Farming to Keep the Grass Short

Multiple cheeses.

Liz returns from the UK well loaded down with goods - all manner of wool, handkerchiefs, taramasalata, books, knitting needles, sourdough flour, potato starch and, above all CHEESE. Lots of cheese. Enough fancy cheese and good old vintage cheddar to keep us in cheesy heaven for many a week. As well as going to the Isle of Wight for the wedding, which was a dream by all accounts. she was able to spend a couple of days in our old home haunts of Faversham in Kent where-at the suberb and highly recommended farm-shop-cum-world-deli Macknade Fine Foods.

Finally some reasonable apples from the orchard - these
are Red Windsor

This place is a veritable Alladin's cave of foodie stuff - from fancy cheeses and cold meats, vegs and exotic fruit, tins, packets and jars from all around the world. Need some African dried biltong meat? Jamaican spices? Greek salads? Pawpaws? Cajun food mix from the Deep South? Obscure Italian wines? Unusual teas or coffees? Spanish cheese? Macknade should be your first port of call and we never fail to drop in for a browse when we are in the area, even now we live 500 miles away.

Nearly late enoiugh to be 'Winter Fruiting' but no, this is my first
decent pick from the Autumn Bliss raspberry canes this year

This time, with Liz in the UK, I spotted a Macknade promo for the cheeses on Facebook and tipped her off. She came back with little 250 g sampler cuts of the Spanish cheeses Torralba Mahon, Garroxta and La Peral plus some Tomme de Savoie and some local (to Faversham) goat's cheese called "Fremlins Faversham Log" named after the goat, not the brewery! Macknade are so good at this that the sticker bearing the weights also has tasting notes for that cheese written on it so that we know for example that the Mahon is made with "semi- cured DOP Raw Milk: is close textured, salty and full flavoured with a peachy aroma from the paprika and oil-rubbed rind. (It comes) from Menorca in the Balearic Islands and is aged for 3-4 months"

Nice clean 'Orla' spuds now coming out of the ground.

We have tried all these as a mini cheese-course after a supper, but we are planning to do a real cheese-fest, tapas style meal with biscuits, grapes, French bread, port and other 'trimmings' on one of the weekend days, to give them all a proper road-test. Liz also returned with a house-brick sized block of vintage cheddar - this one was a Mazy inspired purchase - which we will use up at normal pace - it will take us about 6 weeks from the size of it.

At least one of the geese has come back into lay. 

With Liz currently working, I find myself back in the kitchen to a whole new degree and working my way through some old repertoire plus exploring some new avenues just to put the everyday supper on the table. Tonight I had some fun with Spaghetti Carbonara which is a dish I like but which we rarely get and I had not tried to cook before. It worked really well but the recipe demanded 7 ounces of bacon and 3 and a half of parmesan (this is Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Book). The bacon I had was some 'cooking bacon' of unknown precedence in the freezer since January and it may have been a bit salty because, with the parmesan and creme fraiche too, the final product was just a tad salty to be perfect. We ate it (proof of the pudding?) but if I use that bacon again I may well soak it in a couple of changes of water prior to frying it. For eggs, the recipe asked for 3 and one of our geese has conveniently come back into lay, so one goose eggs makes 3 hens any day in our kitchen. Thank you Miss Goose. I have also been able to produce some of those lovely meals where everything on the table is our own product. Yesterday our chicken was cooked in our tomato 'salsa' and served with our spuds and our chard.

Spaghetti carbonara.

Meanwhile, in the livestock dept, I could kid you with a lovely brag; I definitely 'rock' as a pig wrangler, to the degree that there is a risk I will become smug and complacent! Not seriously, of course, but the last few times I have tried to move pigs it has gone like a dream so that everyone watching thinks I am some kind of genius pig-whisperer who should be doing it for a living; I just hope my luck holds out. Today we had to try to load Sue and Rob's last pig, a full grown (and possibly in-pig) sow over at their place. She had been bought by a smallholding north of here but they had only managed to load the enormous boar (Rodney Trotter) yesterday; the sow was having none of it and charged off into the field. They sent the buyer off with the boar, promising to catch the sow today and deliver her.

