Friday 30 December 2011

What to do on New Years Eve?

So tomorrow is the dreaded day. Weary after the Christmas rush followed by the Chrimbo Limbo days, which never seem to mean limbo for me, just everyone else in The Furrows I am now gearing up to providing an exciting NYE for the turnagers (that is not a typo). EVERYONE else they know has such a rave and we are SOOOO boring. Oh how I dream of those halcyon days when there was no pressure to do anything on NYE as we had no chance of getting a babysitter. Or the following years when just the very fact of staying up until midnight was excitement enough. Now that their sleeping patterns seem to be, go to sleep at 1am get up at 1pm the novelty has well and truly worn off. Fortunately the eldest has reached the age where she can go out and find her own entertainment.

So that leaves us with the 16 and 13 year old, living in the middle of the countryside (which I might add is also SOOOOO boring) where the nearest entertainment that will allow under 18s in, is a good £50 round trip taxi ride away and neither of us is willing to drive anywhere, We have settled for the same as last year as we grown ups really enjoyed it. The neighbours will be coming round for a meal, each household providing a course which sounds lovely to me. But how to make it "exciting" for the turnagers.

When I was growing up my parents always had a party for the neighbours (but they lived in a village so there were more of them) which involved food and party games and quizzes. However I suspect games and quizzes will be SOOOO embarrassing to my turnagers. So what do I do? All suggestions gratefully received......

Tuesday 29 November 2011

What to get for Christmas for teenagers?

I find so much about having teenagers is easier than small children  but what to get them for Christmas is not one of these things. I can no longer throw an Argos catalogue in their direction and get them to choose loads of plastic crap that will fill up my house and be chucked out by next year. Actually, come to think of it that's a GOOD thing!

But this year we are really struggling for ideas. After much nagging eldest dd (18) has come up with a list for Santa: a job, a boyfriend and someone to sit her Maths A Level please. Well that should be easy.....
Middle ds (16) has at least provided me with an Amazon wishlist so at least he is easy - it is not for nothing he has the self appointed title of "Golden Child" in the family
Youngest dd (13) has come up with three items and "just hasn't got time to think about it, Mum"

So any clever ideas anyone? Other than telling them that instead of giving them presents we have donated all the money to a local children's charity!

Meanwhile I am starting a campaign to have Christmas pushed back by a month and really need to stop wasting time blogging......

Wednesday 5 October 2011

The Extended Family Holiday - 5 tips to make it work

Last week I talked about the preparations for this holiday and now I have just crawled out of my darkened room I can tell you how it went last weekend.

Well, it worked *said with an amazed tone*, helped hugely by the fact that the British Summer finally arrived on 28th September and lasted right through until the 2nd October. This meant that we were not all on top of each other and the ankle biters could "burn off energy" ad infinitum outside.

The excitement beforehand and on arrival was inversely proportional to age. The grandparents (or "shrivelleds" as they became known, apparently my generation are the "wrinklies" or the "olds") were bombing down water chutes before any of the rest of us had battled our way through the UK motorway system to get there.

I had thought the combination of a one year old, 2 four year olds, a five year old, a seven year old, an eight year old and 3 teenagers was a recipe for all sorts of potential strife. I only once heard "he's not sharing" (and that was "Uncle A, H won't share your iphone with me", to which Uncle A jumped!), and I wasn't aware of any "they're leaving me out". Of course that could be because I am the mother of the teenagers, may be the other mothers had that whined in their ear. The little ones even allowed those lazy teenagers to sleep in without disturbing them, although they were a little astounded that anybody could possibly stay in bed THAT late - 10am, which my lot thought was early.

We attempted the family bike ride en masse.

We ate every meal outside and yes, there was enough

We swam...LOTS, we bowled and the Dads slept


Only hysterical incident was when a squirrel got in to one of the villas invoking much screaming and standing on tables by some of the girls (the oldest of which was 40!)

