Any way, it has been extra nice to be award a blog award not once but twice in less than a month, thank you so much Caro at An Urban Veg Patch and Philippa at Self-Sufficient Dreams

Liebster Award - 2012

Acceptance of the award is conditional on the following:

Copy and paste the award on your blog
Thank the giver and link back to them
Choose five blogs (with less than 200 followers) that you’d like to pass the award on to and leave a comment for them on their blog.

I have no idea how to tell if someone has less than 200 followers, but her are my chosen five in no real order;

Dichotomyof

Being a Smallholder

Lou Tonkin – Arts & Graft

A year in the life of

Forest Flowers – Tales from Mount Pleasant

I hope this brings a smile to your lips and places a bright tint on your days!

2012 first new arrival - 14th January 2012

 Briony kidded that very night!

‘He’ still doesn’t have a name but is a love start to our year of ‘D’ names and my first third generation of breeding. We have had to take him away from Briony as he wasn’t very quick to his feet and got a bit chilled, a warm feed and a night by a radiator later and he is a strong little boy but is still not very sorted with his feet so will be completely hand reared.

Recyced Christmas tree; Our Christmas tree and all its decorations were either from freecycle or others rubbish bins before the lights (also others cast offs) were added and the cats let back into the room

I can’t say that 2011 was the easiest of years; such a lot has changed forever and I don’t think anyone really naturally chooses so many permanent and final changes all in one go but I am still here and there is still much to look forward to.

The end of last year, or maybe more or less the whole of last year, was more than crazy and many of my plans for it have been all but forgotten about, but I would still like to do them and more.

And 2012 is set to contain some exciting projects and hopefully lots for time for blogging.

Happy New Year everyone!

This year most of the flowers I have grown have been in the front garden from the packets of hoarded seeds I have scattered and I have been so pleased with the results;

Front garden blooms - 21st August 2011

The front patch of flowers has completely by accident mostly been red; red poppies, red sweetpeas and a mix of paler shades of pinks all set off by splashes of white and the striking yellow of the sunflowers.

Red field poppies - 20th August 2011Sweetpea wigwam - 20th August 2011Sunflowers and poppies - 20th August 2011

Sweetpea wigwam - 20th August 2011

First poppy of the year - 13th July 2011

Sweetpeas - 20th August 2011

Autumn is a beautiful month to be surrounded by trees, as the colours change in a last bust (or maybe suck) of life before the bare winter months;

Beech sapling standing above a floor of bracken - 5th November 2011Heading home; the road up the hill to mothers - 5th November 2011

Ivy replacing the green of the Hawthorn with a splash of red from the berries; the bees seem to enjoy the Ivy flowers - 3rd November 2011

Fir cones dripping in sticky sap - 15th November 2011

Dry mix; Oats, flour & sugar - 8th November 2011

I’ve made hobnob biscuits before, originally from a recipe found on the Creative Living Forum but since have googled it and found it in a few places, including a few vegan ones. They are very easy and do taste like the ‘real thing’. I have been experimenting with cooking them in a few different ways but the basics are this:

Ingredients:

• 8oz sr flour
• 8oz sugar
• 8oz porridge oats
• 8oz margarine* or butter
• 1tbsp honey or golden syrup
• 1tbsp hot water
• 1/2 tsp bic soda

*to make vegan hobnobs just replace the margarine with a vegan margarine

Method: Mix the flour, sugar, oats and bic soda (I don’t always remember the last of these and can’t say that I’ve personally noticed the difference) in a large bowl. Melt the margarine and honey along with the hot water, I do this over a pan of boiling water and then add this to the flour, sugar and oats and mix well. Whenever I see the melted mixture I always think that it isn’t possibly going to be enough but once it is in with the rest and you start mixing it is always enough.

Whilst you make the mixture pre-heat the oven to 180 Degrees C, I normally cook them when I have the oven on for something else but have found that they don’t work as well if the oven is too much higher than this so I just cook everything else at this temperature, roast potatoes aren’t that fussy after all. If you do have to cook something else higher than keep a very close eye on the biscuits. 

Grease a/some baking trays and mould the mixture into biscuit shapes just a tiny bit bigger than a two pence piece and place on a tray remembering to leave room for them to grow. It is much easier to shape the mixture whilst the margarine and honey are still warm.

