"Creole Lady Marmalade..."

".....Giuchie, Giuchie, ya ya dada...
"

Been singing this since the annual Making of the Marmalade began last night. Having secured 8lbs of Seville Oranges (which are rarer than hens teeth in these parts) I set off following Delias jolly good recipe.

All was going well too until had to nip out after work today to get some chook food from local country store and came back to find my carefully scooped orange peels (set aside for cutting into bits later) had been tidied up by the OH and Jnr H. Tidied into the bin to be exact. "I'll get them out and give them a wash" says he after I pointed out his potentially fatal mistake. YUK! OK, they were the only thing in there but still. This highlights yet another fundemental difference in the sexes. Men, as far as I am aware, will eat anything from anywhere if left to cope on their own. Leave a woman on her own and she will likely knock up a nice little starter and main course for one. Or maybe its just me?

Anyway so now we're going to have to have orange jelly instead of proper marmalade. This is going to upset my mornings. I need thick cut marmalade on wholemeal toast with proper butter and proper tea, alone, whilst listening to Radio One and checking my emails in the morning otherwise I am a complete nightmare.. I realise its slightly childish and completely antisocial of me and I also realise that having a morning routine which cannot be interfered with, for fear of unleashing my inner demon, is the first sign of impending old-agedness but well hey, I'm having to embrace my senior years anyway. My kids now look at me funny if I dance to the radio or laugh at Chris Moyles. They tsk when I roar with laughter at Top Gear. My daughter scolds me for wearing unsuitable clothing (jeans, fleece and t shirt?!?)and the OH makes constant reference to the 5 year age gap between us. He's younger. Even my boss told me that he liked to hire the more mature person as they get on better with customers.

Mature? MATURE? I'm thirty-bloody-seven!! Everyone and everything around me seems to be conspiring to make me feel twice as old as I am at the moment. Even my skin is ganging up against me. I'm fairly er....sallow skinned. In a healthy way. I prefer to think of it as 'exotic' however this past 6 months I've noticed a distinct drying of the skin on my hands despite copious amounts of *gunk* from a bottle proclaiming to contain the elixir of youth itself. When I look in the mirror I still see me. In fact I think I look a bit bloody better than I did ten years ago when I had a god awful bleach blonde hairdo and weighed in at 7 stone BUT there is a discernable feeling of 'getting on a bit' in the air. I keep checking that my tits aren't round my knees and that my arse hasn't sagged completely. Is this perhaps something I am loading myself with or is it a forewarning of things to come?

Anyway. Something did cheer me up this week. I entered a writing competition on UKClimbing.com about 8 weeks ago. The subject was 'My First Lead'. I didn't write about my actual first lead but my first multipitch. Anyway, I came second! Hoorah! My prize is to have my essay read out at Llanberis Mountain Film Festival and a hundred quids worth of climbing gear from DMM. I'm passing on the gear and donating it to Braemar Mountain Rescue as its just about the 7 year anniversary of my mates rescue off Lochnagar so.... anyway, having it read out at Llanberis is prize enough for me. Obviously now I'm wandering around 'artistically' and musing over possible themes for my next literary adventure whilst adjusting my straw hat and sipping on a sloe gin. Dahlink.

Right enough waffling from me, back to the marmalade....jelly...stuff..

Oh, whatever.

Foxy foxy..

I was out cleaning the chicken run this afternoon after work. Once I'd finished I wandered down towards the foot of the vegetable area to round up the wee blighters and down near the bottom, stumbled across a hole.

Now my 'hole' identification isn't great. Ask me to identify a tree from a thousand paces or a bird feather and I'm yer gal but holes...hmmmm. Anyway what initially struck me was the size. Far bigger than a rabbit hole - I would guess this is about a foot and a half across (though I am a fisherman...). Came back inside and googled ' wildlife hole identification' and it came up with this. Now according to that - sans the bones, we have a fox den in our garden. Which would explain a) the fox thats currently annoying the chooks b) why it can disappear so goddamn quickly when we're stood there looking at it!

