Last night's book group

I organise a very informal book group, which mostly involves 10 or so ladies who live nearby meeting once a month or so.  We discuss a book we have chosen to read (or not sometimes!) and generally drink wine and have a chat!

Last night was our final meeting before everyone heads off for the summer holidays, our next meeting isn't until September now.  Instead of nominating a book for reading over the hols, we came up with a list of suggestions which everyone can choose from (or ignore and add their own) and we'll have our first meeting back to discuss and review.

The books we have on our recommended list are as follows;

Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

 

any books by Andrew Grieg - especially The Return of John McNab and Electric Brae

 

Shit my Dad says - Justin Halpern

 

One Day - David Nicholls

 

Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

 

When will there be good news - Kate Atkinson 

West Coast - Kate Muir

 

Notes from an exhibition - Patrick Gale

 

The Summer Book - Tove Jansson 

 

I'm looking forwards to a very relaxed summer full of plenty of time to read a good book and have also sneaked some more cookbooks onto my personal reading wish list - 

 

Sarah Ravens Food for Friends and Family, 

 

Plenty by Ottolenghi

 

the Nigel Slater Tender books (couldn't resist!)

 

We've got one more week of the school term left, and then are looking forwards to two weeks in Cornwall, then three weeks at home before a trip to visit family and friends in Norfolk/London.   

Really hoping for a nice laid back summer, and hoping that we'll maybe get round to starting the renovations of our railway carriage too.

 

 

 

Photo catch up

Since the weather has been pretty cold and yucky I had decided to wait until the next sunny day to take some photos of our progress.  Here goes;

The chickens new spot -  Peach exiting the hen house, she's not quite at point of lay yet so I reckon she's just being nosy.

 Inside the polytunnel - so far we've planted broad beans, peas, salad leaves (mizuna, rocket,
mustard etc), sweetcorn, cucumbers,tomatoes are ready to be put into our big homemade grow bag, we've also got some strawberries in big pots too.

Hopefully this weekend we'll manage to go and collect some garden bark for the path between the beds.
I've managed to get a Brown Turkey fig as a Father's Day present for my husband from the kids.
(it's not in the photo, as I've hidden it until Sunday).

June already....

Gosh, really can't believe we are on the second weekend in June already.  Haven't managed to post as things have been really hectic.

On the evening of Wednesday 2nd June, Brea, my quarter horse, colicked really badly .  I had been out cutting the grass as we were due to go to a friends' wedding that weekend, and my daughter had gone out to feed the horses (they get a handful of happy hoof and feed balancer every day).  My daughter came running in, Brea was down and she thought she was colicking.

When I got up to the field, poor Brea was flat out.  No noise, no movement, it was almost as if she was dead.  My husband had gone to phone the vet and I sat on the ground next to my mare, checking her pulse (racing) and started doing some of my Ttouch ear work on her.

Mark, the vet, arrived within 30 minutes at around 8.45pm.  By this time I'd managed to get Brea back up to her feet, and had walked her down the hill to our stables.  Brea's pulse was almost 70 bpm, there were no gut sounds and Mark decided to put a tube into her stomach incase we were dealing with grass sickness.  Thankfully, her stomach was clear but we were faced with what to do next.  The nearest vet hospital that can do abdominable surgery on horses is the Royal (Dick) Veterinary Hospital in Edinburgh.   It takes 4 hours to drive there under normal conditions but to transport a sick horse in a trailer would take over 5 hours.  Brea was in so much pain, things really were looking very bleak as we suspected a twisted gut, impacted colic or grass sickness.  However, I made the decision not to subject her to the long journey, if there really was nothing to be done to help her, I would rather she spent her last hours at home with us, rather than stressed out stuck in a trailer.

Mark gave Brea some painkillers and agreed to return within 4 hours at 12.30 am.  I spent the next few hours checking her every half an hour, doing more Ttouch earwork and also I managed to do some belly lifts with help from my husband.

Ttouch Ear work is one thing I wish every horse person knew how to do.  Basically, you make small circle and a quarter ttouches around the base of the horse's ears.  Then stroke the whole length of the ear, up to the tip and apply pressure to the shock point right at the tip of the ear.  By doing these ttouches around the ears you can help stabilise a horses temperature, respiration and  - this stops the animal going into shock and is exactly what to do when you are waiting for the vet or to aid recovery.

http://www.lindatellington-jones.com/horseArticleColic.shtml - link to Linda Tellington-Jones website.

http://www.ttouchtteam.co.uk/   - UK Ttouch and Tteam website.

When Mark returned at 12.30am, Brea's condition was still looking very grim.  Although, her pulse had lowered to 44 bpm.  We agreed to keep monitoring her, with me checking her throughout the night, but with us both well aware that I may be calling Mark during the night to put my darling horse to sleep.

I checked Brea hourly during the night, (flashback to when the kids were babies and being up all night with them!).  At around 4.00 am when I had checked her, I was happy to hear slight gurgling and bubbling noises from her gut, she had been walking around with my other two horses normally.  (I can't believe how light it is here at 4.00 in the morning!).  I went back to bed, and slept until 6.30 am, the longest I'd left her - when I walked over the field I got the best welcome any horse owner ever gets, a lovely whicker from all 3 horses!

Mark, came back to check at 8.30 am.  I've never seen anyone so relieved as he did when he walked round the corner to see Brea standing quite happily at the gate.  I know that we both thought she wouldn't make it through the night.  We decided to not give her anymore painkillers and monitor her for the rest of the day.   

When Mark returned that evening, I was happy to report that Brea had been behaving normally the whole day, she was grazing and drinking (and poohing of course).  It had been a really close thing, and I am so thankful that we noticed as soon as we did that something was wrong.

