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GOOD FOOD | GREAT HEALTH | FRESH LIFESTYLE !

GRAB A SLICE OF THE GOOD LIFE! | £3.25

JUNE 2008

IS IT EASY BEING GREEN? PLUS WIN A £300 MANTIS TILLER

DICK STRAWBRIDGE INTRODUCES OUR 8-PAGE GOOD LIFE GUIDE TO LIVING

COOKING IN YOUR BRICK OVEN

VIVE LE BRIE! STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO MAKING THIS CLASSIC

WE GET HOT AND BOTHERED OUTSIDE OF THE KITCHEN!

BEAN FEAST

POULTRY WELFARE

NATURAL BEAUTY

Nutrient packed broad beans

Chickens don’t go cheap

Fantastic home-made products

ISSUE THREE JUNE 2008 £3.25

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HF ISSUE 3 P03 EDIT

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FIRST WORD

www.homefarmer.co.uk PUBLISHED BY

The Good Life Press Ltd., PO BOX 536, Preston, PR2 9ZY Tel: 01772 652 693 Email: info@thegoodlifepress.co.uk EDITORIAL TEAM Publishers: Ruth Tott and Paul Melnyczuk Tel: 01772 652 693 Editors: Diana Sutton & Paul Peacock Tel: 0161 346 4084 Circulation: Mike McLening Tel: 01726 882 028 Subscriptions: Paul Melnyczuk Tel: 01772 652 693 Email: subs@thegoodlifepress.co.uk DESIGNED BY

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HOME FARMER IS COPYRIGHT OF THE GOOD LIFE PRESS LTD.

Welcome to Issue Three THERE IS SUCH A LOT TO CRAM IN THIS ISSUE! EACH YEAR THE line of coaches gets longer as the villages that surround Oldham, an area collectively known as Saddleworth, put on their annual Brass Band competition. Bands from all over the country fight their way through the traffic on the country roads to compete in around a dozen individual events.

Competition is fierce, and the whole day, Whit Friday, is taken up with polishing, as well as playing.

One by one bands swagger down the street playing a march and everyone cheers, then it’s into the makeshift arena where the judges, who are hidden out of sight so they can’t cheat by seeing who is playing, soberly mark their performance piece. Thousands of people turn up and once you arrive in the village there is no going home because all the roads are jammed with parked cars; only the competitors skillfully guided in and out by the police.

Our roots are so important. It doesn’t matter if you are a bandsman, a ciderman (who will have some pretty interesting rituals at harvest time), a rushman (who may dress up in willow or rushes each year and parade through the streets) or what you are. These events that each season bring us

together actually anchor us into the places we live. It’s true, you cannot live without such an anchor because, quite naturally, people need each other, and that is one of the important messages of Home Farmer. Self-sufficiency is about people sharing their time, their produce, their ideas and their culture.

Quite independently, a series of messages on the Home Farmer Forum (www.homefarmer.co.uk and click on ‘Online Forum’) sprung up where people wanted to get together in their own localities to make a series of ‘Community Home Farmer Clubs’ around the country. Well look out in issue 4 for details of events near you.

Best Wishes, DIANA SUTTON & PAUL PEACOCK

If you are having any difficulty finding Home Farmer please call 01772 732800 and we will rush you a copy!

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CONTENTS

Inside this issue...

14 OF CABBAGES AND KINGS Cabbages have been a staple for two thousand years. If the Romans could grow it, so can you!

16 BLOWING RASPBERRIES Raspberries are one of the easiest soft fruits to grow, and almost as simple as blowing a raspberry!

18 STRAWBERRIES Wimbledon is not the only place for strawberries.There is the allotment, garden, patio, hanging basket or the balcony – you can grow them anywhere! PLUS: a fantastic recipe for your own strawberry health bar!

22 BIG CROPS SMALL GARDENS Anyone can be a home farmer as far as growing vegetables is concerned.Whether your garden is large or pocket sized, a courtyard, balcony or even a window box.

03 FIRST WORD Something’s going down in Saddleworth!

06 NEWS Gardening for Rattie. Food riots.

Badger cull and some special offers.

10 YOUR SAY Share a thought, a photo, a success or what is happening in your Good Life!

16

RASPBERRIES ARE NORMALLY purchased as bare rooted canes in the autumn through to winter for immediate planting. One of the earliest raspberry varieties is “Glen Moy”, quite often ready for picking as early as mid-June. The vigorous canes have very few thorns and the berries are large and firm with a delicious flavour. A more modern introduction is “Malling Minerva”, which has all the same attributes being another early fruiter, but is even more disease resistant. Depending on the weather, you could be picking fruit from early June until mid/late July.

Maincrops can produce very heavy yields indeed, some 10 canes producing up to 40lbs of fruit in a season so you don’t need too many plants to get a very worthwhile return. “Glen Ample” is widely planted, yielding very large succulent fruit which holds well on the canes – good if you aren’t able to pick them every day – and they are excellent for freezing too. Expect to have raspberries ready for harvesting from late June to early August. An older variety is “Malling Jewel”, reliable and tolerant of most conditions. It produces good volumes of large, juicy fruit.

In my view best choice for late crops still has to be the variety “Autumn Bliss”.

It’s been around for years, is reliable and

has huge cropping potential. Take a trip to any garden centre that sells raspberry canes and you should see specimens of this variety – testament to its popularity.

I planted two rows of “Autumn Bliss” when we moved here seven years ago and the amount of raspberries they have produced each year from August into October has been amazing.

For a change, why not grow a yellow fruiting variety? They look great when served mixed up with the traditional red berries. “All Gold” is another late raspberry and a close relation of “Autumn Bliss”. Just as delicious as the red varieties, and very popular with wine-making enthusiasts.

PLANTING YOUR RASPBERRIES Raspberries love soils that include plenty of rich organic matter. They prefer a deep, well prepared soil that holds moisture and adding lots of well rotted compost or manure to the trench when you are planting will fit the bill admirably. The ideal time for establishing a new raspberry bed or planting replacement canes is in the late autumn and winter.

Clear the site of perennial weeds before you plant or you’ll be forever fighting them back in years to come.

The planting trench needs to be a

Sugared Raspberries Wow! This is brilliant and all you need are equal weights of raspberry and sugar. Spread the sugar on a tray and pull the raspberries off their hulls.

Then simply mash them together and mix everything up. Put into a cool, sterile jar and into the fridge for a couple of days. It will last a year and is wonderful on ice-cream.

34 BEANFEAST Broad beans are a brilliant way of packing in the nutrients, and few crops give such a boost to the soil.

Cover Story 36 COOKING IN YOUR BRICK OVEN That thing gets really hot! But there are some things to work out, and a major design change!

28 GETTING IN A SPIN! Beth Frear introduces us to the world of drop spindle spinning; something you can do with a couple of CD’s and a stick.

38 FAT MAN IN THE KITCHEN The Full Monty Breakfast Pie.This month Paul Peacock looks at the latest culinary invention, bacon and egg in a fried bread case.

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Raspberries are one of the easiest soft fruit to grow, and almost as simple as blowing a raspberry! Jayne Neville shows that they require very little in the way of care compared to the huge rewards they will give you at harvest time

Cover Story

26 TIME FOR (HERBAL) TEA Diana Sutton shares her passion for quick and easy ‘pick me ups’ for any time of the day.

RASPBERRIES

Blowing a Raspberry

32 A BRAND NEW BAG Create an eco-friendly receptacle for your weekly shop, beat the carrier bag taxes and shop a little greener.

spade’s depth and about 60cm wide.

After breaking up the soil surface at the bottom of the trench, put in a generous (10cm) layer of well-rotted manure or compost. Start filling the trench back in with a mixture of soil and organic matter. You are aiming to plant the raspberry canes just a fraction lower than they were at the nursery where they were raised (you should be able to see traces of the original planting line on the stems); this will encourage vigorous growth at ground level as the plants establish. Once the soil is at the level you require, lightly firm around the plant and cut off the canes to within 15cm of the ground. Each plant should be about 45cm apart with a generous space between the rows (1.5metres) if you can spare the room, remembering the fruit needs sunlight in order to ripen and you will need to get between the rows to pick them.

Early and maincrop raspberries need lots more support than the autumn varieties, which in any case are cut down to ground level each autumn once they have finished fruiting. Simple post and wire supports will be adequate for your earlies and maincrops to stop them swaying around and breaking in the wind. The new growth can then be tied into the wires each year as it grows. If your garden is particularly exposed then you might need to support even the late varieties, but in general they stand well on their own.

RASPBERRY CARE AND PRUNING Keeping the area around the new raspberry plants weed free is particularly important during their first year

and mulching with well rotted manure or compost each winter will help suppress all but the most tenacious weeds as well as ensuring they receive the nutrition they need to produce the following year’s crop.

Pruning is pretty simple when you know which varieties you have. Basically, the early and mid-season fruiting raspberries always bear their fruit on the previous year’s growth. What this means is that once fruiting has finished, you will need to cut down all the canes that have borne fruit down to ground level. There will also be some new growth which has not yet fruited and these should not be cut back because they will bear next year’s raspberries.

The old canes are easily distinguished from the young ones as they have a drier, mature look to them and may still be carrying the dried remains of fruit clusters.

Autumn fruiting varieties are much simpler to manage and, because they fruit on the current year’s growth, all canes can be cut right back to the ground in winter.

The new growth that appears in spring will be the wood that bears your raspberry crop later that same year.

Unless you are lucky enough to grow your soft fruit in a purpose built fruit cage, then your raspberries will definitely need protecting from wild birds. Once the fruit has started to develop, drape some light nylon netting over the plants. You could take this a stage further and knock a few poles into the ground to support the netting, allowing room for you to get underneath for picking without having to remove the net. You might still lose a few to our feathered friends, but the lions share will be yours!

PESTS AND DISEASES Thankfully, raspberries do not suffer from too many problems. They can occasionally suffer from attacks from aphids, particularly on the tender young shoots at the top of the canes. If caught early you can squish them with your fingers (wear rubber gloves if you are squeamish!) or spray them with an insecticidal soap mixture. Remember you’re going to be eating the fruit shortly, so don’t spray with anything nasty.

Aphids are also carriers of a disease called mosaic virus so it’s well worth nipping them in the bud (sorry!) before they cause big problems. The symptoms are a yellowing of the leaves between the veins. Once the plant is infected there is little that can be done apart from removing and burning the affected plants to stop the virus from spreading.

Grey mould or botrytis could be a problem if the summer is a wet one.

Only the fruit will be affected so if you can, pick off the mouldy ones, which should stop it spreading to the rest of the fruit in the cluster.

Raspberry beetle larvae feed on the ripe fruits, then fall off into the soil and turn into pupae. The larvae damage the fruit, the tell-tale signs are brown, shrivelled patches. To interrupt the beetles’ lifecycle you can hoe the soil around the plants to unearth the pupae which will then hopefully get eaten by birds and other predators. Careful spraying with derris on the fruit itself is a last resort if the problem becomes really severe. E

40 LIFE AFLOAT Tell someone you live on a boat and, nine times out of ten, you get a slightly dreamy response.

42 FROM PLOT TO PLATE A new series by Telegraph columnist Lila Das Gupta.This month she pickles courgettes, amongst other things.

44 SUBSCRIBE Don’t miss a single issue of Home Farmer delivered to your door.

Cover Story 45 VIVE LE BRIE How to make and cook with this famous old cheese!

PLUS: a brilliant recipe for Brie, onion marmalade and sun-dried tomato tarts!

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48 HOME FARMER INVESTIGATES PEAK OIL Anouchka Warren looks into why everyone is worried about future energy supplies.

50 BEGINNERS’ BEES How to set up a hive and what goes on inside.

53 LOCAL HERO We look at the Orford Oysterage, set up by one of John Seymour’s friends.

54 THE HEN HOUSE A house is the most important purchase we buy and the same applies for the poultry, says Janice Houghton-Wallace.

SELF-SUFFIC

5

IENCY SPE CIAL For a large numb sufficient life er of people contempla tin sty can help you le, debt is a serious pro g a more selfthrough the blem. Self-su process say s Paul Peacocfficiency k

Drowning in a sea of debt ?

WHEN YOU THINK of selfyou conjure sufficiency up visions sufficiency of and rows of implies free vegetables, green fields implies dom, debt chickens and milk and hon quite the bills amount The average opposite. to £42 per in happy llamey. But we can’t all live unsecured to a recent day accordin the UK is a debt in surv g the harsh reala land, for many people whis on top of this ey and the mortgag short of £9,0 ker e is . Then com lifestyle, and ities of a consumer 00 per e the family, and money that food, the clot the car, the it, is all but when you pays for crushing. But take account of entertainme hing, the have to be it doesn’t THE AVERAG like that. nt etc. It all mor tgag add E es, the Self-sufficie s up! Now debt per pers average UNSECURE working all if you are after oneself, ncy implies looking the hours D £34,000. Nowon is God sends and raising growing your own food DEBT IN TH , try as to furnish your own mea you may, it E UK debt on top living a past is of this oral sort of t and eggs, possible to not IS A WHISK almost esse you live far life, even if live selfntial expenfrom the cou ER suff iciently, trul diture, then However, this ntry. y selfSHORT OF you are sufficiently goin in certain circidyll is hardly possible g to be very , if umstances, hard a lot of deb you have £9 push having larg one ,00 ed t. of them to put 0 PER e amounts The problem of debt. Self into a self-suff the time is a icient FAMILY complex one lifestyle. . there is a lot When around, the of financial wealth LIF ES TY LE ban Debt affects order to earn ks lend money in your self-este sleep, your em, your Then, as this a slice of that wealth. hea wealth disa pocket. It mak lth as well as your people and ppears bus and your nigh es your days miserabl and more diff inesses find it more e icult to pay ciency is not ts restless. Self-suffithe lifestyle. Deb about money, it’s abo ut banks t financial argu hinders it. The what ciency do not ments about self-suff ithey alwa ys add up anyw A wind turb ay. owe them ine energy syst not save you and the money in the em might long run, accumulated but it will generate your power.

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Next Month

62 GOAT’S CHEESE A look at goat’s milk and two easy cheeses.

57 FIVE BEAUTIES We look at some wonderful flowers for the garden.

64 POULTRY PROBLEMS A new series looking at poultry diseases.

This month we start with coccidiosis.

Cover Story 59 CHICKENS DON’T GO CHEAP We investigate why people should eat free range chicken.

50

Cover Story 66 YOU DON’T NEED LAND TO LIVE THE GOOD LIFE! The first of three 8 page specials on urban self-sufficiency, introduced by Dick Strawbridge.

74 FIRST STEPS IN SELLING Thinking about selling your produce?

Jane Brooks takes a look at what it takes to turn an enjoyable hobby into a thriving small business.

KEEPING BEES

51

This month we look at the beekeeper’s year and how to set up your first hive

The Beekeeper’s Year IT’S AMAZING HOW easy it is to Hefting, I found out, was the art of mistake things. When I got my first bees lifting the hive and guessing how much I wondered how I would know how honey is inside. A full super (half sized much honey was left in the hive in late honey box on the top of the brood box) winter. I asked a crowded weighs around 10-15kg, so room of beekeepers how if it feels light you might it was done and someone

BY APRIL THE wish to consider feeding said, “Heft it.” But I the bees.

QUEEN WILL thought he had said, “F – it!” I imagined he BE LAYING AND LATE SPRING was being rude.

By April the queen will be THE COLONY laying and the colony will “So I don’t do anything then?” From be growing very quickly.

WILL BE that day on there exists Now is the time to feed the GROWING VERY bees if you haven’t already. a happy band of Lancashire beekeepers More than anything, now QUICKLY who think I am an idiot. the bees need room for the They wouldn’t be far expansion of the colony. wrong.

On a warm day check to see if the brood The beekeeping year really starts box has plenty of space on the frames – when you get bees for the first time, but that they look clean and the queen is there is every reason for making a start in healthy and laying.

Spring because, from November to Now is the time to start your varroa March, you will not even opened the hive. regime, putting a white tray in the bottom of the hive and counting how many mites you get falling on it, and using the EARLY SPRING appropriate insecticide or treatment.

It might not be possible to see any bee You will need to take account of the activity in March due to the rotten weather. It is frequently too cold for them; age of the queen and decide if you need you shouldn’t go into the hive and expose to replace her. If you, like me, have a queen that is in her second season then the brood box unless the temperature is 15oC as a minimum. But then you will find you can destroy any queen cells that appear in the hive, so long as the queen a number of bees flying on still days. is healthy and laying.

Once the cherries and hawthorns The most important thing is that the come into flower you will see bees queen is laying vigorously. taking advantage of their pollen and sparse nectar. Bee losses can be critical at this time of the year. Foragers caught SUMMER EARLY out in a sudden downpour rarely make You can remove empty frames in the it back to the hive. brood box and replace them with new.

First bees on a Spring day.

Workers storing nectar in the spring.

69

HE LP IS AT HA ND...

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I told him I was actually he was, and why. He clos richer than ed my acco – but I felt unt good about myself!

Seeing you r plan working is important and you nee d to constan remind you rsel tly Living on littl f how good you are. especially whee money is hard, washing thei n next door are r new car whic doubt bou h they no ght on cred it. E

64 GOING BROODY For some they’re a pain, for others a bonus.We look into the not so sleepy world of the broody hen.

58 SCHOOL HENS Pupils and staff at The John Bramston School have embarked on a new venture to re-home some ex-battery hens.

some lifestyle self-sufficie choices – just what ncy is all abo sudden you ut. All of a are a master. You no longer a slave, but the light of can see all your debt in all the othe do to live a r more self-suff things you lifestyle. icient

76 DIARY OF AN URBAN FARMER Mike Woolnough brings us this month’s instalment of his Good Life diary.

78 WATER IS FREE Water we take for granted. On goes the tap, out goes the water. Joe Jacobs help us to use our own!

82 A TASTE FOR TEABREADS Diana Sutton goes back in time to make some cracking fruit bread, so get making some more butter!

86 PIGGY PETS? Linda McDonald-Brown looks at keeping small pigs and can they live happily in the back garden.

90 SANDWICH MEAT Give me three good reasons for making sandwich meat.You can bulk out a small amount of meat, you can disguise a cut that people won’t normally eat and it is very, very cheap!

Grubs are evidence of a laying queen.

You can also fit another brood box if you need room for a large colony. The number of bees are beginning to reach 20,000 or more.

You can reuse these frames once they have been cleansed by freezing, the main reason for taking them out in the first place. You can harvest the wax and make new foundation or candles or any of the other products. You can also sell your wax; every beekeeping association has a scheme to sell wax back to the major companies.

You will need to be on guard against swarming.

A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay.

A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon.

A swarm in July isn’t worth a fly!

MID SUMMER

The brood box will be almost full, if the weather is decent. You need supers on to take all the honey that is coming in. You might have three supers on the hive by now. Check on the queen every week and make sure she is laying. You don’t have to see her, just the results of her laying!

Continue your vigilance against varroa, checking for the numbers and treating accordingly.

When you inspect the hive, clear away bits of brace comb. Put a half-sized frame in the brood box. Underneath

Cover Story 92 HERBS, HONEY, OATS AND BEAUTY. For almost every beauty need there is a home made product where you choose the ingredients. Diana Sutton brings us just a few.

96 COFFEE CUP PAGES Take a break and win a Mantis Tiller.

Our Coffee Cup pages have a crossword with a prize and our major competition: a £300 tiller.

Inspecting the brood box.

98 CLASSIFIEDS

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NEWS

LETS ALL SHARE .COM

OFFERS FROM VICTORIANA NURSERIES

THE GREEN WAY TO SHARE UNWANTED ITEMS

STRAWBERRY OFFER Strawberry for seed, strawberry Temptation Usually £2.65 per packet plus p&p (£3.95) Offer Price £2.39 inc. p&p per 25 seeds.

Autumn Kiss & Rambling Cascade offer – 6 of each variety: Normally £16.20 and £3.95 p&p Offer Price £14.58 inc. postage & packing Strawberry Baskets, £25.95 + £7.95 delivery Normally £33.20 Offer Price £28.95 inc. p&p HERB TEA OFFER Five great seed packets for herbal tea that will last you the year out!

Bergamot Lemon Balm Sage Lovage Fennel Normally £8.75 plus £3.95 p&p Offer Price £7.88 inc. p&p TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANY OF THESE OFFERS SIMPLY QUOTE HF314

BY POST: Victoriana Nursery Gardens, Challock, Nr. Ashford, Kent.TN25 4DG

BY THE WEBSITE: www.victoriananursery.co.uk OR BY TELEPHONE: 01233 740529

WORLDWIDE FOOD PRICE CLIMB Food prices are continuing to climb around the world leading to hunger riots in many places not normally associated with food shortages. In Haiti rioters stormed the Presidential Palace, according to the Independent. In Morocco some 34 people were jailed over riots against food price rises while in Indonesia 10,000 demonstrated in the capital because of a 135% increase in their staple, soya beans.

In Egypt a number of people died in March after a 40% jump and soldiers have been mobilised to protect rice supplies after the government introduced rationing.

The IMF has informed its governments that the situation will

spread around the world, particularly where 50% of income is spent on food. Dominique Strauss-Kahn proposed that widespread starvation would occur if food prices did not come under control.

According to the Independent he said,“The consequences will be terrible.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation have said that 36 countries are in the throws of a major food crisis. Meanwhile, the grain producers of the world, particularly rice producers like China, Egypt,Vietnam and India, have cut back on exports, making the world exchange price even higher.

This week sees the official launch of Letsallshare, a ground-breaking new website dedicated to promoting the many practical, economical and environmental benefits that can be gained by simply sharing items with other people we trust.

The types of products that can be shared are endless.Typical items include DIY tools, gardening equipment, roof boxes and bicycle carriers, ski equipment, camping equipment, baby and child items, as well as designer clothes, shoes and even birth pools. In today's modern world where space and storage are in short supply the LetsAllShare concept provides a perfect solution in which everyone benefits.

The initiative is the brainchild of Stas Murzynowski and his friend Neil Lecky and came about when they were having a conversation over a beer. Stas was describing how a few months earlier his sister had said she was heading off on holiday with her family and wanted to buy a roof box for her car.Asking his advice on the best type to buy Stas said,“Why are you buying a roof box when I have one in the garage that does nothing for 50 weeks of the year?”

After a successful soft launch and many months of hard work letsallshare.com has now officially arrived.

To find out more about LetsAllShare and how you and the environment can benefit, visit the website at: www.letsallshare.com

COOL COOKING RINGS All stainless steel rings. Ideal for those breakfast pies and all.These are really nicely crafted and will last for ages. In fact they are much better than mine! All prices are subject to £3.95 p&p,

7cm x 3.5cm £2.75 each 7cm x 6cm £4.50 each 9cm x 3.5cm £3.50 each 9cm x 6cm £4.99 each www.crocksandpots.co.uk Telephone 0208 144 5517

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NEWS

BADGER CULL The Welsh rural affairs minister, Elin Jones, announced there will be a test cull of badgers in Wales in an attempt to reduce the incidences of bovine TB amongst cattle. Over the last few years the incidence of bovine TB has increased so much that compensation payments to farmers have risen from £1.3m in 1999-2000 to £15.2m in 2007-2008.

The cull will take place over a wide area and will mean the testing of up to 35% of the Welsh herd for TB.The cull is welcomed by farmers, who have long blamed badgers for passing on the disease.Wildlife groups have strongly

denied this and insist that the Welsh government have “cherry picked” scientific research that backs up a cull while disregarding contrary evidence.

The BBC reported that Ms. Jones said:“This is a difficult decision to take and it has not been taken lightly. I am very aware of the strong views on this issue.” And she had given “due consideration to the divergence of scientific and political opinion” on the matter.

“I want to make it absolutely clear that the badger remains a protected species in Wales and the conditions of the Badger Act are firmly in force. Illegal action will not be tolerated,” she said.

BOOK REVIEWS THE ACORN HOUSE COOKBOOK Arthur Potts-Dawson With a foreword

by Jamie Oliver Published by Hodder & Stoughton 1st May 2008 Price: £20.00 Arthur Potts-Dawson is on a mission to change our throwaway habits.With this personal guide to seasonal food and how to cook it, award-winning recipes, and chapters on every aspect of simple, sustainable cooking - from how to source locally-grown to kitting out an eco-kitchen (complete with wormery). It’s a good book, easily readable and crammed full of excellent recipes with chapters on growing food and seasonal shopping.The growing your own section talks a good talk, but doesn’t really help you with actually growing – but that’s out of the scope of this book.All in all a great read.

THE SELF-SUFFICIENTISH BIBLE Andy and Dave Hamilton. Published by Hodder & Stoughton 1st May 2008. Price: £30.00

THE REAL GOOD LIFE: VILLAGERS’ SUPERMARKET SNUB The Daily Mail reports that a whole village has started to work together to provide its own food.Villagers of Martin, in Hampshire, are now real life versions of the Good Life.They work on a rota system and raise their own chickens and pigs and grow potatoes, garlic, onions, chillis and green vegetables on eight acres of rented land. Of the 164 families who live in Martin, 101 have signed up as members of Future Farms for an annual £2 fee, although the produce can be sold to anyone who wants to buy it.

The community allotment is run by a committee and has a market place in the village where food can be sold.They also have a telephone system and a website: www.futurefarms.org.uk, where you can find out all you need to know about the enterprise.

They say,“It is our hope that increasing numbers of people will join us in this exciting venture based on good prices, good flavour and local origins (so local that you can visit the fields on foot!)”

Andy and Dave are interesting people.This book is the natural result of their website and forum, where thousands of people have shared their green living tips.This book is full of tips. It’s quite a cheap book, working out at around 5 pence a tip.There are 400 pages of them! There are sections on everything from repairing a puncture while on a cycling holiday to how to use a toothbrush in a green way.

There are pages in this book where you might wonder why you bought this book.Then there are pages of sheer genius.The keeping healthy and cooking pages match beautifully and some of the practical sections are well worked out.

More than anything, this is a young persons book. It might not be the only book out there with this information, but it certainly is the most accessible to a modern generation.

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NEWS BOOK REVIEWS THE TRANSITION HANDBOOK Rob Hopkins. Published by Green Books 2008.

Price: £12.95 Ron Hopkins has produced a rare book that gathers together the information needed to make your town a transition town.When I first read it there were a lot of words to come to terms with, transition, peak oil, climate change, climate change denial.They all made me angry. I have an aversion to semi-political eco-speak (see – I am doing it now!) But this isn’t an angry book, it’s a busy one. It catalogues the route and background needed to make your town a transition town, where everything is local, everything is made by locals and the local economy is more in tune with the environment, people grow much of their own food and even use their own, local currency.

For that reason this book is required reading, and well worth the time spent understanding what it means. It is not just for people who will change the political direction of towns and cities, it is for those who will actually change towns and cities.

The book is sort of chronological in its aspect, bringing the reader through theory to actual scenarios and motivational chapters on how to actually get things moving, with action plans and press releases.

Then there are sentences that make me smile still, and I’m on my third reading.“Totness, twinned with Narnia.” Maybe it’s worth the money just for that!

INTERNATIONAL KITCHEN GARDEN DAY Kitchen Garden Day is an annual celebration of food produced on a human-scale. It is an opportunity for people around the world to gather in their gardens with friends, family and members of their local community to celebrate the multiple pleasures and benefits of home-grown, hand-made foods.

How people celebrate International Kitchen Garden Day and with whom is up to them. Some choose to do so in public ways with large gatherings of friends and neighbours, whereas others opt for a more intimate celebration with close family. Here are a few ideas for some activities you might consider organizing, depending on the level of involvement you would like to have: E Walking tour of gardens in your area E Kitchen garden or local agriculture potluck E Benefit for a local food/gardening charity E Kitchen garden taste-test E Harvest or planting party E Kitchen garden “teach in” E Single food theme party E Activity at a local farm For more details visit: www.kitchengardeners.org

HELP SAVE RATTY Gardeners are being asked to help save the water vole.

The River & Rowing Museum hopes its show garden at Chelsea Flower Show garden will inspire and motivate waterside gardeners and those within 1km of a watercourse, to get involved in helping to secure Ratty’s survival.

The water vole is Britain’s fastest declining mammal. 1990 levels recorded a national water vole population of just over seven million across the UK. By 1998 numbers had crashed to less than 1 million, a decline of almost 90 per cent in just seven years.

Predation by American Mink and poor watercourse management have accelerated its decline.The Government has recognised its plight and from 6 April 2008 the water vole will be given extra protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Gardeners are uniquely placed to

help halt the water vole’s decline.

Native planting can create a green refuge for water voles and other wildlife as well as creating a beautiful garden.

The Garden’s website – www.rattysrefuge.co.uk – provides planting ideas and tips for water vole-friendly gardens as well as blogs and pictures charting the progress of River & Rowing Museum’s Ratty’s Refuge at Chelsea.

