Lazy (?) Sunday afternoon - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Sunday 28 October, 2007

by Rosemary at 7:31pm in Anything goes 3 comments Comments closed

The weather this weekend has been sonewhat variable. Last night we had a lot of rain and it was very windy. During the morning, it brightened up and the sun got out for a while but by 4pm, it was dark, raining and windy. So time to light the fire and get out the seed catalogues.

I now have my orders prepared and tomorrow, in the cold light of Monday, I'll go through them and delete half the potato and tomato varieties and some of the more fanciful species. I'm going to have 5 tubers of Mayan Gold and I'm going to grow them in pots, so I know they're safe. At £2.49 for 5 tubers, I might put them by my bed!

I was allowed to help with the bacon curing this morning. In previous years, this has been Dan's preserve (pardon the pun) but he's away this week, so I recieved my instructions this morning. We've two cures on the go - streaky bacon and, for the first time, back bacon which is in a salt and sugar mix. They look good already although they have four days to go. Dan's bought himself a new smoke generator - early Christmas present. He'll say more about all this tomorrow, he assures me.

I've started manuring the vegetable beds. As I clear horse poo, I'm putting it straight on the beds rather than in the heap. The hens are having a swell time. I've done the comfrey bed; now I'm doing the rhubarb bed. Potato bed next, I think.

Anyway, back to the fire now. It's 7.45pm, which is really 8.45pm so almost my bed time. I took Friday afternoon off so I've got long hours in the office to look forward to this week to make up time. Still, at least it's dark outside, so I don't feel like I'm wasting time!