Dairy Maid

I’m so excited – I just made my own butter!

If I had realised it was so easy, I would have done it before.

Of course, all this was sparked by the incredible rise in the price of butter lately. Once upon a time I could get it for 89p for 250g. Not any more. Now it’s £1.10 for the cheapest.

I learned you can make butter from double cream, but that seemed just as expensive. Then I had this brainwave (or something…) In the depths of our outdoor freezer, which is still heaving with venison and pheasant roadkill, lurked a couple of cartons of whipping cream. I bought them some time ago – at £1 for a 1 litre carton, it was too good a bargain to miss. But we don’t often use THAT much cream at a time, so I wasn’t really sure what to do with them.

So then I thought, “Butter!”

OK, so I know whipping cream isn’t exactly double cream, but it’s pretty thick so I thought it might work. I defrosted one carton.

When I came to pour out the defrosted cream, I couldn’t. It was VERY thick and yellowish, looking almost like butter already. I tasted it and it tasted fine (and I didn’t drop dead).

So out came the trusty Kenwood with its whisk attachment. I read on the Internet that you simply over-whisk the cream until it suddenly goes all sloppy. That sounded easy.

I did find something to cover the bowl was a good idea…some of the cream escaped, but I licked it up (it was on my arms, OK? And I was not going up to shower at this point!)

It was true! After about 6 or 7 minutes of whisking, the cream looked a bit like yellow cottage cheese – and then suddenly went all sloshy and looked like yellow cottage cheese floating in milk (buttermilk!!)

I strained the buttermilk into a bowl (gotta use that in one of my baking recipes) and tipped the butter back into the Kenwood bowl.

Using a spatula, I brought it all together in a more coherent lump. It looked very much like butter. My next job was to get all the buttermilk out.

This meant sloshing in COLD water from the tap (don’t want to melt the butter and tip it away) and kind of kneading the butter in the water with the spatula. Then tip the milky water away – and keep doing this until the water runs clear.

Then you keep squeezing it against the bowl with the spatula to get as much water out of it as you can (and you can now add salt if you wish – see later).

I do have a couple of those old-fashioned wooden paddle things for making blocks of butter but I’m only a novice dairy maid and the room was too warm.

In the end I shoved it into a plastic container (sadly for me, an old margarine container. Now nobody will believe I made it!!)

But it tastes VERY good. Creamy. Buttery. I made a spice cake for our friends coming round this evening so I had to test out a bit of cake with butter on to make sure they would like it. OK, I had two slices… yum!

My wonderful home-made butter

In case you have an urge to make your own butter, it seems that 500g cream makes 250g butter. My 1 litre carton of cream made 500g butter. If you wish to add salt, it’s half a teaspoon to 250g butter (I did a level teaspoon as I didn’t want to over-do it).

All that for £1. Cheap!

Go and grab any cheap cream (double or whipping) you can find and see how easy it is.

Yummy potatoes!

No, my subject heading is not a new expression of delight (although it has a little merit…) but an expression of what turned up in our old troughs!

When we moved from the farm, Beloved moved our stuff into storage at his workplace. Troughs that once held our edibles were abandoned “out back” and became overrun with weeds. Nettles, actually – which means that if I so wished I could get my own back and eat them. But one can only eat so many, and the gathering can be fraught with danger.

Due to lack of space, some troughs and containers were emptied and sold (sob!)

One day Beloved informed me that there were potatoes in several of the old buckets. We never planted them there, so I can only assume that soil from previous attempts at potatoes found a good home.

We watched the plants grow and wither – all ready for the crop. Amazingly, we got about 5 lbs of potatoes. This is more than we EVER got from those we deliberately planted. How annoying!

Not only that, but these spuds had the most amazingly creamy taste. And we don’t even know what kind they are (deep sob!)

So we are still reaping the benefits (or the potatoes) of growing our own, even though we didn’t do a thing this year!

It will be some while before we launch out into growing any more of our own food at the moment, the ‘garden’ being so small and covered in paving slabs. BUT – I have a tub of thyme and marjoram, a very small bay tree, and a quince tree (no quinces this year).

After winter is past, Beloved intends to rearrange the garden. Or, to be more precise, to change the position of the garden gate.