The chooks are in no danger (we hope) at night or early morning as they are in a large pen with concrete flooring underneath the straw and 7ft high steel fences topped with a bird proof wire mesh. So do we leave it? Is it indeed a fox or are we looking at some kind of mutant rabbit here? I think I have found a use for the cctv camera.....

Other things that happened today: It snowed. Both fields are now ploughed. I missed probably the most ethereal light for photography this side of Neopia by about 3 minutes because I had my head stuck down a hole.

Oh my word..

com·pli·cat·ed

Pronunciation[kom-pli-key-tid]

Pronunciation
–adjective
1.
composed of elaborately interconnected parts; complex:

Accurately describes the new love of my life. My gorgeous Nikon D80 - Oh my word I had enough problems finding the ONE right button to push onthe Fuji S6500, let alone [counts] 13 obvious and three times as many hidden plus a master and sub-master switching thing going on too!

But, she is lovely. Intelligent. Solid. Multifunctional. Smooth. Incredibly sensitive yet built to last. A lovely firm and definite 'click'. I would imagine that if she could speak, it would be with a yorkshire accent and when my back is turned she'll be out yoking up the ponies whilst simultaneously running her own PR company from the end of a mobile phone and baking scones.

I'll not get into all the technical stuff - mainly because I haven't a clue about 75% of it though have been poring over every magazine and book I can find and discussing with photographically minded friends in my ever increasing thirst for knowledge, tipsand tricks - and because its now 2pm and the light starts to get good now so I'm off outside.

The cow at the top is the first photo ever taken with it. I know the sky is awful, the highlights could be better, the midtones are middle aged and the composition could have been the work of a two year old but I'm euphorically happy to have stepped off the 'auto' ledge I was stuck on and now be freefalling into the endless possibilities of 'manual' so you'll just have to put up with it.

What to do with surplus eggs?

Apart from freeze them . [shudders]

Make tarts! I call them tarts anyway though you may well know them as quiches or flans.

For the pastry cases:

300g plain flour
150g butter
Ice cold water

Rub butter into flour (or use food processor) until mix resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add water a tiny bit at a time, cutting and stirring with a metal knife all the while until a clean dough i.e is one solid lump in your bowl).

Line tart case/flan case with pastry and bake blind for about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and fill immediately.

For the fillings:
Here you can go mad and just use whatever you have in the fridge. e.g today I made

Mozzarella, Andouille and sunblush tomato
Mushroom, black olive, manchego and sunblush tomato
Blueberry
Blackcurrant

Just make sure you stuff the case full of filling. Not so it over flows but to at least 2/3 the depth of the case.

The egg mix is simple and the same for both sweet and savoury - though adding salt and pepper for savoury and about 3 tablespoons of organic golden granulated sugar for the sweet.

4 eggs
7 fl oz of double cream
3 fl oz of milk
salt and pepper OR
3 tbsp sugar

Beat together and pour over fillings of choice. If you are using cheese in your filling, sprinkle/lay it on the base before anything else as I find this helps the bottom remain crispy. Bake at around 160 deg C (fan oven) for 30 to 40 minutes until golden brown on top and centre of tart bounces back when lightly pressed.

They'll keep for a couple of days in the fridge but you can freeze them too - just slip the cooled ones into a ziplock freezer bag, press all the air out and thats it. They'll still be fine a month later. Don't defrost them when you need them, just put in a low oven straight from freezer until heated through.

Evening water

Took this during the afternoon. Fiddled with exposure etc, used a tripod and liked the effect.

Well it happened....

After much deliberation, navel grazing and discussion, I said a fond farewell to my old life in Oil and said hello to the new, hopefully less mind numbingly stressful one. Taken a small part time job in a local delicatessen - which is incidentally heaven for a foodie like me - and have interview at Uni on 15th Feb to assess my application for degree course in Forest Management. I am going back to my trees (for those who didn't know, I was a forester until the end of 2004). I suspect I may need to do a year of some kind of refresher course but thats fine.

