Spring Unsprung

For me, today is the day that Spring should, well, spring into action.

This morning dawned sunny and I had high hopes. But, as I read the weather forecast that promised me sunny spells and white clouds, I could see a large, black cloud looming. I checked the forecast again. Grey clouds are not due until 2pm and they are not supposed to hang around for long. So much for Spring and weathermen.

I considered a Spring photograph then settled for this one of Amber springing. Both pups have great fun flinging things into the air and catching them.

Jilly, on the other hand, is a coiled spring.

She has taken to playing with the pups in the evening. Here, she is actually waiting for one of them to try and take the blue toy. Molly is crouched just out of shot, barking at Jilly who, as you can see, is pretending to be fast asleep. All hell broke loose a few seconds later as Molly finally pounced.


Our seeds remain unsown but we hope to make some progress in that direction this coming weekend even though the weatherman is telling us that it will snow.

St. Patrick's Day came and went and not a single potato was sown. We were late putting them to chit but after only one day, our sets started sprouting like mad. We shall plant our first earlies in the polytunnel and the rest will have to take their chances in a soggy garden.

The hens are laying sporadically, as they have throughout the winter. As we get more sunlight we hope egg production will pick up a little, but these girls are getting on a bit now so we don't expect a yield as high as last year.

We had considered letting the cockerel run with them this Spring in the hopes of maybe incubating some of our own eggs. However, this option is not really open to us this year because we have other plans afoot.

So, the cockerel remains with the Welsummer who has finally posed for a decent photo.

She was our first ever chick.

She is laying six days out of seven, which is just as it should be. Unless she decides to sit on her eggs we shall not be collecting any to incubate.

We are undecided about what we shall do if one of the Warrens goes broody again. We could pop some of the Welsummer eggs under her, but we shall cross that bridge if we come to it.

Meanwhile, the birds are on the wing but Spring remains, for us, unsprung.

As Happy As Pigs In Mud

I saw a picture of this cake on the Internet and thought no more about it until a member of the  Over The Gate forum made one and explained how she had done it.

As we are as happy as pigs in mud, I decided to make one for our wedding anniversary. It sounded simple enough.

A chocolate sponge cake, covered with chocolate ganache, pigs made from fondant icing and kitkat fingers stuck on with butter cream. I have since seen one using twix bars and my mother-in-law suggested that you could also use chocolate fingers.

Foolishly, I thought that, as pink is a girlie colour, I would find ready made pink icing in the supermarket. Hah! My options were white, red or black. I briefly considered making Large Blacks or Saddlebacks but quickly decided that they wouldn't look appetising enough. So, I bought white icing and pink food colouring and had to knead the colour into the icing to make it evenly pink before moulding the pigs.

Steve didn't quite believe that I had made them, promptly poked one and it's tail fell off.

Butter cream for the 'cement' should have been a doddle but I hadn't checked my store cupboard for icing sugar and I had to make my own.

Icing sugar is simply powdered sugar with a binding agent and I used cornflour. One tablespoon of cornflour to 7oz sugar. I knew it would take ages to pulse sugar into powder so I gave myself a head start and used caster sugar. Incidentally, if you need caster sugar and only have granulated, a few pulses in a food processor will turn granulated into caster.

Making icing sugar was a task that threatened to make me lose the will to live with the upshot that I got to a point where I decided "That will do!"

When Steve said "Ooh! There's something crunchy!" I knew he didn't mean the kitkats... yes, I had made crunchy butter cream. Actually, it isn't unpleasant. It was only mildly crunchy and I had used very little, just to secure the kitkats.

The picture I saw on the Internet had a beautifully smooth, shiny ganache topping for the mud. No mud in our pig pen ever looked like that and, anyway, there is no way on earth that my ganache would set so smoothly. With this in mind I went 'slightly messy', placed a few mud spatters on a couple of the pigs and made a mud headrest for my reclining pig.

I am not much of a baker, and I have too little patience for cake decorating but I am pleased that I made this. It wowed Steve, and that was the main objective.

Seeds Unsown

All over our little circle of the blog world I am reading about what people are planning for this year; the seeds they plan to sow and the seedlings they have peeking through already.

We normally put our seed order together in the first days of the New Year but this year it was mid February before we got our order together.

It wasn't a particularly difficult order to put together, we had already decided that we are going to keep it simple this year. Having said that, having read last year's post, I recall that we were going 'bog standard' last year and then ended up with some interesting varieties of crops.

Simple this year means that we aim to grow fewer different varieties of the same thing. So, for example, we have only two varieties of Tomato seeds, a red and a yellow. We have also curtailed our bewildering desire to grow umpteen different types of beans. We have stuck to runners and borlotti - oh! and broad beans, but they don't count because I don't like them anyway. They do make an excellent wind break though. (no double entendre intended!)

So, having ordered our seeds late, and reading about other people's seedlings, that little niggling panic is setting in. Are we leaving our sowing too late?

