Brian has a makeover part 2

Here is Brian in his new wipe clean format.... Don't have a before pic unfortunately...

The Vegetables

Pleased to say the veggies are well on their way to the plate! The cold start to summer has slowed matters down however the signs of life are well and truly there now. I even just ate our first sugarsnap pea ( missed the plate stage altogether...). Loving the hot weather and garden time.

Sad to say our oldest and favourite adopted chicken of all time, Rita, died this week. Loved that hen.

The chicks are doing well, they seem huge now in comparison to when we got them!

Apple Terrine

Joe made us apple terrine this weekend...Raymond Blanc recipe on BBC food. Yum. Also some gorgeous bread....

Brian has a makeover

For a while now we have been meaning to upgrade the bed in Brian (our van) so that we can actually sleep comfortably without being squished... So we upgraded today. Started by removing the shelving which the surfboards were stored on (mainly with a drill). Then, we used the jigsaw and normal saw to remove the large wall panel (the left hand side of the first picture was our old bed space). Next, we fiddled about removing some of the shelf and added flooring to the new bed bit. We then put the wall sheet up on the side of the van, and hey presto, a bed double the size. Very excited as I have been wanting to do this for about 4 years now.......

Here is Brian in all his glory ....

Small things matter

So, the electric bill came through this morning. We are supplied by Ecotricity, who are a company who pretty much match your existing supplier, and they support sustainable energy. They, and similar companies are worth considering as they use renewable energy sources.

Now, safe to say, our electric bill isn't massive; there are two of us living in the house, and we don't go overboard on electricity use...Our bill for 3 months was £130, which includes a standing charge of £25 so essentially we are paying £35 a month, so per day just over £1. We used 764 kw/h over the last three months at 13.02p per kw/.


Shrinkthatfootprint.com estimate that each person in the UK uses an average of 496.25 kw/h per 3 months, so for two of us this works out around 992 kw/h per 3 months.

So we are using under the average, but we have been thinking, are there small things we can do to make this bill even smaller? We are on a three month challenge, join us to see if making small changes can reduce your bill and electricity use?

These are the main things in our house which use electricity, and some of the things which we already try and do but will try even more to do!!

Shower (26p per 10 min shower)
- Now it is summer, try lowering the heat
- Turn off when lathering up!
- Shorten shower time

Kettle (0.5p per minute, 0.75p per boil for 2 cups of tea with correct water amount)
- boil only what we need
- descale to reduce boiling time

Dishwasher
We tend to use the 50 degree setting at the moment...as it is more effective at cleaning
-So, we are going to try rinsing things and washing at 35 degrees

Washing machine
- Our washing machine has a 15 minute cycle, so we are going to use this more! At the moment, we tend to use the 30 min or 45 min cycle (which is still v short as cycles go, but every little counts)

Oven
- We have a standard oven, but we also have a halogen oven. We are going to try and use this more for small things (like sausages, fishcakes, small bakes, jacket potato etc)
- We also have built a cob pizza oven in the garden, so we could be using this more for the bread baking which Joe does pretty much once a week

Other
We are pretty good at turning off lights, computers etc when not in use but we will try and be extra good!


So... I will let you know the results in three months time...

THE chair

So for a while we had a chair...it became a bit of a running joke as I had decided to refurbish it...about three years ago that was!!! I am pleased to say it is now painted, waxed and I even made a new cushion cover for good measure. So one revamped chair.

What's for pudding?

This is a question which joe often asks me with a note of expectation/hope/blind optimism...
Well this evening I made syrup sponge pudding in approximately 6 minutes start to finish... Here is how.

You will need...
50g butter or marg, 50g sugar (I used homemade vanilla sugar), 1 medium egg, 2 tbsp milk, 2 tbsp golden syrup.

To make...
Beat the butter and sugar together in a blender (time saver!). Then add the milk and egg slowly to the blending mix. Then sift in the flour and fold in gently.

Put the syrup in a microwaveable bowl then pour on the sponge mix. Cover and microwave for 3.5 mins.

Yum!

Next time I am going to try adding some dissicated coconut and jam instead of syrup to mix it up a bit

Welcome to the flock

About a month ago we set out to let our poor broody hen actually go ahead and be a mum... this time every year she sits on whatever eggs she can find, until we remove them that is. Feels mean but until now we didn't want any more hens!
Our flock of 11 hens has slowly been diminishing with hen illness and random death so we have only 5 chickens left. Joe bought some eggs online for Lintilla to sit on. Which she did. Day 21 (hatching day), nothing happened. Or the next day. Or the next. By day 28 we felt any chance of baby chicks was pretty slim, so decided to buy some day old chicks and see if Lintilla would adopt them. She didn't. She didn't seem maternal towards them at all in fact, pecking them quite a lot. By the next morning we had hoped she would have changed her mind or got confused and thought that her eggs had hatched. No such luck, so she had to go back to the flock and the chicks will have to do their growing up on their own...

I must say they are are doing a very good job! They were eating, sleeping, drinking, scratching around, preening, and all that jazz within a day!

Now they are looking very active...they go everywhere at 100 mph !!

Strumpshaw Fen

Went for a walk at Strumpshaw Fen a while ago, it really is beautiful there. I love looking at these pictures as a real reminder of how beautiful nature is.

Sausages!

We made sausages!
4 kg of them.....

We made some honey and mustard, Italian spiced, English seasoning and some other type.

All in all it took about 3-4 hours. This picture captures about half of the end amount...

The House of Windows

So we have had rather a lot of windows for a while now. They have survived existing in someone's house for a while, then being taken out. We weren't sure we wanted them or if we were ever going to actually get round to using them but then we got to the stage where we had owned them for too long to get rid of them. So they then survived the move to our new house, and took up residence behind the shed (they would be useful one day...)

I am pleased to say that day came! We started to make a plan as to how to build a greenhouse, and then scrapped it and decided to just attach each window to the next and see what happened! Once we had done this for a while, we needed a roof, so we got some corrugated plastic, which seems to be working a treat. We need to build a door at some point... but it is still warm and sheltered in there at the mo so the tomatoes seem happy enough.

The Cob Oven

Our cob oven is now functional!! We slowly started building it a few weeks ago however torrential rain did stop play for a while.

Joe went on a cob oven building course a while ago, so he knew what to do... I think pictures speak louder than words on this one so here are the pictures ...

There is one more layer that we need to make to insulate it, but for the moment we are using insulation for a kiln.

Sunday of Productivity

After quite a nippy winter, the sun had shone its face and we got into the spirit of doing things. So much into the spirit that we got a little carried away... Joe started the day by tinkering with Alice. Slack Alice. Our new boat that is... I potted on the tomato plants which have been looking like they have wanted new pots for a while now. We then planted our first veg in the new house! A very exciting moment. We should hopefully be the owners of some runner beans and broad beans soon enough. I also split and re-potted some other plants like supermarket basil and a chilli. Having spent Saturday being taught by Joe how to make a bread oven out of cob at his community garden project, we put our skills to work in building the base for our home oven. We put some pallets together and screwed them into place...and then took it all apart and just piled up some pallets instead because you would have needed to be about 8 foot tall to use our first attempt. Having potted out all the plants it was 5 pm. Time for a cuppa and to...yes you've guessed it, build a greenhouse!For about 3 years now we have owned some old large windows which Joe acquired from work. After being assured they would come in handy , we kept hold of them and after a couple of hours of munging we now have something which resembles 3/4 of a greenhouse. Hoping to finish it this weekend. Along with the bread oven. Roll on Saturday (and some more sunshine please).