Best wellyboot forward. Pips frugal edible garden adventures.

mfmaybe

Pippilongstocking wrote: »

Thank you for being so kind. A big wave to you. Oh someone near - how fabulous - we can be weather buddies and enjoy the benefits of lots of sunshine (I hope).

Still looking for pesky chooks. I might cave in and buy the 'spensive ones' goes against the grain but I'm missing my lasses.

I use the one that Red Squirrel posted for me. Its on my blog here if you want the haiver version - otherwise without the nonsense -

10-20 elder flowerheads to each lot of syrup (cold syrup or they're rank) - steep for 24-48 hours and then seive, put into a sterilised vessel.

Syrup
2lb sugar
1 pint water
to a handful of lemon (in my case frozen sliced lemons unused at xmas and bagged up for a later use)
Heat up and make a syrup, then cool.
35g of citric acid (add when mix is cold)

Its so easy and we're still using last years up so we must be doing something right.

:rotfl:

PS if you see a pair of red wellies in an elderflower bush locally. That will prob be me.

:rotfl:

Nice to see you and thanks for popping in. Always lovely to talk about making free grub.

Thanks for that - I liked the haivering version too :rotfl:. Interesting to read on your blog you can use the black elder flowers too, I have both in my garden. Might have to try one of each. Though on closer inspection the black ones are flowering, the regular white are only flowering at the impossible to reach top.

rtandon27

Pippilongstocking wrote: »

...I love that you google this stuff...

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I have to, my English/English translator (aka the OH) does not have a Scottish option! In fact last time I asked him to translate one of your gems he said he was on strike because we were low on cheese! (I don't get the association either:o)

...and my lovely (if slightly eccentric) neighbour, the old Scottish Gran just confuses the issue more when she harkens back to the good old days every time I ask her what something means!

:D:D

Seanymph

I buy my chickens from the farm up the road - I don't think they are caged, I think they are barned.

Anyway, I pay £1.80 each - they arrive bescraggled and bald and a bit out of sorts but they soon chicken up.

One did a dust bath for the first three hours last time - and they soon learn scratching.

The last thing that they learn is to go to bed!

Mine go into the shed and onto the perch as it gets dark, so I can just go and throw the door. When I first get them from the farm they just settle down wherever they are in the run (or garden in the winter) and I have to find them and carry them in to bed.

Takes them about a week.

That and the fact that Barry (my speckeldy hen) won't let anyone sit on the perch with her - so she frightens the new ones off.

Anyway, I paid £19 for my first six, and haven't since then - rehoming them gives me a lot of pleasure, and they are very cheap..

wik

Seanymph, i have also in past got hens this way... i had some free range hens when living on one of islands, they came from a intensive place, they did really well as free range once they had got over the moult... some good food, fresh air and very importantly - a dusting of anti bug powder! - best done as you get them so no need to waste the first few eggs!

wik

Pippilongstocking wrote: »

Good luck to Wik staring her new job as 'matron' this week on the wards!

Xx

giggles at 'matron' comment... matronly more like!! I shall be early to bed as an 8.30am start :eek:
But looking forward to my first time on wards! after 6 years of community work! and very much looking forward to being with 'real' peeps rather than a bunch of ermm how to put this.... 'stepford wifeies' that i have had to share the last 3months with between jobs... I can be me again :rotfl:

mooomin

Not sure if you're on "The Facebook" but there's an Edinburgh-based charity that rehomes ex-factory chooks. They might have just the hens for you

Pippilongstocking

mooomin wrote: »

Not sure if you're on "The Facebook" but there's an Edinburgh-based charity that rehomes ex-factory chooks. They might have just the hens for you

I'm on the book right enough - thank you I'll have a peek.



Hope you're good. I can report that the beaches locally are still braw. (good) and well stomped by us and the mutts last night.

One of us went swimming, not me I hasten to add. :eek:

Pippilongstocking

mooomin wrote: »

Not sure if you're on "The Facebook" but there's an Edinburgh-based charity that rehomes ex-factory chooks. They might have just the hens for you

***NEXT RESCUE - END OF JUNE***
We're having another overwhelming response to our rehoming appeal! The numbers are really shooting up! Thank you to everyone who has reserved hens so far!
To reserve some CAGED hens from our next rescue:
Send us a PM on our page, starting your message with your preferred collection point (Edinburgh, Fife, Dunbar, Lanark, Inverness)
or
Email us at wingandaprayerrescue@hotmail.co.uk with your preferred collection point in the subject line.
Please send us your name, address, telephone numbers and email address along with a description of the set up you have available for your hens.
We require a £3.50 donation per hen which can be paid in advance via Paypal or paid in cash upon collection.
Thank you everyone!

For anyone else interested - I've just messaged them thank you MOOOMIN!

:A

Pippilongstocking

So dear hearts how are you all?

Yesterday vanished in a frenzy of skype meetings, banana's on toast, raids for fruit and veggies (£23 to add to the grocery spends, I tried Aldi again but in a different town) and went hunting to bargains in sainsbugs but nae luck this time.

I quite like Aldi, similar to lidl but something different about it - can't quite put my finger on it.

There was four bags of sugar in that haul, for cordial making. At 69p/kilo I'm not complaining about that. Given the price of posh elderflower cordial, its a bargain making your own.

TRG's nephew and neice and G/f popped in and I found a fellow 'dyslexian', so we had a fabby natter about not being able to read and all that stuff. Oddly reassuring to talk to someone who struggles in the same way.

Work stuff worked quite well and I did a whole day nae bother. That did make me happy. More work today.

Aunty Wik - good luck with your day today, you'll be ace, no more stepford wiffies.

RT, I think your OH is getting very wise to you extracting cheese for translations. I love that you have an auld grannie near I have to take a good while with the folks up the back if I pop in as they seem to want to have a good natter. I've post to take up later so likely I'll be a while. Which is nice. (no new cheese bought yesterday as we've still a stash, although I caught DS thinking 'how can I take some cheese home to my flat' - as it was sunny he declined to rob me. Nice lad, always thinking of the cheeses welfare.

SeaNymph thanks for that - I've never had a rescue hen before fingers crossed due to Mooomins keen eyes that we might be fortunate to be included in this times rescue, if not i'm sure I can wait. Wik thanks for the heads up re hen-medicine, I'll ask them what I need to do if I get any.

MFmaybe - aren't the best flowers ALWAYS on the top? Pesky things.

Starnac I know you're right re the investment if I paid £20 per hen, so I thought if I get rescue hens I'll give them the same cash donation and that way the money will be helping them and other chooks.

I'm surprised hens are still rescued, naive that I am, I'd thought caged birds were now illegal?

Pippilongstocking

mooomin wrote: »

I hadn't heard dight before but do use a cloot for my own cleaning

I had to explain drookit to someone who had lived here for 15 years the other day. No idea how she's missed that one! (For our friends south of the border, if you're caught in a rainstorm with nae brolly, you'll likely be drookit by the end of it!)

DROOKIT has to be one of my favourite scots words, thanks for reminding me. It just sounds so much like you'd be, drookit, standing there, dripping on the door mat.

Mind on, I don't sound scots outloud just in my head, I have my grannies voice rattling around in there. I sound ridiculus when I talk scots but I love the words. Wasn't til I started the daft welly writing that I realised how scots my inner nonsense and haivers are.

:rotfl: