Day 3 - baking and veg plot updates

When I was at work, everyone was asking me where I am going for my fortnight off.  Of course, we enjoy a break as much as the next person but we're not going abroad this time (we are later in the year though, I'm not averse to it).  However what I do want to use these 2 weeks for is a combination of things.  Firstly to spend plenty of time with Ste and the kids doing things that they find fun and that do not cost the earth.  Secondly to get on top of the veg plot, greenhouse and polytunnel and house chores so that when I'm back to work, it's more of 'maintaining' than 'drowning'.  Included in the house thoughts is cooking for the freezer. We do have some space left in there, not much seen as though they are all full of meat.  However I'll make sure they are stacked well and there's plenty of home made produce in there for go-to meals.
Today started off as always feeding the animals and checking everything is present and correct.  The dogs came with me.  They love that I am off work.  Then back in for crumpets and a cup of tea before heading out with the kids and dogs to the feed shop as we needed more layers pellets and corn.  We were back and sorted by 9:15.  The kids offered to help out for an hour by tidying their rooms with the view to spend time after lunch doing the craft things they have both been waiting for.  They did a great job so I am pleased.  Making a start on cooking for the freezer, first up was a lemon drizzle traybake a-la Mary Berry.  I had all of the ingredients in, including the lemons thankfully.  It took no time at all to prepare.  It's a throw it all in recipe, which suits my lifestyle 100%.

 

It turned out really well so I am adding it (and the cookies I made yesterday) to my batch bake list as the kids loved it as you can see!

In the veg plot, I have a million and one things to do.  I decided the best way to go about it is one bed at a time, finish it and move on.  Sounds obvious but when you get out there it's hard not to start something and move on before you finish as something always catches your eye and before you know it the day is over.

So today I lifted the onions from Bed 1.  These have been brilliant, great size, didn't go to seed and every single one came up so as long as the taste isn't too bad then we will stick with these each year.  If it's not broken then don't fix it.  They are Sturon an Garnet (sets).  The bed was full of weeds in between the onions, they've been crazy after all this rain.

However I am really pleased with the results.  They're all drying out head down which my neighbour told me to do.  We're due a really heavy down pour tonight so they'll get a wash and tomorrow is supposed to be lovely so they should dry out nicely before being taken into the barn.

I also tidied up the swiss chard as it was taking over, despite us using it regularly.  I'll definitely be growing this every year, it is so versatile. 

Also the chickens love it so they got all the of bits that I tidied up.

So that's 2 of the beds weeded and tidied up.  Although I didn't start on the other beds, I noticed a few squashes coming along nicely which made me very happy.  I'd missed a couple of courgettes whilst I'd been so busy at work too, so I roasted them tonight for tea.

I'm really pleased as we had a free, home raised meal tonight.  It was pork burger (with chilli) in a homemade roll, cucumber and tomatoes, roasted courgettes, red onion and pepper with steamed Athlete potatoes.  It was delicious however a talking point was I'd thought the peppers were peppers when in fact they were chillis, ooops.....Burgers aren't something I ate until this week - but these are too nice!

I also made a couple of loaves of bread for the freezer and I will continue to so we have them ready to just take out.

We then went out bramble picking for the first time this year and got a great haul which I will preserve with tomorrow as it was a bit late tonight after a busy day.

 

Another couple of photos from today that I took as they caught my eye and I'd like them to look back on for August memories.

 

 

Day 2 of hols - starting the next project

A little update first. Ste has managed to find the problem with the Aga! It's the filter on the control box. It was blocked. He's cleaned it and it's free flowing again now however the wick needs replacing now as it was starved of oil so burnt out. I have ordered some and he will replace it as soon as it arrives and I can get going again. 

In the mean time I baked for the family using the other oven and managed to produce burnt but edible cookies. 

The kids approved so that's a good sign.

The project we're starting is setting up the remaining poultry area. We had a bit sectioned off for the table birds but as they're all gone now, we're starting to open it all up. There's chickens and ducks going to be in here.

When we finished one of the hay bales, we moved the netting that they come in ready for he next bale to be put in place and discovered these. I do love coming across the free range eggs.

Today I've not managed to get into the veg plot as when I got up I did the animals, rode out, showered and went to Aldi then we went to family for lunch. After that we got home and had more family visiting until 6:30 so we decided to call it a day and I'll start again in the morning after a reasonably early night. So instead I cracked open the rhubarb wine and added some lemonade and my goodness it's good.

