the daydream fund challenge thread

Davesnave

OK no more suspense, but no picture yet, because I'm rushing to finish grass cutting before the weather breaks tonight. We have a bit of a social coming up for local friends on Thursday, which marks a year of our being here.

It's a Giant Puff Ball, fully 90cm in circumference and weighing well over a pound. We had some with bacon at breakfast time, but there's still 95% of it left! To my palate, it isn't as nice as wild mushrooms, but what it lacks in flavour it makes up for in sheer bulk.

This isn't the first Puff Ball here. One emerged a few weeks back, but I forgot about it and tripped over the thing later on, destroying it. This one was only a metre from the first and, according to a local with connections here, they're a regular occurrence. When we asked if the previous owners had eaten any, there was silence, followed by an emphatic "No!"

In other news, we were having more feather pulling problems with our second batch of hens, so I 'phoned a well-known 'hen agony aunt,' who told me they were bored & needed to get outside on grass. I wasn't convinced, but we went out and cut the old pig shelter in two, fitted the black polythene wrapped dog cage we'd been using inside and, hey-presto, we were in business. Of course the smaller birds needed a separate run from the older ones, so we made it alongside, allowing them to get acquainted.

And it's worked! All the birds are behaving pretty well now, even though they have no more space than in the barn.

Good to hear everyone is harvesting plenty of fruit & veg. Winged One, we have lettuce in succession, but I still can't keep up..... the chickens eat two every day!

Davesnave

Just giving this thread a bump. I've updated my main album now, so I've removed the link above and replaced it with this:



Our 'proper' chicken shed arrived today. The next thing I'll be doing is creosoting it, so that the dear little red mites don't find a home between the shiplap panels. I realise we'll be heading into autumn soon, but I'll be glad I did it next spring.:D

Still trying to eat the puff ball, and we've given some away, but it is beginning to lose its appeal!

The farmers are all out morning, noon & night here, harvesting as fast as they can go. They've decided the weather's broken. Mind you, I could have told them when it would happen weeks ago; we're having a bit of a 'do' tomorrow to celebrate a year at this smallholding!

rhiwfield

A year already Davesnave? Time flies!

Nice pics, and impressive puffball! See your using the diatomaceous (?) earth. You must have a bulk supply, our 500g canister cost about £7 and we spread it in the nest boxes and nooks and crannies of the coop.

Our tree fruit is looking better this year. Of the nine young apple trees 2 have no fruit, the cox has a solitary apple (didnt thin it last year, my fault) and the rest have a good crop, though they havent reached the full extent of the training wires. So its off to Mr T this morning for some freebie fruit storage boxes. The early transparent gage has about 3x the fruit compared to last year, and its a heavenly taste even though the juice somehow goes down the chin with each bite!

Lotus-eater

OOooo a puffball, always wanted to see one of those, we don't get them round here for some reason.

I remember HFW had a recipe for them, using bacon fat, breadcrumbs or something, it sounded great.
This is it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/puffballfritterswith_14303

Eat it quick! But I think you have to remember to leave some as well, so to get more spores for following years.

O, just seen the photo with the info it was growing on the new polytunnel site, so maybe you don't want any more growing there then Nice puffball!

Davesnave

Hi rhiwfield, the diatomaceous earth is mixed in with our own soil, which has been sieved, though it's pretty fine anyway. We couldn't afford to do it any other way. One of my tasks next week will be to photograph all the apples and add to last year's notes. Like you, we are getting mixed results, but plums are poor all round this year.

Lotus, we've given up on the puff ball, as it is turning a bit yellow inside now. If we have more, and I wouldn't be surprised, we'll let them mature.

Edit: Had a look a the recipe and agree that one needs bacon, egg, or cheese, to get the best from puffballs.

bonsibabe

Hi all

stitching_witch - don't worry lol, it was a very late night for me as I fell asleep shortly after my tea, woke up at 4 and could not get back to sleep for love nor money so came on here for a looksie.

choille - I have no idea what variety of cherry tree they are but the guy i met from portmahomack said that they grow really well out there so should in theory do well here too. The cherries themselves are about half the size of the ones you buy in the shop but taste so much nicer.

Well I'm off into the garden today ... hubby managed to get 9 6ft x 6ft fence panels and 2 half panels for £50 yesterday so we are going to go to the council dump later today to drop off a load of rubbish and see if anyone has dumped some posts. It's amazing what people shove to the dump rather than offer it on freecycle. He reckons that he will get about half of our garden fenced off. All we have at the moment is a really naff council green metal fence so the panels will add privacy and act as a windbreak. Dunno about anyone else but up here in the sneck it was gale force last night. I had washing out on the line and hubby thought it was going to end up in the back field.

