Fascist drills cabbages and tyred courgettes

Last April was cold and very wet. We'd just got here and were spending our time trying to organise the cottage, and I was breaking my back breaking new clods in the veggy garden.The April just gone has been stunningly warm(ish) and dry. Our lives have been dominated by goats and kid goats and I've been rushing about trying to do all those spring veggy garden things. So far May looks like it's going to be much cooler and wetter - so I'm pleased I've put so much energy into the garden - even though it's been a bit of a slog doing that and all the other things.

So at the risk of becoming a gardening blog here is a quick update on the latest ventures.

The top piccy shows an old tractor tyre which I've filled with top soil overlaid with compost. I've planted courgettes around the yellow things and hope to get two thriving courgette plants. Ridiculous of course - but I'm hoping that if the summer is warm and dry enough the tyre will keep the soil warm enough for the courgettes. If they can get a hold, courgettes are very productive and the only flaw in the plans is that 'if'.

Also in that piccy is a new bed I opened to get the top soil for the tyre. And in there I've planted fennel. Fennel is an Italian favourite - and therefore obviously suited to the Northern Scottish climate. What am I thinking of? Really! But one day I came home from the garden centre with a packet of fennel seeds so I've got to try them huh?

Under that is a very dull piccy of a brassica patch. Purple sprouting broccoli and erm minicole cabbage and brussels sprouts - I think.....

Then we have the drill. There were two of these old seeds drills kicking around and I've hauled them up into the garden to be used as carrot beds. I've filled them with a sand/compost mix. One is Ailsa's - with rainbow carrots, spring onions and lettuce, and one is mine with Nantes carrots and garlic. If I can keep the beds watered we should get good carrots....as for the garlic - another impulse buy - everyone seems to have planted their garlic over the winter but on the packet it said you could plant them up to May.

And as evidence that humans tend to become more right wing as they grow older, the final piccy shows creeping facist tendencies - I mean planting things in strict rows delineated by string - with the spacing between the rows actually measured! Oh Anarchist streak where art thou? Unfortunately - planting things in strict rows is a whole lot easier to manage and saves a lot of work in the long run. So, from top, left to right, we have leeks, parsnip, lettuce, garlic, pak choi, spinach, chard, parsnips. But the big question is what colour should I choose for my gardening uniform?

Also planted in the tree bed are a load of peas and beans. Highly speculative - but for some reason seeds packets always have hundreds of seeds and I'd rather plant them than save them till next year.

End of gardening blog.

Post bagging blog post

I know it sounds a wee bitty pathetic - but I've not been blogging much this week because - I could say I've been busy, which I have, but that's really no excuse - no, the real reason is I've been utterly Kenackered - and I fear I must confess that it's taken me the best part of a week to recover from the heady highs of Ben Hope. Back to normal asap.

Kid Therapy

From Lulu. It's taken me most of the afternoon to sort through this lot and I'm not at all convinced I've picked the best.

Lulu reckons we could rent out the feeding of the kids to health authorities. She really did enjoy it.

Meanwhile Helen helped Ailsa with cake baking duties.

Je baguette une Munro

Lulu and Helen were here at the weekend - highly significant because my kid feeding duties were relaxed AND I hardly ever stepped foot in the kitchen. Joy. This caused more slow blogging - mainly because Lulu left me with 472 photos from which to try to select some for the blog. Hard work!

On Monday we scaled Ben Hope. My first Munro and about time too. A good day - if a little cold and foggy at the top (and we hardly ever got any views looking east towards home - technically we should have been able to see our house - but not from inside a cloud).

Ground elder soup

As I've mentioned before - that horror of weeds, ground elder, is edible. Today I decided to test the theory. The link above has links to other people's ground elder recipes - but I couldn't get on the laptop to check what traditionally goes with it - so I made up this:

Butternut squash, parsnip and ground elder soup

Picking ground elder: - you will find the tastiest ground elder growing along the borders of your veg patch. Be sure not to pick any that appears to be diseased or getting eaten - such elder pestilence needs to be encouraged.

