Apples suitable for Snow White

We have started picking the Beechgrove Apples and they are truly wonderful, fabulous flavour and texture and the flesh is tinged with red where the skin colour has bled though to the flesh. They have almost been too successfull as one branch has broken off due to the weight of the fruits. I think next year we may have to pick off a few small apples to prevent the same thing happening again.

The new double glazed window are coming on apace at the front of the house, so much better for bird and doo  watching. The picture above is the old secondary glazed set up and below are the not finished new windows.

 It was the Leuchars Air Show this weekend, weather grim in the morning but better in the afternoon, shame the traffic arrangements turned into a shambolic debacle and most folk took 6 hours to get in and then some who got back to the park and ride at 6pm did not leave the car park until 9.30.  Herb watched from along the track by Pusk Farm, I had seen it all before!

Off to try and find a recipe that involves copius quantities of broccoli and red apples. The farmer has ceased harvesting now the price has dropped too low and I have tons of apples to deal with. The hens like the free broccolli greens and florets though. Shame that they won't eat apples.

Talented chickens?

Discovered today that the chickens have a liking  for shoes and dangly bits on trousers! They are getting bolder by the day but still refusing to eat pellets or mash and seem to be doing pretty well on scarps and forage. The guy in the pet shop says that I am too soft on them and to withold all scraps and treats until they start to eat. I guess like kids they will not starve themselves.

We have taken down the original dove cote for cleaning and refurb although the doves seem not to have noticed, maybe with less nesting holes we will have less eggs to discard this month.

The doo on the right is Stumpy who sadly lost a foot in the roof accident earlier this year. She manages very well and the next picture shows the stump if you loook carefully.

I dug some Pink Fir Apple spuds today, they look a bit odd but am told they will be delicious. I also harvested the onions whioch look fabulous and enormous! the next picture also shows some of the Moonzie goodies we have been producing this summer, Blueberry Jam, Bramble Jelly and Bramble Vodka. The Crab apple and mint jelly took 7lbs of crab apples to make one and a half pots of jelly. I was looking to buy small jam jars and ended up buying full jars of Tesco Mint sauce at 24p each and binning the contents to get the right size jars at a resonable price! Amazon wanted £3.99 for six wee empty jars!

SLAUGHTERED

Should have been a good day, sun shining, bright blue skies and warm. Out of the sky came a killer and this is the result. Killed by a hawk only six feet from the back door this afternoon. It takes twenty minutes for a hawk to kill a bird, as it takes that  length of time to pluck the breast clear of feathers, then tear through the skin to pluck out the heart while it is still beating. And some misguided people still think that sparrowhawks should continue to be protected. They once were a threatened species now they are so abundant they are eating all our songbirds, sparrows and thrushes and MY DOOS! Next time you wonder why you don't see or hear so many you will know why.

This was one of my original doos so it is either  Ben or Jerry.

On a happier note Nikki came round today and we ringed two babies, Cocka Two and Voodoo Two.

When I grow up will I be lovely like you Mum!

A baby doo is not exactly a thing of great beauty, but I am sure his/her Mum loves him!

As Sam said Like a Bollock with a beak!

After having no babies all year I decided to allow three eggs to hatch and two have done so but sadly I think the third baby has been devoured by a predator, maybe a weasel or a rat. Yesterday the  third egg was just 'chipping' when I checked on it, the other two had newly hatched. When I checked again today the broken egg was in evidence but no baby so think it must have been taken overnight. The mother of the little beauty above was none too pleased when I took her baby for his first photo session and gave me some mighty wing flaps and pecks and growls but soon settled when I returned the youngster to her.

The pergola is looking glorious with some amazing trusses of roses all over it, the honeysuckle is also blooming well and it makes a smashing place to sit in the evening when the weather is right. Not that that has been happening too often this summer as yet .

The chickens are laying three eggs a day and have turned out to be the friendliest lot of hens so far. They are loathe to free range too often but are happy enough in the run.

Just a quick update not much doing down on the farm these days, having a lazy week off work but I did make some  Pittormie Raspberry Vodka, ready at Christmas!

                                         " I wonder when I will grow into my beak!"

At last an egg!

The new girls have settled in very well, are really friendly and Rosie has started laying eggs at last. Not very big eggs but lovely brown eggs with firm whites and golden orangey yolks. It has been lovely and dry so the run does not resemble the quagmire it did last year and hopefully by the time we do get some rain Sam will have constructed the long promised boardwalk so I can safely cross the Bog of the Eternal Stench.

This is a picture of Mary and I at Kinshaldy beach after we scattered Auntie Maureens Ashes in the general area where her younger brother Sam was scattered. It is a lovely spot, great views for the sea and nicely sheltered from the harsh North Sea winds. As we drove to the beach through the forest I remarked on the lovely smell of woodsmoke, forgetting all the dire warnings about forest fires. On the way back we spotted the  second of the 7 fire appliances it was to take to put the fire out after nearly 12 hours.