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HF ISSUE 3 P10-12 Q&AS

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YOUR SAY

The response to our first two issues has been amazing. It seems like half the country is making butter and low fat bacon, and they are beginning to tell us all about it! These pages are yours, so if you have a funny egg or have made up some kind of fantastic device, this is the place for you!

SEND YOUR LETTERS TO: Home Farmer Magazine The Good Life Press Ltd. PO Box 536 Preston PR2 9ZY Or email them to: editor@homefarmer. co.uk Or why not join our forum on: www.homefarmer.co.uk

Right: Japanese Quail egg.

Top right:The home-made Heath Robinson cheese press and, below: the cheese produced.

HEATH ROBINSON? Having finished reading through the second issue of your magazine, I thought I’d take a few minutes to offer my congratulations to you and your staff for producing a great publication. My wife and I have enjoyed the first two issues so much that we’ve already taken out a subscription, and are looking forward to issue three and more inspirational ideas.

I was interested to see an article about cheese making in your second issue, as this is something I’ve tried a few times.

Your writer’s comments about being able to make a cheese press from whatever you have lying around the house are entirely correct.You and your readers might be interested in the attached photo of the very HeathRobinson contraption that I used for my first attempt at making a pressed cheese last Christmas.

It’s constructed from a baking tray, an upturned colander, a cheese mould and follower, a thick plastic water “glass”, a bit of spare wood, some string and the largest weights from a set of dumbbells.

Mad as it looks, it was quite effective, and produced some great Wensleydale-like cheese for us.

One side effect of the

construction was that the cheese had the concave imprint of the colander on it so not only can you get some tasty cheese from a setup like this, but it can have something that looks more interesting than a shop bought cheese too. I wonder if any of your other readers produce any oddly shaped cheeses?

Perhaps your writers could clarify something for me on cheese making? Your article didn’t specify anything about the types of pots you can use for the cheese making process.The instructions I’d read in the past suggested that you should use stainless steel pots and utensils when making cheese, rather than other metals, however I don’t think I’d read anything that really explained why. Does the choice of pot actually make any difference to the results? Any suggestions appreciated. Keep up the good work!

Jeremy Davis Menston,West Yorkshire.

I think stainless steel is the best one you can use. I don’t like the idea of acids next to copper and I do worry about aluminium and acid too. Paul

QUIBBLY QUAIL I thought the readers might like to see my quail egg.This egg was laid today by one of my Japanese Quail. It looks like she has been eating too many peanuts! Has any of the readers ever had such an egg from their Quails?

I love the magazine and am glad I subscribed for 12 months, I keep telling all my friends. It has been of great help.

Caroline Baker Stockley, nr. Devizes, Wiltshire.

NEW CHICK ON THE BLOCK I thought you might be interested

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YOUR SAY We decided to create a website: www.weeditandreap .co.uk as a kind of diary of our exploits over the years so we could see what could be achieved with a little time and effort.There are pictures, information and lots of video footage of what we have been up to.

I hope this may be of some interest to yourselves and your readers and give others the encouragement we have had from all the friends we have made along the way.

Tim Wright

to see my new Cobar chick that hatched at 1.20pm 14th April 08. I bought some hatching eggs from The Wernlas Collection on Easter Sunday.They were stored in the glovebox of the car for the journey home & then put into the incubator Easter Monday. I’d seen the other eggs wiggling about, but seen nothing from this particular egg.

However, I came in from work & there was a large crack in the egg with a beak poking out! It took 20 minutes to get out from pipping!

We have called it Bumble, as it has faint little white stripes on its back. It got a little Partridge Cochin chick friend hatch today (also from Wernlas), which is called Boon. So it’s Bumble & Boon sharing the baby blanket in the brooder.

Emma Roberts Sandbach, Cheshire.

WEED IT AND REAP! Hi Diana and Paul, I have just subscribed to your magazine and it is fantastic, thank you.

Myself and a friend of mine Luke Raddy decided to take on a allotment a couple of years ago, it was a total mess but we persevered and now we think we are getting somewhere.

We had no knowledge about growing things as neither of us have very big gardens or up to then any real interest in gardening.

Spurred on by magazines like yours and many good programmes on the television we took the plunge and have enjoyed every moment of it.

GOATS I am really interested in keeping goats on my land and wondered if you could answer a few questions at some point in your magazine.

First of all I wondered if there were any specific permissions you need to keep goats? Do they need a special licence like pigs?

Secondly I wondered if you had to keep them on grass. I have a large concrete yard with access to a field at the back and I wondered if this would be OK. Thirdly, would I have to kill all the male goats? I have read that

Above: Emma’s new born chick.

Right: Simon needs some answers to his goat questions.

Can any readers help?

THE WINNER OF THE EGLO FROM OMLET IS: GRAEME WARKCUP FROM TYNE AND WEAR. It must have been fate.When we rang to tell them the good news his wife, who answered the phone, couldn’t stop laughing.Apparently, Graeme had wanted hens for a long time but she would never agree to them. Finally she relented and said that he could have hens if he won the competition!

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YOUR SAY you should kill them, as they are no real use.

Finally I would really love to be able to keep pigmy goats and larger ones together? Is this possible, or will they need separate places to live to avoid bullying? Thanks for all your help.

Simon Prince, Manton

business and I am only able to buy from a local supermarket.

Irene Siddall,Wirral

Goats are really cute animals, we hope you will enjoy them. Perhaps our readers might have the answers for Mr Prince? Post them to the Home Farmer office or send them in by email.

WILD JAM My Mum’s friend makes something called ‘Ditch Jam’ every year – it’s basically just a jam that comprises of anything collected from hedgerows whilst out walking – sloes, blackberries, rosehips, crab apples, haws... just throw it together and it actually tastes pretty good. Last year I made loads of cakes using our hen’s free range eggs (huge hit where I worked at the time) and the Ditch Jam filler went down a storm. I wouldn’t mind trying to make my own Ditch jam this year but have yet to get my hands on a preserving pan.

Can anyone recommend somewhere where I can get a preserving pan for a good price?

At present our grandmother’s

preserving pan is doing the rounds, but come jam making season everyone wants it! I tried Freecycle too to no avail, and the ones in the shops around here are really expensive.

Lucy Debenham Wilkinsons the hardware store is currently the cheapest place to get good pans.

BOX SCHEME I read with interest the article on vegetable box schemes in your first issue. I wonder if you would be able to tell me how you might find a box scheme in my local area.We used to have a greengrocer who grew most of his own produce, and beautiful it was too.

Sadly he has gone out of

The best way to find a box scheme is probably still by word of mouth. Failing that the Soil Association has some information of members in most areas who have box schemes.

SOIL ASSOCIATION South Plaza, Marlborough Street, Bristol BS1 3NX Tel: 0117 314 5000 SOIL ASSOCIATION SCOTLAND 18C Liberton Brae,Tower Mains, Edinburgh, EH16 6AE Tel: 0131 666 2474

SEND YOUR LETTERS TO: Home Farmer Magazine The Good Life Press Ltd. PO Box 536 Preston PR2 9ZY Or email them to: editor@homefarmer. co.uk Or why not join our forum on: www.homefarmer.co.uk

TOOL CLUB I just thought I’d write to let you know how we organise our tools on our street. Each of the neighbours pays £5.00 a week to a fund and from this money we buy all our tools, compost, plants and fertilisers.We are able to get really good deals when we buy in bulk and so far we have been able to buy a tiller, a really good lawn mower and any number of spades, hoes, rakes etc. Since a number of our neighbours have polytunnels, we are able to start all our seeds in the spring and share them out.

It is like having our own allotment society with our own gardens.

Top:Veg box schemes are very popular.

Below right: Jam can be made using just about any fruit.

Below: Spread the cost of tools by sharing – what a great idea!

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HF 3 P14-15 CABBAGES

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CABBAGES

Of Cabbages and Kings Cabbages have been a staple for two thousand years.

If the Romans could grow it, so can you!

THE WILD CABBAGE, sometimes known as the sea cabbage, has an interesting distribution around the UK. It is frequently found on the south coast, and within a few miles of a Roman fort or town. Indeed this so called wild plant was introduced by the Romans; it is just another garden escapee, but one of great antiquity. Now anyone who tries to tell you that cabbages are a difficult crop are rebuffed by the wild cabbage – if it has lasted sixteen hundred years around the country after the Romans have left, then it must be really easy to grow. It is easy to worry about cabbage because of this, but there is no need.

good cabbage for a meal. You can grow cabbages in pots and they will grow like a Roman candle, but you can pick off the leaves and boil them up just like any other, or put them raw in a salad.

CONSTANT CROPPING You can sow and harvest cabbage at any time of the year. It takes between 20 and 32 weeks after sowing, depending on the variety you use, to produce a good cabbage, but you don’t really need a

Cabbage grown in a pot – not hearty, but just as good.

Top: A good strong hearty cabbage – January King.

HOW TO GROW CABBAGES There are basically two ways of sowing cabbage; direct or transplanting.

You can sow cabbages directly into the soil in which they are going to grow. Sow thinly in drills that are 5cm deep and 60cm apart. Cover and firm in. This way you get a lot of seedlings and these need to be thinned out so that you get healthy plants around 45cm by 60cm from each other. A drill is a scratch in the soil.

This uses a lot of seed to grow cabbages, so the idea of growing in a seed-bed and transplanting the plants to their final growing positions caught on. A seed bed is a finely prepared bed where the seeds are sown and once the plants have four good leaves and look sturdy, they are carefully pulled up and transplanted to their final growing positions. Now the seedbed can be a bed in the garden somewhere, or more usually these days, a tray of individual cells, called modules.

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Caterpillars need to eat too – just not everything in the garden!

A CURE FOR CLUBROOT Cabbages suffer from a fungal infection that distorts the roots and stunts the growth of the plant. Clubroot, or Plasmodiophora brassicae, works mostly on young cabbages and is slowed almost to a standstill in lime. So you can grow cabbages in 8cm pots and then dig holes in the soil to receive the plants once they have grown up somewhat. Each hole can be given a good handful (wear gloves) of lime, and, although you will not get rid of clubroot entirely, it will help considerably.

SOIL Cabbages need good, rich soil that has been well dug into a fine tilth. It needs to be easy draining but must hold some water. One way to prepare this is to dig in a lot of well-rotted manure. A dressing of an organic fertiliser will give the young seedlings a boost.

HEARTY If you grow cabbages in cramped conditions they grow like spears, consequently cabbages in pots grow straight into the sky. You can still use the leaves, as we have already said. Give them room and the leaves will form a ball, or head.

The minimum space to create heads is around 45cm.

especially if it is very wet. Some people earth up their cabbages like potatoes, something I have never tried. It is supposed to help with frost protection.

All year Cabbages

PESTS

AUTUMN QUEEN Sow: June Cropping: late Autumn/Winter

Birds and caterpillars and cabbage root fly are pests best avoided by using a fine mesh. Some people use discs of carpet or any barrier and lay it around the plant so that the fly cannot lay its eggs at the root. Other insect pests such as whitefly and mealy aphid are a problem that can be dealt with by using an organic insecticide or a jet wash of something like simple soap to keep them under control.

If you have any problem with your cabbages, do not compost infected material and when you move around the garden keep your boots off the soil by only walking on the paths.

Cabbages, obviously, are troubled by caterpillars. I have found the best way to keep this under control is to cover the growing plants by fine mesh. But, and it’s a big but, I always grow one or two that are open to the skies because butterflies need food too!

The very best way of growing good cabbages is to keep the nutrient content of the soil high. Plants have their own immune systems and if they are given a rich soil they will grow to be very healthy.

JANUARY KING Sow: Spring, early under cloche.

Harvest: December onwards – also works for November sowings.

MINICOLE Sow:April to July Harvest: October onwards CARAMBA Sow: February indoors to June Harvest: June to November CHARMANT Sow: Spring Harvest: Summer PIXIE Forms good greens and can be sown in the summer successionally until autumn RODEO Red Cabbage – sow in spring, gather in late summer. Needs to be pickled for storage.

HARVESTING Cabbages can be pulled at any time. You can eat any of it – even the roots, but they will be a bit tough. If you grow cabbages in different seasons you should have them every week of the year. E

CARE When the cabbage grows some of the leaves die off. These should be removed because they can promote infection.

Keep them weeded with the hoe, but once the leaves begin to touch there is no need to continue this. They will benefit from a dressing of fertiliser about two months into growing; a good mulch of well rotted compost is ideal.

Try not to let the plants dry out, and once they are established they will only need watering in times of drought. Split cabbages are caused by a lot of watering after a prolonged dry period, so keep the water evenly available. You can cloche cabbages grown through the winter –

Yound plants spaced to heart up

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RASPBERRIES

Blowing a Raspberry

Raspberries are one of the easiest soft fruit to grow, and almost as simple as blowing a raspberry! Jayne Neville shows that they require very little in the way of care compared to the huge rewards they will give you at harvest time RASPBERRIES ARE NORMALLY purchased as bare rooted canes in the autumn through to winter for immediate planting. One of the earliest raspberry varieties is “Glen Moy”, quite often ready for picking as early as mid-June. The vigorous canes have very few thorns and the berries are large and firm with a delicious flavour. A more modern introduction is “Malling Minerva”, which has all the same attributes being another early fruiter, but is even more disease resistant. Depending on the weather, you could be picking fruit from early June until mid/late July.

Maincrops can produce very heavy yields indeed, some 10 canes producing up to 40lbs of fruit in a season so you don’t need too many plants to get a very worthwhile return. “Glen Ample” is widely planted, yielding very large succulent fruit which holds well on the canes – good if you aren’t able to pick them every day – and they are excellent for freezing too. Expect to have raspberries ready for harvesting from late June to early August. An older variety is “Malling Jewel”, reliable and tolerant of most conditions. It produces good volumes of large, juicy fruit.

In my view best choice for late crops still has to be the variety “Autumn Bliss”.

It’s been around for years, is reliable and

has huge cropping potential. Take a trip to any garden centre that sells raspberry canes and you should see specimens of this variety – testament to its popularity.

I planted two rows of “Autumn Bliss” when we moved here seven years ago and the amount of raspberries they have produced each year from August into October has been amazing.

For a change, why not grow a yellow fruiting variety? They look great when served mixed up with the traditional red berries. “All Gold” is another late raspberry and a close relation of “Autumn Bliss”. Just as delicious as the red varieties, and very popular with wine-making enthusiasts.

PLANTING YOUR RASPBERRIES Raspberries love soils that include plenty of rich organic matter. They prefer a deep, well prepared soil that holds moisture and adding lots of well rotted compost or manure to the trench when you are planting will fit the bill admirably. The ideal time for establishing a new raspberry bed or planting replacement canes is in the late autumn and winter.

Clear the site of perennial weeds before you plant or you’ll be forever fighting them back in years to come.

The planting trench needs to be a

Sugared Raspberries Wow! This is brilliant and all you need are equal weights of raspberry and sugar. Spread the sugar on a tray and pull the raspberries off their hulls.

Then simply mash them together and mix everything up. Put into a cool, sterile jar and into the fridge for a couple of days. It will last a year and is wonderful on ice-cream.

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17 spade’s depth and about 60cm wide.

After breaking up the soil surface at the bottom of the trench, put in a generous (10cm) layer of well-rotted manure or compost. Start filling the trench back in with a mixture of soil and organic matter. You are aiming to plant the raspberry canes just a fraction lower than they were at the nursery where they were raised (you should be able to see traces of the original planting line on the stems); this will encourage vigorous growth at ground level as the plants establish. Once the soil is at the level you require, lightly firm around the plant and cut off the canes to within 15cm of the ground. Each plant should be about 45cm apart with a generous space between the rows (1.5metres) if you can spare the room, remembering the fruit needs sunlight in order to ripen and you will need to get between the rows to pick them.

Early and maincrop raspberries need lots more support than the autumn varieties, which in any case are cut down to ground level each autumn once they have finished fruiting. Simple post and wire supports will be adequate for your earlies and maincrops to stop them swaying around and breaking in the wind. The new growth can then be tied into the wires each year as it grows. If your garden is particularly exposed then you might need to support even the late varieties, but in general they stand well on their own.

RASPBERRY CARE AND PRUNING Keeping the area around the new raspberry plants weed free is particularly important during their first year

and mulching with well rotted manure or compost each winter will help suppress all but the most tenacious weeds as well as ensuring they receive the nutrition they need to produce the following year’s crop.

Pruning is pretty simple when you know which varieties you have. Basically, the early and mid-season fruiting raspberries always bear their fruit on the previous year’s growth. What this means is that once fruiting has finished, you will need to cut down all the canes that have borne fruit down to ground level. There will also be some new growth which has not yet fruited and these should not be cut back because they will bear next year’s raspberries.

The old canes are easily distinguished from the young ones as they have a drier, mature look to them and may still be carrying the dried remains of fruit clusters.

Autumn fruiting varieties are much simpler to manage and, because they fruit on the current year’s growth, all canes can be cut right back to the ground in winter.

The new growth that appears in spring will be the wood that bears your raspberry crop later that same year.

Unless you are lucky enough to grow your soft fruit in a purpose built fruit cage, then your raspberries will definitely need protecting from wild birds. Once the fruit has started to develop, drape some light nylon netting over the plants. You could take this a stage further and knock a few poles into the ground to support the netting, allowing room for you to get underneath for picking without having to remove the net. You might still lose a few to our feathered friends, but the lions share will be yours!

PESTS AND DISEASES Thankfully, raspberries do not suffer from too many problems. They can occasionally suffer from attacks from aphids, particularly on the tender young shoots at the top of the canes. If caught early you can squish them with your fingers (wear rubber gloves if you are squeamish!) or spray them with an insecticidal soap mixture. Remember you’re going to be eating the fruit shortly, so don’t spray with anything nasty.

Aphids are also carriers of a disease called mosaic virus so it’s well worth nipping them in the bud (sorry!) before they cause big problems. The symptoms are a yellowing of the leaves between the veins. Once the plant is infected there is little that can be done apart from removing and burning the affected plants to stop the virus from spreading.

Grey mould or botrytis could be a problem if the summer is a wet one.

Only the fruit will be affected so if you can, pick off the mouldy ones, which should stop it spreading to the rest of the fruit in the cluster.

Raspberry beetle larvae feed on the ripe fruits, then fall off into the soil and turn into pupae. The larvae damage the fruit, the tell-tale signs are brown, shrivelled patches. To interrupt the beetles’ lifecycle you can hoe the soil around the plants to unearth the pupae which will then hopefully get eaten by birds and other predators. Careful spraying with derris on the fruit itself is a last resort if the problem becomes really severe. E

HF 3 P18-20 STRAWBERRIES

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STRAWBERRIES Wimbledon is not the only place for strawberries. There is the allotment, garden, patio, hanging basket or the balcony - you can grow them anywhere, says Paul Peacock

Liquid Sunshine – Starting Strawberries IT WAS THE Romans who popularised the strawberry in Europe. They are also native to the New World too, and native Americans have been eating them for millennia. In medieval times they were used as a rich person’s fruit. Maybe, if you were a gardener on a rich estate, you could steal the odd one, but you’d have to be careful because they were always counted!

The fruits were used in medicines and expensive cordials and woe betide anyone found stealing them.

There are two possible suggestions regarding the name. The first states that strawberries get their name from the fact they were traditionally grown with straw under the leaves so that the fruit might not rest on the soil and become spoiled by the mud. The other idea is that they were

once called strewn berries due to the way the fruit seems to be strewn about the plant. Personally I prefer the first - the straw also makes for an excellent deterrent against slugs and snails. They’re also grown in pots for the same reason, with the fruit dangling over the side or resting on pebbles.

fine. They are very hardy and will easily live through the worst winters.

In the spring I cover them with fleece if the weather is very poor.

Although not essential, they do prefer a well drained soil, so put plenty of grit underneath them. The basic job of a strawberry is to turn

GROWING STRAWBERRIES The only time you have to worry about strawberries is if you have new growth in a frosty spring. Every other possible combination of weather conditions and plant type is

Varieties HONEOYE This variety seems to do well in cold, damp situations and has been found to perform in Scotland.

HAPIL Prefers dry conditions and can be susceptible to wilt – but crops really well and the fruit are all similar in size and form.

PEGASUS This one is fine in wet conditions and stands up to wilts of all kinds really well too.

CAMBRIDGE FAVOURITE This is an old variety that is still going strong. It is very sweet and will give you a perfect bed of strawberries.

FLORENCE This one is good on organic plots because it’s very good at disease resistance, as well as consistently giving good fruit.

SOPHIE This crops until late September in warm places and is the latest variety. It really does crop that late – I have had a bowl of them on my birthday!

GARIGUETTE This French variety is unsurpassed for flavour and deserves to be a ‘must have’ in anyone’s plot.

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STRAWBERRY OAT SLICE This is based on an ancient Cherokee recipe.They used to mash strawberries into oats and bake them over an open fire. Both the oats and the strawberries were seen as being very beneficial to health.Today a version is still made in the States using flour but not oats, and is more like a cake.All we have done to the recipe is to add some sugar and a little butter.

INGREDIENTS 300g porridge oats 100g sugar 100g butter 400g strawberries

Sugar and mash your strawberries.

Combine with the oats and sugar.

Pour the mixture into a heavily buttered tray.

Slice straight after cooking and then cool.

METHOD 1 Place the butter in a small pan on a low light to melt.

2 Hull the strawberries (pull off the leaves and the hard bit at the back) and place in a bowl with a good desert spoon of sugar.

3 Combine the sugar and the oats and mix well.

4 Mash or (blend roughly) all the strawberries and combine with the oats and sugar mixture.

5 Pour the butter into this mixture, combining with a spoon, and then transfer to a buttered shallow baking tin such as you might use to make a Swiss roll.

6 Bake in the oven at 200oC (390oF, Gas 6) for 25 minutes.

7 Cut into slices while still hot, but allow the slice to cool before removing. Sprinkle with a little sugar.This sweet dessert doesn’t set like an oat biscuit, but is soft and goes well with ice cream.

You can refrigerate once cool to set the slice even more.

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STRAWBERRIES sunshine into lovely flavoured, sweet juice. So the more sunshine they get the better. Originally the plant was a native of the woodland edge, but just as poor modern dairy cows have become milk generating machines, modern strawberries are sugar factories. So get them into the sun!

PLANTING Strawberries are usually sold as new plants and perhaps the very best time to plant them is April and May, but any time of the year is good except outside in winter or a frosty spring. Plantings in September also do well. However, you can start them off indoors now – most of the nurseries sell plants in the winter and they can be given a good start in a small pot of compost. Be careful, though; I have frequently had strawberry plants posted to me wrapped in wet newspaper and then pushed into a plastic bag, all mangled up, so buy from a reputable source.

Dig the soil to a spade’s-depth and incorporate a good deal of well-rotted compost. A good handful of grit in the bottom increases the drainage and prolongs the summertime growth if it’s rainy. Then, in May, lay straw under the leaves and developing fruit so that none of them are resting on the ground.

Plant the strawberries so the crown in the centre of the plant is at the soil’s surface. Too deep and they will be susceptible to rot, too shallow and they will refuse to grow at all.

The plants need to be watered every couple of days when first planted, but after a couple of weeks they should be fine, although don’t water so much as to cause puddles.

A LIE When I said you don’t have to worry about strawberries, I lied! They do have problems with green fly. I use my finger to remove them mostly. However, the

The growing point of strawberries is the only real tender part when young.

greenfly also carry strawberry viruses, and strawberries really suffer from viral infections. A plant takes a year to become well established. In its second year it is in full production, in its third year it begins to succumb but is still quite well and in its fourth year it is not worth keeping. So every third year it is best to replace your strawberries. This is done by using the plants own system for dealing with this problem: runners.

RUNNERS Most strawberries throw out sideways branches called runners, and at intervals little plantlets appear. In the first year these should be cut off to allow the plants to develop. The runners in the second year can be used to create new plants. Where a plantlet appears, simply lift the runner and lay it into a pot of compost.

Anchor this down with a pebble.

By the end of the summer you will have another strawberry plant. Simply allow the plant to grow in the pot for the first year and then use this to replace its parent the following year.

Your replacement plants can be kept in a cool greenhouse in their little pots over the winter and planted out in the spring. You need to acclimatise them to the outdoor life by taking them out during the day and bringing them in at night.

These plants are so tough that you can ignore them and they will still grow, even though they look half-dead.

Strawberries can get fungal problems such as botrytis and mildew, and the best way of dealing with these include spacing, so air can circulate around them, and copper-based sprays. E

Strawberries are grown on straw to keep them clean and slug free.

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HF 3 P22-24 BIG CROPS

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SMALL SIZED GARDENS

Space Savers Anyone can be a home farmer as far as growing vegetables is concerned.

Whether your garden is large or pocket sized, a courtyard, balcony or even a window box, Jayne Neville shows we can still grow our own fresh, delicious vegetables WHAT CAN I GROW? There is really very little you can’t grow in a small space if you are determined enough to do so (never has the saying “where there’s a will there’s a way” been more appropriate) and in fact many varieties of vegetable have been developed with ordinary sized gardens in mind. Dwarf varieties of broad beans and tomatoes, compact plants that produce baby beetroot and mini cabbages are just some of the more compact vegetables readily available from the various seed companies and through garden centres.

Both low growing and even tall plants can be accommodated given a little imagination and can be just as attractive as many flowering plants, given the chance.

Some vegetables lend themselves very well to harvesting early as ‘baby’ vegetables. Leeks are normally a long-term crop, taking as long as 30 to 45 weeks from sowing to harvest, but if you want tender baby leeks you can pick them once they have reached pencil thickness at just 13 weeks.

When choosing your vegetables you may notice on the seed packets a symbol denoting the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Award of Garden Merit’. This award is given to plants deemed to be of outstanding excellence for use in ordinary gardens. The plants are rated for hardiness, resistance to pests and diseases, good availability and all-round value for the home gardener. These tried and tested varieties are a good starting point for your first steps into raising vegetables, but don’t be put off from experimenting with any type of vegetable that takes your fancy. Gardening is not an exact science, and having a go at growing something you like, even if you cannot offer it perfect conditions, will sometimes pay off with a decent crop. It’s this slight unpredictability that can make vegetable growing so much fun and definitely never boring!

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Small Space Fruit & Veg HERBS OF ALL TYPES Constant harvesting of leaves and stems will ensure continued new growth and keep plants compact.

A large tub of lavender – kept us in colour and aroma for years.

Parsley and thyme on the windowsill – even the smallest space can grow you something!

STRAWBERRIES Ideal for small spaces and containers.

Will need to be netted to protect crops from birds.

TOMATO Any outdoor variety for growing in beds, borders, grow bags and large containers.‘Totem F1’ dwarf variety perfect for pots and windowboxes, ‘Tumbling Tom’ can even be planted in hanging baskets.

Chives grow great in a small pot – always handy for the omlettes.

WHERE CAN I GROW?

A small raised bed under construction. If you use hollow blocks for your beds you can plant in the holes too.

plants, why not incorporate some vegetables in your planting scheme?

If you are lucky enough to have a Striking architectural plants such as garden that can accommodate a globe artichokes (ultimate height 4ft, vegetable plot, then the scope for growing your own produce is enormous. spread 3ft, silver-green serrated leaves), Black Tuscany kale, colourful chards You can either simply allocate an area and leaf beets in an for your vegetables, array of reds, yellows, dig it over and VERTICAL SPACES oranges and vivid prepare the soil SUCH AS WALLS AND greens or a border ready for planting a edging made up of wide range of TRELLIS CAN HAVE low-growing cut-andvegetables, or create come-again lettuce a number of raised CLIMBING (‘red’ and ‘green salad beds with paths in VEGETABLES LIKE bowl’ for between. Although raised beds will cut RUNNER OR FRENCH example, can look down the available CLIMBING BEANS just as area you have to attractive grow, it will allow TRAINED UP THEM as flowering you easier access to plants and are much more your vegetables without having to step on the soil. It will effectively deepen the useful!)

Garden size apart, topsoil layer, creating ideal conditions an important factor to for deep rooting crops like parsnips, asparagus and long, tapering varieties of note is whether the area you are planning to carrot. Raised beds can be made out of use as your kitchen old railway sleepers, thick planks of garden receives enough wood fixed in place in the ground with sunlight during the battens or a low wall made up of two or spring, summer and three rows of bricks. autumn months. Spaces In a garden that already includes that are constantly dark borders with shrubs and flowering

COURGETTE Pick fruits regularly for a continuous crop, need large containers but two plants will produce a generous crop.

‘Tempra F1’ quick maturing, compact habit, green fruit,‘Goldie’ bright yellow fruit with crisper texture.

