Putting My New Old Boots To Work

For a while now I have needed to get myself a pair of work boots and I was about to start shopping around for some when my mother in law tells me there are two old pairs of doc martins in their spare room.
The boots used to belong to either Hubby or his brother and have been in that cupboard since they both moved out of home about 20 years ago.
So I tried both pairs on and one of the pairs fit perfectly.  They are actually a size bigger than I would normally take but I wear an orthotic so that accounted for the larger size.
The boots were in great condition and the only thing was that the leather was a bit dry.  I gave them a good polish and they were set to go.

Today my new boots were put to work today dealing with a neglected garden bed.  We have two veggie beds near the house and two out near the chicken pens.  This one has been out of use for the last 8 months and was full of weeds, self seeded cheery tomatoes and the kikuyu grass was starting to invade.

You can see how overgrown it was but thankfully it was mainly milk thistles and chick weed which we fed to the chickens and they were in chicken heaven/

Number one helper was on site to make sure we were working hard and that there we no forgotten bones hiding among the weeds.

When the bed was cleared of weeds we added 4 wheel barrows of mushroom compost that we have had breaking down since January.  We started digging it through and then I decided that the chickens would do a much better job plus get the benefit of all the bugs.
So we caught a few chickens and added them and some temporary shade to the pen for the rest of the day.

Well so we thought.  I turned out that after a few hours they had had enough and were ready to go back to their pen.  It's hard to find good workers these days.
So it looks like I will be back out there on the weekend digging in the compost by hand.

The Weekend Kitchen

This weekend was a busy one for me but i still managed to get a lot done in the kitchen.

There was bread making.

Then I picked some Lemon Myrtle leaves to be dried and ground for baking and some were made into a a liquid.  I will post more about this later in the week.

I also baked a pear and almond cake with ginger syrup.  And it was delicious.

Pear and Almond Cake With Ginger Syrup

185 gm Soft Butter
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Cups of Dark Brown Sugar
3 Eggs
1 Cup Ground Almonds
2 Cups of Self Raising Flour
1/2 Cup Milk
2 Ripe Pears, Peeled, cored and each cut into 12 segments
A 3 cm Piece of Ginger, Finely Grated

If you have a fan forced oven preheat it to 160 degrees other wise heat your oven to 180 degrees.
Line the base of a 22 cm spring form tin and grease the sides.
Use and electric mixer to cream the butter, half the sugar and the vanilla extract until light and creamy.  then add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each one, until fully incorporated.
Then using a spatula fold in the ground almonds.  Once the almonds are fully combined fold in half the flour then the milk followed by the remaining flour until all are fully combined.
Scoop into the tin smoothing out the top then press your pear segments into the batter.
Bake for 1 hour or until springy to the touch in the centre.
Mean while add the remaining sugar, the ginger and 1 cup of water to a saucepan and heat over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved.  Then raise the heat and bring to a boil for 10 minutes until it is slightly syrupy then strain into a jug.
When the cake is cooked cool in the pan for 5 minutes then release the sides.  Brush a bit of the syrup over the top of the hot cake to give it a nice glaze and then let the cake cool completely.
Serve with a good dollop of thick natural yogurt and some of the remaining syrup to drizzle over each piece.

And finally I roasted up some of those lovely tomatoes we were given with zucchini, chorizo and lots of garlic.  It was lovely served with pasta for a simple supper.

What happened in you kitchen over the weekend?

Strange Garlicy Happenings

For the last few years I have grown my own garlic and in most cases I have used my own garlic when it comes to replanting.
Last year I ended up buying some new garlic for planting as what I had left from the previous years crop had gone soft and hollowed out and I did not have enough to plant out.

I ended up with a good harvest last year and we still have enough left to get us through another few months.

The other when I was getting some more garlic out of the bag I have it all stored in I noticed that most of the ones I had left had these little bulbs growing in what would have been the leaf part when they were still growing.
These are not the result of the bulb flowering as that never happened and I do not think they are scapes as the garlic never took on the general curly look that scapes have.  Plus scapes normally form lots of little bulblits if left to mature.  Mine all have two little round cloves growing in the dried foliage and separated by a gap.

What do you think?  Have you ever seen this before?

Worming Mash For Chickens

This is a natural recipe that I have used for a while and it seems to do the trick.  It calls for fresh turmeric which I have but when I didn't I used the powdered spice and I did not notice a difference.
This recipe uses a lot of chillies but don't be concerned for your chickens as they are not bothered but the heat of chillies.  In fact they will strip a chillie bush bare given half the chance.

For 10 Chickens:

1 Litre of Full Cream Milk
6 Cloves of Garlic
4 Chillies
1 TBS Paprika
1 TBS Fresh Turmeric or Ground (if you do not have access to fresh)

Crush the garlic and chop the Chillies then add both to the milk along with the diced fresh turmeric and paprika.  Bring to a simmer the turn off the heat and leave over night.
The next morning reheat the mix to porridge temperature and if you have a stick blender use it to blend the mix.  If not it will not matter as the chickens will still eat the chillies.
Mix your worming mix with 2 grated carrots and 1kg of layers mash.

Feed this first thing in the morning to chickens who have fasted for 24 hours, a week before the full moon. This is also a good time to dust your chickens for lice, we use Pestene.

A Sunshine Award

Blogger has been naughty and did not publish this post of mine when I asked it to so I am slotting it in here and my recipe for chicken worming mash will be up tomorrow.

I was awarded the Sunshine Award by Kathy over at Our Simple and Meaningful Life so a big thank you to Kathy for nominating me.

Rules of the Sunshine Award: 

1) Display the award on your ever deserving blog
2) Say "thank you" to the wonderful person to have nominated you
3) Give us 10 interesting things about yourself
4) Nominate some of your favorite blogs
5) Link to those blogs in your post and let them know that you've nominated them!

So 10 interesting things about me:

1. I spent some of my teenage years living and going to school in Chile
2. Therefore I speak Spanish as a second language.
3. I hate bananas, I would like to like them and every year I give them another go but I still don't like them.
4. I learnt to ski when I was 4 and am confident on all but the hardest "black" runs
5. I work for a large company and manage 1 staff member who is actually not a real person.  They are a virtual assistant designed to answer questions from our customers using our website.
6. I have lived in 12 different homes in the last 15 years including 5 years in this house (yes that is a lot of moving)
7. I will be 36 in just over a month and I still have 3 grandparents (all in their late 80's) who I adore.  Yes I am very blessed.
8. I have a fantastic relationship with my in laws and love them dearly. No mother in law jokes round here.
9. I am still friends with someone I have known since I was 4.
10. I love fantasy novels with my favourites being, The Hobbit, The Lord Of The Rings and the Eragon series.

Now for my favourite blogs:

I really enjoy Lynda's blog Living In The Land Of Oz
Then there is Liz at Eight Acres with who I have a lot in common
Linda at Greenhaven always inspires me
Finally Christine at Slow Living Essentials has some much great stuff to share.

There are so many others I could have listed but I tried to keep my list small.