ilultham

When we lived around Evesham someone once told me that yellow egg plums grow true from seed. That's one of the reasons there are so many around that area, they'd often grow them around the outside of the market gardens as an extra cash crop.  Well even though I know the science of why it shouldn't be true I took a punt and dug up a seedling from mum and dads farm. I planted it about 8 years ago.  Seedlings often take longer to crop than a grafted tree so I was patient and waited.  This year it has proved what I already thought to be true. They don't grow true from seed (although I guess sometimes they might get fairly near). Instead what we've grown is our own variety of gage. The small plums are quite hard when picked off the tree, but soon soften when stored for a day or so. Quite a few maggot about, but that's to be expected when growing them with no measures other than a bit of pruning (and that's more to keep the suckers cut down).  We've no other p

Always on the look out for mini adventures with the children, we decided that even though the weather looked a bit iffy (like 80% chance of rain at lunch time) we would go for a nice long walk.  The route to Aberaeron from where we were staying in New Quay looked nice and we knew we could get a bus easily back at the end of it.  The children were about 70% sold on the idea so with the promise of an ice cream at the end we set off with a packed lunch and lots of water bottles.  Of course it did rain, but not huge amounts. We'd made the decision to go with jumpers (hoodies) rather than coats as it was still really warm and even warmer when walking!  As a coastal walk it was as up and down as you'd imagine!  With some really steep bits!  The children were great though and didn't moan at all (except about when lunch was!) We stopped and ate in a beautiful little dip where a stream ran through.  When we got to Aberaeron we treated the children to a proper ice cream sundae as a w

We go to the same place on holiday every year at the moment and absolutely love it. We go to the little town of New Quay in Wales, it has beautiful beaches, rock pools and doesn't get too busy.  I'm very aware that I want to keep it interesting for the children (and for us adults as well) so always looking for something different to try.  The children have a few programmes they love on the telly, Bake off, Sewing Bee and Pottery Throw Down. These are all crafts and activities we try to do at home. With the pottery I often buy a big bag of air dried clay and let them make items, or watch a video on how to make something and set them to it - but the children have often mentioned how they would like to have a go at a potters wheel to really let their creativity out!  Mum quite often goes to a pottery to make things and my sister has weekly lessons and time at the wheel, we are very much a crafting family as you probably know from reading this blog. So mum suggested a place she use

 The other night, while I was making tea I picked half a bucketful of French beans. With a quick shout to the living room two helpers appeared to help me prep them (the eldest went off to pick tomatoes).    In fact I didn't do any of the French beans, instead leaving the youngest two to top and tail them, then weigh them out into freezer bags for use later in the year.  As well as leaving us enough out to steam to have with one of our beautifully roasted Indian Game hens and rice.  They love helping put food down for winter - good job as well otherwise it can get a bit overwhelming!  Anyone else make use of their helpers when it comes to food prep?

 It's funny, my dad always sees me as non mechanical, mainly because I chose to work with wood rather than metal. But, looking back, I'm always fixing machines or maintaining them, changing batteries or topping stuff up, there is always something breaking and although I do phone dad for advice I quite often get things going again myself.  My little old blue digger is a good case in this one, I've bled it numerous times when there has been problems with the fuel line, replaced pipes, and now dealt with the track coming off.  When it happens it is never in a convenient time or place and this was no exception. I was trying to level an area for our earth oven and wanted to bring the digger to the bottom of the orchard to create a space for the "waste" soil. As I got to the narrowest bit the track went slack and I lost traction.  Whoever designed the access to the tensioner grease nipple (grease keeps the track tight on this old digger) must have hands like a kittens p

Once we got to grips with the cob as a building material and found a better way to mix it (Using the paddle mixer I use to mix plaster and plaster board adhesive) we set about making a test oven.  This was just to be a test oven and see if we could get the materials to work for us.  We made a dome using some building sand and covered it with some wet newspaper. What we didn't do here was take any measurements and just guessed it. In hindsight we probably should have worked out the ratios from the height of the inside to the height of the door opening.  We then covered it with a good layer the clay and sand mix and smoothed it on. The children loved this bit!  I left them to remove the sand from the inside whilst I tried (and failed) to get the dumper going for another project.  We set a small fire and kept it going then. Unfortunately I think our door way was far too small so the oven wouldn't draw. The fire would go out as soon as we pushed it back in. What was amazing was how

Obviously this post contains pictures of dead animals so please don't read if that kind of thing upsets you.  I had planned to process a batch of Indian Game chickens for the freezer this week. I was then disappointed when I found out that the day I had planned to do it the children were going for a sleep over at my mum and dads.  This is how far things have come with the children, it's so much easier with them that I now plan to do it so they can help. So I made sure we all got up early that morning and got cracking before they had to go! I had considered keeping the hen from this batch but in all honesty they were so wild. I don't think I've ever had such a wild hatch of chickens before, even thought he children spent so much time with them when they were younger.  As a team we've become pretty quick at processing the birds. I normally set the water to boil while we're having breakfast, ready to scald them to make plucking easier. So by the time we've disp

 For a long time now I've been saying how much I'd like to build an earth oven. The trouble with saying it lots, that doesn't mean it happens!  So yesterday each of the children had asked to do something with me (eldest wanted to do green woodwork, middlest wanted to use my pyro pen to burn some pictures onto wood and the youngest wanted to carve some dinosaurs) So I thought maybe we should do something we can all be involved with.  The day before I had started to clear an area for a proper clay oven with the digger. The trouble was I'd never used clay or cob as a building material. The book we were using suggested we make a small oven first (all the materials can be reused anyway) so we set about mixing some cob! We started with some old building sand that had stuff growing in it to make a former for the clay. the girls were hard working in getting the sand up to where we were going to build it.  Once that was roughly built the fun could begin! The boy didn't want