SALAD LEAVES Corn salad, all varieties of rocket, any lettuce including: ‘Tom Thumb’ dwarf butterhead, ‘Little Gem’ cos variety, ‘Oakleaf’ dark green tinged with red lobed leaves suited to cut and come again.

CHARD ‘Bright Lights’ mixture of red, yellow, orange and green coloured stems and leaves.

BEETROOT ‘Detroit 2 Bolivar’ deep red, tender fleshed, can be used for production of golf ball sized baby beet or left to grow to full size.

PEA Choose a tall variety for climbing up supports, trellis, etc., or pea ‘Half Pint’ for growing on the windowsill or patio – only reaches 12-15 inches (30-37cm high) and needs no support.

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SMALL SIZED GARDENS and cold are best avoided. Most other environmental problems can usually be overcome: in overly sunny sites shading can be provided, in exposed places, windbreaks can used to protect the plants, but it is much trickier to remedy the light situation in a shaded corner, overshadowed by a high stone wall or a neighbour’s house.

However, some vegetables and herbs are tolerant of light shade and these include spinach, parsley, mint, Chinese cabbage, corn salad, lettuce, peas and pak choi.

CONTAINER GROWING Many vegetables are ideally suited to growing in containers and pots, so if you have a courtyard or patio, the only real limit to your kitchen garden is how many containers you can squeeze into it. Vertical spaces such as walls and trellis can have climbing vegetables like runner or French climbing beans trained up them. This is a great way to use space that otherwise might be wasted. Using a ready made support in this way requires none of the time and trouble allotment gardeners have to go to to erect freestanding supports for their climbing beans. Planted in a large trough at the base of a vertical structure, several bean plants will rapidly grow to cover a wall with foliage and flowers, before developing a tasty crop of beans late in the summer. A willow or hazel wigwam makes an attractive feature in a garden; so why not place it in a large pot? It could be just the thing for planting some fast growing early peas or a couple of outdoor cucumbers to scramble up. A hardy, outdoor ‘ridge’ type cucumber such as ‘Klaro F1’ (a fairly compact plant whose young fruits can be used for pickling) or ‘Marketmore’ (undemanding and high yields throughout the season) would be ideal for this.

The containers you use can be as diverse as you like. Normally the deeper they are the better, but shallow ceramic sinks, trays and windowsill boxes (minimum depth of soil: 6 inches or 15cm) can be used to grow herbs, salad leaves, radishes and garlic very successfully. Many a budding gardener (myself included) started off by using grow-bags for tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers on the patio, and these still offer one of the easiest ways to raise a few home grown vegetables – just cut a hole in the bag and plant. If you have a choice, go for the larger, more expensive bags.

The chances are that the compost will be of better quality and the bigger volume means longer moisture retention.

Half barrels are excellent for larger vegetables needing greater soil depth, fruit trees and root crops and the natural materials they are made from make them very pleasing to the eye. Old galvanised buckets and watering cans can make interesting containers for your vegetables, but make sure you make a few holes in the base.

Crocks (clay shards from broken terracotta pots) or large stones placed at the bottom of the containers will help drainage and stop the holes getting clogged up with compost.

With all container growing, the trick is to use a good quality compost (bought-in multi purpose, either peat or soil based or a compost formulated specifically for containers) and never let it dry out completely.

Watering will have to be carried out daily – in the hottest months at least twice a day – to keep the plants growing on strongly. Applying a thick layer of mulch (bark or gravel) on the surface of the soil around the plant will stop it drying out so quickly.

Arranging the pots and containers in groups will ensure that those at the back receive some shade and not dry out so quickly. Alternatively, the pots can be stood on trays of gravel which are kept topped up with water. Soil in containers quickly becomes deprived of nutrients and this needs to be topped up by feeding the plants weekly in the growing season.

Seaweed liquid fertiliser is organic and suits most vegetables. It is also a good idea to ‘top dress’ the soil a couple of times with organic matter such as garden compost or well rotted manure. E

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HF 3 P26-27 HERBAL TEA

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HERBAL TEAS

l a b r Time forHe Tea! Diana Sutton shares her passion for quick and easy ‘pick me ups’ for anytime of the day

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varieties, though I do still I HAVE ALWAYS enjoyed drinking herbal and fruit teas, not just because I buy my favourite ones.

You need a good, fine tea strainer, thought they were better for me, but preferably an infuser if you just wish because they tasted refreshing and to make a single cup, but a small were pleasant cold. This stems from when I was a teacher and never finished teapot is easy to use. Just place the required amount of a cup of tea or coffee as herb or fruit in the time wouldn’t allow such strainer or pot and leave a luxury, so by the time I THE EASIEST to infuse for 5-10 minutes. was ready my drink was AND MOST This is the general rule for cold. Fruit and herbal all the recipes in this teas are fine cold, so I POPULAR article, and where there is decided to drink them during the day and HERBAL TEA IS any change this will be written in the recipe. I’ve found them exactly PEPPERMINT also given each of the teas right, palatable hot and names as a bit of fun. Well, cold. They became a why should cocktails have talking point with staff all the kudos! and children alike as some of them are The easiest and most popular herbal very aromatic, and many of my friends tea is Peppermint. Mint is very easy to became converts and enjoyed a cup of grow, but can also be intrusive. It is herbal tea during the day. better to grow it in a pot and have it free I must confess to buying ready standing, or bury the pot with the plant made tea bags for obvious convenin it under the soil. This will stop it from ience, but since then I have found spreading all over your garden. excellent recipes for home made

Peppermint tea THE AID TO DIGESTION 3g dried or 6g fresh finely chopped mint leaves 100ml boiling water This makes one cup of tea.

For larger quantities: 20g dried or 30g fresh mint leaves 500ml boiling water Add a little honey if desired.

This will make a small teapot of the tea.

Good for sharing.

Lemon balm has traditionally been used as a tonic for health. It benefits the general wellbeing of the drinker.

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27 John Evelyn (1620-1706) wrote that ‘Balm is sovereign for the brain, strengthening the memory and powerfully chasing away melancholy’.

The mild, lemony flavour also makes it a very refreshing drink.

Sweet Cherry & Cranberry drink THE REFRESHER

Lemon balm tea THE CLEAR HEAD 8g finely chopped lemon balm leaves 100ml boiling water Add a little honey to taste if sweetness is required.

2g dried or 4g fresh chopped mint leaves 5g dried, chopped raspberries 120ml boiling water Honey to taste

The next brew is one of my favourites, especially after a very busy day when, even though I am tired, restlessness can stop you relaxing. Chamomile and lavender are both renowned for their calming effects and make a very comforting tea drunk in the evening or anytime you want a relaxing moment.

Method 1 Mix all ingredients.

2 Leave to infuse for 15 minutes and sieve before consuming.

Lemon is often associated with cold cures and the next recipe is ideal for the times when you feel far from being in tiptop condition. The tea is especially good for soothing a sore throat during a cold, but can also be drunk whenever you feel like a refreshing pick me up.

6g dried cherries 5g dried cranberries 120ml boiling water 3 or 4 borage leaves Honey to taste Method 1 Put fruit in a teapot or jug.

2 Pour over boiling water.

3 Add honey and borage leaves.

4 Stir well and leave to cool.

5 Sieve if necessary.

Ginger is a wonderfully warming spice that goes really well with lemon flavours.

When I was expecting our youngest son I drank ginger tea to help with my nausea as it was the only thing which helped alleviate the sickly feeling. But now I drink this on a chilly Winter’s day when it can help warm you up. You could make this with dried ginger, but it is better with fresh.

Spicy Lemon tea THE WARMING ONE Juice and zest of a lemon 4g grated fresh ginger 3 teaspoons honey 100ml boiling water

Chamomile & Lavender tea THE BIG CALM 2g dried or 4g fresh chopped chamomile flowers 2g dried or 4g fresh lavender flowers (rub the florets off the main stem.

They will come away easily) 120ml boiling water Honey to taste.

Method 1 Combine all ingredients and allow to infuse.

2 Sieve before drinking.

Raspberry leaf tea is traditionally used to prepare women for childbirth but makes a good tea, especially when combined with mint and the addition of dried raspberry fruit adds to the depth of flavour.

Raspberry & Peppermint tea THE TUMMY SETTLER 3g dried or 5g fresh, finely chopped raspberry leaves

Lemon, Honey & Thyme drink THE COLD SOOTHER Juice of 1 lemon 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel (be careful to get only the zest, not the pith as this is VERY bitter) 1-2 tablespoons of honey 1g dried or 2g thyme leaves 100ml boiling water Method 1 Put thyme, juice and peel of lemon in jug.

2 Pour over boiling water and stir well.

Sieve into a cup or mug.

3 Add honey to taste.This needs to be sweeter than the others due to it being a cold soother. Drink while comfortably hot.

Dried fruit of all types is readily available to buy in the shops so, if you can’t dry the fruit yourself then buy it. I do so for this recipe. This drink is best served cold and in the Summer may be served with ice and the odd fresh cherry!

Method 1 Mix ginger, lemon zest and honey together.

2 Pour over lemon juice and boiling water.

3 Stir well and leave for 5 minutes to allow the flavours to develop before consuming.

4 Sieve if required. E

HF3 P28-30 SPIN

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SPINDLE SPINNING

Getting in a Spin!

A lace knitted scarf and a crocheted wrap were both made from the simplest equipment and some fleece and you can do it too.

Picture credit: Chris Frear.

More info ASSOCIATION OF GUILDS OF WEAVERS, SPINNERS, DYERS www.wsd.org.uk FIBRE SUPPLIERS SCOTTISH FIBRES 23 Damhead, Lothianburn, Edinburgh EH10 7EA www.scottishfibres.co.uk Tel: 0131 445 3899 P&M WOOLCRAFT Pindon End, Hanslope, Milton Keynes MK19 7HN www.pmwoolcraft.co.uk Tel: 01908 510277 WINGHAM WOOL WORK 70 Main Street,Wenworth, Rotherham, S.Yorkshire S62 7TN www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk Tel: 01226 742926 R & AA DOUGHTY Higher Bridge Farm, Lapford, Devon EX17 6AE Email: radoughty@hotmail.com Tel: 01363 83281

Beth Frear introduces us to the world of drop spindle spinning something you can do with a couple of CDs and a stick LEARNING TO SPINDLE spin will enable you to make handsome and original garments from a sustainable source, without cruelty to animals.

The sheep may wriggle as the shearer clips off their wool every June but they are very glad to be unwrapped from their thick Winter fleece.

No ‘spinster’ or unmarried young woman for millennia would dream of going anywhere without her spindle at her girdle and a pouch of washed and combed wool ready to draft into a fine yarn.

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EDITORS INTRODUCTION My first excursion into spinning came twelve years ago when I bought a spinning wheel. But for anyone wanting to learn to spin without spending a lot of money there is a much less expensive method. Since the Stone Age the spindle has been used to create yarn. A piece of wood and stone with a hole drilled through it were common artefacts thousands of years ago. Today you can buy a beautifully hand turned wooden spindle made from rare woods, but it’s equally effective to begin with the home made variety that costs just pennies.

Wool is the ideal fibre to use when you are learning to spin because it has a microscopic Velcro-like texture that makes the fibres stick tightly to each other under pressure. Twisting the ultra fine fibres together gives them immense strength and durability. The thickness of the spun wool may

vary from fine to chunky and thick, but the method is exactly the same. People spin all sorts of other fur, pet hairs and even human hair!

The process of pulling out combed wool from the spinner’s hands and allowing it to twist into a thread is called drafting.

Wool is washed once and then a second washing relaxes the twisted fibres and as they dry they naturally assume the new shape permanently. The difference between a spun thread that has had its final wash and the raw thread from the spindle is quite noticeable.

Wool is the cheapest fibre to spin and the cost of fleece is so low at present that farmers are losing money on the wool. You might think it would be a good idea to gather wool for free from the hedgerows and wire fences around sheep pasture, but

Make your own drop spindle This is a fairly straight forward job and DIYers out there will know exactly what to do.All you need is some 9mm dowel, a hook, something to act as a spinner and some way of fixing the spinner to the dowel.

Cut off around 30cm of 9mm dowel.

In one end fix a hook to hold the spinning material when the dowel drops.

At about 4cm from the opposite end to the hook fix in place some waste CD’s. Here we have used setting putty, but there are other ways including 9mm electrical grommet that fit the CD snugly in place, and this can be then glued in position.

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SPINDLE SPINNING

A home made spindle has just been spun clockwise and the thread is being formed as the wool is released slowly from the spinner’s hands. Picture credit: Chris Frear.

Two mini carders comb small amounts of dyed fleece gently between them. Picture credit: Chris Frear.

there is a wise saying that advises, ‘rubbish in, rubbish out.’ The scratching sheep tear out their fleece, often from the poorest areas of their body wool. If you haven’t anyone to sell you a fleece it’s best to buy prepared fleece from one of the suppliers listed in the boxed copy on the previous page.

My first wool was a Jacob fleece from a sheep that had been bedded on barley straw. I had no idea how to grade a fleece or check it for weaknesses in the wool. Full of misplaced confidence I put the whole fleece into a deep bath of warm water and wool detergent. The syrupy mud that soon filled the bottom of the bath was a revelation. So too was the plumber’s bill to clear the outlet pipe as the mixture of mud, straw and natural lanolin from the wool solidified

in the pipes. To add insult to injury the barley straw was full of sharp awns that wouldn’t be dislodged no matter how hard I tried.

They stuck to the wool like glue until I began spinning and then they impaled themselves in my soft fingertips and turned septic. I almost gave up spinning at that point but then discovered I could buy washed and combed fleece (called tops) by post.

If you decide you want to work with raw fleece then you’ll need to go to some trouble to prepare it. First pull away all the ‘daggy’ bits. That’s polite spinners speak for all the wool that’s covered in hard mud or dried faeces.

Then put a couple of handfuls of fleece into a net bag and wash it with a little wool detergent and warm water. Rinse it in water at the same temperature until the water runs clear. It’s very important not to rub or squeeze the bag of fleece any more than is absolutely necessary or you may felt the wool and render it unusable for spinning. You can spin the bag in a washing machine on a short ‘spin only’ program – but never put raw fleece or even spun and knitted wool into the drum without a netting bag to protect it.

I’m sure about this because that was the second plumber’s bill – clearing the washing machine of washed and felted wool!

Once the wool has been allowed to dry naturally it needs to be combed (called carding) so that all the fibres lie in the same direction.

Mini carders like this can cost £10 a pair but there is a cheaper alternative. A traditional dog comb can be just as effective if done gently. You would need something to press the dog comb against as you work.

Often spinners use an off cut of pale coloured leather across their knee or a chair arm to do this.

If you prefer to take the easier option you can buy prepared fleece. Current prices for washed and combed wool are around £1.80 to £2.50 for 100 grams and a couple of hundred grams would go a long way.

GREEN WOOL

Next Month Next month we will show you how to load your spindle and get on with making yarn.

It’s possible to make green choices in wool as in everything else. In fact Britain is especially blessed by a huge variety of sheep bred for their different wool qualities. Durable grey Herdwick fleece produces coarse, hairy wool that is unsurpassed for rug making. At the other end of the scale Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) wool is soft,

silky and lustrous and produces an even thread for the finest soft garments.

Where I live the Black Faced ewes supply wool to the carpet mills of Yorkshire and, further North in Shetland, the finest fleeces are reserved to make lace weight yarns and the famous ‘ring’ shawls.

The ancient test of a spinster in Shetland was to spin and knit a shawl so fine that it can be drawn through a wedding ring at a single pass.

Somewhere in the middle of the grades are fleeces of a more utilitarian worth like white, grey or naturally brown Cheviot or Woodland White.

Welsh Black isn’t really black at all but a very dark brown and Jacob fleeces have a mixture of colours on the same sheep.

There are sources of help and advice available right across the length and breath of Britain. The Association of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers organises its members into local Guilds who meet once or twice a month. Within each Guild is a huge reservoir of skill and expertise in all aspects of spinning. The work that members bring along and the chance to try out different techniques makes a visit really inspiring. Novice spinners will learn a huge amount by going to a local Guild meeting. Not all Guilds are country based; there are many in the larger cities too. E

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HF3 P32-33 BAG

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ECO-FRIENDLY BAGS Create an Eco-friendly receptacle for your weekly shop and beat the carrier bag taxes with Rebecca Peacock EVERY YEAR, WE pour our shopping into ten billion carrier bags and use them for an average of 12 minutes before they are thrown away and dumped into landfills around the country. In 2458, if global warming hasn’t taken over, those plastic bags will still be there in the soil taking 450 years to degrade. As the plastic carrier bag finds its days numbered through charges, taxes and other schemes to cut down our use of them, supermarkets have produced a number of ‘eco-friendly,’ reusable alternatives for transferring shopping from basket to car and, ultimately, to house.

And yet, despite their slightly thicker construction and gaudy design, most are still made from plastic and are polluting in terms other than the landfill.

One way to counteract the damaging effects of the ‘placcy bag’ is to use cotton carriers, something retailers have used with great aplomb, such as the Co-op, Borders, Lush and Topshop.

Yet the majority of these can cost up to five pounds each, a large addition to the shopping bill, especially if more than one is needed at any one time. To solve this issue, I propose five ways to beat the plastic bag at home with little or no cost.

CROCHET CARRIER So you have five hundred plastic bags stuffed beside the fridge or under the sink. Rather than throwing them away, turn them into a sturdy carrier that will last for 450 years! To make it you will need a lot of bags, but you can put your work aside until you have more to use up. If you know how to crochet, this is a fun bag to make.

In order to get your yarn, cut the handles off your carrier bags and then cut

Cut the bag into hoops.

A Brand New Bag across the bag so you get hoops. Then you can thread these hoops together to make a long piece of carrier-bag-yarn.

You then use this to crochet to make a simple tubular bag. You start a foundation hooped row as long as the circumference of the bag and then loop into the beginning of the row, creating the crocheted net (i.e., the second row).

Continue spiralling upwards. When your tube is as big as you want it, tie off and then sew up the bottom.

THE HOME-MADE COTTON CARRIER Sewing is a skill everyone, both male and female, should consider essential. This

Loop the bags to make a chain.

project requires little expertise and can be customised, should the fancy take you, in many different ways, though the use of a sewing machine will speed you up. A heavyweight cotton or linen is best for everyday shopping as tins and glass bottles may be too much for your handiwork. You can also find a wide range of strong, waterproof fabrics such as PVC canvas or coated cotton for bad weather days; in either case, purchase a metre (for 185cm wide fabric, two if less) for a generous bag. Begin by cutting a strip 20cm by 100cm for the handle. Fold in half and press using a moderately warm iron. Then fold the cut edges in, press again and sew along the entire length and top and bottom, about

Use the chain to crochet the bag.

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33 string bags we mysteriously cast aside in favour of the plastic variety. For this kind of bag, sturdy wooden or plastic handles are best, available at most good haberdasheries. Cast on as many stitches to make the bag as wide as you need it, and knit in garter stitch until you have a length of about a metre. Sew the sides together and knot tightly to prevent your bag unravelling.

Attach the handles by oversewing the straight edge of the handle to the open edge of the bag. Ensure it is attached strongly or your eggs and apples may be in danger.

THE BAG THAT USED TO BE A SKIRT

5-10mm from the edge. You should have a metre long handle with no cut edges showing. Next, cut a rectangular piece measuring 70cm by 170cm. Fold in half and sew carefully down the two sides inside out, first with a straight stitch, then with a zig-zag stitch for stability.

Turn the right way out and fold the top seam inwards to give a nice clean edge.

Pin into place, inserting the handles at the side seams. Sew around the top edge, reinforcing the handles with another row of stitches. I find it best to iron the bag before use to keep its shape.

THE KNITTED STRING BAG A ball of thick string or washing line can be knitted using thick needles into a sturdy, flexible bag reminiscent of the

The bag that used to be a skirt!

An old skirt can be transformed into a large carrier bag extremely quickly.

Denim skirts work well as they are sturdy and have sneaky pockets for your valuables. Simply sew the bottom seam closed, folding in as much or as little as you like, and attach either fabric handles or (perhaps more suitable for mini-skirts) wooden handles using fabric strips. You can transform old T-shirts too, by sewing the bottom shut and cutting around the sleeves to create built in handles!

THE WICKER ALTERNATIVES Baskets are a fantastic way to carry small amounts of shopping, as well as being useful for collecting produce grown at home, though they are not so easy to rustle up at home. The Basketmakers’ Association runs courses throughout the country for making a number of wicker products.

Contact them at www.basket assoc.org for more details. Of course, the best way of beating the carrier bag is to do your weekly shop in the garden! E

Help Dawn One of our readers and Forum members, Dawn, is cycling across Cuba to help the charity Women for Women.

You can sponsor her on line by going to her blogspot and buying a string bag for £2.00!

Dawn’s blogspot is at: cyclecuba2009dawn.blogspot.com Find out more about the charity at www.womenfor-women.org.

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BROAD BEANS

Beanfeast Broad beans are a brilliant way of packing in the nutrients, and few crops give such a boost to the soil

IF EVER THERE was a race of farmers it was the Romans. Wherever their armies for it to shrivel and blacken and you went a legion of farmers moved in soon should get a good supply of dryish afterwards, firstly to feed the fighters, beans that only need second to send food spreading on newspaper to back to Rome.

They worked out how IN EGYPT THE finish the job. to grow their favourite BEAN WAS SOWN TWO VARIETIES crops in all sorts of weather and persevered beans come in two IN DECEMBER, Broad until each region was types, Longpods and FLOWERED IN pretty much self-suffiWindsors. Longpod cient. Romans loved are said to be FEBRUARY AND varieties beans and they brought hardier, give higher yields WAS HARVESTED and crop earlier; ideal for them to the UK, even though they couldn’t use in both Scotland and IN JUNE grow them.

Northern Ireland.

In Egypt the bean Windsors have a better was sown in December, flowered in flavour but also a lower yield.

February and was harvested in June. In Broad beans vary in height, from the Britain, harsh winters and millions of large varieties such as ‘Imperial Green hungry molluscs meant the crops Longpod’ that reach 1.5m to the dwarf frequently failed. The Romans’ answer varieties like ‘The Sutton’ at 30cm. was to plant the beans in the spring.

Germination can be haphazard, but Later the Saxons discovered that if you started beans before the winter you could coax them through the worst of the weather and get an earlier crop.

NAME GAME Broad beans, Vicia faba, are also called fava beans. The common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, is longer and known as the runner bean, with umpteen variations in between. Broad beans can be eaten straight from the pod and the pod can be eaten too. You can eat the whole plant if need be, but only the young shoots are worth bothering with. You can dry the seeds in the pod, more or less, just wait

you get a better take if the seeds are stored in a cool environment. It tends to take 16 weeks to crop.

CARE Broad beans are usually easy to grow, so long as the soil is free draining. They will grow easily in soil that has been manured for a previous crop such as potatoes. They prefer medium loam, but if it’s heavy, full of clay or too wet, they tend to rot. On lighter soils they tend to fall over in the wind.

SOWING Broad beans are grown in double rows.

That is, each row is made up of two lines of seeds planted 15cm apart.

The next double row comes 75cm away from the first.

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Anytime Beans If you can be sure of a sixteen week growing period, you can sow beans at any time really. Sow a Spring variety in June and get a crop in September!

AUTUMN SOWING Although beans prefer cool temperatures for germination, a wet, cold soil will delay germination considerably.

Try to sow in a well-drained bed with plenty of ‘fluffy’ compost.

Make a small hole with a dibber and push a seed into each at a depth of 5cm and cover, firming the soil down.

Germination, which might take three weeks, will follow with growth to about 10cm. At this stage they will appear to stop growing. They haven’t actually stopped growing though; they are sending out a complex mass of roots and this is what promotes heavier crops later.

Once they germinate they will stay little more than small plants all Winter, and then in the Spring they will shoot forth in response to the warmth. You can give them a mulch of compost or feed them with fertiliser.

SPRING SOWING Many people start them off in February in the greenhouse and find they don’t germinate too well because they’re too warm.

Sow them in modules in an unheated greenhouse near the door, where they are protected from the wind. By the time they have developed a little they will easily grow in place in their double rows as already described.

A root-ball sized hole to take the whole of the compost from each module is fine. A little drink of rainwater will set them off, but don’t over soak them.

Protect your young plants from the worst of the weather by covering them with fleece. As they grow, keep the rows weed free and watch for greenfly, white fly and black fly.

PESTS Pigeons and mice love beans. You can lose your crop overnight, especially in early Spring when they are ravenously hungry.

Beans can also be attacked in December by slugs on their final drag around the garden.

The main problem for broad beans, however, is blackfly, which is an aphid.

They are always found on the growing tips of the plant because, as they grow, the beans become tough, making it difficult for the insect to get to the parts of the plant they prefer.

You can get some relief by simply pinching off the tops of the plant as the fruit has set. A jet of water is also a good control, but if you need further remedies, try soft soap.

Broad beans are also susceptible to a fungal infection creating dark patches on leaves and fruit, but the seeds are seldom touched and they are quite safe to eat. E

Varieties Using ‘Aquadulce’ and ‘Witkiem’ varieties, sown in autumn and spring, you can have broad beans from May through to August.

AQUADULCE CLAUDIA This variety is universally recognised as being best for an autumn sowing. It establishes itself very quickly and will produce a very early crop.

IMPERIAL GREEN LONGPOD A high-yielding variety with full pods, an excellent flavour and suitable for freezing.

BUNYARD’S EXHIBITION The most popular, spring-sown, early English white longpod.

WITKIEM MANITA Spring sown variety, early maturing heavy cropper; an excellent variety. Produces top quality white beans.

Can be sown as late as May.

HF3 P36-37 OVEN

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OUTDOOR COOKING That thing gets really hot!

But there are some things to work out, and a major design change!

THE BRICK OVEN has been a great deal of fun! You can walk round the park, pick up all the various broken branches that the wind very kindly dislodged for your benefit, and use them to make your dinner! More than this, the oven gets so hot that I am completely convinced the beast would run the central heating. (I say beast because that’s the name we have given it.)

PROBLEMS The major problem has been the lid. It is true that you learn something new every day! I believed that slate, born in a mountain under great heat and pressure that it was, would be fine for a heat proof lid. Well not so! Slate, as one very kind but alarmed reader pointed out, can explode when heated up. It’s the water that seeps between the layers that turns to steam, expands and then goes off like a firework.

The moral of the tale is do not use slate as a lid on a hot oven! I replaced it with concrete, with no problems so far.

FUEL A great deal of effort has gone into finding the best fuel for the oven. The basic idea of the oven is to start a fire in it, then push the burning material as far back as possible to heat up the cooking chamber. The bricks get hot, really hot, and food is cooked in very little time.

But I live in a smokeless zone and so I started to use smokeless coal. This was fine, but a very strong smell of sulphur rendered the food inedible. Charcoal was much better, and even hotter, if a little more expensive. A combination of

Get cooking with your B charcoal and garden waste seems to be the order of the day.

Another problem was the amount of fuel it burned. I seemed to be stoking the beast every thirty minutes, it was burning so quickly! This was considerably cut down by closing up the entrance which in turn cut down the amount of oxygen getting into the fire.

This also controlled the heat output, so a firing procedure evolved.

COOKING

Get Started 1 First build a good fire with lots of flames which heats the bricks and cooking area.

2 Load with charcoal and when this is burning properly, push the burning coals to the back of the chimera and into the cooking chamber.

3 Reload the chimera, so that we now have hot charcoal at the back and in the main body charcoal beginning to burn.When this is alight, close up the entrance.We now have a stove humming like a nuclear pile!

The oven temperature is around 200oC near the front of the oven and around 140oC a little further back. This has implications for the cooking process.

The hotpot recipe later needed to be turned round every twenty minutes because it boiled furiously at one end but not the other.

The other problem with the cooking process is the exhaust from the fire.

Small bits of ash are drawn from the fire from the flue, which you might remember was cut off and put at the back of the oven. This ash is fine to eat, but not that palatable. Anything you do cook needs to be covered to keep the bits out.

You might remember that I cut off the top of the chimera in order to use the chimney part at the back of the oven. The hole this left was filled by an old plant pot base, and it all worked very well. But I couldn’t help wondering about the possibility of sticking a frying pan over it!

Diana wouldn’t let me use a pan that we used. She said they were all too nice to ruin on my nasty old oven, so I found one of my late father’s that we still kept in the shed. It worked a treat. I would say that the heat coming from the chimera onto the pan was like a gas ring at half power.

So not too hot, but this was a good three hours after the last handful of fuel had been put on the fire. So it was a good, steady heat. The eggs were cooked in about three minutes! Perfect! E

Smokin’ If you use wood as your only fuel you can leave the covering off the food for a few minutes to give it a mild smoky flavour.

