Carved Bird Box

 I made a fun project on Friday for a future article - I carved a little bird box for a house sparrow. 

It's nice as the woodworking project around it is really simple, and the relief carving is fairly simple as well. 

Make Your Own Bootjack

 I'm getting older (I'm in my 40s now) so bending down becomes more of an effort! Lol. So I decided it was time to make a bootjack for the house. 

I wanted one that looked nice and had a bit of grip for the other boot. That made the production of it quite fun as a bit of something extra to work out. 

As usual I filmed the production process, so you can watch the video below. 

A simple project that shouldn't take more than a few hours to make and be useful for many years to come! 

Maybe I need to make a shoe horn next! 

Emergency Cake Stand

 The week before last I had a semi panicked phone call on the Thursday, from my friend who was getting married on the Saturday. 

The person making her cake stand had let her down all of a sudden and couldn't do it. Leave it with me, I said. 

Luckily a month or so before I'd been given an old table. Well two old tables, but one had some very interestingly turned legs. I thought they'd do nicely. 

Rye Sourdough Bread

 It's fair to say I bake a lot of bread these days. We don't buy any. I do love baking though. 

One I bake occasionally is rye sourdough, only me and my middle daughter eat it, but it's just so wholesome and filling, it's also dead easy to make. 

I use 100g of active sourdough starter, mixed the night before. The next morning I add 200g rye flour (light or dark, I'm not fussy), a teaspoon of salt, 15g of black treacle, a tablespoon of caraway seeds (both my daughter and I love caraway seeds in our bread), plus 150g of water. 

It's so simple, mix this together in a bowl, I use a silicone spatula as this is a very sticky dough. Then when well combined together put in a 1/2lb loaf tin, I normally line mine with greased baking parchment as it's not the best tin in the world. Dust the top with a little more rye flour, because as the loaf rises in the oven this cracks and makes it very photogenic! 

Leave this on the side for 3 to 5 hours to prove. Fire up the oven to 200 degrees, then pop it in with steam (boiling water on a shallow tray in the oven). Cook for about 40 minutes, take it out and check the bottom is cooked, if not turn the loaf over and cook for another 10 minutes. 

This bread is one of those rare exceptions where it's better eaten the next day, so try to leave it before you cut it. I tend to slice up the whole loaf and pop it in the freezer. My daughter will often come home from school and have this as a snack, she'll get two slices from the freezer, toast them and have it with a big lump of goats butter on top. Perfect. 

Who else loves a rye loaf?

Making A National Super From Scratch

 A part of beekeeping that really excites me is making a lot of the things I need from scratch. Last week I got my new router table organised and I thought I'd have a mess around with it.

The first thing I made was a super for a national hive. This is the box you put on the hive when it's producing lots of honey. Hopefully I'll need lots of them!

Visiting A Garden

 Last Thursday I took mum for a morning out to see a local garden that houses the National Collection of Michaelmas Daises. I've always been meaning to have a look round so it was really love to take mum. 

Now although I love flowers and plants there was a few things that I really loved in this garden, things that stuck out to me. 

The first was this beautiful potting shed. The colour of it, the rusty tin roof, it just looks so "right" in the garden, I love it! 

Last Beekeeping Lesson - Malvern And Upton Beepkeepers

 So last Thursday (the 5th) was the final beekeeping lesson for beginners at our club this year. 

It's been a really fun year when it comes to learning about beekeeping and I feel like I've landed on my feet with this club, so I was a little sad to see the season finish. 

Carved Vegetable Fridge Magnets

With our daughter's diabetes, we like to keep really organised. The main thing we have to keep on top on is the insulin. We have to keep three sorts in stock, all in date, even though we're only really using one regularly. 

I decided that rather than having these out of sight, out of mind, we should have a reminder in the form or a white board with the note written on it. 

Of course this is a bit of a depressing board really...

So I decided to try and make it a bit more interesting. 

On The Cover Again!

On the cover of Woodcarving magazine for the third time! This time with a lovely picture of my boy doing some carving with me. He was pleased to see his picture there. 

This issue of woodcarving magazine I also write the opening letter for the issue (always a fun bit), I got to interview am amazing carver from America called Bob Yorburg, and I carved up some vegetable fridge magnets (more about them in another post).  

Outdoor Tomatoes

Ever since leaving our last house, I've never really grown good tomatoes outside. 

That house had a suntrap garden, with white brick walls I used to grow them up against. They'd often do better there than in the greenhouse (which was a little shaded).

This year I thought I'd have another go outside here, having failed in the past. I planted two types, one Primabella, is a late blight resistant tomato that I you can save the seed from. The other is Crimson Crush, also blight resistant but an F1 (so no seed saving) and also not the most tasty tomato you will ever eat, but still streets above the supermarket ones. 

Longest Season Plums - My Plan Is Working

My plan with any fruits that I like and that grow easily here is to try and have the longest season possible of fresh fruit.  

Now this can be done in a few ways. I can take advantage of any micro climates my plot offers, so taking advantage of suntraps like sunny walls or places under glass. The other is with variety. 

It' really with variety that I've doubled down on. I've been slowly collecting and planting as many varieties as possible with apples, pears, plums and damsons. All grow really well here and all have so many interesting types. 

What I really look out for when building my collection is the earliest to crop and the latest to crop. For me this is most important in the plum harvest. Plums just taste the best when fresh off the tree, and yes we preserve lots each year, but that fresh harvest really takes some beating. 

The earliest I've put in is Herman, but that is yet to fruit here. Then I have quite a few more early plums, with opal being trained against my shipping container to try and ripen them even sooner (although again no fruit yet). 

Victoria was the first to fruit this year, although it is also the oldest fruit tree I have planted here. It fruited so heavy a big branch snapped off it and ruined the harvest. 

As the Victoria's went over the Marjories seedling kicked in. I'd be tempted to say it's be a better plum than the Victoria, although the fruit clings to the stone. Funny that this one was next as the place I got it from said it would be ready the end of September - and they're going over now. 

Some other plums just coming ready now down int he orchard and the Merryweather Damson is at it's peak - these are almost a plum rather than a damson. Smaller than a plum, but the fruit is free stone, so it's really easy to prepare for cooking and making preserves, we normally dry some each year. 

I'm looking froward to a year all my plum trees fruit and then I can really see how long a season I've managed to create for fresh plums. So far so good though. Looks like I have a few weeks left yet! 

Homegrown Peaches

The middle of last month I forgot to share one of our best harvests. 

This little box of peaches!

They were incredible, grown in the polytunnel and hand pollinated with a brush by my Middlests and me. We were going on holiday in Wales for a week, so rather than miss them I harvested them to take with us. 

Sweet, juicy and an amazing treat. My neighbour (now into his 80s) was telling me how the "big house" here used to grow them in the one glasshouse, and how 'd always be given some, and how he could never to give into temptation of just taking one. 

Having a tree like this down one end of the polytunnel seems like a good use of space, a taller crop, with roots that must extend down below where I'm watering other crops. 

Who else grows peaches?