Christmas Dinner

Well I'm quite pleased with myself. Yesterday was the end to a good gardening year, we had a group of friends over for a late Christmas dinner and all the veg were homegrown. We had potatoes, butternut squash, Brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots, swede and leeks, I felt quite smug at what we'd achieved and how good it all tasted (with some good cooking from my wife). The turkey was from a friend of my fathers so it was quite an accountable dinner.
On a less positive note my allotment is constantly under a couple of inches of water and the carrots have started to float to the surface (I wish I dug them up sooner and clamped them).
Here's to next year where I aim to be self sufficient in veg (and maybe I can talk Claire into having a couple of turkeys on the garden!

No fun for the chickens

Well without wanting to say what everyone else is saying but I'm fed up with the snow, its cost me a weeks work and my chickens are pretty much too frightened to leave the coops. At least the garden look nice!

A little bonus

I had a little bonus this week in the form of 3 brace of pheasants from the couple who I've been working for. They host the shoot dinners (a posh meal after the "guns" have been shooting all morning) and get as many pheasants as they like, these were shot Monday.

Mind you I almost didn't get any as they had been left out overnight and the next morning there was half as many (and a fat fox somewhere)!

Today I've plucked and dressed two of the birds and cut the breast and leg meat off the other four. The whole pheasants are in the oven at the moment, surrounded by vegetables dug out of a slowly defrosting allotment, should be a cheap and rich dinner!