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ur Brick Oven

37

THROW AWAY HOTPOT

HOTPOT This is a left over from student days and consists of everything you would have otherwise thrown away. In this case the middle of a cabbage, a few carrots, some softish potatoes and 500g of diced lamb.

4 When the hotpot comes out, thicken the gravy in your favourite way.

(I cheated and used gravy granules).

5 Put back in the oven for 10 minutes to thicken.

1 Cut the vegetables into manageable pieces and layer them in a casserole.

2 Season the veg and put a layer of meat on top.

3 Cover the veg with water and wrap the casserole in foil. Place in the brick oven and forget. In fact it went in at 1:30 and came out at 5:30.

BAKED APPLE 1 Core three apples and place on some foil.

2 Down the core hole push some raisins and top up with brown sugar.

3 Place on the coals for 15 minutes and they are cooked. (You can smell them cooking for miles).

HF ISSUE 3 P38-39 FATMAN

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FAT MAN IN THE KITCHEN

The Full Monty Breakfast Pie This month Paul Peacock looks at the latest culinary invention, bacon and egg in a fried bread case.

“Dad, s a w t a h t ome!” awes THERE IS NOT much else to say about this breakfast sensation.

Well you would expect me to go on a bit, it’s not every day when an idea comes together. The truth is that this dish is a bit fiddly, but very worth it. It came out of ...AND READ a discussion about the was filled HOME FARMER with small pieces of phrase ‘pan fried’. It’s one of those things bacon. This was baked FOR ANOTHER chefs on the television at 200 oC for ten THOUSAND WAYS minutes and then an use a lot and I must confess it drives me egg was broken on top TO LIVE THE nuts! What else can and baked for a further ‘GOOD LIFE’! you fry something in! five minutes.

Well, actually, you can There were three fry bread in an oven. problems: the whole I tried an experthing was small, iment – lightly brushing sliced bread difficult to get out of the ramekin with oil and cooking it in the oven. and the salty juices from the bacon Perfect, healthy, low fat, fried bread. were just a little too salty. I must Now if you can do that, then why not confess that the juices from the make a fried bread case for other cooking bacon are part of the dish! foods?

Second try had to be bigger! A cooking ring was chosen, and I used my own low salt bacon. Everything ON WITH THE else was kept the same, and this one EXPERIMENT! really worked, except that the egg The first try was in a ramekin. A disc yolk was slightly over cooked. This and a strip of oil brushed bread problem was remedied by covering made the case and then the centre

with a hat of foil to reduce the fierceness of the heat.

VARIATIONS My son likes his bacon soft but my wife likes it burned to a crisp! You can’t please everybody! Well, you can.

You can cook the bacon in the frying pan first then add it to the case that has been cooking for a couple of minutes. Then you can add the egg.

But you don’t need eggs. We have tried various combinations of fillings. Bacon and beans, bacon and mushrooms, mushrooms on their own, mushroons bacon and melted cheese. In fact the list is only limited by your imagination.

I am going to try smoked salmon, scrambled egg and prawn. How about haddock, scrambled egg, and caviar?

Or even something with scallops? E

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39

Cut out the base to fill the ring.

The ingredients for the first part, don’t forget to brush a little oil on the bread.

Layer the bacon into the package.

Cook for 10 minutes at 200oC and then break an egg on the top.

You can cook the bacon first if you like.This removes some of the salt of shop bought bacon and makes it more crispy.

Cut into, everything is succulent and tasty.

Below: Served, the perfect Full Monty – well I think so!

HF 3 P40-41 BARGE

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PROPERTY

Peter Underwood is a journalist who lives and works from his 57ft narrowboat, currently on the Leeds and Liverpool canal.

With his wife, he has owned boats for the past 15 years and has lived on board for the past four years, mostly in Cheshire, Derbyshire and Lancashire

Sky Above, Water Below – TELL SOMEONE YOU live on a boat and, nine times out of ten, you get a slightly dreamy response. The voice may be saying ‘that’s nice’ or ‘isn’t it cold’ but in their heads they are imagining drifting along a rural canal or river in the sunshine, detached from everyday life.

Of course there are days, sometimes two in a row, when it is like that. There are probably more days when the rain is penetrating the neck and cuffs of your waterproofs as you battle through a dozen, poorly-maintained locks in an urban wasteland in the teeth of a howling gale – in June.

The trick to living happily on a boat is to enjoy both days and revel in the freedom that the lifestyle provides.

We first came to boats as a way of forcing ourselves to slow down when we were running a business. Step onto a narrowboat and you have to travel at four miles per hour. A 30 minute journey by

car can take three or four days when you and couples on a second or third have to use a canal that is following the marriage. You can buy a boat out of a contours through the Yorkshire Dales, half share in the equity of a house and with only the pubs as landmarks. not have a mortgage to pay and I suspect But it is a big step from an inland that is one of the main motivations. waterways holiday to For those looking for a living on board and the cheap option it is often a YOU CAN BUY A temporary fix and many go TV programmes or specialist magazine ashore fairly quickly, BOAT OUT OF A back articles about this although a minority fall in lifestyle usually feature HALF SHARE IN love with the lifestyle. For top of the range boats in it is a sort of THE EQUITY OF others the best weather. They extended holiday; they don’t go into great have always loved boats A HOUSE AND detail about emptying and now they want to live NOT HAVE A the toilet or filling up aboard. That works if they the water tank in wet have really had sufficient MORTGAGE and freezing conditions. experience and can cope People live on boats with slimming down their for various reasons. On those marinas lives to live in a tin box less than seven where they allow residential boats – not feet wide and about the same in height all of them do – there are a disproporbut anything up to 70 feet long. tionate number of divorced single men If the most important factor for you

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41

w – Living Afloat is whether it is cheaper than living in a house, you almost certainly won’t fit in other than as someone living in a vessel that never moves from its moorings and might as well be a studio apartment.

In fact there are more and more such vessels on the ‘wide’ canals, which will take a boat up to 14 ft wide, at least in theory. But to me the essence of living on a boat is that it is not a fixed abode.

It offers the opportunity to travel from the southern edge of the Lake District to Bristol, from Olympic East London to deepest Wales, from fenland Cambridge to the Yorkshire Wolds – all on a single, connected waterway system.

It is that ability to be independent of our regimented, security camera obsessed, risk-averse society and to be part of the friendly, non-judgemental, relaxed and unconventional community of the waterways that makes it a way of life that I prefer.

Of course, whether it is more or less expensive than living ashore depends on what it costs you to live ashore. The sums go roughly like this. You can buy a 55-70 ft narrowboat which can become your home for around £30-40,000 if you are willing to opt for something that may be 20 years old and in need of a little care and attention.

The licence fee you pay British Waterways simply to use the canals is around £700 a year for that sort of boat – and due to rise by nine per cent a year for the next three years.

Moorings are difficult, especially for live-aboards, and you always need to get a mooring; even before a boat. In a marina, with electric hook-up, water, waste disposal and, perhaps, a wi-fi internet link you are looking at around £2,500 a year. The many British Waterways marinas are increasing prices by well above inflation each year – and

they get away with it because demand is so high, with more and more boats taking to the water each year.

Bank side moorings without these facilities can range from £1,000 upwards but it is British Waterways’ policy to push moorers off the bank and into expensive marinas.

Additional costs include insurance, which can be several hundred pounds as insurers charge a lot for contents insurance on a boat and a four-yearly boat ‘MOT’ called a boat safety certificate.

Having the bottom ‘blacked’ every couple of years (£4-600) the rest repainted every five-ten years (£2-5,000) will add to the bills and then there is diesel for the engine and perhaps central heating, bottled gas and either electricity from a hook-up or from running the engine to charge the batteries.

Cheaper ‘red’ diesel comes to an end this November, so the cost of all those diesel-related activities may well double.

Mostly you don’t pay council tax, although some local authorities will try to claim it. So far most test cases have been won by boaters as boats with engines are not fixed abodes, and are not using local council services.

People like banks and government find it difficult to cope with someone who is not living in a house with a fixed address, and that can be inconvenient; but is not insurmountable.

About 15,000 people are thought to live afloat in Britain, on the canals, rivers and coasts; in cities, in the country and in harbours.

We are from all walks of life: families to pensioners, professionals to artists.

Although it sometimes feels that way, the Residential Boat Owners’ Association says that academic research has shown we are not a sub-culture, but a very diverse group which often has a strong sense of their local community and its environment.

I suspect that we all share a deep disrespect and distrust of authority and an inner glee at being as self-sufficient as it is possible to be in this regimented era. We may not extract our own diesel from the ground, but with it we can generate our own power and move about as we please.

Our impact on the environment is not non-existent, but it is less than a house-dweller and nothing makes you more conscious of power use when you have to run an engine to get it or hump wood along a slippery towpath to keep the fire going.

Living on a narrowboat – only the wide ones are barges – may be the closest thing to freedom I will ever know. E

HF3 P42-43 LILA

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LILA DAS GUPTA

Vegetable Matters Welcome to Lila’s new column about growing and cooking vegetables

LIla may be familiar to Home Farmer readers from her Daily Telegraph column called ‘The Good Life’ about allotments and kitchen gardens. Last year Lila and her family, inspired by the ‘Compact’ recycling experiment in San Francisco, undertook a year-long experiment not to buy anything new from a shop, except food, wine, medicines and work essentials. She didn’t quite manage to be self-sufficient, but she did learn a lot along the way about re-cycling and the value of good friends. ‘Vegetable Matters’ is about her own allotment and also features those of others.

THERE’S A COOKERY book with a great title like ‘Help, what should I do with all those courgettes?’ I’ve never got round to reading it, but it always puts a smile on my face that someone else has acknowledged just how troublesome gluts can be. You get to that point with courgettes (runner beans and rhubarb

compost, then ‘harden are also offenders), TRY THE YELLOW, off’ outside to accliwhere your neighbours matise in a sheltered pretend not to be in KNOBBLY, spot. when you ring the bell, ‘SUMMER Make sure you dig because they can’t face in lots of organic having to look enthusiCROOKNECK’ matter or well-rotted astic about another pile THAT IS REALLY A manure to the place that’s been thrust into their arms.

SQUASH, BUT CAN where you plant, because courgettes are Why do we bother to BE EATEN YOUNG hungry beasts. grow so many of them in the first place? That’s AS A COURGETTE Watering well is important too, probably something for although over-watering the psychiatrist’s couch, can lead to blossom-end rot. but ever since my sister-in-law, Gemma, If you want to grow courgettes to taught me how to make her ‘antipasto,’ make an antipasto (Italian cold starter), or Italian-style, preserved courgettes, I it’s a good idea to choose varieties with have been someone who plants different colours, which will look more courgettes with purpose. interesting mixed together in a jar.

Try the yellow, knobbly, ‘Summer SAVE Crookneck’ that is really a squash, but The first thing to do is to get in to the can be eaten young as a courgette. You habit of keeping all your glass jars, can also get the pale ‘Trieste White especially ones with a wider circumCousa.’ The round, dark green ‘Tondo di ference: they will come in handy when Piacenza’ is also worth growing, you want to preserve anything.

If you haven’t planted any yet, it’s still although it needs a bit of space to spread out in as it grows into quite a not too late to sow a late crop. Not only large plant. are courgettes one of the easiest crops Where space is limited, ‘Black Forest’ to grow, but their preference for warm (F1) is a good option because it grows weather means that if you start them too early, they are more likely to suffer a as a climber and can be tied to grow upwards. ‘Striato d’Italia’ is an intercheck on their growth from a late, cold esting stripy green variety. ‘Jemmer’(F1) snap. Start the seed off indoors in has a vibrant yellow colour and is a good cropper. If you want to kill many birds with one stone, ‘Tricolour’ (F1) Hybrid gives you three round courgettes of different colour, all in one packet.

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Gemma’s Summer Antipasti The basic proportion for this recipe is 1 part red wine to 2 parts wine vinegar (red or white will do). This recipe works equally well with aubergines.

INGREDIENTS (Makes around 3 x 450g jars) 150ml red wine 300ml wine vinegar 1 yellow, 1 green, 1 pale variety of courgette 3 small chillis (optional) 1 teaspoon peppercorns 4 cloves garlic (sliced) 1 teaspoon cumin seed 1 teaspoon coriander seed 1 teaspoon fennel seed 1 teaspoon dried marjoram or oregano Approx 330ml virgin olive oil

METHOD 1 Sterilise jars first (see panel) 2 Slice courgette in half along the length, then gouge out a little of the centre where it’s softest. Cut again

along the length or in pieces, as desired.

3 If you have a griddle pan, put the pieces on a hot pan for 1 minute on either side (don’t oil the pan first), to mark them with stripes. This part is optional and can be missed out if you don’t have a griddle.

4 Heat wine and vinegar in a pan and bring to a simmer. Add the courgettes and chillis, if you are using them. Cook for 2-3 minutes – the courgettes should still be firm.

5 Drain, and dry with a clean tea towel.

6 Mix together all the dry herbs, peppercorns and sliced garlic.

7 Place one layer of courgettes in a jar, then add a sprinkling of garlic and herbs.

8 Repeat and add another layer till the jar is full.

9 Pour olive oil on top, making sure contents are fully submerged, then seal.

10 Store for at least 6 weeks in a cool, dry place. Use as fresh, once opened.

Sterilising 1 Wash jars with warm, soapy water and rinse well. Place 2cm of cold water in them and put in a medium oven for 15 minutes, the water stops the jars from shattering in the heat.

2 Meanwhile, scrub the lids and put them in hot water to boil at the same time.

3 When the jars are ready, tip out the water, let them cool a little and begin to fill.

4 Use a fork to fish out the lids from the pan as and when you need them.

HF ISSUE 3 P44 SUBS

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HF ISSUE 3 P45-47 BRIE

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CHEESE

Vive le Brie!

THE KING OF France, Charlemagne, ordered the monks of Lombardy to deliver two cartloads of Brie each year for his personal consumption. This was in lieu of tax, and had to be delivered monthly. Making Brie is a reasonably complex process and I find it completely amazing that this is such an ancient cheese.

Temperature is important, and how they measured it exactly in those days I do not know. It is amazing to think this cheese was made some 1600 years ago.

ON YOUR MARKS This month we introduce the concept of starters. The protein in milk curdles in acidic conditions, and starters were a way of introducing bacteria into the milk that would produce acid as they grew in the culture. More than this, the specific bacteria in the starter had an effect on the texture as well as the flavour of the final product.

Cheese cultures are divided into two basic types; mesophilic and thermophilic. Mesophilic cultures are best for making cheese at or around room temperature. Thermophilic cultures require more heat. A good mesophilic culture is yogurt, and in this recipe I use a tub of it – natural, fresh yogurt. However, you can also buy professional quality cultures from smallholding supply companies.

Thermophilic cultures, which we will look at in another issue, are used in making hard cheese and cheeses that require some cooking.

The whiteness on the surface of Brie comes from a fungal infection that you

Make sure the temperature is exactly 32oC. It can take an hour to gently warm to this temperature.

add yourself.

The cheeses bought from shops have the culture sprayed over them at the maturing stage. You can buy the culture from cheese suppliers and smallholding suppliers.

Cheese mats are also needed. It is really something that will allow the cheese to drain, this is not pressed in any way and it will take the cheese a long time to expel all the whey. You can buy them by the metre, or simply use a sterile straw mat.

YOU WILL NEED

3 4 5 6 7 8

4.5 litres milk 50ml mesophilic starter solution 1g (one eighth of a teaspoon) Penicillium candidum 5 drops rennet in a small amount of cooled, boiled water 9

INSTRUCTIONS 1 Add the starter and the culture of Penicillium candidum to the milk and slowly warm to 32oC.

The curds are collected together and moulded inside a cheesecloth first, then gently laid on a cheese mat.

2 Leave for 30 minutes at this temperature.

Add the rennet and leave for up to four hours for the curd to form.

Carefully but thoroughly cut the curd into 0.5cm cubes.

Drain off most of the whey and ladle the curds into moulds so they are no deeper than 8cm.

Leave the curds to drain overnight and then carefully turn them out of the moulds onto a cheese mat.

Sprinkle salt over the sides and top and when you have turned the cheese over sprinkle salt on the top.

Over the next couple of days turn the cheeses over and over, every 8 hours or so, salting as you go, but only pinches of salt. If kept in fairly humid conditions they will start to become mouldy on the outside. At this point you can leave the cheese to ripen.

After a week it will be quite mature and after five weeks it will be like soup! It’s up to you to decide when it is right for you.

COOKING WITH BRIE OVERLEAF

The cheese is salted to help the mold grow.

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CHEESE

Cooking with Brie

Grow Red Onions

RED ONION, SUN-DRIED TOMATO AND BRIE TART

Red onions can be grown now from sets (small bulbs you push into the soil).

THIS IS COMPLETELY delicious, and just a bit special. It is one of those things you have to make in stages.

Onion marmalade is a brilliant ingredient to have in anyway.

‘Burgundy’ or ‘Red Wethersfield’ or ‘Kamal’ are the varieties to choose.

STAGE ONE RED ONION MARMALADE

Push them into rich soil about 6in (18cm) apart and about 1ft (30cm) between the rows.

Keep them weed free.

On the whole these red varieties are trouble free and will be ready to lift in the summer. Late summer of they are planted in May. You can even get away with planting sets (if you can get hold of them) in June for a late September harvest.

This recipe is from Ben Watson at the Riverford Farm Shop in Devon.

INGREDIENTS

adds zing to simple meat dishes like sausages and steak sandwiches.

2 Chop the onions lengthwise, not in small pieces. You want to get long thin strips. I like mine a bit chunky, but for a more genteel product cut as finely as you can. Cook them in oil on a very low light, you do not want this to caramelise at all.

METHOD

3 When they are soft add the vinegar.

I cheated a bit and added 2 BIG tablespoons of port. (My hand slipped a bit!) Stir well and then add the sugar, stirring all the time. Don’t overdo the liquid. It starts to look dry and then all of a sudden the water falls out of the onions and you end up with quite a lot of liquid.

1 Onion Marmalade is a doddle to make and keeps well in the fridge. It

4 Turn the heat up a little and reduce

Slice the onion to get long, thin pieces.

Cook slowly till the translucent stage appears.

1kg (2lbs) red onions 2tbsp oil 5tbsp red wine vinegar 100g (4oz) sugar (brown is good) Variations: add mustard, tomato puree or Cumberland sauce.

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Short Crust Pastry To make short crust pastry for four tartlets INGREDIENTS 225g plain flour 120g fat (equal measures of lard and butter) Level teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons cold water (you might need more, or less) METHOD 1 Sift flour and salt into a bowl.

2 Cut the fat into 1cm cubes.

3 Rub the fat into the flour with the fingertips, lifting the mixture to keep it cool and airy.

Once the vinegar and sugar is added, bring to a slow simmer.

4 Continue rubbing until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

the mixture until it is nice and gooey. (Once the mixture starts to bubble, turn it down a little to maintain the simmer.) If you over cook it the mixture will turn to toffee, it happened to me the first time I did it.

5 Make a well and add the water gradually while you stir with a knife.

6 Use just enough water to make a soft ball, not a sticky dough.

5 You need to stir this very frequently.

6 Cool and spoon into a sealable jar.

7 Wrap in cling film for 30 minutes to rest in the fridge and cut into tartlet sized rings after rolling out.

STAGE TWO MAKING THE TARTS

8 Bake blind – with pasta or baking beads on Gas 5 (180oC) for ten minutes.

You need pastry for the tarts, and you could use a bought one, bake it blind and then add the ingredients. Delia Smith, in her new series, suggested buying miniature tart cases ready for baking.

Then a layer of sun-dried tomatoes.

Half fill the cases with onion marmalade.

Then a generous amount of Brie.

Fill the base of the tartlets with onion marmalade. Cover this with a layer of sun-dried tomatoes and then top with a generous amount of Brie. E

HF3 P48-49 OIL

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HOME FARMER INVESTIGATES Anouchka Warren looks into the concept behind the idea that we are now running out of oil, and its impact on how we shop and live

‘PEAK OIL,’ AS the concept is known, is the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which the rate of production enters a terminal decline. The theory was originally proposed in 1956 by Marion King Hubbert, normally known as M. King Hubbert, who was an American geoscientist. It was probably his most notable contribution to his field and of particular importance is what is now known as the ‘Hubbert curve’ which projects the rate of oil production over time, and is the main component of his ‘peak oil’ theory.

You may well have heard the term, and have even digested some of the You Tube talks on the subject. But if this is all news to you, here’s some background.

M. King Hubbert’s calculations were based on the discovery and increasing reliance on oil wells from the late forties onwards. His prediction that oil production in the USA would peak around 1970 and his models for that theory have since been used to predict the peak oil production of many other countries, and the entire world.

The model states that ‘the rate of oil production is determined by the rate of new oil well discovery’ and the curve produced is a bell shaped curve. The field production of any substance will tend to gradually increase to its maximum output, plateau for a significant stretch of time and then gradually decrease. When there are several inputs (in the case of oil production, this would be the number of wells) the curve becomes smoother and therefore more predictable and apparently secure.

Periods of war, economic recession or political instability will all also affect the symmetry of the curve.

What is concerning about the curve is the steepness of the production decline rate, which shows that once half the total oil has been extracted, production overall will decline; and quickly. The implication is that decline will be so rapid that there will not be enough time to source new forms of energy to replace oil use before our energy runs out. M. King Hubbert was the first to recognise this key point: What matters is not when the oil runs out, but rather when it begins to decline.

Peak Oil

ENOUGH OF THE SCIENCE, WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? We are left with the reality that in order to avoid a global energy crisis, the world must make attempts to delay and minimise the impact of peak oil. Efforts towards this would include reduction in the consumption of petroleum, development of non-conventional oil resources and, arguably the most effective solution – the investigation of alternative sources of energy.

We have already seen the impact of temporary fuel shortages simply through strikes or high prices causing endless queues for petrol stations. Any sustained unavailability of oil would cause massively inflated prices, eventually to an unaffordable level.

Despite the gradual awakening or admittance by our government to the

reality of this problem, our current level of dependence on oil in still so high that a real shortage of it would grind the country to a halt.

It is human and natural to only react to a problem when it is nearly upon you.

However, an avoidance of a crisis of this proportion would only be achieved by planning several decades before the ‘peak.’ There is, of course, the possibility that further small sources of oil may be found in time, although this is unlikely to be on any helpful scale. However, the truth is that even if we were to find more oil now, it would not be able to be brought on tap in time to prevent a drastic shortage.

I have already mentioned that Hubbert’s initial prediction for the USA was that oil would peak around 1970.

On a global level, even with a proven

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49 a largely stable economy. Additionally, there is increasing competition for oil as more and more countries seek the western lifestyle of excess.

Predicted peak dates vary greatly.

Some say it has been and gone, the more hopeful that it will hit in the 2020s or 2030s. Exactly how optimistic these later date predictions are is unclear, but it is certainly true that those who think the peak later are the same people who assume that we will have found alternatives by then, that will be sufficiently established to be reliable. Is this a deserved trust in global governments and people’s desire to change their behaviours? Or is it perhaps just wishful thinking?

WHAT CAN WE DO?

model such as Hubbert’s curve, it is much harder to pinpoint a date. It is also perhaps dangerous to do so, implying that all is safe until doomsday, when in actual fact it is not such an exact science. The reasons for this vagueness, as mentioned earlier, are the myriad socio-political factors that can have such a huge effect on the curve.

In the 1970s oil scares reduced production for a while and when transferred onto the Hubbert model, a dip was produced on the curve. Hostilities in the first gulf war also markedly changed the overall shape of the curve.

Understandably, oil production drops during a time of conflict in an area of oil wells. A peak in production will then occur after the events, but never to the level it once reached, after the overall ‘Peak’ has been and gone. Predictions of

the date of our global ‘peak’ vary but most students of the subject agree that we are somewhere on the downward slope. With wars ongoing in the Middle East to this day, and oil playing a large part in the societies of the countries involved, an effect cannot but be had on peak oil and our future. There is certainly no assurance that future wars will not be fought as oil prices rise.

HOW LONG HAVE WE GOT? Constantly changing economics and politics mean that the Hubbert curve remains flexible. And this stands just as true for our relatively stable nation as it does for the rest of the world. With our import figures and global interests as they are, we cannot count ourselves safe purely because we are a democracy with

The important things to consider here are how viable our alternative methods are? What role are our leaders and governments playing? What about our large corporations, which so greatly influence our lives?

There are many avoidance tactics and many countries have been actively promoting alternative energy sources for several years. Biofuel: corn or sugar cane grown purely as fuel, is now becoming a reality. It seems like the perfect alternative to oil derivatives, but should we be using our precious open spaces and limited farmlands to grow fuel? Will we have fields of sugar cane and continue to import all our foodstuffs? Wood: a perfect and sustainable source of heat but with an overblown and growing population, do we have enough of the stuff? In short, are our efforts and enthusiastic ideas enough? The reality I personally believe is that it’s not enough. Greater changes are needed; changes in our mindsets and behaviours; the way we live.

If the peak has been and our attempts to delay and minimise are rather late in the day, then the only true conclusion is that a global depression will set in. I do not mean to depress, to preach doom and gloom. I do believe this issue will prove to be the bane of our collective life and society. A reality should not be ignored and a difference can always be made by the individual.

Grow your own if you can, don’t encourage imports, conserve energy and play your part but as well as this it is our leaders and governors who need to take action. Whichever energy source is in fashion be it wood, coal, oil or biofuel, it will always be a short-lived solution if society continues to live in excess and claim it has a given right to energy. Knowing our responsibilities rather than our rights will, I believe, prove to be our solution. E

HF ISSUE 3 P50-52 BEES

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KEEPING BEES

This month we look at the beekeeper’s year and how to set up your first hive

The Beekeeper’s Year Hefting, I found out, was the art of IT’S AMAZING HOW easy it is to mistake things. When I got my first bees lifting the hive and guessing how much honey is inside. A full super (half sized I wondered how I would know how honey box on the top of the brood box) much honey was left in the hive in late weighs around 10-15kg, so winter. I asked a crowded if it feels light you might room of beekeepers how it was done and someone

BY APRIL THE wish to consider feeding the bees. said, “Heft it.” But I QUEEN WILL thought he had said, “F – it!” I imagined he BE LAYING AND LATE SPRING was being rude.

By April the queen will be THE COLONY laying and the colony will “So I don’t do anything then?” From be growing very quickly.

WILL BE that day on there exists Now is the time to feed the GROWING VERY bees if you haven’t already. a happy band of Lancashire beekeepers More than anything, now QUICKLY who think I am an idiot. the bees need room for the They wouldn’t be far expansion of the colony. wrong.

On a warm day check to see if the brood The beekeeping year really starts box has plenty of space on the frames – when you get bees for the first time, but that they look clean and the queen is there is every reason for making a start in healthy and laying.

Spring because, from November to Now is the time to start your varroa March, you will not even opened the hive. regime, putting a white tray in the bottom of the hive and counting how many mites you get falling on it, and using the EARLY SPRING appropriate insecticide or treatment.

It might not be possible to see any bee You will need to take account of the activity in March due to the rotten weather. It is frequently too cold for them; age of the queen and decide if you need you shouldn’t go into the hive and expose to replace her. If you, like me, have a queen that is in her second season then the brood box unless the temperature is 15oC as a minimum. But then you will find you can destroy any queen cells that appear in the hive, so long as the queen a number of bees flying on still days. is healthy and laying.

Once the cherries and hawthorns The most important thing is that the come into flower you will see bees queen is laying vigorously. taking advantage of their pollen and sparse nectar. Bee losses can be critical at this time of the year. Foragers caught SUMMER EARLY out in a sudden downpour rarely make You can remove empty frames in the it back to the hive. brood box and replace them with new.

First bees on a Spring day.

Workers storing nectar in the spring.

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Grubs are evidence of a laying queen.

You can also fit another brood box if you need room for a large colony. The number of bees are beginning to reach 20,000 or more.

You can reuse these frames once they have been cleansed by freezing, the main reason for taking them out in the first place. You can harvest the wax and make new foundation or candles or any of the other products. You can also sell your wax; every beekeeping association has a scheme to sell wax back to the major companies.

You will need to be on guard against swarming.

A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay.

A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon.

A swarm in July isn’t worth a fly!

MID SUMMER The brood box will be almost full, if the weather is decent. You need supers on to take all the honey that is coming in. You might have three supers on the hive by now. Check on the queen every week and make sure she is laying. You don’t have to see her, just the results of her laying!

Continue your vigilance against varroa, checking for the numbers and treating accordingly.

When you inspect the hive, clear away bits of brace comb. Put a half-sized frame in the brood box. Underneath

Inspecting the brood box.

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KEEPING BEES the frame the bees will build a large amount of drone comb, which are preferred by varroa mites. When this is capped it can be removed and the mites with it.

