Phase one of Blackberry wine 2016.

This is the recipe I used. 

4 lbs of blackberries and a couple of raspberries too. Just because.mash them well.

boil water and add it to the berries, making the liquid up to eight pints.

Once the mix has reached blood temperature add a t-spoon of pectolase, and leave overnight.

In the morning add your wine yeast and nutrient, leave for five days, stirring daily and  

sieve the liquid through muslin onto 3lbs or a little less of sugar. Stir well, until all of the sugar is dissolved and pour the juvenile wine into a demi john, just to the shoulder, store excess wine in a small clean bottle with cotton plugging the top. After a few days of bubbling, when the ferment quietens down, you should be safe to top up the wine to the base of the neck. There will be more pictures later, if I don't forget.

whoops.

Might have left that one a bit too long.

I've been looking into the use of nettle seeds.

From what I've read, nettle seeds are incredibly good for you and can give you a bit of a natural high. Which I could do with.

I went out with Trouble for over two hours and filled up a bag for life with nettle heads (and only got stung once :D), that were covered with seeds. I also found one plum, one apple and a handful of blackberries. Not the most amazing haul ever, especially as I went out for elderberry's, but its certainly not bad.
I have to dry the nettle seeds first. It's not dangerous or anything, drying it just reducing the 'hit' it gives you which can be a bit extreme if you haven't had it before. Or so I've read.

This is how much I got.

Not many blackberries and I wasn't kidding about only getting one plum. :p

You can see how the seeds hang from the plants. Try to imagine how time consuming removing the seeds will be...

And there we go. Yes, it was as time consuming as you imagined. I still need to put them through a large holed sieve to remove the seeds from the small stems once they've dried. I also need to find a place to put these so that they can dry out of the way from the animals and not on the cooker. 

 

Blackberry picking.

I took out the dogs and the OH (that's his arm) to pick the last few blackberries for the blackberry wine that we will hopefully have made before I go back to work. 

There are a lot of berries, but they are mostly very high up or have lots of bug damage.

I also bought Brian our youngest snake a new Really Useful Box. This new box is about a third bigger than his old box and after I'd put air holes around the whole box, I moved him into his bigger home. He's a bit scared at the moment, as its all very new.

I will add some more hidey holes when I can, now that he has the space.

Strawberries.

I bought two more punnets of strawberries yesterday and I've now got 2 lbs and 12 oz of frozen de-hulled strawberries. Hopefully I have just over a pound of plums in the freezer and that's the first batch of wine provided for. :) So, that will be one off the list. Three more to go I think, it should last me through next summer and up to Christmas.

I keep finding guinea pigs on the lawn

Trouble is getting a little excited about it and I do worry that she'll get too excited, and hurt them, so we are doing everything we can to keep them out.

I'm at work today so I am hoping to get some serious blackberry and elderberry picking done tomorrow. Hopefully it isn't raining. I've been entertaining the dogs by hiding treats around the house for them to hunt out. I hate it when it rains before I have to go to work. I worry that the dogs will be more destructive... She certainly was last night. She pulled off some nice unopened seeded wraps and ripped them all up on the floor. This better be a fleeting throw back to puppy-hood phase. I couldn't cope with her reverting. :/

Solar panels.

I really want to get a solar panel to put on my allotment shed roof. I want to power my electric strimmer up at the allotment but I don't really know anything about how to do it, whether I'd get enough power to use it etc etc.
I will have to do some research and save some money.

also, Trouble seems to be going through a phase of pulling stuff off the work tops again and ripping stuff up. She's been eating the garlic bulbs in the night. :/ I hope the garlic put her off, although I have no idea how she got at it as it was inside the bread bin.

New toy day.

I got two flavored chews and a teddy. Obviously both dogs wanted the teddy. :/ 

The suet pudding tastes amazing.

The pudding has a lemon syrup sauce. It cooked pretty well, a little bit wet but not too bad.

I got my 21 kilos of flour delivered yesterday. Happy baking times. :)

And the courgette plant is really producing now. I sent the two small courgettes to my dads but I forgot that he was going away today so I had to bring them back home.

I got to bring some of dads tomatoes home with me too though, which is nice, and one of his cucumbers in the photo below. I've given half to the chickens. 

looks lovely doesn't it?

Well this is the second attempt at cooking it. The first time I tried to cook it, it was wrapped in just grease proof paper, which dissolved in the water making the pudding fill up with water. :'(

I've removed as much of the water as I can and I've put it in a little bowl that I hope will do ok in the hot water. Hopefully it will cook properly and all of the excess water will evaporate.

Its a lemon and current suet pudding. I'm quite excited about it. I hope it works out or I'll have to make another one.

Moved the visiting chickens.

This is where they had been for over two weeks. They'd been telling me that they were fed up of being in that spot for a while but today was the first chance I'd got to move them.

They are much quieter, and much happier now.

They're busily mowing the lawn for me. :) 

I took the dogs out for an hour and forty-five minute walk.

She's had her denta stick and now she's happy.

It's my dads birthday on Tuesday so I made him a cake.

I made it to look like a wheel of brie cheese as my dad really loves brie. Its a lemon sponge with a white chocolate icing. 

Its lovely, even if I do say so myself. 

We also picked 1 lb of blackberries while we were at my dads, making the total amount of blackberries now 3 lbs worth.

We'll be making the first blackberry wine soon... :) 

A video about the cat... Kinda... Not really at all, to be honest.

DSCF7430

Bought some echinacea tablets!