Of course, we know we aren't but we are all a little susceptible to trying to 'keep up with the Joneses' of the blog world. It is reassuring, therefore, to go back to last year and see that we didn't begin sowing until 14th March . Not that this means that we can relax, we still have plenty of prep to do.

And, while our best made plans are to 'keep it simple', we are also part of a Seed Circle and we are next in line for the package. I am excited about seeing what is in the pack this year but, as I sit and sort through our seed stash to see which are still viable and can be passed on, I am also dreading finding lots of seeds that simply must be tried.

Whoever said planning what to grow was simple?

Bearded Cockerel

Here's our cockerel sporting a beard.

It is actually feathers from the Welsummer hen stuck in his beak - he gets a little aggressive when 'showing his affection'.

It's all perfectly normal although we are keeping a close eye on her. Ideally he should have more than one hen to lavish his attentions on and it had been our intention to supply him with a harem. However, there are plans afoot this year that mean we can't really set off down the road of incubating eggs. If someone goes broody then we may set some of the fertile Welsummer eggs under 'mum' because she will look after any chicks that hatch but we won't be able to raise any ourselves this year.

Meanwhile, we need to keep an eye on the Welsummer because if he lavishes too much attention on her, she may suffer. At present she is perfectly healthy and quite adept at skipping out of his way most of the time. She is also proving to be extremely camera shy!

The cockerel spends a lot of time at the fence that separates him from the Warrens, all puffed up and stamping his feet. By and large they ignore him, even though he is a handsome devil.



He has come a long way since the day he was hatched in May last year.








Bearded breeds of poultry do exist although I have not found a site I like well enough to send you to. There are Bearded Silkies and several bearded breeds of Belgian Bantams, all with muffs and beards of feathers. Perhaps one of our readers keeps them? If you do, please let me know and I will add a link to you in this post.

A hole has appeared in the willow tree stump...

... Molly is looking into it.

 

I didn't do it...

 



 

Neither did I...

 



 

 

Over The Hills and Far Away

I would love you all the day.
Ev'ry night would kiss and play,
If with me you'd fondly stray
Over the hills and far away.

 

 

This is not the version of the rhyme that I know but having found it, and with Valentine's Day approaching, it seems more appropriate than the piper's son who can only play "over the hills and far away".

 

Digressing even further from the point of this post....

I played the recorder as a youngster and my Grandad always asked if I could play "Over the Hills and Far Away" :)

 

The first time we let the pups off leash in the big wide world, we were in Brockadale Woods.

As we followed the track through the woods all was fine. The pups did not stray far from us. However, we turned up a wide, grassy avenue between fir trees and they were off! Quite literally "over the hill and far away".

Some dogs have no fear but, generally speaking, a pup will turn back to its owner before disappearing. With two pups, they take confidence from each other. Luckily for us, a man was walking towards us. We couldn't see him but the sight of him stopped the pups in their tracks and they fled back to us.

 

We didn't chase them because humans have a big secret that they must never reveal to their dogs.

We can't catch them.

Once dogs learn this secret all is lost because chase will become a game that they know they can win.

 

Amber is pretty good at recall, it is a little more hit and miss with Molly but together they are getting better. As you can see from the photo at the top, we can now let them run free in the fields and they will return to us.

 

I have  tried to show them close up. It's not a great photo but I like it.

 

 

 

Three Dogs Welcome

Finding a small holiday cottage that will allow three dogs can be time consuming. We have found that many cottages that advertise themselves as pet friendly go on to say "one, small well-behaved dog welcome". I always picture a chihuahua in a handbag when I read this.

We like to have a couple of weekends a year up in Cumbria and we found a cottage last October that was lovely for us but a little restricting for the dogs because the garden wasn't secure.

Earlier this month we spent a long weekend in the Eden Valley at a cottage that was just perfect for the dogs. In fact, it was so dog friendly that we feel we should share it. We stayed in Mouse Hole Cottage , one of Coombs View Holiday Cottages.

Not only was the garden perfectly secure, but the owners also have an agility course on site which visitors can use free of charge. A little early for our young pups, but the big plus for us was that the paddock with the agility course in it was completely secure too. This meant that we could let the pups have a mad half hour tearing around a field.

Of course, we tried them on the various agility bits and bobs but, overall, they just cheated.

Here's Molly getting the better of a jump, she made it through too!

The owners also offer a dog sitting service for those who want to venture out on their own, but we had no need of this.

It was the little things that sound silly that impressed us.

Like the shovel provided to clean up dog mess, and the gated stairs to stop four legged visitors from sneaking upstairs.

The owners were very friendly but not 'in your face' and they have an impressive collection of free range poultry wandering about.

We had a lovely weekend, with lots of local walks. The cons for us as a couple were the lack of a view from the cottage and no wood burner or open fire. Nevertheless, the pros for the dogs outweighed this. We could sit and enjoy their antics in the garden, and the cottage was very warm and cosy.

This is not intended to be a review of the cottage. We booked and paid for our weekend with no thought to writing a review, we were not asked to do a review. It is simply that we know it can be hard to find somewhere that really is dog friendly, and we think that this holiday cottage really fits the bill.