I keep typing 'old life' activities that will be replaced by new life ones and am coming to the conclusion that words alone are not going to be able to convey the difference. I don't expect it to be easy - working, running this ever expanding place and studying. It maybe even harder work but I am looking forward to it.

Anyway, now there is some positive structure and progress - and to continue... the greenhouse.

This coming week will see the construction of raised beds. We're going to be using brick and wood as thats what we have handy basically. I've sourced some lovely local well rotted manure too which will be added. Also to do this week, prune back raspberry canes and I'll be checking out the rhubarb.

Chickens are doing well - 3 out of 7 hens laying daily and no re-ocurrence of the mystery diahorrea. I've replaced the lid on the nest box(es) as they were fiddly and encouraged them to roost (and crap) on it. White formica at an angle. Quite entertaining to watch...

Other news: Rangerover (old G reg one before anyone thinks we're high falutin' folks)is causing N some major headaches. Keeps cutting out and he suspected the ECU. However now suspects its something to do with something else. As he started explaining I felt my brain crumble so unfortunately thats all I registered. I do know it makeshim swear a lot. Modern electronic stuff y'see. Didn't get these problems with Series landies! Engines built to last [coughs]

The Clio is worse than ever. Rangie probs have meant that operation replacement fanbelt has slipped to 'whenever I can manage' so I am still screeching about the place and causing old ladies to stop and stare as I drive though the village. AND the roof quite literally pours with water. The drivers seat is like sitting on a sponge. Just what you need at 8am and freezing. I am considering limpet mines.

I'm not moaning though. Really.

A comment on the weather

It has at last stopped raining and or/ snowing. However this part of Deeside wasn't dumped on quite as much as some of the inland areas. I can, in fact, testify from experience that on Thursday, the Lecht had it considerably worse than anywhere down here. What with them being at 2090ft n'all. It was Jnr's first experience of snow too - we climbed the flanks of Carn a Bhacain and Mona Gowan towards our goal (bacon and egg softie in the ski centre) and all he could say was 'oh NO!' as some invisible and unknown hand lay a thick white blanket over his still new world. Even more so when he felt the hurricane force winds lash tiny particles of frozen ice at his yet unweathered face as we raced a blizzard the final 20ft to our destination.

On Friday we were intending to hunt down more of the white stuff but got waylayed in a nationwide hunt for spice racks (please, don't ask). As the afternoon wore on however, we unwittingly found ourselves part of the Find the Worst Flooded Road in Scotland competition. We won by finding some definitely unclassified roads over moorland during one of our 'shortcuts' and the heaviest rain in years. Rain and floods turned to snow and ice the higher we got. It was very pretty but my mind was elsewhere. Our septic tank, which has been playing up, be precise. And lo, by the time we reached home, the drains were as we suspected, overflowing. Being married to an engineer is very handy especially when they disappear into their shed and reappear with pumps and things to disperse the rapidly overflowing drains. Thirty minutes, some jubilee clips, a few hoses and a compressor later we were free to flush the toilet again!

Meanwhile, Jnr is taking this rain seriously and is taking steps to protect himself against floods and falling trees.

Love thy Neighbour?

Not anymore it seems.

I was reading an article last night (from under the duvet - attempting to fend off the subzero temperatures upstairs) in Decembers edition of Smallholder magazine written by a couple of beekeepers from the Wirral. The article was not about bees but a more human subject - that of helping thy neighbour.

Now when I were a lass (she says - puffing chest out, smoothing down apron and folding arms) every single farmer in our wee corner of Moray used to help one and other - no matter what was going on - from picking stones, to planting, to roguing the barley to harvesting and baling and tattie picking - everyone would come together. All the local kids would help too. Being as young as I was, I wasn't party to the agreements made between the different farms but I do know that when we increased our wee holding to a size where we needed help, we got it, and in return dad or mum or the entire family would (at some point in the future) toodle off to a neighbour and help out. That was the way it was. No financial reward (except during tattie picking time when we kids earned the princely sum of two pounds per day!).