I was there for about 10 am expecting a bit of fun and games. Sue was off delivering a cat to the vet, so Rob and I were on our own. Well, it took us about 3 minutes, certainly no more than 5. We had laid straw all over the trailer ramp, Rob tempted the sow down the 'race' and I brought up the rear with a sheet of currugated iron, trying to bar the way for any attempt by the sow to turn round and get back into the field. Well the sow was like a different animal. She sauntered down the race, took a brief and mildy concerned look over her shoulder at me and my sheet of metal, then spotted Rob theatrically throw his bucket of fruit and peelings into the trailer. She shugged her shoulders as if to say, 'ah well' then strolled up the ramp and ignored us leaping forward to slam the ramp/door shut on her. Rob and I could barely believe our luck. Sue came back and the job was pretty much done. Hitch up the trailer and head to the kitchen for a coffee. The sow is now delivered to the destination and reunited with Rodney, to much happy grunting from both pigs.

We had a deal, Mr Fox. Stay away and we will leave you alone.
Start messing about and this trap is ready for you. 

Here, we have the worrying arrival of another regular fox. This chap started coming every night while the clear skies and full moons were on around the lunar eclipse and the dogs were onto him, so we were getting some interupted sleeps. Regular readers will know that we had a fox problem in January and ended up (very unfortunately) having to have three shot. At that stage I made a little deal with any remaining foxes that if they stayed nocturnal and left my stock alone, then I'd leave them alone but if this lad is going to renage on his part of the deal, then we will be ready. I have the lend of a fox trap just in case but I have left this locked open at the moment so that Mr Fox can get used to it and come to believe that it is a harmless open metal box which occasionally has old fish heads in it.

Rambo has now worked his way round all three 'yows' and
can go home at the end of the month.

Finally, I was very amused to hear a couple of old boys discussing beef prices. One had apparently paid a bit more for some animals than he had liked but commented to his friend that "What else could I do? If I didn't do this, the grass would not stay short". That is now my new favourite farming philosophy - Farming to Keep the Grass Short! Not feeding the nation or making money or breeding the best pedigree animals you can breed, just keeping the grass mowed! Amen to that! Brilliant.

The Boys are Back

The field has had a few weeks to recover a bit and the grass is now 'moving' well and giving it a lovely new green 'pile'. I have had to mow the lawn its first cut and the other two miniature horses are getting through the hay we made last June and stashed away in the barn at Carolyn's, so today we get them back. They (Bob and Romeo) are delighted and, says Charlotte, as soon as they turned right out of her drive and realised they were coming here, they were pulling like mad down the lane to get here.

Once released into the field and cleaned of all tack, head collars and so on, they went completely giddy, racing round the field in big figures of 8 and loops, bucking and playing and stopping now and then to munch big mouthfuls of grass. It is a pleasure to see horses so happy and we are delighted to be able to give them this fun and pleasure just by having a spare field which needs a bit of mowing now and then till our lambs arrive. Carolyn is, meanwhile going to fertilize her own field and let it grow to hay again so that we can do the hay-making, hopefully in June and then put the horses out on the aftermath.

20 years of gardening - our first
successful fritillary!

The third amigo is still confined to home awaiting his appointment with Aoife the Vet. He needs 'doing' in between the risk of frost and the start of the blow fly season, which is a tight window but his other problem is that the months of separation have led to him no longer being able to get on smoothly with Bob and Romeo. He, an entire stallion, is convinced that he should be top dog but Romeo, backed up by Bob argues this point quite forcefully. At the moment, he can't go back into the field with them but he could now go into our pig-field which is also horse-proof, so we're waiting to see in his case how the operation goes and the reduction in his testosterone levels which will follow.

Concrete pig-drinker.

In the pig department we have had a nice result as a gift from former pig keepers, Carolyn and Charlotte. As we now know from our pig-learning, pigs are devils for destroying any plastic bowls or buckets you try to use for feeding them and providing water - they are playful, boisterous animals and they will happily grab up the bowl and go for a game with it, hurling it around, fighting over it, doing tug of wars, climbing into it and generally messing. K-Dub's solution to this was to build a bowl shaped mould out of wooden shuttering and fill it with concrete, thus creating a heavy robust concrete bowl which the pigs could not move, never mind play with. We have inherited this (Thanks very much, all three of you!) and hefted it into the car to bring home. It is currently being washed and sterilized with Miltons fluid prior to being installed in our own pig-run.

Tarte tatin with pâte brisée.

Meanwhile, Happy Birthday to me.  Not a significant number but one with a rather neat symmetry, I was born in 1957 and I am (tomorrow) 57 years old. Tomorrow though, we have an extra session of Bee School thrown at us, so we decided to do the special meal tonight. In our family the rules are that the Birthday-boy (or girl) gets to choose the menu and the other person has to cook it, but is allowed to interpret too. I 'ordered' steak and chips, apple pie and ice cream but this being Liz, it was not your standard apple pie with shortcrust pastry.

