TAS Diary Archives
February 22, 2010
Green ginger wine
We bought a bottle of green ginger wine on Saturday. It was reduced in Marks and Spencer and I, in particular, love ginger. Especially covered in dark chocolate, but no matter.
We've both had colds but Dan has been taking a cold and flu remedy which was quite horrid - very chemically and fluorescent green. Anyway, he's invented his own remedy - juice of one lemon, large teaspoon of honey, three capfuls of green ginger wine topped up with hot water. That plus a couple of paracetamol makes him feel a whole lot better.
I didn't realise green ginger wine was alcoholic - I suppose the clue is in the name- so we're going to buy or make some ginger cordial, so we don't get into trouble. In fact, I know the very thing to warm me up after doing the outside jobs...
February 21, 2010
Spring "lambs"
The ewes and ewe lambs have been confined to quite a small paddock, albeit with adlib hay and a lick. It was a lovely day today, cold but sunny, so I let them through into the river paddock. What excitement! The three ewe lambs were leaping and skipping; even the pregnant ewes had a little skip, but not too much. Amazing what a mouthful of fresh grass does for the sheep spirit!
"Spring" Lambs from asmallholder on Vimeo.
They are back in the small paddock overnight but will be released again tomorrow. Lucy Lamb is big girl - I hope she has some high energy lick tonight or she won't be able to throw her weight around with the same abandon as she did today.
More beekeeping
Well, it's week four of our beekeeping course tomorrow. Week one was an introduction and bee biology; week two was equipment (and we were given catalogues away with us!!); week three was handling bees (without actual bees) and week four is swarming.
Last week we also had a demonstration of how to light a smoker. It all looks very simple in the hands of an expert. Dan flicked through the catalogues and asked if we needed one of evrything - I said no, we needed two of somethings and none of others! I'm not sure if this made him feel better or not.
We're going to have National hives. I'm planning to get two, although we'll only get one colony - the spare will be for, well, spare! I'm also getting a bee suit - in stone (colour not material!), I think. White's a bit conspicuous and looks like there's been a chemical incident.
The beekeepers - the proper ones who are delivering the course - are just wonderful. They are so generous - with their time, their enthusaism and their expertise. This year, for the first time, they are running a queen breeding programme to develop nuclei that new beekeepers will be able to buy at a very competitive price. They hope to make importing bees from other areas unnecessary, thus preventing the spread of disease. They were meeting today to build the nuc boxes and hope to have nucs ready in May, June and July.
The Association gets a discount from one of the major suppliers of beekeeping equipment, so I have to get my list done and in for the mentors to check before the end of the month. That's my next job!
February 1, 2010
I love our kittens because...
they take their worm tablets wrapped in a little bit of cheese, like dogs.
This year's potatoes, onions, shallots and garlic
Our seed potatoes, onion and shallot sets and garlic arrived last week. I ordered them before we even thought about moving. As usual, I was surprised by the quantity I had ordered!
I've bought Vivaldi and Mimi as earlies to go in pots; Red Duke of York as a second early and Druid as the maincrop. We grew Druid last year and they were very good indeed.
This is the Druid "blurb" - "Very similar to Red Cara but a slightly later maturity. Short oval pink/red skinned with no white splashes, shallow eyes. Huge yields. Firm flesh does not disintegrate on cooking. Resistance to foliage blight, common scab and golden eelworm so ideal for the organic gardener." Also ideal for the "not very good gardener".
I've bought two garlic bulbs (Wight Cristo), which will be plenty, and 3 bags of "Picasso" shallots. We grew these last year, and they did well. We never have much luck with onions, so I've bought two mixed bags of white, brown and red onions - Red Baron, Snowball and ABS 101. In the two bags, there should be 100 - 150 sets, so that should yield, oh, about 20 onions.
Other then these, I'll just use up last year's seeds and start again next year in the new vegetable garden.