Tag Archives: Equipment

Brewing, Food, Preserving, Produce, Recipes

Adventures with rhubarb

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So this year we haven’t been doing as much with growing but there are two very prolific rhubarb bushes just by our bedroom window. I’ve never been very good at using rhubarb. I tried for several years to do rhubarb wine and it has bested me every time. For some reason I always get a smell and taste of old socks from it. One day I will try again and I will master a rhubarb wine. My only other experiment with rhubarb is the Finnish fruit soup which comes out ok but does need cream or milk with it. I planned to change that this year.

I started with the Finnish fruit cake I do but doing first an apple and rhubarb and then a rhubarb on it’s own. They were both lovely but the I really like the solo rhubarb one. Unfortunately I haven’t mastered a gluten free cake yet, the only gluten free flour our Tescos does is Doves farm and it just comes out too thick, even with extra baking powder. I tried the Tesco cake mix but due to not checking the ingredients it just came out as a molten sugar mess, my biggest baking disaster yet, it actually got scraped into the bin. I’ve bought some flour from Morrisons though and I’ll give the Tesco cake mix another try but without adding sugar. Fingers crossed I can make a decent tasting cake that my body approves of. Home made cake with home made custard is just so lovely.

The next step was some jam. I made jam late last year for the first time and really enjoyed it, but for some reason I have had cold feet about doing jam this year. Which is kind of crazy as I am hoping to be making jams and chutneys for sale next year as an added income from our fruit trees. I finally bit the bullet when Chi was settling in for her first long day at a new nursery. She seemed to be settling well but I wanted to be close to the phone and not too tied into a job. The rhubarb was also getting a bit overgrown at this point too. I’m very glad I gave it a go as it really is simple and Chi had us down to our last jar of jam (blackberry), she really does like jam on her toast and porridge. The rhubarb and vanilla worked well but I was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t as sharp as I was hoping, in fact it was really a bit too sweet. I’ll try again with less sugar and see if I can get one to our taste. That said Chi loved it on her porridge and Sam enjoyed it on his toast.

The recipe was taken from the BBC and is simply equal amounts of sugar and fruit (1kg) with 2 cinnamon sticks stirred until the sugar dissolves, then the juice of 1 lemon added and proceed as you would for any jam. You do have to scrape the scum off the top though, we used a metal spoon for this and once cool Sam gobbled up the scum! Waste not want not here.

Lastly I’ve had my first go at a cordial. I found this a bit daunting too, but that seems to be a trend for me with new skills. It was really simple once I carved out the time for it, another day of Chi at nursery where other commitments meant I couldn’t get stuck into a big job outside. I used  another BBC recipe for this one, using an orange and a lemon as well as rhubarb. I was meant to use ginger too, and even had it in the house, but completely forgot to add it. Maybe for the best as it would be nice for Chi to have this and I’m not sure how the ginger will affect her liking of it.

I have to say that I’m not sure I did it quite right. I did it in the jam pan as that is easy to pour from and I don’t know if the thicker bottom will have affected things. I also think I left it too long. The recipe said ‘until the rhubarb is falling apart’ but I wasn’t sure if that was just some of the rhubarb or all of it so I waited until it was all coming apart. The cordial was very thick. The recipe expected 600ml to be produced but I only got about 250ml until I pressed and squeezed the bag with a metal spoon. I ended up with about 400ml which seems like very little. The rhubarb I used was quite old though, very thick stems, and the weather has been quite dry, so it is possible the fruit itself had less moisture to give. It is lovely and tasty though, maybe a bit more orangey in flavour than I was expecting,. the ginger may balance that out.

I had heard that cordial needs to be stored in the fridge so I called Vigo Presses to see if I can pasteurise it for a longer cupboard storage. We bought our pasteuriser and apple pressing kit from them a couple of years ago and I am still really happy with their customer service. They said I can absolutely pasteurise it but also suggested using a steamer to produce a cordial that will store in the cupboard without pasteurisation.