Steak, chips, peas and chestnut mushrooms.

Nope. She got out the Darina Allen books and went for a rather special Tarte Tatin (a French upside-down apple tart). The pastry is a superb fragile, rich, 2-egg-yolk job called Pâte Brisée (Broken or 'crumbly' pastry) which is allowed (nay, expected!) to break up as you try to turn out the pie. The apple you start by getting butter and sugar to foam in the frying pan till it turns fudge-golden, then add the apples and cook till the whole is caramelised to a dark brown colour. "Hold your nerve" advises Darina in the book, you will think you have burned it all to blazes but , no, you will have created a superbly sticky, sweet, apple-y version of heaven which your husband will be very very impressed by and grateful for on his 57th Birthday.

Spoiled, I am.

Tough Aul' Birds

I promised to report back on the 'Duxelle' (mushroom and ham based) stuffing Liz created to use up some of our mushroom glut, using the Darina Allen (Ballymaloe Cookery School) recipe, and I am happy to report that it was delicious. Full of flavour, too, was the roast chicken it accompanied, being the tiny carcass of the Sussex Ponte bird we culled just before New Year because she had injured her self 'beyond repair', possibly the rather bedraggledy girl we knew as 'Baldy' last summer. I can not be as complimentary as this about the texture of this bird - we were both really surprised at the toughness of the meat. She had received a fairly standard roast having been spatch-cocked and looked 'normal' but as soon as we started to attack it we were switching to sharp steak knives to cut meat from bone. The meat thus cut was very good and perfectly edible but it was a struggle to bite through the skin and we ended up ripping our half (each) to pieces with our hands and teeth, Medieval Banquet style.

Of course we quickly worked out that these Sussex Pontes, our old originals obtained at point of lay (20 weeks old) in May 2012, are 2 years old, easily the oldest chicken we have ever eaten. Standard commercial birds are pushed to killing weights in just a couple of months, commercial free range and organic birds more like 80-100 days and our own Hubbards were being eaten at between 100 and 140 days. This is why, of course, there are recipes around like 'Coq au Vin' designed to slowly cook a sinewy old bird to edible tenderness. We will know for next time and not try to fast-roast our 'geriatrics'; Heaven knows what the Marans birds will be like - they are more like 6 years old! Ah well, Baldy was left with plenty of meat on her bones when we'd finished our Medieval gnawing (and we were perfectly well fed on the meat we had eaten and the good range of veg accompanying her and the Duxelle stuffing) so she went into the stock pot and got the hours of gentle simmer she'd really needed.

Meanwhile our inner 'tough aul' birds' have been called on over the last couple of days as a result of the weather. Last night another 'orange warning' wind storm came through and blew a hole in my theory that the outbuildings are safe enough as long as the wind is from the south. We heard the mild clang in the dark of a sheet of corrugated iron going air-borne and the dogs woke up and started fretting. In the dark at half six or so, I ventured out with dogs to check on things (the dogs only because dogs fretting in the night can mean that someone has an upset bowel and if they can't get out you will end up cleaning up 'accidents' indoors). Our way up the cattle race was blocked by a long sheet of corrugated iron and a quick scan with the torch showed me that the chickens had lost a roof panel. I think it had simply shaken loose on its nails and slid down like an avalanche to land in the yard; the wooden frame of the roof there is quite badly rotted and probably long overdue replacement. In the dark, though, with the wind blowing a hooley and the rain coming down, there was not a lot I could do - the chickens were all OK not being directly below the new hole. I went back to bed to sweat out the wind noises and pray that no more panels went for a fly about.

That was our job, then, for the morning, trying to shore up and replace rotted roof timbers, then slide the sheeting back up its 'slot' and fasten it down with new screws and waterproof washers. Luckily the wind had abated a lot and the rain was now in bands between which you could nip out and scramble reasonably safely on roof ladders. It remains to be seen whether our repair will hold, the forecast has several more wind systems coming through. Mercifully, we only lost a roof panel and that not damaged. The internet and news are full of homes flooded, power lines down, rivers bursting their banks and coast roads impassable. Our sympathies to anyone who is really struggling through all this. We also take our hats off to the earlier Irish resident 'tough aul' birds' who survived all this kind of weather and mud without the benefit of modern outdoor clothing, power tools, light aluminium ladders and Posidrive screws.