I got paid yesterday, so last night after I finished work at nine-o-clock I went out and bought echinacea tablets. I just didn't want to sacrifice my two baby echinacea plants in the garden. They are too young to have me keep removing all of the leaves.  I took a tablet last night and I woke up with just a little snuffle and cough. I really love echinacea.

I woke up to the cat jumping onto the bed and she was soaking wet. It was an interesting way to be woken up, its raining quite heavily outside meaning the dogs and cat have their rain faces on.

I have work again today two until nine. I am not a night person and I truly, truly hate having to be at work that late at night. I normally like to be asleep by eight. I am going to be off work from Sunday until Wednesday though so I'll hopefully be able to get some of my life back, and keep desperately applying for better jobs. Its been eight years that I've been trying to get out of retail now and I so passionately hate it, that it causes me physical pain.

I'm hopefully going to get lots done at the allotment while I'm off, hopefully I'll get a bit more compost and cardboard onto the raised beds. I'm forever thinking of ways to improve the soil without spending a fortune. I am really starting to think about what to grow for next year. How to get a greenhouse or my poly tunnel up there as I'm determined to get more tomatoes. I can only get cherry toms to ripen in time in my garden so I need to grow the big fellows at the allotment. I might get a better germination rate of squash at the allotment too. I only had one winter squash germinate this summer and he's really not very big.

So, I'll be planning and biding my time, waiting for the weather to improve... In more ways than one.

Apple cider vinegar and honey water.

It tastes like I'm eating cockles.

The puddin' didn't like Trouble trying to sit with her.

You can see she's pretty pissy about the fact that Trouble just got up onto the sofa, sat next to her and washed her ears.

She got up from her spot still looking annoyed and sat down right there. Maybe so Trouble can't lick her anymore? Its raining today and I have work this afternoon so I'm trying to rest so that I can get better. I would love to get to my allotment and do some more weeding but I decided I should just rest and get it done another day.

FIRST TOMATOES!!! August 18th.

I ate them ALL. They were incredible. I did get one more but it had split and I gave it to the chickens.I'm still ill, but its  more like a cold now rather than flu. I'm going to have to conclude that I've just been really over doing it and having depression certainly doesn't help.

 Anyway. I've kept some seeds from the biggest of my earliest ripening tomatoes so that I might get them to ripen earlier next year. My garden just isn't sunny enough for good tomato growing. I have saved some from the tomatoes my dad gave me too. I might have glass or plastic up at the allotment by next year.

I have labeled the paper since taking this picture. I felt very sciency whilst I was doing it. Yes it's toilet roll.

Proud: Updated

Well, we all know I have the flu because I've been complaining about it, but now (all the men are gonna run away in horror) I'm also getting rather nasty period pains too. Yey! :P
But despite all of this I managed to walk the dogs, change all of the snakes waters, clean out Brian who is getting so much more friendly now. He sat wrapped around my wrist quite happily as I cleaned out his box. I changed all of the chickens waters, adding garlic and apple cider vinegar to the clean water which the visiting chickens picked out of the water and ran away with. D: Stupid chickens.
The chickens have had some chopped up tomatoes this morning too but as I'm worming them I shouldn't be giving them any treats.

I've done two washes and put them on the line, watered the potted stuff. flea'd Trouble and Esme. Went to do Niche and found I needed to buy some more for her. She's 21 kilos so I'm uncomfortable using the 20 - 40 kilo flea stuff that Trouble has. I'd rather use the up to 20 kilo, especially now that she's getting older and weaker. Call me paranoid if you must.

I've also planted some plum pips in largish pots and put them on the windowsill. Hopefully I'll get some nice little trees that I can keep in very large pots until we get a bigger garden.

I'm now propped up on my pillow mountain, wrapped up in my duvet trying not to move so that the pain doesn't get too bad.

Later.

I've since done a third washing load which is on the line, and taken Trouble out blackberry picking. As it was a dog walk as well, we went around three miles picking blackberries as we went. I met a VERY rude woman, which isn't the best when I barely see anyone during the day. But we do now have around 1.5 to 2 pounds of blackberries to go towards wine-making. I will have to go out again soon to get some more.

Trouble over heated despite us being under the trees for a lot of the time so I had to wrap her with a wet towel when we got home. (I've never seen her look so happy) I've done a bit of weeding and now I'm back under my duvet once again.

Woke up at 4 am so lets do a photo roundup.

 I woke up at 4 am with the coughing and the sneezing so I was up in plenty of time to walk the dogs as the sun was rising.

it was a beautiful misty morning, spoiled only slightly by the sounds of my hacking and spluttering.

It was so quiet, barely anyone was around. We saw one man with his two dogs, a fox and about twenty cats, all going home after a night of feline fun. 

 This was one of them, you can see him if you look closely.

We only went out for about 45 minutes again as I'm still ill. I think the dogs fit in quite a lot though. They were very excited about EVERYTHING. Which I can't quite understand as they went out for thirty minutes right before bed. It'll be nice when I can go on a proper big walk again. :/ hopefully soon. 

I don't know why, but this little pineapple plant just caught my eye.

Yes, I'm aware she looks a bit evil in this picture. She's not I promise. 

And niche looks silly, which she is. I promise. :)

You can see how early it was, the sun wasn't due to rise for another thirty minutes. 

This is Felley priory. Dad took me to visit it on Friday. I can't say I'd recommend it. Its tiny and they charged £5 to look around!! The highlight was getting to pet their horses over the fence. :P

I got the OH to pick these courgettes for me last night as bending does all sorts of terrible things to my lungs right now. They'd been left a little long. The wine bottle is for scale. I'll be making cheesy courgette boats with them.

 The OH was very nice yesterday, he picked a whole bunch of blackberries and he helped me to worm the chickens.