Edible Garden Show 2011 – Stoneleigh

So today one half of Honestly It’s Easy went to the Edible Garden Show in Stoneleigh (the other half is off to the show in sunday!).  It’s a 3 day show quite literally packed full of anything and everything you can think of in the world of Edible Gardening.

www.theediblegardenshow.co.uk

The whole event is very well laid out and has regular talks from industry professionals on anything from Keeping chickens to edible flowers, with a sprinkling of the WI!

There’s also a marquee with a small selection of chickens in, some beautiful specimens on show from the Poultry Club www.poultryclub.org, and lots of scrumptious pigs!

Personally for me stand out stalls were;

Bubble House Worms Stand number 344 www.bubblehouseworms.co.uk

Jimmy’s Farm –Stand number 4 - Ray and Jayne from My Dream Farm were selling some lovely sausages www.jimmysfarm.com

Feathers Stand number 122 www.feathers-animal-housing.com

Stand out products from the day were Spiced Carrot Chutney from Heathers Harvest Stall number  382 www.heathers-harvest.co.uk

Gardeners Honey Hand Cream Elegance Natural Skin Care Stall number 6 www.natural-skincare.com

All in all a very well presented, organised and informative event – I look forward to incorporating many of the ideas I saw and spoke to people about in my garden over the coming months – watch this space!!!

Who knows maybe next year we will be there with our own stall alongside the Cropredy Chicken Company! www.cropredychickencompany.com

All the best!

Claire

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup

Oh and whilst I was out we had some chicks hatch – there’s 5 so far – 2 still to hatch hopefully!!

The Transformation has begun.....

So Claire has updated you about her home brew, raised beds and cheeky Pekins, now it's my turn.

We moved into a brand new house in Jan 2011 with a HUGE back garden. Now to say the least, it was quite the mess!


Unfortunately the rather large greenhouse at the back was just too unsafe to keep (much to my dissapointment) and the remaining "stuff" just had to go.

We wanted a complete blank canvas to start from scratch.

We have many plans for this garden, it needs to accomodate my gorgeous chickens, grow all our own fruit & veg and have an area for my two little munches to play on!!

So, we begin, firstly, the whole lot gets cleared, then for the chicken coop, a rather lush new pad to graze in and I must admit, they are more happy here than in our old garden! They seem to be laying more, their combs are much brighter and they have plumped out far more than usual! (Though I'm not sure if all that is due to the handsome young Russell we now have keeping them in order!!)

Last weekend we decided to start the raised beds, in which all our veg will be grown (plus some in pots). We don't need masses of it, as we are only a family of four, so just enough to feed us really, though we always get gluts so I'm sure we'll be giving some away!

Now I have no idea what the gentleman used to do with his stuff in this garden, (though I can imagine!!) but we spent the best of four hours removing hundreds of pieces of broken clay pots and broken glass from literally a 2 metre squared area, Time consuming...Yes! Annoying... Yes! Be worth it in the end...Definately!

I have to admit as much as the previous tenant got my back up while digging all this out the ground, i have to say the soil is bloody marvellous! Soft, dark, and just ...well....perfect!

So there you go, the story has begun, Once Upon A Time this garden used to be a mess, soon we'll be living "Happily Ever After"

Stay Tuned!!!!!

Mel.

Twitter:
@honestlyitseasy
@Tikobear

P.S. We're attending the Edible Garden show this weekend, really looking forward to getting some fab new ideas for this project!
http://www.theediblegardenshow.co.uk/

Update on Home Brew, Raised Beds, and Cheeky Pekins!

As blogged about previously, I am trying to brew some home brew.

www.honestlyitseasy.blogspot.com/2011/02/home-brew-anyone.html

So the update is, the wine is finished and bottled and surprisingly tastes great!

 It does say on the instructions that the wine gets better if left, but I couldn’t wait so I cracked open a bottle yesterday afternoon whilst watching the rugby!

2 raised beds are also complete, the other two will hopefully be done this weekend.  I’ve never really grown anything in raised beds before so it will be interesting to see what happens.

Let the Lavendar Pekins out for a while on Saturday as well and they went straight to the finished beds for a mud bath!  Cheeky little monkeys!

We took a little video of them as well.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB3luUKv1EE

It's been quite a busy weekend - potatoes are chitting up well, hopefully the wather will be nice this wekend so I can get out in the garden again!

All the best!

