Kulning

I saw this on YouTube and it was so beautiful that I had to share it with you all.

Gave me goosebumps

Far better than me shouting "Come on Sheep!"

Avian Flu Warning

So this morning the UK Government has issued a warning about avian flu and recommended that all poultry and other domestic birds be kept inside for the next 30 days. It also goes on to say that if this isn't possible then measures should be taken to reduce poultry movement and to minimise direct and indirect contact between them and wild birds. 

Well there's no chance of keeping mine in as I tend to keep the coop quite small and give the birds a large run. As I get up early this seems to work well for my birds, but not great when something unpredictable like this happens. 

The alternative is to net the run to keep the wild birds out. This is easier said that done! Above is a video of what my chicken run looks like now - It resembles a third world shanty town but it should keep the wild birds out for the next 30 days. My other birds are also going to have a reshuffle, a few will be culled tonight and whilst the young chicks will have to stay in the broody ark for a while longer yet. 

I want to make a little movable ark to fit my new garden beds to include chickens in my garden rotation, so it looks like that project it get moved up the priority list a bit now. 

What measures have you had to take? Or are your birds already in enclosed runs? What about the wild bird droppings, would they be a problem as well?

I'm not sure disinfection foot baths are really going to work here as I think that's for more sterile environments than my muddy field, like commercial enterprises. 

Peter Cook's Bread

I'm very fortunate to live in an area that seems to have a lot of people who care passionately about food. Locally there are people that make cider, cheese, grow good livestock and a great butchers in the village. The butchers also sells fresh bread. 

Now I bake bread most days but I still think it's great that there is fresh bread available just a mile from my door, when I have bought some it's been lovely and very different to what I bake; sour doughs, cider crumb, rye breads, ciabatta, etc. 

Kneading techniques

I saw on Facebook that the hotel in the village was having a 2 hour demonstration by Peter Cook, the man that bakes the bread and sells it to local shops around the area. He has quite a following in the village and everyone raves about his bread (rightly so) so I thought I'd go. 

Showing some focciaca dough

It was just £5 for 2 hours and I picked up so many tips and learnt that I'm doing quite a few things differently to him (some might say wrong but I still make good bread!). He made, but didn't cook, some Chelsea buns, a focciata and talked about his sour dough loaves. I'm planning on making some Chelsea buns for the school bake sale on Friday so hopefully I should make them even better this time round! 

Rolled up ready to be cut into pieces to make Chelsea buns

What really came across was this mans passion about what he did and that he believes in good local real food and real bread. His loaves are all made by hand and some of them are three days in the making, he even says that some gluten intolerant people can eat his loaves just due to the fermentation times that the yeasts have to work. He could name all his suppliers and even collected spring water from the Malverns to use in his sour doughs.

I think I might have to book on one of his day courses and do some more learning. 

You can read more about his bread here.

Anyone else have great local producers of food?

A Cool, Frost Free Place

How often do you see this with gardening tubers that you buy or want to store? 

"Store in a cool, frost free place".

Finding one isn't always as easy as it should be. I have a shed here that is well insulated but it still can go below freezing if we have a long spell of cold weather. Last week I was worried that with temperatures going below -6 Degrees Celsius that the shed would also dip below freezing.

I'd planned for this and the shed has some power in there, as well as this I had a little fan heater that I was planning to use. 

A cheap fan heater

I never trust the thermostat on these cheap heaters so instead I bought a thermostatically controlled switch. It cost £35 and the idea behind it is really simple, if the temperature you set it to dips a degree below, it switches on what ever you have plugged in until the temperature gets to where you want it to be (if that's makes sense).

The new switch

I've also got a digital thermometer in there as well so I'm not just relying on the one on the plug. It also records the maximum and minimum temperature so I can see the range of temperatures that the shed is giving my produce. 

Just to double check and to see the range of temperatures. 

I was really pleased with it, with all that cold weather the shed stayed at around 5 degrees, only dipping to 4 degrees before the heater would kick in a for a minute or so (very infrequently as the shed holds it's temperature really well).

So although it's not a root cellar I have got a frost free place to keep my things overwinter. That way crops like my yacon and oca can be stored and planted again for next year without having to buy them again. Kind of like having a big fridge! 

The switch will also work in reverse if you had a air con unit you wanted to set up to keep temperatures cool in the summer. 

Do you have a cool, frost free place to store tubers?

Disappointing Oca Harvest

 A couple of days ago (before this heavy cold frost) I had a dig around my Oca (New Zealand yams) bed (this post is in response to Sol asking when to harvest them - in truth it's a guessing game!). 

We had a frost that killed them the earlier in the month so I left them a good three weeks, where the tubers are then meant to swell, the later this happens in the year the better as they only form the tubers as the days get shorter. 

I only dug up half the bed and I was very disappointed by the results, the tubers are all small and very few in number. Compared to last years harvest where I had a couple of buckets worth it's going to be slim pickings with only enough to replant really. 

I'm going to leave the other half in the bed a little longer and see if that makes any difference to the size of the tubers. All i need to worry about is pests and them rotting in the ground so it's a bit of a gamble.

It's a shame as this is a crop with such potential, but it needs some development to make it a predicable crop that produces tubers eariler. 

I've recently joined the Guild Of Oca Breeders to help to try out new varieties in the hope of finding some that crop earlier. I'll do a post about what they get up to another time, I just need to decide how much space I should dedicate to this crop in future - when it's good it's very very good, and when it's bad it's dreadful!

Who else has harvested their yams yet?