48 days ago
Three chilli plants have been harvested to date and all are fiery and at the point of harvest green. But they are quickly changing colour, one bunch to yellow the others to red. So making my early Christmas decorations hanging in my kitchen even more splendid. More plants will be harvested and the chillies threaded in the coming weeks.
78 days ago
rite another batch of dried fruit is soaking in black tea to make the next two cakes. But after a 24hor soak, yesterday’s batch was added to flour, brown sugar, a bit of mixed spice and an egg, mixed thoroughly and baked in the Aga. Hey presto, the fist two cakes for tea at Sharestock on Saturday are now ready and being stored, as they should be, to mature a little.
150 days ago
The strawberries keep on coming but as you can see below we now have blackcurrants aplenty and the first raspberries, golden and red. It is almost time for summer pudding. Meanwhile I have been active in the top field where one day I hope to keep goats.
541 days ago
I made a stack of jams last year: strawberry, blackcurrant, gooseberry, damson and marrow & ginger. And now we are down to the last jar. The fruit trees and bushes are looking good for this year and the strawberry crop is going to be absolutely enormous. But we are now down to our last pot of jam, as you can see below.
647 days ago
I worry a bit that this is a bit of “all must have prizes” as this cup is awarded once a week and there are only about 65 kids in Joshua’s school. But, what with the lomg holiday’s teachers enjoy and all those Inset days perhaps I worry too much. Anyhow being called out in assembly last Friday to receive this cup, which is for adademic progress and being a pleasure to be at school with, made my son very happy and proud. He was, I’m told, a bit shy about going up to get the cup but he has had a wide grin of happiness and pride all weekend.
748 days ago
I gather that in England drought orders are set to remain in 2023 but here in North Wales there is no shortage of water. As you might gather from the picture below, the River Dee is rising and the rain is still beating down. There is now a small stream running down the lane to the hovel and through the farmyard towards the river. It is my apple orchard, the older of the two, which sits on the river bank and will be the first to be flooded if the water rises by another five foot or so which it might well do.
782 days ago
For some reason, I am snowed under with apples from the orchard by the river Dee this year. This week I brought in two 25 litre buckets of apples. I could easily bring in another twenty if I had the time and energy to process them all and enough bottles to store the juice in.
1034 days ago
All bar three of the c250 olive trees at the Greek Hovel produce the tiny pea, or two pea, sized fruit used only for crushing and turning into oil. Three of the trees produce larger, edible fruit.
1257 days ago
I need 200ml of the stuff to make elderflower ice cream so on Saturday I went picking elderflower, wading through grass, nettles and weeds in the top meadow which are almost as tall as me, in order to get to the bush by the churchard. Twenty five heads went into a pot with the zest from four lemons onto which I poured 1.5 litres of boiling water and left it to stand overnight, under a tea towel.
1305 days ago
Okay that is not a huge number. Despite being behind a paywall my main site, www.ShareProphets.com has achieved almost ten times as many reads in one fewer year. But some might be surprised that my ramblings on rebuilding and living in hovels in Greece and Wales, on life on both, on politics, on jokes and on all sorts of other matters, mainstream and obscure, get any readers at all. So this is a modest landmark. When this website started it was therapy for me at a very difficult time in my life and I’d be lucky to get 30 page impressions in a day.
1434 days ago
The Mrs thinks that when boxes are emptied of Christmas presents, they should be thrown away or just plausibly used for lighting the woodburning stove. Not that she has done that once. But the cats and I know what boxes are really for.
1986 days ago
I have not reported for a couple of days and I am glad to say that the waters are now receeding here at the Welsh Hovel. They have left our garden and the levels in the Orchard are down by a good foot and a half. The photos below are from Thursday and are from the area around the bridge I cross each nursery day walking Joshua off to “borstal” in England.