So really a success. The secret of our success? I'm not really sure but tips for anyone doing a multi-generational family holiday like this would be
1. Don't plan to do too many activities - it will take ages to get you all organised
2. Don't feel you must do everything together
3. Have meals planned and prepared beforehand, preferably by outside caterers!
4. Do whatever it takes beforehand, bribery, threats, whatever to all children and spouses to make sure they play nicely.
5. Take lots of alcohol and cake.

The devil eyes are a coincidence.....honestly

Would love to hear your experiences of these types of holidays. Please feel free to comment.

Thursday 29 September 2011

Saturday 24 September 2011

The Extended Family Holiday - the planning

Three generations: nine grandchildren (aged 1 - 18), four children, three partners and two grandparents all in the same space for a weekend. A weekend to relish or a recipe for disaster??

This is what we are doing next weekend in honour of my brother and his family's return from a year in NZ and my eldest teenager's coming of age. The latter happens at 18 not 21 these days, although there is a movement  amongst the teenage section of society for it to be 16 with the nauseating American "Sweet Sixteenths"...but that is another blog for another day.

OK so some call me a control freak, I like to think "natural leader". Either way I struggle with the balance between my desire to organise everybody and everything in my life and not hack all my friends and family off. So when my sister in law (who I suspect has a similar personality type to myself) suggested I organise activities in advance I was given permission, and off.

We are visiting one of those Truman Showesque holiday parks: glass dome, water slides, smiley happy people, bikes,trees and squirrels. You know the ones......we certainly do having spent most of our family holidays there when the teenagers were tots. We decided on three villas between the 18 of us and therein lies the first mistake. Whilst it worked out cheaper this way it would have been less of a logistical headache to just book one per family. We all have odd numbers of children (except youngest sister who has the more conventional two but her 1 year old doesn't count as a bed.) so this meant cousins going in with cousins. Without boring you with the details it was a bit like that how to get a fox, goose and bag of beans across a river puzzle. Having solved this dilemma I am moving on to Palestine and Israel this week.

Then comes activities. There are hundreds to choose from and although the spreadsheets were beckoning me (get behind me Satan) I suggested we opted for mainly the pool and bike rides. Not only are they free it means I won't have to spend the weekend marshalling people with a whistle. Ok, ok, we all know that's what I really want to do but for the sake of family harmony I will resist. Getting us all in the pool, together should be challenge enough in itself.

Travel plans were another cause of paracetamol ingestion. My youngest and eldest teenagers are away at ballet school on Birmingham and we live in the North East. Next sister down (I am the eldest...had you guessed?) is coming without her dh as he will be windsurfing in Ireland so she and daughter are coming on the train. Brother is coming from North Yorkshire with his three offspring but his dw will be coming up from London where she is on a course. The nearest train station is about half an hour away. Bring in fox, goose and bag of beans again.

And finally food. There is a genetic thing passed down on the X chromosome in my family about providing food. My grandmother had it, my mother has it and so do I. We NEED to do it and we are never knowingly undercatered. So having fought my mother off I am doing the catering. Parameters are one vegetarian, one teenager on a no/low carb regime, one small child who likes very little to eat when away from home, requirements for breakfast, morning tea (its a kiwi thing), lunch, afternoon tea and supper;kids version and adults version. I have compiled a menu of food that I can precook and freeze and mountains of cake....that is this weekends task.

So all suggestions for, and experiences of, this type of holiday gratefully received:)

Monday 19 September 2011

Where is Day 2?

As I know I have so many avid readers (not) I thought you may be wondering where is the next installment of the c2c trip. I have started a new blog for cycling stories, its called the puttering pedaler http://theputteringpedaler.blogspot.com/
Day 2 is on there, the rest to follow
This blog will continue to be about my smallholding calamities....honey harvest video coming soon :)

Friday 16 September 2011

C2C for beginner cyclists - Part One

So we have been married for twenty years, an achievement in our eyes, but how to celebrate? A romantic meal at an exclusive restaurant? A weekend away to some East European city? A UK country hotel break? No - lets pedal from the West to the East coast of England. Never mind that one of us (me) doesn't even own a bike. If we can survive twenty years of marriage surely our relationship can stand a long distance cycle ride together....can't it?