Ingredients

6 or so carrots

4 or so parsnips

1 butternut squash

A handful of cannillini beans

6 or so cloves of garlic - peeled

2 onions

Veg stock

About a third of a carrier bag of freshly picked ground elder. I used Tesco - but any carrier bag will do.

Roast the squash, carrots, parsnips, garlic and one of the onions. Dust the carrots and parsnips with ground coriander and cumin seeds, and place about 1 cubic cm of peeled root ginger on each half of the squash (in the hollow were the seeds were like). Splatter everything with oil, olive oil if you're not going to roast the veg at too high a temperature.

Cook the beans

Once the squash has gone squashy, scrape the flesh off the skin (this is easier if it's cooled a bit), and chuck it, and all the roast veg in about 1 litre of veggie stock. (Discard the ginger - it's done it's job). Add the beans. Finely chop and add the other onion. Simmer for bit.

Zap in a whizzer, or whizz in a zapper depending on what you have to hand. Adjust seasoning to taste.

What you now have is a really delicious soup - pungent with garlic, sweet from the roast veg, deeply enticing from the spices and silky smooth. Are you sure you want to proceed to the next step?

Really? Ok - a few minutes before serving add the ground elder. Be sure to relish this moment - witch-like cackling greatly enhances this part of the recipe.

Serve with crusty homemade wholemeal and rye sour dough bread with pumpkin seeds and disgraceful amounts of cheap butter from Lidl.

And reflect - if only you could eat all the pests in your life.

(Tempting fate I know - but although the soup is nearly ready - I haven't actually eaten any yet. Stay tuned!)

The Zen of kid maintenance

Morning and evening I feed 17 kids, two at a time, by hand. There's a survival skill to maintaining interest in routine tasks - and I survive this one by floating off into a meditative state. I'm not sure if this is Zen - so I explored a bit on google trying to find out if there is a religion that describes it - and the closest I could find is a state sought by an obscure Hindu sect who call it Shuttiineehda**.

I sit contemplating the sun rising over the hills (it was cloudy this morning) as the kids fight over the feeding bottles and I transcend into Shuttiineehda. The fed and unfed are penned in - otherwise it's total mayhem and I begin uttering in most un-zen-like tongues. Problem is one of them has learnt how to vault the hurdle - they will soon all learn and I'll be in trouble....

The milking machine means Jussi finishes in time to come and help me with the feeding.

She has a different approach to feeding them than me. All coooos and caws and clucks and soothing words of encouragement - this undoes my transmogrification and I abandon her to finish off and go get Ailsa ready for school.

Whatever your approach, feeding the kids is very satisfying - and I cannot recommend it highly enough to any of you thinking of coming to visit. Please hurry - this deeply fulfilling experience is only available for a limited time. And for the spiritual - the ecstasy is about to be enhanced by the emergence of the midge (they are just beginning). This means, that with your hands full of feeding bottles, you'll be able to sit in quiet contemplation while the midges attack the edges off your eyelids, your nostrils, ears, hands, neck....... Aaaaah. Hurry hurry hurry!

** Shuttiineehda roughly translates as sleep deprivation

Space travel

Margo was clearly abducted by extra-terrestrial goats last night and taken to the milky way to have her mercury and kryptonite levels topped up. Scary stuff.

Milking machine

I promised a piccy of the milking machine in action. Here it is - not terribly good, but notice the relaxed and happy looking Jussi - and the contented obedient goat.

Lulu is arriving later today - I'm sure she will take much better photos of this.

Rose management

As I've mentioned, the budding horns of the kids are burnt off as soon after birth as possible. This stops them growing horns which stops them hurting each other and their human pets. De-budding is done as soon as the buds appear - usually within their first couple of weeks of life.