A cold kitchen means time to clean the Aga

I can't remember a time before we had an Aga. It was one of the reasons I was so drawn to this house. The kitchen is warm and cosy, where lots of memories have already been made. I've been asked if I'm not scared of it, cooking on something you can't change the heat up and down without immediate effect. Truth be known, I would never be without one now. I've always enjoyed cooking but since moving here, this has become a bit of a passion be it cooking, preserving, baking etc. 

I've said many time before, the Aga is like a member of the family. We gravitate to it, dry clothes on it, air boots, defrost food (and ourselves after a winter walk), make toast, boil the kettle, cook tea, make one pots, keep food warm waiting to be served, warm plates, rise bread, keep your mug of tea warm and quickly dry out tea towels to name a few.

So when I came down this morning, on day 1 of my time off (yey, 2 weeks off work now!), I felt a shiver when I went in the kitchen to see the poor girl not very well. Despite it not being a cold morning, the kitchen was missing her heat and when I went to check, she felt cold and sad. Steven has taken a good look at her but despite our best efforts, she's going to need an engineer to come out to figure it out.

We decided to see a silver lining in all this and teach ourselves how to give her a really good clean. Now as many of you know, the Aga is always on, you can't clean inside and the best you can do on the top and front is wipe over it with a damp cloth. Well I haven't done a great job of this as when it was off the amount of build up behind the hot plate was immense. 

I started by taking the doors off. The roasting oven puts up with a lot, we cook everything in there on one way or another. The door was dreadful but I didn't realise until I'd cleaned it.

I lightly scrubbed it with a Brillo soap filled pad and it came up great.

I did the same for the simmering oven but that was still very clean.

Then sitting infront of it, I cleaned where the doors hang on. I didn't do inside the door holes too well as there's grease in there to help them swing easily however the little washers that are supposed to be there too had corroded so I need to get the engineer to get some more. 

It came up really well too. The odd tiny chip but you can't notice that when the doors on.

I then turned my attention to the front of the doors. There's only 2 that come off on my 2 oven model. They scrubbed up well and I just used a soft scrubber that you'd do the pots with, not very abrasive so no need to worry about the enamel.

The lids were removed to allow us to get right in and clean them. What a build up underneath. Not sure if it's all ours but they are sparkling now. 

Before we started we had visited a local aga showroom at Gateshead. I say local, it's 35 mins away. We bought the proper enamel cleaner and cloths which isn't a purchase I take lightly as for me, a cloth is a cloth and cleaner a cleaner. However as the old girl is probably twice my age but still looking brand new, I want to give her the attention she deserves. The cleaner will last a good while and the cloths wash and are fully reusable.

The also tried to sell us a razor blade cleaner but I knew Ste would be able to knock one up so we declined that offer!  You use them to scrape (not dig) along the surface to take off any build up. This takes it out of your fingers so we took turns. The white bit at the back is where I'd started using the cream cleaner and said to Ste to bring in the heavies as the cream cleaner wasn't going to cut it!

That left the front which didn't take long and the lids. Inside the simmering oven lid was worst but I'm not sure why as the spitting would come from the hot plate. Who knows. Anyway, that came up well using the Brillo soap filled pad too, gently though.

Before we put the lids back on, Ste lifted out the drum from the hot side and took a look in where we know the engineer cleans out. The wicks look like they've had it and they are dry as sticks so maybe the oil isn't getting through. We did clean out the little holes and hoovered using the soot Hoover but no luck when we tried to light it again (after waiting some time for new oil to flow through). 

She looks beautiful again. After seeing all the new modern ones in the shop today, as great as they are, I'd take this girl over them every time. 

Although this wasn't how i intended spending day 1, it's been productive and a good job done. Any tips from your experiences very welcome. Thank you for reading.

Monday night preserves - Perfect pork! We did it!