 My birthday was celebrated quietly with a fish and chip and Bollinger supper by the stream, a warming fire and a few neighbours over to join in.  Sam and Dan lit a fire later on as you can see. Moonzie looks great at this time of the year and the stream is a lovely place to sit and enjoy the peace and tranquility of the countryside, until, that is, the gas powered pigeon scarer starts up accompanied by the drone of the water pump to irrigate the broccolli. Still the farmer has taken up my kind offer of  being on-site-qualty-control for his broccolli so as soon as it is ready I will tell him and he will arrange for the ten acres of the stuff to wing it's way to Morrisons.

Cheers!!

 The girls really wanted to come and join the fun but stayed safely behind the wire for now.  The doos are stll laying eggs just as fast as I can remove them but so far we have had no babies this year at all. As soon as I can get an accurate head count I will see if we can allow at least one pair of chicks to hatch. We appear to be down to 17 doos but it is difficult to count them. Due to the Gas Banger Bird scarer, and the giant plastic hawk bird scarer they spend a lot of time hiding around the roof and cotes and it is hard to get a good count. Still now the crops are established hopefully all the noise will abate.

Looks like we may be in for a spot or two of rain tonight, great for the garden, not so good for Captain Ahab who has yet again headed West on what is forecast to be an interesting week weather wise, 60mph gusts tonight for a starter!  Then rain, rain and even more rain, great for the reservoirs, awful for the sailors.

Here come the girls!

This is Arriety and Rosie and Tia and Maria, the new girls.

They arrived a couple of weeks ago and quickly settled in, Tia and Maria, the Black Rocks quickly established themselves as right at the top of the pecking order by temporarily becoming the fowl version of a velocoraptor by taking great chunks out of Rosie and Arriety. But now they have all settled down and at night all cuddle together in the nest box and  seem to be the best of chums.

No eggs yet but it is early days as they are still young. I decided that we would just use the Little Hilton Chicken House and the Old House leaks and so that will soon be consigned to the dump or the bonfire, it will make for a bit more space in the run too. Once the new girls are settled in I will let them out to free range and they can take their chances with Roly and the Fox. Much better to dine on worms and slugs and have some fun, to see a chicken chasing a butterfly is a wondrous sight, they literally run and jump and then usually bump into a fence or a wall as they are too busy looking up to look out!

I found this sign in the garden centre and just loved it, Herb is not so keen!

The weather has turned well and truly summery and today it is yet again almost too hot to be outside, never a happy medium here! (Arriety by the way was the daughter in The Borrowers book and Rosie is  named after my dear friend who bears no resmbalnce apart from her lovely nature and lovely name!)

The veg garden is looking great, the hot weather has caused all the Pak Choi to bolt but everything else is looking grand. Time to go and get some watering done now, no doubt there will be a hosepipe ban soon. The farmer has very kindly planted about ten acres of broccolli all around us so I will not bother this year!

Spring has well and truly sprung!!

Sincere apologies for not blogging for ages but the job really has filled my time but I don't mind as I love it. It is so interesting, I get to meet loads of really different types of  folk, murderers and the like, and the days just whizz by...and they pay me and I get to buy gorgeous stuff.

Just for the girls, just one of the gorgeous stuffs I have bought so far!

And for the boys this is some if the gorgeous stuff Herb has bought too. It is a Mulching, Self Propelled mower and Herb says it makes moaning the lawn a positively enjoyable experience. Actually they were not his exact words but it makes it all so much quicker, for the uninitiated, it clips all the grass into tiny sharp pointy bits and shoots it into back the ground, so you never ever have to collect the grass ever again or so it says on the box, whatever it does, it works!

This is the Beechgrove TV Apple Tree and it is laden with blossom this year, looks like we will have a bumper crop later on. Sadly this year the plums look like they will bear no fruit, we have not got a single blossom on any of the three trees, maybe it was just too cold or mybe they are just too young.

I have planted up the raised beds and devoted one to being an Asparagus Bed for the next twenty years, that should see some of us out!  I also have Pak Choi, Bulb Fennel, red and green frilly lettuce, red and yellow beetroot and Pink Fir Apple Spuds, not to mention onions and radishes. The greenhouse is also bursting to the seams again with the fig which this year has 18 fruit, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Some interesting herbs including a little known herb called Sweet Woodruffe that I brought back from a recent trip to Germany.

This is the pergola that Herb put up last year and already the roof bit is getting covered with lots of lovely climbers and ramblers, we have roses, honeysuckle and just flowering now, a rampant clematis Nelly Moser. As you can see the sun is shining today, in fact so much so I have been out with just a t shirt on, and some jeans of course. This is not something that is seen very often in Scotland, the sun I mean , not jeans!

The other thing that has taken up our time has been having a new kitchen put in. This is the old kitchen.

 

This is the new kitchen!!

Love the wine cooler! No beer just wine and bubbly!!!!!

And another one. Right now I am going to take a bottle of something cold from the chiller and head up to the summer house for a well earned rets while I contemplate the next week at work. The summer house is looking good too.

The doos continue to be very active on the egg front, so far this year I have removed 27 eggs and replaced them with china eggs. We appear to have lost one doo, possibly to the hawk but as we had two with leg injuries it may just have left to die quietly. On the injury front, one doo has lost a toe and Stumpy has a leg that is about to drop off, but otherwise Stumpy is healthy, flys well and hops about very happily.

Sun is over the yard arm, I'm off!