The Cottage Smallholder

Evening all, me again.  Aly, we decided in the end to get a trainer to come out to the house for Rosie.  The reasoning was that she (and us) needed to be trained in the environment she lived in so that the training and behaviours stuck.  Second to that we still do not have a car and I usually only get back into Crawley after 6pm so getting to any sort of class in time would be difficult.  Broadfield is to my mind the most attractive part of Crawley but it is also historically one of the poorest so you don't get much in they way of classes or anything extra curricular going on around these parts - you always have to travel to Ifield, Three Bridges or other parts of town.

I liked the bit of Horsham that I saw - as spring marches on this is a good time for you to visit.  We already have daffodils flowering hereabouts.

The book is a piece of fiction and under wraps at present.  Once I have figured out the full storyline I will share (right now I have  a few scenes and have to link these together somehow - for me writing is not a logical process).

The market I want to sell at is the Slow Food Market in southeast London that I participated with the launch of last year.  Considering I did rather well out of that with the bare minimum of preparation and almost no stock, going in with a plan this year will hopefully allow for even better returns (though 100% sales last time was great!).

Terrier - right now I am building up stocks of the blood orange marmalade (aiming for 100 x 225g bottles - will have 72 done by the end of this weekend).  I have already made a batch of the curried green beans and will do more (also aiming for 100 bottles).  I have experimented with cranberry & orange jelly but think the cost of production is prohibitive, same for the blood orange & port preserve - so these are for home use only.  Good old bread & butter pickle (though zinged up with a jalapeno pepper added) is also on the list.  However these will be made nearer the time I go to market as they have a shorter shelf live (3 months as opposed to 2 years for the others).  I want to make up some more Bangladeshi Lemon & Ginger marmalade as well but that is dependent on getting a decent price on the Bangladeshi lemons (they are not cheap).  Other than that we have debated doing the onions pickled in a mustard sauce, some chutneys and a few other jams...the final list is yet to be decided but I want to limit it to 6 (3 x sweet and 3 x savoury). 

I have also passed samples of some of the products on to the manager of a South African shop in the area and so far the reception has been positive.  It would have been ideal to sell at market in Horsham but there are already two South African stalls there (one doing pickles, preserves and baked goods, the other doing meat products).  Crawleys market scene is a bit dismal at the moment so I have decided against trying to sell here...

A friend of mine will take the stall with me - though her half will be selling Jamaican street food.

Lime pickle is great!  I was introduced to that only recently and fell in love (my other favourite is garlic and chilli).  Lime marmalade is also nice, and about the easiest of the marmalades to make.