Self sufficiency

Growing in a small space

2012-03-01T04:13:00.002-08:00

Thanks to the ever wonderful Shep and Jo (not the mention Lidia the producer), I'm on BBC Radio Devon this afternoon at 3.30, oh yes, self sufficiency Simon is back on the air!

Okay, so all veg growers suffer with one common complaint, space - or more to the point, lack of space. But there are things you can do to expand your growing area, and one of which is growing upwards, sort of high rise growing.

Tyres are great for growing potatoes and provide a micro-climate in which the plants can thrive.

Sit a couple of car tyres one on top of the other and fill them with a good, rich composted soil.

Press 4 chitted potato plants about 10cm/4in into the soil and water after planting.

When the green shoots start peeking through, add another tyre and again fill with soil. You can continue this process for as many as 4 or 5 tyres, adding more soil each time.

Note: more than 6 or 7 high and it can be difficult to keep the plants well watered.

When you want to harvest the potatoes, take the tyres off one by one and you should be rewarded with a bountiful crop in each section.

If you can, do listen live to the Shep and Jo show, they're great and I, well, do my best.

Hen nights (and days)

2012-02-08T10:58:00.000-08:00

Two chickens have gone rogue. They’ve turned their backs on the batch, shook a tail feather at the flock, set their combs at a jaunty angle and did the walky-flappy thing away because it’s very difficult to march with any dignity when you’re a chicken. They left chicken-opolis with its safe collection of houses, friends and family, and headed for a life where crime is the only way to survive.

Street life for chickens is rough. Actually, let me rephrase that; Street life for chickens is rough—ly akin to a five star gastronomic adventure. They’re loving it! They’ve never had so much fun. Who’d have thought stealing food could make you so fat and happy? Well maybe there’s a reason for that, and maybe I’ve sussed it out.

It starts each day just after lunchtime when I begin by mucking out the first stable and lay a fresh straw bed before moving onto the next. While I’m in the second stable, they move behind me into the first.

Now I know it’s just two chickens in there scratching about between the straw for wheat, but I honestly wonder if their little legs are bionic the way they flick the bed about. By the time I get to chase them out, the horse’s bed looks like a giant doughnut with a massive hole in the middle.

I go off to fill hay nets feeling like I’m in some out of season panto with a crowd yelling, “They’re behind you!” I know they’re behind me! They’re doing the same to the second stable as they did to the first!

For me it’s annoying, for them it’s an appetiser.

Stables remade and doors securely closed, I move on and feed the sheep. I pour nuts and stand back to watch all the white woolly heads buried in the trough… along with the two chickens. The sheep even make room for them!

But you know what it’s like, you have something to eat and you really want a drink. Water’s okay, but there’s got to be something better. And there is. Milk. Honestly I milk the goat, turn my back and the chickens are in the pale drinking it.

Okay, so appetiser done, main course done, nice drink of fresh warm milk done… right, what’s for pudding?

Pig nuts. In case you’re unaware, pig nuts come in sturdy plastic sacks. Nice big strong bags, just the job. In fact they’re so strong it can be a struggle to open them, unless of course you’re a chicken.

I place the sack on the back of the quad bike and go off to collect the rest of the bits and pieces I need. When I return they are standing on the bag (which for a start if the height of bad manners, who ever heard of walking about on the dinner table?), dipping their little beaks into a hole they’ve made and scoffing.

We’re all aware of the obesity issues in this country, and you could argue that these chickens are on the frontline of that in as much as they themselves are food producers – as egg layers. Shouldn’t they be looking after themselves a little more? Do they really need two starters, a huge main course, a large fattening drink and as much pudding as they can cram?

I want to catch them and put them in prison – a large house with a run known as the Love Shack because that’s where the cockerels go when I want to control who their wife-of-right-now is. I figure if I can keep them in for a week or so, it might break this cycle of crime and slim them down a bit. Only I can’t catch them. They’re at large (very large). Fugitives from justice. It’s like living with a poultry Thelma and Louise.

The good, the bad, and the Alfie

2012-01-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

I had left bringing the horses in at night for as long as possible for a couple of reasons, first the field in which they spent their time was quite sheltered and they were happy, and second… second, was Alfie.

But with the wet weather coming in and the high winds it felt the right time to start stabling them at night. I dug out a head collar and made my way to the gate. I could see Alfie at the other end of the field, his rug twisted and untucked, his knees muddy, his mane scruffy and sticking out at odd angles on his head.

“Just William,” I mumbled, “I’ve ended up with an equine Just William.”

He turned – he couldn’t have heard me, there was no way he could have heard me, but he turned as though he had and spotting me galloped over, careful to find the biggest puddle of mud to run through on the way. The mud splashed up everywhere, covering his belly and his legs in thick oozing yuck.

“Oh Alfie,” I said as he dashed up to me and went to rub his head affectionately on my arm but misjudged and put so much effort into it he sent me flying.

Oh Alfie. I slipped the head collar over his nose and stepped back when he got so excited he started bounding up and down on the spot, which is quite a feat for a tinkers pony.

“Calm down, wooo, calm down boy.” I stroked his neck and watched his eyes come back from helter-skelter to nearly normal, and the bounding up and down slowed to a bopping, then a mooching, and finally his front stood still with just the hint of a bum wiggle at the back. We can handle a bum wiggle.

“That’s a boy,” I said, still stoking him, still claming him. Then I opened the gate and lead him through.

The second we made it out of the field he went crazy, ‘…yeah yeah, dad dad, yeah, come on, where are we going? Yeah, come on, wherever it is, let’s go there fast! Wow, I love going… anywhere…’

“William—I mean, Alfie, will you calm down, please.”

This was going to be a nightmare.

We made our way to the stable door with him prancing about like a Spanish stallion.

‘…yeah, woooo, I love jumping about, woooo…’

“Alfie!”

I took a deep breath, and marched him confidently into the stable.

He stopped prancing. He walked in, and stood there. Quiet. Well behaved. With good manors. Nicely.

I looked at him.

He looked back at me.

I scratched my head.

He nibbled some hay.

I tied him to a ring on the wall and undid his outdoor rug, all the time expecting him to explode in such a confined space, but he couldn’t have been better behaved if he was stuffed. I moved around touching and talking to him so he knew were I was all the time, and groomed some of the mud off – to remove it all would have involved walking him through a petrol station carwash. I threw on a fleece indoor rug and buckled it up. Not a murmur.

Early the next morning I went down not knowing what to expect, but he was still calm, still relaxed, standing on a straw bed that hardly looked slept on. I couldn’t work out why my naughty horse had turned nice, other than the fact that he loved being inside and was trying hard to be good – I didn’t even know he was capable!

I swapped rugs, put on a head collar, opened the stable door and the moment he was outside he went, ‘…wooo, we’re out again, yeah, dad, let’s PAR-TY!’

Towards a homemade Christmas

2011-12-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

Who wouldn't like a few homemade touches about the place for Christmas? It makes it nice, it makes it cozy and it makes it personal. And, there's nothing quite as personal as a homemade gift.

Sure money's tight right now, but giving a homemade present isn't about saving money, it's about giving something of yourself. Even rich, famous people give homemade gifts: Vic Reeves for instance, half of Reeves and Mortimer, makes bars of homemade soap for his family and friends.

We're in good company.

So here's a couple of ideas that i think are lovely, Homemade Firelighters and Edible Tree Decorations.

First, Homemade Firelighters that when treated each burn with different colours.

Pine cone firelighters

These are really easy to make, but the standard Blue Peter caveat applies: make sure you're a grown-up or have a grown-up around to help.

To start with, you will need:

Dry pine cones

Wax - the old ends of used candles are ideal

Sawdust/wood shavings

Additives to colour the flames (see below)

Method:

Melt the wax very carefully in an old saucepan. You just want it melted, you don't want to cook it or heat it any more than you need so don't put it on the hob and wander off - in fact, if you're at all worried, make up a double boiler with one saucepan inside another and water in between just to be on the safe side.

Dip the bottom half of a dry pine cone in the wax, and then straight into the sawdust so that the sawdust sticks to the wax, and hold in the air to dry.

To make the sawdust burn with different colour flames, you can mix a little sawdust with one of the following (don't be tempted to mix the colourants as they tend to cancel each other out and just burn normally):

For yellow flames - Sodium Chloride (table salt)

For orange flames - Calcium Chloride (bleach powder)

For violet flames - No salt substitute

For green flames - Borax

For white flames - Epsom salts

These are great firelighters, fun to make, romantic to burn and special to receive.

To jazz them up into a present, maybe get a small wicker basket and half fill with pretty dry leaves and put the treated cones on top. Then add a festive ribbon.

Edible Tree Decorations

For these you will need:

350g plain flour

1tsp bicarbonate soda

1tsp cinnamon and/or sweet mix spices

175g brown sugar

100g butter

1 beaten egg

4tbsp golden sugar

Coloured boiled sweets

Okay, now the method:

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Centigrade. Line 2 baking sheets with grease proof paper. Get a bowl and add the plain flour, to which put in the bicarb of soda and Cinnamon/sweet mix spices. Put the butter in and rub together with your fingers until it becomes like fine breadcrumbs. Next add the egg, syrup and brown sugar and hand mix until it comes together.

Separately, crush some boiled sweets with a rolling pin.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough until it's about as thin as a pound coin. Now to be creative. Cut out shapes, you can cut circles or triangles, but if you're feeling bold, cut out Christmas tree shapes, or stars, anything you fancy. In the centre of them all, cut a circle so that the middle is missing. Then place them on the lined baking tray. In the cut out middles, sprinkle some of the crushed sweets, and maybe make a hole near the top if you want to hand them up later.

Bake for 10-20 minutes until golden brown, then leave to cool.

When cool, thread with ribbon, and away you go, edible Christmas tree decorations!

BBC Radio Devon!

2011-11-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

I know what you're thinking, the only time i blog is when it's connected with the Shep and Jo show, and at the moment you're right, but it's only because i'm struggling to get so many things done before December, not least of all finish writing my book.

Well, it's written!!!!!!!!!!!!

All i need to do is spend a couple of weeks polishing it, and it's done *phew!*

Normal blog service will soon be resumed. Thanks for putting up with me.

In the meantime, dad, dad, darrrrrr...

The lovely Shep and Jo have allowed me on their show once more, it was at 3.30 today (here's the link to listen again if you missed it http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005xcng).

We talked about:

Sloe Gin & Rose Hip Syrup

First, Sloe Gin

Ingredients
1lb Sloes
300g sugar
1 bottle of gin

Sloes are the berries from a hawthorn tree. Traditionally you pick them after the first frost, but actually you can pick them right now and replicate that frost by popping the sloes in the freezer over night.

So you've got your sloes.

Then take the bottle of gin and empty the contents into a bowl or jug. In the empty gin bottle, put the sloes - they should go about two thirds up (one third from the top). Add the sugar, then tip the gin back in right up to the top. Put it into a cupboard and forget about it.

It will be ready for this Christmas, but even better next Christmas!

Decant to drink.

But don't discard the gin soaked sloes!

Because, next, make Sloe cider

On top of the gin infused sloes, poor cider - cheap cider is fine - to the top and leave for a week. Sloe cider is brilliant, you've got to try it!

Again, don't discard the sloes!

The sloes now have been marinated in lovely gin and lovely cider. Take them and sivve them to make a beautiful topping for dinner party ice-cream (dinner party or in front of Strictly on a Saturday night).

Rose Hip Syrup

Rose Hips are in season right now. They're the fruit of the rose; when the bud dies, the fruit flourishes.

Rose Hips are so good for you...

There is more Vitamin C in a couple of Hips than in over twenty oranges!

Make a syrup, but ensure to strain through muslin cloth to remove all the fibres because, as every mischievous boy will know, the fibres are itching powder!

Rose Hip Syrup is good for:

Syrup
Jam
Jelly
Soup
Bread
Wine
Or, Marmalade

Healthy and versatile!

More blogging coming soon...

It's the Shep and Jo time again, on BBC Radio Devon!

2011-10-04T03:28:00.000-07:00

We've had a good run of weather in the last week or so, but October is here and sadly things are set to change. As things get colder, we don't tend to feel as good as we might in the summer. So how about we talk over some simple self sufficient homemade soothers for everyday ailments?

Please note: These are not in place of a doctor, and they don't cure, all they do is sooth and hopefully make you feel a little bit better.

For example:

Fatigue: Take ginseng tea or capsules.

Common cold: Drink tea made from elderberry extract and ginger - and never underestimate the soothing effect of a thick chicken soup if you have a cold. Also, add eucalyptus oil and clove oil to your bath.

Water retention (including swollen ankles): Drink dandelion-leaf tea and increase your intake of vegetables that have diuretic properties, such as carrots, onions, cucumbers and leeks.

Sadness: Before going to bed, add some pine needles, willow bark and larch bark (the inner part) to a mug of boiling water. Place it, still steaming, on your dressing table to scent the room while you sleep. Do not drink.

Sore throat: Blackberry tea to sip.

Ingredients can be found in a most heath food shops.

I'm really, really, really close to finishing my book, and when it's written i promise to blog again properly. Honest Injun, no fingers crossed promise.

It's that radio time again!

2011-09-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

I'm back on BBC Radio Devon this afternoon at 3.30, and thought it might be fun to talk about making paper. Here's how to do it...

MAKING PAPER AND GREETINGS CARDS
Until the industrialization of the nineteenth century, all paper was handmade one sheet at a time. Paper is actually an ancient Egyptian word derived from papyrus, which was a flat woven sheet made from strips of the papyrus plant, however paper was not invented by the Egyptians, but rather by the Chinese, and to this day some of the most beautiful paper still comes from China.

Making paper at home is all about recycling, taking old newspapers, utility bills (nothing is more satisfying than putting a bill into a blender and blitzing it) and turning them into crisp new sheets ready to be used. In fact, both in the UK and America, around 70% of the material used to make all the paper each year comes from recycling. Paper manufactures collect old newspapers and magazines and subject them to a simple process that can be recreated in any kitchen, though the process is a little soggy – so it’s ideal for children then! But it’s not just wood and recycling that can be used to make paper, and more industrious makers use rags, cotton, even elephant dung, though quite how many people involved in self sufficiency would have an elephant is questionable.

How to make paper
First you need some equipment, most of which is easy to find around the home, the only exception is likely to be a deckle. A deckle is the frame in which the paper is made. You can buy them from craft shops and online, and if you are going to turn this into a small business, then it’s worth the investment. But if you are only going to make a few odd sheets then it’s cheaper to make your own.

To make a deckle, take an old picture frame (boot fairs and recycling centres are ideal for finding old pictures), the inside measurement of which is just a little bigger then the piece of paper you want to create, but smaller than a washing-up bowl. While you are out, the other thing you need to source is some tightly packed mesh the same size as the frame, the ideal is the gauze used in a screen door or the fine mesh for windows on a chicken house to keep the flies out. Take the glass, picture and backing out from the frame and cut the gauze so it fits snugly into the frame and staple or pin it in place. That’s the deckle.

For an even quicker version, get a coat hanger and bend it into a rough square, run a stocking over the top right down to the foot and tie a piece of string at the top where the hook is so the stocking is tight as a drum. This works well as a one off, but is unlikely to last any longer than that.

In addition to this, you will also need a washing-up bowl, lots of scrap paper, letters and bills work best. Avoid shiny magazines and although newspapers work well, the ink does come through so you may need to add a little bleach to your pulp solution. Two tea towels, blender, rolling pin and a clothes iron.

To prepare the paper, either shred and rip the lengths into strips, or tare it into coin size pieces. Half fill the bowl with warm water and soak the ripped up paper for about an hour, then drain through a colander. Take out the blender and half fill it with water, and add a little of the pulped paper, taking care not to add too much in one go as it will just clump. Blend it until it is completely smooth without any lumps, adding more pulp little by little.

Meanwhile, rinse out the washing-up bowl and half fill it again with warm water. Slide in your deckle so it rests on the bottom and add a spray of laundry starch to help stiffen the paper. When the blending of your pulp is complete, pour it into the water and swish it around so it settles evenly and blend some more until you are happy that the amount in the bowl will create a single sheet. Swish the whole lot once more and let it settle (shake the deckle a little if you feel it is still not landing evenly), then carefully lift out the frame and rest it over the bowl to drain. When it has stopped dripping, gently press down with the tips of your fingers to help squeeze out any excess moisture.

Lay a clean tea towel over the deckle and place a plate on top of that, then twist the whole thing over the same way you would turn out a sponge. Remove the deckle and the plate so the tea towel is resting on a flat surface with the sheet of paper in the middle. Lay the other tea towel over the top and with a rolling pin roll the paper sandwich to clear as much water as possible, take the top tea towel away and let the paper dry for a good couple of hours. Don’t let it dry out completely, just until it’s mostly dry, and then iron it with a medium to low heat iron still with the tea towel as a backing. Leave it for twelve hours, and then peel it away from the tea towel. Again leave it for twelve hours, and there you have it, homemade paper.

If you are an incurable romantic and want to use your homemade paper to write a love letter, add a couple of petals or leaves for a girl, straw or herbs for a man, into your pulp at the blending stage after the pulp has been zapped and smooth.

Homemade greeting cards
In the UK alone it is estimated that a billion pounds each year is spent sending cards.
There are masses and masses of cards available, but none of them compare with a handmade card as any parent will testify the first time their little one hands them a card they have made themselves. Sending a homemade card says so much more than one bought from a shop.

Of course the best way would be to attach a sheet of your homemade paper to the front of a card so it sits in the middle and write you message on that.

Taken from my book - The Self Sufficiency Bible - Hundreds of ways to become self sufficient

Also check out our website www.hiddenvalleypigs.co.uk

It won't work!

2011-08-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

To everyone who's posted on my blog recently, just to say i've tried and tried and tried to put replies up, but it won't let me!

I thought it was this one particular computer that i favour, so i tried another. And another. None of them will let me.

It keeps chucking me back to sign-in. Stupid thing, i'm already signed in! I sign-in to access the blog in the first place! But i do as i'm asked, and sign-in again, and it takes me back to the publish comment point, and i do, i press the button, and it takes me back to sign-in again! Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

All i do is go around and around in circles.

Apologies if you've commented and i've not responded, it's not because i don't want to, it's because this stupid thing won't let me. But i will get it sussed. I will beat the machine. I will overcome the small mindedness of the Google Account that won't let me publish a comment. I will figure out what the hell i'm doing wrong and make it right.

I'm really very grateful for all comments, and i will get back to you as soon as i can.

Rant over.

Cheeky cheats chutneys

2011-08-03T02:24:00.000-07:00

I was listening to Desert Island Disks with Tony Robinson (Baldric in Black Adder) who said, I can achieve anything as long as i stay relaxed. Who could argue with Baldic?

Well hopefully, having met Shep and Jo a couple of weeks ago - two of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet, and so damn good at what they do - I'm hoping that i can stay relaxed on the radio this afternoon and not sound nervous. 4.30, the Shep and Jo show, BBC Radio Devon. You'd be insane to miss it!

This month we're going to be talking cheeky cheats chutneys.

Now is the season to be thinking about chutney making ready for the winter.

If you've got a glut, or overgrown veggies such as marrows, courgettes or stringy green beans (runner bean chutney is a real west country treat, and absolutely stunning!) then this is what you need to do. If you haven't got a veg garden, nip down to your local farmers' market. Most of us small producers (I sell pork at South Molton farmers' market every Saturday) haven't put our prices up for years, and on the whole we're cheaper than the supermarkets. There are some real bargains to be had, especially for vegetables right now.