As I only got 400ml this time I haven’t bothered to pasteurise but we do have a Mehu Liisa in the cupboard that I think I will use to make the next batch of cordial. It came straight from Finland so doesn’t have English instructions but I think I will ask my mother in law or some of our Finnish family for help with it. It looks like it will take a lot longer than just on the hob but it can be left and I like the idea of not having to pasteurise separately. I might also get a better return. I think I’ll do another post about that when I get around to giving it a try.

The only picture I have of the Mehu Liisa in action (blackberries)

Dans

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Livestock, Setting up

Lambing preparations

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We are a bit late this year but it’s nearly lambing time here at Six Oaks!

There are two options for how to lamb. You can lamb indoors, like you may have seen on Lambing Live if you ever watched it, or you can lamb outside. Generally the more commercial, ‘softer’ breeds will lamb inside as they may need more help, whilst the primitive ‘hardier’ breeds will lamb outside, are more likely to get on with it on their own and are able to cope with weather changes. It also depends somewhat on the shepherd.

Our sheep are a primitive breed, one of the reasons we got them was their reputation for being ‘easy lambers’. Despite this it’s our first time lambing, as well as theirs, and there are a few more dangers when both parties don’t know what they are doing. As such we decided on a compromise in terms of lambing. During the days the ewes would be out and we would check them regularly. In the evenings we would bring the ewes inside where we can easily check on them. Once lambed and bonded the mother and lamb(s) will go into a mothering up pen for a day or so and then be turned out into a new area. We had a plan in place.

You may have pieced together from our posts that whilst we are well endowed with polytunnels we don’t actually have a shed that we can have animals in. It’s on our list of things we would like to have but we haven’t got there yet. Our first thought was to use the storage polytunnel, we used that when the ewes first came, for shearing and when Akbar came. The shearing was in May last year though and I had been very worried about the ewes being in there with the afternoon sun. We decided that a sunny May afternoon it may be too hot for a young lamb. So time for plan B.

The girls in the storage polytunnel last year

The second thought was the shade polytunnel. This has fine netting over it and is much cooler, but it does get wet. We need a way to keep the rain off. We bought a very large blue tarp and threw it over the top (somewhat comically, it took a fair few tries!). We pegged it down to see how it coped with the wind. Suffice to say it didn’t cope very well with the wind, and after a few tears we took it down. Time for plan C.

Our makeshift cover

We started looking at temporary structures we could put up, in my searching we came across polytunnels with mesh sides. I briefly considered if we could alter the cover and structure of our storage polytunnel before I realised that our big polytunnel has mesh sides. We have planted half of it with veg beds, the other side has these large sliding tables that we don’t really use. Time to convert it into a lambing area.

The polytunnel when we first moved in.

We started by cleaning up the whole area which was long overdue. Then we lifted one of the table tops up and popped it on top of another. Tied the other two tables together so that they no longer slide. Next we put weedproof fabric over the bare earth floor and got the hurdles in. Straw down and it was ready to use for this year’s shearing.

After shearing we turned the ewes out into polytunnel way and the triangle. From there they can access the polytunnel freely but not get through to the veg beds. Plus there’s plenty of grass there.

Free access in and out

The final touches were to get the lambing box in (£100 worth of equipment, most of which we hopefully won’t need). Move across the tea urn, so we have some hot water for handwashing. Set up the security camera, so we can be nosey from inside the house. And lastly, remove all trip hazards for when we are stumbling out there at night.

Everything we could need

So that was housing sorted. Now for where to put them after. We have an area called Car Park area, just between the gate and the storage polytunnel. We haven’t really grazed it and there is no fencing separating it from the outside veg beds, berry patch or polytunnel way. Sam set to work putting up some temporary fencing, we still don’t know exactly how we want to use that area so don’t really want to hammer fence posts in only to need to move them next year. His solution used up bits of fencing we had left over from other areas and bamboo canes. Despite being primitive sheep our girls don’t test our fencing much at all, and as long as there is an upright barrier and food on their side they will respect it. We have a couple more fence posts to put in to give the fence along the road a bit of support but that goes on our list of jobs for today.