Claire

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup

Not entirely sure what happened but when I got up to let the girls out this weekend Pat was wandering round the garden.  Initially I though they may not have been locked up properly.  On further investigation it appears that something tried to get in their cage, and as a consequence we have lost a chick. The other two seem to be ok though.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccyVJqmjt9U

Onion Bhaji

We had friends over last night for a curry and tried my hand at making some onion bhajis.  For a first go they turned out alright!

Here is the recipe.  I put ours in the oven for 10 minutes after I had drained them on kitchen roll because the curry wasn’t quite ready and I think it crisped them up a little bit extra as well.

Onion Bhaji

Ingredients

2 free-range eggs

3 Onions, cut up in bit sized pieces

4oz Plain Flour

1 tsp Ground Coriander

1 tsp Cumin Seeds

1 tbsp Tumeric

Salt and Pepper

Vegetable or sunflower Oil for cooking

Instructions

Beat the eggs thoroughly together in a bowl with the salt and pepper.

Add the onion rings and mix well.

Add the flour, ground coriander, cumin seeds and tumeric and stir well to combine.  I find it best to get your hands in to mix everything though at this stage.  Messy but gives it a complete coating.

Heat oil in a deep-sided frying pan over a medium heat. When the oil is hot (this is very important you want to hear the mixture sizzle when it hits the pan)  add a large spoonful of the bhaji mixture and fry for 30-45 seconds, until golden-brown.

Turn the bhaji over and fry for a further 30 seconds, until crisp and golden-brown all over. Remove and drain on kitchen paper.  Repeat with the remaining bhaji mixture, refill the oil in the pan if it begins to run a bit low and again make sure the oil is hot before adding any mixture.

Later next week I’ll post up the recipe for Paratha’s – they are an Indian pan fried flat bread – extra yummy and they can be filled with all sorts!

Hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday!

Love

Claire

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup

Table bird chicks 2 weeks old

A Farmers Life for me ...............

 A Farmer’s Life for me is fronted by self-taught pig farmer Jimmy Doherty, which sees nine couples compete for the chance to run their own 25-acre farm in Suffolk, with full financial backing for the first year.

Spen and I have loved this show and every Tuesday we’ve snuggled on the sofa and watched it together.  So last night when we came to watch it and found the Hairy Bikers on instead I was quite annoyed.  Even though I do love the hairy Bikers, I was really looking forward to A Farmer’s Life For Me.  It turns out they have changed the programmes around and Jimmy’s show is now on Thursday.  Why do the BBC do this – you start getting into a programme and then they swap the night!  So frustrating!

Anyhow Episode 6 this week is about how the five remaining couples learn how to milk sheep and goats.  I would love a goat so I’m sure this is only going to make me want one more!

To catch up on all the episodes click the link below;

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yflv1

It’s definitely worth a watch, the only slightly annoying part of the show is the way the couples say that they want to own this farm and it has been a life long dream etc, but judging from last week can’t even build a fox proof chicken coop.  Surely if it was a life long dream you would have some idea how to go about it?

You can also buy the book ‘A Farmer's Life for Me: How to live sustainably, Jimmy's way’ from Amazon;

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0007411952/ref=pd_luc_mri?ie=UTF8&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

I’ve just order it so I’ll have a butchers at it and give a review over the coming months.

Here is also the link to Jimmy’s Farms website.

www.jimmysfarm.com

Happy viewing!

Best Love

Claire

xxx

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup

Yummy Scrummy Pancakes!!

Delia Smith style Pancakes

Ingredients

110g / 4 oz of plain sifted flour

Pinch of salt

2 Eggs ( we collected two fresh ones from the girls this morning)

200ml milk mixed with 75 ml of water

Sift flour and salt into bowl (hold sieve high to get as much air as possible in)

Make a well in the centre of flour

Break eggs into the well

Whisk eggs into the flour

Gradually add small quantities of the milk and water mix

Whisk until the batter is smooth

Add oil into frying pan and get the pan really hot, then turn the heat down, put some mixture (dependent on how fat you want your pancakes of course – some people like them really thick others really thin) and then cook on both sides until they are nicely brown.

Don’t forget you can add all sorts of things to the batter – bananas, chocolate (if you add chocolate make sure its at the very last minute otherwise the chocolate burns), strawberries the possibilities are endless when we were kids mum used to serve them with bananas and icecream, yummy!! Nowadays I tend to go for the more traditional lemon and sugar option! Lol!

Happy Pancake Day everyone!!.

Claire

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup