Monday 12 May 2014

May the catch-up be with you.

SO, yet again it’s been a long time since the last post. Reason for this is simple. Life has got in the way, a wedding, livestock, good weather, DIY, Game of Thrones, work and planting have all contributed to a general amount of laziness when it comes to writing posts for the blog. Due to mounting pressure (Hopwood!! Might get her back by getting her to play Russian roulette with some Correzienne mushrooms in October!!) I’ve finally given over some time to do a bit of a catch up as far as life here at Chez Powell is concerned. I’m afraid it’ll take, yet again, the form of a list and I’ll stick in some photos where I can.

Things we’ve done since Feburary.
Staring with the one that’s taken up most of our time. We’ve planted/sown the vast majority of the garden, including ...flowers. This is unusual as I’m a bit of a plant Nazi. If it doesn’t produce food or directly contribute into the production of food then normally it has no place in my garden. However, some flowers have been planted including some that have no apparent use what so ever other than to look nice. Perhaps I’m going soft in my old age. Less of a plant Nazi and more of a VNP (Vegetable National Party) member. Although I have also planted up some anti insect plants near the door to deter the little buggers from the house. In addition to the “normal” veg there is also some experimental perennial ones in this year. I’ll write a separate one for them if/when they start producing. Lots of experiments in companion planting happening this year as well so I’ll post on that when the pictures look more impressive!
Anti insect plants, geraniums, tansy and rue in pallet planters.
Increased the animal stock. Six ducks, one rabbit litter of six, for new chickens with some eggs currently waiting to hatch in an incubator lent to us by some very nice people who also sold us two new pigs.
This years first rabbit litter.
Some of the new birdies.

Charlotte and Babe

Built more animal housing from pallets

Built a planting bench.....from pallets.
Built more fencing including a little picket style fence for the front of the house (from pallets) as well as pig fencing.

Strengthened up the polytunnel. It took a bit of a battering this winter in the wind so I’ve used, you’ve guessed it, pallets to reinforce some the side supports/hoops.

Acted as vet. Since the arrival of the baby chickens the weather’s been rubbish and they keep getting colds so barely a week goes by without one spending a couple of days in the kitchen under a heat lamp!
A hot chick under a red light!!

This little chap now lives with the guinea pig as he ran away and we couldn't find him for 4 days so he can't go back with mummy.

Lots of work away from the “farm” as well for both of us, which is good as it means we can pay our taxes!!


Yet again I promise to AIM to have less of a time lapse between this and the next post but time simply slips away. Perhaps I’ll fill the time with nice pictures of flowers.

Tuesday 4 February 2014

Pallets 101

Today we got a garden/porch chair. It didn’t cost us a thing, bar some screws. I made it from pallets. Lots of this going on at the moment and the internet is full of spectacular things made from them. Some big some small but all great. I even found a man who had covered his allotment in them then used plastic bottles to increase his production space with vertical gardening. Whilst there are lots of ideas there isn’t a lot of info on how to get from pallet to creation. I’ve put some of my creations on before and I’ll try not to repeat too many. Rather than set of instructions on how to make something I thought I’d go for general things I consider when thinking about a pallet project.
Today's creation

Rabbit run in progress

       Quality of pallet. Is it even worth picking it up? If it’s smashed to bits, rotten and generally falling apart then my advice, unless you’re planning a bonfire, don’t bother. It will simply sit in your garden/shed rotting further and taking up space.

       Treatment. Some pallets are treated with some unpleasant chemicals to preserve them. Don’t use these indoors or for chairs, play equipment etc. Use them for gates, fences and things people won’t be spending a lot of time on. Look for heat treated ones for “people used” items. You should be able to find a HT on a spacer to tell you if it’s been heat treated.
Seating area. Looking for a fire pit for the center

       To cut or not cut. Can I make what I want without cutting it up? Pallets are generally very strong. Think about their original purpose. If you start butchering it will it loose its integrity? If you go for cut, where will you cut? I generally try to keep the spacers on if I’m going for this.

      

Dining Table. No cutting required.

Work top. Butchered another pallet to fill in gaps.

  Pull it apart. The trickiest part of adapting a pallet for further use. Sometimes they come apart like a dream, leaving you with 10-15 planks of wood where what you make is limited only by (in my case) skill and imagination. There are several videos on you tube. I go for a combination of masonry chisel, hammer and crow bar to “gently” prise apart rather than the smash the end technique as it leads to more splitting. Sometimes you simply have to give up on a pallet and cut it instead and use smaller pieces joined together.
No right angles allowed mirror.
Window boxes. Ready for summer.
Chicken house.
Number one rule. You need to be adaptable. You probably won’t be able to make the item you’ve found on the net. You won’t have the same size and/or type of pallet.
Bathroom mirror



Pedestal 
 Yours will split when you try to screw them together. The planks will break when you try to pull it apart. Yours will bend and warp. Believe me I’ve had all these problems and more, sometimes resulting in tool throwage! My biggest problem is forgetting the number one rule. But, this is the joy of pallets. Your creation will be unique. No one will have one quite like you. If you want one like everyone else, go to Ikea! Who wants to be the same as everyone else?



What have you made from pallets? Share in the comments below.

Thursday 30 January 2014

Pork Preseves

Well it’s snowing outside so a perfect excuse to down tools for a while and write the next post. This one’s about putting longevity into your meat. There are several ways of doing this and we’ve had a go at lots this year. So, in order of success.
Wet cure – A wet cure is simply putting your meat into to a brine solution for an allotted time and then hanging for a week or so. You can add all sorts of weird and wonderful things to your cure from beer to coke. It’s the first time we’ve done this so I kept things simple. Just salt and water. All was going well until it got warm and damp here weather wise and the temperature in our normally freezing cold storage room shot into the early teens and we lost just over half our wet cure meat. For the most part not too bad but the biggest blow was the two hams. Any that wasn’t too gone off was rapidly boiled up for the dogs so they were quite happy about it!
The brine bucket


Curing nicely













Profiting from disaster
















“Canned goods” – By this I mean the things we cooked up and put into parfait jars. This year we made: Rillettes, which is a bit like a coarse pate, the meat is salted, shredded then cooked in its own fat. Rillons, like the rillettes but using belly meat and it’s kept in chunks and cooked in wine first, very nice. Finally confit, which really is just chunks of pork, salted over night then cooked in lard and it’s delicious!
Rillons.Yum


Stored rillons.Yum yum!

Rillettes cooking away.

Nicer than Intermarche!


Saucissons – These are air dried sausages. Essentially you make a salty sausage mix and hang to dry until they go hard. The flavour improves with time so the longer you can resist temptation the better. We made two types, a plain one and a sort of chorizo flavoured one with lots of garlic and paprika. Both are very good and are a real success this year.
Mincing!

Errrrrr
Ummmm?


Hanging out.
Dry Cure – Easiest to do and our most successful. Simply rub salt into the meat each and drain off any liquid that comes off. In the case of the hams I set up a box with holes in it to allow the liquid to drain and covered the meat in salt. Again you can add things to your salt mixture to add flavour. I did some bellies adding in sugar, pepper, bay leaves and juniper berries to make a sort of pancetta. We also had a go at lonza and coppa which are entire muscles kept whole and given the salt treatment.
Bellies getting a salt rub. You pay good money for that at a spa.


Ham going into a salt storage

Next time there will be more dry curing and “canning” as these were by far and away the most successful methods. We did also fill one and a half freezers and cook a whole shoulder a couple of days after butchery, which was slowly consumed over about a week in a variety of leftover pork dishes! Starts all over again this spring as the hunt now begins for two more piglets for chez Powell. Oink oink.

Mmmmmmmmm.






Saturday 18 January 2014

All brawn and (this time) no brains!

Despite a promise that I would knock these pig related posts out quickly I haven’t done so. “Why?” I hear you cry in despair. “We want to see more meat processing. We want to be aware of where our food comes from.” The weather is pretty much the reason. It has been unseasonably warm here in the Correze. This has meant more work outside,  both here and job wise. I was picturing months on end stuck indoors with snow mounting up outside. This has not been the case.

So on with piggy processing. Day 2 was butchery and some offal processing. As far as butchery was concerned I did lots of you tube watching and came up with a plan for how to carve them up. Lots of joints for roasting, lots of mince for sausages and sausisson, head and feet for brawn and a whole range of odd and sods for curing and cooking.





Rolled belly.

Chops, loin roast and a bit of bacon


Offal wise. Liver went in pate using Ray’s Liver Pate recipe from River Cottage Meat. Hearts are being saved for a favourite of ours, devilled hearts on toast.


Pate


 The left over liver went in with kidneys to make a sort of haggis/faggot concoction which we can’t decide whether or not it’s a haggisy faggot or a faggoty haggis!


Wrapping a big "Haggot" in caul fat



Finished little ones


Finished big one.















Look at all that meat. Scandal that this is often thrown away
The much under used heads (Minus the cheeks which were removed and brined to make Bath chaps) went into a pot with a couple of trotters to be picked over and pressed into the resulting gelatinous stock to make brawn. This is a sort of pate/terrine, very popular over here but all but forgotten in Britain. Probably because we don’t like to be reminded that our meat was once an animal with a head. Quite happy to eat it all mashed up in a cheap supermarket/fast food burger though!

Hello there!

The finished Brawn.