Then there will be space for a shed. Size is yet to be determined, although it can’t be too big or it will impede the rotary clothes dryer. Once that is done, though, we can start thinking of growing stuff again.

My thought was to have hanging baskets, at least for the strawberries. And if we can fit in one of the large troughs (which we still have) there will probably be space for a couple of cherry tomato plants and some spinach.

And I guess I’ll buy one of those large bag-like things (like a grow-bag but tall rather than wide) for growing potatoes in. When I’ve planted that, I’ll ignore it and see what happens.

Whew!

You may have noticed a distinct lack of posts lately…or maybe not. You’ve probably given up reading by now. Sigh.

It was my intention to carry on with tales of the countryside as I played at being a farmer’s wife. But, we had to sell the farm and have moved into the middle of a town. Horrors!

But, as I’m still a country lass at heart, I’m going to carry on as best I can.

My Beloved is working hard to put shelves on every available space. The new house is a quarter of the size of the farm. And the farm had stables (lots of nice storage space). Car boot sales here we come. . . .

We have had to console ourselves by watching DVDs of “Tales from the Green Valley” and “Victorian Farm”.

Sadly, our ‘garden’ is about the size of a Victorian pig-sty. Oh well.

Something (or someone!!) ate all our strawberries. So all I have salvaged from the farm is a quince tree (doing very well in a dustbin until we have the garden sorted), a bay tree, and a pot of oregano and thyme.

Nearby, in the parking area, is a huge rosemary bush so I slip out and snip bits off it as I need it. One day I shall take cuttings.

Well, that’s my quick update. Hopefully more interesting stuff coming up later.

Country Lass

Catch-up

Hmm . . . it’s been a while since I tackled a post on this blog. To those who are hanging on my every word, sorry for the delay.

Since I last posted, I have managed to totally avoid the Cardigan of Doom because it is draped over my knitting machine in an artistic manner. Its sole purpose is to give the impression that I use my knitting machine. Actually, I do use my knitting machine. It’s just that after the disaster of the Cardigan of Doom, I’m reluctant to make anything with the glorious new wool I’ve acquired. I must beat this fear…….

But, in the meantime, I have knitted two scarves and three socks. This is not weird. I have sock number four on the needles.

Beloved and I recently joined his family for a weekend in the Yorkshire Moors. It’s a beautiful place, full of wild moorlands, steep roads and . . . sheep. We had a good time, and even had surprisingly good weather. Except, that is, for the moment we decided to have a picnic. We’d been threatening to have a picnic all weekend and somehow it didn’t quite work out. By the time we were on the way home, we felt cheated. We HAD to have our picnic.

To be fair, we did notice that the sky was a little overcast. Earlier, the sky had been black with rain; by lunchtime it was a dark grey and we decided that, since the weather was obviously brightening up, we would have our picnic.

We stopped our cars at a ‘viewpoint’ area that had a couple of benches overlooking a glorious view. True, the benches were a little damp from previous rain but everything seemed okay. We got out the plastic-backed picnic blanket and spread it over one bench for Beloved’s mum to sit on. We made cups of tea, cut the rolls and started to spread butter on them. The heavens opened.

We quickly shoved meat and cheese into the rolls and grabbed some tomatoes before they became totally submerged.

Brother-in-law and wife hunkered down under a tree. Silver birches are not entirely thick with leaves, so the two of them got just as wet as the rest of us – only they could pretend they were sheltering. Sister-in-law put up her brolly (yep, at least one of us came prepared) and Beloved’s mum put her coat over her head. Beloved and I got wet.

Personally, I was astonished to find that my sturdy bread roll absorbed an amazing amount of water in a very short time. Sloppy rolls are unpleasant, so I only ate half of it and threw the rest in the rubbish bag.

Ah well, it was a picnic to remember. And it was kinda funny (afterwards) when I think that it was the ONLY rain we encountered during the whole weekend.

Country Lass

Socks of Joy

Finally, they are finished!! My wonderful Socks of Joy are complete. I promised I’d give a picture, so here it is.

Socks of Joy!

As you can see, the socks start and end in slightly different places, which annoys me. I tried so hard to begin knitting in the same place but one sock has a yellow toe and the other hasn’t.