On 1st September 2011, twenty years to the hour since we stood at the altar sharing vows I find myself in a cycle shop in Gateshead muttering slightly different oaths under my breath. After an hour and a half we emerge with a new bike, inner tubes, pannier rack, gloves and the all important padded shorts. That evening we have ordered the relevant Sustrans maps and I am actually feeling quite excited by the idea.

I believe that most people take some time to plan (accommodation on the route is not plentiful and I am NOT taking a tent) and to train. But, oh not we. We are going to be setting off just one week later.

So this blog is for all of you who are googling C2C in the hope of finding out how hard it really is. I did this numerous times in the week before we set off, but is one person's definition of  "a relatively tough climb" another person's (mine) definition of  "tantrum inducing and marriage threatening sheer agony"? What exactly is their frame of reference?

My frame of reference is: I walk the dogs most days for 45 mins to an hour, I don't go to the gym, I don't run and in August, whilst on holiday I went for three 20-30km bike rides. Other than that the only training I did was three 5-10km rides between the 1st and 8th September up and down hills.

We took the train from Newcastle to Whitehaven. You can not book bikes on this route and I understood only 2 bikes were allowed on each train "at the guard's discretion". However, worry not, it was no problem. There were at least 5 bikes on the stretch between Carlisle and Whitehaven. As we arrived about 3.30pm we had decided to do only 20 miles that afternoon to our first stop.

The first job was to find the start and dip our rear wheels in the Irish Sea, as tradition dictates. After that it was a 2 hour pedal to Lorton and a very luxurious B+B - they even have a spa in the garden. http://www.newhouse-farm.com/ The comfiest bed I have ever slept in and lovely food.

Don't be fooled by all the blogs telling you that the first section is the easy bit. Ok, harder is to come but don't forget this is the Lake District...there are hills. That said it wasn't too bad. There is a long gentle climb out of Whitehaven, along an old railway path. I felt confident I could manage this as there is only so much gradient a train can cope with (I've read Thomas the Tank Engine). It was quite manageable, if a little boring. The second hour was along winding hilly country lanes. A couple of these had me in the lowest gear but none of them were too big. What Sustrans are very good at is keeping you off the busy roads, so this section was enjoyable as for every uphill there was a "wheeeeeee" downhill. I would advise putting your companion in front of you, there are a lot of bends and if there is a car coming its probably best that they hit it not you, as long as the life insurance is in place.

So here ends Part One...more to follow

Wednesday 7 September 2011

The Sad Tale of The Three Little Ducks




Once upon a time......no wait, this isn't going to end well. I can't start with that or I have to finish with...and they all lived happily ever after, and they didn't.

When I last posted I was very excited about my cute little fluffy yellow ducklings. Well they grew bigger and followed me around like the mummy duck I was. Youngest dd returned from ballet boarding school with the comment "right, that's normal, ducks wandering around the kitchen" As the good mummy I am, I tried to encourage independence and took them for walks out to the copse where the hens live (much to my neighbours amusement).

And this is where it starts to go wrong. Leaving them with the hens on a sunny afternoon I walked back towards the house, stopping to chat with one of the neighbours who was returning from a walk with her dogs. Unfortunately the ducklings had squeezed out through the fencing and followed me out of the copse. Her German Shepherd puppy thought it would be fun to play with them. He really did no obvious harm but one of them died (in my arms...aaaahh) 5 minutes later, from shock I think.

So then they were two. I decided I had to wean them off me so when they were fully feathered they moved outside permanently in to their own duck house with run. Once the chickens were used to them and vice versa I took the run away to allow them a little more freedom. And here it starts to go wrong again.

