Our life is quiet, nothing out of the ordinary is happening, summer has appeared, the sun is shining, everything at the garden, and at home, is growing at a fast pace, including those pesky weeds.
She has become a fan of Kefir. It is, Dear Readers, the most delicious thing to drink, I know this as I am allowed to drink some every day out of a spoon.
It all started when she was given a bottle with some Kefir grains by Debbie of Ellie's Dairy, she brought them home and fed them to two pints of raw goaty milk. Where they hubbled and bubbled and brewed a scrummy fermented drink. Nothing that you buy in a shop will taste anything like the 'real' stuff that you can make at home.
She likes it chilled and neat for breakfast and chilled but mixed with a slug of pure beetroot juice for supper, oh slurp.
Now we have three large glass bottles lined up on the work surface, the open tops are covered with a linen cloth held in place by a stout elastic band, this allows the brew to breath.
It all depends on the temperature and each bottle is different, the quickest fermentation was nineteen hours with a huge amount of whey showing at the bottom of the jar. The one next to it took thirty hours!
That's not the only stuff that is hubbly bubbling in YumYum HQ, there is a huge glass jar, a monster of a thing and it is full of chopped beetroot. She is making beetroot Kvass.
She thinks beetroots are God's Gifts and this stuff sounds truly scrummydumptious. The first recipe she came across said to ferment it for two days, well, those two days came and went on the 20th that was two days ago, it is only today that there are just beginning to be a few, a very few, bubbles at the top of the liquid!
It looks as if the other recipes which talk of ten days are more accurate, I will report back but it is all good 'live' stuff indeed!
What else has she been doing? Gardening and working is the answer, I know it doesn't sound very exciting but we are quite content and happy.
The red and the yellow pepper plants have gone and are planted at the allotment together with the courgette plants, we have passed the last frost date so all the plants can be planted.
It is easier to grow the tomatoes at home, they get stroked as she walks up the stairs, this movement makes for thick and strong stems and they can be watered twice or even three times a day if the day is hot and sunny.
The last things to be planted will be the purple sprouting brocolli and some lettuce seeds that she sewed in a seed tray, they will go under the mini fruit trees and benefit from the tiny amount of shade.
The Seneca plum tree who was completely covered in pure white blossom has out done herself and she must take a lot of the smaller ones off this coming week, otherwise damage will be done to some branches, they are bent to the floor with a magnificent crop of these superb plums.
The poor cherries, those days of frost and that evil wind which whipped off the blossom, mean there are very few fruits. It is very sad as all of the trees were absolutely covered in their pink blossoms and it would have been a brilliant harvest. But as they are the last to come into flower they missed that spell of fine weather that all of the other fruit trees benefitted from.
Ah well.. that's gardening and life for you.
What has happened this week end? Jack, as you know, died last September and Ros has had so much to deal with that the plots have rather taken a back seat. It takes her no time to whiz the big trimmer over the plots to keep them neat for her friend. Dear Jack, such a nice gardening friend, they all miss him.
She has tied the currant bushes up, she does this just before she wraps them in the nylon bags. She admits they do look funny but at least WE get to pick the fruit instead of those greedy fat pigeons. She tells them to go and eat the elderberries but they take no notice and keep casting their beady eyes on our currants.
June.. this means it is time to prune the stone fruit trees and to give the pip fruit trees a light prune to shorten this years new growth.
The figs have all been pruned and yippee.. finally miss Violetta fig has decided to grow! She was grown especially for a really cold climate.. huh.. she was planted in the spring of 2012 and the last two winters nearly saw her turn her 'toes up', for she has never grown one leaf! But now she is in leaf with one minute fig!
Meanwhile miss Greek Cypriot fig has never ever minded our cold winters and, bless her heart, is covered in fat figs!
But the raspberries ARE going to get the chop and to be dug out. They are showing a few fruits but far too few to justify the space that they occupy, so maybe the solar house will be built this autumn after all.
We have a busy week ahead of us, well, she has a busy week, I get to loll about as grey parrots do.
She has to make a claim at the post office and to sort out stuff, work one day at the shop and she has a hospital test to go through on friday, which means no food for twenty four hours, rather her than me!
I don't know when I'll be back, long gone are the days of May when we posted every day but it will be some day this week, I hope.
