Sausage making!

Finally, we had some rain today...;) so a good day to make a fresh batch of sausages.
You may wonder what the relevance is to this Blog: Well, I believe using good, local and seasonal produce is relevant to your environmental credentials. More importantly, if the raw ingredients are of an excellent quality then the end result is likely to be pretty good. You know where it comes from, how far it traveled, and what's in it.
What's in it is of course important when making a sausage: Many butchers (but not all!) will use any old scraps to put through the mincer, add some bought-in ready mixed sausage flavouring powder, add salt (a lot of it), add rusk (even more, to keep the ingredients costs down) and ram it through a machine using collagen casing, made out any unspeakable part of animals.

Well...not here!

Today's batch of sausages is made out of the following list of ingredients:

• Gloucester Old Spot free range minced pork from the Sudeley Estate, Winchcombe (100%)
• Onions from our own garden (7% of the meat weight)
• Sage and Rosemary from our own garden
• Black pepper
• Breadcrumbs (7% of the meat weight)
• Water (7% of the meat weight)
• Virgin rape seed oil
• Curing Salt (0.75% of the total weight)
• Natural hog casings

The process is as follows:

1. Chop the onions, sweat  in a little rape seed oil, add chopped herbs and spices, add salt, add the water, bring to the boil to dissolve the salt, cool.
2. Mix this with the minced pork and bread-crumps.
3. Put in the sausage making machine and press the sausages into the casings to make one VERY LONG SAUSAGE.
4. Make a string of little sausages by squeezing and twisting
5. Leave to dry in a cool airy place overnight

Ready!

Putting the minced pork mixture in the sausage making machine

Turning out one large sausage, using a hand-cranked machine

Dividing the large sausage into individual linked sausages

We have our own bees at home - finally!

Our own bees having been living in their hive in a farmers field a few miles from here. They are being looked after by Nikki under guidance from the Gloucestershire Beekeeping Association. They will come 'home' in September 2012. We may even get some honey from them this year!

Our second hive has been unoccupied in our garden since the Spring of 2011. In Spring bee colonies that get too lage sometimes swarm and move into an unoccupied hive, attracted by a small piece of comb which contains all the lovely smells bees like. We are on the waiting list of the 'Gloucestershire Swarm Collector' -  who will let us know when a swarm is spotted in the area, reported by the public, and needs to be collected.

So, earlier this week Nikki collected her first swarm (see pictures). It wasn't too hard to get them into a box, but it wasn't so easy to get them from the box into the hive. The Queen bee somehow ended up outside the hive and promptly decided that 5 Meter up a tree above the hive was a much nicer spot. There they stayed put all night, only to disappear the next day, alarming our neighbours in the process.

However, within 2 days another swarm or cast was spotted nearby and this time we managed to collect them and transfer them to the hive. This swarm is very small, consisting of a virgin Queen bee and maybe 200-250 bees, but it is a start. Now they are busy feeding on suger syrup and hopefully settle down, start foraging, and expanding the colony after the Queen bee has been mated 'on the wing'.

Moving the swarm from the colection box to the hive

Hmm. They don't like it!

Why not settle in a tree. Much more comfortable!

Fledgling Woodpecker

Just a quick post to show a fledgling woodpecker clinging to our garden fence.

A quick update!

It has been quite some time since the last Blog post and nature hasn't stood still of course. So what has happened?
All the non-native trees in our garden have now been felled and replaced by British native trees, such as Poplar, Willow, Oak, Elm and Hazel. Some of these species are suitable for SRC (Short Rotation Coppicing) so a few well-rooted Poplars and Willows have been cut off this Winter at approx. 6" above the ground, for new shoots (typical 6-7 shoots) to emerge and grow for the next 4-5 years to provide us with firewood. This process can be repeated 5-6 times before the tree is exhausted.
The fruit trees in the Orchard have all been pruned and 1/2 dozen new fruit trees have been planted.
The overgrown and out-of-control hedge on our Southerly boundary has had a real good trim at approx. 5' high, so it can now regenerate and become thicker, healthier and more wildlife friendly and provide privacy, as we will now let it grow to approx. 6'.
The first frogs and toads appeared by the end of February in our little pond so thousands of tadpoles are providing food for our newts – but there will be plenty left to complete the cycle.
Two Grey Herons appear every morning at dawn and are eying up the fish in the pond - according to our 'in-house Zoologist' Richard the pond shouldn't really have any goldfish in at all so we don't really mind. Baby rabbits have started appearing with the lovely summery weather last week - all week- up to 21C. by the end of March - unheard of. But snow is forecasted for tomorrow so we'll see all seasons this week. We haven't seen any badger activity lately: A small woodland close to us is being cleared out so we think they may have lost their habitat and moved on. However the Muntjac deer keep visiting our garden and nibble all the fresh young shoots of everything so we see some very strangely shaped plants and lots of fraying damage.
The wild flower meadow area has been cut for the first time this year to suppress the grasses and give the wild flowers and Orchids a change: The next cut will take place around October.

Kitchen Composter

Most of our household waste is already sorted and recycled, but we have always had a problem with food waste which can't be composted, such as chicken bones, fish bones & heads and cooked food left-overs. This has to be collected in a special little bin which gets rather smelly and in itself forms a food safety risk if it is kept in or near the kitchen.
The solution appears to be the so-called 'Bokashi' composter which uses a bran-based material that has been fermented with EM ('friendly' bacteria) and dried for storage. Adding the Bokashi to the special closed bin and the organic food waste starts an anaerobic fermentation of the organic matter which does not produce adverse smells. The end-product can be added to your normal compost heap, and a reservoir under in the compost bin collects a liquid which can be tapped off and used for the fertilisation of plants and vegetables. The liquid can even be used to clear drains or septic systems and as such prevents algae build-up and controls odours. 

Pompeii style bread & pizza oven

We have now been in Homelands for just over a year, and decided to clear up some old stone left by the previous owner, and 'recycle' it by building a Pompeii style bread & pizza oven.
This has now reached the stage of a workable oven - and a beauty it is as it doubles up as a BBQ and food-smoker. Some final touches still need to be applied but that's all cosmetic.

Parties of 4 or more booking into Homelands B&B are now offered a 'pizza experience' where you make up your own pizza's, bake them in our out-door oven, and eat them - we will supply all the ingredients. We will demonstrate the basics to you but you'll have to do all the hard work yourself. As we're not licensed to sell alcohol you may bring your own drinks and wines.
Here are some pictures of one I made a few years ago:

What's rattling?

Yellow Rattle or Cockscomb, or Rhinanthus minor, is a flowering plant native to Europe and Western Asia.

It is a hemi-parasitic herbaceous annual plant that gains some of its nutrients from the roots of neighbouring plants. It grows to 25-50 cm tall, with opposite, simple leaves, with a serrated margin. The flowers are yellow. The name gives it away really! The fruit is a dry capsule, which contain loose, rattling seeds when ripe.  Its preferred habitat is dry fields or meadows, where its flowering period is between June and September.

Encouraging Yellow Rattle to grow in hay meadows greatly increases biodiversity by restricting grass growth and thereby allowing other species to thrive.

So that explains why we have made quite some efford to saw Yellow Rattle in our little meadow: The results are now showing.