Okay, cheats chutney. Now traditionally chutneys are boiled and reduced for hours and hours, which uses stacks of electric (or gas) and you're losing half of what you put in. However, cheats chutneys takes about 30 minutes and you get out what you put in. I'm all for cheating.

Oh, by the way, the runner bean chutney is coloured with Turmeric, so visually it's vibrant and a heart warming colour to cheer you up on gloomy winter days, but also Turmeric is a natural digestive, so it easies digestion.

Runner Bean chutney
You will need:

4-5 onions, peeled and diced
900g/2lb runner beans, diced
68oz/1.5lb granulated sugar
900mls/1.5 pints vinegar of your choice, for example malt or cider
1.5 tbsp turmeric
1.5 tbsp mustard powder
1.5 tbsp cornflour

Put the onions and beans in a stainless-steel pan of salted water and bring to the boil, then reduce and simmer until tender. Strain through a non metalic colander, allowing the mixture to drain well. Tip the mixture into a food processor and mince or pulse until it is chopped and mashed, but not puree. Return to the pan and add the sugar and 720/1.25 pints of vinegar. Bring to the boil and boil for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the turmeric, mustard powder and cornflour in the remaining vinegar and add gradually to the beans over a low heat, stir until mixture has thickened. Return to the boil for another 15 minutes, then leave to cool thoroughly before pouring into cold jars and sealing.

Will keep for about 2 years.

Spicy Marrow Chutney

1.3kg/3lb marrow, peeled, deseeded and cut into 1cm/.5in cubes (about 900/2lb prepared weight)
450/1lb tomatoes, skinned and quartered
450/1lb onions, peeled and chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
50g/2oz sultanas
1tsp ground allspice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
570ml/1 pint vinegar
680g/1.5 light soft brown sugar

Put the marrow, tomatoes, onions, garlic, sultanas, allspice and seasoning in a large stainless steel pan and stir in 425ml/.75 pint of the vinegar. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer until the marrow is tender. Remover the lid and continue to simmer to reduce the liquid. Stir in the remaining vinegar and the sugar and return to the boil, then simmer until the chutney is thick. Remover from the heat and cool thoroughly before spooning into cold jars and sealing.

Again, should last about 2 years.

It's all a very cunning plan...

Moving home

2011-07-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

All was quiet, tranquil and calm. I reached in and very gently picked up the hen. She had been sitting on eggs in the main chicken house and very cleverly hatched five chicks. Now she was off the nest and unsure where to settle had gathered her babies under her and plonked herself down in the doorway, which was hardly the safest place.

So I needed to move her. So I picked her up.

She screeched. She screeched and screeched and screeched and flapped her wings and went into complete chicken hysterical meltdown. Sometimes language is no barrier. It wasn’t hard to work out what she was screeching. She was calling for help. She was calling for lots of help.

She was calling for the police. She was calling for the army. She was calling for the air force, the navy, the cavalry and the gods of war. She was calling for a swat team and helicopters and napalm. She was calling for Heaven to rain down thunderbolts and Hell to rise up. She was, it’s fair to say, emotional.

The cockerel was the first to respond to his damsel in distress. He charged at me talons flying. I ducked and shouted at him. Then the goat joined in and attempting to protect me started trying to head-but the cockerel.

My dog was running round in circles barking, the hen screeching, the cockerel attacking me and at the same time fending off the goat, and the goat trying to head-but the cockerel.

Then the geese joined in. Geese love any excuse for a scrap. Good gander that he is, he stood to one side while his wife did the goose equivalent of taking off her stilettos and shouldering in, wings back, chest out, mouth open and tongue going nineteen to the dozen.

The hen was screeching, the dog barking, the cockerel attacking, the goat head-butting, the geese scrapping… and then the pigs joined in. Luckily they were in their pen to one side and couldn’t actually get over to us, but they showed their solidarity with their brothers and sisters against the evil oppressor, me, by charging up and down the fence line woofing and barking.

The crowd, any duffing of this magnitude always draws a crowd, consisted of the rest of the chickens and the ducks, who screamed and shouted and jumped up and down in excitement.

I kept hold of the hen. If I let go of her now, I’d have no chance of getting her again. I brought her up to my face to protect myself – this isn’t as cowardly as it sounds, using a female as a shield, as trust me nobody was going to mess with her, not even the geese – and stepped back.

It was carnage. Blindly I staggered through it and popped her into the broody-coop. I slammed the door. She went silent. I rushed back, scooped up the five babies and put them in with mum.

She went all mother hen and fussed over them, then settled down, quite happy, babies under her, a nice, new, safe, single-mother apartment around her, and looked out as if to say, I feel better now.

With the focus of the riot taken away, the rest of us shuffled our feet a bit then wandered off in different directions, hands in pockets, whistling. Only the goose remained, her hubby still off to one side while she screeched and strutted around the empty battlefield as though the whole thing had been orchestrated for her, and she wasn’t finished yet.

It’s true what they say, moving home is without doubt a stressful business.

Getting back to London

2011-07-03T00:23:00.000-07:00

I've become very bad at updating my blog lately, mainly because I'm desperately trying to write this book and at the same time keep all the magazine, newspaper and radio work going, not to mention the farm!

It is a lot of fun and i wouldn't change it for the world, but it is hard going sometimes.

However, I did manage to get back to London for a sneaky weekend.

“Can we take a pig with us, not one of the big ones, just, you know, one of the small ones?” I said, standing in front of our bed strewn with clothes, a half full suitcase on the floor.

“No.”

“How about Dex, can I take Dex?”

“Simon, shut up.”

Oh. In the twelve years since we left London to live on Exmoor, we’ve only been back together twice, both times for funerals, and the last one of those was seven years ago. Now, Debbie’s sister is getting married and we’re off to London.

I think I’m looking forward to it. I love my animals, but I haven’t had a single day off for eighteen months and I could do with a break. However I’m not sure I want to leave them. What if they forget me while I’m gone? Or I loose my position as leader, a tenuous state of affairs at the best of times? We’ve all read Animal Farm, what if the pigs revolt?

To keep control, I’m going to have to entrust the symbol of my office to another. The orchestral conductor has a baton, the judge a gavel, the train controller a whistle. I have a yellow bucket, and I shall pass it into the safe keeping of the one left in charge. That should cover it.

I rummage through the clothes on the bed for something of mine. I know what I want to wear. I’ve already picked my outfit. Black shoes, black trousers and a smart fitted shirt. Classic but dapper, with just a hint of cool dude.

I know what Debbie’s going to wear because she’s had the dress hanging up on the outside of the wardrobe for the past six months. It’s, er, long. Floor length. Kind of strappy, cut low front and back with muted colours of dark blue, rusty gold and light grey, and she looks beautiful in it.

After a week of solid work typing up the “How to,” and “What happens if,” manual list of instructions, I’m happy with the result. It’s always a worry of what to include and what to leave out. How in depth should I go without terrifying her of the possibilities? In the end I opt to include the chapter on, “What to do in case of a flood,” but leave out, “What to do in case of an attack by zombies,” figuring if the council don’t need to take precautions then neither do I. Besides, the pigs would probably eat them.

So that’s it, I’m off to party like it’s 1999. For a whole day and night, I’m going to be a human being, not the stressed out worry-wart dad to an odd crew of animals. It’s exciting. No welly boots, no mud, no screeching pigs desperate for dinner NOW! No driving around on a quad bike with rain pouring down my neck. No stampeding naughty horses. No chickens demanding attention. No goats to milk by hand. No killer geese. No stinky Dex. No flying head butts by the lambs. No aloof sheep.

No cats, no ducks, no great dane on the bed at night taking up all the room. No spending hours outside, no wood to cut for the fire to keep warm, no bread to make by hand. And no meat – away from home we eat vegetarian. Just human beings. Normal, everyday, human beings.

Mm, I wonder if I should lie when anyone I don’t know asks me what I do for a living? I could tell them I’m an estate agent! You’re right, maybe not. No, I’ll probably end up drunk in a corner slurring about how the General, a fifty stone pig, is my “Best friend in all the world.”

Yep, it’s time to go and embarrass the family.

And I promise to blog more.

Microwave crisps and home grown peanuts

2011-06-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's the scariest time of the month again, my little slot on BBC Radio Devon at 3.30 this afternoon.

Shep and Jo are allowing me on once again, this time to talk about microwave vegetable crisps and grow your own peanuts.

Microwave vegetable crisps
Take raw vegetables, something like parsnips, beetroot and carrots all work well, wash and then slice them thinly with a potato peeler. Dry them in kitchen paper, put them in a bowl and toss them in a little vegetable oil. Microwave on full power for about 2 minutes, depending on how many crisps you're doing. Season and eat - how simple is that?

Peanuts
Possibly the most confused plant out there is the peanut plant. It's the Platypus of the plant world. Technically peanuts (also known as monkey nuts) are not nuts at all, but part of the bean family, or Legumes, but they grow in a similar way to potatoes with the nuts forming under the surface amongst the roots. Confused? - you're not alone, so are they!

Growing them is really easy and lots of fun. Go to a health food shop and buy a monkey nut (a peanut with the shell on). Carefully peel away the shell to reveal the nut, and plant it in a wide pot about an inch under the surface. Pop it in a warm place, on a windowsill or in a green house, water well but allow good drainage.

The plant will grow, and flower, and little runners come back off the plant down to the soil surface again, where they burrow down and on the end of each one a new peanut will grow. It takes about 6 months, and when the bush looks to be dieing back and goes yellow, then the nuts are ready to harvest.

Lemonade and Ginger Beer

2011-05-03T02:26:00.000-07:00

I’m back on BBC Radio Devon http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/programmes again this afternoon between 16.30 & 17.00, chatting to the wonderful Shep and Jo, this time about traditional lemonade and ginger beer.

There’s nothing quite as refreshing as homemade drinks. They cost pennies, they’re natural without any additives or preservatives so they’re better for you, and they’re so simple and quick to make:

Traditional Lemonade

Juice of 5-6 lemons
3 tbsp granulated sugar

Put 1½ litres/2½ pints of water in a 2-litre/3½-pint bottle and add the lemon juice. Carefully tip in the sugar, then secure the lid and shake vigorously. Top up with water to the neck and shake again. Adjust the sugar and lemon to taste, if necessary. Chill and drink or pour over ice.

Ginger Beer/Ginger Ale

½lb fresh ginger
4oz Demerara sugar

Take the ginger and zap it in a food processor or grate finely. Place 2lts of water into a pan and add the ginger. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl, cover and leave for 24 hours. Strain into a clean drinks bottle and add 4oz Demerara sugar. Shake vigorously to dissolve the sugar. Adjust the sugar to taste, if necessary. Chill and serve or pour over ice.

For the alcoholic version with a fizzy kick:
Take the ginger and zap it in a food processor or grate finely. Place 2lts of water into a pan and add the ginger. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and cool to blood heat. Add yeast and sugar and stir. Store somewhere warm, adding a teaspoon of sugar and mixing everyday for a week. Strain into a clean drinks bottle with a screw-top lid and top up with water. Warning – this is VERY fizzy! Store outside (in case it explodes!) for 2-3 weeks and open with care. Chill and serve or pour over ice.

Cappuccino milk for the lambs

2011-04-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

And this week’s favourite animals are… (drum roll please)… The orphan lambs!

Yep, the orphans have arrived. Three very noisy, very pretty, very noisy, two day old girl lambs. Noisy girl lambs. Little orphan Annie’s (were there any girls in Fagin’s gang in Oliver? Other than Nancy, but she was more to do with Bill Sykes—

—There’s a lovely true story about that. At the time Charles Dickens was writing Oliver Twist he had a friend who was working at the Houses of Parliament as an artist. Anyway a squabble broke out between the artist and one of the MPs over a woman, and the MP got the artist sacked. When the artist relayed this to Dickens, Dickens said he would immortalise the scoundrel by naming a nasty character after him in the latest book he was writing. The MP’s name was Bill Sykes.)

Noisy orphan lambs…

The danger with bottle feeding lambs five times a day is it could send a man off balance for good. They’re far too cute, and the urge to talk in baby speak whilst leaning over them with both hands on knees, screeching “Iccle baby lamber-lambers!” is always there. A lesser man than me might succumb, and certainly all the females.

No, leave all that silly stuff to the girls. Silly stuff. Never catch me doing it. Of course I do have to speak to them, but I do it in a manly way, matter of fact, “Here is your breakfast, please do not slurp.”

Breakfast is a manic headlong rush. The lambs are in the stable next to the goats. I have to dash past the lambs into the goats, get Amber up onto the milking platform and milk her into a bucket. I have a jug and three bottles ready, and I milk her in three separate stages because the milk froths on top like a cappuccino and each bottle has to be the same. Besides, it’s how the lambs like it.

All the while there is utter bedlam from the lambs next door.

Now for the tricky bit.

I’ve a rack in their stable set at the right height from which the lambs feed. All I have to do is fix the bottles in there without trapping a lambs head, or leg, or ear in the bar that secures the bottles in place. Once the bottles are in place, then the bundle can begin.

They all scrum for the same bottle. I’m pulling lambs off and poking their mouths at a spare bottles, and they look like they’re going to go for it… and then they charge back so they can all fight over the same one again.

Eventually I get them all plugged in.

They are little sucking machines, and don’t stop for boring things like breath. Their tails wag, their little tongues poke out from beneath the teat and their tummies swell like a balloon being blown up.

The goats, now milked and free to wander out and about for the day, come over to investigate, and nudge them a bit with their nose. The lambs pay them no attention. The geese go by, the chickens pop in, the dog nips in and out and the sheep stand outside and stare. The lambs ignore the lot of them.

Breakfast is a very serious business you know.

When they’re done, they spend a pleasant minute head butting me affectionately on the leg, before cuddling up together in a corner where the sun pools in the mornings.

That’s how we do breakfast. And in a few hours, we’ll do the same again for lunch. And then the same again in the afternoon. In total, it’s five times a day.

One Year On

2011-04-06T23:41:00.000-07:00

A year ago this week my first book came out. I can say first because I've just signed a contract to write a second *jumping up and down like Lewis Hamilton on the podium, and looking pathetically happy!*. A lot has changed in that year. I feel like I've learnt so much, and i think I've changed a lot as a person too. Certainly all those years of wondering and worrying if it's worth pursuing the dream of getting published have been worth it, and just that in itself has a huge impact. The thing is, when you sign a contract to write a first book, from that second on you're fumbling in the dark. There's no president. The writing process, putting the manuscript together, send it off, the publicity, promotions, it's all new and you're just doing your best moment by moment. It's pretty scary because if you muck it up, that's it baby, you've blown your chance and there's no way back. I loved writing the Self Sufficiency Bible, but now i know a little more, I'm going to love writing this next one a whole lot more. The first chapter is already written (that's what the publisher bought), so I've eleven more to write, and i can't wait to get started. I feel like... you know the night before you start a new job, when you're anxious and worried, but excited at the same time? Well that's how i feel right now. I'll have a bath on Sunday night, iron some clothes, and on Monday morning, I'll start. At least i know the coffee will be okay.

Keeping cool and awake!

2011-03-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

I had never put everyone together in a field before. Never had the need. Until now.

I spent a day making the chicken field as safe as I possibly could, removing anything that wasn’t nailed down. By the time I’d finished it looked rather smart, certainly neater than it had in years.

First thing the following morning I took the horses Georgie and Alfie, the goats, the sheep, the chickens, ducks, geese, my dog, and of his own volition probably because he felt he’d be missing out otherwise, Niko the cat, and put them all in the one field together.

I’d kind of expected them to check each other out, to argue and generally misbehave, but what I hadn’t expected was how loud they’d be. It sounded like an orchestra tuning up, with loads of independent and unconnected sounds battling to be heard above the rest.

The geese screeched, the horses neighed through their noses, the cockerels crowed, the goats yelled, the ducks whacked, my dog barked, the cat fled and the sheep went for a lay down. And walking through the middle of them all was me, shushing.

Quite what I thought I was doing I have no idea. They didn’t pay me any attention anyway. But I’d become determined in my shushing. I was the boss of the field, I was in control. They should respect my shushing.

So I started yelling it, shushing at the top of my lungs. They didn’t go quiet, they just saw me a competition and got louder. Well two can play at that game. Just as we reached our crescendo, two trucks bumped down the path, parked up and disgorged men armed with chainsaws.

We all fell quiet and I leaned against a gate post, a vision of cool. If I’d had a piece of straw, I’d have chewed on it.

Several of the hedges around some of the other fields had sprouted trees big enough to threaten the electricity cable that ran above them, and they needed cutting back. These were the guys to take care of it. Four chainsaws started in unison – I could hardly hear the RAF jet flying overhead.

In our field we all kind of looked at each other, and with a collective understanding, thought no, we can’t compete with that noise. The ducks and geese wandered off to perform their morning ablutions in the stream, the horses found their hay, the goats went in search of something they shouldn’t eat, my dog found something smelly to roll in, and the chickens went off to lay an egg each.

The only one without anything to do was me. So I went and sat down. I knew I should be doing things, there was plenty to keep me busy. But somehow it’s hard to get motivated when there are others around you working. I kept telling myself that my little smallholding was only big enough for so much hard work, and that these guys were using it all up. There was no room left for anymore. So I sat there, sipping coffee from a flask and reading.

It was quite nice actually.

By midmorning I knew I was getting dangerously close to feeling sleepy. I’d done nothing more energetic than some enthusiastic shushing, but my eyes were feeling heavy and I couldn’t stop yawning.

By sheer force of will, I managed to stay awake until all the hedges were neatly trimmed, the chainsaws put away and the guys had left. Then I slumped down in some hay and fell fast asleep, not waking up until a chicken walked across my face.

Pandora - a warrior on her way to heaven

2011-03-12T09:42:00.000-08:00

In certain cultures, when someone important dies they tip back their heads and scream at the sky, not in grief, but in warning to the heavens that a warrior is on their way into their midst.

Late last night, I had to have one of my horses put to sleep.

I’d been in London at a meeting with a book publisher and caught the lunchtime train out of Paddington. The train was empty and fast, and even including a change at Exeter, I was still back in Barnstaple by four thirty.

Hungry and tired, I drove the twenty miles home as quick as I could. There’s nothing like reaching home after a stressy day, and even though it hadn’t been long since I’d seen my dog, he greeted me like I’d been away for months.

I heard the quad bike pull up outside and hoped Debbie would greet me just as enthusiastically. She did, but not in the way I’d thought.

“Pandora’s down!” Debbie yelled, even before she’d opened the door, the words pouring out so fast I could hardly catch them. “I thought she was laying down in the field but she wasn’t. She couldn’t get up. I got her up in the end and moved her away from the others into another field. But she went down again, and now I can’t get her back up!”

Still in my suit I threw on a coat, jumped into a pair of wellys and said, “Get help. Phone the vets. I’ll meet you down there,” as I ran out the door.

I found Pandy tangled against the fence almost upside down. She looked like a different horse, tucked-up and skinny – how can a horse suddenly look so skinny and frail? – and pasted head to food in thick mud.

Pandora came to us two years ago on loan as a companion for Georgie. Last week I introduced Alfie to them so they were a trio and they settled down into a comfortable routine. Georgie fell instantly in love with Alfie, and Pandy just let them get on with it. Pandy is around 30 years old.

With a friend we managed to get Pandy away from the fence, on her feet and smothered her in rugs to keep her warm. The vet arrived soon after.

The vet was wonderful, fussing and talking to her as he made his examination. There were a few problems and they were all related to old age. Still, never say never, he gave her some pain relief and left us for a couple of hours to see how she’d respond.

It was late. It was dark. It was cold and it was only fair the friends who’d rallied round went home. I was really grateful for their support.