Pre-baking - 8th November 2011

Place the trays into the oven (with the biscuits on!) and wait until golden brown which takes roughly 10 – 15 minutes. When the biscuits are done they seem to stay a little soft and have a not-completely-cooked feel about them but are and will harden up once they are out of the oven and cooled so it is the colour you are looking for to tell if they are done or not. If you take them off the tray to cool, which I normally do to get the next lot in the oven, then make sure they are somewhere flat or they will cool to the shape of whatever you have placed them on, but really even the side-of-a-plate shaped ones are very tastie.

Golden brown buttons; of course after writing about leaving enough room between biscuits for the 'spread' the next batch I baked stayed in their neat little button shape - 8th November 2011

This makes approximately 36 biscuits.

The Chocolatey Version

For chocolate hobnobs bake as above and whilst they cool melt some chocolate, a 75g bar is enough for between 12 – 15 biscuits. When the chocolate has melted use a tea-spoon to spoon the chocolate onto the biscuits and spread out to cover the biscuit before the chocolate cools. I have used dark chocolate, but I’m sure milk chocolate works just as well. The dark chocolate doesn’t seem to set completely without putting the biscuits in the fridge for a while.

I personally like the plain biscuits better but am out voted by at least two to one.

The Giant Version

Do everything as above until the shaping stage. Then instead of making small biscuits grease a cake tin and spread the mixture evenly across the bottom of the tin, bake until the same golden colour is reached and cool.

When I had a bad wrist instead of mixing everything in a bowl I put it all in the blender, well I don’t have a food mixer, and this chops up the oats and makes a much finer mixture which I think works especially well for the larger ‘biscuits’.

Chocolate Giant - 10th November 2011

The large biscuits seem to stay a little moister and I suppose are similar to flat-jacks but not as heavy as flat jacks can be.

These can be covered in chocolate too!

I am yet to try adding chocolate chips to the mixture, and I’d like to work out a way of dipping biscuits in chocolates so as you end up with a half-and-half biscuit without have to stand holding it whilst the chocolate cools. I’d also be interested in how replacing wheat flour with either gram or chestnut flour works, and if anyone has already or gets to try these things before me please let me know how it works, but for the moment everything I’ve tried has been a hit.

I haven’t really marked the occasion for many years but have today by visiting my dads grave for the first time. I took some of the sweetpeas that are still going strong, spurred on my the warm spell a few weeks ago, in the front garden

Enjoying the evening sun - 16th April 2011

Morning dew on a spiders web - October 2009

Each day there is another job to enquire about, an application form to fill in, an interview to go to or a job centre visit to make but I still don’t have any confirmed work, just lots of possibles. With each job I try to work out how it would fit into my life, fit around other work and how much time it will leave for living at the end of each day, week or month. I think I may have to find something full-time, which I haven’t done for so long, but we shall see.

The kitchen, and house, is full of things to be made, done or stored. I’m pleasantly surprised by the amount of produce that has come from the allotment and garden given that I haven’t really grown anything, or so I’d thought. Ok, maybe thinking about it most of it has been forged and not really come from the allotment or garden but as least I can put a lane or track to where it has come from and it shall keep things going for a while.

Wind turbines - October 2009

And my mind is full of everything; lists of jobs to be done, plans for next years growing season, plans for what I should be doing and plans for what I want to be doing all crashing around and making it hard to see one job out before feeling that I should in fact be doing something else instead, something more important, or needed. I’ve started going to bed each night feeling like it has been another day wasted with nothing much getting done and waking up not knowing where to start or which list should take priority.

It is all very tiring but not in a good way.

The goats have started coming into season and already it’s time to be planning kidding in March and that can’t be right, surely things can’t be that far a head in the year already.

Everything it just so full on and urgent at the moment; it would be nice to be given some time to stand still and take a deep breath

A tame Alpine strawberry plant before the explosion of runners - 22nd May 2011

The Alpine strawberries in my garden seem to have exploded all of a sudden and are quickly taking over any earth their runners alight on.

I hate the thought of pulling up and composting strawberry plants, even Alpine ones so if anyone would like some plants for their own garden please let me know and I will happily post them in return for stamped SAE.

We also have far too much manure if anyone is in the area but it is a bit heavy to post!