LATE SUMMER A colony of bees will need around 15kg of honey for their own use. This equates to a whole super of honey. Not all colonies have this, especially if, like last year, the season was a bad one. You will have to decide if your bees need to be fed.

EARLY AUTUMN Expect a decrease in the number of bees in the brood. Reduce the frequency of inspections to one a fortnight. Heft the hives and feed if they feel light and feed if necessary. Fit a mouse guard to the entrance.

A stand and brood box, ready for bees.

The hive in winter, quiet yet alive.

Collecting a swarm in a box.

A hive with an external feeder.

WINTER All the drones will be dead outside the entrance. If you like gladiatorial contests you can spend many an hour watching workers expel drones from the hive. Eventually the males all die. Don’t go in the hive at all and keep on your guard against all kinds of exterior damage from humans, woodpeckers, mice badgers and even Mr. Fox.

SETTING UP A HIVE Swarms are introduced into their It cannot be overstated that you cannot new home in many ways. Sometimes keep bees with a smoker in one hand the bees are just poured into the box, and a magazine article in the other. All other times they are set on a ramp, newcomers to the craft of beekeeping and since bees always walk upwards, need help and encouragement, so get they will march into yourself to your local the hive.

Beekeepers’ Association.

A colony bought from This is also the best MAKE SURE a dealer will come in a place to buy equipment, THAT WHATEVER nucleus, which is four or second hand hives and so frames in a box, even bees.

THE HIVE SITS which then can be Also, if you have to ON IS SECURE directly transferred into buy from a dealer, there your brood box. will probably be AND CANNOT someone at the BE TIPPED Association who will do PUTTING IT ALL this for you. The ‘bee TOGETHER OVER club’ (as I call it) will DECIDE ON then get some profit on THE ENTRANCE the sale.

Point the entrance of the hive away At this time of the year look out for from strong winds, especially driving someone who will come along, knowing rain. Bees do not like draughts blowing you want bees, and who will dump a through their hive. Make sure that the swarm on you. Then you will have to do hive has plenty of room around it, but something about it pretty smartish. it can have high hedges around it. This Sometimes you have no option about way the bees will have to fly up and setting up your hive. away from the hive, and consequently New beekeepers should be wary of will not trouble anyone. taking on a swarm. The colony might be weak, diseased or have an old queen; SECURE THE STAND you just don’t know. They might prove Make sure that whatever the hive sits on successful manythecases, but just keep is secure and cannot be tipped over All the honey in removed: your expectations either by wind or vandals. final point of beekeeping.on hold a little until the colony is well established.

Stands made from tubular steel can

be cemented in position. You can strap the hive to the stand.

ADDING THE BEES Which ever way you acquire your bees, they should be settled into a deep brood box and fed straight away. Put a super on top and place a feeder on this with 1:1 syrup solution. (That is 1kg sugar to 1 litre of water.)

AFTER THIS, LEAVE THEM ALONE. A week later take a look inside to see them settled, with a laying queen and evidence of foraging bees. Grubs will appear and you will see frames drawn out, honey stores beginning and bees exploring the hive. The food should be going down nicely and you might think of putting frames in the super, a queen excluder in place and replenishing the food higher up the hive. E

Next Month Next month we will look at making frames, an easy process, and one that every beekeeper will have to learn.

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HOME FARMER HEROES

Orford Oysterage BUTLEY ORFORD OYSTERAGE began at the end of the Second World War when Richard Pinney decided he had had enough of living in London and headed for the countryside. After an extensive search he found a derelict cottage near Butley Creek on the Suffolk coast and began looking for ways to make a living. His first enterprise was cutting rushes from local dykes and rivers and drying and platting them into mats and carpets. It was here that he met and became friends with John Seymour. He is even mentioned in the book The Fat of the Land and it was Sally Seymour, John’s wife, who drew the symbol of the business, the merman.

This goes back to the true story of a man coming out of the sea to live in the village who never ever spoke.

Richard turned his attention to the river and set about restoring the derelict oyster beds in Butley Creek.

Oysters had been cultivated here for centuries and had a fine reputation but the trade had died in the late 19th Century. These oysters were undeniably one of the reasons why the

Romans invaded Britain. He introduced oysters from Portugal, and they fattened much better than the local molluscs. At the same time, being a keen fisherman, he caught some large sea trout off Orford beach. Not knowing what to do with them, he began to experiment with smoking in a disused compartment at the end of his cottage. The results were so good that he decided to buy some salmon and the smoking business grew from there.

The oysterage sells fresh smoked fish, seafood, smoked salmon and oysters.

Everything that ends up on the plate in the restaurant has been fished from the sea a day or two before and is wonderfully fresh and both cooked and presented in a simple manner. It is a place for eating and right up John Seymour's street. John loved oysters and had them for his 90th birthday present – the shells now mark the edge of his grave.

You can buy smoked and fresh fish, smoked poultry and other meat online, and, of course, oysters. All are completely fresh and come with the taste of the North Sea! A wonderful treat! E

NOMINATE YOUR LOCAL HERO Write to: Home Farmer The Good Life Press Ltd. PO Box 536, Preston, PR2 9ZY. Or email: editor@homefarmer.co.uk

Contact You can visit the Orford Oysterage in the centre of Orford, Suffolk.

Telephone: 01394 450277 www.butleyorfordoysterage.co.uk

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HF ISSUE 3 P54-56 CHICKENS

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HEN HOUSE DIARY

Housing Your Birds

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A house is the most important purchase we buy and the same applies for the poultry, says Janice Houghton-Wallace ONCE YOU HAVE decided on the type of birds you are going to keep, then their housing and fencing need to be arranged. This is vitally important because housing: E Protects against predators overnight E Provides a safe place for poultry to sleep E Provides birds with shelter from wind and rain E Provides an area to lay eggs – either with nestboxes fitted either internally or externally E Provides safety if the birds are required by law to be housed, for example in the event of a notifiable disease outbreak in the area

The breed and size of birds will have a direct bearing on the type of housing required. Geese and ducks, for instance, prefer housing that allows them to exist at ground level but some bantams and large fowl like nothing better than to escape to a cosy roost. Large fowl will need more space than small bantams and some ready-made housing is geared much more towards bantams than large breeds.

A tiny ark with a gable style pen is not going to be very comfortable for a large Buff Orpington. The bird would probably have to spend most of its days walking up the centre of the tent shaped unit. Look at the pop hole too, for a large bird you need an equally large hole, to encourage it to freely go into the house and out again.

There are numerous outlets for poultry housing these days and a wonderful array of designs and sizes to choose from. Some are very picturesque, while others are quite plain but do the job they were made for. Don’t necessarily go for the units that would look attractive in the garden for they could have poor ventilation for the birds and are often less than use-friendly when it comes to cleaning them out. A house that is large enough to walk into should pose few problems but some small units will find you bending over to scoop out the litter from above, or kneeling down to poke at awkward corners from behind the pop hole. Mobile units often have trays that pull out, enabling bedding to be removed with ease, but if this is not the case check that corners are accessible so that litter can be scooped out

thoroughly, thereby not allowing pests and bacteria to gather.

Whichever type of housing you choose it should be well constructed and robust. Gale force winds can soon lift a light roof and where you position the house should be thought through in this respect. Also, predators, especially foxes and badgers, will soon find a flimsy fitting, some rotting wood or a broken plank and all your birds could disappear overnight.

Mobile units that have runs attached are extremely useful for people who work during the day with no-one to keep an eye on what the birds are doing whilst they are away. Here again, some are more generous with space than others, however, the larger the mobile, the more difficult it will be to move it. A very small broody coop and pen will be no bother to move but the larger mobiles, even though there are handles for lifting, really do need two pairs of

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HEN HOUSE DIARY hands. Big field units often come with an ideal poultry home. If you do need to buy, as well as agricultural merchants towing skids, but then you need the and poultry housing specialists, the appropriate vehicle to pull it. local garden centre is also worth a visit.

One of the advantages of mobile A children’s play house units is the ability to could be just what you are move them to different pastures, either every day WHEN PUTTING looking for to house a few or every few days. This POULTRY IN A bantams.

I am a great advocate of way a lawn or meadow HOUSE WITH NO a customised garden shed will not become overly soiled and the birds can RUN YOU HAVE as a home for a few chickens. With a space cut enjoy fresh grass on a TO THNK OF out near the top of one regular basis. Being able to move the birds on a WHAT HAPPENS side and covered with chick mesh for good ventiregular basis is very WHEN THEY ARE lation and the inclusion of important, because this a perch, most birds will be way the land won’t LET OUT extremely happy in such become stale or worm housing. Any opening should be made ridden. on the side opposite to the prevailing Before buying a purpose built winds. The joy of such a building, poultry house, consider what is already though, is that you can get a good sized, available in your garden or on your quality shed for less money than many allotment. It could be that there is a smaller, purpose built poultry houses. A shed or building being unproductive that with a little conversion would make 6ft x4ft or better still, 8ft x6ft shed will

be large enough for half a dozen large fowl to be given feed, water and a cabbage to peck at, and they can be shut away in luxury during cold, wet, windy days in the winter. Another advantage is that if you are not home until after dark there will be no worries about the chickens being vulnerable to predators.

When putting poultry in a house with no run you have to think of what happens when they are let out. If the birds are in an enclosed garden, perhaps they will be free-range but, if not, simple penning systems can be bought; although if you are handy with a hammer and nails, wooden frames with wire panels would not take long to construct. Finished with fruit cage netting over the top, you will have an ideal outside pen which not only keeps the birds secure but is also fully mobile.

If putting up permanent fencing, then wooden stakes and 4ft high, 2 inch chicken wire is suitable for most adult poultry. E

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FLOWERS

Eye Catching Stars With the spring turning to summer, Paul Peacock looks at some must have plants for the flower garden THE WAY TO use eye-catching plants is to keep them as a focus. A corner to draw the eye in a certain direction, or a central bed that demands attention, a place where you simply must walk up to the plants to see what is going on.

CONEFLOWERS Also known as echinacea, these plants come from America where they have developed a reputation for helping the human immune system. This may or may not be true, but they certainly look good. They stand up like chrysanthemums and are at least as high. The purple of the flowers usually contrasts with the deep orange of the centre, but there is a wide range of colours available.

They can be grown from seed any time indoors from March and will easily establish themselves once transferred to their growing places. They require little care and become well set to give an ever growing display as the plants seed themselves.

EVENING PRIMROSE Oenothera, or Evening Primrose, has a trick up its sleeve. It will grow anywhere, and is just as at home growing against a wall as it is in a rich bed. The plant is now used medicinally as a botanic hormone replacement since it is rich in linolaeic acid. It will grow into big flags that cover an unsightly wall or a shed and draw the eye to its blousy flowers. Almost impossible to kill, you can grow it from seeds in the spring directly where they are going to thrive.

Keep it moist for a few weeks and it is away! You will be amazed at how the plant seeds itself, and you will find it popping up all over the place.

LAVATERA

This plant will melt anyone, like it’s purple cousin, a stand of this plant makes me breathe in and gaze forever.

Personally, no matter how bad the rest of the garden became, my mind would be taken by this lovely delicate little plant. Grown from corms in moist but not too moist soil and near to a water feature this plant will simply shine.

Although it is not cheap it is easy to grow once bought and it will certainly become a popular feature in your garden.

The mallow, or lavatera, is an unusual plant in that it will grow as a bedding plant in its first year and will then go on producing a bush that provides masses of colour through the summer. It almost invariably has pink flowers and can be trained as a centerpiece – a little like a ‘standard’ rose.

It doesn’t need much pruning – just keep its shape and restrict it to the size you prefer.

Every Spring give it a good feed of well rotted compost and it will produce the most colourful flowers. The problem comes when it is under-fed year after year as the flowers will begin to whiten.

Lavatera can be trained as a centrepiece.

The delicate and glorious White fritillary.

WHITE FRITILLARY

The amazingly easy to grow Evening Primrose.

KNIFOPHIA Red hot pokers come in all colours and look just like their name. You can get them red-tipped or simply red all over and they grow to about a metre tall. At one time these were Victorian garden curiosities, but are now much more common place. Mix the colours so they produce a fire in a stand of five or six plants. You can buy shorter ones and plant them on the outside and larger ones in the centre.

Knifophia covers a multitude of sins behind them – you can obliterate a rough corner or even a fence as long as you put a few of them together. The worst way of growing this plant is to grow it alone in singles – they look so weedy in ones – so rich and formidable in a group.

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SCHOOL CHICKENS

“How’re the Chickens, Sir?” Pupils and staff at The John Bramston School in Witham, Essex, have embarked on a new venture to re-home some ex-battery hens THE JOHN BRAMSTON School is the larger of two secondary schools in this small, semi-rural town. For many of the students, their families shop on a very tight budget and do not, or cannot, have pets of their own. Although the surrounding area enjoys a good deal of farmland, there is also a fair amount of industry within the town which is located beside the A12, one of Britain’s busiest commercial roads.

Following a difficult OFSTED in 2006 it was thought that students were not given sufficient opportunity for reflection on moral issues resulting in attitudes The school contacted the Battery and behaviour that were selfinvolved and not conducive to learning. Hen Welfare Trust co-ordinator for the area, Jean Gill, and on In the last 18 months 11th March the hens the school has made THEY QUICKLY arrived to a welcoming significant improveSETTLED INTO party of students and ments in all areas and staff. They quickly settled hopes to be removed THEIR NEW into their new purposefrom ‘special measures’ PURPOSE-BUILT built coop and run, laying shortly. There has been first egg inside 2 a marked improvement COOP AND RUN, their hours! Some of the hens in student attitudes LAYING THEIR were quite feather-bare and behaviour and the but with the tender loving setting up of the FIRST EGG care of the staff and chicken run is testament to this.

INSIDE 2 HOURS! students they are coming along nicely.

When Daren White, “The reception the hens have received Assistant Principal, spoke to one of his has been marvellous,” said Daren White. classes about his own hens, following “The students have volunteered to check the Channel 4 Big Food Fight, they on them during their lunchtime and enjoy showed a great deal of interest. discovering the eggs. They are not As a result the students watched the frightened to get their hands dirty and Hugh’s chicken Run series as well as some of them are getting confident and footage of the conditions for battery enjoy a quick cuddle with their favourite hens on the Internet and from hen. I walk down the corridor now and I Compassion in World Farming. The am bombarded with questions; “How’re students and I looked into the costs of the chickens, Sir?” “How many eggs today, setting up and maintaining a run at Sir?” “Is Madras alright this morning, Sir?” school, including health and safety It’s been a very positive start to the requirements, and put forward a proposal to the Principal and the Chair project and it is noticeable the change in attitudes of the students, particularly of Governors and our delight, both the when you liken battery farming to Principal and the Chair of governors intensive schooling. E were fully supportive.

These are the clucky ones!

ADAM MOORE AND RYAN KEMPEN (YEAR 8 STUDENTS) TAKE UP THE STORY Here at “The John Bramston School” in Witham, Essex, we are selling eggs from our Free-Range rescue chickens to staff and members of the public.

The aim of this is for people to appreciate how battery hens live in confined captivity and how much better their lives can be when allowed to range freely.

We have re-homed 10 chickens to start with. Lots of them did not have their feathers when they arrived in March and they had poor skin.

We give them plenty of food and water, rake out their coop and run so that they have plenty of exercise and collect the eggs every day.The eggs are really big and tasty and there is even a waiting list amongst the staff!

We got involved in this project with the chickens when Mr White did an assembly on hardship and showed us a video. It was horrible to watch them living in those cages.We wanted to do our bit and save them from their Battery Farm life.

It’s great to do something different at school and the chickens are really good fun to watch.

It’s amazing how quickly you learn to tell them apart.

We have already learnt a lot about how to look after them, how eggs are laid and how you can have good food without paying a lot.A lot of people bring in scraps of food for them too.

They love cabbage and sweetcorn!

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BUYING CHICKEN

Chickens don’t go cheap!

A NEW SERIES ABOUT THE WAY WE BUY AND USE CHICKEN MEAT

THIS SERIES CAME about because one of our readers was confused in the supermarket.

Easy enough when there is so much chicken about!

He wanted to buy free range chicken pieces and picked up a package that looked right. It had a picture of green fields on the front and generally looked, well, green!

But nowhere did it say ‘Free Range’ or ‘Organic’ and the price was cheap, dearer than the economy stuff but cheaper than the organic.

A trawl round the supermarkets has shown a variety of methods by which chicken is packaged. They fall into a number of categories: CHEAP CHICKEN This is the economy chicken priced at around £2.30 a kilo and has no origin information.

CHICKEN WITH PICTURES This packaging has either pictures of the farmer on it, telling you how well he looks after his animals, but makes no claims about free range, organic, Farm Assured, or RSPCA compliance. The cost of this product is priced around £2.50 - £3.00 a kilo, but we have no way of knowing if this is any way different from the economy brands.

RED TRACTOR WITH PICTURES This product has some welfare implications for the meat production. Minimum legal requirements are adhered to,

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BUYING CHICKEN

Get more from your chicken

especially in relation to disease and animal health. Proper records and inspections maintain standards and there are strict biosecurity, feed and hatchery controls. This product varied between £3.25 and £4.25 a kilo in the shops we saw it.

PICTURES WITH WRITING THAT SAYS RSPCA COMPLIANCE One supermarket had a picture of a farmer on the product and a paragraph that said the chicken complies with ‘RSPCA standards.’

FREEDOM FOOD The logo of freedom food on the package indicates that the chicken lived according to criteria laid down by the RSPCA, Freedom Food scheme. The product costs around £4.00 a kilo.

STAGE 1 – ROAST CHICKEN 1 Keep whatever gravy that is left over 2 Slice the legs and breast 3 Keep the underside meat, including the oysters 4 Give the skin and the Parson’s nose to the dog (Unless you like it yourself!)

STAGE 2 USING THE UNDERSIDE MEAT 1 This is all the meat you have to work to get off, the oysters in the hip, the meat round the hips, the muscle tissue that makes the wall of the abdomen, inside the wings, all over really 2 Chicken and vegetable pie or chicken and ham pie – use whatever gravy there is left over 3 Or Chicken risotto using up the gravy too

STAGE 3 – SOUP 1 Chicken and leek with vegetables (whatever you have) and dumplings.

ORGANIC OR FREE-RANGE You generally know what this product is, and it costs anything up to £9.00 a kilo.

One thing that can be said about this list is that, unless it actually has the appropriate logo on it, the chicken could have come from any source. The economy chicken could easily have been imported, frozen, pumped with chemicals, lived a life in an awful situation – you have no way of telling.

You might ask the butchery department if you can freeze the chicken, which will tell you that at least it has come from the UK and not on some huge refrigeration ship from the other side of the world.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RED TRACTOR AND FREEDOM FOOD? THE FIVE FREEDOMS The Farm Animal Welfare Council have laid down five freedoms for animal welfare. They include: 1 FREEDOM FROM HUNGER AND THIRST By ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour.

2 FREEDOM FROM DISCOMFORT By providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.

3 FREEDOM FROM PAIN, INJURY OR DISEASE By prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.

4 FREEDOM TO EXPRESS NORMAL BEHAVIOUR By providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind.

5 FREEDOM FROM FEAR AND DISTRESS By ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.

Economy chicken can mean almost anything!

These freedoms are the underlying basis for the Red Tractor and Freedom Food standards. The problem is that most people would be shocked to see how these standards are actually worked out on the farm.

According to the RSPCA website the amount of space allowed per bird is around the same area occupied by a piece of A4 paper. But then the Freedom Food says that they give 25% extra space per bird. Well that’s a sheet of A4 and a cigarette packet per bird.

Not much! The Freedom Food standards allow for 19 birds or 30kilos of chicken per square metre.

So what is the difference between Red Tractor and Freedom Food? Not a great deal! The RSPCA standards are more stringent on how long the birds live, the strains of poultry used, and within the realms of modern poultry farming, they are harder – but not by much. But it remains to be proven how a chicken can behave normally on a sheet of A4.

An RSPCA spokesperson said, “Freedom Food was set up to help improve the welfare of as many

Always look for the label. Interestingly the large chicken is much bigger than the free-range one!

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Can birds express normal behaviour crammed in a shed?

farmed animals as possible – it is not a niche scheme with impossibly high standards. They are set at the stretching end of achievable and are revised and developed annually as new evidence comes to light.

The idea is that the industry is able to move with us so we can help as many animals as possible. If we’d set the standards too high, few farmers would qualify for the scheme and the result would be that we’d help fewer animals.

As a bare minimum it is easy to imagine a merging of the Red Tractor and RSPCA standards, something that we believe most poultry keepers would hope for.

We would also hope that people do not buy cheap chicken but at least will look for the Freedom Food or the Red Tractor logo.

WHY NOT CHEAP CHICKEN? A BIT OF ETHICS It would be easy here to bang the table about supermarkets, about how badly chickens are treated, about farmers and profits and how we’re being cheated or duped by dubious

packaging or how free range is the only standard that should be sold. All of these things would be true, but I would like to turn things round a little and look myself in the eye.

With all so called ‘green’ movements the answers lie not in changing everyone else or moving the world and so on, they are to do with changing me. The same problem with cheap, caged eggs or broiler house meat applies to expensive free-range eggs and meat. It is that we have come to see chicken as convenience food – to be eaten and thrown away.

Once we have nibbled a few drumsticks and sliced the breast, the rest of the bird is seen as some sort of internal packaging and lobbed in the bin.

It is this attitude that we need to address if we are ever to make serious headway in the poultry welfare debate.

It is not what we do to chickens, it’s what we do to ourselves by somehow believing that another creature that has died for our dinner is fit only as quick food, to be thrown away without a second thought.

A BIT OF RESEARCH A new RSPCA poll shows that 73% of consumers said that since recently discovering standard chickens were farmed in poor conditions they now buy chickens that have had a better life.

Nearly three out of four people feel supermarkets should only sell higher welfare chicken such as Freedom Food, free-range or organic.

Over 130,000 people have signed up to the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Chicken Out campaign. There is plenty of impetus for a change in the way people buy chicken; some 53,000 people signed an RSPCA petition that calls for all supermarkets to only sell higher welfare meat.

USE YOUR CHICKEN RESPECTFULLY Even if we had nothing but free range chicken we would still need to look at the way we use it. A generation of nuggets and cheap sliced chicken has left us lacking the impetus to use the animal to its full potential. After all, it died for our dinner! So, we’re going to get 3 meals for four people from an average bird and something for the dog! So if you buy a free-range chicken at £8.00, you have a major ingredient for about 60p per person.

The truth is that I am sure every reader of Home Farmer could produce their own menu for the fullest use of a chicken. The most important message is really about self respect, respect for our food and ultimately respect for all the animals and processes that feed us. E

HF ISSUE 3 P62-63 GOATS

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GOATS A look at making cheese from goat’s milk gives us a chance to examine these intriguing animals as milk producers

Nannie’s Cheese IT ISN’T POSSIBLE to keep a cow in a garden and you are never going to have your own milk unless you have access to at least a couple of acres of land per cow.

And a lot of room for winter shedding and space for a suckling calf, not to mention the ability to grow or buy a whole lot of hay. But with a goat the prospect of your own milk becomes feasible, especially if you can get your allotment society to give you some space.

COW v GOAT AT THE MILK BAR

THERE IS SLIGHTLY LESS SUGAR IN GOAT’S MILK AND THE PROTEIN IS DIFFERENT TOO

When you look at goat’s milk it appears whiter and less creamy than cow’s milk. This is not because there is less fat.

Goat’s milk lacks an enzyme, agglutinin.

Consequently the fat droplets in goat’s milk do not stick so easily together and are consequently smaller in size. This affects the colour of the milk. In fact goat’s milk is around 10% fattier than cow’s milk.

There is slightly less sugar in goat’s milk and the protein is different too.

This accounts for the longer setting time of goat’s cheese and the curds, when they are formed, are softer. It is much more difficult to make a good hard cheese from goat’s milk.

Because the goat’s milk fat particle is much smaller than cow’s milk, it means the surface area of fat in the milk is much higher. Goat’s fat acts as a solvent much more rapidly than cow’s does and for this reason goat’s milk takes up flavours and taints much more readily.

You need to be sure that your utensils

are completely clean.

(Yes, this is true for all cooking, but is especially true in this case. The number of times I have made onion or straw, or even strawberry flavoured cheese!)

don’t have so much to store and use up.

There is a lot of hype about goats needing much poorer food than cattle.

This is not really true. Yes, a goat can survive on rubbish food, but it certainly won’t thrive. A goat will produce six pints a day, as opposed to the two gallons you might expect from a domestic cow.

BENEFITS

PASTEURISED?

There are said to be a number of benefits, healthwise, to goat’s milk.

There have been widespread studies into allergies, and it does seem that some people can get relief from asthma and eczema by drinking goat’s milk. This is likely because there are fewer allergy causing chemicals in the milk in the first place, but studies are by no means clear and sufferers should always take medical advice before relying on any so-called remedy.

It is currently not considered appropriate by the medical profession to try goat’s milk for infants who are lactose intolerant.

One real benefit from goat’s milk is that you don’t get so much of it. You

There are bound to be people who will phone in and complain, but I personally believe that you should pasteurise your milk. I have spent long enough watching agar plates in microbiology labs counting the various pathogenic bacteria that can come out of milk.

Pasteurisation of milk, both cow and goat, led to the biggest improvement in public health humanity has ever seen.

Of course, you can put bacteria back into the milk, as with a mesophilic starter, but in this case you pretty much know which bacteria you are using.

To Pasteurise your milk, use a double boiler and slowly bring the temperature to 66oC and keep it at this temperature for 30 minutes.

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MAKING GOAT’S CHEESE Goat’s cheese reflects goat’s milk. You can buy the appropriate milk from the supermarket if you don’t have your own.

The curds are softer but the milk is higher in protein, so it takes a little less rennet than cow’s milk. It looks white and for some time I believed it to be more acidic than equivalent cow cheeses. However, this is often down to the manufacturing process.

BASIC GOAT CHEESE Goat cheese tends not to be pressed and is always handled carefully. It taints easily so be careful not to use rubber gloves and make sure there are no aromas around the preparation area.

This cheese does not use rennet, but you can substitute it if you wish.

INGREDIENTS 4.5 litres of fresh goat’s milk which might be more than one day’s milking.

Juice of four lemons or 50ml white vinegar or 3 drops of rennet in a little cooled, boiled water Cheese cloth

2 Leave for 30 minutes allowing the mix to cool to 40oC 3 Cut the curd into 1cm cubes and gently pour into a cheesecloth lined colander.

4 If you have used vinegar you need to wash the acetic acid out of the cheese with gently running cold water until the smell has gone. If you use lemon juice, the cheese is really lovely if it is sweetened.

5 Draw the corners and hang to drain the whey.

Some writers say you can vary the cheese type in the hanging process.

An hour and it is similar

to ricotta. Three hours it is like cream cheese, and six hours it becomes hardish and can be pushed into a mould to be lightly pressed – very lightly.

You can sweeten the cheese – honey is best. Salt it to 1% by weight if you wish to keep it longer than a week or so.

SPREADABLE GOAT CHEESE This cheese is simple to make and should serve as a template for all goat cheeses.

CAN

YOU SWEETEN THE CHEESE – HONEY IS BEST. SALT IT TO 1% BY WEIGHT IF YOU WISH TO KEEP IT LONGER

2 3 4 5 6

METHOD 1 Heat the milk to 80oC and add the acid, stir to mix.

INGREDIENTS 2 litres fresh goat’s milk 25ml Mesophilic Starter Culture 1 drop of rennet in a little cooled, boiled water 2.5g salt (half a level teaspoon)

METHOD 1 Slowly warm the milk to 21oC ideally using a double boiler with such a small quantity of milk.

Add the starter, mixing well and then ten minutes later add the rennet.

Leave for at least 12 hours to set.

Carefully ladle out the curds and let them drain in a cheese mould for 24 hours.

The curds should have a firmness about them.

You can incorporate salt and herbs if you prefer at this stage. Rolling the cheeses into chopped herbs makes a great presentation feature. E

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POULTRY DISEASES

Coccidiosis Coccidiosis is a very common and costly problem in poultry. This unpleasant disease can cause all sorts of painful symptoms in young and old birds COCCIDIA LIVE EVERYWHERE: in the soil, in the guts of most animals and they are mostly found in faeces. It is almost certain that this single-celled parasite will be somewhere in the soil that your birds are scratching and feeding on. When the conditions are not perfect the cells create microscopic egg-like cysts which can remain dormant in the soil. These are then ingested by the birds, causing them to become infected.

These cycts, known as oocysts, can last for a year and are resistant to drying out, freezing cold and a number of disinfectants. Once inside the bird they find a niche in the specific part of the gut the particular species prefers. There are seven species that infect poultry and are quite specific in their requirements.