So I stood with Pandy and talked to her, kept her alert and stopped her from going down. She even ate a little hay.

When the vet came back, it was clear the pain relief was wearing off and she’d deteriorated. It was just her time. She was old and tired and it was just her time. Earlier that day she’d eaten breakfast, was perky and happy and half a day later… If you’re going to go, and all that.

She slipped away just before ten with me and the vet talking to her, Dex my dog beside us, and an owl hooting in the distance.

I didn’t tip my head back and scream at the sky because I’m British and we don’t do that, but just the same, I want to warn the heavens that a warrior is on her way into their midst, and this warrior, this perky, brave little warrior, is called Pandora. Rest in peace baby girl.

Having Issues with the Disco

2011-02-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

It was spitting with rain, but after a while it stopped doing that and started raining properly. I pulled into the verge and began setting the Land Rover for bad weather, which involved hanging a bucket from the rear view mirror to catch some of the rain that leaked inside the car, and replacing the fuse for the windscreen wipers that had developed a habit of switching themselves on whenever they felt like it.

Then I set off again. Very slowly. The suspension had given up behaving itself and gone flop. Not all of it, the front was still okay, but the bum of the car was now only about an inch off the ground so driving it felt like I was doing a wheelie.

Pootling along at 15 miles an hour, I couldn’t help thinking evil thoughts about Auto-Slaughter, and GBH; Grievous Banger Harm. It was all I could do to stop myself from pulling over, grabbing a branch and giving the thing a Basil Fawlty thrashing, or driving a stake through its heart.

Vampire, that’s what it was. It sucked blood. Some cars are nice, and some are just downright nasty, and this one was wicked to the core. The radio hadn’t worked since the day we got it, the heated seat would only work on the hottest days of summer and was so pleased with itself it would ignore all attempts to turn it off, and the electric windows would only go down, not up.

Fill it up with diesel and you empty Kuwait.

I pootled on.

The windscreen had cracked in the snow, a big split from one side to the other. Vampire car—where was the heart of a car anyway? The engine? Probably. That’s where I’d drive the stake. Hammer it in, all the way in, in the… the… well under the bonnet in the big metaly bit. I’m not great with mechanics.

Didn’t Stephen King write about a possessed car? Christine, I think it was called. My lump of Land Rover certainly wouldn’t have a girl’s name. There was nothing pretty about this Disco.

I pootled on.

At one point I had a string of cars and vans and lorries behind me. Along a straight bit I hugged the side and let them all pass, ignoring all the irritated hand gestures.

The thing is I need a big 4x4. I need something that will go off road and onto my land, something that will tow the animals about. I guess as much as the Land Rover hates me, I hadn’t exactly been kind to it. It hadn’t had an easy life.

Still, I felt no sympathy.

It’s amazing how bouncy it gets without suspension. Hit a pebble any bigger than a marble and the whole thing shudders as though it’s driving over its own private earthquake. But worse, much, much worse, is when it hits a pot-hole.

I hit a pot-hole just at the moment a Police car overtook me. I’m pretty sure it’s not an offence to drive a knackered car, albeit a legal one, slowly to a garage, but it’s still a worry. They went past slowly and I tried hard to look relaxed, like I do this every day. Then two things happened simultaneously, I lifted my hand in friendly acknowledgement, and hit a pot-hole.

I rattled about that much I could have lost fillings. The Police continued up the road, probably too busy laughing to bother pulling me over.

Cursing the vampire car, I pootled on.

Making the garage in record slow time, I pulled in.

“Well, I’m not certain what’s wrong with it,” I stammered, unable to meet the mechanic’s eye, “but I don’t think it’s serious. Just needs a bit of TLC, and it’s such a good car, never lets me down.”

The General is home!

2011-02-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

I threw down the tailgate and announced, “Give it up and go nuts everyone, the General is back!” The General ignored me and so did all the rest of the pigs. He made his way out of the trailer and stepped into his old pen for the first time in more than a month, sniffed the air and ignoring the pigs and food in the middle set off on a reccy around the perimeter fencing.

Meanwhile I’d gone from a fine rendition of, The General’s Back in Town by Thin Lizzy to Robbie Williams Let Me Entertain You, mashing it up with some Wurzles I’ve Got a Brand New Combine Harvester. I was pleased to see him back if no one else was. I wanted them all to go mad but pigs can be very conservative at times. Unlike me.

Having lost my glasses the week before and now using an old pair with an old prescription that severely limited my eyesight, I was confident nobody was around to see me acting a fool, working on the ancient rule of if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.

Just as I reached the chorus, fifty stone of handsomeness sauntered along the last few feet of the perimeter and stopped in front of me. Truth is, I’d really missed him. He’s my mate and I’m his. While he was away I’d missed not being able to talk to him, not having someone with whom I could share how I was feeling and gossip about what was going on.

I guess we all need a confident and I felt comfortable with the General as mine. I stopped singing and larking about and went quiet. For ages we just stood next to each other. I put my hand on his shoulder and leant against him and he leant back. Then he wandered off.

He walked over to the group. It was dinnertime and they were tucking into pig nuts and barging one another about, which is normal. I try and limit competition for food by spreading it as wide as I can, but even so they’ll still congregate and argue over the same bit even though they’re surrounded by goodies.

The General didn’t bother eating. He just bumped into all of the pigs one by one in a kind of greeting, the way we might shake hands or hug.

Bump: Hey, General, you’re back!

Bump: Good to see you man, what’s happening?

Bump: Do you mind, I’m trying to eat my dinn—Oh, it’s you! How you doing General?

Pigs only have seven audible sounds with which they communicate, and they’re reserved for the big emotions, fear, food, sex, etc. Behind that, all the subtlety of conversation is conducted in body language. Pigs are masters of body language. Of course it’s all interpretation, but when you watch them communicate amongst themselves it’s laugh out loud funny.

I don’t know if he was seeking out Whinny, whom before he went off was his special girlfriend, or if she was seeking out him. But they found themselves together. She turned her back on him and he nudged her bum. She ignored him. He nudged harder. She still ignored him. When he went to walk off, she turned and charged and bit him on the shoulder. Hard.

He immediately went into full love seduction mode and she went, oh no, no, no, no, no! And bit him again. Then she started squealing and running away while looking back over her shoulder at him, and he lumbered after her. We were all pleased to see him home.

Shep & Jo BBC Radio Devon

2011-02-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

How is it possible to love doing something that makes you so nervous?

I’ve been lucky enough to get a regular spot on the radio talking about self sufficiency and giving fun tips. Yesterday was my first show.

I was on at five past four in the afternoon, so I started prepping for it about 10 hours earlier. I sussed out what I wanted to say and then paced the length of a marathon up and down my lounge as I rehearsed and rehearsed it. I desperately wanted it to come across as fun and interesting and witty, and I sounded great… right up until I went live.

The produce phoned me up and put me through to Shep and Jo, the presenters. We had a quick chat while some music was playing, and then they introduced me.

It’s like your brain splits in two. One half is concentrating on what you’re saying while the other half is kind of commentating, saying things like, ‘you’re live on the radio man, don’t mess this up… Oh! What did you go and say that for!... Don’t sound nervous, don’t sound nervous, DON’T SOUND NERVOUS! Ow, you’re sounding nervous…’

It’s really weird.

Shep and Jo are just so nice and so good at what they do. You don’t realise how clever and how much work goes into making the show sound so effortless and smooth until you’re part of it and get a tiny glimpse behind the scenes. I know with the writing, which is more of what I’m used to, to make it sound easy is actually really hard, and they do it brilliantly.

So next time I’m on will be the 1st March. I loved being on yesterday, really loved it and I can’t wait to do it again, and next time I won’t be so nervous!

Shep and Jo are on every weekday afternoon on BBC Radio Devon 103.4fm / 95.7fm and dab. Even if you don’t live in Devon, give them a listen.

I’m on the BBC iplayer for the next few days at www.bbc.co.uk/.../Shep_and_Jo_Part_One_Self_sufficiency/

Right, this media tart is off to muck out some pig poo. It’s a charmed life I lead.

Life

2011-01-26T00:17:00.000-08:00

I am listening to the most amazing autobiography by Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones. That man should not be alive; the things he's done! That's one wild, amazing man, and what i love about the book is it's so honest and frank, sure he's had some great times, lots of great times in fact, but he's been through hell too.

The book is an audio book, unabridged and read by Johnny Depp, this other guy who sounds like Keith Richards, and Richards himself. It's a great, great book.

I've started listening to a lot of unabridged books recently, and it's made a big difference to me mostly i guess because I'm out working on the farm a lot. I've got this old MP3 player and i download a book and it keeps me going. I'd be lost without it, to the point that I've become a champion for Audible, which is the audio book arm of Amazon.

As a champion i get to offer friends and people who know me a free audio book which you can't get through their regular site. Here's the link

www.audible.co.uk/championsd

If you can remember a time as a kid, walking to school and day-dreaming about buying a guitar and starting a band and getting a gig and touring and getting laid and having a wild time, then get Life by Keith Richards, because he did it for all the rest of us who went on and got boring jobs.

If that doesn't appeal, then i think there are something like 50,000 other titles to choose from - if you find a good one, please let me know.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

2011-01-19T00:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, to bring you up to speed with the story of the year so far…

Well, I kind of held off pitching articles out to magazines because lots of people fix their New Year resolution to becoming a writer, and editors are bombarded with article ideas in early January. So I held off for the first week. Since then I’ve pitched a few ideas and been commissioned to write three different pieces for three different magazines, so that’s okay.

I was on Radio 4 last weekend. It was a piece I recorded before Christmas for Open Country. I was bloody terrified, as you can hear at the beginning – or so I’m told, because I can’t listen to it, no way.

Here’s the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xgqwz/Open_Country_15_01_2011/

However, on the back of doing that, I pitched to BBC Radio Devon for a regular spot on their drive-time show to talk about self sufficiency and money saving tips and ideas, and only got it. So now I’m going to be on the Shep and Jo show on the first of every month.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005xcng

I’m currently stressing over two book pitches out with publishers. Serious finger crossing time!

I know this is just a fleeting overview of things so far, but combine them with the farm and animal work and it’s been a busy start and things don’t look like tailing off.

Rant against suckling pig

2010-12-21T00:13:00.001-08:00

Okay, stand by for a full on Kermodian-style rant…

It’s Christmas, I understand that. A time to enjoy all the things you’ve not had the money, or the time, or whatever, thought the past year. Let’s face it it’s a time of self indulgence, and on that level I’m all for it.

But where during the past year would anyone sit down and think, you know what, I’d love to eat a baby?

So why over Christmas would anyone want to eat a suckling pig?

I’ve been asked a dozen times in the past week to supply suckling pigs, two from really, really well known top London restaurants.

Do these people know what a suckling pig is? It’s a piglet under eight weeks old who’s still feeding from its mother. I would literally have to pull it off the breast, take it to the abattoir screaming, and have it killed – even the slaughter men hate doing it, and these are not squeamish boys.

God that’s barbaric.

And when that’s done, it would go off and be cooked. Okay this next bit is a guess because I’ve never eaten suckling pig on principle, but it’s an educated guess. It would be flavourless. The meat would have had no time to mature, intensify and develop any depth of flavour.

It might be tender, but any good cook can make pork tender, especially the pork I produce.

I rear my pigs to between eight months and a year old. They have a good, free range, happy life, without stress or fear, and plenty of time to develop a real distinctive porky flavour. To me, as a producer, that’s important.

However, the quality of the pork is incidental in this rant.

Come on, if you’ve a choice on the menu this Christmas, please pick something other than suckling pig.

So ridiculous, and yet so sensible

2010-12-02T01:33:00.000-08:00

I’d planned on a full day’s logging down on the land, and so went prepared with a flask and sandwich.

Last summer I had spent 6 weeks coppicing an area in the woods, and all the trees that I felled I cut into lengths and stored in a stable to dry-out for the winter.

Dry and seasoned, the wood was now ready to be chain-sawed into sections and split with an axe to the right size for our fire. Of all the non-animal jobs I do, this is by far the most important as we have no central heating, so the fire is our only source of warmth.

However, before I could begin, I had the normal rounds to complete. I let the chickens, ducks and geese out, fed and watered the pigs, put hay down the horses, checked on the sheep and goats.

Finally I was ready to start. After coffee.

I poured a cup from the flask and took a sip. It tasted bitter in the plastic mug, as though too much instant coffee had been used. To make matters worse, it was black. I tried another sip, but it was just too strong.

I needed milk.

All the milk at home comes from Amber, the goat, but she’s just gone down to a once a day milking in this cold weather, and that’s done in the evening. Still, no matter, I only needed a little squirt.
The goats love people and hang around like pet dogs whenever anyone’s there, so it was easy to sneak up behind her. Making a fuss I snaked my hand down, took hold of a teat, placed my cup beneath it and squeezed. And missed.

I watched the milk fire right down the side of my mug and splash on the floor. Bugger.

Wise to my plan and indignant that I should have been so forward and rude to have done it in the middle of a field, Amber gave a squeal and kicked out with her back legs before trotting away.

What I should have done was give up and drink bitter coffee. What I did was start a long campaign of subterfuge of which an M15 operative would have been proud.

I bluffed, double bluffed, even on one occasion triple bluffed until with immense satisfaction grabbed hold of the teat without her noticing what I was doing, and caught a huge squirt of milk right in the centre of the cup.

Amber huffed and trotted away (if she really didn’t like what I was doing, then she could easily withhold her milk so I knew she was only mildly pissed off at me). I tipped the milk into the flask and gave it a shake.

It wasn’t until I took a sip (it was lovely, like having cream rather than milk) that it dawned on me how odd it was to have squirted milk directly from the udder into a coffee and drunk it.

Prisoner, cell block pig

2010-11-15T23:37:00.000-08:00

Don’t you hate it when you’re having a conversation and the other person drops a bombshell, and they know it’s a bombshell but they act as though they were doing nothing more innocuous than commenting on the weather, or worse, when they sneak it in with a whole load of other stuff so you have to replay it in your mind to see if they actually said what you think they said?

“Yes, of course we’ll have to go shopping at the weekend,” Debbie said, hand on hip standing in the kitchen. “Also got to drench the sheep this week – have we got drench or do we need to buy some? I can’t remember. What book are you reading, I saw you reading something new? You know you can’t go back to London, the farm’s too big for me to do it on my own now. What do you want for dinner?”

She turned away and started fumbling with some washing-up. She probably hadn’t stopped talking, but I had stopped listening. I had to, I couldn’t listen and rewind at the same time.

I rewound, and in my mind I heard her voice again, “You know you can’t go back to London, the farm’s too big for me to do it on my own now.”

I felt poleaxed. “Are you serious?” I said.

She turned back, her face a question.

“About London,” I said. “I can’t go back?”

She looked sad. “I’m sorry, there’re too many animals and I’m just not strong enough to do them on my own.”

I go to London—had been going to London—about half a dozen times a year, just for a day or two at a time to see family and catch-up. I like the contrast, plus it gives me a chance to dress up smart with shoes and everything, and talk city speak about business.

“How’s business?” I’d say, and promptly switch off and start thinking about home, because that’s the other thing about London, it makes me miss home and realise all over again how lucky I am. Debbie knows this.

“You can still miss the place and me while you’re here,” she said.

“No I can’t. How can anyone miss something while they’re doing it?”

She shook her head. “You’re such a man.”

I wandered off, determined to be anything but a man. I’d be a child; I wanted to be a child! I felt a tantrum coming on, a really big one followed by a really long sulk.

I could never leave the farm again. Never. I was trapped like a prisoner! A prisoner on my own land. The animals weren’t my friends, they were fellow inmates!

I went upstairs and grabbed a pair of work jeans and a magic marker and set about drawing arrows down the legs, but stopped after the first one and stood staring out of the bedroom window instead.

No more London. I’d never see my mum again, or my brother, or anyone. I loved my pigs and the animals, but the thought of seeing only them for the rest of my life filled me with a sense of loneliness so profound it felt like another being in the room.

Then the being spoke, and I nearly jumped out of my skin until I realised Debbie had followed me in.

“So, have you reached the point where you’re never going to see another living sole as long as you live, yet?”

I didn’t answer.

“We just need to put some systems in place so it’s a little easier for me to do on my own,” she said. “It wouldn’t take much, and then you can go back to London again.”

I nodded, but the childish tantrum hadn’t finished and I wanted to stamp my foot and yell, but I want to go now!

One amazingly lucky piglet

2010-11-07T01:14:00.000-07:00

Some piggy mothers are just clumsy. I see them kick and tread and lay on their young, not out of spite, but just because they’re in the way, as though they haven’t quite tuned into their babies. All the outer signs of mothering are there, it’s the other ones that are missing, the ones that are more difficult to describe but can pretty much all be filled under the heading, ‘bonding’. They love them, but they don’t bond with them.

Luckily Mother Nature has done a bit of forward planning in this department and built piglets like Tonka Toys. Once the babies are a few days old, they’re solid little bruisers and it’s rare to have problems, which probably means when you do get a problem it’s much more of a shock.

I found a piglet lying dead in the straw.

Mother and siblings were at the other side of the pen munching the dinner I’d just tossed in for them when I noticed the little black body. He was at the bottom of a furrow shaped like mum and the assumption was he hadn’t got out of the way quick enough when she’d lain down.

Whenever anything dies it’s always the same sudden feeling and I hate it; it’s like my entire insides are yanked out leaving a vast Tardis-like expanse that’s icy cold. It’s the worst feeling.

I climbed over the gate. There was little point in rushing. I could see his head squashed and his tongue sticking out between tiny pin teeth. I picked him up. He was warm, but then he would have been with a 40 stone mum lying on top of him.

I climbed back out and sank down next to a straw bale, cuddling him to my chest and telling him I was sorry. I told him I wished I could have been there to help him, and I stroked him and held him and stroked him some more, and brushed his little face with my finger and touched his little tongue, and as I did he opened his eyes and looked at me.

Okay, first reaction was to throw him on the floor, which was stupid but it was like having a ghost wink at you. When I recovered I said, “Blyme boy, are you still alive?” which was probably just as idiotic.

I kept cuddling him trying not to laugh so he wouldn’t bounce up and down on my chest. Bit by bit I could feel him recovering, and marvelled at how tough these little guys really are. I thought back to the mum shaped dent in the straw and figured the way the straw had been compacted she must have been there for at least half an hour.

He could only have been minutes away from dying, possibly less. For me to come along right at that moment, with the feed so that mum got up, was so lucky.

There were no broken bones, but the obvious worry was brain damage from oxygen starvation.

I tried to think of what I should be looking for, but without any understanding or training I had no idea, so I just tried to look for anything unusual. First I grabbed a can of antiseptic purple spray from the side and put a line down his back so I could pick him out, then put him on the floor.

Mum was back lying on her side with all her piglets plugged in. He marched over and hooked straight onto a teat. He seemed fine.

Mum groaned and kicked her feet out, but none of them detached. Then, little by little, the babies began drifting off to sleep still plugged in. The last one to drop off was the one with the line down his back, without which I’d never have been able to pick him out.

Published in The North Devon Devon Journal in my weekly column.

Cuddling up with the General

2010-10-26T05:37:00.000-07:00

It was that early in the morning it was still dark. I crouched down on all fours and peered into the General’s house. I could just make him out laying sprawled on one of his gigantic sides taking up half the pig ark, and beside him the shapes of three other pigs.

My first thought was to wake the lazy pigs up, bang on the tin roof and yell that I had breakfast and it was a lovely morning and what on earth were they still doing in bed? But I didn’t. I did the opposite. Without thinking, I crept in.