I console myself with the thought that nobody will know unless I take off my shoes. But I love my socks anyway.

Remember, these are MY socks. I don’t care whose birthday is coming up, or how Easter-y the colours are. Nobody gets MY socks.

However, when it comes to the annoying cardigan (now dubbed the Cardigan of Doom) I don’t mind if anyone lays claim to it.

I originally imagined the Cardigan of Doom in shades of peach and white with the occasional bit of khaki (or is it brown) to add depth. But no matter how I contrived to twist the three coloured strands, it ended up looking mainly khaki with the odd streak of peach or white.

And it knitted too loose. I’m sure the writing on the cones said 3 strands equal double knitting yarn. But maybe that was for wool and doesn’t work with cotton. But it’s too late now. Here is a piccy of the Cardigan of Doom.

Cardigan of Doom

Needless to say, I have yet to attach the sleeves.

I’ve just started to knit the button band, which should be fairly quick as it only has 7 stitches. What worries me is that it looks very narrow. . . .

Of course, having finished the Socks of Joy, I am even less inclined to work on the Cardigan of Doom. I desperately want to start the next project but have challenged myself to finish the cardigan before I decide what to knit next.

There are several possibilities for the next project. More socks. OK, perhaps I should be a little more adventurous.

A dishcloth. Now, I do realise this is not particularly adventurous, but I need to knit one and have a ball of unexciting ‘ecru’ coloured cotton yarn somewhere in the craft room.

Or I could knit another hat like the one I knitted for my Niece. Or I could knit a scarf out of fancy yarn. Or I could decide on this year’s Christmas presents and start early. Hmmm.

But what I really want to knit is a sweater. For me. Is that selfish?

Country Lass

Dogs and socks

I haven’t written this for a while because we had ‘visitors’. First we had Mother and Dog.

Mother had a fall (she’s okay – she’ll survive!) and was a bit shaken, so she brought Dog and they stayed overnight.

Mother felt okay to go home the next day, but we continued looking after Dog until Mother felt a little stronger. Dog is somewhat bouncy and ricochets off the walls from time to time. (Okay, I admit to a slight exaggeration there . . . but not much)

Dog likes socks and feet . . . and especially socks with feet in them. Dog also likes tissues and footballs, but these are not such a problem.

My darling Beloved (said through gritted teeth) let the dog out of the kitchen while I was having a shower. The bathroom door wasn’t properly closed. Thankfully, Dog is small and not easily able to leap into the bath (though she has been known to do such a thing when Beloved is cross with her).

So I had to fight to get out of the bath, totally forgetting MY FEET!!  Aarghh! Dog immediately pounced upon my nice clean feet and proceeded to give them huge, slobbery licks. I tried to grab the towel. Dog thought I was playing and promptly grabbed part of it and started to pull. Then she remembered my feet again.

Have you ever tried to walk while a small dog is slurping at your feet? It’s verging on impossible.

I finally made it through to the bedroom. Dog was beside herself – my socks, Beloved’s socks, my feet, the bed – she didn’t know where to go first.

My dilemma was that she is not, definitely not, allowed up on the furniture. It’s something we’re trying to teach her. Dog leapt on the bed. Now, understand that this was a welcome respite for my feet. But how do I get her to understand that she can’t go on the furniture unless I need a break from her attacking my feet? Can’t be done!

I grabbed my socks. And tried to shove one slobbery foot into the first sock. Dog jumped from the bed, grabbed the end of the sock and pulled. I overbalanced. I put my foot on the floor. Dog slobbered.

Finally, Dog inexplicably ran off into the hallway. I quickly dressed and went for my shoes. My SHOE – singular. Where was my other shoe? “DOG!!!!!”

Sure enough, there was dog in the hallway, holding the shoe by the laces and banging it on the floor. I assured her it was very dead and she should drop it now. Eventually, she did. I put socked foot into shoe, pronto!

When I recounted the story to Mother she assured me she never had any problem. But, of course, she shuts Dog out of the bathroom and bedroom until she’s dressed and ready for the fight!

Thankfully, I had hidden the wonderful socks I am knitting for ME. It would not do for any of us to see them shredded by Dog.