If you are in the least bit squeamish stop reading now. One night we were late closing them up and for some reason the ducks had chosen to sleep in the bigger hen house. Thinking there was no problem with this my ds just closed the door on them. What he didn't realise was we had rats burrowed underneath this hen house.

The next morning the most gruesome sight met me. One dead duckling with slashed neck pulled half way down a rat hole. It was far too big to be pulled all the way down. I managed not to vomit and did the brave thing...ok ok I didn't. I made dh (he does have some uses and likes occasionally to feel that he has a useful role to play) go and deal with it.

So then there was one. Ducks are community minded creatures and don't like the solo life so I decided I had to get a new one and quick. I found (thanks to facebook friends) someone who bred them in Weardale so the very next day I dragged 2 of my teenagers and the 2 French teenagers we had staying on a 75 minute journey up hill and down dale (well it showed them rural England) to buy another duck - black Indian Runner this time. By the time we got back the lonesome duck had in fact made friends with the chickens and really didn't show any interest in the new addition. However after a couple of days they realised they were the same species, if different colours and now hang out together all the time.

Rats are now poisoned and gone and ducks happy and healthy. Moral of the story.,....animals are animals, not humans and I am NOT a mummy duck!!!




Saturday 11 June 2011

The Birds and The Bees





Well I've created a monster. Having been a bit disheartened at how non hands on or engaged dh was being in the whole smallholding thing I hatched a cunning plan. I knew he would need something complex and bordering on philosophical without too much hard work and I had the answer.....BEES.
I lured him to a two hour taster session as I said I fancied the company and he was hooked! To the point that he is finishing his 10 week beekeeping course tomorrow, has a colony ("his girls") and is a bore at dinner parties....luckily we don't go to many!
Never have I seen the like - before the bees arrive he would come home every night from work and get out TOOLS and BUILD his hive. Those of you who know and love him will appreciate the enormity of this statement. Then it had to be painted. Well it didn't "have" to be painted it but he wanted it royal blue with yellow flowers (Everton FC colours of course). Unfortunately his new found enthusiasm took him a bit too far and the dingbat painted the inside of the box too (I think he was hoping they would all become Everton fans) and then had to spend another two evenings sanding it off.
After much anxting about where and how to get bees (its better if they're local and they're in short supply after the harsh winter we've had) we sourced some form a man in Carlisle. So off we went one Wednesday evening, in convoy with his new beekeeping pals to pick up a Nuc (a nucleus of Queen bee and her subjects). It's an hours drive home from Carlisle which had to be done with all the windows down and frequent spraying of the bees to stop them overheating. At this point I am starting to reflect on whether it was such a cunning plan after all.
So two weeks on they are happily expanding to fill the hive and I have become a bee widow. As you will see from the photos though this is purely because he likes to do a lot of sitting with them.....I wonder if he's singing lullabies????

Meanwhile I ordered myself some Indian Runner Duck eggs. 6 arrived through the post and after a long 4 weeks in the incubator three of them have hatched. They are just the cutest little things - just like the rubber ones you get for a bath, but fluffy.







Sunday 27 February 2011

Half Term Babies







The baby chicks have arrived this week. 3 out of the 7 hatched.....one yellow, one black and one stripey. They are not crowing....... yet, but are very noisy. At the moment they are living in a cardboard box with a brooder in the utility room. Eggs must get fertilised a good while before they are laid as the Buff Orpington cockerel (presumably father of the yellow one) was murdered by the Bull Mastiff about a week before these were laid. When I can find the lead that attaches my phone to my laptop I will upload some cute pics. Even eldest dd who is usually very disparaging about the whole "farm" thing has been in there cooing over them.