I crawled through the straw careful to avoid bumping into the sleeping group until I was behind the General. Then I lay down next to him, put him arm over his shoulder, and spooned into a cuddle behind him.

It was warm and the air smelled of fresh straw and that kind of musky scent of pig. It’s not unpleasant. He wriggled a bit as he got used to my body behind him, and then fell still.
I felt small in that way you sometimes feel small when you look up at the stars on a really clear, really dark night. Small not because it seems so big, but small because you feel so close and kind of surrounded. Small in the comforted sense of the word.

I guess I did feel comforted. Since my first pig Kylie died, I’d become really good mates with the General. We kind of hung out together, nothing excessive, just when I went down to feed I’d spend a bit of time with him. I liked to tell him what’s going on with everyone on the farm, and I swear he likes to keep up with the gossip.

Laying there listening to the General and the three snore and shuffle about in their sleep, it was like I was a kid again and having a sleep-over with my friends. I thought of the last sleep-over I had before reaching the age where it became un-cool, probably about nine or ten. I thought about camping trips with the school. I thought about—wooh! One of the pigs let out the most violent wind that smelled like it had been trapped for some considerable time in the folds of Satan’s underpants. Yep, just like camping with the school.

Outside it was beginning to get light. I’d come down early to feed so I could get on with the day. I stroked the General’s side. I had loads to do, loads to be getting on with. I stoked him some more. I should get up. I let my eyes slip closed. My last thought before I drifted off to sleep was that I really, really shouldn’t have closed my eyes.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I grabbed my head and ducked.

“Simon!” Debbie yelled.

Confused. Banging. Lots of noise, keep down - hang on, where am I—oh.

I opened my eyes. The pigs had gone. I was alone in the ark. In the doorway Debbie stood staring in. She didn’t look happy. I struggled up onto my knees and smiled. “Morning,” I said.

She rolled her eyes and looked like she wished she’d had the presence of mind to bring a rolling pin. “I’ve been worried sick,” she said.

Beside her the General poked his head around the opening. I gave him a look like, you could have woken me!

“And you needn’t look so pleased with yourself,” she told him, swiping him on the neck. He made a Mm sound and wandered off. Looking back she said to me, “you left a sack of feed outside. Between the four of them they’ve scoffed nearly all of it. Simon, it’s nine o’clock!”

I rolled back into the straw. “I can explain,” I said.

Two cooking books to review

2010-10-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

Just received two stunning cooking books to review for magazines, but it seems churlish not to yell about them a little bit here first!An exciting cookbook from one of Britain's landmark meat-free restaurants http://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Friends-Modern-vegetarian-cooking/dp/1906821542/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287408191&sr=1-1

and,

a beautiful, arty, coffee table cookbook http://www.diningcity.nl/toscanini/en/index.php

As soon as i know when the reviews are to be published, I'll put up here the magazines and newspapers they'll be in.

Rant without a cause

2010-10-13T01:30:00.000-07:00

I like my life, and sometimes that’s a problem. I want to rant, I’m a man for God’s sake! Men rant and shout and yell at the injustices of their life. I want to be one of those. Not all the time, but every now and then. Like now.

I want to stand on my own private soap box and yell out at the world that it’s not bloody fair!

Trouble is I’ve got a really good life and I’m ever so happy. But it doesn’t stop me wanting to rant! I’d scream at the football, only I don’t like football.

So I yell at the pigs – not AT the pigs, at the pigs; they’re my audience, not the subject matter. I yell and they gather around me and I tell them that, “It’s not fair!”

Of course it’s all rubbish. There’s nothing in my life that’s unfair at all. I’m the luckiest person I know. But that hardly seems relevant.

“It’s not fair!” I yell.

Pigs are a great audience. They don’t care how weak the content of your rant as long as it’s passionate. They do like a passionate speech.

When I get going I’m like a cross between Michael Macintyre and Winston Churchill, skipping round the pig pen shouting, “We’ll fight them on the beaches, Come On…”

I can see the beach from here, though quite who I’d fight on Lynmouth beach in the middle of winter I haven’t quite worked out. It’s not renowned for invading marauders, though there was talk once of setting up a ferry service across from Wales.

I’m a ranter without a cause. A freelance ranter. If my life was horrible, I’d be brilliant. People would flock from near and wide to hear me moan. The fact that I’m happy is a loss and a tragedy!

“It’s not fair,” I yell again. I’m loosing my audience. One of the pigs has wandered off to eat a tree, and the others are weighing up whether to watch him or stick with my, It’s Not Fair speech. They wander off.

So I’m alone. That’s okay. A man can rant alone, in fact that’s when we’re at our best. I might even be able to work that into the speech.

But I don’t. Truth is a rant is like a magic trick, there’s no point to it if there’s nobody to watch you. I stuff my hands into my pockets, hunch my shoulders and wander over to join the throng surrounding the tree munching pig. I really need to get out more.

Feeling for Edwina

2010-10-05T21:52:00.001-07:00

Autumn will forever more be known as the Masterchef time of year. There's Masterchef Australia with its maddeningly catchy theme tune, Masterchef the Professionals, Masterchef for kids - we're inches away from Masterchef for Poochy Pets.

Then suddenly from the heat of the complicated kitchen, comes the prospect of 'Egg Week'. A whole week dedicated to eggs. Seven days to celebrate the beautiful simplicity of this little package of gorgeousness, all neat and tidy in a delicate shell.

Scrambled, boiled, poached, fried, scotch eggs, egg mayonnaise...

With near fifty free range chickens to my name, I should be jumping for joy at the egglicious prospects, for there is no better way to start the day and we should all be going to work on an egg. And here lies the problem.

I can't help thinking of Edwina Curry. Eggs make me think of Edwina Curry.

Here's a lady who entered politics, we would like to think, to make a difference and do something special, and yet we remember her for claiming that eggs give you salmonella poisoning and could wipe out the UK in a single Sunday morning fry-up, and then shagging the greyest man in the country.

I wonder if Edwina will enjoy a little egg this week?

Meet the goats

2010-09-26T00:24:00.000-07:00

I've got loads to tell

2010-09-20T00:45:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since my last blog, but things have been pretty manic with the farm and the writing.

It does feel very much like things are progressing. On the writing side I've been talking to the assistant editor of the Sunday Telegraph and it's looking very promising that I'll be writing a few freelance pieces for them, which is really exciting.

Lots of magazine work is coming through and i do seem to be very lucky that the work is rolling over. Saying that though, i sent a piece in to the Exmoor Magazine yesterday and realised that's the last deadline i have, which is kind of scary.

I pitched a couple of ideas out this morning (Christmas ideas, oh yes it's that time of year again!), so hopefully something will come of that.

Had a very surreal moment yesterday when needed a photograph for an article I'd written of a Gloucester Old Spot pig under a tree, something very specific but also something i couldn't do because i don't have GOS pigs, so i tweeted for help and ended up messaging Liz Hurley as apparently she keeps them.

My pigs are Berkshires, and at the moment they are somewhat confused Berkshires as i have introduced a new animal onto the farm. I've got goats!

This is Bee...

And this is Amber.

I'm hand milking Amber twice a day and getting about 4 pints. As you can imagine I'm now cooking and making every milk dish in existence, from ice-cream to live bio-yogurt, butter and mashed potatoes to a creamy curry. I get quite excited if i find a recipe that needs milk!

The idea is we'll be completely self sufficient in dairy. It's also a lot of fun to hand milk, and will be a good thing to teach on the smallholding courses we run.

Big bums are very warming

2010-08-25T23:25:00.000-07:00

Is a big bum better than a tiny bum? Ah, it’s one to ponder. Certainly for a lot of the animal kingdom, big is better. Take sheep, you’re standing in the middle of a cold, windy field and it starts raining. You might think of finding some shelter. You might think of finding a tree. You might even think of finding a hedge. Mostly you’ll be turning your back to the worst of the weather and trying to work out if the surface area of your own behind is big enough to act as a shield.

Personally, if I was a sheep, I’d be one of the driest in the field. I’d probably even have bad weather friends who’d congregate around my head to stay dry and warm; throwing the odd leg out halfway through the night when they get too hot.

Animals don’t have to worry about fitting into a pair of jeans and having a nice shape. What they want are big friends that they can cuddle up to at night. In the winter I pack my chicken sheds tight so the birds are snuggled together. Same with the pigs, though I do have a worry over one little girly pig.

Pigs get up at dawn, mooch about for a couple of hours, and then go back to bed during the day. Very Spanish siesta.

I do all the maintenance work on the pig pens at siesta time because it’s far easier to get anything done without a clump of pigs helping by trying to eat the hammer, or the saw, or me.

Shammy sow is in with a group of five adolescents. Shammy is a I’m-taking-no-nonsense-and-if-you-upset-me-I’ll-put-my-nose-under-your-belly-and-flip-you-a-summersault kind of mum. Adolescents need a firm trotter, and she gives it. Only, with one of her kids I’m worried she might have gone too far.

When I’m down there working they’re all asleep together in their house. All except one, this little girly pig. She sleeps outside, and I don’t think it’s through choice, I think Shammy won’t let her in, and I don’t think she’ll let her in because she snores.

She can’t help it. It’s not her fault. But it is bad.

I can hear it from the other side of the field. She sounds like a very low flying, stuttering, propeller aeroplane. Only louder. It must be awesome when she’s actually in the house, a house that’s made from acoustically perfect corrugated iron.

Yet she’s seldom in there. Most of the time she’s just outside it, which has been fine throughout the summer, in fact a lot of them sleep outside on the cool earth when it’s hot, but now it’s turning towards autumn I’m getting worried for her.

The way I see it I’ve got two choices, I can either try and cure her snoring, or find her another house. I’m not keen on finding her another house as I don’t want her to be on her own and lonely, so I Googled, Herbal Remedies for Snoring. I didn’t mention it was for a pig.

The first hit recommends you avoid smoking (she doesn’t), limit alcohol intake (mm, as far as I know, but she is an adolescent), sleep on her side (she does), aromatherapy (!), and losing weight.

I could cut her feed back, but she’s got such a big gorgeous bum on her I’m reluctant to put her on a diet.

So I’ve decided to build a lean-to on the house. Actually it’s more of a conservatory as the roof is an old double glazed window, but the wall is solid. It’s not going to be as good as sleeping inside the house, but it’s far better than being completely outside. And besides, her big bum should help keep her toasty warm.

The worry of working a smallholding alone

2010-08-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

It’s so stupid. Really, really stupid. But I’m… I don’t know. Not in trouble, not exactly, but not far off. Okay yeah I’m in trouble. I’ve got myself into this mindset and I can’t find a way out of it. Look, this is making no sense, so I’ll give you the bones and then try and work out what the hell’s going on.

Debbie developed this bad shoulder and she’s had some injections into the joint to try and help it, and then I nipped off to London to see my mother for a day, one day, that’s all, and left her with the farm. She did the rounds of the animals, and ripped her arm again. It’s as bad as it ever was.

I feel guilty because I left her, like it’s my fault, and I feel bad that she’s trying so hard to carry on around the home when clearly she’s in pain - though she can’t do the animals - and I worry about her, I worry about her a lot. But that’s not the problem. That’s not why I’m in trouble.

I’m in trouble because, and this sounds so stupid, I’m in trouble because with Debbie out of action I’m worried I’ll get injured and then neither of us will be able to do the animals, and the more I worry, the more I seem to keep hurting myself. Last night I pulled a muscle in my leg climbing over a fence. The night before I twisted awkwardly and caught my back. The night before that, the chainsaw kicked-back and smashed into my shoulder.

They’re not major, but it just seems every day there’s something. I’m trying so hard to be careful, but every day I end up feeling bruised and kind of beaten-up. But it’s not the physical thing I’m worried about. It’s who would look after the smallholding if I was out of action as well as Debbie. Not, you know, major or long term, something could be worked out for that, I mean an emergency day. A day neither of us could.

There’s nobody around here who can do the feeding and watering of the animals other than Debbie and me.

It makes me feel, kind of alone and kind of vulnerable. I’ve never felt vulnerable before, not really, and I don’t like it. There’s other stuff too. It also makes me feel angry. I’ve no idea why it makes me feel angry. The closest I can get is when I feel vulnerable there’s also this sense of feeling weak, and feeling weak is horrible, so, I guess, I’m smothering it with the opposite extreme and getting angry.

But it’s an odd kind of unfocused anger. Anger for the sake of being angry. Angry so that I don’t feel vulnerable, which of course I still do, so I just get angrier. It’s weird.

It’s all internal, I’m not punching walls or anything stupid like that. I just feel tense and on edge and angry, and the more I feel like that, the more I seem to injure myself, and the more I injure myself, the more worried I get, and the more worried I get, the more vulnerable I feel, and the more vulnerable I feel, the more angry I get. It’s a circle, but it’s a circle I can’t break out of at the moment. It’s horrible.

I know I just need to calm down and relax about it. I’m trying to. I’m trying to.

It comes to us all. Ish.

2010-08-17T00:22:00.000-07:00

So I got out of the shower and towled down in front of the mirror thinking, you know, I might have put on a little weight, maybe gone up a jeans size, but it’s okay. It’s not a bad look. Not a bad look at all.

For a while my old 32” jeans had been, shall we say, a little snug. Even a bit Freddy Mercury, and I noticed I had been approaching the point where I had to throw my leg over the quad bike with more and more care.

Then a few days ago I’d been doing something particularly messy, probably involving the back end of a sheep, certainly the back end of some animal, and ended up changing three times that day, which meant I’d run out of work jeans. Desperate, I found an old pair stuffed at the back of the wardrobe still in the bag.

They were a pair Debbie had bought at some ridiculous knock-down price, something like two quid, and although they were a size too big, she said I could wear them on the farm with a belt.

I said thank you, but knew I’d have to be screamingly desperate to wear them.

I was screamingly desperate.

I put them on.

Oh. Oh, they were like slippers on tired feet after a long day. Man I could move. I felt younger, fitter. I honestly felt like I had more energy. I wasn’t tired, I was nineteen again. Oh!

I approached the quad bike and leapt on with all the abandon of Zoro leaping on the back of his horse.

So I’ve gone up a jeans size. I kind of feel okay with that, I think. Once you’ve made the decision, then it’s easier to accept. Something inside your head changes too, or maybe it’s your eye sight, I don’t know. I now believe a little extra covering on a body is good, healthy, sexy, and, um, will help keep me warm in the winter. That’s it, I’m preparing my body for winter. I’m not fat, I’m a boy scout, always prepared. Just, a, slightly, older, boy scout.

So pleased - Guest blogger Feltmaker

2010-08-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

Frances Barker is in thrall to felt. In her Suffolk home there is an abundance of wool in various stages of being washed, carded, dyed and worked into hats, boots, and other functional, as well as decorative items. "I enjoy getting lost in the possibilities that felt provides. Some soap, water, friction and a little sheep's fleece are the foundations for an incredible textile that can be gossamer fine or thick enough to act as armour".

Felt is made when wool meshes with itself. It isn't a woven or knitted fabric; but relies upon the little scales on the wool fibre entangling with each other. To encourage this process along, the felt maker wets the carefully laid out layers of wool and rubs soap through them. Then the resultant soft felt is shrunk (fulled) to size, usually by rolling it in a bamboo blind.

Frances is in her final year of a city and guilds programme and although she is sometimes lured into spinning some of her wool stash, it is always the felt that she returns to. "Spinning is fun, but felt is faster. I can make a felted hat in a day, it would take me far longer than that to spin and knit one!".

At one point Frances was felting so much that she hurt her shoulder and it looked as though she might have to give up her precious pastime. Undeterred she turned to her washing machine to do the hard work. Wool as a fibre, shrinks dramatically as anyone who has accidentally washed a pure new wool jumper on a hot wash can testify. By carefully shielding the soft felt, the machine can achieve the shrinking, leaving more time to lay out more wool.

"I've noticed that some of the coarser natural wools do very well in the machine. This means that I can source my materials closer to home, which is good news for both producer and makers".

Felt is fantastic fun, if you ever get the chance to, then try it.

Check out more of Frances Feltmaker blogs at feltingneedle.blogspot.com

Thoughts from a newish author

2010-08-11T01:27:00.000-07:00

So my book has been out for a little over four months now. I was toying with the idea of writing a blog entitled 10 mad things authors do when they have a book out, like a funny list, and I started writing it, laughing and shaking my head as I typed. I was getting on quite well and it wasn’t until I finished number 5 that I started wondering if it was possible these were things only I did?

Mm, Number 6 – Paranoia.

Take Amazon for example. I check my book three of four times a day minimum, 1. To make sure it’s still there, 2. To check the ranking (though I have absolutely no idea how the ranking process works or what it means and I seem to bounce between 4,000 and 100,000 – though I’m guessing the former is better than the latter), and 3. To check where other books are that are similar in the ranking system that doesn’t mean anything anyway (though I then have to click lots on mine just in case I have given my competitors extra points by clicking on there’s).

But it doesn’t end there.

You can do an advanced search. You can type in the publisher, and then hit ‘Bestsellers’ and see where you come in the mysterious ranking system there. I was number 1 for a while, now I’m number 5. I carry on through the list, down the pages until I come to the book that was released at the same time as me. This sounds terrible, and I can’t believe I’m confessing it, but sometimes (often) if there’s a big gap between us and the other book is way down the list, I give a little yeah fist in the air. I can’t help it.

I’m not even competitive, and now I’m getting excited if I’m doing better than a book that’s nothing like mine in a ranking system that makes no sense and means nothing.

I never click on their book.

Then there’s twitter. I’m new to twitter, having avoided it mainly because I had no idea what it was all about and felt it would take far too much time to figure it out. I avoided it for two years, then spent an hour figuring it out.

It’s seriously addictive. I follow Stephen Fry, obviously, and as many writing related twitters that I can find. I even won a new release book from an Ebury Press tweet, how cool is that! (Will read and review right here in a week’s time.)

I like the different ways publishers and writers push their books—what’s the difference between a publisher and a writer? A publisher promotes books, where as a writer promotes blogs and websites.

I’m the same. I drawl in admiration when I find a writer who’s got more than a 100 followers to their blog. Now that’s a ranking that I can understand.

Unusual dinner friends

2010-08-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

You know what it's like when you go out to a dinner party and get stuck next to someone you're unsure about? Well spare a thought for my horse, bless her.

Homemade oak spoon

2010-08-06T23:55:00.001-07:00

I quite like this. It's an oak spoon i made for a friend's birthday with wood from our land. The spoon next to it is a desert spoon. I put some olive oil on it and it really brought out the grain of the wood. I hope she likes it.

Beautiful, majestic stag

2010-08-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

Quick video taken last night of an absolutely stunning stag in my top field.

This is how it feels...

2010-08-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life on the farm feels like one gigantic revolving door, the type you used to get in swanky hotels, where lots of people would crowd into a sweaty cheese shaped compartment and shuffle, very slowly round until the gap was big enough for them all to tumble into the foyer. The farm may not have a foyer, but that doesn’t lessen the tumble, they just hit mud as opposed to posh Italian tiles. But just as the first group are tumbling in, unseen on the other side are another group falling out.

Ten new point of lay chickens arrived on Saturday, and on Monday two of the old flock died and a duck went missing. Then a pig gave birth to a piglet. A piglet. One. Pigs are supposed to have about twelve and she had one. And it’s tiny, honestly it is the world’s smallest pig. Running next to mum it looks like a spider. Okay maybe my revolving door theory falls down a bit here, but in my eyes one pig came in and eleven others refused to enter.

Actually it’s the duck that’s got to me. I’ve known her since she was an egg. She was a Valentines Day presents for Debbie a couple of years ago. I’d got three for her, and now we’re down to two, which is really confusing because they go everywhere together. They’re never apart. If a fox got one, you’d have thought it would have got them all. I’ve seen otters around, would an otter take a duck?

