Can’t decide if I want to fork out £8.83 for this or not. Funky title and cover but probably not going to tell me anything I don’t already know … ?
Click on the image if you want to buy it for yourself (or me!!!)
April, 2009:
Sound of a Fox Calling
This is what we’re hearing every night.
http://www.angelfire.com/ar2/thefoxden/call.wav
We’ve lost so many chickens, ducks and geese lately that we’re now (as well as shutting them in their shed at night) electrifying the chicken wire fence of their run every night. Don’t worry, it’s only 12v electric, we’re not out to kill the foxes – just make them think the chicken run is something they definitely don’t want to be going anywhere near!
Lots more fox sounds at - http://www.angelfire.com/ar2/thefoxden/sounds.html
HEN AND THE ART OF CHICKEN MAINTENANCE
Martin Gurdon
Forget motorcycles, this is a reflection on keeping chickens. Little did the author realise that a small flock of chickens could change his life (and his lawn) so much. For those that already keep chickens or those that think they might like to keep chickens – a lovely gentle book well worth a read.
Olive Oil & Lemon Cake
We made this, and the vegan chocolate cake, to take to friends for an Easter dinner yesterday.
INGREDIENTS:
2 eggs
125g caster sugar
grated rind of 2 lemons and juice of 1
200ml olive oil (+ extra for greasing)
2tbsp milk
175g SR flour, sifted
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 190c/375f/gas 5. Grease and line the base of a 25cm loose-bottomed tin. Beat together the eggs and sugar. Beat in the lemon rind and juice, olive oil and milk. Stir in the flour, then spoon the batter into the cake tin and bake for 30-35 mins until golden and firm.
We decorated our cake with icing sugar and borage flowers from the garden.
This recipe came from an old “Co-op” magazine, for more olive oil recipes try:
The Olive Harvest Cookbook: Olive Oil Lore and Recipes from McEvoy Ranch
In 1992 Nan McEvoy planted the first olive tree seedlings on her ranch in Northern California. Today McEvoy Ranch is renowned for their high quality extra-virgin olive oil and is one of the few California olive oil producers to hold organic certification. Also producing lavender and honey, and maintaining an extensive kitchen garden, the ranch has developed into a culinary paradise, replete with heirloom vegetables and fruits, grazing sheep, and olive groves as far as the eye can see. With this abundance of ingredlents, ranch chef Gerald Gass has more raw materials than any good cook would need to create more than 70 recipes combining extra virgin olive oil with the best the garden has to offer. Comforting soups of winter squash with honey and sage; hearty pasta dishes with olives and tomatoes; savoury pork tenderloin flavoured with red cherries and spices; crunchy lemon biscotti; these recipes are simple to prepare and take center stage at any meal. Introductory material tells the fascinating story of how McEvoy Ranch came to be and how olives and olive oil came to California. Splendid photographs of the olive groves, gardens, and recipes bring the Nan’s dream to life and offers a visual tour through one of the most beautiful working ranches in the West.
Vegan Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
- 3 cups SR flour (680 grams)
- 2 cups sugar (450 grams)
- 6 tablespoons cocoa (100 grams)
- 2 teaspoons baking soda (10 cc = 10 ml)
- 1 teaspoon salt (5 cc = 5 ml)
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil (200 cc)
- 2 tablespoon vinegar (30 cc)
- 2 teaspoon vanilla (10 cc)
- 2 cup cold water (480 cc)
Directions
Mix the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients. Stir until smooth. Bake two greased, floured pans at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Makes two layers of a two-layer 9-inch or 8-inch round cake, or one small sheet cake. When cool, frost it.
Recipe for Absurdly Easy Vegan Chocolate Cake from www.boutell.com
This makes a HUGE cake (i used 2 x 10.5″ tins). If I were doing it again I’d use half the quantities given in the recipe unless it’s for a LOT of people!
Decorated with the only ripe strawberries I could find after the rainy weather, and a few little sprigs of mint.
Water Barriers for Trees
Here’s a video from theproducegarden – it’s pretty much what we do when we plant trees to reduce the amount of watering we’d have to do while the tree gets established.
And here’s some photos of young trees planted here. The ridge of earth is very clear, and on sloping ground that ridge is higher on the lower side of the tree and almost non-existent above the tree. For most of the year it will catch rain, and hold it in the manure/compost filled earth under the tree. But in dry spells, and definitely July and August we have to water maybe once a week – depending on how hot it is and what type of tree. Our experimental drought tolerant trees need much less water than fruit trees, which may need watering occassionally for their whole lives.
