Cauliflower Leaf Pakora

I've decided that homesteading is the word for me. Such a friendly word, conjuring up images of making preserves and shucking corn (whatever that is - I hope it's not rude. Actually now that I think about it, it might be. Oh well). Quite unlike the hideous compound self-sufficiency that we use here in Britland. I mean, it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue now, does it? It's really best delivered in Received Pronunciation as "sef-sefish-en-say", and smacks rather more of hairy men living in yurts than anything else. Not that I have anything against yurts, you understand; nor hairy men, come to that.*

Such are the thoughts that go through the head of someone handweeding a large asparagus bed, and gazing in despair at the black kale which is bolting so fast it could win the Derby. Apparently black kale is prone to doing this in mild weather, and it's just a shame that the mild weather in question happens to be February - February, for heaven's sake - when the crop is supposed to be feeding us into early April. It's back to the heritage variety Ragged Jack for me, I think - but as some small consolation, I read that the flowering shoots are something of a gourmet treat.

That's another thing to add to my list of "things people normally throw away but which are actually rather good to eat", but whether it displaces broad bean shoot tips sautéed in garlic butter from my top slot remains to be seen. Wise homesteaders nip the tips out once the first pods have formed you see, since blackfly can be a real problem if you don't; and anyway, the tips are actually nicer than the beans themselves. Garlic scapes are another unexpected delight, as Kitchenwitch explained in the summer; but today, it was the turn of cauliflower leaves to find their place in my kitchen as I made the best of two plants which had made it abundantly clear that hearting up was simply not an option. Didn't know you can eat them? Neither did I, but served up like this they're a delight if perhaps a bit calorific.

Caulipakora

Take a dozen or so middle-sized cauliflower leaves (the big leathery ones are frankly unfanciable) with the mid-ribs removed, rinse and pat them dry, and heat about a 10cm depth of oil in a pan suitable for deep-frying. While it's warming up, make up this batter;

two cups of gram (chickpea) flour
quarter cup of ground rice
half a teaspoonful each of chilli powder, cumin powder and garam masala
a good teaspoon of tamarind paste
a pinch of salt

Mix and whisk all the ingredients together in a bowl with just enough cold water to make it into a thick batter - a bit thicker than pancake batter, really, as it needs to coat the cauliflower leaves without running off. Taste the batter before you start in case you need to add more spices.

Once the oil is hot, completely coat each leaf in batter and deep fry them, in batches, until they are golden brown and crispy round the edges. As you take the leaves out, put them in a warmed bowl with a little kitchen paper at the bottom (to catch any remaining oil) - and that's it. This makes enough for four people as a side dish or starter, with a bit of mango chutney for dipping. The moustache - and the cheese - is thankfully optional.

*Don't read into that. As a matter of fact, for some reason the two hairy men in my mental yurt are both Dick Strawbridge, and they're making curd cheese. The cheese bit must be from the sound of the word, but the stereo Strawbridge is slightly worrying. Best not to think too much about it, eh?

The Fetching of Poo

The fetching of manure is a delicate business, involving favours from two people I haven't seen much of lately. I need to borrow Dunk's little pickup for a couple of hours, and then there's Mrs Whisky-Sniffler who owns the pile of manure in question. Happily Mrs WS still feels vaguely indebted to me for the whole cider-making business last year; even though she may not be up for it in 2008 I think she'll quite happily allow us to take her apples in exchange for a couple of gallons of the resultant brew, and she certainly won't mind me helping myself to a mere truckful of delicious, crumbly horse manure or two.

Dunk's another matter, since there is always an element of risk involved in moving the truck. At all. Last time it was a warning about the suspension, so I took it easy while crossing the fields - that warning is still in place, but now it's been joined by the cryptic "If you smell burning, yank hard on the dashboard and pull all the wires out. You can put them back in once things have cooled down a bit". Ohhhh-kay.

Dunk's also got a completely different world view to me, and I can't work it out. On one hand he pretends to be a Celt for a living - he's an "historical interpreter" at a nearby field study centre - but on the other he's politely disinterested in anything ecological, from transition economy worries right down to growing so much as herbs in a window box. I can't work it out. Still, we do share a passion for role-playing, so in exchange I drove him to Poole and joined in his usual game, allowing him to have some alcohol for a change. He's easy to please.

So I'm good to go - have truck, have poo. All this is in aid of bringing two new areas into cultivation; two perennials beds and a corn patch. The perennials beds will be used for things like nine-star broccoli and globe artichokes as well as for growing biennials like parsnips and leeks for seed - something that I could also do in flower beds. If I had any! Now all I have to do is give the two areas a fork over and let the chickens kick them to death looking for bugs and roots - oh, wait. That means finishing the chicken tractor, doesn't it?

moar funny pictures

LETS weld

Yesterday I put together the fruit cage frame I spoke about last year, before the little birds (or as the Bleedin' Cats call them, the Flying McNuggets*) start to peck at the raspberry buds. This is potentially more of a problem than birds stealing the fruit, since every damaged bud represents an entire spur that won't flower - a good handful of fruit in one nibble! I could have bolted the frame on my own, but that would have meant jagged swarf everywhere and is more likely to rust than a tidy weld - which means I need a welder. Happily, the redoubtable Rentman** agreed to help - for which I am most grateful. Photos when the nets go up. Hooray for that old oxymoron, the blogging community!