The river that runs along side the farm is the West Lyn, and whilst you couldn’t exactly go white water rafting along it, it can become quite bolshie, and over the years has eroded away the riverbank causing trees and bushes to sag down into the water. Maybe the duck got tangled up and trapped?

I’d never walked the riverbed before, in fact I hadn’t seen most of it. All the fields that back onto the river are edged with banks and trees to stop the stock from escaping, and me from peering over. I can get down to it at the far end of the farm, but other than that there simply is no other access. Not keen on walking all the way down and then all the way back up, I decided to start at one end by nipping across a neighbour’s field, which, incidentally, is the favoured approach of the ducks too. The river is about ten foot wide and from what I could see, varies in depth between a couple of feet and a couple of inches. The plan was to stay on the couple of inches part.

I waded out in welly boots and began walking up stream. I had no idea the river twisted and turned quite as much as it did, and within a minute could no longer see where I started. I discovered waterfalls I never knew existed, crystal ponds and clever dams. And I also discovered bones. Not duck bones, but very white bones none the less. It was quite eerie, especially as I have this terribly inventive imagination, and couple that with a heightened sense of cowardice I’m quite capable of spooking myself anywhere, and the only times I have ever come close to rolling the quad bike is when I’ve been convinced there’s a Scooby-Do ghost hand behind me reaching out for my collar.

The bones were old and undoubtedly sheep, but I lost interest in staying dry and splashed all the way to the end. I didn’t lose interest in looking for the duck, but I didn’t see anything that resembled her either. She was gone. But I do have the last fertile egg she laid. Maybe, just maybe that revolving door is still turning.

Dressing down is the new dressing up at 2am

2010-07-28T04:11:00.001-07:00

Unless you’re lucky enough to be newly in love, under eighteen, or some sort of night worker, there is no dread deeper than the 2am phone call. Good news does not come at 2am. That’s the bad news hour, with conversations that start, ‘I’m sorry,’ or, ‘I don’t want to worry you, but…’

I blinked at the mobile in my hand without even remembering reaching for it. The word DEBBIE shone out in the darkness and some idiotic ringtone split the silence. I pressed the green button, noting the time and feeling an iceberg form in the pit of my stomach. ‘Darcy’s escaped,’ Debbie said.

Fumbling about on the bedside table for the nightlight, not used to the layout of my mother’s spare room, I sent pictures and nick-knacks tumbling to the floor before I found the switch.

‘Okay, that’s not a problem,’ I said.

‘Yes, yes it is a problem. Did you hear me, Darcy’s escaped.’ Darcy, twelve stone of lolloping Great Dane dog and the world’s biggest baby. Untrainable, unpractical, unintelligent, and utterly adorable.

‘Where are you?’

‘On the land, just walking past Kylie’s enclosure. I think she’s asleep, does that mean Darcy hasn’t been past here? Oh, I think I might have woken her up. Hello sweetie.’ I could hear the pig snorting and snuffling in the background and imagined Debbie shining a torch into her face. Yep, that’d wake her up.

‘Darcy!’ she yelled. I did that stupid pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it rudely thing. Then I lifted it back. ‘Can’t you shout quietly?’ I complained. ‘Or at least move the phone when you do.’

‘Sorry. What am I going to do? I can’t see him anywhere. It’s not so bad if he’s contained on our bit, but what if he gets out? You know how soppy he is.’ Actually I was more concerned he might get tangled up in one of the electric fences, or find himself face to face with General Lee the boar, but I kept that to myself.

‘I think he must have gone out the end path. I bet there’s a bitch in season somewhere in Barbrook and he’s gone after her,’ she said. ‘The thing is, I’m not sure I can go out there.’

‘Why not?’

‘I was in bed. Darcy said he needed to go and it was urgent. I wasn’t expecting to go traipsing through the streets.’ She sighed, ‘I’m only wearing wellies and a coat.’

I started laughing. ‘You’re joking?’ Silence. ‘You’re not joking,’ I laughed even harder. Then I put on a mock stern voice, ‘Mr Dawson, we’ve arrested your wife for streaking through the centre of town.’

‘I’m not streaking, I’m decent. I’m just not fully decent. Besides it’s two in the morning, who’s going to know? Oh damn it, I’m going to have to go and find him, hang on.’ The sound of her footsteps changed to a slap-slap sound. I guessed she was now walking along the pavement.

‘Isn’t it a bit chilly?’ I asked.

‘Shut up. Wait, I think I’ve seen him. Yes, oh no, he’s in the petrol station.’ Then very quietly, almost a whisper, she called, ‘Darcy, here boy.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Sssh. Hiding behind a bush. Darcy, come to mummy.’

‘But the petrol station’s closed.’

‘They don’t turn the lights off, and I bet there’s CCTV or something. Darcy, please, for me, please. Got him.’

‘Better?’

‘Simon, it’s two in the morning, I’m nearly naked, walking the streets, freezing cold, with a dog that thinks I’ve come out to play. Do I feel better? Better than what, exactly?’

The secret to keeping flys away

2010-07-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

If you've got a horse, or stock, or you yourself are plagued by mossies and flies, then watch this!

It's just an Avon body moisturiser that's gaining a massive reputation as a truly brilliant, and very cheap fly repellent. Obviously always skin test an area first.

Lesson No7, pay more attention!

2010-07-25T00:39:00.000-07:00

‘I have three different lipsticks,’ Debbie told my mother. ‘A daytime one, an evening one and a fun one.’

With mother down from London for a week, there were a lot of conversations about make-up, moisturiser, eyeliner and now lipsticks, and I was learning a lot – not about make-up, but about my wife. I didn’t know she had three different colours, and I certainly never knew about a fun one! With my mother distracted, I looked a question at Debbie.

‘What?’ she mouthed.

I didn’t bother to reply quietly, ‘I never knew you had three different colours?’

The seconds that followed were some of those horrible moments in a relationship where time gets sticky and slows down. I watched her shoulders sag and her eyes close in an exaggerated blink. When they opened, the look she gave me was utter disappointment. She wanted to scream at me for not recognising and I wanted to explain that it wasn’t my fault because … um, because … oh dear. Instead we both looked at my mother and smiled.

‘Come on, let’s go and move these pigs,’ I said.

We needed two vehicles down on the land, and I would like to have engineered it so Debbie and I rode together and we could clear the air, but unless my mother could drive the quad bike down on her own, that was never going to happen.

In fact she rode on the bike with me and my dog Dex, who had taken the opportunity to dab a little perfume on some intimate spots by rolling in something unmentionable in the top field.

‘Don’t worry,’ I announced, gunning the engine into life with mother gripping on to my t-shirt for dear life, ‘as soon as we start moving the smell will go.’

Doris and Whinny are the best of friends. Two sows who have spent their entire lives together. Now they are both pregnant and due in just over a week. Time to bring them in for a spot of pampering.

With Dex well out of scent range, I parked mother to one side and hitched the stock-box on the back of the bike and drove down to the pig area. The trick was how to get the two pregnant sows in the back and not all the others. And I wanted to show off.

With devil-may-care, I leaped the gate and landed in the thick of a scrum of pigs with nothing more to protect me than a bucket of feed, a stern voice and a very pointy finger. I walked some feet away and poured feed on the floor, before rattling the bucket quietly next to Doris and Whinny hoping they would take the hint. They did, and followed me back up the ramp of the trailer.

‘That was easy,’ mother said.

‘You didn’t get bitten this time dear?’ Debbie said. ‘What a shame.’

The birthing area is an open fronted field shelter with gates and fencing making two snug quarters side by side so the pigs can see, touch and hear one another. Doris and Whinny walked in either side like a dream.

I wasn’t until we went to bed that I finally got Debbie alone. ‘It came out wrong,’ I explained. ‘Of course I know you have three lipsticks. I was just surprised at the fun one, that’s all.’

‘Yeah? Name them.’

‘Sorry?’

‘If you know all about them, what colours are they?

‘Ah, you think I don’t know. Well I do. Lipsticks don’t come in colours, they come in numbers. Your three shades are slight variations on the same colour, so they all have the same number.’

‘Which is?’

I started grinning at how clever I was. ‘No7.’

Rainbow Bridge where pets go and wait

2010-07-23T02:01:00.000-07:00

“You’ll appreciate this,” the email said. I get lots of emails (there’s nothing more disappointing than when you click on and there’s nothing there for you). I double clicked the message.

Man alive, I couldn’t even get halfway though the first paragraph without welling up, doing that quick inhale like a tiny sob and looking round to see nobody was there to see or hear me, even though I knew I was on my own. By the end of the second paragraph, oh forget it. I was sobbing like a teenage girl who’s just been dumped by her boyfriend.

I don’t know if I’m the last person on the planet to discover this, but if you’ve ever had a pet, read this.

Rainbow Bridge
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals that had been ill and old are restored to health and vigour; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.

The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind. They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

(Anon.)

Sorry if you’re reading this on the train or somewhere public. Phew, I know I’ve had a lot of pets, and maybe you could argue that quantity should make me somewhat harder, more resilient, but imagining all my animal friends playing happily together in a big field waiting for me, and I’m in bits on the floor. Until I was twenty-two, I’d only had one cat. Now, they’d have to put reinforced girders under the Bridge to cope with the weight of all the pigs, horses, dogs and cats – gosh there have been a lot.

I’m not normally a cryie type of person. I watched Titanic with dry eyes, saw Ghost, ET and the last episode of Friends without even blinking back a tear. But I couldn’t watch Babe—Oh, do you remember those old Lassie films? Lassie Come Home, I think it was, when the dog would wait by the gate every day while the little boy went to school, and then the boy grew up and joined the army, and Lassie went with him. I watched them as a kid, but there’s no way I could watch them now.

I even refuse to watch Chicken Run.

Mass slaughter, sadness and annihilation of humans in films are fine, as long as they don’t harm the puppy!

I think the more you spend your life with animals, the closer you get to them – with the possible exception of sheep. This is just a guess, but I doubt anyone ever reached Rainbow Bridge and mistook it for New Zealand.

Just hatched chickens

2010-07-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

These little chickens had just battled their way out of the shell in the incubator about 10 minutes ago, when i took them out and carefully placed them under a heat lamp to start drying out.

The biggest one is about an hour older.

10 most embarrassing moments of country living

2010-07-19T01:07:00.000-07:00

Don’t even consider stepping foot in the countryside until you have read this. This is the urbanites and cityites guide to avoiding red faced calamites that could haunt you for the rest of your life.

10 Stopping the car for a pee. Come on, who amongst us hasn’t? You’ve been on the road for ages and you’re still miles from civilisation (otherwise known as a McDonalds) where they have half sensible loos. There’s no way you’d ask at a petrol station, and as for public conveniences, forget it! So you find a quiet road and drive slowly. You haven’t seen another vehicle for miles. You are alone. You spot a cut in, and pull off. Open the window. Silence. You’ll be out of the car for no more than a minute max – what could possibly go wrong? As soon as you nip out and assume the position, a caravan appears out of nowhere with the longest tailback in the whole history of the countryside snaking out behind it, and it’s not just cars, oh no, there’s coaches, a school bus, tractors and a police car.

9 Country pubs. This is a hive of potential for anything from an awkward moment to a full blown “Oh my God” disaster. First there’s the accent. People in the country don’t talk proper, and even if you can understand the words, the context can be mystifying. One thing to remember is, rather like the French, in the country everything is either male or female. Everything. A gate post is male, referred to as “him”, where as a gate is “her”. “Her swinging on him quite nicely now,” is nowhere near as baffling as it sounds.

8 Beware of local delicacies. The temptation is to do the, “When in Rome, do as…” bit. Eat like the locals. Surely in the countryside that’s going to healthy, wholesome and fresh? Isn’t it? Possibly… and then possibly not. To give you an example, the old Devon farmers’ traditional breakfast – this is breakfast remember – is called, Thunder and Lightning, which is toast, smothered in clotted cream (thunder) and topped with maple syrup (lightning). The heart attack by lunchtime is optional.

7 Mud. Mud is Satan’s two fingers at God for chucking him out of heaven, along with traffic jams, people who whistle in public and Peter Mandelson. Like most things, country mud is way different to town mud. Town mud is the stuff that clings to the leather soles of your loafers, or the tiny bit of a high heel that actually connects with the ground. Country mud, on the other hand, has the consistency of quick drying cement and can suck a man’s welly-boot from his foot as fast a look at him.

6 At night, it really, really, really gets dark. I’m talking a hand an inch from your nose, and you still can’t see it. Foxes bump into hedges. Cats walk into walls. And it’s not just in the middle of a field, or a rural farmhouse that it happens, step out of a pub in the winter’s evening past nine o’clock and it’s as though someone’s turned your eyes off. If you haven’t got a torch handy, the trick to finding your car is to use your mobile phone – when it’s that dark, a mobile switched on casts enough light to grope your way amongst the bonnets in the car-park without serious injury until you find one that’s familiar.

5 Fitting in. Lots of things will mark a townie out. White jeans… in fact any light clothing… or any clothing that’s clean for that matter. The inability to talk knowledgeably about the price of tractor tyres. The, “I did have three riding lessons when I was young – and there was that time in Portugal that I rode across the beach – so yes, I am a good horse rider!” brigade. If you’re planning on spending any longer than a brief holiday in the country, there are only one of three ways you can possibly fit in, and that’s by joining the church, school or stables, and of the three, the stables rule the roost.

4 Pony club. Take the Freemasons, the W.I., The Police Force, MI5, The Maffia, The KGB, The Yardies, and they all look like school children grumbling about a wet-break in comparison to, The Pony Club Riding Instructor. Big busted, grey hair scraped back into a tight bun above a face that’s only ever moisturised when it rains, beige jods like a second skin over iron thighs, permanent PMT and the ability to reduce a child of three to tears with just a glance. Stand The Pony Club Riding Instructor in the centre of a sand school, and suddenly your little poppet who’s been collecting My Little Pony for years in a build-up to her first moment on a horse, is now sobbing with terror as she gallops round like Frankie Dettori’s understudy. Your urge as a parent will be to interfere, but DO NOT! Look away, bite your knuckles, do whatever you like because if you do interfere, The Pony Club Riding Instructor will take this as a challenge to her authority over all little children, and will announce, in a loud, proud, who’s boss now? voice, “I think we’ll finish with a jump. Set the jump to three foot six… wide!”

3 Amorous animals. The countryside is awash with sex. Awash with it, it is. Bulls humping cows, rams humping sheep – a ram can service up to twenty females a night, which is something even Tiger Woods would struggle with. They don’t care about privacy, in fact if the more of an audience, the better, and has given way to a phenomenon known as, the countryside second. The countryside second is the period of time between a coach pulling up to watch a herd of cows, and the bull leaping on the nearest female.

2 Are we alone now? You have booked a rural cottage in the middle of nowhere. The road outside has grass growing down the centre of it, and you haven’t seen another human being for days – but don’t be fooled! The minute you relax and dispense with the dressing gown and wander around in your underwear, maybe doing a muck-about dance to a song on the radio while you put the kettle on fix breakfast in bed for two, the minute you start doing that, it’s a given that a group on horseback will ride by all staring in at you through the window.

1 Visiting. It’s nice to see how the other half live. Bundle the children into hats, coats and boots, get a towel ready for the dog, and make your way over to a smallholding close by to have a look around. But there’s a vital question you have missed. Something you should have asked at the point you agreed to take a sightseeing trip over to a local’s. Something that could have avoided traumatising the children back into wetting the bed, and that question is, “Do you have any dead in the house.” The thing is, from a country folk’s point of view, there’s nothing so convenient as a coat rack by the back door for hanging all your dead pheasants, chickens, ducks and turkeys while they’re waiting to be processed. Ah, the country life.

Guest blogger

2010-07-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, you know when you watch a film and part of the credits read, "and introducing..."? Well this is the blogger's equivalent. So, without further ado...

And Introducing... Andy Kirby, this week's guest blogger.

Round of applause please.

Give a man some pork.... teach a man to butcher....

I've always had an affinity with food. I like to eat well, I enjoy cooking, I fish and have hunted rabbits and pigeon, I forage wild mushrooms and berries, so it made sense for me to learn how to prepare and process my own raw ingredients.

To this end, over the last couple of years, my wife, Sally, and I have been on a few courses learning how to make cheese with www.reddevoncheesecompany.co.uk, keeping bees with www.rivercottage.net and most importantly in our eyes smallholding and butchery with the revered self-sufficiency guru Simon Dawson at www.hiddenvalleypigs.co.uk. Fuelled by this 'extensive' training we set about creating a sub-urban micro-holding - we've got a corner plot on a Woking residential estate so it would never qualify as a smallholding.

Step 1
Since we started out 4 or 5 years ago, we have put together a couple of hens, a couple of bantams, 1/2 a dozen quails (added to the kid's 4 rabbits, guinea pig and 5 cats) and most recently 2 Indian runner ducks - not bad for a plot the size of one of those extra large postage stamps (the ones that hide the most important part of the address when you stick them on - and then can't get them off so you have to write a separate address label).

Anyway, we were doing fine on the livestock front and even grew a few veggies etc. - when the chickens allowed - but this still wasn't enough. We wanted to take advantage of the skills we had acquired, so taking a leaf out of Simon's biblical tome The Self Sufficiency Bible (available online and in all major bookstores) we started small.

Step 2
One Thursday evening, whilst walking around our local Sainsbury's we saw 6 pints of full fat Goat's milk reduced to 20p per pack and I said to Sally "shall we make some cheese this weekend?". She looked at me like a baby hedgehog unable to avoid the onrushing lorry whose handbrake I'd just taken off and simply said "OK". At 60p for 6 pints we figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, and after all we could throw it away if it tasted awful or didn't work - but it did. It was the best. It was like a slightly sour, but extra creamy Philly. Sally added some garlic and herbs and we munched our way through it in pretty short order with some home made bread. Since then, every time we see reduced milk in the supermarket we both get really excited, buy as much as we can carry and make up a batch of cheese.... baby steps.

Step 3
Next up, I noticed that the chickens had not gorged themselves on our blackcurrants this year and, not wanting to miss a once in a lifetime opportunity - the chickens love to stand under the bush and jump like Masai (straight up and down) pecking off the fruit one piece at a time, endearing and amusing but also really annoying - I picked what amounted to one small Pyrex bowl of currants.

OK, so I have a bowl of currants, now what do I do with them? I tried one straight off the bush but it tasted ropey, sort of floral and slightly bitter but nothing like blackcurrant. Like the reduced Goat's milk though, I thought it would only cost me pennies to try making some jam. So I placed the fruit (stalks and skins intact) with some lemon zest sugar and a splash of water straight in a pan and boiled it away for as long as it looked like it needed (I've never been one for recipe's and precise instruction as you'll find out later). Every 1/2 an hour I would take a teaspoon and put it on a cold plate (I knew that much) and test it's consistency and flavour.... the flavour..... it was like Ribena but better; sweet, sour and sticky, wow it was good! Anyway, getting carried away with myself, I placed an empty jam jar into the oven to sterilise and after 15-20 minutes took it out and poured the hot, sticky, purple compote into the jar (forgetting to strain off all the 'roughage'), replaced the lid and stood it on the side to cool before I placed it in the fridge to test.

This approach didn't work, I'd tasted nectar and wanted more, so I took several slices of bread from the fridge, buttered them and applied a liberal coating of the ambrosia (lumps and all). It was the best jam I had ever tried, but for one thing - the flimsy pieces of green stalk stuck between my teeth and the shaving of lemon zest that I had to chew. I consoled myself with the fact that this was my first attempt and rustic was to be expected, after all I wasn't going to waste this on a WI competition or anything like that. That jar lasted less than a week and has convinced me to grow more soft fruits next year to conserve and preserve for consumption when the lovely summer weather fades away to rain.