But Rosebud's buds didn't appear for several weeks. This makes the de-budding harder - there's more tissue to burn through - so she came back from the vets yesterday all bandaged up. We confined her so that we could stop her from being butted by other goats, butting other goats and having her bandages picked off. But she escaped and next time we looked she was out in the field. The vet said to keep her bandaged on for a day or two. They were gone within hours.

Bathtime

Jo needs help deciding what to do in the bath. Can you help?

Companion planting

Excessive consumerism - the modern scurge. I too succumb to this evil and in the last few weeks I've bought far too many seeds. This means I'm having to open veg plots sooner than I intended. This patch had been covered with carpet for about six months - not long enough to kill the ground elder - which when I rolled pack the carpet looked a bit anaemic but was fine thank you very much.

Hey ho. Dig on man.

I didn't dig this terribly well. Somehow forgot to dig two spades deep and bury the former turf - so it's going to be a bugga keeping the weeds down. But around the border I've used old feed bags to create a barrier to the roots of the likes of ground elder. Well that's the theory. The sheep and the horse also give me someone to talk to as I wile away the hours picking out shoots of buttercup, thistles and..... ground elder. You can't really tell from this piccy - but that horse is quite disconcerting - it stares accusingly. Aaaargh.

And nettles. I caught myself saying "Oooh nettles - that's a good sign". Has it really come to this?

Anyway - this is going to be a brassica patch this year. Not because the soil is suitable for brassica but because I have nowhere else to put them. Optimism.

Pants

Relatively local visitors like to visit when the weather is good. Which is nice of course but it does mean spending what could have been a highly productive day nattering. Which is nice of course. But slightly frustrating. Apart from routine tasks I got nothing done yesterday.

But I'm not really complaing - they may afterall, sit the goats for us later in the year.....

Jussi did all the goat duties last night - milking and feeding. Unfortunately I was left with the task of plying a neighbour with homebrew. Well someone has to do it I suppose.

And then there was The Apprentice. Superb! The best ever. Rarely do I miss this 0739 train to Edinburgh, but this morning it would have been fun to giggle about the moronic egoists who somehow managed to think that having a superhero with pants over his trousers could persuade people with pants under their trousers to eat a new breakfast cereal to stop them putting pants over their trousers. But the programme carried an interesting lesson in the dangers of group-think. I mean they're all intelligent people who managed to be swept up by a clearly, well, pants idea. This happens all the time in life, work and politics and it shows the value of people with the courage to stand up and shout "Hey - wait a minute there's something wrong here".

If only 'the group' had listened to those bank employees, pundits, economists and even politicians who had made noises about the fallacy of the economic boom over the last few years. Instead they were sacked, ridiculed and scathed for 'talking the economy down'. And we suffer the consequences - for decades to come.

Always listen to the maverick voice. There may be truth in their words.

Free kit

Do you happen to have a stream flowing through your garden/land?

Sheep Dog

A little while ago, in a comment, MTB suggested we should get a sheep dog. This piccy from Daniel illustrates why we don't need one - our sheep herding skills are the envy of - oooh all sorts of people.

The sun is out again today (after a fairly heavy frost - I'm becoming anxious about all those seeds I planted too early), we're expecting visitors and there's lots to do.

I tell ya - this life beats working hands down. I mean really. After feeding the kids this morning I made Ailsa scrambled eggs, fresh from a neighbours chickens and took a walk to the shop. Crisp clear skies, surfers and cyclists looking all sleepy eyed in the camp site and streaks of snow on Ben Hope. Aaaaaaaah.

Commoners

And in the middle of all that we learnt that our application for shares on the common had come through. After only 18 months of hassling various people too. Amazing.

We've not actually had the official letter yet but we should soon and it should say that we have shares in three grazings:

Common One: Is 1245 hectares (3000 acres). Our 2 and 7/8 share equates to a souming of 23 sheep (or goats or five and three quarter cattle).