Some birds have a degree of built in immunity, and symptoms vary according to the amount of infection.

Symptoms come and go according to the THERE ARE coccydial load (the number of parasites in SEVEN SPECIES the gut) and other external factors that THAT INFECT can range from cold weather, other infesta- POULTRY AND ARE tions, social pressure, QUITE SPECIFIC feeding and so on. In IN THEIR particular the free availability of vitamins REQUIREMENTS A and K in feed have an

What to look for E E E E E E E E

Listless Off its food Lacking vigour Pale comb Ruffled feathers Blood in diarrhoea Open drooping wings Eyes closed

E

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65 effect in keeping coccidian concentrations down. Flare up can be very sudden and you should be keen to recognise changes in bird health.

In particular rescue poultry can fall due to coccidiosis should they be forced into an environment of high soil load and a lot of ‘natural’ or untreated food that they find difficult to eat after their life-long incarceration in a cage eating easy swallow food.

LIFECYCLE Coccidia have a sexual and an asexual phase, usually occurring in the same host at the same time. In the case of chickens the prevailing lifecycle seems to be to develop in the bird and then to become egested into the soil or bedding. Transfer infection then takes place and once in the new host the cells divide rapidly asexually to build up a host population.

The protozoan parasites inter-set themselves between the cells of the gut, and this causes a number of problems.

First of all it makes the animal feel unwell, leading to a loss of appetite. The reduction in the capacity of the gut causes other problems too. It becomes harder for the bird to absorb the nutrients it needs and when the coccidian cells have passed a threshold number the gut wall begins to break down.

This causes diarrhoea and within days blood will be seen in the watery droppings.

The problem affects mainly young birds that are subject to high loads and low anti-coccidiant feed concentrations. They have not usually had the chance to develop any immunity as the guts are not fully vaccinated from food sources, and are still in the early stage of development. In these cases the parasite load increases without check.

Lethargy, muscle waste and a general boots. Introducing young birds into lack of condition are all common in such environments will lead to birds that have had a prolonged and inevitable infection. But the same is gradually increasing exposure to the true for home and urban bird parasite. Internally this effects the populations too. ability of the animal to maintain its The further away from the hut, the immune system and various other less chance there is of the soil borne problems can be seen in conjunction. spores causing a problem, but good They can fall to other diseases, cleanliness, fresh soil, plenty of varied especially respiratory ones, and can food and good ventilation all help suffer very badly from red mite attack. keep the problem at bay. However, it is Their combs become not recommended that pallid and lack colour you simply rely on your SUDDEN DEATH good works to keep the and their overall appearance deterioproblem out of your flock.

OF BIRDS IS rates. A heavy infesFREQUENTLY tation will have the NOT BATTERY bird looking as Birds kept in battery DOWN TO though it is near conditions have been COCCIDIOSIS, death – wings relatively free from the drooping, eyes closed, problem because of the PARTICULARLY ruffled feathers. possibility for very high RESCUE AND Sudden death of birds bio-security. For this is frequently down to reason, as described YOUNG Coccidiosis, particuearlier, rescue birds can larly rescue and young. suddenly fall prey to the problem.

Infestation can predispose the However, the increasing number of animal to other intestinal diseases, free range and organic birds being especially necrotic enteritis (NE). This kept has led to an inevitable increase is caused by the bacterium in coccidiosis because of the greater Clostridium perfringens, a soil-born number of birds scratching in organism that is found almost everyinfected soil. where. When it grows unchecked in The lack of an easily applied and the gut, it releases toxins that damage completely effective vaccine means the intestinal lining. that other chemical coccidiostats are required, especially for the home poultry keeper. There are a number on GOOD MANAGEMENT the market, and your vet can suggest Your management skills will actually the one you should use. Normally put help your birds gain a measure of in drinking water, this provides a good immunity and will keep the coccidial measure of control that keeps population to a minimum. While the numbers of parasites at bay. parasites are in the spore stage they There are two classes of drugs. can easily be removed. Dryness Coccidiostats arrest or inhibit the enhances this, forcing the coccidian growth of intracellular parasites. This into the spore stage. If there is type of drug can make the bird more nothing in the hen house that is wet, sensitive to coccidia in the future. nor appetising in terms of pecking, They work by making complex the likelihood of the birds ingesting chemicals on the cell surface of the large amounts of infected faeces is parasite. The other chemicals are lowered. Keep the bedding dry. called Coccidiocidals, which destroy From the hen house a few yards coccidia during their development into the run, a series of duck boards, inside the gut. E or even wire netting for the birds to walk on will also keep the chance of ingesting infected material to a minimum. Clearly, the more birds you have, the greater the chance of infection. Overcrowding is one of the main contributing factors. Needless to say, this disease costs the poultry industry over £40 million a year.

Investigations of broiler sheds show that the oocysts will remain viable for E Keep litter dry over a year where they are protected E Treat as soon as you can from prolonged exposure to weather. It E Keep droppings away from the is possible for the parasite to be transhen house mitted into clean sheds by humans E Do not keep too many birds carrying infection on clothing and E Excellent hygiene

Good management

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SELF-SUFFICIENCY SPECIAL

Suburban Self-sufficiency After years of dreaming about it, I am now fortunate enough to own a little bit of Cornwall that allows me to experiment in all sorts of sustainability and self-sufficiency. It was not always so!

As a family we spent nearly 20 years moving from one rented army married quarter to the next. Television’s Dick Strawbridge tells us how it was and is...

SPACE WAS ALWAYS an issue and we had the added disadvantage of knowing we would be on the move to my next posting in less than 2 years.

I’ve never been one for ‘stripey’ lawns so we started each new tour with digging in our veggie patch or putting up a little greenhouse, polytunnel or cloches. In the early days of our married life we had to pay to move most of our belongings ourselves so we were not in the habit of transporting lots of plants and tools, we took cuttings and started from seeds.

Looking back on it, we must have been the neighbours from hell. In fact, I do remember a senior officer that lived next door to us changing his attitude very quickly when we went from being the slightly ‘odd’ family next door with some chickens and vegetables to the real pains in the ass who had given a home about finding a more sensible way of to an unwanted cockerel. doing things and it doesn’t matter if you A couple of years ago any green are live in a smallholding, a terraced article would start by having to justify house, a bungalow or a the need to be ecosemi we can all achieve a friendly. Times have changed and there are FOOD MILES ARE massive amount of selfsufficiency. only a very few people A SERIOUS ISSUE This is a huge subject, who will not but one of the most acknowledge that, as a AND I THINK fundamental human planet, we are living GROWING YOUR needs is to eat, so what beyond our means. The important place to eco-warrior’s mantra OWN HAS TO BE an start. I have to come ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ THE BEST WAY clean, I’m a bit of a is the easy answer. Put ‘foody’ and high quality, simply, we have to cut FORWARD well produced, well down on what resources cooked grub is a subject we are using and stop very close to my heart. Food miles are a throwing as much away. The most serious issue and I think growing your important thing is to reduce how much own has to be the best way forward. we need to maintain our way of life. For There are several, significant, me, that does not mean denial and challenges: reverting to sackcloth and ashes, it is

FINDING THE TIME Paying the mortgage does tend to get in the way of the good life! Let’s not kid ourselves; self sufficiency takes a lot of effort. I hear lots of people giving the very sensible advice of ‘don’t try and do too much to begin with’. Sorry, but I have very different advice – jump in with both feet and just do it! Get out there and dig all day long, until your muscles ache, and plant as much as you possibly can. Pick up a free greenhouse from ‘freeserve’ and work into the night with your partner/friends/children getting it up. Life is not a rehearsal so don’t wait for the planets to align before you get stuck in.

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR SPACE Not everyone can have acres of space, but most people will find their garden is more than enough to be a full time job.

If you are seriously short of ground

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space, you may have to go 3-D, building up instead of out. Think about how to get the most out of every little bit of space. We are all aware that south facing walls warm up and retain heat – putting a lean-to greenhouse against one can increase your yields and your growing season. If that’s not possible, keep your water butt in the green house – they will retain an amazing amount of heat that will be gently given out as the evening chills. But instead of being positively industrial in your growing regime, don’t forget companion planting, to encourage good insects, wildlife corridors for hedgehogs, ponds for frogs and cover for slow-worms... they are all on your side and help keep the pests at bay GROWING ENOUGH We always grow the expensive crops as a matter of priority (who’d pay £1.99 for a bag of salad when you can grow enough plants to keep you all summer in a tiny bed?)

the ‘worm tea’, the liquid fertiliser, is extremely potent and has to be diluted by about 10:1 before it can be used. ‘Bubblehouse’ worms have a stacker system that will take most of what an average family produces and even allow you to grow herbs in a pot on the top.

so sadly home grown spuds suffered during all those years we were vagrants. If you are short of space, and you grow intensively, it may not be long before fertility is an issue. There is nothing for it, you COMPOSTING have to become a religious composter.

SAVES WASTE Composting saves GOING TO LAND waste going to land fill and adds to your producFILL AND ADDS tivity. In small gardens a TO YOUR wormery is a must; as well as great compost,

ENSURING YOU HAVE ENOUGH VARIETY IN THE PRODUCE YOU GROW There are certain limitations to the choice when you try eating grown food in PRODUCTIVITY home season and, to rub it in, supermarkets are there to tempt us all year round, but be strong. I think that eating seasonal food helps keep you linked to the changing seasons and when each new crop becomes available we appreciate it all the more - we all know that local British strawberries are magnificent, and far superior to anything you will be able buy in the winter! So staying away from tasteless imports and waiting ‘til Wimbledon week for our local fruit, it’s not really a hardship is it?

I’ve only touched the surface of the fun to be had when you progress towards self-sufficiency. Lets not forget all the challenges of pigs, rainwater harvesting, turkeys, wind turbines, geese, water wheels, ducks, spring water, heating and heat recovery, sheep, smokers, solar systems (thermal and PV), insulation... E

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SELF-SUFFICIENCY SPECIAL For a large number of people contemplating a more selfsufficient lifestyle, debt is a serious problem. Self-sufficiency can help you through the process says Paul Peacock

Drowning in a sea of debt?

WHEN YOU THINK of self-sufficiency you conjure up visions of green fields and rows of vegetables, chickens and milk and honey. But we can’t all live in happy llama land, for many people the harsh realities of a consumer lifestyle, and the money that pays for it, is all but crushing. But it doesn’t have to be like that.

Self-sufficiency implies looking after oneself, growing your own food and raising your own meat and eggs, living a pastoral sort of life, even if you live far from the country.

However, this idyll is hardly possible in certain circumstances, one of them having large amounts of debt. Self-

Next Month In next month’s special we will look at how health can affect our dream to live a more self-sufficient life and how we can get help when we need it.

sufficiency implies freedom, debt bills amount to £42 per day according implies quite the opposite. to a recent survey and the mortgage is The average unsecured debt in on top of this. Then come the car, the the UK is a whisker food, the clothing, the short of £9,000 per entertainment etc. It all family, and when you THE AVERAGE adds up! Now if you are take account of working all the hours UNSECURED mortgages, the average God sends to furnish debt per person is on top of this DEBT IN THE UK debt £34,000. Now, try as almost essential expenIS A WHISKER diture, then you are you may, it is not possible to live selfgoing to be very hard SHORT OF sufficiently, truly selfpushed to put the time £9,000 PER sufficiently, if you have into a self-sufficient a lot of debt. lifestyle.

FAMILY The problem is a complex one. When LIFESTYLE there is a lot of financial wealth Debt affects your self-esteem, your around, the banks lend money in sleep, your health as well as your order to earn a slice of that wealth. pocket. It makes your days miserable Then, as this wealth disappears and your nights restless. Self-suffipeople and businesses find it more ciency is not about money, it’s about and more difficult to pay the lifestyle. Debt hinders it. The banks financial arguments about self-suffiwhat ciency do not always add up anyway. they A wind turbine energy system might owe them not save you money in the long run, and the but it will generate your power. accumulated That’s the point! Keeping chickens result of might be just as expensive as buying this is that free range chickens, (and you can everyone finds guarantee that supermarkets will their debt more always make it so) but they will be expensive, and your chickens, your eggs, your meat. many are squeezed out of SELF-SUFFICIENCY the credit world AND DEBT altogether. This is Embarking on a self-sufficient happening at the lifestyle is a gradual process where moment; the media various crops and activities replace call it the credit some of your shopping and work crunch. related tasks. You get new crops, and one way of dealing with money is to see it as another crop that you LIVING IN A manage just like all the rest. Just in MODERN the same way you plan your seed WORLD sowing and harvest, plan to remove It is impossible to your debt. Taking control away from live in the modern your creditors is not difficult if you world without are determined, you just have to make money. Ordinary

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69 some lifestyle choices – just what self-sufficiency is all about. All of a sudden you are no longer a slave, but a master. You can see all your debt in the light of all the other things you do to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

WOULDN’T DARE I wouldn’t dare tell you how to get out of debt. But I will tell you about our position. Due to stupidity and a severe lack of money our debts built up so that we could no longer pay the mortgage and our other bills fell into arrears. Having the telephone cut off was a blessing because it stopped our creditors bothering us each evening.

Time to plan: I telephoned all my creditors, from the phone box, and made a plan with each of them to pay reduced amounts of money until such a time that I could pay more. With each conversation I made a payment straight away, only a small one, but it was enough to let them put on file that I had paid something. This was all they needed because debt collectors have to collect something, however small.

I found that by making a list of all my income and outgoings it was easier to actually work out a plan. It is surprising how you spend money without knowing it. Then I could plan, protecting the mortgage and the serious bills, and then making arrangements here there and everywhere.

PROTECT YOURSELF Debt is a killer. A horrid combination of our personal sense of failure and other people’s scorn does a lot of harm. I once had a bank manager tell me that since I was a ‘man of the cloth’ (as I then was) I was a disgrace.

The world is good at making you feel small. But then something occurred to me, sat in the bank manager’s office. I had an allotment and a garden full of veg, two beehives and a couple of dozen chickens. If the world changed, and money was of no value, who would be the richer of us.

At least I’d be able to feed my family, and I knew he lived in a posh flat with no garden at all.

I told him I was actually richer than he was, and why. He closed my account – but I felt good about myself!

Seeing your plan working is important and you need to constantly remind yourself how good you are.

Living on little money is hard, especially when next door are washing their new car which they no doubt bought on credit. E

HELP IS AT HAND...

CLEAR START 2nd Floor Norfolk House, 47 Upper Parliament Street, Nottingham NG1 2AB. Tel: 0800 138 5445 Clear Start is a national organisation set up to provide free support to help people with serious debt problems.

THE DEBT ADVICE TRUST Tel: 0800 954 6526 Is a not for profit organisation, who advertise themselves as listeners.

CONSUMER CREDIT COUNSELLING SERVICE Wade House, Merrion Centre, Leeds LS2 8NG. Tel: 0800 138 1111 CCCS is a charity, so you won't pay a penny for any of their services – whether you need immediate debt advice tailored to your situation or more general budgeting advice.

COUNSELLING DIRECTORY www.counsellingdirectory.org.uk/debt.html This is a website where you put in your post code and it gives you a list of counsellors in your area.

DEBTWISE www.debtwise.co.uk This is a brilliant website that gives you all sorts of links from reclaiming bank charges to lending disputes and all the ombudsmen are listed too.

NATIONAL ADVICE UK www.adviceuk.org.uk This is a website that provides you with any number of different helplines.They do not offer help themselves, but provide contacts for approved help around the country.

MARTIN LEWIS’ MONEY SAVING EXPERT www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/ debt-help-plan Martin Lewis is the chap on the television who champions financial help. He was the man who started the ‘claim money back from the banks’ movement. His website is full of brilliant help.There are videos to watch and plans and assessments of your debt status. It really is a first step to get an idea of your situation.

MORTGAGE PROBLEMS This is a priority problem, you could lose your house. It is very important that you try and sort out this problem as soon as possible by either contacting your lender or getting advice. It's also important that you keep paying something on a regular basis even if you can't afford the full amount.

More people than ever are facing mortgage problems, this year a million households will face increased mortgage payments because their fixed-rate mortgages come to an end.

UK INSOLVENCY HELPLINE www.insolvencyhelpline.co.uk Tel: 0800 074 6918 The Insolvency Helpline has a lot of resources to help people with debt problems. In particular it has advice for people who are experiencing mortgage problems.

SHELTER www.england.shelter.org.uk Tel: 0845 458 4590 It sounds desperate, but Shelter help more than just the homeless.They can offer help and advice when it comes to mortgage arrears.

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SELF-SUFFICIENCY SPECIAL

You Don’t Need Land to Live t How much land do you need?

Well, if you want to grow all your own vegetables and fruit, keep hens and maybe some bees, surprisingly little IT IS OFTEN said that you need an acre of land to be self-sufficient. This would include keeping a milk goat, lots of hens for eggs and meat, maybe a pig, bees for honey and wax and tonnes of vegetables, fruit, salads and wheat for bread. Take out the pig and the goat from this equation and you need much less.

The truth is that you don’t need to be a member of the Country Landowners Association in order to live a very good growyour-own life indeed.

STORAGE

Storage is very important if you want to grow your own.

You will find that it isn’t finding space to grow food that is important, it’s being able to store it when it is grown that is a problem.

Modern houses are built the way they are because designers and planners have stuck to the belief that people feed themselves from a shop. Kitchens that once were food factories are now little more than tin opening and warming up rooms. So the most important ‘good life’ tool is a good kitchen! If you don’t have one, spill out into the dining room. A good shed is important too. Make it a dry one with lots of shelves for storing potatoes and greens and fruit and, of course, a good freezer.

STAPLES You need to work out what you eat and plan accordingly. Let’s take potatoes as a starting point. In our house we eat around 10lbs of potatoes a week, which amounts to 520lbs a year (or 250kg or a quarter of a tonne). In other words 10 large bags. This can be grown in a space that is 6 large paces square. But then you can eliminate this entirely by using up your spare land. A pile of tyres will produce anything up to 50lbs (25kg) of potatoes, so a number of towers dotted around the garden will produce quite a lot.

You can ‘container grow’ a lot of vegetables. There is little need to grow carrots in a bed when they will grow quite successfully in containers around the garden. They will even grow on the roof! All you need is a container that is a couple of feet deep, then you can grow carrots anywhere. We eat around 100lbs of carrots each year, an area of 3 big paces square will produce this easily.

The principles apply to each of the various crops in the garden. Now it is beyond the scope of this article to actually show you how to grow all the various crops in the garden except to say that this idea is nothing new. Indeed, it was once official government policy.

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e the Good Life

Top Tips DIG FOR VICTORY The Second World War saw the UK almost without food. Farming in Britain had long been run down and important foods were imported; wheat, barley, milk, meat and fruit were all brought in from around the Empire. We imported nearly 70% of our food, especially Canadian wheat. Within a very short time we would have starved without the ‘Dig for Victory’ drive that was so important that it still has a certain impetus over 60 years later.

The Dig for Victory Leaflet No. 1 showed householders that with a garden of 90ft by 30ft (28m by 9m) you could grow all your own vegetables. They were also encouraged to keep chickens in the same space. This was an almost selfsufficient existence. And at the same time we were able to make aeroplanes and cars and live an industrial life too!

It was said that the people of this country were never better fed, even if there were no bananas, not much milk, and the Sunday joint looked more like a picked bone!

FERTILITY It was John Seymour who introduced the concept that importing food was actually importing fertility. You grow grass to feed a cow, the cow gives milk, you sell the milk. The nutrients that went in the milk came from the soil that fed the grass. The soil has lost some fertility to make milk. Now the same is true for the garden.

You need to put back into the soil what you take out. Composting material that you waste in the garden is important, but not enough. The garden needs inputs to replace what was lost,

and this comes from composting material from outside the garden too. Paper, cardboard, shop bought vegetable waste, leaves off the pavement in autumn, chicken droppings, especially if they are fed using bought food, are all important sources of fertility. Green manures do not add fertility to the soil except for nitrates. They just change it around; whatever minerals make up the green manure came from the soil in which you grew them in the first place. Busy compost heaps are a really important feature of the self-sufficient garden.

WHO CARES? The hackneyed old term, ‘Living the Good Life’ means a lot to many people.

But at the end of the day what business is it of anyone’s exactly how self-sufficient you are? You might not always have enough potatoes or cabbage, and you might need to pop to the shops and buy some, or better still, swap something you do have a lot of to meet the shortfall. This kind of bartering system occurs at allotment societies all over the country. On good allotment sites (and yes, there are some not so good ones) neighbours will say ‘if you need anything, just take it’, and in return you say the same. So if a few spuds are dug up one Sunday morning you know they have been paid for by a couple of cabbages you took the previous week.

This is the real ‘Good Life.’ You see self-sufficiency is not about living in isolation, it’s not about being self-selfself-sufficient! It is about community, and that is where we as humans have always been at our best. E

START WHERE YOU ARE A window box, a patio, a garden or an allotment. Don’t pine away hoping for a smallholding – get stuck in now!

SMALL STEPS Even if you’d like to, don’t just dig up the lawn in a fit of passion about The Good Life, looking for Margo Ledbetter over your shoulder. Start with a small bed and expand as your interest allows.

COMPOST Before you do anything, start to plan in the fertility of whatever land you have.

Compost is of vital importance if you want fit, healthy, tasty food.

TRAINING There are lots of ways you can learn more. Dozens of websites – including www.homefarmer.co.uk – and people to learn from. If you are considering keeping animals go on a course, and watch this space for Home Farmer Training!

ENJOY More than anything, the pride of serving up your own food, grown, produced and cooked by yourself, is the very best seasoning you can get.

Selfsufficiency is a good life, not just scraping a bare living in the bare earth, so ENJOY IT!

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SELF-SUFFICIENCY SPECIAL

The Home Farm Some people have more land than others. Some have bigger gardens and some have back yards. The average garden in the UK is 300m2 and it is quite possible to turn this into a Home Farm that provides all your vegetables, a lot of fruit, all your salads, eggs, honey, herbs, some meat (chicken) and if you go fishing...

YOU WILL NOTICE this takes up nearly all the garden! Salads can be intercropped between rows of vegetables and this leaves just about enough space for a greenhouse. However, a patio style greenhouse will work just as well, and I can lay a number of these against a wall of the house, saving space and heating costs. I happen to be lucky enough to have a south-facing wall, and so this will act as a heat sink, keeping the night time temperatures above freezing in the greenhouses for much of the year. This will provide me with no end of tomatoes and cucumbers.

TH GAR IS IS M THE DEN F Y O YEA COMIN R R, BU G A I RAISROUNDLT ED B EDS

FRUIT Thankfully you can grow a lot of fruit in small places. Hanging baskets will provide enough strawberries for a long summer. Rhubarb will happily grow in an old dustbin on a path, raspberries take up a row of beans’ worth of space, but the canal bank, not 50 metres away, provides me with more blackberries than I can possibly eat, make pies from or turn into wine. And I have two wonderful apple trees in tubs – not much, but enough for a gallon of cider and 20 apple pies in the freezer.

Crop

Quantity consumed

SECURITY I live in an urban part of Manchester, a very urban part! Security

Area needed (m2)

Notes

Potatoes of all types

300kg

80

Ease the land burden by planting in tubs

Cabbages of all types Including cauliflower

150 plants

30

Successive sowing needed

Leeks 200 plants

20kg

Onions of all types including shallots

100kg

Garlic

20kg

Swede

50kg

20

Beetroot

20kg

10

30

Chives and spring onions will grow in pots Grow anywhere, between rows, in pots, on the roof.

Parsnip

25kg

10

Carrot

50kg

25

Beans (broad)

50kg

20

Beans (runner)

50kg

20

Peas

50kg

20

for my garden is paramount and for this reason the hugely overgrown hedge at the bottom is important. It takes up a lot of space, but no human or animal can get through it! I am planning to replace some of this hedge with thorned bushes that will also give me fruit such as sloes and some old gooseberries that I have to move.

Each of us will have differing needs when it comes to security. Anyone living in a town and wanting to keep hens and bees will need at least a part of the garden out of sight of the rest of the world.

BIRDS I have a small plot overhung by a large tree, out of the way where I can keep a few bantams in complete comfort. Six of them will provide all the eggs I need, but you might want more. Bear in mind that each hen needs to run and scratch and live normally, and you will need at least one other area of the same size to move them so that soil borne parasites can be kept at bay. However, this can easily be one of the other areas of the garden, occupied by the birds for a spell once the crop has been taken. A garden of 300m2 can accommodate 4-6 hens.

You will need a moveable hutch and the ability to move the run fencing too. E

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SELF-SUFFICIENCY SPECIAL You might live in a terraced house, but there is plenty you can do to it to live the Good Life.

My House is too Small ANDY HUNT LIVES in Bury. Tarmac, other terraced houses, factories and concrete surround him. He is excited about the tarmac because after 10 years of trying he has finally got frogs to return to his small pond to mate, despite there being very little in the way of frog habitat in the area.

Inside, a wood burner powers his house. It is plumbed into the central heating system and his logs are kept dry in a lean to part of the backyard. A problem I envisaged as I walked into the front room was the area he lives in; it’s smokeless. I asked the inevitable question. It seems that there are a number of wood burners on the market that are so efficient they are officially exempt from the Smokeless Zone legislation.

There are two ring mains supplying electricity to the home, a grid-mains one that drives the kitchen, with its high power equipment, and a secondary one that supplies the rest of the house.

The power for this is generated by two 24v photovoltaic cells on the south facing wall. This feeds an inverter via battery storage. In the winter, when the light is low, he can recharge his batteries from the mains if he needs.

He is pondering a 24v lighting system directly fed from his batteries, but that one’s for the future.

Did he need planning permission for the cells on the wall? The answer was basically a no, with provisos. You do need planning permission if you are going to take something above the

height of your roof, or you change the skyline, but otherwise there’s no problem.

The back yard is little bigger than the average dining room, but it is the engine of the house. On the roof he has a heat exchange solar panel which adds greatly to the hot water system from the late spring to the early autumn.

He collects his roof rainwater into a butt and is increasing his capacity.

There is a filter in the kitchen that allows him to use this water in times of emergency, like when they are diggingup the road, something of a council pass-time at the moment.

The rest of the yard is given over to beds for growing vegetables. Along the back wall of the house is trained a healthy grapevine. It is one of the variations of ‘Black Hamburg’ that does so well in northern climates, with small black fruit that is very sweet.

Clearly, in this small space he is not going to be self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit, but he has his own greenhouse and what he does grow, like the couple of dozen onion sets that were peeping out of the soil, goes a long way.

Last year he had enough grapes to make himself a whole bottle of wine! Next year, who knows! E

Next Month Every small garden should have room for wildlife.

Saving water from the roof with an automatic system.

In next month’s Good Life Special we will be looking at keeping hens in small space gardens.

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MARKET Thinking about selling your produce? Thinking of moving to the country and opening a farm shop? Countryside Journalist Jane Brooks runs a small herd of Large Black and Berkshire pigs in Warwickshire, marketing all her own meat and selling breeding stock. Here she takes a look at what it takes to turn an enjoyable hobby into a thriving small business

First Steps in Selling MANY FARMERS AND smallholders just directly over to the family and each family member will be affected by the don’t see themselves as salesmen or new enterprise. It is vital to work as a women, but sales and promotion skills play an important part in bringing your team, giving everyone a role in the decision making process to avoid any products to the marketplace. potential conflicts. Sometimes it is easy Traditionally most farmers sold their to get wrapped up in technical issues and produce in a mass market but within lose touch with the personal problems the speciality and niche markets that that can make or break a new business. have developed in recent years there Selling products directly to customers are many opportunities for both large does give producers the opportunity to and small producers to market their receive a better price but there are own products. You just have to look at pitfalls, the product has to the number of Farm the customers’ needs Shops and Farmers LOOK AT SIMILAR suit and maintaining customer Markets that have loyalty depends on sprung up during the BUSINESSES IN building relationships last ten years to see THE AREA, IS with them. Good sellers that there is a growing demand for THERE ROOM FOR know their customers’ names and loyal quality home ANOTHER ONE, customers bring in repeat produced British business even if they can food.

HOW CAN YOUR get the same product Before deciding to NEW VENTURE slightly cheaper go into any type of elsewhere. To use a well business it is BE BETTER worn phrase, any producer important to identify deciding to sell direct to and target potential the public needs his own ‘Unique Selling customers, it is also vitally essential to Point.’ Perhaps what you produce is assess your own skills, time available, organic or free range, maybe rare breeds, resources and most importantly whatever you have to offer, the customer consider if you have the personality to needs to know why it is different. It may deal directly with members of the simply be that it is sold direct from the public. Then set some goals, write down farm but then of course there are less what you want to achieve and how you food miles, less stress to any animals if plan to do it, from the raw product they have been reared at the same place through to it finally arriving on the all their lives, giving the meat full customers’ plate, everything from traceability. If you are producing processing, packaging, storage, vegetables perhaps they are traditional transport, selling, staff, advertising old varieties, or local varieties. These are through to dealing with customer all good selling points to raise. complaints. Look at similar businesses Niche marketing takes many forms, in the area, is there room for another but in the UK at the moment one of the one, how can your new venture be largest and most widely recognised is better or different. for organically grown products, driven Many farmers and smallholders by consumer’s belief in the quality and depend on family help and stresses safety of such foods. However, in recent related to adding a new venture to any years prices for organically raised food existing commitment can easily carry

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and associated products have come under severe pressure and many shoppers are no longer happy with the hefty premiums charged which has resulted in retail prices levelling off.