Step 4
So, we'd had two successes and the momentum was behind us. With growing confidence, I suggested that we try to butcher half a pig which would have been sensible if I'd suggested it immediately after the course with Simon, but I'd left it over a year. How much would I remember? Sally gave a resigned look but, being as supportive as ever, agreed to let me give it a go.

Having tried a number of different breeds of pig before I thought it might be nice to try an Oxford Sandy and Black (OSB), a small pig that is good for pork, but like the Berkshire could be used for bacon too, so I looked up a supplier on the internet and booked in my half. The clock ticked round and, before I knew it, it was time to collect. Jim at www.bamptonpigs.co.uk showed me around his pig fields (well paddocks), introduced me to some of his pigs (all very happy and well behaved) and talked me through his set up, before we proceeded to his local pub to collect my 1/2. Money changed hands and I raced home to watch my son represent his school in the district sports.

I parked in the shade with the pig rested on the back seat covered by a couple of black bags while I went in to watch the relays and presentations and, after a while, collected my son to go home and play at butchers. Oliver got into the car, gave the pig a half glance and said nothing, obviously used to Dad's eccentricity.... "yeah... whatever!" his face said.

So, we got home and I carried the pig indoors. Fortunately none of the neighbours noticed as I threw a child sized pig carcase over my shoulder and did battle with the front door. I walked straight in and faced 5 cats looking at me quizzically. I continued past them into the kitchen, placed the pig onto the empty and cleaned work surface and turned to gather up my knives, steel and cutting board. As I turned, I noticed that I had an audience. The cats had followed me out and, intrigued, they were lined up in a row looking on expectantly as if I had brought the pig home just for them. I ignored them and turned back to the job at hand.

I faced up to the pig and.... went blank! I now faced a dilemma. All my books, including the exemplary Self Sufficiency Bible by Simon Dawson (available online and in all major bookstores), were in the living room... the other side of the cats! I called to Oliver, but he had gone out to play with his friends, so I had no choice. I raced through into the living room, whipped up the books and returned to the kitchen in a time that Usain Bolt would be proud of, ready to scream and shout and curse at the ravenous hoards. Fortunately, none of them fancied 1/2 a pig and, having initially scattered, rearranged themselves in a line to watch.

A brisk review of a couple of pages (the pictures and diagrams), it all made sense again and I positioned myself at the head end and confidently cut through the neck leaving me feeling like a proud Viking holding my prize of a severed head aloft. I then proceeded to prepare each of the primary cuts and, handling my knives in a way that would definitely have had Debbie and Simon wincing, separated out sausage meat (more than a professional would have ended up with), chops (of varying size and shape), belly and back bacon, roasts and hams. When I'd finished, I felt a massive sense of self satisfaction. A job well done.

To be honest apart from; my brawn not setting, my first set of sausages disintegrating in the pan, and the looks the local kids gave the skeletal pigs head that I'd placed on the doorstep (only kidding), everything else went really well. The kids, and their friends all lent a hand with the sausage making, the bacon and my prized hams cured beautifully.

Step 5
In summary, as The Self Sufficiency Bible (available online and in all major bookstores) says, anyone can be more self-sufficient it just takes a few small steps. My next step is to find someone local to where I live who has a corner of a paddock free for a few pigs of my own and some chickens for the table... I'll let you know how I get on.

Have you ever seen anything this cute?

2010-07-13T21:55:00.000-07:00

This is a video of twelve, four day old piglets playing.

Piglets are so funny when they play. They kind of remind me of puppies, but with something a little more solid about them. I love the bit when mum tells off the two main protagonists by putting a nose underneath one of them and tossing it into the fence.

I'll keep them in this open fronted barn until about the middle of next week, and then hopefully move them into the woods.

Trying not to like my mini Jurassic Park

2010-07-12T03:57:00.000-07:00

Imagine a Tyrannosaurus Rex in miniature, give it a huge pair of swimming flippers to walk around in, and then give it all the stability of a twelve month old baby walking its first few steps, and there you have a gosling.

How geese ever made it through evolution is a complete mystery. If challenged as young they’d be hard pushed to summon more than a flappy foot in defence, and they certainly couldn’t run!

I have two of them. The thing is, I don’t want to like them. I don’t want to dislike them, but I don’t want to, you know, like them. I don’t want to be fond of them. They’re just flappy footed mini dinosaurs who follow me around the chicken field, bumping into things and falling on their backsides. Stupid things. And they’re ugly. They are! They look moth eaten with their white feathers poking through the yellow down and a silly little head and an over-sized silly beak.

I’ve known them since they were eggs, but that makes no difference, no difference at all. They’re meat. That’s what geese are, they’re meat, simple as that. I’m going to rear them, and then… you know. That’s the circle of life. I know it’s tough, but it’s a tough world. I have no problem with that at all. No problem at all.

I hate it when they follow me about. Why do they do that? Can’t they tell I don’t like them?

You should feel their little hearts beating when you pick them up. There bellies are all soft and squishy like jelly and their heart slams away in their chest, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I tell them, calm down, chill, you’ll be sending more blood around your body than you can cope with – it’s probably all going to their feet, no wonder they’re so huge.

I pick them up and carefully put them in a safe wooden house at night, and then in the morning I lift them out and place them in their run for the day. Of course when I’m around I let them out completely to explore the chicken field, and when they’re old enough, and have a little more control over those feet, they’ll be out and about all day anyway.

They don’t explore the field though. They follow me, cheeping and calling. When I walk fast they try and rush to keep up and trip over, and then sit there looking at their own feet in disgust as though they’d done it on purpose. I only stop and wait for them because I don’t want them injured, not because I like them.

Obviously I’m not going to name them – you never name anything you’re going to eat. I named their parents Honey-Bunny, but that’s different. I won’t name these two.

One of them tumbled head first in the brook which is a bit muddy and when he stood up dirty water was running all down his back and made him look as though he had long dark hair, and I thought, if I was going to name him, which I’m not, I would have called him Marc, who was the singer of T’Rex. Marc The Flappy Footed Long Haired Mini Dinosaur. Marc for short.

That’s not his name, of course. It’s just, well, I’m going to need something to call him. Not a name, just a reference. A tag. A label. It’s defiantly not a name.

I don’t even like them. I’m going to stop them following me about. I’ll run away from them, and I won’t stop even if they do trip themselves up. And I won’t listen to their cheeping calls as they shout after me. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’m glad I sorted that out.

Nicely confused

2010-07-04T00:58:00.000-07:00

With Debbie’s arm still out of bounds – she’s ripped the muscle away from the shoulder and now it’s all inflamed and she can’t use it. She should have gone back to the doctor for a quaterzone injection into the socket, but funny enough she didn’t fancy that and went into stroppy teenager mode with head on one side, arms crossed (see, she can use it when she wants to), one hip shoved forward and a pointy toe tapping.
I did manage to get her to a chiropractor yesterday and the verdict was, nasty. “It’s nasty,” the chiropractor said. I could have told her that! Anyway, she can’t use it for a week, can’t drive, can’t do anything.
So, with the farm work all pretty much down to me, I decided to treat myself and downloaded an unabridged audio book for my MP3 from Audiobook.co.uk. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larson, all twenty-three and a half hours of it.

What a wonderful book. I know it’s won loads of awards, but honestly, fantastic book. The funny thing is, far from just doing the normal rounds of feeding and watering the stock, letting the chickens, ducks and geese in and out, feeding and fussing the horses, making sure the sheep still have four feet and they’re all pointing down rather than up in the air, and chatting ten to the dozen with the pigs, I’m searching for extra things to do so I can spend more time out listening to the book.
I’ve got to say, this new regime is working for me on so many levels. I’m enjoying myself bumbling along listening to a great story, I’m getting loads done, and when I finally come home, Debbie is so swamped with guilt because of the extra hours I’m putting in that I have wine, nibbles and a hot bath all waiting for me.
Happy days!
The only slight downside, and I’ve really had to search for one, is that although I have fallen in love with listening to a story as I work, I don’t want to give up that comforting lovely sensation of actually holding a book in my hands and reading from a page. I don’t think audio could ever really replace that. So I’m reading a book as well, which can get confusing.

I’m reading, Survivor by Tom Cain, totally different to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but when you’re submerged in two books at the same time, there are times when you think hang on, where on earth am I?
Actually I do have a little previous with mixing books up, as a while ago I had over ten cd books stored on my MP3 player, and listened to so many times I was totally bored with them, so I set them on shuffle – now that makes interesting listening!
“Call the White house, I need to speak to the President of the United States immediately!”
“I’m afraid oral sex has never really been my bag, even if I do love you.”
“A handbag!”
Classic moments.

I blame The Foot!

2010-06-28T00:44:00.000-07:00

I quite like the idea that in life there’s this foot that come along and trips you up. It kind of gives bad luck a shape, a form. Unlike Sod’s Law, or Murphy’s Law, both of which seem to imply that bad luck is a rule and as such something we must abide by, you know where you are with a foot. There’s even a chance you might be able to avoid it. If you’re lucky.
Sounds like a character in one of Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld novels, The Foot that wanders aimlessly amongst the community until it finds someone who’s doing alright, and then… BAM, suddenly they’re on their arse.
The thing is, you know it’s coming. You can almost smell it—you know what I mean. Life bubbles along, the kids are doing okay at school and that little bout of bullying seems to have come to an end; the bills are paid – most of them; intimacy in the bedroom is nice, if brief; and everyone seems to be communicating with everyone else, which makes a change.
So what do you do? You think, oh, something’s bound to go wrong.
The foot knows. Honestly, it does! You become prime suspect numero uno for a really good trip.
I’m not sure what’s worse, the threat of life suddenly plunging into bad luck or the event itself. Does this make me a pessimist? I hope not. A touch superstitious maybe, but not a pessimist. Pessimists believe everything will turn out bad, and I’m not in that camp, so I guess I’m more your clumsy optimist, steady and happy most of the time but there’s always that sense that I could go arse over tit at any moment.
Right now I’m walking very gingerly, groping my way forward in life before take each step. I’m on the pinnacle of doing alright, and I know The Foot of bad luck is out for me. The scary thing is, I think it might be out for Debbie too.
Debbie’s had this bad shoulder for a few weeks. It hurts her to lift it, and there’s no way she can lift the elbow as high as her shoulder. She’s been on the maximum dose of Ibuprofen for more than two weeks and it’s getting worse. She went to the doctor last Friday.
It seems she’s torn the muscle that holds the arm to the socket (very technical, I know). He has given her a week’s course of massively high anti inflammatory and pain killers. This coming Friday, she will have to have a steroid injection directly into the joint. But that’s not the worst. The worst is that she could end up with a frozen shoulder – and that can last 2 years.
I’m so worried. She’s really active and fiercely independent, and although she’ll be okay and will just get on with things, there’ll be so much she won’t be able to do simply because you need to arms. Things like riding the quad bike, feeding the animals, even walking Darcy the dog (he’s a great dane and can be quite rude when out on a walk, especially when he sees sheep or catches the scent of a deer, and then you defiantly need two hands!).
The doctor told her to rest it, and she does as much as she can, but it’s difficult and I know she’s frustrated.
Two years.
You know when you have a dream and as soon as you wake you feel you want to tell someone so that it breaks the dream, and then it won’t come true? Well this is the bloggers equivalent. I want to tell you about my worry over bad luck, and Debbie’s frozen shoulder, so that it won’t come true.
There is no such thing as The Foot. There is no such thing as bad luck.
Debbie’s shoulder will be fine.
I hope.

That’s how we do Monday!

2010-06-21T23:03:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I get hit with the full force of just how different my life is - not from other people’s, but from my own. From how it used to be.
So I thought it might be fun to write a diary for one day. Yesterday. Monday 21 June 2010.

5.20am Got up, still very tired. Three days of teaching courses in the last three days has really waked me out!

Made a strong black coffee and switched on the computer. My column for this week should have been in on Friday, and although it is written, I’m struggling with the ending. Beginnings are no problem, but endings, phew!

It takes a while, but eventually I’m happy-ish with it and send it in to Pat the newspaper editor.

It’s a nice feeling when the column goes in, so I celebrate with a whiz around facebook, checking out what everyone’s doing. It’s very quiet.

I write a funky, spiky email to GMTV and Good Morning – I figure it’s got to be funky and spiky to stand out from the crowd – with a Beat the Budget idea for a slot on their program with me giving simple self sufficient ideas to put a few quid back in the nation’s pocket. I tell them I’ve written a book about it. I don’t hear back. Maybe I wasn’t spiky enough?

Toast and more coffee. More facebook, this time on my author page. This side of things do not come naturally and I have to force myself to do it. I feel very self conscious on the author page. I guess I’ll get used to it.

9.00am Debbie gets up and we have coffee together. I walk the dog, put the goosters out on the lawn (two baby geese we hatched ourselves in the incubator), collected my dog and Quadbike from the barn and drove down the hill to the animals.

The sheep are in the chicken field to eat down the grass. They prefer chicken feed. As soon as I open the door to the shed, there’s this huge head-on collision between the chickens trying to get out and the sheep trying to get in. I can’t make anything out, just a mass of bodies and dust like a cartoon.

I let the two older geese out, known collectively as Honey-Bunny – yes, that is ironic. I have to fend him off as I walk away. I check on the pregnant sow, water where necessary, make sure my dog will be okay for the day looking after the animals (he’s in charge), and drive back up to the house.

10.35am My biggest worry at the moment is a 1,500 word article for The Exmoor Magazine. It’s the first time I’ve written for this editor and I want it to be right, but typically things keep happening that either mean I have to rewrite or I’m delayed by waiting around for people I need to interview. Very frustrating and stressy. But it’s got to be in today, so I lock myself away and get on with it.

12.15pm Done! I give it to Debbie for a final read through and, with a couple of tiny alterations, she approves. I send it with photographs. Man, column done, article done, this is a great day! Time for a nap…

I read until I fall asleep on the sofa.

1.20pm Debbie’s board, Darcy the dog’s board, and I make out they’ve woken me up even though I’ve been listening to them for ages.

We decide to take a trip up onto the moor. I tie Darcy to the back of the quad bike, Debbie climbs on behind me and I drive slowly onto open Exmoor. This is lazyman’s dog walking in the extreme!

2.00pm I’m still glowing with all my writing deadlines out the way, so I suggest we nip down the pub for a sensible lunchtime one. We have a local delivery to do (black pudding and hoggs pudding to a guest house in Lynton) and go on from there. There’s a lovely pub right on the top of Exmoor with a garden we can sit in. It’s nice.

4.00pm Ice cold beer and a sandwich for lunch in the sunshine, and there’s only one thing to do when we get back. Nap number two!

5.00pm I quickly get ready and jump on the quad for the evening rounds.

I feed, water and fuss all the animals in this order; chickens, ducks, geese, sheep, first set of pigs, pregnant sow, largest group of pigs down the end (spending a little time with The General, our boar, because we’re quite close and he’s just such a dude!).

6.30pm I kill and pluck a chicken in the barn for tomorrow night’s dinner (please don’t go squeamish. When I see two for one chickens in Tesco’s, I could honestly cry my eyes out for the horrible life they’ve led – I’d far rather produce my own and know they’ve been happy, fulfilled and lead a free range life the way they should.)

7.30pm I snog the horses in the field and fix their water – Georgie is so fat on all this grass! Put the quad away. Put my (superstar) dog away and feed him.

8.10pm Bath, dinner, glass of wine, there’s something on TV and I can’t remember what it was, read until bedtime.

Two beers and an embarrassing moment

2010-06-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve got to start with an embarrassing moment as it’s a classic. I was at the Lynton and Lynmouth music festival last night and I’d had a couple of beers and needed to find a loo. I knew there was a public one by the town hall, so I wandered off in that direction. Typically the loo was locked, but as I turned away I spotted an alley with a guy at the end standing against a wall. Not ideal, but things were becoming urgent so I walked down to share a apace next to him.
Now as any man will know that when you’re confronted with a quiet, dark alley with another man waiting at the end of it, and you’re tugging at your flies as you approach, you’re keen to make your intensions clear. I doubt anybody in the history of the world has ever misinterpreted a similar situation, but in your mind you feel the need to state the obvious. So as I got closer, I said out loud, ‘two beers and I’m desperate.’
That’s it. That’s all that’s needed. Just, two beers and I’m desperate. Says exactly what it does on the tin.
He didn’t say anything back, just shuffled a bit uncomfortably.
It wasn’t until I was nearly next to him that I realised he wasn’t doing what I thought he was doing. In fact, he wasn’t even alone. Between him and the wall was a woman, and they were way beyond the point of being able to cover what they were doing. They probably didn’t need me strolling towards them pulling down my flies and stating I’d had two beers and was desperate.
As embarrassing moments go, this is up there with the time (and I swear both of these are true), that I was early for a horse riding lesson and decided to go for a quick beer with Debbie in a local pub. We walked in. I was dressed in skin tight britches with knee length leather boots and a t-shirt, ordered a pint and found a seat.
I had that feeling that people were staring at me, and just tried to ignore it. When Debbie started laughing I felt a sudden cold shiver of something horribly wrong.
‘What?’
‘You haven’t noticed, have you?’ she said.
The shiver got colder. I looked around. It all seemed okay to me, lunchtime in a pub, a lot of women, mainly in short skirts and quite a few fishnets and stockings and crop tops. Lots of high hair. Lots of make-up. They looked a bit cheap, but you know, not that bad.
‘Look again,’ Debbie said.
I did. And this time I saw the extras, such as the odd moustache, or maybe a hairy chest peeping over the top of a spangly boob-tube. Yep, we wandered into a transvestite convention, and I had to be dressed the way I was!
Anyway, ahem (very male macho voice), back to farming and food…
My neighbour asked if I could help milk a cow that had a small calf and needed to be stripped to avoid mastitis. Payment – not needed until I heard what it was – would be a gallon of fresh milk. I’ve never had milk that unprocessed before!
The milk is currently in the fridge developing a creamy crust that reminds me of the old gold-top milk you used to be able to buy when I was a kid. Tomorrow I’ll take it out and make cheese and yoghurt with it.
Today I need to recover from last night’s beer, music, and wander down the alley. Honestly, it could only happen to me.

Beer flavoured pork - 2

2010-05-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

It didn't work. The pork was lovely, really good flavour, but not a hint of beer. It doesn't matter - though i still don't understand why it didn't work? If you think about it, you get heather flavoured honey from bees that visit heather, you get Salt Marsh lamb, you get corn fed chicken, you get foie gras, you get veal (not that i'm in favour of veal, but it is a legitimate example), and as i said in the last blog, you get autumn pork, or spring pork, or spring lamb for that matter, all of which take on certain characteristics of the food the animal is given. So why doesn't beer shine through?

I didn't want it to be strong like a marinade, but i was hoping for some hint of a malty, hoppy background. I had this mad idea of selling beer fed pork sausages for the world cup, which i know is a bit tacky, but there is a sense of fun there none the less. I quite like food with an edge of fun to it - just look a Heston Blumenthal and his sense of theatre.

So beer didn't work. But i can't help thinking i was nearly onto something, a nagging thought in the back of my mind that if i tweaked the idea slightly, i could create something special. Something fun. Oh well, at least the pigs enjoyed the beer.

Beer flavoured pork?