RAINWATER HARVESTING
Author – Pacey and Cullis
Stuff on storing rainwater, building tanks etc., but with the addition of a good section on farming with runoff water in rural areas. Good for developing water strategies.
Surrounded by Beauty
While watering some trees up in the forest, this morning, it struck me – just how beautiful so much of the world around us is. The photos speak for themselves.
And the fantastic views from here. We live surrounded by extravagant beauty.
Buy any of these highly recommended books and you’ll be supporting a small ecological bookseller and we’ll receive a small commission which we exchange for books for our library. Everyone wins – hoorah!
DIY Solar Oven
We’ve been thinking about solar oven for some time now, and yesterday decided to have a go at making our own.
The builders have left us a few off-cuts of the insulation stuff, and I had an old ‘super’ from a beehive.
To start, I screwed some t&g to the bottom of the super, to make it into a complete box, with a bottom. Then some of the blue polystyrene stuff needed cutting to size and fitting in.
After a quick look at plans on the internet, we had to have a long look at what junk was lying around, that could be used to make the reflective flap.
A old metal panel from a dead computer did the job, pop-rivetted onto hinges which were screwed onto the back of the box. Covered with tin foil, and protected with copious amounts of sellotape, does the job of reflecting the suns rays into the box.
And it works! Just made a cup of tea and some leek and potato soup.
The shiny back flap could be improved, as we come across materials that would work better. Some designs use a mirror, although I wonder if this might be too hot in the summer and dangerous to eyes.
And our original perspex top was tinted, so that didn’t work. Luckily we had another broken sheep that will do for now, but when we find a proper replacement we will use that.
Quite amazing really. Its april and we can cook using the sun’s rays – in July and Aug this contraption will probably boil water quicker than a gas cooker. And we have recently ordered a parabolic solar cooker, after finding a cheap supplier in spain, although if we had an old satellite dish and some aluminium sticky tape (such as we used to seal the insulation in the roof) we could build our own one of them too.
Solar Cookers / Fornos Solares (Portuguese website):
Tá-Sol, Fornos Solares e outras curiosidades
COOKING WITH SUNSHINE
Author – L. Anderson
Complete guide to solar cuisine with 150 easy recipes to start you off and give you the basic principles
April Garden Photos
Every year we seem to get more organised earlier in the year. This year both gardens are in great shape, and we are spending some time most days, weeding, planting, watering (it has been dry) and generally gardening!
My garden looks more like a jungle every year:
And last year’s compost heap is a mound of lovely rich soil.
My bed of strawberries is almost all weed-free, mulched with pine needles and horse manured over. A few onions got missed last year, and are now growing again.
Sophie’s garden is even more organised. Beautiful.
And this is before the main spring plantings have been done – lots of seedlings are still coming up in trays under plastic, and will be transplanted over the coming weeks and months.
NO-WORK GARDEN
Author – Bob Flowerdew
Lots of common sense stuff from the great Bob. Nicely produced large size, paperback book – for beginners and experienced alike. And, best of all, it promotes and explains environmentally sound strategies.
Batteries Arrived
Our solar batteries arrived this morning. 12 x 2 volt solar batteries. Just waiting on the the invertor and regulator, and for Dave who is doing our wiring to return from a trip away, and we can get our solar power system sorted.
PRACTICAL PHOTOVOLTAICS
Author: R Komp
A comprehensive guide to the theory and reality of solar electricity, also a detailed installation and instruction manual. Lots of good technical and practical stuff – enough to construct.
£14.95
Fruity Promises
It looks like we are going to have a lot of fruit this year, probably because of the dry spring – the flowers didn’t get washed off the trees by the rain this year.
The plum trees are laden with tiny plums, including the row of plum suckers that we put in a few years ago not expecting them to fruit much if at all.
The two cherries in the gardens have some fruit for the first time, and we planted half a dozen more cherries each of the last 2 winters. Cherries are so good, and easy to sun dry for the winter, we should plant more trees this winter.
The raspberries that we transplanted into a bed in Sophie’s garden are covered in flowers. I wonder if we can take cuttings from them this autumn to make another bed. Raspberries must be one of my favourites.
And of course, the grapes are appearing on the vines now, as they grow, and strawberry flowers are starting to appear.
There are also plenty of other fruits appearing, nectarines, peaches, figs, apple and pear blossom, goji berries, cranberries, russian olives, loquats…. and I am bound to have forgotten some. Each year we get more fruit and more of the new ones come on stream for us. We must get a solar drier made, to make winter stores of all of this abundance.
CIDER
Author – A Proulx
New, revised and updated edition. Lots of information for the cider maker (includes vinegars and brandy).