My family and I decided not to travel down to England to our friends' wedding, luckily for us they are animal lovers too and knew that we couldn't leave a recovering animal (even though I have the best horse sitter around!).

We've now got the cover on our polytunnel, and have managed to plant most of our veggies in it.  And we have spent this weekend moving the chickens round to their new bit of garden - so things are slowly moving forward with the garden even if the weather has been wet and cold.  Some sunshine every now and again would be nice though too!

Tortilla - (Spanish Omlette) with my wild garlic

This is one of my favourite dishes to make, not only does it taste good, but there are times in the year when everything I use is from the garden - eggs from our hens, potatoes and onions.  Decided to add some wild garlic as we've got tons this year.

Started off by lightly frying one large onion, sliced, until soft in olive oil. Next added steamed baby potatoes (used Jersey Royals which are in season right now) roughly crushed the potatoes, then gently mixed through the onions.  Added salt and pepper and continued to fry for a bit.

Next, I beat up some free range eggs (I used 13 from our own hens - this fed 5 of us with leftovers).   Added the eggs to the pan and gave the pan a shake  to make sure the egg seeped through the potato and onions.

I washed and sliced a large bunch of wild garlic leaves, (saved the stalks, chopped them up finely and chucked them in a chorizo & chickpea warm salad).  Finally sprinkled  the wild garlic on top of tortilla.




Finished off the omlette by putting in the oven to cook through (or under a grill maybe - I don't have one so just put in the top oven of the aga).  Then sprinkled the garlic flowers over the top before serving.

Really good to eat hot and even better to eat cold out the fridge (if there are any leftovers) - is also the perfect hangover breakfast or picnic food.

hottest weekend of the year (so far)

What a gorgeous weekend we have just had.  Things are moving on quicker with the polytunnel now, got the beds all in place now.  We have one narrow bed on the left hand side, to grow beans, peas etc in.  A double width bed in the middle and on the right hand side we have left bare.  The plan here is to make a huge 'growbag' from weed fabric, fill it with well rotted manure and grow our tomatoes in it. 

We have left a working area at both ends of the tunnel and have also got two paths (wheelbarrow width) down between the beds.  Next weekend will see us putting the plastic over the top of the frame, and doing the final adjustments on the structure.  All the wee bolts will be adjusted to tension the plastic cover (well, that's the plan at least).

Elsewhere in the garden things are really starting to take off, my wild garlic is blooming and looking perfect for adding to a frittata or soup maybe?  Our lovage is absolutely perfect right now - and very tempting to grab a mouthful when walking past (as well as adding it to salads - yum).    We have finally planted all our tatties and I hope to get our onions planted in the next day or two.

We've also added a couple of new hens to our wee brood, some Amber Star pullets, they are around 16 weeks old, so about 5 weeks from point of lay.  They are happy docile wee things, and have started life in our 'baby' chook ark, where they can see and hear the big girls but not be bullied by them.  Their names are Princess Peach (Peachie for short) and Daisy - apparently something to do with Mariocart (the kids chose the names!).  We'll introduce them all when we move all the chickens to the other end of the garden, at night of course.  One of my friends has just started keeping hens and it's been so much fun helping her with setting up her flock.

Slow Progress

The polytunnel epic continues! We are erecting the polytunnel over some existing raised beds.  This means that whenever we need to put up the next bit of the frame, we are digging up old strawberries, moving wooden boarding and heaps of soil. 

I'm not being very much use at all, still got a sore shoulder.  But at least I can hand my (lovely) husband bolts etc - so it does feel as if I'm helping a bit.

We had a sad day yesterday, as we lost one of our old chickens - Brownie (she was about 5 years old). She hadn't been very happy for a few days and I had to separate her from the rest of the girls as she was being picked on.  She seemed to perk up a bit on her own but then went down hill quite quickly.  We've buried her up in the woods behind our cottage.   It's very sad when you lose an animal that you've cared for and has provided you with lovely eggs during her life. 

Weather has been so mixed this week, with us having heaps of snow on Tuesday and temps of 3oC, with hard overnight frosts.  So hoping it's finally going to get a bit warmer and more like May.  Still on the bright side, we are so far behind with our planting this year that it doesn't matter having such a late spring. 

May Bank Holiday weekend 2010

Probably should be renamed the weekend where I didn't manage to get anything done.  After a warm and sunny day last Thursday after I had ridden my horse and walked the dogs, I decided to get serious in the garden.  One of the beds in our front garden had become so overgrown with Ivy that it needed to be pulled up before the plants underneath it suffocated.  So I spent around 2 hours happily digging, weeding and hacking away.  The consequence of this was a pulled muscle in my left shoulder, which started to hurt Fri/Sat but then became a full-on muscle spasm on Sunday (ouch). 

Therefore all the work we had planned to do ended up being done by my lovely husband on his own, albeit assisted by our two sons (aged 13 and 9) - in addition to having to do my usual chores of mucking our and feeding horses etc.

Polytunnel skeleton in place

Anyway, major progress has been made!  The ground posts and frame of the polytunnel are now up and in place, now we need to re-work all the old existing raised beds and finally cover it!

Looks like a bit of a mess at the moment - but at least the skeleton is now in place.

Other stuff we managed to do this week was close up the railway carriage with some tarps as our swallows have returned and we don't want them to nest in there and start laying as we would disturb them with the building work later - it's just a precaution as they haven't nested in there for a few years (the stables is far nicer and cosier and they get to dive bomb me everytime I go in the yard!).

Dash