Common Two: Is smaller, but we have one share equivalent to a souming of 9 sheep.

Common Three: 1877 hectares (4600 acres), 1 1/2 shares giving a souming of 31 sheep + 6 cattle.

Being optimists, we're hoping that the letter will go someway towards explaining what all this means.

Goats

This is Rosebud.

Rosebud used to be called Rhubarb but people seem to think that Rhubarb was really a Rosebud. So Rhubarb is now the kid previously known as Rosemary.

And here is Ryoshima - my favourite.

Ryoshima's not really a goat - it's a human being in disguise. I can't work out which one of you it is, but I'm pretty sure it's one of you blog readers. Ryoshima is the lighter of the two here - next to one of the kids that all look the same to me.

Nature

Things are coming out of the ground - the air is filled with birdsong and it's all rather wow. We even saw not one but two swallows this morning, and a few days ago we had a woodpecker in the garden. And the bats are back.

Here is a picture of a wall. Notice how crisply in focus it is. If only that black cap hadn't gotten in the way.

Morning routine

Sunrise 05:49 (dawn 02:32), sunset 20:43 (dusk 00:03).

Jussi rises at 5:30, breakfasts and brings me a cuppatea at 6 and heads up to the croft. 20 minutes later I head up and mix up the milk for the kids. The main change in routine is that now, as I go through the 'milking parlour' I don't find Jussi there in tears of frustration as another goat refuses to behave on the milking stand.

This milking machine has changed our lives. Goats milk better. Jussi smiles.

I'll try to get a piccy of this machine in use - but frankly at 6 in the morning my mind is (or rather isn't) on other things.

Sheep talk

Yes they do.

And it doesn't take them long to suss out white settlers. I've seen sheep jump across cattle grids - but they wouldn't even deign to do that to a white settlers cattle grid. Oh no. They just casually mosey - I mean WALK - across our cattle grid.

But we got wise.

We love fences. We love gates.

Do fence me in. Please.

So thus equipped with new toy, Malcolm and I set about stopping those sheep from getting in once and for all. Daniel and I had patched up bits - but the whole thing needed re-doing and so armed with all kind of manly looking kit, Malc (he who knacks Nissens) set about demonstrating our rural skills.

It was a great few days work - made possible by the dry weather we've been getting - the fence stretches across a bog (aka the loch).

We didn't know what we were doing and discovered we often had the wrong tools - usually at the other end of the fence as it happens. But, despite staring at a radisseur for an entire afternoon, we got the job done - and not at all bad for a first ever fence.

It's not easy making a fence look photogenic - unless it's in front of a prison camp or something - but here are some piccies for you to marvel at our impressive skills.

Also featured is our not yet patented rylock strainer attachment - it works too.

Multi-purpose purchase

Not only is it a boundary strainer - something I see myself as sometimes as it 'appens - but also a useful prop for fancy dress parties and possibly, maybe, perhaps, a sex toy.

One of the said uses is illustrated - rather too often but it amused me - and anyway it took me friggin ages to pose for these shots ....... Just be grateful I didn't undress.

Arboreal oxymoron

Sorry about that last post. But the google blog experience can get very frustrating if you try to post too many piccies to one posting - and - fool! - try to format the post.

Hey ho:

Look! The alder Christian gave us. The most thriving tree we've planted.

And the best of the fruit trees in the mother of raised beds. This is an apple - red windsor. All the fruit trees are showing some signs of life, although the plums (except that one from Lidl) seem to be very slow.

Because I'm an optimist

Well mainly brown just now I guess. But despite the frosts we've been getting on account of the clear skies, I've been gardening aplenty.

So here are some excruciatingly

dull piccies of the beginning of things.

A flat bed

Overtime this bed will become raised - through a process of adding compost and the upcasts of moles (good stuff mole hills you know). For now, the sides of this non-raised bed provide excellent shelter and in here we have cauliflowers and summer cabbage. The sunny side will soon have the transplanted broad beans. Soddin piccy has bin soddin deleted by soddin google.