No movement at the moment on the possiblity of allotments down here but we have finally managed to get the ok from the council to use a small car parking area at the back of the council offices to make a moveable community garden. Me, DH and a friend of ours are going to try and show people that you don't need a large garden to grow your own ... it can be done in pots and rubble bags etc. So I am going to go on the scrounge to local businesses for compost and rubble bags and seeds and the like ... see what we can blag for free.

On the garlic front I'm going to plant some today. I'm going to do a bit of recycling. There's not much chance of planting it direct into the soil so we are recycling some 2 litre plastic bottles. DH is going to cut the tops off, and drill some drainage holes in the bottoms. We will then add some gravel for drainage, some good quality compost and hopefully one bottle will produce one garlic bulb! Well that's the theory ... hopefully it works! If it does then we have yet another way to show folk how to grow in small spaces.

The girls now have their own venus fly trap as well! It's only a small one that they got from a rather well known garden centre with the name Home in it! They have named it Seymour of all things! Although my oldest (she's only 8) wanted to call it starvin marvin! Kids!

Right the sun is shining and I'm feeling energetic! I've been off since thursday and am not back to work till wednesday (using the last of my hols before the end of the month) so am off to try and be productive in the garden!

Will pop back later on tho! xx

choille

Some size of puff ball Dave.
Love the way you improvised with the henhouse - we do the improvisation all the time.

Bonsibabe - good to hear that you are feeling energetic - Didn't get much sleep last night - the gale force winds were incredible.

But your plans for the car park are amazing. That's good with the garlic plan. I will have a go tomorrow. I have never successfully grown garlic out side so I cadged some old wooden-framed windows off someone - I'll have a go at making a frame/mini green house thingy thing tomorrow.

Davesnave

I harvested our garlic a couple of weeks ago and it was OK, but a few plants had extra bulbs growing out of the stems about half way up. Not sure why, though they may have been stressed during the dry weather.

Choille, 25 hectares is some woodland to plant! Are you going to put them all in yourself? Yes, there are some people who will complain about anything, and won't mind upsetting others while they do it, having no ability to see anyone else's POV. Often, they are people who contribute nothing to the community and just want to live in some kind of rural museum. Our nearby Nimbys are going to be apoplectic shortly, as I've heard something on the local grapevine, but as this is an open forum, Mum's the word!:rotfl:

We've had a bit of luck. Someone we've known for a while turns out to have an almost inexhaustible, not 'off the back of a lorry,' supply of food and other chicken-related stuff, like bedding. Until we got the chickens, this wasn't a matter of conversation, so we didn't know, but anyway, we now have enough of most items to take us through next year.

As for the new chicken house/shed, it's a cracker. I'm really glad we bought locally. I've finished creosoting, so have to get the base sorted now. All the time, I keep thinking about the polytunnel that's not going up ATM and wondering if it will. Maybe I'll dig a trial foundation hole today......

Looks nice outside. Have a good Sunday on your plots!

rhiwfield

Rain, rain and more rain! What a damp squib this July and August has been. But somehow the sweetcorn pollinated well and we are feasting on the stuff every night. More crops this year than ever and having trouble keeping up, even though the hens are taking some of the spare fruit and veg.

DW is waiting the results of her assessment medical but is busy planning for life after knee ops.

We watched the programme on food waste last night in wonder, do people really throw away all that food after they've bought it? We dont even have leftovers for the hens, we're that mean

Greengages have now gone thanks to us, the hens, the hordes of wasps and the wind. But the apples promise a bumper harvest, will start picking the first tree soon.

The wet summer has really tested our movable coop and run. No real problems in moving from spot to spot BUT we are getting some leakage of water down the sides of the coop which particularly affects the nest boxes. Looks like a design fault

Lotus-eater

rhiwfield wrote: »

We watched the programme on food waste last night in wonder, do people really throw away all that food after they've bought it? We dont even have leftovers for the hens, we're that mean

We saw that program, interesting in a way, although it's all been on tv before. I was suprised how many market traders threw away half decent stuff, I would have thought they would sell it off cheap at the end.

I'm missing my chickens now, they eat up all of the glut stuff that just goes over before we can get to it, now it's all going into the compost