The long awaited (ahem) picture post

So I started this post yesterday and am finishing it now. Hope it all makes sense still.

IT'S RAINING!! (or at least it was when I started writing this post)

Ok now I've got that out of my system let's continue with the normal post :o)

It seems like quite a while since I have posted any pictures so I'm going to go a little overboard on you now. A combination of Spadger nabbing the Internet connection for work, baking and general apathy have stopped be from editing any pics. So be prepared for a picture book story. Well, sort of.

Where to start, where to start. How about a tour of the garden, sound good? Ok then. There are many more pictures to come on this theme but this is catch up time. Firstly lets look at the flowers. I love flowers. However my garden is not so keen. The front flower beds have suffered the whole time we have lived here from being in the shade of two massive sycamore trees. As you may remember they were both cut down before Christmas due to them interfering with the structural stability of the house. I love trees but not enough to want to come home one day to find the front of the house has fallen off!! Now the front garden gets sooooo much more sunlight. This is good news for the flowers and the possible veg that might get planted out there. Not so good for the wild garlic that we have just discovered is edible. That baby likes the shade. Fortunately I know it is a very hardy bulb because in our first couple of years here I tried to dig it all up and it was having none of it let me tell you. So the plan is to pull some of the bulbs and re-plant them somewhere a bit more shady. The far corner of the garden was lovingly referred to as the mossy corner of doom. Even in the middle of summer the ground squelched. It is now dry and the moss is receding. So things might grow in that corner soon. Right, on to the pics I've been babbling about. First up is the peony. I thought I had killed this one but no, tis alive and blooming. I adore the bright but dark red and how floofy it it. This is a petticoat in flower form my friends.





Next up is the tulips. Now I planted many tulips last year and they were all very nice. This year I totally forgot about anything in the ground and planted some interesting tulips in tubs. Spadgersdottier had planted mystery bulbs in the ground so I got plenty of "normal" tulips but this here is my fav one from the tubs. So pretty.



Now these ones are not from my garden but I thought I would continue the flower theme. All of these were taken at the farm. This is the apple tree that is at the side of the car park. When we first came to look round the farm back in Feb the tree had apples on it. Now look at the gorgeous blossom. I am a big lover of blossom. Daffodils may be the first herald of Spring but blossom means it is in full swing. My primary school had a little hill in the grassy area surrounding the playground and at the bottom was a blossom tree (it never fruited as far as I know). So blossom will always remind me of sitting under it at dinnertime.





These 2 are random flowers in amongst the veg. Anyone know what they are?





Lastly we have one that no gardener/farmer I know likes. However I like to eat the blossoms when they are yellow (dandelion fritters rock) and think that the seed heads are one of the prettiest things there is. They're like stars or sunlight on water. Pretty!



Right then back to my garden. These ones weren't with the others are they are functional not just pretty. Here we have strawberry futures and blueberries. Look at the difference between the 2 blueberry ones. One is just flowers the other is burgeoning fruit!




Also we have gooseberries and black currants but I didn't manage to get any pics of their flowers.



Our little piggy Gyoza is growing up well. As you would expect from a pig she gets bigger ever time we go see her. She is definitely a girl. The last time we went down the boys from her litter had discernible boy bits which she is lacking. So Miss Gyoza it is. I like this pic, she looks like she is laughing. Maybe the pig in front farted?




There seem to be more piglets born every time we go to the farm. Can you spot the 2 adventuresome ones in this pic? I like the bemused looks on the faces of the sheep at the left hand side. I can almost hear them bleating "wtf!"

Click to see their faces

The last picture form the garden is quite old as these are no longer in the ground and we have eaten them all. That's right folks they are radishes. They were a breakfast variety so were much milder than I am used to but it meant Spadgersdottier would eat them. So far we have harvested 9 ounces of them. It doesn't sound like much but only the very bottom and the stems went to waste. We even eat the leaves which are nice in salad.



One thing with having veg straight from the garden or farm is remembering to wash it well. I have no real aversion to dirt but certain things like to hide in the leaves. This one was very adventuresome and stayed in the veg box for a few days before I found him.



Last farm based picture then. As you may recall I am quite fond of goats. I think the darn things are just so cute. Also I love goats milk, goat curry is quite nice and you get fibre of certain varieties. Yup they are cute, tasty and useful, my main requirements in an animal :o) The lasy at the farm who owns the goats is selling them. She stood their with my favourite kid in her arms and told me he could be mine for £20. I had that money in my wallet people!!! However I know that where we are now is not the place for goats even if our very understanding landlord and neighbors agreed. We just don't have the room. But man it was hard admitting that then. So here is a gratuitous goaty shot just because I can.