Veg bed one

Looking up the way you can't often see: peas, chard, leek, parsnip, spring onion or was it lettuce, chard, pak choi (on the left and very experimental) carrots (on the right) and parsley.

Tatties

Maris piper - cos that's the variety that had almost sold out and I reckoned if everyone else is buying it maybe I should too. All the sheep around here seem to be having their effect. Two rows with a mound in the middle for mounding up as the shoots grow. At the top you can see the cold frame I built. The top would fit, if it was a bit bigger. Soddin piccy has been soddin deleted by soddin google.

Broad beans and lettuce

In the cold

frame - the broad beans are doing rather too well. I'll not plant them out for a couple of weeks to lessen the risk of frost damage.

Jerusalem artichokes

From Lulu, planted a couple of weeks ago and now coming through in a somewhat terrifying fashion.

Blackcurrant

A

new bush no

t expected to fruit until next year. Meanwhile, yesterday I caught Jussi feeding our existing blackcurrant to the goats. "Oh sorry, er,..well I thought...oh...". In the summer - when the blog is filled with tales of starvation - we'll know why now wont we?

Herb garden

In towns and cities, supermarket trolleys can be found in ditches canals and waste ground everywhere. Also known as weegie barbecues, with a little ingenuity they can make quite striking hanging baskets. Our ubiqitous equivalent is the fish box. This one has become a herb garden featuring chervil, chives, thyme, parsley and dill. The seeds were ancient so may not do anything - but tis rather attractive what!

Rain at last

It's raining today. The first proper rain we've had this month I think - and it makes an excuse to stop being so busy and sit down and blog - at last. The lack of blogging has mainly been down to the good weather - too many things to do when the weather is nice - and a wholesome influx of visitors (and in one case the diseases they carry - we're becoming more and more like amazonian indians by the day (well, erm, sort of)). Of course the jobs that need to be done could still be done when it's raining - but ...).

Thank you for your patience and comments. Prepare for flood.

Better than knitting

Look wot I made! The local high school has an enterprise project and they have spent this year making and selling these Adirondack garden chairs. At £80 a pop I declined to buy one but when they ran a night class to build one yourself for 40 quid I was in there. Not bad really - and a great chair for sitting listening to nature and watching the landscape shimmer in the ever changing light. You should come and try it sometime (soon-like - the chair should fall to pieces within weeks - I mean I made it innit).

Pavlovian deficit

Time was - when anything happened at the croft I'd dash off to try to blog it. The blog is as much a diary for myself as all the other other things it seems to have become. But it's been a bit busy and that reflex has worn off - and ironically, when there's too much happening I don't have the time to blog. A pity.

But here are some brief, incoherent, ramblings: - we've had visitors from Dunbar, Edinburgh and about to receive some more Dunbar visitors before welcoming more from elsewhere soon. Clear as mud.

The milking machine hasn't appeared yet - but Jussi is getting better and milking. But we need that machine. Still hand feeding the goat kids.

Next time I drive around and notice that lots of farmers/crofters are doing something I'm going to take the hint and go do it too - unthinkingly, Pavlovianly. In the last couple of months I've seen scores of people out fixing fences. In the last couple of days I've spent scores of hours chasing scores of sheep off our land.

The developers of Ronseal antique* wood stain varnish paid too much attention to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist - because you cannae do a good job with it. A tad too literal a translation of 'it does what it sez on the tin'.

The veg patch is coming along - but there's seriously more to be done. Somehow the demands of goats usurp the demands of veg.

My hands are suffering from being washed too much. But I have some neem soap which seems to be helping.

Rambling and incoherent enough? I'll try to get back to witty and observational soon - after I've caught up on sheep.....I mean sleep.