Bamboo fence posts

It’s all sorted now. I’d still like a shed, but I think we have made the best of what we have, which is a big part of smallholding. I’d have liked to remove the supports for the table, but they are cemented in and if we took the arches away there would have been stumps sticking out of the ground.

Now we sit and wait for the lambs. Arya is due today or tomorrow, has a nice big bag and a swollen vulva so fingers crossed!

Dans

Edit: This was written Saturday morning and just needed the pictues adding, then Arya lambed and everything got delayed.

Preserving

Apple pressing

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Sam and I decided to forgo the usual exchange of christmas presents and put the money we would spend towards something useful. In the black friday sales we went all out on some juicing equipment from Vigo Press. We bought a Classic Crusher A, a 20 litre press and a stainless steel pasturiser. Just before Christmas we decided to try it out. We gathered the last of the apples from the trees, eating and cooking and gave it a go.

We had about 20kg of apples and set up a little production line. We gave the apples a quick rinse in a tub of water, quartered them (cutting away and bruised or bad bits) and put them in the crusher.

The production line (and little helper loading the crusher)

We ran them through that once, in batches of 10kg, the crusher was really easy to use, so easy a child could do it. Chi had a great time putting the apples in and even turning the crusher.

We then used the press, that was a bit more complicated. We didn’t secure the press and I think that next time we will bolt it to a pallet or something. We ended up having to have one person hold it whilst the other wound it to press the fruit. I didn’t get any pictures of this step though, I will do next time.

We had a stainless steel pot underneath to collect the juice. Chi was very happy to have a taste of the juice fresh from the press! We added some citric acid in the hope that it would stop browning. It didn’t, after talking to the staff at Vigo Press they suggested using ascorbic acid at 0.5g/litre, I think we will try that next time.

The first taste

We didn’t end up with as much juice as I had hoped for, about 8 750ml bottles. Again Vigo Press advised that we could try running the apples through the crusher twice and we shall definately be trying that next time. The pressed apples weren’t as dry as I had been expecting them to be so I think we could have gotten more liquid from them. They did make a nice treat for the geese and chickens though.

We pasturised the juice and I was very happy to see that it did lighten in colour, so it wasn’t so brown. The only issue we had was that some scum appeared at the neck of the bottle. We might get less of this if we use a mesh bag in the press to stop bits and pieces coming through. But Vigo Press suggested leaving in a sealed container overnight and then pasturising, so that’s another option.

In the pasturiser

The juice tasted really nice, and although we only got 8 bottles we are managing to save them for special occassions. I am really looking forward to 2017, we will keep more apples this year as I had been getting rid of any with even small blemishes. I can see some nice family days pressing apples, it’s a great family activity. And I’m looking forward to trying it with pears and with trying to make some wine with the juices. Yep, very excited to get more use out of this equipment!

Finished product (and wonky label)

Dans

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Brewing, Growing, Preserving, Produce

Apples and pears

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Well in my last post I said I’d tackle the apples and pears the next day, suffice to say that turned into the next week or two! The job still isn’t done though, the apples are resisting coming off the tree, at least the ones I can reach, but yet still falling to the floor in the masses! At least the pears are completely done.

The pear tidy up was daunting, There were so many on the floor. Pretty much all of the Conference pears were no good, they were cut or eaten in some way, some had started to rot but they still needed to be cleared up. I roped Chi in to help, she was very good at picking up the bad ones and carrying them off to the bucket for me. As a bonus it tired her out enough to fall asleep whilst eating a pear I picked from the tree.