Gardening/farming has not taken over my life completely though. There has still been crafting. Not as much as I might like mainly due to apathy. I have lots I want to do but not much motivation. Here are a couple of my forays in knitting. First up is a cardigan for Spadger. He has requested a long, plain garter stitch cardigan with thumbholes and 4 pockets. So it's massive and a little dull to knit at the moment. I got almost a ball of wool into it and then discovered that even with counting it several times and separating it with paperclips to make the counting easier I still cast on the wrong amount.



That big green mass you can see in the background is a whole ball of unravelled knitting. Yes I was not happy at all. However unravelled wool is really pretty and curly. Silver lining and all.

The other project on the needles at the mo is a Zebra for Spadgersdottier's birthday. I have over a month to complete it and I've done the 2 biggest pieces so I am feeling quite hopeful. This first pic is of what I had to unravel (are we spotting a theme here!)



Everything is perfect except I had misread the pattern as was knitting far 2 many rows for each instruction. I find knitting patterns really hard. There is a lot of abbreviating, which makes sense for them to do, but my brain just doesn't understand. So when it says to do 4 rows of each colour increasing as below I did an increase and then 2 more rows in that colour. That wasn't what it meant. I wrote out the pattern the long way, split it into sections of 4 and continued knitting. This worked much better.





These 2 bits make up the body. I still have 10 more pieces to knit but they are much smaller.

And so I bring you to the last 2 pics. These are of my latest piercings. They were taken not long after so I'm not as swollen now. In fact all the swelling has gone and they are both healing well. I was finally able to sleep on that side again last night and I had the best nights sleep since having them done. I really do sleep much better on my right side.



You see that mole just below the piercings? I didn't even know I had that until getting this piercing. Guess I don't look at my ears much hehehe



So, there is my very pic heavy post. Hopefully I will stay a bit more caught up and wont have to subject you all to this again. Right now I am off to try and grade a pattern that fits my short and curvy size 16 down to fit my tall and gracefully thin ballet dancer friend. I understand the theory but there are fractions involved. Me and fractions don't get on so well.

The bounty of Spring

You can tell Spring has sprung. Look how much veg we got this week!!!! The eggs you can see were free because they had no idea how old they were. Score for us because not a single one is rotten!

Are you local?

I was directed to this fab article about the Martin food cooperative this morning. This is exactly the kind of thing I would like to see happening all over the world. People taking responsibility for their own food. Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that we all need to start growing our own. It would be great if we could but in our industrialised country it's not possible everywhere, let alone the fact that not everyone has the time or skill to do so. No what I mean is supporting things like CSAs. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. Basically you pay a set amount per month which gets you a share in the farm. For this you get a veg box every week during the growing season. Your money goes on equipment, seeds, paying the growers and improving the site. You can also volunteer to help out at the farm which obviously helps them out a lot. The one we have joined also runs social events for all share holders. Ours is also split into full shares, which would feed 3-4 people, or half shares which are for 1-2. Half shares cost slightly more as there is more admin work involved but this was very clearly explained before we signed up.

These schemes encourage small agriculture. I think that small agriculture is an important thing. Currently all our agriculture in this country is geared towards selling in large amounts. Farms focus on one product and market it to the supermarkets or to people who will turn it into something for the supermarkets. Communities don't see what is actually produced right on their doorsteps. It's not like you can find it in the supermarkets either. I have had days where I've struggled to find reasonably priced English bacon. Now I'm sure we have pigs in this country, I've seen them. But it makes more money to sell our products abroad and then import stuff. How nuts is that?!?

With the global markets for food we have lost all touch with what is seasonal. Why worry about it when you can have whatever tickles your fancy just by picking it off the shelf. Never mind that it's travelled half way around the world to get to you. Never mind that it was grown in a hot house so you could have it in December. Never mind that it has been hybridised to be plentiful and hardy without any consideration to the taste. Me and Spadger try our best to eat in season and in Europe at the furthest. We have a few exceptions, our sin foods if you like. One of these is bananas and the other is Sweet Potatoes. Everything else we look at the labels before we buy. English food is obviously preferable. Then comes Europe. We try to keep even the European food close to home. So if it's a choice between a french product or an Italian on the French would win. It means that we have to think more about what we are eating and it means we are expanding our culinary repertoires.

This weekend we went and collected our first share from the CSA. In it we got potatoes, carrots, sprouts, salad leaves, beetroot, celeriac, baby turnips and parsnips. We also got 2 bonus parsnips that were in the "gift box". I think they were there because they were too big, so wouldn't fit into the weight you were allowed, and also too ugly. I like ugly veg :o)



Now as you can see it's not a mountain of veg. It certainly won't last us a week. However this was the haul at the height of the none harvesting season. I'm quite chuffed with it. Now I just need to find celeriac recipes.