A new acquisition for the kitchen. We bought this little gem from Driftwood Vintage at the top of our Street. It was made from unfinished plywood so we painted it orange, to complement our ice blue kitchen units.
Perfect.
Another moment of perfection, is the bottling of a couple of bottles of, ‘Black Rider’. This is an infusion of blackberries that have been soaked in whiskey for 6 months.
Rather than ditching the fruits we re soak the fruits in a cider. This one is Black Rider.
We also use the fruits to make Semi Freddo. This is a classic Italian desert, using eggs, Castor sugar, double cream, all whisked together, with the added fruit, and placed in the freezer, creating Semi Freddo … nearly frozen.
“Around the world, the library of life that has evolved over billions of years – our biodiversity – is being destroyed, poisoned, polluted, invaded, fragmented, plundered, drained and burned at a rate not seen in human history,” Ireland’s president, Michael Higgins, said at a biodiversity conference in Dublin on Thursday. “If we were coal miners we’d be up to our waists in dead canaries.”
Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues
Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said
It’s a true start of the year when your marmalade is stacked in the cellar for the year. Even though we don’t grow our own Oranges, we do make our own marmalade, using organic Saville oranges, we knock out enough to keep us going for the year.
Apart from the, marmalade making, we have been busy over wintering our allotments, planning our year.
Chitting our seed potatos has started, a bountiful crop of varieties are promised, and when you grow your own, that’s what you can get, variety.
We’ve planned for 6 varieties, including, Nicola and Casablanca, as our first earlies, Ambo as our Second early, followed by Record and then Setanta and a bumper crop of Pink Fir.
Feed the family.
Readying new raised beds, on the new allotment.
The garlic & onon sown at the end of 2018 are rising well.
All the soil has been fed and is covered.
We have been given access to Rhubarb at the back of Ralf’s, local dtsin glass producer, this has been covered, for a crop of forced produce. This will be used to make our, spicey rhubarb chutneys, and a early batch of our rhubarb vodka.
I prepared a variety of liquid feeds last year, using the roots of docweed & dandy lion, plus seed weed. This feed will be used in the early part of the year to boost feed the crops.
Plus a couple of bottles of urine to activate the compost.
We are working with Maria Thun’s Biodynamic Calendar for 2019.