Hoe Hoe Hoe!

I love these handy single portion packs of Weetabix

Now, Coco and I tend to get up quite early in the mornings, in fact It has been known for it to still be dark when we start our day.  Some days we get up before we go to bed!

As every hard working Gardener will know you can't possibly start the day without a hearty breakfast.

Coco's breakfast of choice varies between Weetabix and Cheerios depending on what I put on the table.

Today I put Cheerios on the table, so we had Weetabix.

So much to do, so little time, come on, keep up!

After our breakfast its time to give the cats and dogs their breakfast, take Nanny Southwellski her morning cup of tea (which incidentally she never drinks and just lets go cold!) before heading out to start the day by letting the chooks out.

We include the chicks as chooks now as they are really not chicks any longer (If that doesn't make sense then you really should have been paying attention earlier on in the blog!).

We've had a few not very productive days of late with work related stuff to sort out, places to go etc etc.  Nanny Southwellski has had a bad chest infection but she'll go to the doctors tomorrow.

Anyone know when tomorrow comes?

We have tried all our remedies, Thyme, Anise and Honey tea for the cough followed by an Onion poultice applied warm to the chest, in a tea towel of course, to clear the chest (the poultice should not be used as an aphrodisiac).

It's taking a while to shift but in the meantime we keep a careful eye on her, well you do when it's someone you love don't you.

The Thyme, Anise and Honey tea really is very lovely as a drink in it's own right but it makes a great cough medicine and because it's very gentle it's great for littlies too.  This is another recipe from Kitchen Medicine the accompanying book to Hedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal.

Yuk! Chook Poo!

The chooks are grounded temporarily due to landscaping works in the house garden but this means more mess in the veggie garden.

We've had the builders in for a week and a half and they have transformed our garden and at last we can see the makings of a beautiful natural garden.

A blank canvas

The house garden has been levelled, cleared and is now having the hard landscaping works done.

We will soon be able to sit and listen to the stream trickling past Mr B's arbor before it splashes into the pool to start its journey all over again.

Our designer (Richard Wlkinson of Lotus Garden Designs) has listened to everything we said and has included it all in his design.

View from the pond

There will also be a shallow pond with a beach area.  We had Coco in mind when we asked for this as it not only gives an access point into the water, it's also a way out in an emergency for both her and any creatures that wander in.

Muddy mountain high.

Coco has had an absolute ball climbing the heaps of soil that have appeared around the garden and there now no 'hills' unclimbed. She also loves to watch the machines as they dig and dump soil all over the place and she won't go to sleep until we've said goodnight to the dumper and digger which are parked outside her bedroom window at the end of each day.

Tell me the truth, that reindeer's not real is it?

It was a very special evening this evening and Nanny Southwellski, Coco and I went to the church in Feltwell to meet up with Auntie Angela and Uncle Robin to go and see Father Christmas.

Coco was very good, but did look rather questioningly at the reindeer, it wasn't very convincing, but Father Christmas was.

We had a lovely time and Coco had as much fun chasing her balloon around as she did seeing the 'big fella' in red.

All in all it's been another great day.

Fur and feather and sugar. Sugar???

Now when Nanny Southwellski, Coco and I moved to Grandpa Southwellski's Garden we had the notion that being self sufficient was the direction we wanted to take.

It would be a gradual process, growing a few veggies, recycling more, wasting less, trying to produce our own energy and who knows one day killing and processing our own meat.

The meat side of it would have to be a very gradual process as we are both a bit soft around animals.

Well that all changed in 24 hours!

2 x brace = 4

As you know we have the team in doing some landscaping works, and a very lovely team they are too.

Roy charges around on the digger and Mike basically clears up behind him whilst Richard the designer comes and moves the soil around to match the drawings. (He also charges around on the digger but only when Roy isn't here!)

Roy shoots and offered to bring us a couple of brace of pheasants, and true to his word he turned up with them on Friday morning.

Soon have these feathers out!

So with much gusto and bravery we made a cup of tea and watched the shooting times video clip online on how to prepare a pheasant.