Well I have to say I am proud as punch.  Only a couple of years ago, last year even, I could only think about what it would be like to raise your own meat.  This year we have managed to become self sufficient in chicken and now we can tick anything piggy off the list too.
We've been the proud owners of 2 large white x land race pigs since March 2017.  We bought them from a local farmer who we made friends with when we moved into the smallholding.  He supported us with advice during the life of the pigs and we are forever grateful as this year was all about finding out what it was like to raise your own pigs and whether or not it was for us.
Well guess what - it is! 
With Ste working for a large butchers, we are lucky enough that the pigs could go to the abattoir there and we knew they were in good hands.  However we don't have a trailer yet, so what to do.  Well around here it seems that you mention it to a neighbour and they go out of the way to help you.  Seriously.  We couldn't believe it.  Up until now we'd not met our 'neighbour over the river' (all neighbours here have a "over the river, across the field, on the corner type" phrase attached to their description given our location) however we were told to call him and he'd help out.  So feeling rather cheeky, that's what I did.  Well what a lovely man (and wife too, we were to later find out).  David and Marg - they didn't question us and just offered the use of the trailer based on the word of a mutual friend.  Now I also must say, we only met this mutual friend as a sheep of his got stuck near our land so I made sure I found the owner and returned it.  He's obviously never forgot as he went on to help us get the trailer contact when we needed it.
Turns out, on the day the pigs were due to go, David said he'd join me and help out too - even better as I must admit I was worrying that we'd struggle to get them on safely.  We'd not had time to familiarise the pigs with the trailer as it wasn't ours, so we hoped for a bit of luck which came in bucket loads and combined with a few shoves with of our wellies and a bucket of pig nuts - the 2 hungry pigs barged their way onto the trailer.
We were off.  I felt slightly sick but that wasn't the fact the pigs were going, it was at the thought of something going wrong with the journey or the papers being wrong.  I shouldn't have felt sick though, it all went just fine.
The pigs went through the motions at the abattoir and after a couple of false starts, we got them back ready for the weekend.  Ste got a photo of them at work whilst they were hanging in the big fridge.  I couldn't wait to reap the rewards of the happy, free range life they'd lived.  We had weights of 54kg and 66kg which we are happy with this year.

We initially got the fillets and offal home.  These were frozen on the night, with the loins vac packed.

The first night we set the dining room up for Ste to butcher the sides he brought home.  He'd cut them down at work into manageable sizes.  We worked on a wooden board resting on a sanitised new shower curtain which did the job perfectly. Everything got wrapped up and the end and went in the bin - cost a couple of pounds.

He boned and rolled the spare rib half of the shoulders giving us 8 joints.  Each one was cut into sizes that will be large enough for at least 4 people right up to feeding a tribe! 

The thick end of each loin went to the bacon tray (to be dry cured for back bacon) and the thin end into medallion chops, which gave us 27 chops.  As 27 isn't an even number, we cooked one up and tested it on the night.  Goodness me it was the nicest chop I've ever had (and no, I'm not just saying that).

Now, something we didn't realise when raising these pigs is we may have given them too much space as there was very little fat on them from all the running around they did.  There was no flare fat so I couldn't render that down, but that's ok - I'll take a happy life for the pigs and little fat for us.  This did mean that the bellies were very lean and thin too.  Therefore 2 went to sausage and burger meat, 1 was boned and rolled for a nice belly pork joint and the other we trialled as streaky bacon.

I decided to use Dawn's dry cure recipe for the bacon and we are on day 2 of that now.

The bones out of the bellies and backs went to racks of ribs, so we have 8 racks which we tested one, but it was quite tough so I will slow cook next time. 


We kept one leg for a Christmas ham so that was cut and wrapped, going straight into the freezer.  The chump end of that went to steaks.  The other 3 had the hocks taken off which went into a wet cure along with the topsides and the thick flanks.  They were weighed down with a plate so they don't bob above the surface.

That was 6 ham joints and 3 hocks.  Once these are ready I will cook all of these straight away.

We also got 6 roasting joints off the legs.  All in all, these joints will see us through the rest of the year and beyond.  We cooked one up for lunch on Sunday.

I roasted and cooked the bones up to make pork stock which will be frozen in portion sizes tomorrow.

Out of the trim that was left over, we had 3kg of diced pork and 8kg of minced pork, 36 burgers and 120 links of sausage.

All in all, our hands are tired and our freezers are full.  The whole family chipped in, including my visiting nephew. 

We had burgers (pork and apple) and Jack declared them the best he'd ever had.  Grace preferred the sausages (spicy ones) and we had a joint roasted on Sunday which were amazing,
So we've achieved a life long dream, we know exactly where our meat is coming from and to top it off, there's no air miles on this little lot of meat.  Happy days!