2010-05-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have to manipulate your own feelings. You have to, kind of, focus them. Send them in a certain direction. It takes practice.
I make myself feel excited inside when a pig carcass comes back from the abattoir. Otherwise, what’s the point? Once the pig has gone off, then it becomes meat – that’s the only way I can get my head around it and remain sane. Meat that I have produced myself, and I like that thought; maybe that’s a residue of the old caveman provider coming out in me. And it’s also respect for the animal. Imagine going through all of the rearing and looking after and then getting the pork back and moping and being indifferent about it. No, it’s got to be worthwhile. It’s got to be for a reason, and the reason is my own rare breed, free range, healthy, happy, pork – and that’s exciting.
Only today, I’m more excited than normal.
I don’t normally sell weaners (baby piglets just weaned from their mother), as I like to keep family groups together, but Shammy had a litter of eleven and she was struggling with them all, so I sold four to the local pub landlord.
The pub is situated on the top of Exmoor with wonderful views and a huge paddock out the back. The pigs would be happy. They would also have their feed supplemented with beer, and on a busy day, this could be as much as 20 pints.
I offered the landlord a deal, that if I kept an eye on the pigs and made sure they were healthy and happy and well cared for, in return for him rearing one extra pig for me.
The idea of a pig getting so much beer fascinated me because I know just how important the diet is, and how directly that diet affects the flavour of the meat. For instance, many producers will fatten their pigs on barley for the last month of the pig’s life, but the fat turns pappy and yellow and soft, whereas I finish all mine naturally and the fat is solid and as white as milk (guaranteed to crackle and perfect to render down as lard – and don’t knock homemade lard, it’s been proven to be better for you than butter!).
Another example of a pig’s diet affecting the meat is seasonality. Autumn pork, where the pig has been running in the woods eating tree bark and roots, wild mushrooms, slugs and snails, tastes dark, almost earthy, whereas a spring pig that has spent their time on fresh grasses, heather, gorse, and new saplings, tastes fresher, with just a tiny hint of something you can only describe as citrus, not orange, but a similar background zing you get from oranges; that clean, almost refreshing taste.
So a pig supplemented with beer (not lager), is going to be very interesting.
It went off to the abattoir last week and comes back today.
I have a feeling it’s going to be really special.
I always do all my own butchery anyway, so I’ll break the carcass down into the primal cuts, and then take a chop and fry it gently. I’m hoping to get a sense of the beer coming through in the flavour. I’ll let you know.

I'm not sure my mum understands

2010-05-17T00:55:00.000-07:00

Mum is down and sitting in front of me. She lives in London and comes to stay with us a couple of times a year. I’m not sure what she thinks.
Of course she’s positive and complimentary when I talk to her, but it must be odd to see her son live such an alternative lifestyle, her boy who she remembers wandering off to school in a smart uniform, who used to play with the family cat, Solomon, and shy away from any dogs (oh how things change), who left school and began a career of working in offices as an estate agent, and now… now, has separate indoor clothes and outdoor clothes (a sure sign of a manual worker), and the front door step crowded with mucky welly boots.
Most of the time even I’m astounded by how different my life is; not from other peoples, but from my own. In London I had such a trendy apartment. It was Victorian with ceilings so high that when I wanted to fit a plaster ceiling rose, I had to hire a mini scaffolding tower. The walls and ceiling were yellow, and the rose, coving and all the woodwork a bright, crisp white, with jazzy curtains hanging at the windows. You could have photographed it for a magazine.
Now I live in a tiny cottage on Exmoor. In the lounge, about six inches away from my mother’s feet, is an incubator with half a dozen goose eggs and nearly thirty duck eggs warming nicely with the chicks growing inside. On the other side of her, curled up and asleep, is my dog. She doesn’t look comfortable.
I want her to be part of my life, but I know she doesn’t quite know what to make of it. She can’t join in because she doesn’t know how to. The other thing is, our life has lots of different stands to it, with the farm work, the farmers’ markets, the courses we run teaching others how to butcher and process meat, or smallholding courses, even self sufficiency courses. Then there’s the writing.
The writing is going really well and I’m actually now getting editors coming to me asking if I can supply articles, which is brilliant. I had a lovely one last week. There’s a magazine called Writers’ Forum, and for years I was a subscriber because they have a monthly competition where you write a story on a set theme and the winner gets theirs printed in the next edition. I entered every month for years, and every month I prayed this would be the one and I’d win, but it never was. I never even came close. Anyway, a little while ago I sent a pitch in for an article about getting my book published, and they accepted – but the really cool thing is, they want a photograph of me for the cover. What a turn around.
I told mum about it and she laughed. She keeps looking at me now while I’m writing, little furtive glances that I can sense rather than see. She’s not proud of what I do, she’s not—oh I don’t know, maybe she is, maybe that’s not fair. The thing is, it’s a Monday morning and I’m sitting on the sofa writing this, and then I’ve got an article to write for Devon Life magazine and some research to do for The Exmoor magazine, but I know she doesn’t think this counts. What counts is if I was up and dressed in a smart business suit and on my way to an office somewhere.
I guess it used to upset me a little. Getting the book published helped, and I think she can see that Debbie and I have worked really hard to achieve the life we have, even if she can’t understand it. I have got to take her back at the weekend, back to London. On route, I’m going to make a detour to Bluewater, the massive shopping centre in Kent because that’s where she shops and that’s what she knows, and I’m going to take her into Waterstones and stand her in front of my book. It probably won’t mean much to her, but for me, it’s going to mean the world.

2010-05-09T19:51:00.001-07:00

Last week I put up a post on facebook and a couple of other sites asking for people's photographs of self sufficiency, and, with a huge thank you to everyone who sent some in, here they are...

Brawn or Pork Terrine, Sir?

2010-05-01T04:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, traditionally brawn is made by boiling up the pigs head, which i can understand might put some people off tasting it. It wouldn't put me off eating it, but i do have a thing about using the heads, only from the point of view that the pigs are my mates and although i have learned to disassociate the individual who goes off with the meat that comes back, i couldn't lift the lid off a pot on the hob and see my friend looking back at me through the steam (i don't have a problem using the head of a pig i don't know, though).
But i do love brawn, so i had to find another way of making it.
If you haven't tried brawn, imagine a chunky meat pate held together with gelatin, almost like the innards of a really good pork pie. Heaven on hot toast.
So, how to make brawn without using the heads...
My only concession is to use the bath chaps (the cheeks) that i carefully remove from the heads, and toss them into a large pot. Also in go the trotters back and front, the tail, ham hock and any trimmings and bones. A pinch of mace (small pinch), a few juniper berries, black pepper corns, a couple bay leaves, a whole onion skin on cut in half and a carrot. Cover in water, put a lid on and simmer for five or six hours.
Allow it to cool and strip all the meat into a pile before packing reasonably tight into a loaf tin, and then strain the juice until it just tops the meat, then pop it into the fridge to chill down completely, before turning out and slicing.
I admit it is a bit of a faff, but I'm really keen on the whole nose to tail eating, and i think that if I've reared the pigs it shows good respect for the animal to use as much of it as possible.
The funny thing is when we come to sell it at the farmers' markets, and have learned to have two trays of identical brawn, but labeled differently. For those who feel brawn is old fashioned and can't stand the thought of eating something made from a pigs head, we call it Pork Terrine, and for the other half, it's good old Brawn. We sell out every week.
As far as I'm concerned, brawn or terrine it's hansom!

Just how healthy is self sufficiency?

2010-04-18T05:10:00.001-07:00

Face value, I haven’t been to the doctors in fourteen years. I don’t get colds, I don’t get sniffles (if I’m unwell it is of course the worst illness in the history of the household, but because I’m a man I soldier on and don’t bring it to the attention of those closest to more than once or twice a minute). However, the fact that I don’t seek help can be a worry in itself.
The last time I had my blood pressure checked was that last visit fourteen years ago. A lot has happened in fourteen years. Until ten years ago I was living in London and was living the opposite to self sufficiently – would that be dependently?
Anyway, I guess it’s been on my mind a little lately, so when I saw an ambulance parked up offering free blood pressure checks, I decided to take up their offer.
It was a Saturday morning, and not surprisingly business was slow for the paramedics manning the stall, most of whom were sitting inside the ambulance fiddling with the equipment. Just outside were a ring of chairs. I smiled at one of the ladies and sat where she indicated.
The thing is there are times when I think my lifestyle is hard on my body. In the depths of winter I often get soaked to the skin and freezing, literally freezing cold. I’m out feeding, watering and bedding down every day in conditions that even the animals I’m caring for don’t venture into. In the house there’s no central heating and away from the fire I can quite often see my own breath.
On my diet I’m pretty sure I score points because I keep it as natural and pure as possible, but I never consider fat content, or calories, or salt levels, but then I don’t eat anything that’s processed and not made from scratch at home, and my only big no nos, are additives and preservatives. I eat butter, not margarine. I eat cheese, I drink wine, and when I get the beginning sensation of a wobble to my tummy when I move about, rather than cut back on what I’m eating, I’ll just go out an hour earlier each day and work a bit harder until I feel as though the extra weight has gone. I have never been to the gym and I don’t own any bathroom scales.
All of which you could take two ways; either I’m living a natural life and listening to my body, or I’m being foolish and not taking advantage of ‘healthy options’ offered in the shops.
All these thoughts rushed through my head in the time it took the paramedic to bring the equipment over. I gave my name, age and signed to say I wouldn’t sue them if they gave me bad news.
She wrapped the black strip, like a bandage, around the top of my arm and began pumping it to inflate.
There’s the book as well. I have felt a lot of stress lately with the book coming out. That’s natural, I don’t want to let anyone down, the publishers, my agent and not least of all my family and myself, and have found the pressure much higher than I thought it would be. I can imagine that pushing my pressure up.
When the bandage was fully inflated, she wrote on a clipboard before address me.
‘The best today,’ she said. ‘It’s very, very good.’
I felt my insides sag with relief. Only now I realised that all of the lifestyle analysing wasn’t weighing up which way the result might go, it was gathering excuses in case it was bad news.
But it wasn’t. It was good news.
Very, very good – aren’t they lovely words?
So there you have it, self sufficiency is a healthy lifestyle for good blood pressure. As if I had any doubt…

And life moves on...

2010-04-13T01:09:00.000-07:00

Actually I wasn’t sure whether to call this week’s blog, ‘And life moves on…’, or ‘Shattered!’ as both are appropriate. This time of year, this transitional period between winter and spring is crazy. There is just so much to do, and although I adopt the ‘hit the crocodile closest to the boat’ philosophy, which at any other time of year helps me prioritise, right now it seems to be working against me, as the bloody crocodiles seem to be climbing over each other to get at me, and I keep changing focus and now have a farm full of half finished projects.
You know how it feels? I don’t know if you can still get those kids toys where you have a flat picture in a frame cut into lots of square pieces with one piece missing, so you can move the pieces about to form a picture or mess it all up, but if you want to move one square, you have to move other squares out of the way in a complicated sequence first. That pretty much describes my land at the moment.
Sorry about the metaphors one after the other, that’s my allotted two for the blog so you’re okay, there won’t be any more.
Okay, so in a condensed form, this is what I’m facing: I need to bring all the wood that I have cut down in the woods into the stable to dry, but before I can do that, I need to move Maddy and her babies who currently occupy the stable. In order to move Maddy, I need to build her a new enclosure. To build her new enclosure, I need to cut straight, slim lengths of wood to use as fence posts. To cut the fence posts, I need to start burning some of the brushings from the last lot of wood so that I can get to them. But, in order to start burning, I need to move the horses out of the field that’s right next to the burning area.
No, no, don’t glaze over, there’s more…
I can’t move the horses up into the top field until I burn the brushings from the hedging I did up here. I also need to do work on the vegetable plot, and, and, AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You see? The kids picture metaphor works, doesn’t it?
Last night I almost worked until it got dark. By quarter past seven I was completely shattered, and kept looking at the sky willing it to get dark so I could go home and have a glass of wine in the bath. I gave up at seven thirty, figuring it was almost dark, and last thing put the chickens to bed.
With spring in the air, the three cockerels have turned into little sods. They absolutely refuse to go to bed at night, and the only way I can catch them is to wait until one of them jumps on one of the hens and then grab him.
So last night, tired, aching, hungry and smelly, I had to stand in the middle of the chicken field waiting for the cockerels to get randy (which wasn’t long), and then when they did rush over and grab him mid-coitus, but, worried I might do some damage if I simply dragged him off, had to hold him gently until he had finished. I desperately wanted to laugh but I thought it might put him off.
Honestly, the things we do…

The self sufficiency bible is out!

2010-04-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

Of course I understand this is a blog about my self sufficient lifestyle, but right now my whole life is dominated by my book coming out, and come out it has! Anyone who has ever dreamed of writing a book will have wondered how it would feel to wander into a branch of Waterstones or WHSmiths and found their book on the shelf. That's the dream I had, anyway.

It's got something to do with feeling that I've achieved something.

It's got something to do with Debbie, and my mum, and my family and how they see me.

It's got everything to do with sharing my passion for a lifestyle that at its most simplistic, living close to animals and nature and growing or making what I need, and at its most complex, the daily struggle to survive financially and emotionally, is just so rewarding and (most of the time)such fun.

It's funny, but sitting here I can't think of another way of life that is so enriching. Of course that's subjective, and of course I understand that someone else will have an entirely different point of view and would hate to live the way I do, and that's fine, that's how it should be, but for me, living as self sufficiently as I reasonably can and at the same time sharing many of my discoveries and understandings in a published book, this is everything I have ever wanted. I really am very lucky.

So how does it feel to see your book on the shelf of Waterstones and in the front window? Absolutely bloody marvelous! Scary as hell too, but bloody marvelous none the less.

Talk Radio Europe

2010-03-27T04:39:00.001-07:00

If you have access to Talk Radio Europe, then please listen on Monday 28 March at around 12.45pm when i will be chatting about my book, the Self Sufficiency Bible. If not, then here is the link to listen online or listen again http://www.talkradioeurope.com/

Wartime recipe, Len Goodman and hedging

2010-03-25T01:19:00.000-07:00

I really must get my act together and start blogging more than once a week because there's just so much happening!

First, a very kind friend found an old hand written recipe/household book her Mother wrote around the War period and rationing and gave it to me. It's falling apart, stained and faded, and quite simply one of the most beautiful old books i have ever handled. It gives such an insight into how people lived and what they ate and how they looked after their homes. The recipes for cakes ask for egg powder (!), and there's little tips such as homemade metal polish and even china cement - presumably if they dropped a cup or a bowl they couldn't just toss it away and instead found ways of mending it. But one page just grabbed me, and it's simply titled, Grandma's War Cake. This is the recipe copied verbatim:

2 cups Brown Sugar

2 cups hot water

1/4 lard or dripping

1lb of fruit

1 teaspoon salt

1 cinnamon or 1 and half allspice

Boil together for 5 minutes. When cold add 3 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon carb. soda dissolved in 1 teaspoon hot water. Bake in two loaves for 45 minutes in slow oven.

I haven't tried making it yet, so if anyone else does, could you let me know how you get on as I just love the idea of it! Alternatively as soon as i can i''l make it myself and blog about it here.

* * *

What next... Ah, my dad's old mate Len Goodman sent me an email

What a lovely guy he is. Dad and Len were best mates for donkey's years, all well before Len became famous with the TV show Strictly. Dad used to tell stories about the two of them, and i wrote a funny article about them for my newspaper column, and it seems someone sent Len a clipping and he emailed me to say he found it 'interesting', ha-ha! Len's a star, in every sense of the world!

* * *

The book is going great guns, and i'm being booked up for radio, magazine and newspaper interviews, all of which i will of course blog right here. Amongst all of this i'm supposed to be hedging, and will do my best to post on that soon.

My first magazine restaurant review!

2010-03-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

This week i did my first paid restaurant review for a magazine, and went along to the Blue Ball Inn on Exmoor. It was a strange mix of work and pleasure, probably more work than I'd perhaps anticipated, sitting there frantically scribbling notes on a pad while a succession of people; the owners, the chef, staff, customers, all came over to talk to me and give me their story and ideas about the place. The food was great, I had a real homemade steak pie with fresh vegetables that had never been anywhere near a freezer, let alone a can, and sipped a couple of glasses of nice, easy to drink white wine. I guess the hardest part of the evening happened a bit later on when i sat down and had to condense all the information into just 600 words - not an easy task. However, i would highly recommend it, and if you're planning a trip west, it's well worth considering and can be found at http://www.exmoorsandpiper.com/
Alternatively, of course, you can read my full review in Devon Life Magazine, the link to which i will put up just as soon as it's published.

Busy, creative week

2010-03-10T04:57:00.000-08:00

Okay, busy blog for a busy, creative week. First, i have cured my first sheepskin rug! I keep Greyfaced Dartmoor sheep because they are hardy (it gets so cold here) and easy to deal with. I sheer them myself and had wanted to get the wool spun and ask someone who can knit well to knit jumpers each for Debbie and I, but the staple is too long and the spinners won't touch it. So second best is to use the skin by curing it into a rug, something that's surprisingly easy to do. It took a little over a week and involved just three processes. Initially i heavily salted the skin for three days, then i got an old bath and made a solution of 9 gallons of water, 9 pint glasses full of salt, and 18oz of Oxalic acid (dirt cheep on the Internet - it's actually a wood preserver), and sunk the skin for a further three days. Then i rinsed it, brought it up to the house and washed and washed it over and over again in the bath until the water ran clean. There you have it, a home tanned sheepskin rug!

You see the log burner with the sheepskin rug in front of it? Well that's our only source of heating in the home, and for 10 months of the year it's burning from dawn until late into the night, and that takes a lot of wood! As you know, wood needs time to season and dry-out before you can burn it, so I've been frantically coppicing trees so they can lay for a month or so before logging into small sections and stored in a barn for next winter. I only have until the middle of March to get the trees down, or there's going to be some very chilly evenings coming up! I'm nearly there now.

Finally the publishers have sent me a handful of pre-release copies of my book. Fantastic feeling to actually hold one in my hand, a real iconic moment in my life. Sadly (for me) the next day i sent them all out to magazines and newspapers and important people for reviews. But that moment of opening the box and picking up a book with my name on the cover will live with me and keep me warm and smiling for the rest of my life. The Self Sufficiency Bible will be on general release from 1st April, and will be on the shelves of Waterstones, WHSmiths, Tesco's and loads of places online including Amazon.

Video of piglets just a few hours old

2010-03-02T00:11:00.000-08:00

From the sad end of one pig's life yesterday, to the wonderful begining of another's today. Mother Nature in full, tidy, swing...

Thinking of Kylie

2010-03-01T00:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, in less time than it takes for a TV commercial break, there’s what’s happened… The publishers have employed a PR firm to take over the promotion of the book (I checked out their website and they seem razor sharp). Two pregnant sows, Pippa and Maddy have been moved into their maternity units (two nice warm stables with lots of straw). I’ve started curing a whole sheepskin, the largest project like this that I have undertaken, and when it’s done I plan on making Debbie and I a pair of moccasin slippers each from it. Finally I have got one of my own, having begged and borrowed a sowing machine from my Mother-in-law (she had one spare), so I can start making stuff – quilted blankets, fleece rugs for the horses, throws for the sofa, basic curtains for the bedroom, and some simple clothes. But saddest of all, I went down last night to feed the animals, and found Kylie dead.
Kylie was my first pig - that's her in the picture. She was about as close as a farm animal could get to a pet. She was my friend. I found her in her pig ark, just laying quietly. There was no sign of stress, or pain, or panic. No straw bunched up around her. It just looked like she went to sleep, and never woke up. I guess, if you’ve got to go… and all that. That’s not how I feel, but you know what I mean.