Country Lass

Roadkill !!

Living out in the country has its benefits. From time to time you can’t help but get roadkill.

The pheasants, of course, are their own worst enemy. They stand by the edge of the road until a car comes, run into the middle of the road, have second thoughts and run back . . . and at the last minute run back under the car and – zonk! – they’re dead.

Deer are different. They drift across the road, not expecting a car to come (and drivers don’t expect to see the deer, either). They don’t go under the car so easily.

Livery lady is great. She comes early to see to her horses and if she sees a pheasant/rabbit at the side of the road, she’ll bring it to us (not the flat ones, of course). But if it’s a deer, she rings us (a deer is not so easily scooped into a carrier bag). The other day we had a phonecall – “there’s roadkill at the bend in the lane.”

My Beloved, of course, leaps to his 4×4 (with trailer attached) to find the roadkill. Some time later, after several mishaps and much grunting, my man has the deer hung from the woodshed, where it stayed for several days in a somewhat indelicate pose.

Yesterday, he butchered it. Well, he hacked at it.

Have you ever butchered a deer? You look at those neat joints and steaks in the shops and think it can’t be that difficult. But confronted with a whole deer (with skin on) hanging from the woodshed, it’s a different matter. How on earth do you start?

We looked on the Internet because American people seem to hunt deer a lot, so we thought we were bound to find something to help. We did, but there’s surprisingly little about how to butcher the deer once you’ve killed it. The website we found said to cut the deer in half. Easier said than done! Presumably, every American home has a butcher’s table or something… We only had pallets and some huge logs.

My Beloved started by skinning it. Have you any idea how many small hairs come off the skin? Standing down-wind isn’t good (the smell AND the flying hairs) so I took my Beloved’s advice and went indoors to get warm.

When I came out again the deer was naked and my Beloved had started to cut bits off it. Like the head, which was staring at me from a large log.

Thankfully, we have several large plastic bowls for him to fill with pieces of deer. It took him hours. Somehow one fondly imagines that a person should be able to go chop, chop, chop and in a few minutes have a wonderfully butchered deer. Real life doesn’t go that way. It might for butchers, but not for ordinary people with roadkill.

My poor beloved was so cold, I had to carry bowls of hot water out to him so he could thaw out his hands. At least the temperature will keep the deer fresh, I thought.

It’s hard being a country wife sometimes. I desperately wanted to be with my Beloved, to give him moral support as he cut up the deer. I hated to think of him on his own out in the cold doing a boring, difficult job. He kept sending me inside to keep warm, but I worried about him being cold, so I kept going out to change the water in the bowl. He worked all afternoon until twilight.

He brought four large bowls full of meat into the kitchen. He was tired, his back ached, and no way could we continue chopping meat.

Today, we set about cutting the meat into portions. We bagged several joints and ribs and so on. Then we got to some of the meat without bones. It was luscious! We got loads of steaks out of that, plus a few pieces that will make wonderful rolled joints. Maybe I’ll stuff those. Hmmm. Must think about that….

We had to clear one of the freezers yesterday, too. We thought we’d be pushed to make enough room for the deer, but by the end of it we managed to clear one freezer entirely! Wow! That will be the venison freezer. Once it’s in there, my Beloved has nothing more to do with it until it’s on his plate ready to be eaten. The in-between stuff is MY job. This is not a sexist comment or anything like that. It’s simply that I don’t think I could eat that much venison pizza if I left my Beloved to the cooking…

So now I must imagine all sorts of ways to eat venison.

Last time we had venison roadkill I found a recipe for a wonderful rich stew but I can’t find the recipe now. I remember it had pickled walnuts in it, but I didn’t have any so I used prunes instead. Yes, I know prunes are not the same as pickled walnuts (unless you look at the colour) but the stew turned out very yummy. Now I’ll have to invent it all over again. Sob!

Watch this space.

Country Lass

People like me

I’ve been reading and commenting on a few Christian blogs today.

What caught my attention was that they are what I would have once have considered ‘too radical’ for me. For many years I was a good church member.

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe in God, I believe Jesus is the Messiah and died for me. All that stuff. I even prayed the sinners prayer because I thought I should (although I didn’t have a clue what it was on about at the time).