We followed the instructions to the letter and eventually had feet and wings strewn all over the worktop.

It was when we got to the removing the skin bit that we finally gave in and I trundled down the garden to ask Roy to show us what to do.

Having very diplomatically congratulated us on 'having a go' he proceeded to prepare the other 3 birds (and finish our attempt) in about 6 minutes, with our blunt knives.

"I don't mean to be rude but my penknife is sharper than this knife" he said.  I should have asked why he didn't use it.

All this done and without the need to gut or behead them and left us with breasts and legs ready for the pot.

Here's the veggies darling!

Nanny Southwellski turned two of the birds into a casserole with a rich gravy enhanced with her cherries in brandy.

Served with mustard mash and spring greens it was amazing!

Auntie Angela was wowed by it and had to be warned about her language in front of young Coco such was her excitement.

Our second encounter with all creatures great and small and deceased began on the Friday when on the field next to us we saw the lights of a truck and heard gunshots.

Being good neighbours we phoned the farmer who told us his brother was shooting rabbits, well not one to miss an opportunity I asked if there was a chance of having a couple.

They duly arrived the next morning and by tea time I had skinned and cleaned them like a pro, a very slow and uncertain pro but a pro none the less, and armed with my newly sharpened knives and a copy of John Seymours 'New complete self suffiency' book I ensconsed myself in the utility room.

Nanny Southwellski turned the first rabbit into rabbit pie and it was delicious, but I have to say it tasted like chicken!

So what next here on the frontier in Hockwold?

From our paddock we can see the sugar beet factory at Wissington and as I stood looking one sunny afternoon as the factory pushed clouds of steam up into the atmosphere I recalled seeing in John Seymours self sufficiency a short piece on making sugar.

One of a bagfull.

A quick phone call and before you could say " Give us a couple of sugar beet and we will feed you a pheasant casserole" Uncle Robin had supplied a bag full of beet.

So Sunday morning Coco and I washed 2 of the beet, peeled it and chopped it into manageable pieces which we juiced.

We weighed the beet and started off with just under 5kg of beet, once peeled and cleaned this went down to 4.2kg.

Beet'le' juice

After juicing we had about 2 litres of juice and so the process began.


John basically says in his book boil it to infinty and beyond, so we did.

Now local people will know the pungent aroma of the beet factory, we reproduced it in our kitchen!.

 Our creamy white beet juice quickly turned to a grey frothing ooze and after reducing the liquid by boiling we have managed to recover about 200g of syrup from the two beet.

Its now crystallising as we speak and so will we become  a threat to the future of Wissington? No, probably not.

Vegetable lasagne al la Kirsty

Our daughter Kirsty 'Parsnip' Southwellski is back home from abroad, Somerset is abroad isn't it?

As part of her having to work for us to pay for her keep she has been doing a bit of culinary creation in the kitchen and this Pumpkin and Greens lasagne is a total hit.

Parsnip has also been staining some timber, always a good idea to redo the stuff that's already been done first I think, right Parsnip?

Mice snacks!

Another culinary hit has been the broccoli seedlings Coco and I sowed a few weeks ago, but not with us.

We have a rogue mouse somewhere in the potting shed and he/she has taken a liking to our seedlings.

We rescued them before they all vanished and moved them to the utility room before we shift them out into the polytunnel.

Blossom the blur!

A few days ago, out in the chicken run Nanny Southwellski spotted a rat searching for some fallen chook food.

Blossom, Monty and Scarlett were sent to sort it out.

Monty dug holes, Scarlett wandered around looking pretty but Blossom got straight onto the job and was still hunting a good hour later.

Rat?  I'll just dig a hole.

The rat did make another appearance just before dusk, running across my fot followed by Blossom who despite getting her teeth on it couldn't hold on.

Shame, it would have been her second 'kill' in a week.

Now, Nanny Southwellski and I are not anti animal in any way shape or form. We would never kill anything for the sake of it.

But anyone who has chooks knows what a pain rats can be if you don't store your food safely or keep your coop/shed secure.