The Williams pears were much more worthwhile. They are harder so a lot less had been damaged by falling. The ones that were damaged quite often had a split in them from the force of falling off. We did a little experiment with some of these and turned them into pear juice. This is something I’ve wanted to for a while but we didn’t actually realise we had a juicer until Sam stumbled across it in the stuff that is still waiting to be unpacked.

Just a little windfall
Just a little windfall

The juicer was quite small though and I had to cube the pears so that they would fit into the hole on the top. That was horribly time consuming. Then one of the hooks to hold it all together fell apart, the plastic must have been made brittle from age and being stored outside. Despite that we got some nice juice out of it, certainly a way to use the more worse for wear windfalls. I did a brief google on preserving pear juice but the best I found only gives you two weeks. We did it (heating juice to 80C for 20mins then pouring into sterile bottles) but I’d like to get longer storage if we did larger quantities. I’m tempted by the proper pasteurisers too. The juice was really tasty though and we didn’t add any sugar, just a bit of lemon juice to stop the colour change (it didn’t work). I don’t actually have a picture of the finished juice though!

 

I’ve been making my usual host of crumbles, apple and plum, apple and pear as well apple, pear and raspberry and I think I’ll be experimenting with adding in other red fruit from the freezer as I quite like the colour change. I’ve tried to mix things up a bit as well though. Last year when we got lots of pears I printed off a recipe for a pear pancake and a pear tart. I tried both of them. I’m not 100% sure that my baking skills are up to scratch though. My pear pancake was more of a pear on a bed on baked custard and my tart was like a very dense sponge cake. It was so awful I didn’t even take a picture, although I did eat it all! I need to find more easy baking ideas for pears (and apples). If you have any favourite recipes let me know!

Pear pancake
Pear pancake

I’m also hoping to make a dent on the pear haul by trying pear wine again this year. It went horribly wrong last year and we binned the lot. I’m gonna try again with vitamin b and citric acid added and cross everything. The problem is that we have so many chopped up pears in the freezer still from last year and I’m just not getting through them with my baking. A few that I gathered 3 weeks ago have gone bad and  I don’t want this haul to do the same.

Pear and apple haul
Pear and apple haul

As I said the apples are still going. I’ve pretty much only focused on the cooking apples, and cooking apple tree #1 has barely fruited this year which had made it more manageable. We have 3 different eating apples in fruit at the moment though and again I’m nowhere near being on top of those. We’ll put some cooking apples to wine next week when the fermenters are free again but I really should do something with the eating apples. We did do dried apple rings with the Beauty of Bath apples so I might do that with the other eating apples, get more use out of the dehydrator too.

I’m currently eyeing up some crushers and presses which have a black friday offer on and I’m sorely tempted. The one thing I do want to do is some apple sauce, I still can’t believe that with all the apples we had last year, and all that are still in the freezer, I’m still buying Tesco applesauce!

Dans

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Livestock, Produce, Setting up

Shopping smallholder style!

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We went shopping – smallholder style. A member of our local smallholding group is leaving the smallholding life and offered up a bunch of their stuff to the group members to buy.

A couple of our purchases were to do with future interests. We know we’d like to get into keeping bees, although I’m slightly worried as to how I will react with a bunch of bees flying around me but we should find that out when we go on a bee keeping course. The equipment was at a really good price should get us pretty much set up to go so we went for it. We also want to keep goats for milk in future, but we’d like to see if we like and will use the milk first so a cheese making kit (soft and hard) seemed like a good buy.

On the practical side we bought a scaffold tower as some of our fruit trees are high and it will help us do repair work on sheds, the house and polytunnels. The most useful of all is that we have now bought a trailer! Once we get a tow bar on the car and collect the trailer it will come in handy not just for transporting animals but collecting muck, moving things around the land and crazy spending sprees like this! As it was, somehow Sam defied the laws of physics to fit it all (except the trailer) into the car plus me, Chi and a pushchair!

Our car, aka a TARDIS
Our car, aka a TARDIS

Dans