Dairy Free Carrot Cake

My wife has been working her way through our big bag of carrots that we got given.
This is good for me as it means one thing - cake!

Poor quality photo sorry - but it tastes amazing!

She's been playing with the recipe and I'd say its as near to perfect as it's going to get:

175g light muscovado sugar
175ml vegetable oil
3 eggs, beaten
175g self raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
3 large carrots, grated
200g raisins
good splash of orange juice

Mix the sugar, oil and eggs together,
Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices,
Add orange juice, carrots and raisins,
Stir well and put into a greased/lined tin,
Bake at 180 degrees c for 45 minutes or until cooked.

Makes a lovely moist cake. You could add walnuts to the mixture if you wanted (we haven't got any at the moment) and you could make an icing to go on top. We decided not to have icing because otherwise our little girl just eats that and leaves the cake, whereas with no icing she eats the cake like it's the last one she's ever going to have!

Egg Numbers Improving

Although we're still not getting huge numbers of eggs the numbers do seem to be improving.

Thanks to anyone who left advice when I asked about stopping an egg eater.

Regular egg collection by my wife and two little "helpers" have helped the most I think (and it's not been easy for her in all this mud and wet with two little ones). But I've also made sure there is plenty of extra bedding and added a grit feeder as well as mixing it in their food.

I've not seen any wet, eggy patches in the nest boxes in a long time so, without wanting to use a pun, maybe we've cracked it!

Thanks again for all your help and advice.

Blogging is such a good tool for a homestead! Real advice from people who are living it is hard to beat!

Hybrid Willow For Logs?

The last couple of years I've been planting a few trees in the corner of our "large" 2 acre field with the view to making this into a little coppice for firewood and somewhere for the kids to make dens when they're older.

In this little corner there is about 30 native trees, cherry, hazel, sweet chestnut, cherry, etc. But in my fencing frenzy of the last month or so (I'm going to draw up a plan so everyone will know what area I'm on about when I talk about it) I've sectioned off a long strip about 10m wide and 80m long (approx) down the one field to make this coppice area bigger, now needing hundreds of trees.

The trouble is what to plant.

I want to be able to coppice this on a short rotation if possible and divide it up into sections that will be coppiced each year.

My Potential plan for the coppice area (a very rough plan)

I've been reading about hybrid willow and it seems to be the fastest growing tree about that coppices well and is relatively good for firewood and charcoal making. The beauty of growing it like that is the logs only ever reach about 4" in diameter so there is no splitting required.

What I want to know is has anyone else had any experience of growing hybrid willow for logs and what does it burn like on a high efficiency wood stove? Or should I go for slower growing native trees like sweet chestnut and hazel?

George's Shallots

The last few weeks I've been working with an old carpenter, George, on the roof in the rain. He's 70 and I guess I've known him for over ten years now. When I first met him he taught me how to skin a rabbit, prepare an eel, pickle a walnut- all I had to do was bring them into work an he's cook them up for lunch or show me the best way to eat them. It was quite a laugh looking back on it and I think he certainly helped fuel the fire that I had for doing all the things I love doing now.

I lost contact with him for 8 years so it's been nice to be working with him again and our conversations are pretty much what they used to be - gardening, or food related! We've been talking a lot about what we think is the best thing to grow in the garden and one of the things that came out on the top of George's list was his shallots.

He has no idea of the variety but says they grow well every year and he stores them for two years with very few problems. Then he asked if I'd like to grow them! Well it would be rude to turn him down...

So although it's a little late to be planting these, I'm sure they wouldn't have done much better in the ground over this wet winter and they should soon catch up if we have a good spring. This might be one more vegetable that I can be self sufficient in (we rarely buy them as they're too expensive anyway). I'll save enough to plant each year, eat the rest and hopefully they'll bridge the gap when we have no onions.

How well does everyone else do with shallots and do you think they'll help with the bigger picture of trying to be self sufficient?

Book Review- Ray Mears My Outdoor Life

I've been a fan of Ray Mears ever since my brother and I watched his first program on the TV. Since then both my brother and I have had a keen interest in bushcraft and survival skills, we've even spent a week in the Scottish highlands to put our skills into practise!

So when I saw he's written an autobiography I added to my Christmas list and then promptly forgot that I had! On Christmas morning I was pleased as anything to see this in my pile of presents and started reading it that day.

The book is quietly written and it really reads as if its his voice in your head, softly and quite understated. The pace is quite slow and at times some of the dialogue feels a little "clunky" but it doesn't distract from what is otherwise a really enjoyable read.

He's had an amazing life and has worked hard to seize any opportunity he could which would help him learn more bushcraft skills and this pursuit has taken him all over the world.

 I knew little about this otherwise private man before reading this book, so it's nice to see what makes him tick and the adventures that formed him like driving across Africa, or helping the police hunt Raoul Moat. I do feel that he may have written this book a little too soon and some parts (where he deals with loss and bereavement) the wounds are still quite fresh and this shows in his writing.

I enjoyed this book but I'd say it's only really one for fans of his work, hopefully he'll write another book in 20 years time and have many more stories to tell.