If you like baking and get offered a bit of Herman, then grab it with both hands. Herman is a sourdough cake and you need to be given some of the mixture as a starter. You’ll need to look after Herman for 10 days before you bake the most delicious cake. It’s acutally very easy to look after, and you’ll get a copy of the recipe, but you do need to give it a stir every day and feed it a couple of times (with flour, sugar and milk). The culture froths and bubbles away. On the 10th day, you split the culture into four, bake a cake with your portion and then pass the others round to your friends. The cake is really easy, just some basic cake ingredients, a couple of apples and whatever else you fancy. I added cranberries and pecans. The cake definitely tastes a little different, not sour but almost boozy. It’s wonderful. Give it a go if it’s in your neck of the woods. The cake below is our third in the last few months, and each time it has come from a different person and from up to 20 miles away. If you’re lucky it will be in your area too.
Herman the German Friendship Cake
Nature is Winning
Oh dear….nature is definitely beating us at the moment. Our PSB was looking very promising just over a couple of weeks ago, and the spears were just beginning to form. But then we had about 3-4 inches of snow, and although David gently brushed all the snow off, I think the damage had already been done. It probably didn’t help that temperatures remained around freezing for a further 3 days. This is what the spears now look like. We’re hoping some more will grow.
Whilst looking at the sorry state of our spears I couldn’t help seeing that the pigeons really had been helping themselves to the PSB as well. I don’t mind so much when they stick to the outer leaves but it seems they prefer new tender growth too.
So, I decided it was time to get the fleece out to try and protect what’s left. As I went to get some from the shed, I noticed that our seed potatoes were looking very sorry for themselves too. It obviously got below freezing in there. Very few have survived so we won’t be planting many potatoes this year. Usually our seed pototoes don’t arrive until about March but I’d ordered them extra early this year, hoping for an early crop.
Nature is always challenging when you’re gardening but I usually feel there is a reasonable balance. At the moment though, nature is well and truly in the lead.
Hens Desperately Waiting for Snow to Melt
Our hens do not like the snow. At all. I opened up their hatch on Sunday morning, and half and hour later they were all still inside. Usually they would be straight out and diving into their food. They must have been hungry too because it had been a cold night. But there was all this unusual white stuff around and they just didn’t know what to make of it. I walked round to the end of the ark just to watch them. This obviously enboldened one of them as she decided to fly up onto the perch. What she didn’t realise was that, because of the snow, it was incredibly slippy and so she skidded off and landed right in the middle of the very stuff she was trying to avoid! Amusing for us. She just stood there unable to move. Their feet and legs are warm and so they can obviously feel the cold but they’re used to scrabbling about in cold mud which never seems to bother them. We think they don’t like the fact that you sink into the snow, as they walk very gingerly. David cleared a little patch of snow and that’s where all 5 of them stood for the rest of the day. I’m sure the hens in the greenhouse must have had a good chuckle as they scritch scratched in the soil as normal.
I love seeing all the footprints in the snow that the birds and animals make. Bird prints are very distinctive and criss-cross the garden. More worryingly I also came across some fox prints which I followed across the decking and then all the way round the hen’s fencing. He’s sure to be able to smell the hens, he’s just never seen them and we need to keep it that way. We’ll have to be extra vigilant now that it’s been so cold, as they are more likely to come out in the daytime.
Snow is Good and Bad
We woke up on Sunday to a beautiful garden carpeted in about 3 inches of snow. The kids were out just after 7.30am, unbreakfasted but so excited. We peered out of the bedroom window half and hour later. It did look glorious, but then we saw our fruit cage – eeek! Why didn’t we take notice of everyone telling us it was going to snow and remove the roof netting on the fruit cage? We could see the wire and netting straining under the weight of all that snow. Before I even had chance to grab the camera, David was dressed and banging the snow off, so I’m afraid we’ve only got an after shot.
David almost ended up a snowman as the snow fell down on him, and he felt like he’d done a whole weeks worth of exercise afterwards. The wires on the roof of the fruit cage have ended up stretched a bit and we may have to tighten them but apart from that no harm has been done. We’re lucky. Our fruit cage was put up by our fencing chap with very solid posts all cemented in. It’s unlikely to go anywhere, but many fruit cages are damaged by the sheer weight of the snow on the roof. Next year, we will remove the roof, we’re just not used to snow EVERY year.
We’re hoping our PSB will be alright. It was all so tall and beautiful before the snow arrived and we could see first spears appearing. Again, David was on a mission and brushed all the snow off the plants, with his bare hands! Managed to get a photo first though.
