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New season Garlic
Today we started selectively harvesting our home grown garlic which has been grown over winter inside a polytunnel. Whilst we still have quite a bit of last seasons crop left to use up, there is nothing like the taste of new season garlic and this one ended up in an omelette for lunch.
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2016 Lemongrass Plants
It’s a bit late but today I eventually got around to separating out the overwintered clumps of Lemongrass and re-potting them as single stems to make this years crop. All these lemongrass stems are from a one clump which in turn was a single stick of Lemongrass a year ago. You tend to get around…
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Polytunnel Progress
Having caught out with the very late frost last year I have delayed the sowing of outdoor crops by two weeks which has allowed me more time to get the polytunnel better organised. We have used reservoir trays for the tomatoes for a few years now and, by maintaining the compost moisture levels, they have proved…
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Rustic Chopping & Serving Boards
The past few days have taken place in a large cloud of sawdust as we try and catch up on a few bespoke orders for BIG chunky chopping boards. Thick milled planks are cut to best make use of their individual natural grain patterns. All boards are marked out by hand and consequently no two boards…
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Hurrah for Cow Muck!
Cow muck is THE essential ingredient for our big pumpkins and giant vegetables. The delivery of the cow muck always heralds the start of a new growing season. We work one year ahead so this muck heap will be piled up and left to rot for use next year. The muck pile from last year has…
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EU Referendum
Our Chucks have considered all the information in the £9m leaflet and cast their votes early.
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Sourdough Course
Having already completed the Artisan Foodworks ‘Basic Breadmaking’ course at some time ago, the ‘Mastering Sourdough’ course was a natural follow on. David and Julie were again the perfect hosts and the gang of eager students were a good bunch. My haul of my own handcrafted sourdough bread made on the day was impressive: For…
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Our first homemade wood fired pizza
Yesterday we finally got around to making our very first homemade pizza in the wood fire oven. Liam made 1kg of pizza dough and a delicious (secret recipe) tomato sauce and so our first pizza trials began. The oven was lit with some dry brash and a few sticks to warm it up before it was…
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Cooking sausages in a wood fired oven
Having lit some 10 fires of ever increasing size in our new wood oven in order to ‘cure’ the construction (slowly drive out all the moisture) it was nice to declare the oven open and pop in a few appropriately named ‘firecracker’ sausages from Taylors at Lathom. At last… Dinner is served!
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Growing our own firewood – 2016
Many years ago we abandoned the idea of being able to own our own woodland as there is so little of it in West Lancashire in the first place and, of that, it is very rare that it comes up for sale. But, rather than admit defeat, we bought some arable land and field by…