Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Finally I have remember to take a camera out and about in Tonbridge to take some photos of it in the snow.

This is poor Resiwick in the snow (I took this from bed, which is the best place to be on a snowy day in my opinion!)



The garden is looking very snowy indeed, I think being so narrow is protects the snow that lands from melting so it's really been building up over the last few days:




I left my gloves on the train yesterday and hadn't managed to get out to buy some new ones yet so my attempt at a snowman was this little chap on top of the girls' old coop. his eyes are made from bird seeds and his arms from dead chilli plants!



We also tried to coax the girls out into the snow to see how they dealt with it. Corn encouraged them a little way but not for long, they soon retreated back under their cover:




These photos should show you why we are not intending to take the car out today. Out little house does look lovely in the snow




Tonbridge also looks really lovely in the snow. We didn't go to any of the really pretty bits to take photos today but even around the river and park it looked pretty:

Cheese Making

Matt's main present from me was a cheesemaking starter kit. It provided everything that you need to make soft cheese including starters for curd cheese, soft cheese and mozarella (which I am VERY excited about!).

For his first attempt Matt made a basic lemon cheese, which doesn't actually use the kit but is a great way to get to grips with the basic process.

To do this you need:

1 litre of milk
Juice of 2 lemons
Salt

1. Heat the milk to 38 degrees C



2. Add the juice of two lemons to make it curdle



3. Leave for half an hour



4. Strain through cheese cloth, keeping the curds (solid bit) and rinsing out the whey



5. Salt to taste

6. Eat the cheese! This first attempt cheese as a really interesting flavour - tart and lemony and quite salty (Matt likes things more salty than I do!)

We haven't eaten it all yet but Matt made some pasta and made some ravioli just to test it.



I think it would be nice in ravioli with some sundried toms so that mght be a job for today. This is also very similar to how you make the Indian cheese paneer, which I absolutely love, so that's Matt's next job!

Christmas present round-up

We both got some brilliant presents this year so I thought I would share a quick summary of some of them (I'm not going to say "favourites" because that would be unfair to the other presents!). While you're reading this I want you to be humming the tune from "the gallery" (think Tony Hart)

This lovely Country Living jug came with the utensils. Beautiful AND practical:



This jug was sneakily purchased under my very nose. It was made by the Hadlow pottery, run by adults with learning disabilities just down the road from here and I've been admiring it for ages. It's a pastoral scene and so beautiful with the fields wrapping around the jug:



This is a cider jug. Beautifully "rustic" and one day might hold our very own cider! (that's it for jugs now, I promise!)



Although the butter churn has had an outing in another post it deserves a mention in all it's glory so here it is:



This lovely cast iron cockerel door stop, now taking pride of place in our dining room:



A plethora of Cath Kidston books. The two big books have a project in each (both bags - one tote and one handbag) and the little book is stickers which I can't wait to use but also don't want to because they'll all go!



Hoe, Hoe, Hoe! Once all of this snow has gone and the soil has warmed up a little bit this handy tool will do brilliantly at preparing the soil for all of our summer sowing!



For the allotment we also got a rhino runner which we didn't manage to fit in the car so we will have to collect or have dropped off later. It's like this:



Katy also got us some wild flower seeds, which I think I am going to try to sow on the slope at the back of the allotment. There are brambles there so we'll have to try to keep them at bay but it would be great to have some wild flowers to pick. We also got a garden planner so that'll be great for planning out our plot.

We're all going on a...chicken holiday

The chickens had a special treat this Christmas...they got to travel round the M25 in a box! Lucky them! As we were spending 9 days away from home this Christmas and new year we obviously couldn't leave the poor chickens all on their own so we took them to visit their Grandma and Grandad in Hampshire!!

They had a lovely little holiday home, although the neighbours were a bit noisy...lots of quacking! But they loved it, and whenver they were let out they went on a bit of a rampage around the garden...






And they were even naughtier when we left them on their own for a few days...




...while we were enjoying ourselves in Devon in absolute luxury:





Looking at the photos of the girls makes me realise just how much they've grown over the past 9 months.

This is Hythe:



This is Romney:



This will be even more obvious when, next weekend, we get them two more sisters! All being well weather wise we are going to collect two more ex-batts next weekend and i think we'll be shocked at how skinny and featherless they are. I just hope the snow goes by then or we might have to knit them some woolly jumpers!

Butter making

One of Matt's Christmas presents was a lovely jar butter churn with wooden paddles for butter churning. Obviously he was keen to test it straight away so we hot-footed it to Tesco to buy a load of double cream (which was reduced post-Christmas).



We may have been slightly over ambitious with how much we poured in so by the time the cream has got to whipped stage the churn wouldn't move any more...



So we had to decant it into smaller jars for the old tried and tested shake-it-like-you-mean-it method! This worked a charm (even if my arms, which we already aching from excessive Wii-ing, did feel like they were going to fall off by the end!)





...et voila, we got some butter!





It made not only these three ramekins but also a large one (this is about half of the total butter) so very worthwhile indeed.

Egg count

Inspired by Blagger, we have been keeping a monthly egg count since August and we've now had enough months to do a little graph. Everyone loves a little graph!

Deck the halls...

Since my last post we've made some progress on the allotment - we managed to find two more pallets so last weekend went down to the plot to build two more raised beds. Here's Matt making the finishing touches in the failing light.



Christmas has also arrived in Tonbridge. We took a day off in the week to go to the Wealden Timea Midwinter Fair - which was so lovely but a little pricey for our pockets but we did come home with locally grown rapeseed oil and mayonaise, which are absolutely delicious. We also got some local blue brie and some local apple juice! We never say no to local food!

We also got our Christmas tree, which was grown locally (of course!!) in Rolvenden and have adorned it with our homemade decorations from last year. Matt made his paper tinsle and I have to say it looks just lovely.



I also finished off the stockings that I started last year. I didn't manage to get the letters on last year so have just finished, and I'm so pleased with the final product.



I've been at my friend's house today being fitted for a bridesmaid dress and came home to the lovely smell of freshly baked bread. Matt baked two loaves which we've sliced and will freeze for later.



That's all of our news for now.