Since Blossom's foray we haven't seen any signs of rats, just the pesky seedling eating mouse, so we are hoping that she will keep them from returning.

 And finally, with the gardening works in full swing we have a few heaps of soil around and well they just have to be climbed!

Whoa Grandad it's very high up here you know.

Sorry, I thought you said you wanted to help, for free!

I'm 24 but have had a hard life!

Now, call me suspicious, but when people want to come and help for free, well apart from some meals and accomodation that is I get a little spooked.

So it was only natural that I felt a similar trepidation as to that of trying pumpkin soup for the first time when Nanny Southwellski sugested the wwoofer/helpx thing.

Wwoofers (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and Helpx'ers are basically people of all ages/genders/nationalities who want to travel and experience first hand living and visiting different parts of the world.

Ben tilling the soil.

 Our first experience has been great, we had a Helpx'er, Ben, from Australia arrive three weeks ago for a one week stay.

He stayed three weeks and we were sorry to see him go, especially Coco who shared many rounds of toast with him and had lots of stories read to her.

Ben helped us get the new veggie plots turned over, the polytunnel up, dog run finished and the fencing finished and stained.

He fitted into our way of life and joined in with what we were doing when both we and he felt like it and did his own thing when he wanted to. 

Is that a cross word to Monty, Anna?

Anna, our Wwoofer, lives locally and cycles three miles each way on Mondays and Tuesdays to help out.

We did ask the question of why come and help us when there are so many exotic places to choose from on the wwoofer site to go and help.

It turns out that along with a lot of other young people, Anna has finished University and is finding job hunting very difficult and so thought she would try wwoofing locally before venturing further afield.

During a conversation this very morning,  Anna just happened to mention that she had a blog called 'Velvetalphabet'.

'Velvetalphabet' is not a blog, its a masterpiece in how to live well, live cheaply (sometimes for free) and live ethically.

Nanny Southwellski and I are blown away by the huge amount of knowledge this young lady has about the environment in which we live.

However, our opinion of Anna is very different to the one that Ben formed, mind you she did give him a cycling tour of most of West Norfolk in just three hours and he suffered for a few days afterwards because of it.


My thoughts now are, if you have the room and have the work that needs doing give wwoofing or helpx a go.

Great, Great Grandpa Southwellski's medals from WW1

On a slightly more sombre note, we have just had rememberance day, and each year we see fewer of the old veterans turning out, but we do see the younger veterans from later conflicts replacing them.

It surprises me, and saddens me that young people today are not told very much about the history of the two world wars, why they started, what happened and how mankind dealt with the aftermath.

We always observe the two minutes silence at work and at home and it gives me a great feeling inside when the 'troublesome' youngsters we have at ZFL stand perfectly still and silent for the whole two minutes despite their 'alleged'  ADHD, Lack of social skills and anger.

Gives you a bit of hope that despite what society thinks, there is still a lot of good in our young people.

Now, those who have known me for a while will know that as each year goes by I hone my 'Victor Meldrew' skills a little more.

But its not in vain, about three months ago I tripped over a raised paviour at Tesco's in Brandon.  I spoke to the Assistant Manager who promised to sort it.  Six weeks later it wasn't done so I spoke to the manager who said he would get it done that very day.

Four weeks later it still wasn't done, so I spoke to another assistant manager who appeared irritated by my bringing this to his attention, I did tell him he was very rude!

"I will see it's done" he said "thank you for telling us".

"No problem" I replied "every little helps". 

If it's not done when I next come I'll write to the papers I thought, but, true to his word, two weeks later they are all repaired and level and lovely. Go Victor I say!  Oh, and well done Tesco.

Isn't Autumn lovely!

I love Autumn, I love the freshness, I love the cold and I love the changes in colours.

Our fruit trees are as beautiful now as they were when they were laden with fruit, this is our apple tree (left) which earlier was covered in the brightest red apples I have ever seen.

And now it's off to bed as we have the landscapers in tomorrow.

Fortunately they have to go to the yard first to load up so won't be here until 7.45!

.