Given that there are increasing problems fulfilling the demand for organic feedstuffs for livestock, it may become more difficult for organic rearing systems to sustain their current profitability. Many consumers also take animal welfare and food mile issues very seriously, leading to a premium market for welfare friendly production methods.

In order to succeed it is imperative to identify customer needs and then assess if you can fulfil them. Will you sell enough to be profitable, can you reach your customers, is your distribution system reliable, what will make them want to come to you.

Draw up as detailed a ‘Business Plan’ as possible, and then use it. Working capital, the money used to support the business in its early stages, is the basis of any venture. Many new businesses face the challenge of raising capital and a well thought out business plan is almost always a requirement of loan or grant applications. Many businesses fail due to a lack of good financial planning, a realistic view should always be taken of a business’s prospects, potential profits and funding requirements.

Think about using a trademark or brand name. These can be protected by law to prevent others from copying the look or name of your products. Don’t think you have to go it alone, there are

many successful small co-operatives in the country, as well as other small companies who may well be interested in your unique products. Other local farm shops, restaurants and speciality food stores are all potential customers. Above all, remember marketing is a challenge and not all direct marketing plans will succeed, niche markets by their very nature tend to disappear after a while and it takes skill and perseverance to sustain any business in the long term.

Advertise your business, as well as more traditional methods such as newspapers and magazines there are many other ways of bringing your products into the public eye.

A lot of smaller producers start by selling to people they know, friends, neighbours and the local Pub are all potential customers. If your product is good enough word will soon get around.

Prepare a brochure and business cards are very inexpensive nowadays and easy to hand out. Newsletters make existing customers remember you, as well as being able to give them special offers for their loyalty. Give out some free samples as tasters. It is surprising how many people will buy after trying something for free. Donate some of your produce to a local worthy cause. Use the internet, many people use it to shop, but make sure the packaging and delivery charges don’t add too much to the price of your product.

If selling from a Farm Shop make sure it is clean and well presented, offer a variety of products, communicate with the customer, ask them questions, find out what they want and be prepared to provide it if you can do it at a profit. Don’t underestimate how long it takes to establish a new business, three years is a general rule of thumb. According to Farma, the National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association, there are an estimated 4,000 Farm Shops nationally which, together with farmers’ markets, have annual sales of more than £2 billion. E

Next Month Many aspects of selling meat and vegetables direct to the public have their own set of rules and regulations and it is very important to be aware of what the law requires, this is a complicated and bureaucratic area with planning, legal and liability issues to be covered, so next month we will take a look some of these regulations.

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GOOD LIFER’S DIARY

r e m r a F n a b r U The Mike Woolnough brings us a bit of experience from his other job. When he’s not looking after his urban farm of gardens, polytunnels and allotments, he is to be found working in a supermarket HAVE JAMIE AND HUGH shot themselves in the foot? I mean of course Jamie Oliver and Hugh FearnleyWhittingstall with their campaign for ethically produced chicken in our supermarkets. According to all the figures available they have achieved a major success with a very large proportion of shoppers switching away from the factory farmed birds and wanting to buy free range poultry instead.

But they can’t. The supermarket shelves in the free-range section are always empty.

What do they expect? The whole point of ethical chicken is that the birds have a longish and uncrowded life. The supermarkets (who no doubt see it all as a flash in the pan anyway) cannot just suddenly satisfy the demand by buying large quantities of free-range birds.

The market previously had a minimal demand for ethical chicken, and the suppliers will have to finance a huge expansion of premises to raise the number of birds now required... and they will take months to grow even then, not weeks as with factory farmed poultry.

They will have to be absolutely certain that this sudden demand is sustainable in the long term and not just a flash in the pan. Will buyers just say “Blow it” when they can’t get what they want, and return to buying the cheap chicken? Will some unscrupulous foreign grower just start labelling his factory-farmed poultry up as free range?

We were saved from starvation in early April by the welcome appearance of purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus 6-8 weeks early in the polytunnel, and a lovely crop of cauliflowers, also in the polytunnel. I have never before been able to successfully grow caulies, so this was a fantastic first.

Do we have a system in place to verify their claims? After the debacle of suppliers here being able to buy turkeys in Hungary, bring them live to this country and kill them here, calling them British Turkey, what can we really believe any more?

Jamie and Hugh’s campaign is of course commendable, but it has to be sustained and ongoing for its initial success to bear fruit. The supermarkets will be only too happy to flog you a £4 bird instead of a £2 one, but they will have to be absolutely certain that the demand is there before they start ordering them in their thousands.

Vegetables We really struggled to survive the “Hunger Gap” earlier this year, running out of many items before spring crops were ready. We were forced to buy potatoes and onions and

carrots for the first time in three years. The damp summer ruined our onion crop, with a lot of them just rotting or not growing to any size, and the dreaded carrot fly destroyed our carrots yet again despite our defences.

We cut back on our potato planting (having been inundated in previous years) and paid the price. It was possibly down to the hot, dry April, although more likely due to poor soil, but our potatoes really didn’t do well.

Most of the plants only produced two or three small tubers, and our supplies ran out rather quickly.

First earlies planted in January in the polytunnel saved the situation somewhat, but this year we have had to take positive action to prevent another potato famine. The area where they are planted this year has been well mucked with chicken manure, and large quantities of leaf mould dug into the soil to get plenty of moistureretaining humus in place for the spuds, which are greedy feeders.

We are also growing more broccoli to get us through the late winter, and going for three varieties instead of just one, to spread the crop availability over as long a period as possible.

Broccoli is a vastly underrated vegetable which puts in an appearance when very little else is available. One good tip I picked up from an old boy on the allotments is to plant them very

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Our neighbours lovely new £300 cage was severely damaged and they have to replace several poles.

deeply by digging a hole six to nine inches deep, and then planting the seedling in the bottom of the hole.

As the plant grows, gradually fill the hole up. This gets the roots and stem very deep, thus giving good support to what is basically a leggy and top-heavy plant.

This method is also particularly useful for Brussels sprouts as the sprouts will “blow” if the plant is subjected to wind rock because of insufficient support. When planting out, make sure that you give them plenty of space as they form large plants with big heads. The further The excitement (and trepidation) is growing as Gertie and Rosie draw closer to their kidding times. As you can see above, Gertie is huge and still has nearly a month to go. She has a ravenous appetite but you can forgive her for that as she is eating for two... or three... or who knows how many?

apart you make them, the better the crop will be – aim for spacing them two feet apart if you have the room.

Your broccoli, indeed all brassicas, also need to be heavily defended against marauding pigeons, which especially seem to be a problem on allotments. Not only will they peck off all the new tender greenery, but also they will sit on top of the plants and cover them with their droppings – very unappetising!

We have a twenty two foot netted tunnel that we use to grow our brassicas and peas in, but you can’t have too much protection so I recently acquired a tent frame that a friend was throwing out and converted it into a broccoli cage.

Goats Gertie and Rosie’s kidding is drawing very near, and we are getting very nervous at the prospect. Both their udders are very large and cumbersome, and the poor girls waddle around looking most

It doesn’t matter what it looks like – if it protects your brassicas from the ravages of the ravenous pigeon population, use it!

uncomfortable. I have yet to prepare a kidding shed – something I really must get on with, but there really aren’t enough hours in the day. I will have to separate the girls just prior to delivery as they will not tolerate kids that are not their own trying to take milk. As both the girls are horned they could do considerable damage – I know because Gertie butted me last week when I tried to examine her udders!

Another job on the list is to sort out some protection for the currant bushes. We lost nearly all our crop to blackbirds last year. I thought we had solved the problem when we were given an old fruit cage. A sudden fall of unexpected snow combined with gale force winds destroyed it, however, snapping the old posts off at their bases and buckling cross pieces. Our neighbours didn’t fare any better – their posh new £300 cage was wrecked as well. They told me afterwards that the instructions tell you to take the cover off if heavy snow is expected, something I hadn’t even considered. The snow wasn’t that heavy, but the accompanying wind was very strong. If you have a fruit cage, remember our experience if snow is forecast next winter. You have been warned! E

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Water,Water Everywhere We take water for granted. On goes the tap, out comes the water. We have water restrictions when the oceans are full of it and we have damaging flash flooding when reservoirs and supplies are seemingly low. Joe Jacobs helps us to use our own!

FOR THE BENEFIT of water on tap and our sewage floating merrily away we pay money... quite a lot of money.

Ask most people and they haven’t got much idea how much they pay to the water companies, but thankfully I don’t have to pay.

For a smallholder or avid gardener, water conservation is of paramount importance, water for crops, water for animals and water for the house.

It’s all too easy to say, “Well, I’m not on a meter.” I can assure you that one day you will be. Having once worked for a brief spell with a water company, I can confidently state that clean water is fast becoming a costly commodity. When a third or more of supplies are lost underground prior to reaching the consumer and pipe networks are in constant need of updating, somebody has to foot the bill. To quote the lottery, “It’s you.”

And it’s not just the supply network that is stretched.

Thousands of acres of concrete, tarmac and roof tiling are added to the UK’s infrastructure every year; millions of gallons of water that would have otherwise soaked away into the ground are redirected through culverts, drains and sewers into watercourses that cannot bear the burden. Your water bill is actually divided into two parts; a water segment and a sewerage segment. There are a multitude of

Top Tip If you have a large old toilet cistern that uses gallons of water every flush, put a brick or two in it. (Obviously it must not interfere with the mechanism).

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79 upstairs loo or outside tap. These reservoirs are automatically topped up with mains water if the rainwater level in them drops too low. It is possible in some properties to have an additional cold water header tank fitted in the loft but this will still have to be filled by virtue of an electric pump. For a true eco system, one should install a renewable power source to run the pumps or use a small Savonius wind turbine to mechanically pump the water to a header tank.

Run off water from roofs is an important source of free water, if you install the correct storage equipment.

The problem with open water as a source is that it is liable to contamination.

measures that every householder in the UK could and should take to cut down on water consumption and usage, from economical toilet cisterns to taking showers instead of baths.

Off-the-shelf rooftop collection systems typically plumb into the existing guttering system on your property. Having perused the information supplied by various manufacturers, one should realise that some of the environmental claims made in the sales bumf can be wild, inaccurate and exaggerated. At best you are getting your own private water supply and are conserving mains supplies, at worst you are simply using up more electricity trying to pump and pressurise your free water.

Environmentally speaking you don’t get something for nothing. Most commercial kits are not designed for potable water and are only aimed at supplying washing facilities, gardening, outdoor supplies and WCs. Typically a large reservoir is situated underground, fed by the rooftop guttering.

Water is pumped to where it is needed, be it

WATER COLLECTION At the simplest level, free water can be harvested using a water butt. Some of the larger containers will hold close to 500 litres, a short internet search will manifest 1,000 litre plastic steel caged industrial containers for less than £50. That’s quite a lot of water. Commercially available rainwater harvesting kits can now be purchased, although I’d strongly suggest that anyone with even the faintest grasp of plumbing could make their own using the wide array of plastic push fit plumb systems now available.

Simply speaking, a length of guttering on a house, shed or greenhouse roof will serve as the source collection point. Investing in one of those in-line (downpipe fitted) rain savers (they’re about £5) is handy as it sends the water onwards into the drain, should the water butt become full. Unless you want your water full of bloodworm and jokers (as fishermen refer to them) during the warmer months, you’ll find it necessary to seal the container to prevent the ingress of mosquitoes and suchlike that produce these larvae. Probably the most industrious use of a small water butt is to drip feed or automatically water one’s greenhouse full of plants and seedlings. Hoselock produce timed water valves that will control the flow to your plants as and when you want it. Admittedly, the initial outlay might be high, but the equipment lasts for years, it conserves water and, once set up, it doesn't half save time spent watering.

UTILISING OTHER NATURAL WATER SOURCES There are essentially four elements to any small-scale water supply: 1 2 3 4

Source Storage Filtration Point of use

My source is a stream running over the moor edge some 500m distant and 125m higher up the valley. This source is disadvantageous in that it is open and could be subject to contamination from flies, faeces, dead sheep and so on, let’s not even go there! At the source is a primary collection chamber (plastic 25 litre) filled with gravel which acts as a rough filter to remove large debris.

The water flows downhill through a 25mm blue plastic pipe buried underground. About 100m distant from my house and perhaps 20m higher in elevation is the water storage facility: a purpose manufactured 5000 litre black plastic tank set into the side of the hill. Inside the tank the inflow pipe terminates in a gigantic ball valve. From the storage tank a pipe runs directly to the house with tap off points for outside usage.

Inside the property there is no cold-water storage tank, only a header tank for hot water. In effect, the body of stored

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WATER FILTRATION

Inline treatment unit.

Above:The last line of defence.

Right:Water filter with meter.

water up the hill maintains mains pressure.

Filtration for drinking water was initially provided by a reverse osmosis water treatment plant and use of 3rd taps. All other domestic water supply is direct and unfiltered from the distant storage tank. All the properties in this locality are the same, neither is there any recent record of illness through water contamination. Inside the house is a water meter, which was needed before recent deregulation of water abstraction (light private users) by the Environment agency. The continued use of the meter is, however, handy as I can work out both average usage and also know if a minor internal leak should occur. As it currently stands, we are using between 2.5 – 3 cubic metres of water a month.

This, in theory, gives us a reserve of 6 – 8 weeks in the storage tanks should a drought occur!

The reverse osmosis filtration system packed up within a short period of use due to the high levels of minerals, peat and fine sediment within the water. Under examination, the 5 stage filter system was quickly becoming clogged up, requiring frequent changes of all components.

Regular filter changes are feasible but a costly option so an alternative option was sought.

This sort of set-up could be adapted for several different water sources. The problem in most cases will be insufficient head of water to provide a usable water pressure. In situations where water is available but with no head the following methods are an option:

E Electric pumping using renewable energy (wind or solar) to a storage vessel

E Direct pumping as needed – electric, manual or wind driven E Electric pumping on reduced night electricity tariffs to a storage vessel

Where a water flow is available, the use of a 'ram,' or progressive water weight, to raise a small amount of water in height is an option.

Boreholes are one way of exploiting a free water supply in some areas although the cost of sinking one would more than likely prove prohibitive for a light user.

WATER FILTRATION AND PURIFICATION There are various methods available to filter water, thus rendering it fit for consumption. If you’ve got time to make activated charcoal, then that’s about the best there is for a filter bed.

Generally speaking I am only

concerned about removing biological pathogens from my drinking water supply, cryptosporidium and the suchlike. I do know that my water supply contains high levels of iron, although I do read my wife’s British Medical Journal on a regular basis and haven’t found this to be a major cause for concern.

You can get your water tested but that can lead to a whole host of problems if the testing authority condemns your supply. An acquaintance fell foul of such procedure and was issued with a notice of intended prosecution should he fail to get his supply up to standard. He was forced to spend a lot of money to comply and none of his neighbours ever went down the same testing avenue.

Water filtration units are available at low cost, although, what they filter out is both variable and debatable. A filter of less than 5 microns is required to remove most biological hazards.

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Pre-filters are required simply to avoid clogging the fine filters with larger particles. The water bills inevitably come in the shape of replacement cartridges, although a three year supply for 50 quid isn’t really too bad.

The best method of killing biological nasties is too run your water through a pre-filter to take out the bits and then run it through an Ultra Violet (UV) treatment unit.

When pathogens are subjected to intense UV light in such a unit, the light breaks down the RNA, thus killing the cells. Interestingly enough, a team of researchers recently discovered that simply leaving contaminated water in a plastic bottle in the sun killed off most of the bugs (somewhere in excess of 90%, I believe). This was billed as a breakthrough method of simple purification for developing countries. Household UV water treatment systems are costly to buy and undeservedly so. Allegedly the cheap UV filtration systems required for tropical fish are not up to the standard required for human consumption. Here’s the authors version of events.

water that had been filtered and passed through a similar aquarium set up. Over time, UV tubes loose their intensity and they must be replaced on a periodic basis. In my case it’s every 12 months.

I purchased Water conservation isn’t necesa very nice £500 sarily about implementing lots of water purifier via eBay for silly ideas, it’s about making the a meagre £125. Essentially, it best and most economical use of consists of a pre-filter, followed by a what you have. The water you use in water jacket around a glass tube in the garden doesn’t have to be which a UV light is situated. On treated in the same way as that used examination of the unit, the UV tube in the house. A car was manufactured doesn’t need chloroby Tropical Marine WATER fluorinated water to (obviously for aquarium purposes). CONSERVATION ISN’T clean it, and neither plants. My late I enquired with NECESSARILY ABOUT do Grandma’s various spares IMPLEMENTING LOTS Aspidistra once companies and on cold tea! found that the OF SILLY IDEAS, IT’S thrived Although some of numerical code on the 15 watt tube was ABOUT MAKING THE these ideas may be out of reach of your correct for this unit.

BEST AND MOST home, simply the Therefore there does not appear to be any ECONOMICAL USE OF addition of a water butt or two, will help apparent difference WHAT YOU HAVE reduce your overall in the light output water consumption. of a household unit The late John Seymour once said, compared to a much cheaper concerning his toilet, “If it’s yellow tropical fish unit. There is, however, let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it a correlation between the UV tube’s down” Water preservation indeed. E electrical rating and the maximum amount of water (litres/minute) that can be safely passed through the light chamber for effective sterilisation. Plastic plumbing is simply that. The aquarium units have not been certified for household use and therefore the manufacturers charge their true worth, not an inflated price.

In a later issue of Home Farmer Joe I do have a posh certified unit will look at waste water and how to but I am adamant that I would drink deal with it.

Coming Up

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BAKING

A Taste for Teabread Diana Sutton goes back in time to make some cracking fruit bread, so get making some more butter!

WHEN I WAS a little girl I would often go to my friend’s Grandma’s house for tea on a Sunday afternoon. It was always a proper tea with cakes, bread, lots of cups of tea and there was always jelly in a mould. My favourite tea loaf was a fruit and nut bread, unfortunately I never asked what it was called or how she made it (well you don’t when you are young).

But I have found a similar recipe that uses walnuts and dried fruit, but because my family prefers pecan nuts to walnuts I have always made it with these. The thing I enjoy about making teabreads is that

some recipes produce a bread like product, because they contain yeast and some are more cake-like in texture as the raising agent used is baking powder. So there is a great variety of teabread recipes some very easy, yet still produce an excellent tealoaf.

100g butter, cut into small pieces 60g Muscovado sugar 1 egg 3 tablespoons marmalade 3 tablespoons milk A little extra marmalade for the top

METHOD

Marmalade Tealoaf My first recipe is a very simple oldfashioned marmalade tealoaf. This was a favourite with my uncle who always asked my Mum to bake one when he came to visit.

The marmalade gives the loaf a really tangy flavour and it has the added benefit of keeping it moist, which some teabreads lack. Just because we are going to be drinking tea with them, they shouldn’t be dry.

INGREDIENTS 200g self-raising flour 1 teaspoon cinnamon Below: Most of the ingredients you will ever need...

1 Preheat oven to 160oC/Gas3.

2 Sift flour and cinnamon into a bowl.

3 Add the butter and rub in with fingertips.

4 When the mixture looks like breadcrumbs stir in the sugar.

5 Beat the egg and mix the milk and marmalade together.

6 Add the milk mixture and the beaten egg. Beat these in well with a wooden spoon.

7 Transfer the mixture to a greased 1lb loaf tin and cook for 55-65 mins.

8 When cooking time is complete, cool slightly then brush the top of the cake with a little warmed marmalade.

This can be done by using a hot spoon to hold the marmalade whilst brushing the top of the cake.

If you have problems with your Muscovado sugar being lumpy as I did, place it in a bowl with a damp teacloth over for an hour and the sugar will regain its correct texture. This happens because the sugar dries up in the packet and needs a little re-moistening.

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Bara Brith Pecan Teabread My next recipe is for the Pecan bread (or walnuts, whichever you prefer). It is also very easy if you use the fast action dried yeast. It is similar to making bread, the dough must be kneaded and as it contains dried fruit and nuts, some people prefer to add these whilst they knead the dough but I find it easier to put the fruit and nuts in the mixture before adding the liquid. The finished loaf is the same.

INGREDIENTS 450g strong white flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 sachet fast action dried yeast 40g unrefined caster sugar 50g butter 280ml milk 50g pecans 220g dried fruit (a mixture of sultanas, raisins and chopped apricots or your favourite mixture)

METHOD 1 Put butter and milk in a pan over a very low heat till butter has melted.

2 Meanwhile sieve flour and salt into a large mixing bowl.

3 Add dried yeast and stir.

4 Mix in sugar and dried fruits and nuts.

5 Make a well in centre of flour mixture and pour in butter and milk. Stir thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

6 Knead dough for 10 mins. Place in a greased tin and leave to prove in a warm place for 35-40 mins.

7 Bake at 225oC/ Gas 7 for 15-20 mins.

I have found and tried many recipes for Bara Brith, the Welsh fruited tealoaf, (the name means ‘speckled bread’), some contain yeast and others use selfraising flour. If yeast is used the Bara Brith will be more like bread, without yeast the finished product is more like eating cake. Have a go at both and see which you prefer.

The first recipe is very easy and makes a really fruity finish to the loaf.

The second is a little more work and uses less fruit.

INGREDIENTS (1) 400g self-raising flour 350g mixed raisins, currants and sultanas, add candied peel if you wish 275ml tea 2 tablespoons honey 1 egg, beaten 80g soft brown sugar 1 teaspoon mixed spice

METHOD 1 Soak fruit in the tea overnight 2 Sift flour and spice into a large mixing bowl and stir in sugar.

3 Add fruit and tea mixture, egg and honey and stir thoroughly.

4 Pour mixture into a buttered 2lb loaf tin and cook for 11/2-13/4 hours at 170oC/ Gas3.

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BAKING INGREDIENTS (2)

good served with a strong flavoured cheese, like Stilton or farmhouse cheddar. This malt loaf must also be left for 2-3 days to allow the flavours to develop and for it to moisten and acquire that traditional sticky texture. It is also easy to overcook it as the colour is dark to begin with and it takes quite a long time to cook. Always check the loaf after about 50 minutes by testing how firm the mixture is. If it has stopped being too springy then it is probably cooked. It will depend on your oven as with all recipes. You know your oven.

The temperatures and cooking times are only a guide.

300g strong white flour 220 g mixed dried fruit 25g melted butter 1egg, beaten 170 ml warm water 30g unrefined caster sugar 1 sachet fast action dried yeast 1 level teaspoon salt 1 /2 level teaspoon mixed spice

METHOD 1 Pre-heat oven to 200oC/ Gas6.

2 Sift flour, spice and salt together in a large mixing bowl.

3 Stir in yeast and sugar. Make a well in the flour and add water, melted butter and beaten egg. Stir mixture thoroughly.

4 Knead dough for 10 mins adding a little more flour if it gets too sticky.

5 Place dough in a 2lb loaf tin and leave to prove for 30-40mins.

6 After proving time bake for 10 mins then turn oven down to 180oC/Gas 4 and cook for a further 30 mins.

7 When cooked brush the top of loaf with some clear honey.

Millie’s Easy All Bran Loaf The next recipe is my mum’s easy All Bran tealoaf. She always said you only really have to remember two things with this recipe, one is to soak the fruit and All Bran the night before and the other is all the ingredients (except the milk) are the same amounts, that is one cup of each ingredient. How easy is that?

INGREDIENTS 1 cup All Bran 1 cup sultanas and raisins 1 cup tea 1cup unrefined sugar 1cup self-raising flour 5 tablespoons milk

METHOD 1 Mix All Bran, fruit and tea and leave overnight.

2 Stir in flour, milk and sugar and combine well.

Next Month Next month I will show you how easy it is to make your own delicious biscuits of all types for all ages.Watch your biscuit barrel fill up and empty quicker than ever!

3 Pour into a buttered 1lb loaf tin and cook 1 hour at 185oC/Gas 5. If it looks as though the top of the loaf is cooking too quickly turn the heat down to 170oC/Gas 4 and cover the top with foil.

Sometimes, for a change, mum would make it with chopped dates and walnuts in place of the dried fruit stated in this recipe. So long as it is 1 cup you could use any dried fruits or a combination of fruit and nuts. They were all delicious sliced with a good slathering of butter.

Leave to mature for 24 hours before eating if you can. My mum had to hide it from us till it was ready to eat.

Farmhouse Malt Loaf The last recipe is for a true malt-loaf.

We often have this as dessert with a hot drink after a meal. It is also

INGREDIENTS 225g self-raising flour 225g sultanas 50g Muscovado sugar 170g malt extract 1 tablespoon black treacle 2 eggs 150ml tea

METHOD 1 Preheat oven to 150oC/ Gas2.

2 Sift flour into a bowl and stir in fruit.

3 Heat malt, treacle and sugar gently in a pan then pour over flour and stir.

4 Add beaten eggs and tea. Beat mixture well till smooth and combined.

5 Pour into 2 buttered 1lb loaf tins and bake for 1hour.

If you have difficulty finding malt extract try your local health food or home brew shop as they usually sell it.

It also comes in handy when you are making your own beer. E

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VISIT OUR WEBSITE

Try us and buy us online www.homefarmer.co.uk You can find HOME FARMER magazine on the website at www.homefarmer.co.uk where you can access the latest blogs, recipes, tips and information - and if you would like to contribute – just email the editor!

The Kitchen Table More than just cakes and bread, but cheese, pies, fish, your recipes, jams, preserves – in fact if you can make it yourself it will be there!

Getting Started If you are a first timer – or even just thinking about it – these pages will be packed with useful information. Tips, hints and contacts for everything from beekeeping to deep sea fishing!

The Editor’s Blog Well that’s Diana and me sounding off, most of the time, with all the expletives deleted!

Plus... ...the usual links, subscriptions and more – so if you are on line, come along and say hello!

RESERVE YOUR COPY AT YOUR NEWSAGENT!

E Don’t miss out, just ask your newsagent to place a regular order for you. Once set up, your copy of HOME FARMER will be held for you to collect and will save you having to search the newsstand.

E Some newsagents may even offer home delivery so just ask them about this service as well.

E Don’t miss an issue. Simply complete the form to the right and take to your local newsagent.

E To be sure of future copies of HOME FARMER, fill in your details and hand this form to your newsagent

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85

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KEEPING PIGS

Piggy Pets?

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Linda McDonald-Brown looks at keeping small pigs and can they live happily in the back garden NOWADAYS, OBTAINING INFORMATION pets is not an excuse for not having one.

Make sure you have at least 10 foot on how to look after pigs has never been by 10 foot of garden or land to keep easier. Apart from the usual books and your pig in and a suitable form of magazines, the internet has a wealth of shelter. If you can, try and provide it information on breeds, their care and with an area of grass, Kune Kunes even their dispatch. For a more “hands especially like to graze. It is unadvisable on” approach you can attend one of the to keep your pig in the many pig courses held house permanently. throughout the UK. PIGS ARE Pigs are happiest What happens, though, outdoors and can cause if all you want to do is HAPPIEST all sorts of problems if keep pigs as pets?

Would all of the OUTDOORS AND kept in the house, if you have very paperwork, rules and CAN CAUSE ALL especially young children. As with regulations apply to two larger pigs, you need to small pigs in your back SORTS OF some form of garden that once on PROBLEMS IF KEPT provide wallow in the summer to your property would enable to your pig to never move off until the IN THE HOUSE protect itself from the day they died? sun.

The short answer to Once you have your pigs, you must that is yes, in the eyes of the law there is then apply for a herd number from your no difference between your cute Kune local Animal Licensing department.

Kune wandering into your kitchen for a Again, without the herd number you pat and a Kune Kune destined for the are keeping pigs illegally. freezer. Although there are a few excepAlthough the smaller breed of tions, not always made clear in relevant pig isn’t as much an escape books or magazines, on the whole the artist as some of the larger rules, regulations and care are exactly the same for all pigs, pets or commercial. breeds, you still have to be Keeping pigs just as pets does not sit sure that it can’t get out.

