Marrow rum - part two

I'm on a real buzz for making wine again at the moment.

Went over to my best friend in Shrewsbury on Saturday night and had a mad lock in, as he's the landlord, till four in the morning drinking all sorts of weird drinks, the one with peppers in I will never drink again! So its got me keen to get all my wine going again as they can be great fun to drink, strong and a talking point as people don't realise how easy it is to do.

Also went to Mum and Dads this weekend (the miles I do is unreal) and had a good tidy up of all my old brewing and wine making gear and cleaned some up ready to make some more in the next few months. I've got about 6 gallons of wine ready to be bottled up now - plum, strawberry, elderberry, crab apple and damson.

The made up marrow rum seems to be working. Its started to drip into the bowl and gone soft so today I made a slit in the bottom and drained it into a demijohn. I'll leave it until the morning before I'll fit an airlock on it.

Marrow Rum

Managed to get away from work an hour early so it let me cook tea and do a few other little jobs.

For tea I made a tomato and basil sauce with pasta, nearly everything was out of the garden except the pasta - haven't found a plant for that yet.

Whilst that was cooking I've also managed to dig out my food dryer and started to dry some sage leaves for making my own dried mixed herbs to use over winter.

And then the fun bit! Haven't made any wine or alcohol in ages and I've decided its time I start again. Tonight we began making marrow rum.

First we hollowed out the marrow (well its an over grown courgette but I'm not telling anyone!)

Then packed it with brown sugar

Before pouring over it some bakers yeast we had activated a couple of hours earlier (with a little lemon juice to help things along).

We then taped it back up,
Before hanging it in a pair of tights in the airing cupboard (something mum would never let me do! hope it doesn't make our towels smell!) with a bowl under it to catch the drips. I will keep you posted on the next stages of development.

Quite keen to make some more wine soon, so keen I went online last night and brought some "super" yeast that can make wine up to 23% - should be fun for parties!

It's been a long time...

A couple of months since my last post, but I have an excuse, I got married!

Claire and I tied the knot on the 25th of July and had a really countryside-type wedding. We got married in Ludlow castle and then headed back to mum and dads farm for the reception, the weather was perfect and everything went to plan - I even got some laughs on my speech!

Everyone turned up and we had a bout 175 people there in the evening. Everyone enjoyed themselves and had a good few drinks, some aunts even got sent home in disgrace for getting too drunk (I didn't send them home I thought it was funny)!

We then spent two lovely weeks in Thailand for our Honeymoon before coming back down to earth with a bump and doing 14 hour days in Birmingham! Every weekend has been jam packed with stuff and so I haven't had time to update my blog, although I think I should be able to from now on. We've even been to another wedding this weekend, must be the time of lift we're going through!

Strawberries

The sun has been shining all weekend and I’ve had my first big lot of strawberries. It was a rather decadent breakfast for the two of us but very nice. I’ve decided to pull my garlic and set it in the greenhouse to dry off. I’m not sure if this is a bit early as some of it was quite small, but last year I left it in too late and lost half of it, the leaves on what I pulled had all started to go yellow and wilt. In its place I planted loads of pak choi and some frilly red lettuce, the plan this year is to have lots of days where we don’t have to take sandwiches and take salads instead. Already we’ve been having lots of salads as I planted up a grow bag by the back door with mixed salad leaves so it handy for adding to meals.
My next door neighbour has just got some ex-battery hens, these are in a much sorrier state than the one’s we got, hardly any feathers at all but they’ll soon look like new chickens in no time!

A whole month without writting!

Its been a busy month. I've had no internet for most of it so thats the main reason I havent written on my blog.
Mum, claire and me went to Malvern spring gardening show a couple of weekends ago and brought a few different herbs and salad seeds as well as a late brithday present - a automatic watering system! Really good day out, can wait till the autum one again



This Bank holiday weekend has been great for gardening, I've gotten hundreds of jobs done! As well as catching up on all my seed planting I've started to put in my wigwams of hazel for my climbing french beans and runner beans (popped up to the woods to cut the sticks so it cheraper than bamboo).

I've also managed to make a fruit cage out of "build-a-balls" and hazel to cover my gooseberries and blackcurrents.

Yesterday I also managed to start to install my automatic watering system across half of my raised beds, seems to work well but it was hard work digging under all the paths. It will be worth it in the long run as these 13 hour days are killing me in birmingham and work have now said we've got to take it in turns to do late nights as well! Rubbish!

Jam making!

My weekend was cut a little short, as I had to work Saturday morning (not best pleased) but I still managed to cram a lot in. Saturday afternoon after speeding out of Birmingham I managed to get the time to go to a farm sale, something I haven’t done in years, it was good fun looking round all the tat but I didn’t feel the urge to buy anything. The rest of the day was quite social, catching up with people I haven’t seen in ages and going for a walk with my sister (which turned into a bit of a run thanks to an April shower!). On Sunday I was very productive, spending a lot of the day in the garden (weeding mostly), and I cooked some roast lamb (my dad had given us this the last time he had one killed) with all the trimmings, first time I’ve cooked in ages as I’m always back too late with my job.
As the rhubarb is running rampant I decided to do something with it and make jam (we’ve nearly run out of blackberry and apple jam). The recipe was simply equal amounts of fruit and sugar (in weight) with a bit out ground ginger. This is simmered until its all mushy then boiled rapidly until setting point is reached (it wrinkles on a cold plate). Making jam is so easy and it didn’t take long, not sure why anyone would want the supermarket stuff with all its preservatives in it.

Homemade stuff always tastes better as well!

Picnic

(An entry for last week as my internet was down!)
This has not been one of the best working weeks of my life! Between the rain, thunderstorms and the gear box going on my car I was pretty down by Friday afternoon, especially when I found out how much the parts were for my car, but the weekend has been a complete turnaround.
I was an usher at a very good friends’ wedding on Saturday and the whole day was filled with sunshine and apple blossom, it really couldn’t have been any better! And the weather on Sunday has been great as well, so Claire and I went for a picnic by the river (about an hours walk from our house) and then lay in the sun for a while. Perfect recharge for the rubbish week I’ve got ahead of me!

Sunshine!

The weather over the weekend has been lovely, complete sunshine for three days, not like a normal bank holiday.
We went away for the day on Saturday to Hay-On-Wye, one of our favourite places on earth due to it having about 35 second hand bookshops. A really enjoyable day, I only brought two books (one on farming and the other on Kung Fu) and spent the rest of the day browsing even having fish and chips by the river. Sunday and Monday were spent in the garden planting hundreds of seeds, repotting blueberry bushes and herbs as well as trying to make it look nice. Also got a little done on my shed, which seems to be going a lot slower now I’m doing 13 hours a day in the week! I will get it finished by the end of the summer though.
I’ve also managed to talk Claire into letting me hatch out some quails to make use of the old chicken pen. I’ve got to find somewhere that sells fertile eggs and borrow the incubator from mum and then we can add to my growing little garden economy!