Chicken with Sour Crop
One of our hens is not laying, and hasn’t done so for quite some weeks now. I had my suspicions about which one it might be and then, the other day, I noticed she had a very large crop. The crop is at the bottom of the neck at the front of the chicken. Food goes into the crop first and is then passed in small amounts to the stomach. They do get full crops after they have eaten, but hers is unnaturally full and is enlarged first thing in the morning when she hasn’t had anything to eat. So there is definitely a problem, although she does not appear unwell. I felt her crop and it is soft and squidgy which means it is unlikely to be an impacted crop (which feels hard). It sounds as though she might have sour crop which occurs when the food doesn’t empty out of the crop and starts to ferment. Usually their breath smells pretty bad. Hers doesn’t, but I have tipped her upside down a few times to make her sick, and the stuff that comes out does smell sour. So we are going to treat her for sour crop. At the moment I am just trying to empty the crop as much as I can. Then I am going to give her some live yogurt with a couple of garlic cloves crushed into it. We’ll either coat some grain with the stuff or try using a syringe, whichever works best. Hopefully, that should sort things out.
Surprise Potatoes
I had a very pleasant surprise a couple of days ago. The postman delivered a small parcel (exciting at the best of times) and I couldn’t think of anything I had ordered. I was non the wiser when I saw the label saying “Live Plants Inside”. It wasn’t until I opened the package that I remembered I’d ordered some seed potatoes 2 or 3 months ago. They are a first early variety called Foremost, which we haven’t grown before. The mild weather has obviously encouraged them to start chitting. The long white chits that you can see in the picture aren’t really the ones we are looking for. Small greenish ones would be better. I’ve put them in egg boxes by the window in the shed, which is light, cool and dry but not in the sun at all.
Some of them are the largest seed potatoes I’ve ever seen, and are a little big to fit in the egg boxes. I’ll leave them chitting for a few weeks and wait until the soil is warmer before planting. Which reminds me, we must get on and dig the veg patch over. It’s not ready to have anything in it yet, and we’ll be planting broad beans soon.
Delicious Swede
I have to admit I am not a big swede fan, consequently we don’t grow them. However, they do sometimes arrive in the Riverford Veg Box that we have delivered each week during the winter months. In the past they have spent several weeks in the bottom of the fridge before ending up on the compost heap. But not anymore. I have found a wonderfully delicious recipe which uses a whole swede and is very simple to cook. Unfortunately, it does involve quite a lot of butter, but never mind. The recipe comes from River Cottage Veg Every Day.
2oz butter
about 1lb swede, peeled and cut into 1cm chunks
12 fresh sage leaves, chopped
1 onion, chopped
salt and pepper
Melt the butter, then add the onion (I only had red and that worked very well), swede, half the sage leaves and some salt and freshly ground pepper. Get it sweating nicely, then put the lid on and cook gently for about 40mins. Check that the swede is tender, then add the remaining sage leaves and check the seasoning.
This recipe is so good that you just want to eat more and more of it. The sage works really well with the swede and the onions become caramalised in the butter, which gives everything a lovely glossy coating. Delicious!
Blueberry Jersey
We loved our blueberries so much last year, that we’ve decided to buy another plant. Our other 2 blueberry plants were a variety called Bluecrop (mid-season). They cropped very well but we subsequently read that you get many more berries if you have more than one variety. So our latest addition is Blueberry Jersey, a late season variety. This little plant might not look much at the moment, but they grow quickly and it is winter after all! We’re hoping for a bumper crop this year, we’ve just got to remember to water them well.
I’m sure blueberries are one of those plants that you just can’t have too many of. They are very easy to grow (just make sure you grow them in acidic soil or ericaceous compost, and water them a lot), they don’t seem to have any pests other than birds and they are a wonderful snacking fruit. We might have to look at getting a few other varieties too. It would be nice to be able to have a long picking season.
Autumn Fruiting Raspberry Canes Gone
Just after New Year, we cut down all our autumn fruiting raspberry canes. They gave us an excellent crop and we were still picking the odd raspberry well into November. Autumn fruiting raspberries are very easy to care for, as once they’ve finished fruiting, you just cut down all the canes to about an inch above the soil. Once the weather starts getting warmer, they’ll start sending up the new canes that will fruit this year. I have read that some people leave a few of their canes standing to get some early fruit. We might try this another year, but as last year was our first year with raspberries we thought we’d better do it all by the book!
Manuring the Greenhouse
Well, our 2 old hens are still living in the greenhouse adding their own lovely nitrogen rich manure, and scrabbling about digging up all the pests. But we’ve been growing in the same soil for two years now and thought it needed bulking up a little more. So David did some serious exercise over the weekend and barrowed in about 10 very heavy bags of horse manure that we’d had stored in the garden for a year. Our 5 year old was helping and the job still got done! The hens, who find it impossible not to scratch about, will surely help to dig it all in. I just hope they don’t eat all the lovely worms that were in there.
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