If it hadn't been for Rentman I probably would have tried our local LETS scheme. For anyone who doesn't know, LETS stands for Local Exchange Trading System, and it's a form of local cashless currency - you can read more about it here. Basically you have a LETS account which keeps track of the imaginary money that you have - you can earn by offering your goods or services, and spend the points on anything you like so long as it's within the scheme. There's no interest and therefore no penalties for going into debt (or as the scheme prefers to say, "in commitment") and there's no tax to pay.

LETS is a terrific idea, and there are some hugely successful schemes dotted around the country. There are problems associated with them though, and a high level of burnout of administrators is one of them. Motivating the apathetic is a thankless task. My beef with the scheme is that it doesn't really know if it's a currency or a time bank. On the one hand, there's parity with the pound; selling a bike? No problem, £10 = 10 LETS. But on the other, it embraces a timebank ethos with everyone's time worth 5 LETS per hour. The problem with this is that the schemes predominantly attract time-rich people, even though there are different rates for "professional" and "expert" time. Want an indian head massage? No problem. Want a plumber? Er, try yellow pages.

I'm generalizing, of course; I'm sure there are LETS schemes that have plumbers in them (although they're probably semi-retired ones). But the basic problem here is, what exactly do we mean by currency? There are three in play in daily life,*** and the lack of parity between them leads to all sorts of illogicalities.

The first currency is cash. Everybody knows about cash; any commodity or service is worth what people are prepared to pay for it, no more and no less. This means that the price of something isn't fixed, but is affected by all sorts of things including demand, competition and economic conditions. Everybody hates it apart from the people who already have lots of it, because cash tends to attract more cash, unless you keep it in a biscuit tin under the floorboards.

The second currency is time. Everyone has a notion of what their time is worth, but how we factor this into our decisions is often fairly arbitrary. For example, someone working full-time can only "sell" their precious sliver of free time, whereas someone who has retired or is unemployed has a surfeit of time and is happy to use it productively. Hence the problem with clamping everyone's time at the same rate.

The third currency, and most often overlooked, is energy. You may not have considered this, but when you use a powered lawnmower you're saving your own time by spending fossil fuel on making, powering, and disposing of this machine at the end of its life. Right now that's such a bargain that it probably doesn't seem like a choice at all, but multiply the cost of the energy used by five (as may be the case in a decade or so) and it might not be so simple.

Do I have a point? Well, LETS is a useful way to formalize what the taxman calls "social favours" (which is why they're not much interested in taxing LETS schemes unless tradespeople get involved) but it's not the only way. If you have a busy, vibrant LETS scheme in your neighbourhood, then consider using it - but it can never completely replace cash, barter, and the old-fashioned practice of helping a mate out. Thanks again, Rentman.



* Utterly sinister non-free-range link.

** I presently class Rentman as definition 2, but given the glint in his eye when holding an arc-welder packing god knows how many volts, there's still time to change to definition 1.

***Okay, so there's a forth currency, but I'm not going to go into that here. And no, I'm not going to give you an example - Valentine's Day was only last week for heaven's sake!

A Painful Subject

Ahh, the peace. The blessed peace. The Sons have gone to stay with a relative for a few days, and I'm using the quiet to finally get to grips with my seed order and planting schedule. The tunnel is clearing out of winter crops, and it's time to break out the propagator and get going.

However.

The relative in question has been having a distressing time of late due to an extremely painful rash in the, er, scrotal region. This has all medical staff mystified, since infection has been ruled out and it responds to absolutely nothing. Relative in question cannot sit comfortably and has become... somewhat grumpy. Pity poor relative. Is not funny. Very brave to volunteer services as minder for the half term, especially given the condition that shall not be mentioned.

Enter Number Two Son, who is prone to inventing new games which no-one else can fathom at all. So far as anyone can tell, the rules and objectives are infinitely mutable and change by the moment - the only thing to remember is that you are always losing, and he is always winning. Keep that in mind, and you'll be fine. The only thing that always stays the same is the game's name, which has to be shouted loud and often during play.

So will someone tell me why he has to pick the very morning of his departure to invent a game called "Where's My Nuts?"


There is no image to go with this post because I am in shock, having looked for one in Google images. I chose not to display what I found, this being a family blog*, but you can see it and the article it came from here if you have a strong enough stomach. You've been warned! Talk about a sockful of marbles...

*Okay, so not really. But still. People may be eating.

Free Rice

For those unimpressed by the possibilities of earning a fortune through pay-per-click advertising, here's an alternative way to harness your pathological desire to click on something - anything - with alarming rapidity. Every click you make generates 20 grains of rice* for the UN World Food Programme, and you get to enhance your word power to boot!

