Mak'n Bac'n

Something we've wanted to do in a while, is try our hand at home curing. We finally got our acts together in January and bought us some pork from Tablehurst, the wonderful bidynamic farm in the Ashdown Forest that we go to occasionally.

I followed a recipe from one of our home craft type books - I don't have the weights but I mixed curing salt, sea salt, raw brown sugar, juniper berries, peppercorns and some herbs (thyme and rosemary) together and made sure I got it all over the belly (the pig's, not mine!)





We then left it for 2 weeks, covered in muslin in the fridge (although a cold larder will do) and occasionally drained the liquid. After 2 weeks I tried a bit - it was very salty - so I soaked it in cold water over night. The finished product was deeeeeelicious!



After about a week it started to smell a little so we used it up quite quickly. I'm not sure whether I should have put more cure on it or whether that's how quickly it goes if you don't hang it in the salt for longer. I have read, in Home Farmer magazine, that you should entirely cover it in the cure (lots and lots of cure) so I'll try that next time but a reat first attempt!

Produce 2011

As I didn't do any updates last year, you will have no idea how well our allotment has been getting on so this is a gallery-style update on things what we grew last year...

A basket of produce (this must have been autumn time)


My beautiful "Twilight" chillis (one of three varieties I grew - I have so many!)


Some strawbs in the fruit cage from early in the year


The onions, ready to come up


A GIANT carrot (after never having had much luck before, we outdid ourselves this year!)


A GIANT mooli! Slightly enexpected and we only managed to use some of them sadly...there's not that much you can do with a mooli it turns out!

Update on chickens

Our first 5 hens (Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch followed by Blue and Bell) were all ex-battery hens. There really is nothing like seeing the battered, naked chickens going from their first day (being scared of air, sun, rain, flies...) to becoming confident (some might say a little too confident!) proper chickens. BUT, they are hard work - I always say that they're like foster children. They'd had a tough start in life and you can tell. We lost our last ex-batt (Rom - who behaved more like a cockrel!) late last year and not long before that decided that we would get some *normal* chickens for a while...enter Water and Cress (following the theme of being named after heritage railways).

Here's Cress, she's the boss, and a big chicken:



This is Water, she's an "Amber", isn't she pretty? She's the under-chicken (and therefore our favourite!). Good ol's Rom-the-bully is in the background (I think Water was pretty glad to see the back of her!)



They're very well behaved and lay pretty much ever day. I'll post an egg count soon but this gives an indication of how productive they are...

Doesn't time fly...

It has been a year and a half since I last blogged on here - life, PhD, work, running has all got in the way:



(Matt is the centre of the trio of blue shirts on the right hand side)

I'm going to try to start adding photos more often. An allotment update will come once we have some things growing and I will introduce the new chickens to the blog but for now I'll just put some pretty pictures of things that we cooked with our produce in 2011...






A creative (and pretty!) way of using courgettes



Matt's wonderful bread



"Healthy" Eton Mess (yoghurt, not cream) with our own raspberries and homemade meringues