Preserving Nature

One of our general aims of living here on our smallholding is to leave the Earth as we found it, or to leave it in even better condition. We've always been conscious of trying to be environmentally friendly, but sometimes life just gets in the way and you have to take short cuts. Well, we've been putting the extra effort in and are starting a journey of becoming plastic free. This will take some time (we'll have to learn to make our own shampoo, deodorant and toothpaste...), and realistically may not be entirely achievable, but we believe it's important to try.

We're starting buying vegetables (until we grow enough of our own) from our local farm shop where most things are sold loose and as much as possible is locally sourced, which also cuts down the food miles, brilliant. :) Unfortunately, the milk they sell is in plastic bottles, so we'll have to do a bit of hunting to try to find wax cartons somewhere. (which will also be good for starting fires!)

I also buy things like washing liquid, all purpose cleaner, liquid soap and shampoo in large, recycled containers which I then decant into smaller bottles which I re-use. This is certainly better than buying small bottles, and is also cheaper, but does still use plastic, so we need to find alternatives in time. (Any suggestions welcome!)

My brother found a fantastic product, bamboo toothbrushes! I've just bought Iain and I one each as our next brush, lets see how they scrub up... pun entirely intended. ;)

Bamboo toothbrush in eco packaging

Here's a link to the one I bought, although there are many brands around;

http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/environmental-toothbrush/environmental-bamboo-toothbrush---medium/

I've started to do a bit of another sort of preserving nature too with having a go at making wine! Cordials, jams, jelly and chutneys are all things I've done a fair bit of before, but alcohol is one path I haven't ventured down until now. I've started a wine of nettle tops, to make more use of the mass of nettles taking over our land, which I've now siphoned off into a demijohn where it's bubbling away happily!

Nettle tops about to be heated up for wine

Nettle wine fermenting

I've also made a jar of basil pesto and a few things from elderflowers as there are so many beautiful, bountiful blooms about. I've made elderflower cordial, elderflower curd (very yummy in sponge cake or spread on toasted teacakes) and I'm going to have a go at making elderflower champagne. Luckily the champagne only takes a few weeks to ferment, unlike the nettle wine, which we'll have to wait until next year to try.

Basil, washed and ready to become pesto

Finished jar of pesto

It's been a very exciting month for the growing. We've had the first few redcurrants and quite a lot of strawberries, which are always so much tastier when homegrown. :)

Delicious strawberries from our land!

The broad beans are producing lots of pods, which we've been enjoying daily, I also tried the pinched out tops, which are very yummy! The onions are swelling nicely. Herbs are also doing well, I'm going to try drying some rosemary, sage and thyme to use later in the year. If I manage to grow enough mint then I'll freeze some batches of that, but I use so much for tea and rissottos that I'm not sure I'll have enough this year. I've planted some more seeds so next year I should have it taking over a bit more. :)

Broad beans along with a couple of our radishes

I made a realisation recently that I'm never going to be really good at this self-sufficiency thing. I spotted a group of small rabbits outside the front of our house, and instead of thinking 'grr pests' or 'yay dinner', I ran for my binoculars and was busy saying 'aww they're so cute!' as they munched on my chives... I'm not sure how many crops I'll have left to harvest with this attitude! Oh well...

Cheeky squirrel stealing a strawberry

As well as an awful lot of rabbits, and a squirrel that likes strawberries for breakfast, we've had a few other animal visitors along with the regulars. We've got some swallows nesting in our nissen hut, they're doing a great job, along with the bats, of keeping the mosquitos down. I like the dual attack, swallows eating the pests by day, the bats eating them at night, thanks wildlife!
We had a surprising visit by a mute swan which I think must have crash landed in the lane. The poor thing looked very shocked and wouldn't move for a long time, it eventually got up to walk, but was very wobbly. The animal rescue people were called and it'll be well looked after, hopefully soon to be returned to the river.

Visiting swan

Starlings are another daily visitor for us, they're coming in big flocks and devouring all the food I put out, costing a small fortune, but it's very nice having so many birds to look at every day. :)
We have so many nesting birds in our barns, trees and fields. The most unusual bird we've seen is an Asian brown flycatcher, which we're told is very rare to be seen here in the UK, it's currently nesting on the ground in our small field! I'm not very good at bird identification, as it's a small, brown bird, I didn't realise it was anything unusual until my keen twitcher of a neighbour told me. We feel very honoured it chose our field to build it's home. :)

As I'm making so many things at the moment, I thought I might add extra blog posts every now and then of recipes and gardening tips and things. So keep an eye out and there might be extra postings before next month if I get enough time with these busy long days!

Happy Spring everyone!