Rumpot

We did a Rumpot a couple of years ago and it was fan-bloomin’ tastic. We drank the juice (it tasted a bit like alchoholic Vimto to me) and put the fruit in or on ice-cream (it was a bit strong on its own).

Basically you get a pot and fill it with Rum, fruit and sugar over the course of the summer when there is plenty of fruit about, then eat it over the winter when there isn’t.

Last time we did it we used the pot out of our slow cooker (which we never used) but we’ve passed that on to someone who wanted to use it! and we saw a proper German Rumpot pot in a local charity shop, so we’re using that.

I started ours off with some plums that were starting to go bad. I cut out the bad bits and put the rest in the pot, covered it with sugar and left it for a little while so the sugar absorbed some of the juice. I then poured in rum to cover the fruit. Job done… as we go along we’ll just add whatever fruit we have left over or if we see something cheap (when it comes into season) then we’ll get some fruit specially.

Dandelion Wine

What a great excuse to pull up the ‘weeds’ (it’s only a weed if you don’t want it there!) and make some wine!
Now, this was my first attempt ever at making wine, I did try to make beer once and well it was a disaster, it tasted a bit like shandy which had been made with vinegar instead of lemonade! so my track record isn’t the greatest at this brewing malarky.

Anyway I’ve got a couple of books, the one with the most detail is C.J.J. Berry’s First Steps in Wine Making so I started out using that, but again there were some bits that perhaps weren’t fully explained for the novice, so I did a google search too and there are loads of recipies, mine ended up as a bit of a mish mash, but there were sooo many recipies and they were all so similar.
Basically:
1.5 kilos of sugar
4.5 litres of water (1 gallon)
4 citrus fruits (Oranges or lemons, seem to be able to use whatever you have to hand, I used Oranges)
2-3 Litres Dandelion Flowers (I used 2)
Yeast (as per packet for the quantity your doing)
yeast nutrient.

First off pick the flower heads (St Georges Day in full sun so the flowers are open is the recommended time), no stalks or leaves but mine still had the green bits from around the bottom of the flowers. I was surprised at how many you need, but that it doesn’t take too long to get them, I avoided getting them from too close to the road or path! (yeah okay so most of them were from the garden).

Put all the flower heads into a bucket, and pour over your boiling water, cover it (I used a tea towel tied over the top of a bucket) for 2 days (this varies from 2-3 days depending on the recipie I did 2 days).

After that reboil the mixture (You need a big pan! I got a 10 litre ’365′ one from Ikea) with the peel of your chosen citrus fruits. (recipies vary here from 10 – 20 minutes, I did 10 minutes).

Clean out the bucket you used to step the flower heads and put the sugar in it.
Strain the hot dandelion mixture into the bucket.
When the liquid has cooled ( to room temp.) add the yeast (some recipies also add the citrus juices at this point too I think it’s either the juice or the nutrient… I used the yeast nutrient).
Fill up your fermentation vessel and leave it to ferment.
When it’s done fermenting let it clear in a cool place and bottle.
All the recipies say it’s best left for a while!

Chicken Shed

We haven’t got any chickens yet but we’re planning on getting some rescue chickens.
We have an old kennel (well, it’s practically a shed!) left by the previous owners of the house, I’ve given it a lick of paint (a couple of weeks ago now) and raised it off the ground to dry out a bit (it’s been sitting in a puddle!).
So this weekend while my sister was over we had a go at moving the shed! Now as I said it is quite large but we still thought we’d go for lifting it (well there were 5 of us!)! bad idea! then we tried pushing it… hmmm still not going anywhere, time for a cuppa!

Well after a short brew stop we decided to use some stakes (round) we had in the shed (I think we were supposed to put those in when we did the apple trees! ooops!) as rollers… hurray, it didn’t matter much that the rollers were different sizes as the garden isn’t exactly a bowling green!
After a bit of pushing and shoving and some careful direction we finally got the shed in place…

We thought we were done! but oh no, still to go… but that’s for another day, just moving the shed was enough effort for today! remember to think about the positioning and perhaps don’t go for the furthest point away from where the shed is now!

I feel a bit guilty putting this under the ‘food related’ heading…. we’re going to eat the eggs!

The First Planting

We did our first planting based entirely based on the seeds we had a box, some from our last place and some which people had given us.

Outside we planted two types of pea (a podding pea and a mange tout) and loads of broad beans. We just raked over the bed, then pushed the seeds down into the moist soil, we put everything a bit closer than it said on the packet, some of the seeds were past their ‘use by’ date so we thought they might not all come up (I guess this is where planting indoors and then transplanting comes in handy as you know what is growing and can lay them out accordingly).

Inside meanwhile, we sowed some mixed salad leaves, courgettes (2 varieties both F1′s a yellow and a green) , Squash ( Crown Prince?) and 3 types of tomato (Tumbler, San Marzano, Tiny Tom). our seeds were from a mixture of Edwin Tuckers seeds (My mum likes them), B&Q, Suttons and Thompson & Morgan and 1 packet of ‘heritage’ seeds from The Lost Gardens of Heligan so basically anywhere.

These are all now in our ‘conservatory’ as we don’t have a green house and well we don’t use the conservatory really as it’s bloomin’ freezing (warmer than outside though!) you could of course just use a windowsill, I think an east or west facing is probably best as plants won’t get scorched in a full on sun (later in the year) but will get plenty of daylight.

We also have a Mushroom log (Shitake, I think it was from wiggly wigglers but it was a Christmas present so that’s a guess) that’s now been put in the shade of the fence.

Fruit Trees

Originally I got carried away planing an orchard, I was soon brought back into the real world.
I’d planned a full succession of fruit for as long as I could through the year only to be faced with the realisation that we only had room for about 3 (dwarf) apple trees!

I spent a while looking online at Keepers Nursery (in Kent) who had really good detail about the different varieties what pollinates what and when they will fruit. In the end we bought a 1 year St Edmunds Pippin from Crown Nursery in Ufford and a Discovery ( we think this is a couple of years old) and a Damson from Kiln Farm Nursey (whilst the Internet is great for research, I still like to see plants before I get them.

So The Damson got planted out the front, in the hedge with next-door rather than facing onto the road (you don’t want to put your fruit trees next to the road if you can help it as they’ll get fumigated by passing cars) and the two apple trees got planted out in the back.

UPDATE
The St Edmunds Pippin hasn’t fruited this year but the Discovery has, they are still tiny, we’ll have to wait and see how big they get!