PipPip.. Dear Readers.. PipPip..
GeeGee Parrot.
June 22nd, 2014
She has become a fan of Kefir. It is, Dear Readers, the most delicious thing to drink, I know this as I am allowed to drink some every day out of a spoon.
It all started when she was given a bottle with some Kefir grains by Debbie of Ellie's Dairy, she brought them home and fed them to two pints of raw goaty milk. Where they hubbled and bubbled and brewed a scrummy fermented drink. Nothing that you buy in a shop will taste anything like the 'real' stuff that you can make at home.
She likes it chilled and neat for breakfast and chilled but mixed with a slug of pure beetroot juice for supper, oh slurp.
Now we have three large glass bottles lined up on the work surface, the open tops are covered with a linen cloth held in place by a stout elastic band, this allows the brew to breath.
It all depends on the temperature and each bottle is different, the quickest fermentation was nineteen hours with a huge amount of whey showing at the bottom of the jar. The one next to it took thirty hours!
That's not the only stuff that is hubbly bubbling in YumYum HQ, there is a huge glass jar, a monster of a thing and it is full of chopped beetroot. She is making beetroot Kvass.
She thinks beetroots are God's Gifts and this stuff sounds truly scrummydumptious. The first recipe she came across said to ferment it for two days, well, those two days came and went on the 20th that was two days ago, it is only today that there are just beginning to be a few, a very few, bubbles at the top of the liquid!
It looks as if the other recipes which talk of ten days are more accurate, I will report back but it is all good 'live' stuff indeed!
What else has she been doing? Gardening and working is the answer, I know it doesn't sound very exciting but we are quite content and happy.
The red and the yellow pepper plants have gone and are planted at the allotment together with the courgette plants, we have passed the last frost date so all the plants can be planted.
It is easier to grow the tomatoes at home, they get stroked as she walks up the stairs, this movement makes for thick and strong stems and they can be watered twice or even three times a day if the day is hot and sunny.
The last things to be planted will be the purple sprouting brocolli and some lettuce seeds that she sewed in a seed tray, they will go under the mini fruit trees and benefit from the tiny amount of shade.
The Seneca plum tree who was completely covered in pure white blossom has out done herself and she must take a lot of the smaller ones off this coming week, otherwise damage will be done to some branches, they are bent to the floor with a magnificent crop of these superb plums.
The poor cherries, those days of frost and that evil wind which whipped off the blossom, mean there are very few fruits. It is very sad as all of the trees were absolutely covered in their pink blossoms and it would have been a brilliant harvest. But as they are the last to come into flower they missed that spell of fine weather that all of the other fruit trees benefitted from.
Ah well.. that's gardening and life for you.
What has happened this week end? Jack, as you know, died last September and Ros has had so much to deal with that the plots have rather taken a back seat. It takes her no time to whiz the big trimmer over the plots to keep them neat for her friend. Dear Jack, such a nice gardening friend, they all miss him.
She has tied the currant bushes up, she does this just before she wraps them in the nylon bags. She admits they do look funny but at least WE get to pick the fruit instead of those greedy fat pigeons. She tells them to go and eat the elderberries but they take no notice and keep casting their beady eyes on our currants.
June.. this means it is time to prune the stone fruit trees and to give the pip fruit trees a light prune to shorten this years new growth.
The figs have all been pruned and yippee.. finally miss Violetta fig has decided to grow! She was grown especially for a really cold climate.. huh.. she was planted in the spring of 2012 and the last two winters nearly saw her turn her 'toes up', for she has never grown one leaf! But now she is in leaf with one minute fig!
Meanwhile miss Greek Cypriot fig has never ever minded our cold winters and, bless her heart, is covered in fat figs!
But the raspberries ARE going to get the chop and to be dug out. They are showing a few fruits but far too few to justify the space that they occupy, so maybe the solar house will be built this autumn after all.
We have a busy week ahead of us, well, she has a busy week, I get to loll about as grey parrots do.
She has to make a claim at the post office and to sort out stuff, work one day at the shop and she has a hospital test to go through on friday, which means no food for twenty four hours, rather her than me!
I don't know when I'll be back, long gone are the days of May when we posted every day but it will be some day this week, I hope.
PipPip.. Dear Readers.. PipPip..
GeeGee Parrot.
June 22nd, 2014
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