Not much else to report - chicken shed roof replaced and refelted after high winds and tree planting finished (12 in total) along with 11 Ramanas Roses and 2 Worcester Berries for the lower layer of the windbreak. The hot manure is being turned every 3 days at the moment in readiness for the hot bed and lambing should start tomorrow (officially)


Thursday 17 February 2011

Forest Gardening and Romance

Well last weekend was the weekend before Valentine's Day so we put the whole weekend by to be romantic. Yes we cleared out the garage!! Such a good catharsis - which is why "dump" is a much better name than "tip" for the place you take all the rubbish (though my BFF will disagree on that one)

We did also manage to start planting the edible forest garden I have been planning/designing along permaculture lines. DH did the digging while I did the planting - always felt I should be the Queen really. First priority is to grow a windbreak so we have gone for mostly hardy trees that should manage in the North East of England - Crab apples, medlar, rowans, hawthorn, some hardier plums, a mulberry and a couple of Siberian pea trees.

I am also planning a Lindsey lavender bed in memory of a very dear and special friend who died a fortnight ago. She had sent me a card last year with lavender seeds and these I am going to grow indoors first, to then transplant to a sunny spot in the forest garden - she was a sun lover too :) This way every time it is sunny and I can smell the lavender, I will smile and a little bit of her will live on.

Chicken update - the eggs in the incubator have less than a week to go, I have been candling them and am hopeful that three of them have viable chicks. We are down to one remaining cockerel now - the small but stroppy Lavender Aracauna was waking the neighbours at 4am. Hopefully the remaining one will learn the lesson of his fellow cockerels and stay a bit quieter.

Must take the time to put some pics on here at some point.


Tuesday 1 February 2011

Hard-boiled eggs

Sadly the thermostat went on the borrowed incubator I was using for the 12 eggs I had gathered from our hens. This meant the light stayed on permanently and it got a little over heated not to mention smelly, in there. Needless to say no survivors. On closer inspection half of them were in fact fertile so the roosters clearly weren't quite as inadequate as I thought. Oh well. I plan to set another 6 or 7 to start tomorrow.

Added to this loss when I opened up the shed this morning the only hen (lavender araucana) from the 6 that hatched in July had died :( No idea how but I've had enough of post mortems this week so she went straight in the wheelie bin. Our bin men must love me!

Lamb update: No more new arrivals. Lottie (the one with mastitis) is surviving thanks to im penicillin, although had to rugby tackle her to catch her on Saturday. She sees us coming with the syringe now. Maybe sheep are not as thick as we think. This still leaves my neighbour with the dilemma. Proper farming advice is to cull her as she will never be able to feed lambs again. The jury is still out on that one. One of her lambs is a bit poorly with joint ill (google it!) so is also on penicillin and fingers crossed.

Friday 28 January 2011

Twins and caesarean

The sheep have decided to keep us busy now. Yesterday the lovely Lottie gave birth to twins (again about a month earlier than expected) but is unable to feed them due to mastitis. Lottie belongs to my neighbour and fellow small holder (well she's a small holder I'm more of a tiny holder). So she has them in her downstairs toilet to bottle feed at the moment. Well where else do you put 2 lambs when all your stables are full of horses?

Then during the night Wensley died. I understand sheep do this...die I mean. But when they do it they do it quickly, no lingering on for them. She was found early this morning with no signs of any lambs but half her guts prolapsed. It all seemed very strange as when my neighbour tried to pull lambs out she could not find any. So we did a Caesarean (with a Stanley knife, on the side of our lane) to find out what had happened. There were in fact 2 lambs in there...but obviously not alive. Just hope the people that come to collect the body don't charge for three instead of two...we did shove them back in.

Wednesday 26 January 2011

dh

Not animal or small holding related at all but just had to share this.....my dh read this blog for the first time yesterday. Being new to blogging he didn't understand the nomenclature. He thought I had really gone a step too far when I started referring to him as a dickhead (dh) on the internet.....that kind of pet name is just used for home!!!!

ps I don't think any of the incubating eggs are fertile - those cockerels are obviously all show and no action. May be it's just teenage fumblings and they don't really know what to do, that's what happens when you don't get decent sex education.....ok enough.

