Racking the rhubarb wine
Tonight Danny has gone to bed early and I am racking off the rhubarb wine. It has been in the airing cupboard for a couple of months and I want to move it to the barn, which is cool and perfect for storing fermenting demijohns. Racking the wine is good as it skims the wine from the leys, removes dead yeast and activates the live yeast. It’s been a year since we started to make country wine. I’d noticed that our elder tree was in bud, swiftly followed by glorious creamy white heads of flowers. It was watching a client make...
read moreRain. The lazy guide to watering in dry weather.
It’s been raining on and off for about three days now which has set back the work on the outside of the cottage. The garden is loving it. The plants look so much fresher. The pond and all the water butts have filled up (even the butt holding 1400 litres is half full!). We water the vegetable garden using a slow drip system fed by seven water butts that are dotted about the garden collecting water off the greenhouse and various roofs.Laziness drew me into the world of slow drip watering. Two years ago we raised tomato plants from seed and...
read moreFiona’s Smoked Fish Chowder
We used smoked haddock as our fish of preference in this delicious chowder. It is a very forgiving dish and you can use most any fish. Either all smoked like this one or a mix of smoked and unsmoked if you want to achieve a balance that appeals to your taste. Many fish chowder recipes require fish stock. Most people do not have it to hand and we are no exception. We created an instant fishy, smoky stock by lightly poaching the haddock to create a base stock for this soup and adding marigold and a touch of picante pimenton. It took minutes and...
read moreConfiscating the pig’s ear from The Contessa
After an afternoon that has be punctuated by deep low growling, I’ve been forced to remove the pig’s ear yet again. The other dogs were delighted with theirs and gobbled them up. Contessa goes into immediate guerilla warfare tack when we give her a treat. Her afternoon is ruined. She cannot move from the chair where her basket perches. The others play in the garden near our tiny apiary, whilst Contessa grumbles on. It’s a bit scary removing the chew but once the deed is done, she seems relieved. And it’s out through...
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