Christmas is all over. The tree has been stripped of its finery and now languishes on the pile of 'sneddings' awaiting its fate on the range fire. The tinsel, baubles, pine cones and fairy lights are back in their crates in the Utility Room till next time. The cards are in the recycling. The Christmas Cake is all gone, the huge pud is cut up into sensible one-meal portions and frozen. Liz had blitzed through the house sweeping up the shed pine needles, pieces of dog-chewed decorations and rescuing the (thankfully plastic these days) silver baubles which we'd displayed artistically in a big bowl on the coffee table. Blue the cat had invented a good game of scooping them out of the bowl with a front paw and watching them roll onto the floor, whence they ended up under the sofa, the settee and the tree. Thank you, Blue, we have retrieved them all now.

50th Food Festival?

Here we are, then, all quiet again on site after having just dropped our latest group of visitors back to Knock Airport. It is always lovely to have good friends stay and enjoy the place and these had the added plus-point of it being a chance for us all to celebrate a 'significant' birthday together for Liz. These were long-term and very best friends from the Faversham days, Diamond and her husband John who you may recall were married in Greece recently around the famous "Happy Webbing" cake and not-quite-so-long-term friend, Mazy-Lou.

This, rather superbly, brought together three ladies who are amongst the best cooks we know, so the holiday event was always likely to turn into a foodie extravaganza and so it proved with everybody chipping in marvelous recipes and some beautiful eating. John and I were reduced to 'service and supply' roles and largely evicted from the kitchen but you can hardly complain about being asked to gather and prep veg', make 'tay', wash and dry up, lay tables, chop wood etc when you are being fed and 'watered' so handsomely, can you?

A HUGE thank you too, to Mentor Anne and Simon on the 'supply' side in this case by giving us a gorgeous haunch of venison. We gather they had tried it and found venison too 'gamey' for their tastes but it was definitely a case of 'their loss is our gain'. Thank you very much, A+S! The venison was just one in a series of superb meals coming, in this case, as "Roast Venison in Red Wine Gravy" - the meat was marinaded in olive oil, peppercorns, thyme, juniper berries, red wine and orange peel for 36 hours. The gravy is similar but has redcurrant jelly and beef stock.

Dessert on that occasion came from Mazy who tried us out on a new recipe as a birthday cake, a chocolate mousse 'Genoise' sponge, this one off page 453 of Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course (pub Kyle Cathie). Genoise sponge, in case you did not know is one used in many French gateaux recipes. It was a great success and we have plenty of it left over. Diamond did her gorgeous mashed spuds. All veg were from the garden, of course.

This quality and effort set the standard for the visit and has us remembering it as a Food Festival which will be hard to top. Other days saw us taking on an enormous roast pock shoulder and an elabourate cheese board which included Cooleeny (Tipperary Brie), Cashel Blue, a goat's cheese and a Crozier Blue as well as the Camembert, Cheddar. There was a superb coq-au-vin which featured our 'late' 8-ball Sussex rooster, "Son of William" and a delightful, genius sticky-toffee pudding with caramel sauce.

Breakfasts were light and 'roll your own' yogurt and toast style affairs except for the final morning when we have now established a good tradition of sending folk off to their planes or cars with a belly full of "Irish Fry" - sausages, rashers, white pudding, black pudding, Mazy's scrambled eggs, beans, mushrooms and 'tay' or proper coffee. Even the 'down-times' and non-special lunches were rendered a bit 'foodie' - one day we had cold pork sandwiches, but the bread was actually special rolls (more like individual loaves) and Mazy knocked up a delicious sweet spicy BBQ sauce to smear on them.

In between all this food there was plenty of time for catching up with old friends, relaxing, enjoying the 'farm' and the livestock and sipping the occasional wine or Bloody Mary (or indeed Bushmills). There were outings to local towns and to Knock Shrine and Basilica. John loves chopping kindling and I was more than happy to let him work away - I now have a big Curver bucket and 2 coal sacks full of neatly chopped and lengthed kindling wood. We had a play at the pick-axe earth bank. He also come with me on the dog walks. Diamond fell in love with the geese and chickens and was fascinated to see that the chooks take themselves off to bed as it gets dark, while you have to shepherd the geese home to their night time quarters. Our only regret was that firm local friend John Deere Bob did not drop by. He is busy with 2nd cut silage and bale carting. The visitors had heard so much about him and Diamond met him last time she was over so we had hoped to get everyone together for a chat but it was not to be.

And so, another successful and very enjoyable bit of 'hosting' comes to an end and peace returns to the 'farm' disturbed only by the crowing of William, cheeping of Hubbard chicks, baa-ing of lambs, honking of geese, roar and clang of a nearby silage baler and the busy hum of the fridges as they try to keep the gourmet and bountiful left-overs in fit condition... you know how it is. We will not have to shop or cook for a while.