The Idler

Country Diary 91

THE FIRST SNOWDROPS have appeared. Their arrival slightly, but only slightly, lightens the gloom caused by the rain. Our yard is a sloshy mudbath and brings to mind the peevish refrain of my city-loving mother, when she comes to visit: “I don’t like mud. I don’t like it!”

The Little White Bells of Spring

The happy days of the snowfall are now just a memory. Jobs beckon. I ordered two large loads of logs and they are sitting in the rain in the yard. They need to be stacked. One pile will be stacked in the wood barn, and the other will be stacked in my new log drying area. This is a row of three pallets with a plywood roof above them, which Alan has fixed up for us. Logs piled up to dry here will get all the benefit of the wind and the sun while being protected from the rain by the roof and also from ground moisture by the pallets. They therefore ought to dry our much more quickly than logs left in the shadey barn. And as far as wood goes, one plan is to do a lot more scavenging. There are woods all around us which are packed with fallen trees and branches, but no one takes them away. If we could drag big branches home, we would have a fgree supply of wood. The problem would then be how to cut the wood up. To this end I have been recommended an electric chainsaw. They cost about £80 and are quieter and safer, I am told, than their oil-powered cousins. But before then, I am going to ask Nick to come round with his chainsaw and tidy the hedges for us, and cut the wood up. We could probably find a lot of free wood around the place and smarten up the appearance to boot. A reader has suggested that we use the pony to collect wood, thus killing two birds with one stone: finding a use for the pony and saving money on wood. This is an excellent scheme.

THERE WAS A problem with the wood burner we put in my study last year: the heat from the stove was causing poisonous fumes to fill the room. The fumes, we surmised, were coming from the bricks behind the stove which we had painted with black floor paint. Alan came and took the paint off and repainted them with proper stove paint and now it is working beautifully.

The New Non Smelly Black Bricks

MY NEW SEED order has arrived from the Real Seed Company and I have great hopes for their seeds. They are a small company based in Wales, and encourage you to save seed. But the vegetable patch looks absolutely appalling. It has been neglected for at least two months and is covered in weeds and grass. I should have manured the whole thing in the autumn, but somehow never got round to it. I think I need help, particularly as I am planning to grow a lot more veg this year. Beans and peas, beans and peas: that will be our focus. That and salad. And carrots. And beetroot. And parsnips. But those seeds are just not planting themselves.

WE HAVE BEEN out ferreting with Brian again, but again no luck. We patiently netted the rabbit holes and then slipped five ferrets into the warren. The ferrets did their job beautifully, and five rabbits fled their warren, but all five somehow eluded our traps. Again we walked home empty-handed. Next time we are going to put up a long net to catch any stragglers. Bernard, who fixes the Rayburn, says that he used to go out with ferrets and a shotgun, and that they would regularly catch sixty rabbits, which they would sell to the butcher.

Twister and Whisper Hope for Success Next Time

THE GREATER-SPOTTED woodpecker visited the bird feeder a couple of time which was thrilling to watch. We have also seen a buzzard sitting in the ash tree opposite the house.

THERE IS CHAOS IN THE HEN HOUSE. The white chicken, we now know, is most definitely a cockerel. Victoria heard him crowing and I saw him vigorously fertilising a hen, very possibly his own mother. So he has come of age, and the poor young man is confused. He has tried to split off and create his own brood but this has not been a success.

Spare Cock

We will have to remove him from the scene sharpish, and either give him away or eat him. Otherwise he will fight the other cockerel. It seems a shame to kill him as he is a fine-looking bird, but there is not much demand for cockerels, and anyway, he will make excellent eating. The other chicken born here is a hen, and she may even have starting laying eggs: I found a very small egg yesterday. We are still getting one or two a day all told.

I MADE MARMALADE for the first time. Out of two kilos of Seville oranges, I got ten jars. This time I used a thermometer to get the setting point right, rather than relying the unrelaiuble “crinkle test” recommended in all the books (do these recipe books actually make the recipe the reproduce? They all seem completely indentical to one another, as if they have just copied them out from the same source). It is absolutely delicious. My only mistake was to leave the shreds cut too big. This makes a spreading little awkward but it is certainly not fatal, and as Bernard said encouragingly, “you’ll know for next time then, won’t you Tom?” And I have named my creation “Big Marmalade”, with the intention of covering up my mistake by pretending that the over-sized bits of peel are actually a culinary innovation.

Tom's First Marmalade

ENDS