I wanted to say above that ‘I was a good Christian’ but I realised I was simply a church member. I went to church and sat through the hymn-prayer-hymn-prayer-sermon-hymn sandwich type thing. I did what the pastor said we should do to become good Christians.

But at the same time, GOD was telling me to teach small groups of people.

So what did I do? I asked the pastor if I could teach small groups of people. He said no. So I didn’t do it. I had somehow assimilated the understanding that to go against the pastor was the same thing as rebelling against God, because God was the one who had appointed the pastor. But this is a lie.

All of which means that I was NOT a good Christian. I did not do what God said. I did what my pastor said.

Gradually, I learned to listen more to God than to pastors and leadership. Sometimes I spoke out but I was so often ‘rebuked’ that I learned to keep things to myself.

Than I met my husband who (thankfully) felt the same way about God, church and leadership.

It has been so exciting to read good Christian blogs and discover there are other people to whom God has spoken, who are listening to Him, and who want reality rather than religion.

This is FUN!

Country Lass

Snow!!!

We have snow!!! Yay!

Actually, I lie. We had snow yesterday . . . and today, briefly. But most of it has gone now (sob!) But it was good while it lasted.

Isn’t snow beautiful? I wish we had more of it (although some people would disagree with me here…) Of course, because of the snow one of our livery ladies stayed all day and popped in for lunch. As did my mother.

I was knitting aforementioned sock.

“Oooh!” said Livery Lady. “I like that sock. That’s just the sort of thing I need . . .”

And “Oooh!” said mother. “What a wonderful sock. I’d love a pair of those.”

Livery Lady said, “Hey! I saw them first.” Mother replied, “Well, I have a birthday coming up soon.”

“When’s your birthday, then?” Livery Lady asked.

“May.”

“Mine’s in May, too. What date?”

They finally ascertained that Mother had first rights on the socks.

NOW WAIT A MINUTE!!!!

These are MY socks, knitted for my very own self. And to think I even half-formed the thought that I could give them one sock each and they could SHARE!!

My socks!! All mine!!! My poor Beloved thinks I’m obsessed with socks. I keep telling him I need new ones and I really do. And I want to knit them (well, maybe I’ll buy a few – it takes time to knit).

One day I’ll show you a picture of them. Maybe just one of them. I’ve almost finished it. Then I will have to hide it away. And nobody’s going to see the next socks I knit. NOBODY, I tell you. Nobody . . . . Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!

Er . . . that’s all for now. (cough!)

Country Lass

Rainy Day Thoughts

Yuk – more rain. We already have a big pond in the middle of the road down the hill from the farm. I’m sure it must be fast becoming a lake.

Actually, I don’t mind the rain as long as I’m dressed for it (or indoors in the warm in front of the woodburning stove with my feet up, eating chocolate . . . oops, that just slipped out. I’m sure I wouldn’t do such a naughty thing as eat chocolate. I’m sure I’d eat something worthy like . . . er . . . porridge . . . or something).

I have the urge to continue knitting the socks. It seems like a rainy day kind of thing to do. But I’m still conscious of that cardigan.

What is it with me? For some odd reason I feel I OUGHT to finish the cardigan. I enjoyed knitting it on the knitting machine. I just hate ribbing on the knitting machine – it doesn’t look right to me (I don’t have a ribbing attachment). So the best option is to knit the ribbing by hand. I don’t mind doing that but it seems to take longer to do than the whole cardigan and I get impatient to move on to the next project. Sigh!

My beloved has eaten all the mince pies. Well, not ALL of them. I had a few and now I need to bake some more if I can summon up the motivation to move out of the warm into the cold kitchen. I know – it will be warm once I start cooking – but it’s cold NOW. And the sofa is cozy. But it’s nearly lunch time and I’ll have to go out there anyway. . .

So many dilemmas.

At least I’m not a Shetland pony. They’re out in this rain and not even bothering to shelter under the trees.

Currently, the Shetlands are in the garden, so it’s fortunate we haven’t anything much apart from grass. We have lots of grass. Tall grass. Or it was until the ponies were let in. We had to do something after my beloved’s ride-on mower stopped working. Shetlands are a very different kind of ride-on mower

Country Lass