I did start logging in the week. Just a couple of hours chopping trees down ready to lay for next year’s firewood. It’s probably a man thing, but there’s something incredibly satisfying about chopping down a tree. I’ve got ten acres of woods, so I’m not taking them all by any stretch of the imagination, just setting myself an area that needs coppicing and chopping the trees down within that. Most of it will go for firewood, but I have half an idea to make a table out of some of it. I really like the idea of doing the whole thing myself, from chopping down the tree right the way through to the finished, polished table. Nothing big, just something like a coffee table. I’ll sketch out a couple of ideas and see how it looks.
Stinging nettles should be up this month, and stinging nettle soup will be back on the menu again! It’s incredibly good for you, and a few hundred years ago it would have been a staple in this country, but the appeal does seem to have died out somewhat – probably the thought of putting a spoonful of nettles into your mouth that did it, but honestly, the cooking process takes out any sense of the sting, and it’s just like spinach, only with more of an iron taste. As soon as they’re up, I’ll blog about making the first bowl of the year and put it up along with photographs and the recipe.
I do love this time of year. Late winter, early spring is about the most creative in the self sufficient year. It’s not that there’s so much to do, it feels much more like there so much you can do. It’s a time of potential, and ideas, when anything seems possible. Whatever we need, whatever we want to make our life pleasant and comfortable, surrounded by things that are unique and handmade at home, things that make us smile, we make. It’s nice – life is good.
And life is sad. Rest in peace Kylie. I love you and I miss you.

A week of courses

2010-02-21T01:07:00.000-08:00

Tough, long, week. Held three courses in five days, a two day butchery course, a one day smallholding experience and then a three day combined butchery and smallholding course. I’m absolutely shattered now.
They were very nice people and great fun, but I don’t think we’ll do three on the bounce again. It’s too much, especially as this lot were all clever people, and the questions they asked were pretty complicated.
We butchered pigs from start to finish on our kitchen table – everything we teach is designed to happen in any normal kitchen. Butchered the pigs into chops and joints, and then made sausages, bacon, brawn, fagots, ham and gammon, before moving on to a little dairy, making a quick cheese, butter and yoghurt. Lunches were all homemade from the produce or hot soups with fresh bread straight from the oven.
Then we go out onto the land and teach people how to act around the animals and how to treat them kindly and safely. We make sure it’s very hands on. We make sure people touch the animals and bond with them. We show them basic care, such as how to foot trim and inject a sheep, and then encourage them to do it. We show them how to load a pig into a trailer, and how to inject that, and then encourage them to do the same.
We get them to feed the animals. We get them to check the animals, do the bedding and the watering – all under our supervision, but we get them to do it. We get them chasing chickens into bed, do the feeding and then collect the eggs, and then round-up the geese. They learn how to work my collie dog and how to drive the quad bike. In short, they experience the day in, day out, life of a self sufficient smallholder, mud, poo, good and bad smells, high and low moments and wonderful, hearty, homemade food. The lot (with us in control all the time, but try and make sure they are fully involved!).
I feel shattered, but you should see the people when they leave us. Some of them can’t talk, they’re that tired. They look punch-drunk. It’s a lot to take in. They wander off to their hotel or b&b and tell us they fall asleep while it’s still daylight. I guess it’s the same with any lifestyle, if you’re not used to it, it hits you hard. If I spent a day in an office with phones ringing continuously and people bustling about, and then went out in the evening to a club, it would wipe me out for days (that’s my idea of an alterative lifestyle, because obviously mine is totally normal).
So yeah, it’s been a busy week. But now it’s done, I can get on with the things I need to do, such as coppicing the woods – I desperately need to cut down enough wood to lay for next years heating. Might start that tomorrow.

London town

2010-02-07T23:10:00.000-08:00

Short blog this week, because i have to nip to London for a couple of days. The trip is unexpected and I'm pretty much leaving Debbie with a pile of hassle, but a phone call late yesterday with my brother means i have to drop everything and run back. He needs a bit of moral support. We all do from time to time. I leave in 20 minutes. Just enough time for a quick coffee as i pack. Back home in three days time.

That's a wrap!

2010-02-01T01:22:00.000-08:00

The trick when being filmed for TV is not to look at the camera, because unless you’re the presenter, it makes you look shifty. However, that’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s a human nature thing, if you’re told not to look at something, the urge to look is almost unbearable. So the day before the cameras from Sky One arrived, I spent the entire time practising not looking at things.
The absurdity wasn’t lost on me as I walked along picking trees or rocks or walls or buildings, and then not looking at them. At first I found myself casting quick glances at the thing I was trying not to look at just to make sure it was there, because if you are trying purposely not to look at something, it feels for all the world like it’s looking at you.
But little by little I overcame that, until in the end I was ignoring things like a professional, and strolling past trees like they weren’t even there!
Then the film-crew arrived.
The program was all about me re-homing two cockerels from the North Devon Animal Ambulance. I’ve got about forty chickens and the two cockerels I did have both died last year, so the hens have been husbandless for a while and they’d begun to bicker and argue; nothing too serious, just kind of handbags at dawn sort of thing. What they needed was a man, that way they could give him hell and not feel the need to fight amongst themselves.
Filming was fast, and we were done in just under two hours. The only slip-up was just that, a slip-up. Walking away from the camera I had to follow the hens down a steep slope, and half way down skidded. What I should have done was turn and smile at the camera, or at the very least laugh, but oh no! All too aware that the camera was on me, I did that really stupid thing of pretending I meant it, as though the slip was perfectly normal and something I did most days. It must have looked like I did a sudden courtesy mid step.
Desperate not to look a fool, as soon as the camera was switched off I begged the producer not to show that bit and bribed him by collecting all that day’s fresh eggs and handing them over. Assuring me he hadn’t even seen it (yeah, right!), he said no, no, no, he absolutely couldn’t take the eggs – unless of course I was sure? By the time I looked down the eggs were already safely tucked away in his bag.
They were really nice people, and lots of fun to work with. I’ve done quite a lot of filming now, and the thing that always gets me is how empty and quiet it all seems when they have packed-up and gone. It’s almost eerie. I think part of it is when they’re there you’re so aware and focused on them, that when they leave part of you is still searching for the camera out of the corner of your eye so you can ignore it.
The program is new with a working title of The Nation’s Pets, but that could change, and due to air on Sky One in April.

Trouble at the market

2010-01-24T01:31:00.000-08:00

News that a Trading Standards inspector was wandering around swept though the farmers’ market stallholders like a bad smell. Customers were ignored or told to come back later, as everyone checked and rechecked the labelling on their produce.
For two pins I’d have packed up and gone home – not that I’d done anything wrong; not as far as I knew, anyway, but it’s the thought of it. It’s like driving past a police roadblock set up to check everyone’s car tax disk. I know my tax is up to date, and I know I’m legal, so why do I drive past staring dead ahead, refusing to glance at the officer as he looks down at the corner of my windscreen for the date on the little round disk, and feel so uncomfortable and guilty!
I looked at the packs of mutton on my stall, the joints and chops, diced and minced, the gorgeous deep red of the meat so much darker than normal lamb against the crisp, almost clinical white of the fat that topped it, all snug in their trays under tight cellophane.
At the other end of the table was the deli stuff; still warm scotch eggs piled high on a tray under a see-though cover, next to homemade faggots and black pudding and hogs pudding. There was bread and rolls and brightly coloured jars of different chutneys and jams, everything neatly packed and very obviously homemade.
I had a large table-top sign next to each group with a list of the ingredients, but hadn’t put any best before labels on anything. I can understand the need for best before dates in supermarkets and shops, but in a farmers’ market they always seem pointless, as all the deli produce is either made early that morning or late in the afternoon the day before.
Even the butchery is done on the day before the market.
Surely that’s why people come to farmers’ markets, because everything is fresh. Stamping produce with a best before date is akin to telling anyone who bakes at home that they have to do the same in case someone other than then picks it up out of the fridge. Madness.
But, legal is legal. I pulled out a sheet of blank sticky labels and began frantically scribbling a best before date of three day’s time, which sounded about right because we never add any artificial preservatives to anything we make. It would probably last longer than three days, but three days was comfortable.
The Trading Standards inspector wasn’t difficult to spot. Elderly, balding, light coloured trench coat, an open folder thick with paper and pamphlets held tight in front of him above a serious business face.
‘Do I know you?’ He said, looking at the stall rather than me.
‘Um, well…no, actually.’
‘Good. Right. So who are you?’
I told him. He wrote it down.
‘Homemade faggots, for real?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I assured him. ‘Everything on the stall is homemade, all grown or reared from my own free range animals that I breed myself.’
He started digging in his pocket. Oh, great. What was he going to do, arrest me? Ban me from trading? ‘There is only one other person in Devon I know of who makes their own faggots, and I’m not even sure they still do it,’ he said, pulling out a ten pound note. ‘I’ll have two. And some mutton. And a scotch egg.’
He handed the note across and smiled. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘if you’re producing and selling yourself, you don’t need a best before label. Because you’re selling direct to the consumer, if people want to know, they can just ask you.’
Oh what a wonderful breath of sanity!

Just a couple of other points I need to update. First, I might have been a little unkind to the marketing lady at the publishers in my last blog. True, but maybe unkind. I gave it one last shot and sent a brisk, business-like email to her with clear bullet points outlining all the information I needed, and got an apologetic response the same day. Since then we have swapped a couple of emails and she has really gone all out to be as helpful as possible.
The other thing is, I have got Sky One coming down tomorrow to film a piece with me about looking after and re-homing chickens. I’ll try and blog again in a couple of days with photos and an update on how it went and when it will be shown on TV.
One last thing of note, I have secured a monthly column double page spread in a nice glossy magazine on top of my weekly newspaper column. Happy days! First article to appear in April – will blog more on this later.

A problem shared, and all that

2010-01-17T01:55:00.000-08:00

I’ve stared at this blank screen for well over twenty minutes now, not because I don’t have anything to say – quite the reverse. I guess I’ve got a lot on my mind right now, and I’m kind of worried that this blog might end up looking like a page out of Bridget Jones Diary, without the cigarette tally. Or the scary knickers (any reference to Bridge Jones always has to include the scary knickers). But what the heck. A problem shared and all that. So…

Worries, in order:
Money – to include mounting bills and the niggling prospect of an MOT on the land rover.
Animals.
Horses – I had to take them out of their lovely 8 acre field and put them in a much, much smaller one with a field shelter whilst the bad weather continues, and now both of them are depressed.
Mother – family in general, including ill aunt.
The veg garden needs to be dug-over and manured this month (started this yesterday).
Need to begin some home brew so people who come on courses have something self sufficient to drink.
Cut down trees and lay them to season for next winter’s logs.
Burn brushings and fallen branches that have blown/knocked/rotted down and litter the front of the woods making it look scruffy.
The book – is going to print next Thursday and the marketing manager at the publishers has ignored my last three emails to her begging for advice on when to begin approaching magazines, etc, (despite her assurance that she would help me), and now I realise that I really, really, really am alone, and face the prospect of marketing this huge book using best guesses and best intensions.
I need to loose weight in case I do get any TV appearances to promote the book. I could also do with growing some hair, developing a razor sharp wit like Clive James and sexy eyes like Robby Williams.

Maybe making a list was a bad idea. It just bunches together all your insecurities so they can be easily viewed with a tiny sweep of the eye. At least when they’re still in you’re head you can only think of one at a time, so although it might seem like a mountain, at least it’s not a range.
Funny thing is, I just started writing a balance to this list; a list of nice thoughts, and it turned out to be the same as the worries: family, animals, land and book. See that’s my point, why does everything have to be so complicated? It’s like each part of my life has a good and bad side to it. I’m happy with it, but at the same time as being unhappy. Love it, hate it. Like it, loathe it. Worry sick about it, glow happily inside when I think of it.
No wonder I’m confused.
However there are a couple of issues I need to tackle sooner than later. I need to get my arse in gear and work on the land tidying and repairing where necessary, paying special attention to the front field where the chickens, ducks and geese are, and strim and generally clean-up everywhere else. I also need to send out a press release to all the long-lead magazines alerting them to the book, with an added paragraph saying I’ll get them a copy as soon as one is available from the publishers.
As for the rest, I’ll talk to Debbie. She’ll know what to do.
Yes, good plan.

Snow and Ice

2010-01-11T00:37:00.001-08:00

This, surely, is the only way to travel in the snow - but please note the complete absence of my dog. Dex, my little collie usually travels everywhere with me riding on the back of the quad, but he hates my snow driving, and seconds before this picture was taken jumped off to run beside me, and landed in a drift deeper than himself!

So far four trees have come down under the weight of the snow (mostly in the pig enclosures), but when the snow is full in the branches, the place looks so different and so magical.

Just a cool photograph.

Okay, so he won't ride with me, but he's quite prepared to fall asleep on the back of the quad when it's stationary.

Self Sufficient Christmas

2010-01-06T00:39:00.000-08:00

So what do you think, not bad? I made it for Debbie as her Christmas present. The bowl and the stand are made from oak which I turned on a lathe, and the middle bit, the stem, I hand carved from lime using a Stanley knife. It’s meant to represent the fact that we work so hard for the pigs, looking after them, feeding, watering, worrying about them, that this is one pig that is working for Debbie by holding up her drink.
I’ve only ever carved spoons and bowls and eggcups and things before, nothing as intricate as this. I’m really pleased with the result, even if it does look a little like a fat mouse!
So Christmas is done. Survived. Actually I like Christmas, it’s just that for a smallholder, it can, if you’re not careful, drift into being just like any other day. You do the morning rounds of letting out the dogs, chickens, and geese (very lucky geese, considering!), and ducks. Do a quick feed around of the pigs, check water, cast an eye over the horses and sheep and bomb back for breakfast.
I’d love to say that we all had fresh farm eggs for breakfast on Christmas morning, but out of well over fifty assorted poultry, not one of the buggers bothered to lay. I think it’s too cold for them, that or they wanted Christmas off.
Instead I munched toast while finishing off decorating the tree. We had sworn to ourselves that we would not be decorating the tree on Christmas morning again, that we would be better organised, and in truth we were, but we were still out delivering the last of the local orders for turkey, gammons, sausages and smoked ham (made the most amazing smoked ham this year. Hot smoked it over a low heat in oak wood smoke for nine hours, and it was dark and rich with a gorgeous smoky flavour).
Then we drew the turkey – doesn’t everyone spend their Christmas morning with their hand up a turkey’s bottom?
I tried to be even faster doing the evening rounds, but the horses decided to escape – something they have never done before – and pushed a hurdle to one side and walked out into the next field with all the sheep close behind.
The sheep just ate, but the horses were really funny because they knew they were being naughty and weren’t quite sure what to do after their great escape, so they found some humans and went and hung out next to them. I’m not sure the humans were as delighted as the horses in this arrangement, but luckily they did called us and I went over with a bucket of feed and walked the animals back, narrowly avoiding getting caught in the middle of a war between both horses and the stupid sheep who all thought it would be a good idea if they tried to trip me up so they could get at the feed before we made it to the correct field. With a little yelling, some swearing and use of a very stern pointy finger, I managed to get them back.
Then, charge home on the quad bike at light speed, finish off dinner, eat, and yes, I confess, fall asleep on the sofa by nine thirty. Another Christmas done.

Excuses, excuses, excuses!

2009-12-02T01:07:00.000-08:00

I know, I know – don’t you just hate it when someone starts a blog and then doesn’t bother to carry it on! However, it’s not so bad as I don’t seem to have any followers yet, so I guess this apology is going out only to me. Sorry Simon.

There is a good reason for not blogging though, and can be summed up in one word; editors. Yep, the book I wrote and submitted to the publishers was accepted and handed onto the editors. Now, okay so this was my first book, and as such wasn’t so much a learning curve as a learning vertical line. I had no idea editors had so much power. We hear of writers telling stories about the time they went ballistic at an editor for changing an important aspect of their text (if you haven’t already seen it, read Giles Coren’s rant to his sub-editor at the Times, written late at night when he was drunk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2460188/Giles-Corens-email-rant-in-full.html If you’re a writer, you’re unlikely not to have seen it, but if you haven’t, I envy you – it’s a classic). But for those of us on the bottom rung of the writing ladder, those of us who spend every waking hour and quite a few of the sleeping ones dreaming about a life at the keyboard, then a rant is totally out of the question until you’re successfully published (or should that be published and successful?). Isn’t it?

Well no, actually. If you think Giles Coren chucked everything out of his pram and then turned the buggy upside down, I just luzzed a few rattles over the side. It was all very stupid and concerned the fact that the editor was taking every single idea and thought I had about food out of the text and making it into a standalone recipe. I moaned that she was turning me into Delia, which, considering how rich and successful Delia is, only a dimwit would complain at. But I’m a man so I can do dimwittedness – I can do it quite well. And in this instance, I excelled.

There is a reason for recounting this story, a point to it, and that is to show how passionate you get when you begin to live your dream. All those early-day thoughts of getting to the stage where you have a manuscript accepted by a publisher (and only then once you have it accepted by an agent – an even harder task) that will be enough, goes straight out of the window. It’s not. It doesn’t matter what your dream is, whether you want to become a writer, as I did, or a fireman, once you start to live the life everything changes. You become besotted by getting it right, probably because it’s so easy to get it wrong, and if you get it wrong, puff, dream over. It’s scary.

At its height, I would receive five or six email pages of queries through from the editors a day, mainly asking me to justify facts and figures I put down, and clarifying important points. Every email had to be returned the same day. It was a full time job keeping up.

But now it’s done. Editing finished. I can go to pubs, restaurants and converse with friends again. I can, in short, become human. And I can blog. So, after a bit of a hiatus, here we go again. My name is Simon Dawson, this is my life, and this is my blog…

This is my life - well, a little bit of it anyway

2009-07-20T23:46:00.000-07:00

I was standing at my regular Saturday farmers' market stall when a woman (early fifties, lots of make-up, prada handbag and visually depressed, short, balding husband two steps behind), made a beeline for my stall.

'I want to complain,' she said, in a loud shrill voice. 'I bought sausage meat from you last week. Only it wasn't. It wasn't sausage meat at all, and the Scotch eggs I was going to make were ruined.'

I stammered that I was so sorry. She waved an irritated hand.

I hardly dare ask, but the question had to be put. 'What was wrong with the sausage meat?' I said as quietly as I could.

'It tasted like pork!'

Ahh.

I gave her money back, but I couldn't bring myself to apologise (after all, isn't that what real pork sausages are supposed to taste of?).

Every Friday the prep for the market begins ridiculously early at five in the morning, by butchering an entire pig down into the primal cuts, and goes right the way through the day making sausages, faggots, brawn, bacon and ham, etc, to about two the following morning. Three or four hours sleep, up, stumble about, drown myself in as much strong coffee as my asbestos mouth can take whilst getting ready, finish off any last minute prep, load the land rover, discover that I'm late (always) and drive like a lunatic to set-up before eight. So when she moaned that I had the bare-faced audacity to sell her pork sausage meat that actually tasted of pork, I was too tired to argue.

But she was an exception. Most people like the idea that Debbie and I home-make all our own produce, and most of them even like the old-fashioned flavours. But even amongst our regulars, few of them know how self sufficient we have really become.

I like the idea that Debbie and I are doing more and more for ourselves. I like that feeling of self reliance - though I do understand there is a balance, and I certainly don't want to become a Billy-no-mates, shun the outside world and live in a cave. I want to be greedy with self sufficiency. I want everything, the complete package. I want to be self sufficient and have a proper life.

So this is my blog, about modern self sufficiency, about natural healthy food and drink, animals, relationships, and anything else I discover along the way.