This is especially easily with pig breeders and certainly important if you are many of the breed associations tend to living in a suburban disapprove of the idea of pigs as pets. area. So good Unfortunately past experience has shown that once it becomes fashionable fencing right to keep a certain pig breed just as a pet, down to the ground is a the breed suffers. must. Walls or A few years ago the Vietnamese Pot thick hedging Belly was marketed as such a breed, without gaps leading to all sorts of people, often is ideal. without the knowledge of how to care Choose for them, buying and keeping them in far from suitable conditions. There have your weaner carefully and even been incidences in the past where from a Pot Bellies have been found to be living reputable in high rise flats. Nowadays the Kune breeder and Kune has taken over as the must have pet pig, but unfortunately it seems from try to meet the mother at the many rescue stories circulating that least, if not the not all owners have the knowledge or the circumstances to look after their pig father. It is especially well. So before you embark on buying a important with a pig as a pet, there are a few crucial pet pig that it has points that you need to bear in mind just as you would before buying weaners the most fantastic temperament, for breeding or eating. especially if children are going to be OFFICIALDOM You must obtain a Holding Number that handling it. Sometimes animal sanctuaries will allows you to keep pigs on your rescue pigs and then property. Without this you are illegal advertise them once they and can be fined. Keeping pigs just as

have got the animal fit and healthy.

Think very carefully before taking on a rescued pig. Does it have any problems, especially temperament wise? Chances are it will be an older pig and you will have no idea of its background, so taking on such an animal can be risky.

Pigs are social animals so ideally they do require another pig companion but failing that, you should have the lifestyle to be able to spend a reasonable amount of time with your pig or provide it with another type of companion such as a goat. Leaving a pig on its own for days on end is cruel.

Choose a breed that doesn’t require a vast amount of space. Vietnamese Pot Belly pigs and Kune Kunes are small and therefore don’t require a huge amount of ground. They are also very trainable. Pot Bellies have been known to be aggressive and both breeds are prone to getting over-weight if incorrectly fed, which can then lead to joint problems. German Micro pigs, although not as popular or as well known as the other two, are also suitable to be kept as pets.

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KEEPING PIGS Do not feed your pig kitchen scraps.

Not only is it illegal nowadays to feed scraps that have passed through your kitchen, it will also be harder to control its weight if it is getting scraps regularly.

However, some fresh fruit or vegetables once or twice a week will be much appreciated by your pig, they are especially partial to bananas. Make sure all the fruit and vegetables you give your pig are either straight from your garden or from a vegetable market.

Smaller pigs should not have too much protein and should be fed with pig food that has been specially formulated for Kune Kunes and Pot Bellies.

This food might be harder to find than ordinary pig food and it is worth looking around for a supplier before you buy your pig. Take advice from the person you buy the pig from on the quantity you should be feeding it and stick to it, overfeeding is just as cruel as underfeeding.

Unlike pigs moving from holding to holding or to the abattoir, your pig doesn’t necessarily have to be tagged if you purchase it at eight weeks and it does not move off the property. However bear in mind that if you move house or move your pig to land off your property then it will need to be tagged for identification purposes with your herd number.

Medical records still need to be kept.

Hopefully you will never need to give your pig anything else other than wormer throughout its life, but if you do, this as well as details of any wormer you give needs to be written down as a proper record and kept.

Should you be planning on taking your pig for a walk, then you have to apply for a pig walking licence. Contact your local Animal Health Divisional Office about obtaining this free licence.

You will have to inform them of the route you plan to take with your pig so they can visit you and approve it. They might not approve it if there is a risk of your pig coming in contact with other pig farms, livestock markets and fast food outlets. This licence has to be renewed annually. Bear in mind when you do walk your pig, it can run off so you have be certain that it will stay close and walking it near a road for obvious reasons is not advisable. Just make sure you have good flat shoes on just in case you have to chase after it!

Brush your pig regularly. Pigs can suffer from dry skin so a twice weekly brush with something like a horse dandy brush, followed by a good oiling with either pig oil or baby oil to keep its skin moist and in good condition will be much appreciated. This will also help you

build up a relationship with your pig.

Be aware that some plants are poisonous to pigs. Garden plants such as Yew, Rhododendrons and Deadly Nightshade can be fatal to a pig, so if in doubt either seek advice before you put the pig in the area or pull the plant up including the root.

Finally, there is no reason why you can’t try and train your pig to carry out a few simple commands such as sit.

Start training the pig at a young age and be persistent and you should have success if you reward it with food. Even more fun for both the pig and the owner are pig agility classes that are starting to spring up at shows.

Activities include, encouraging the pig to walk over small bridges, in and out of posts and up ramps. These classes are great fun to take part in, especially if your pig has a mind of its own. The Royal Welsh and Smallholders show held in May at Builth Wells has a super agility class and is popular with both inexperienced and experienced pig owners alike.

Pigs are fun and entertaining animals to be around, so having one as a pet can be a fantastic experience, especially for children. Treat your pig well and you will be rewarded with a pet that gives you hours of fun for many years to come. E

GOOD LIFE W-P AD JUNE

17/4/08

19:48

Build It! DIY Projects for Farmers, Smallholders and Gardeners

Page 1

The Pocket Guide to Wild Food

Flowerpot Farming

BY PAUL PEACOCK # PAPERBACK # 168 PAGES # COLOUR AND B/W PHOTOGRAPHS / ILLUSTRATIONS # £12.99

BY JOE JACOBS

BY JAYNE NEVILLE # PAPERBACK # 192 PAGES # BLACK & WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS AND ILLUSTRATIONS # £12.99

Using recycled materials wherever possible engineer and smallholder, Joe Jacobs, provides step-by-step instructions for over 50 DIY projects for the home farm. From poultry houses to fences, Joe guides the reader through the equipment needed, the tools and materials and the plans all accompanied by clear instructions.

Projects include beehives, chicken arcs, gates and fences, incubators as well as a section on renewable energy projects and plenty more making this an essential book for any keen enthusiast.

Grow and Cook Simple Recipies from Seed to Plate NEW BOOK

BY BRIAN TUCKER # PAPERBACK # 192 PAGES # £5.99

As passionate about his vegetables as he is about cooking Brian keeps his advice on planting simple and his recipes easy to follow, making this an ideal introduction for anyone wanting to plant, pick and cook their own food. With the conscious decision made by many families to shop local and cut down the food miles together with the desire to grow their own food and wean themselves off the weekly supermarket shop, Brian’s simple approach will encourage anyone who wants to both grow and cook to have a go.

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HF ISSUE 3 P90-91 MEAT

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IN THE KITCHEN Give me three good reasons for making sandwich meat. You can bulk out a small amount of meat, you can disguise a cut that people won’t normally eat, and it is very, very cheap!

Sandwich Meat SO, I SAID to the lady behind the bacon counter, “Do you have any pig’s trotters?” Se looked at me as though I was an idiot. “What?” I repeated myself but it was clear she didn’t have a clue what a trotter was. “Pig’s feet – do you have any?” The lady shuddered, she was at least as old as me, and I would have thought she’d eaten a few in her time.

“Ooh no! We don’t have anything like that here!”

So I went to the butchers. “No, sorry, you can’t get them any more!” I nearly asked if pigs came without feet but thought better of it. I went to a ‘High Class’ butcher who told me that if I wanted them he could get some by next Thursday. I pointed to the photograph on the wall. It was one of those you find in butchers’ shops everywhere: some men in aprons outside a shop with chickens, turkeys, rabbits and pigs, pig’s head and trotters. “Those were the days eh?”

I finally got some pigs trotters from the Chinese supermarket.

When the children were young we used to frequent a pork shop and the lady who owned it used to make her own pressed meat to Victorian recipes.

The meat was approximately 80% meat and the rest was jelly made from the stock of the joint that cooked the meat.

The pressed beef had a bit more jelly.

Either way it was gorgeous.

The fundamental idea is that you are going to make a jelly and into this press your meat. The jelly can be made from the stock of the meat, and in that way you do not lose all the goodness. The big point about this meat is that you

Jelly You do need a strong jelly to set the meat, so if you are using gelatine, make it as strong as you can.

can make something delicious from the cuts of meat the kids wouldn’t eat if they were starving!

There are two ways of doing this, the ham way or the chicken way – but it really doesn’t matter how you do it for any meat.

You can even use the same method for a mixture of meat!

PRESSED HAM The most important thing to remember is that everything (including yourself) needs to be scrupulously clean!

In the shops, pre-sliced pork is anything from £12 to £20 per kilo. This is much tastier and will cost no more than £4 a kilo.

Remove the meat from the hocks and place in a bowl where it is shredded with a fork.

Transfer to a second bowl or terrine and press down. Fill with jelly and leave to set.

I tried an alternative method that was to put the meat in a cheese press to get a higher density product. I pressed it for a couple of hours and then stood it in jelly. You do get more meat than jelly, but the meat is slightly less set. This doesn’t matter if you keep it in the fridge, it stays together well enough to slice.

This will last for three days, assuming your family will allow it to last for three days!

THIS WILL LAST FOR THREE DAYS, ASSUMING YOUR FAMILY WILL ALLOW IT TO LAST FOR THREE DAYS!

METHOD Boil two bacon hocks, ham shanks or whatever you call them where you live. If you boil them for over two hours all the fat will be rendered off.

Keep the stock and dilute it by 50% with boiling water to reduce the salt.

From this you need 500ml to make the jelly. Now you could use pig’s trotters, boiled and boiled in the stock, to make the jelly, but I found the resulting product looked a bit grey on the sandwich. So I used gelatine added to the hot diluted stock instead.

PORK AND CHICKEN Unsalted meat will not keep so well as cured, so you have to add a little. The process is much the same but you have to measure the salt content. This way

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91 you are going to boil the meat, and then keep the stock piping hot.

Add the gelatine to the stock and then measure the appropriate amount of salt. For 500ml stock you need to add a level teaspoon of salt – that is 5g, a 1% solution. Most cured food has 3% salt, so this is already lower salt. Of course, you can add less, and the product’s keeping qualities will be reduced. I find that the jelly is very salty, but you are only using a fraction of this, and when it mingles with the unsalted meat it is fine.

You could miss out the salt altogether and add it later if you wish.

Fill a dish with your cooked shredded chicken and press down hard.

Then add the hot jelly stock to it, pressing down with a spoon and getting as much air out as possible. Continue this process until all the meat is covered with stock. Try to get as much meat in the dish as you can, pressing all the time. If you want a higher density product, really pack the meat in and press it down with a plate or any implement that will fit.

Pressed ham starts with a couple of cooked hocks.

Cook for 2 hours in a pan of water on a low heat.

Pull all the meat off the fat and skin and shred the meat with a fork.

Gently press the meat. I am using my cheese press!

Next, stand the pressed meat in the jelly mixture.

Now you have the finished sandwich meat.This needs to remain cool while the meat is sliced.

This time we are using chicken to make sandwich meat.

Press the chicken down as hard as you can.

Pour the stock to the very top of the meat.

Once the jelly has set, you can turn out your meat.

BRAWN I was put off brawn when I saw a whisker inside a big jelly at the pork shop. But in essence, what you have made is brawn, except this comes from a pig’s head. Mostly cheek muscle with some feet, and various ‘other bits’ thrown in.

The thing about brawn is that it sets itself because the bones and feet make great jelly. The problem with this is that it turns out a grey colour, and you have to make sure that the all the gruesome pieces are filtered out.

VARIATIONS You can use more than one type of meat in a sandwich. Chicken and ham go together well. You can also bulk out the meat by adding a boiled egg. These recipes are quite different from pate, which can be bulked with breadcrumbs or rusk as in a sausage or pie mix. E

Flavour The point of this sandwich meat is flavour. Since you have made your jelly from the stock the meat was cooked in, you get a sandwich meat that is twice as tasty. If your mould fall apart when you slice it you need a stronger jelly and smaller pieces of meat. But that doesn't matter - it's going in a sandwich.You will never have tasted better sandwiches in your life!

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HOME BEAUTY

Herbs, Honey, Oats and Beauty For almost every beauty need there is a home made product where you choose the ingredients. Diana Sutton brings us just a few I HAVE TO confess to having a great interest in cosmetics and beauty products. Ever since I was very young it has fascinated me and been a great hobby. I must also own up to owning more than my fair share of make-up and skincare products. Recently I have started to buy a well-known natural beauty product line and, having read the ingredients, I thought I could make some of these myself. Having both a grown-up daughter and a daughter-in-law who also love experimenting with beauty products, it made sense to have a go.

I thought I would need to extend my kitchen cupboards to house all the new items I would have to buy.

After some research, I realised you didn’t need too many ingredients to make your own basic face cleansers, packs, scrubs and toners. Many of the ingredients I already had and a few more would be needed if I wanted to have a go at making a DIY moisturiser.

I don’t have a particularly sensitive skin but my daughter does, so I had to be aware of what I was using in my concoctions if Rebecca wanted to use them, but as most of the ingredients are natural products we consume in our diet it hasn’t been much of a problem.

MAIN STORE CUPBOARD INGREDIENTS ARE: E E E E E

Oatmeal Honey Olive oil Dried milk Bananas

E E E E E E E

Apples Eggs Lemons Cornflour Cider vinegar Ground almonds Desiccated coconut

OTHER ITEMS USED IN THE RECIPES ARE: E E E E E E

Sweet almond oil Coconut oil Glycerine Distilled witch hazel Beeswax Various essential oils

a sterilised glass jar, seal and use when cool.

3 Spread a little of the mixture over the face and remove with tissue.

Cleansing If you have a dry skin I find coconut oil and a drop of lavender oil massaged into the skin, then removed with a warm face cloth removes dirt and face makeup and leaves skin soft and clean.

For this I would use 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil to 2 drops lavender oil.

A really good recipe for home made cleanser particularly effective on normal skins is the following: INGREDIENTS 2 tablespoons cornflour 2 tablespoons glycerine 70ml water METHOD 1 Cook all ingredients in a pan gently till mixture becomes transparent.

2 Allow to cool slightly and pour into

To vary the recipe add a little essential oil to the mixture after cooking, check which essential oil is most suitable for your skin type.

When using essential oils always remember to follow the dilution ratio, which is 1 drop of essential oil to a minimum of 5ml of carrier oil or liquid.

NEVER put the oil directly onto skin without diluting it first.

A soothing cleanser for mildly irritated skin is equal amounts of sweet almond oil and aloe vera gel. It needs a good shaking in a plastic or glass container as it is difficult to combine.

Use it as soon as it is mixed by spreading over the face and gently massaging in with fingertips. Remove with a warm face cloth or tissues.

ESSENTIAL OILS

Warning I have used all these combinations and quantities of ingredients myself without difficulties, but if you have sensitive or problem skin, or have a medical condition of any type, always seek medical advice before using something new.They are not treatments for skin complaints, just beauty products.

SKIN TYPE Oily Sensitive Dry Troubled Anti-ageing De-congesting

Lavender

Tea-tree

Chamomile

Geranium

Rose

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93 For a clean feeling distilled witch hazel in a little cooled boiled water makes a really good toner for normal to oily skins.

INGREDIENTS 20ml distilled witch hazel 10ml cooled boiled water 3 drops lavender essential oil METHOD 1 Mix all ingredients together in a bottle and apply to skin with a cotton wool pad.

Honey, freshly collected from the hive.

Toning

For troubled skins or very oily skin use tea tree oil in place of lavender and use 30ml of witch hazel.

CIDER VINEGAR

After cleansing, a toning rinse with cool water is sometimes sufficient to refresh the skin, but an added boost to this simple idea is to put some mineral water in a small pump action bottle and keep in the fridge till needed then use to spritz the face. My favourite toning spritz uses honey and water:

In cooled boiled water this makes an excellent toner for normal skins.

INGREDIENTS Honey water toner 50ml boiled water 1 tablespoon clear honey

COCONUT MILK

METHOD 1 Add the honey to the hot water and leave to cool.

2 Pour into spray bottle and keep in fridge.

3 Spray over face after cleansing and see how soft your skin feels.

LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY TONING WATER The combination of the lavender and rosemary makes a soothing and toning lotion for all skin types.

INGREDIENTS 10 lavender flower heads 15g fresh or 10g dried rosemary 200mls boiling water METHOD 1 Pour water over lavender and rosemary and leave to cool, stirring mixture occasionally.

2. Strain into a sterilised bottle and store in the fridge. Use regularly after cleansing to tone the skin.

3 This mixture keeps well for 2 weeks if kept in the fridge.

INGREDIENTS 30ml boiled water 4 teaspoons cider vinegar Mix and use as with the witch hazel recipe.

Powdered coconut milk mixed in warm water will soothe tight, dry skin.

INGREDIENTS 2 tablespoons powdered coconut milk 150ml boiled water, cooled slightly METHOD 1 Mix the coconut powder with the hot water and mix well. I use a small whisk for this, as you don’t want any lumps in the mixture when applying it to your face.

This is best applied with cotton wool pads and press onto the skin rather than rub.

Making your own facemasks can be great fun.

Treatment Masks I have had great fun making my own facemasks but some can be a bit tricky to apply so always protect your clothing when using them.

BANANA FACE MASK INGREDIENTS 1 egg yolk 6-8 drops sweet almond oil 1 ripe mashed banana 1 teaspoon lemon juice METHOD Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and apply to face (avoid eye and lip area), leave for 20 minutes. Remove with tissue and finish with a splash of cool water and a toner of your choice.

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HOME BEAUTY HONEY MASK

AVOCADO SOFTENER

This mask seems to help tighten the skin, so evens out the complexion. If your skin is feeling a little saggy this is one to try!

For very dry complexions there is nothing better than an avocado for cleansing and putting oils and moisture back into the skin.

INGREDIENTS 1 egg white 2 tablespoons honey 1 level tablespoon finely ground oatmeal

INGREDIENTS 1 mashed avocado 1 egg yolk 2 teaspoons olive oil

METHOD Mix to a thick paste and apply to face.

Leave to dry and then rinse with cool water.

METHOD Combine all ingredients in a bowl and apply to face. Leave for as long as you can stand it (at least 20 mins) and rinse off with cool water.

CLEAN AND SOFT MASK

TONING MASK

The fruit acids in the apple helps to exfoliate and brighten the skin so use this when your face is feeling and looking tired or dull.

For a toning treatment, cucumber is an excellent ingredient as it is gentle on the skin yet has a good toning effect.

INGREDIENTS 1 whole egg 1 tablespoon clear honey 1 mashed apple 1 tablespoon ground oatmeal METHOD 1 Combine egg and oatmeal and mix in honey.

2 Add mashed apple and apply to face.

Leave for 20 mins and rinse off with cool water.

INGREDIENTS 1 tablespoon powdered milk 1 /3 cucumber, mashed 2 tablespoons natural yogurt METHOD 1 Mash cucumber and powdered milk together in a bowl and add yogurt.

2 Stir well and apply to face. Leave for 20 mins before rinsing in cool water.

Below: oat, milk and lavender scrub needs six drops of lavender added to the paste.

Facial Scrubs I have found using a face scrub once or twice a week helps keep my skin looking healthy and much brighter and, up until a few months ago, always used a shop bought product to do the job.

But I recently remembered my domestic science teacher telling the class what an excellent face wash you could make with oatmeal. I thought I would research into making my own and there are many items in the store cupboard that will work effectively as a face exfoliant.

The best way to prepare the skin is to place a fairly warm face cloth over your face for a few seconds like the old fashioned barbers used to do when they were giving a gentleman a close shave. This opens the pores ready to be cleaned out with your choice of treatment.

The first recipe is the one I use the most and the first I ever made. You have to use this over the sink as it does get messy, but it is worth it for softer, brighter skin.

OAT, MILK AND LAVENDER SCRUB INGREDIENTS 30g medium oatmeal 1 tablespoon dried milk powder 6 drops lavender essential oil 30ml cool boiled water METHOD 1 Mix the water and milk powder to a smooth, thin paste.

2 Add the oats and lavender oil and stir well.

3 Apply to the face and massage in circular movements, taking care to avoid eye area, but it is gentle enough to use over lips and actually seems to stimulate the circulation and so makes them look fuller.

4 Massage each area of the face for 30-40 seconds then rinse with cool water.

5 If you have a tendency to the odd spot then add 2-3 drops of tea tree oil as well as the lavender and pay particular attention to the spot area when massaging with the scrub.

ALMOND SCRUB This scrub is particularly good for keeping the skin looking healthy and cleansing the pores. The geranium oil is really good for decongesting the pores and getting rid of any blackheads.

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95 INGREDIENTS 20g ground almonds 2 teaspoons sweet almond oil 5 drops geranium essential oil METHOD Combine the ingredients together and use as with previous scrub, working on the areas that need most work, usually the nose, around the mouth and the chin.

The combination of the coconut oil and the ground almonds really cleans the skin thoroughly and gets the pores deeply clean. You may add a little essential oil to help your skin type if you wish, but it is very effective without. Your skin is left clean and very soft after this treatment.

COCONUT AND ALMOND SCRUB INGREDIENTS 15g ground almonds 10g desiccated coconut 1 level tablespoon coconut oil METHOD 1 Put coconut oil in a warm bowl.

This will melt straight away and add other ingredients.

2 Mix well and massage over face with circular movements. Continue for at least 60 seconds, but no longer than 2 minutes. Rinse well with warm water and finish with a toner to close the pores.

Moisturisers Making a home made moisturiser is a little more complicated but is still worth a go. Always remember if you are storing your cream make sure it is in a sterilised container.

SUGAR SCRUB

RICH MOISTURE CREAM

A really strong face scrub that is good when your skin feels dull and flaky, yet still needs something gentle, is this one that uses sugar as the exfoliate. I use caster sugar as I have never been brave enough to use granulated, but I am sure it would be fine as I have used it on my hands in a hand scrub (in next months issue I will be covering hands, hair and feet).

The next recipe is for a rich moisturising cream, it uses beeswax which you can get from your local bee society. Pure rose oil is very expensive but gives a luxurious finish to the cream and is particularly good as an anti-ageing ingredient.

INGREDIENTS 25g of either caster or granulated sugar 1 tablespoon olive oil METHOD Combine the two ingredients together and massage over the face in circular movements. Continue for 30 seconds till the skin feels tingly, then rinse off completely with warm water. This can make skin feel oily afterwards. If you wish to get rid of this, wash with a mild glycerine soap.

INGREDIENTS 5g beeswax 50ml almond oil 10 drops rose essential oil METHOD 1 Melt the beeswax over a low heat till completely fluid.

2 Add the almond oil and the rose oil, pour into sterilised jars, seal well and use within 2 months.

LIGHT MOISTURISER For a lighter moisture lotion, the following uses glycerine to give a more fluid lotion.

INGREDIENTS 20g coconut oil 20ml glycerine 8 drops chamomile essential oil METHOD 1 Melt coconut oil in a warm bowl.

2 Stir in glycerine and chamomile oil.

3 Pour into sterile jars and seal well.

Again, use within 2 months.

Next Month Next month we will be looking at home made treatments for the hair, hands and feet.

HF ISSUE 3 P96-97 BREAK

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COFFEE CUP PAGES

WIN Prize Crossword Your chance to win a book token from The Good Life Press for £15!

Across 2. Small dish for sweets (7) 4. Essential or not...(3) 6. Not a barge (10) 11. Tea loaf ingredient (9) 12. What it feels like to be in debt (8) 14. In the chicken or in the field (4) 15. The Royal bean (7) 18. Pig headed food (5) 19. One of seven, not just tomato (5) 20. Good on bruises and skin (10)

Down 1. Raspberry - sugar - bamboo (4) 3. Serious disease in stock (10) 5. Fish eggs to make an excellent alternative (6) 7. Keep them away from the big bad wolf (8) 8. Del Boy and Rodney (8) 9. Speckled Bread (9) 10. Tea for tummies (10) 13. Water purification method (7) 16. Caused Sleeping Beauty's 100 year sleep (7) 17. In the country (5)

All the answers are somewhere in the magazine – good luck!

How to enter: E You can cut out your crossword E You can simply write the answers on a piece of paper E You can email the answers

Mark your envelope Prize Crossword and post to: Home Farmer, The Good Life Press Ltd., PO Box 536, Preston, PR2 9ZY. Or send an email to: editor@homefarmer.co.uk

Last Month’s Answers ACROSS 2. SUNDANCE 4. DRONE 5. RAINBOW 8. CHICKEN 11. NAAN 12. SMUT 13. EINKORN 17. ELDERFLOWER 18. LONGDAY 19. SALLYLUNN

DOWN 1. TRENCH 3. NUBIAN 6. WINNOW 7. WELSUMMER 9. INTERCROP 10. SHORT 14. TORTILLA 15. RENNET 16. BELLY

Coffee T ime Fac ts

A typi c of diff al flour mill erent types will produc of hom of f eh e-grow n and lour using undreds a Cattle impor ted wh wide range a differe re living ch eat. n e nutrie t stomachs mical plan ts nts in t grass. o digest th with e One d variou a s each d iry cow ma kes 10 ay.

0 glas ses of A com milk bine c 10 sec a onds t n harvest e n o mak e 77 l ough whea It take o ti aves o s f brea n to mak 12 bees to d. c e a tea spoon ollect enou g of hon h nect ar ey.

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Competition Watch out for Wildlife Those of you who have spent the night trying to get to sleep only to be lambasted by a chorus of whistles and whoops at first light might not be too sympathetic, but this time of the year is so important for wildlife.You might want to encourage wildlife as a fundamental part of the garden.

Water in the garden is the key to attracting wildlife. You can feed the birds until you are blue in the face but without water your visitors will be minimal. Once you put water in the garden, all of a sudden the place becomes a zoo!

SLOPING SIDES On the whole frogs feed away from water, so if they are not going to starve they should be able to get in and out easily.

WIN

WIN A ÂŁ300 TILLER FROM MANTIS UK You can win a Mantis tiller worth ÂŁ300 from Mantis UK that is so versatile. It will fit into the boot so you can take it to the allotment, yet it is so powerful that it can cope with the roughest soil.

The Mantis Tiller is the incredible lightweight tiller that has made gardening easier for more than a million people. Originally designed to help landscapers get their jobs done quicker, the 20-pound/9kg tiller is a favorite of home gardeners all over the world. Visit the website: www.mantis-uk.co.uk.

All you need to do is match the photographs below with the pages they

come from.

Simple!

Mark your envelope: Mantis Tiller Competition and post to: Home Farmer, The Good Life Press Ltd., PO Box 536, Preston, PR2 9ZY. Or email to: editor@homefarmer.co.uk.

COMPETION ENDS 31ST MAY 2008

HOMEFARMER JUNE COMPETITION CLOSING DATE: 31ST MAY 2008

DEEP WATER This allows animals to escape predators and find some warmish mud to settle in far from the freezing surface in winter.

PLANTS Plants such as yellow flag, rushes and sedges, and then further away ordinary bedding plants, looks good, but also allows insects to get their bearings around the water.

SHADE A shady part of the pond will help keep the algal blooms at bay and provide a hiding place for wildlife.

SEAT Wildlife ponds are completely captivating, especially in high summer.

A place to sit and watch.

PIC ONE FROM PAGE ...............

PIC TWO FROM PAGE .............. PIC THREE FROM PAGE ...........

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The instructions said...

97

HF ISSUE 3 CLASSYS

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CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING

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Miscellaneous Gofarmer – Online market place for livestock, farm machinery, produce, farm stays, rural crafts. www.gofarmer.com

Property Rural Bulgarian Properties for sale from 4000 Euros.Village houses to rent from ÂŁ250 a week Web: www.thetravelbug.org Web: www.therentalbug.org

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Machinery Plastic Welder (hand held) mft Forstoft.

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NEXT MONTH

In July’s crammed issue of Home Farmer we have: From Plot to Plate with Lila Das Gupta Another offering from the allotment of Telegraph columnist Lila Das Gupta.

The Strawbridges Father and son team, It’s Not Easy Being Green’s, Dick Strawbridge and his son James bring us some more insights into their selfsufficient adventure.

Desperate Dan Pie Next month the Fat man in the Kitchen makes Cow Pie with the horns in! Just how Desperate Dan likes it. (Well, maybe we’ll leave the horns out!)

Desperate Dan © D.C.Thomson&Co.,Ltd

Digging for Victory with Sophie Grigson For the next three issues we take Sophie’s recipes and tell you how to grow all the ingredients.

Baked twice

Next month we look at making sweet biscuits of all sorts.

Plus...

Regular features on growing vegetables, keeping hens, keeping bees, building a polytunnel, making soap and preparing to sell your wares at the farmer’s market.

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NEXT ISSUE OU JUNE 6THT

8-page special section on living the Good Life E Where to get help when it

all goes wrong E Getting your hands

dirty and planting E Preparing for

your first hens E Getting the

best out of your walls – growing crops in baskets and tubs

Hands that do dishes!

Next month Diana Sutton brings us natural products you can make at home for the hair, hands and feet.

HF3 ADS

17/4/08

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