Friday 21 January 2011

How long til Spring?

I am feeling the January blues big time at the moment so decided to use this countdown to Spring:) Nothing to do with half my family being in the Antipodes and dh jetting off to Malaysia tomorrow or anything........GREEN!!
Did actually see first signs today - all the hens laid an egg (except the lavender araucana which has still not come in to lay). We are now down to two cockerels and 6 hens but there are 12 eggs on day 3 in the incubator.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Too many men....

......who are only good for one thing, alive.

Of the 6 chicks we hatched out last July I was confident that at least one Cream Legbar was female as you are supposed to be able to autosex them at birth by their colouring. Well either I am not very good at telling the difference between spots and stripes or one particular hen is a "pink" hen. S/he has started mounting the other hens. Another "hen" (lavender arancua) that has no obvious cockerel signs started crowing today....damn. That leaves one - Lazarus (as it reawakened from the dead at birth). We always said that all cockerels would go in the pot to save early morning wakening calls for the neighbours so we will eventually only have 1 (I hope) left.

On a plus note we must have lots of fertile eggs at the moment so I plan to start incubating some of them tomorrow. Watch this spot in three weeks......

The Buff Orpington (the one the dog got) made a very lovely Sunday roast, Monday risotto and stock. Tonight the cockerel we finished off on Sunday is going to be chicken casserole.

Sunday 16 January 2011

Feathered Frenzy

Well we've had an interesting week from the chicken point of view thAt I thought I would share with you all....sorry!

Having opened the shed to a bloodbath last week I decided to move the loudest cockerel on to death row.
Meanwhile the enormous yellow crowing "hen" started jumping every hen in sight. Not funny to carry that weight on yr back if yr just a little hen. Chuck, the white one, seemed to be the most frequent, resigned, recipient of all three cocks amours. Bit weird as she was the one that hatched them out.....eugh. Jeremy (named and owned by niece who was 2 at the time) however, was having none of it. Obviously giving her a boys name has encouraged her to think like a boy and I pity any cockerel that tries to take her on.....or should I say tries it on with her. The cockerel on death row was getting noisier by the minute....clearly thinking there is some kind of appeal system. So I put Chuck in with him for a bit of company and to give her a break from enormous yellow crowing "hen".

So on thursday I'm sitting in the cinema with bf ( yes...in the middle of the day!) when I get a phone call from our neighbor. The bull mastiff lodging at number six has escaped and is prowling the chicken run. To cut a long story short the big yellow crowing hen is no more. I came home to find it left for me at the back door....by a human not the dog! So Thursday evening was spent with laptop, gloves and filleting knife and now we have a plucked and gutted chicken in the fridge for lunch tomorrow. However death row cockerel has to be finished off too this weekend so think I might take Bruce (said bull mastiff) for a walk through the run again!

Wild rabbit

I have decided to blog rather than send emails to you all. Please feel free to ignore me ;)
So here goes:
Monday 10th January 2011
Yesterday Lani at last caught and killed a rabbit - after three years of fruitless chasing! So we brought it home, skinned it, gutted it and we're having rabbit casserole for tea tomorrow. It was a little bizarre


as I stood in the old stable wearing gloves, knives and scissors at the ready while dh* read me the instructions off his ipad!! So am very proud of new skill, now I can kill chickens, help sheep to lamb, shear sheep and skin and gut a rabbit......oh how my life has changed :)

For those that don't know (I had to ask) dh stands for "darling husband", ds for darling son, dd for darling daughter. Nauseating I know but it keeps it anonymous and its "standard" blog nomenclature I believe.

Tuesday 12th January 2011:

I did the rabbit in the slow cooker with wine, garlic, leeks and cream. It was delicious - even ds agreed. Not in the least bit tough.