Back to our Beekeepers from the Wirral. Now they are projecting much and such the same image of days gone by albeit in North Wales. "We notice that another neighbour, busy from morning till night, always has time to spare for others, getting in their hay crop, although his own lies waiting to be baled, mucking out a cow byre for a sick friend when his own sheep wait to be sheared, taking a neighbours stock to market when the wall on his own farm has collapsed and needs repair: he always has time for others without any thought of repayment. This is the old and traditional way of doing things, but seemingly not taught nowadays. Mores the pity"

I'm not sure that I agree that its simply a case of 'its not taught now' - I know a lot of good folk that do teach it and pass it on - perhaps I am naieve but I think its down to more than one factor.

The mechanisation of farming for one - a farmer simply does not need a whole host of folk at every occasion nowadays. Remember tattie 'holidays'? Good lord, one farm could employ every single kid for a ten mile radius and a couple of adults to boot! Now its done with a couple of folk and a couple of tractors and the kids now look on and can't see what all the fuss was about. Same with harvesting. This past hearst, I watched the local farmer and his son combine and bale the feild next to us in one morning. One morning. It took us two days and two families to do one 75 acre feild in 1982. Mechanisation has distanced us from our neighbours, if not through physical miles, then certainly through communication.

I'm not denying that a helping and knowledgeable hand isn't essential in smallholding or farming, on the contrary its part and parcel, but there is another element to this shift in attitude that I am positive bears thinking about. And heres my cynical side coming out. Independence. I think, to a fair extent, folk expect too much help now. We're mollycoddled to the point where we just can't do things for ourselves. We just expect help when we get stuck. Alright some just expect help when they have something needing doing and that leads to an equal and opposite reaction - you'll soon piss off all those around you. From making a meal from scratch and not from a supermarket packet to fixing your own *insert broken thing*. I'm not saying you have to become Gordon Ramsay or some mechanical guru overnight but instead of sitting there, get up, learn what it is you have to do to fix the situation and get going. Even if you fail, even if you make a mistake - you'll have tried. In return you might find that more folk will offer help because they see that you're actually giving it a go.

You simply can't do everything though, there are only twenty four hours in a day and having to say No is unfortunately an inevitable part of life. Our Beekeepers farming friend willingly sacrificed his own time to help those around him. He could have said, just for once, "no, sorry, my wall really needs repairing" and as he's a nice bloke anyway folk would have understood and likely offered to help. Is it true that what goes around, comes around? What about those karmic blocks? Those folk that readily accept help but then don't pass it on or even worse, bemoan the fact that the helper didn't meet their standards. Is saying No a general result borne from bad experience? (and oi! Don't sit there all saintly, muttering about how I should just let it flow over me and that after all helping out is all about 'doing' as oppose to 'what it does for you' - as I can almost guarantee you've been pissed off the same one way once or twice too..)

When does saying No become habit rather than a need? Has saying No become second nature rather than concious thought and where do you draw the line?

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone!

We saw out the Old Year at the Stonehaven Fireball Festival. The festival arose from a 19th century fishermen's festival but it is likely that the use of purifying flame to word off evil spirits and to endow the fishing fleet with luck has pre-Christian origins. Before and after the ceremony itself there was an open air band, amusements, pipe band, drummers and fireworks. I've Youtubed some of the videos I took last night. Not best quality but with approx 12000 folk in attendance, it was kinda hard to get a decent spot for video/photo.

The first is the finale. 45 - 60 burgh residents twirl massive fireballs up and down the main street before hurling them into the harbour.

The second, the piper, was just a bloke that appeared from his back door right in front of us and started playing!