*In this sense I'm equating 'antique' with 'Victorian' - I don't mean to besmirch the entire history of homo sapiens.

Herbal deficit causes moonlighting

Yesterday morning we had sheep on our land so after milking and feeding the kids, Jussi Ailsa and I spent an 'enjoyable' hour getting them off. It makes you realise why you don't see fat sheep dogs.

I found where they'd got in and patched up the fence - it was really just a matter of filling a few gaps under the fence with big stones.

While feeding the kids in the evening I noticed the sheep were back. Jussi and I made a couple of attempts to get them out but we soon gave up and Jussi went off to track down their owner - who equipped with lithe sheep dog - could get them out in minutes. While she did that I looked for where they'd got in this time and found some tell-tale scrags of wool on the top of a section of fence - sheep can jump quite high when they want to! So I gathered together some gripples and a roll of rylock and set about raising the height of the fence. By this time it was dark - but my labours were amply lit by a fullsome moon.

John the Post got his sheep out very quickly - though rather alarmingly he got them out from the top field - where there are no gates - but I guess it was dark so he wasn't to know that. I'll go and check for damage later when the rain stops.

Jussi had to get to the vets early this morning (I think she'll be ok - thanks for asking) - which meant that we were up at 5 to milk and feed. Getting up at 5 worked well - and I think we may stick to this timetable for when Ailsa returns to school next week.

As the kids mobbed me I noticed that the featured sheep where in Big T's field - ok except for the fact that there is a gaping gap in the fence by the 'loch' so after feeding the kids I hurried down with an offcut of rylock to patch that up before they got in.

All of which reminds me of an incident earlier in the week that led me to remark to Jussi in my most imperiously sage voice "Aye - there's a lot to be said for getting jobs done when they need to be done rather than when you need them to have been done." A useful motto, but difficult to follow when it's raining and there's a blog to write.

Tick Tock

I know some of you get very bored when I go all serious on you. But hey! It's national tick prevention week. So before the midge gets abiting, let's all spare a thought for the humble tick and the terrifying range of diseases it can transmit.

Names

For the benefit of future visitors here is a list of the kid names and their distinguishing features. Maybe later on I'll design a photo quiz and you can all have hours of fun deciphering it all.

All mums were mated with Muppet - a pedigree anglo-nubian.

Mother - Bonnie. Pure Anglo-Nubian.

Kids names have an African theme.

Female: Rwanda (pale with an up-side-down triangle on her side)

Males: Ramases (the biggest of the anglo nubes, a big nose with fur pointing downwards exposing black), Rasta (chestnut brown), Rafiki (the palest, grey/brown), Runtu (Chestnut brown with two white spots).

Mother Gwendolyn. British Alpine. Myths and Legends

Females: Ryoshima (light coloured, no tassels, striped knee and funny ears).

Rumina (grey with a side stripe)

Rhea (grey with a side stripe, black head)

Mother Gwennie British Alpine. Myths and Legends

Female: Ruthie (identified through elimination)

Male (wether): Rainbow (tassels)

Mother Gwennifer British Alpine, Myths and Legends

Female: Raven (black, slight)

Male (wether): Rabbit (tassels)

Mother Gwynneth, British Alpine. Myths and Legends

Male (wether) Rupert (the brownest of the greys, tassels, chubby cheeks) aka sick boy (a homage to Irvine Welsh) - but he's much better now thanks for asking.

Mother Margo. British Saanan. Botanical

Female: Rhubarb (wee white, no tassels)

Male (wether): Rambutan (big white, no tassels)

Mother Matilda. British Saanan. Botanical

Females: Rosemary (white, tassels, long hair, woolly tail). Radish (grey, tassels, white knees, woolly tail).

Readers (if any of you have survived it this far) should note that terms such as brown, grey and black are relative. We have no black kids, the only browns are the anglo-nubians, and apart from the whites and the anglo nubians they are all grey.

I hope that clears things up for you.