*Naturally there's a "but" here, which is that the surplus income from this PPC experience goes to the originator, a smart man. Read this for more details if your finger isn't too exhausted. Sian from Spin a Song of Sixpence has already cracked level 50. Think you can match her?

When The Lights Go Out

It's been a great week for staring at the stars out here in the sticks. Usually at this time of the year a clear night means a hard frost, but warm air being pulled up from France has kept things unseasonably warm - so I've been more inclined to linger to take advantage of the new moon for a few moments. Until, that is, Wingco returns home - for then his exterior lighting snaps on, bathing the area in a total of nine hundred watts of prison-yard clarity. There doesn't have to be anyone actually outside - the lighting simply signifies that someone is in residence, like the flag flying over the royal palaces. Handy for burglars, though; it saves on having to watch the place to find out when people come and go.

Kudos, then, to Hamshire County Council for trialling a post-midnight blackout in the Fishlake Meadows estate in Romsey. They're not alone, either; street lighting accounts for a big chunk - at least 25% - of the typical energy spend for any Council, and with wholesale energy costs rising, saving energy on lighting has to be a case of when, not if. The Romsey experiment has attracted a fair bit of criticism in the media, however, since one resident is sufficiently unhappy about it to give interviews. "The residents in the area feel very unsafe when there are no lights on outside," said Judith Giles (46)*, although the County Council has only received one complaint (presumably from Ms Giles herself). "They feel very insecure when they look out in the night and they can't even see their own garden." Hmm. Perhaps she should get together with Wingco - he can spare her a couple of hundred watts, no problem at all. But not being able to see your garden at night! Fancy that!

Ms Giles isn't the only one with such concerns, although the Home Office study in 1991 found that street lighting reduces public anxiety about crime, rather than the crime itself. Here in the neighbourhood of the Hollow we're sufficiently far from major towns for it to actually get dark - properly dark - when the sun goes down. Moving around without turning lights on in the small hours (which would guarantee spousal irritation) involves a torch, or failing that a sort of zombie shuffle with both arms and one probing foot outstretched. The foot is to detect cats, you understand, as nothing puts a cramp in your evening like nineteen pounds of panicked feline attempting to claw its way up your naked thigh.

Naturally enough, when I do visit the city I can't sleep because it doesn't get dark, so I can quite understand how someone used to those conditions might be unnerved by a Council switch-off. Perhaps it might be a good moment to recall thoughts expressed by Mel of Beansprouts, on a trip to Cornwall in 1999 to see the solar eclipse;

"At 2am I noticed the sky. My God, I had no idea there were so many stars.
I had lived in the city my whole life, and had probably never seen a star with a magnitude less than about 2 or 3. The eclipse was a wonderful phenomenon, but that view of the cloudless night sky was just as memorable."

*Hooray! Certain sections of the British press insist on publishing the ages of interviewees - I suppose it's so that readers have a chance to mentally label them as "young hooligans", "old farts" or "smug mid-lifers" (delete as appropriate) - many thanks the Mail on Sunday for helpfully supplying that of Ms Giles, who has had all hope of claiming another forty-second birthday party cruelly dashed. Oh well, if you will talk to journalists...

How To Clean A Polytunnel/Hoophouse

It's that time of year. The days are lengthening at last, and although air temperatures may still be low, inside the polytunnel (a.k.a. hoophouse) things are already warming up. Overwintering plants are growing again, or at least they should be - unless damp conditions have coated your tunnel film with algae. Chances are you'll be able to see a greenish coating on one side of the tunnel, but don't be fooled - it's everywhere, and it's substantially reducing the light transmission of your tunnel film. Think it's not going to be significant? Think again!

To clean an ordinary (single-span) tunnel, you'll need the following; a willing helper, an old sheet, two short lengths of rope (or clothesline or similar), a quart of beer, two tennis balls, a soft car-washing brush, a garden hose, and hand spray bottle and a suitable detergent.

1. First, tie a length of rope securely each end of the sheet. Don't make any holes in the sheet, as it will only tear. Instead, place a tennis ball near the end of the sheet and wrap the sheet end back around it, so that the ball is in a pouch of sheeting; then tie the rope around the neck of the pouch, so that the ball acts as an anchor to secure the rope.

2. Dip the sheet into your detergent solution. To prevent damage to the tunnel film a mild detergent is needed, and I recommend Citrox (aka Aussan). This is an organic cleanser which inactivates many fungal spores, retards algal growth, and more importantly is harmless to plants, breaking down harmlessly in the soil.

3. Using the hose, thoroughly wet the tunnel and throw the sheeting over it so that it hangs down on either side, as if it were an extra hoop. You and your helper now have to take turns to pull the line so that it "flosses" the tunnel from side to side, as you might dry your back with a towel, and work your way from one end to the other and back. Once this is done, repeat the process without the back-and-forth movement; this is because unless your film is absolutely taut the back-and-forth movement tends to miss any natural creases that form under pressure. Depending on the width of the tunnel you may find that your sheet is not long enough to clean the whole upper surface at one go, in which case adjust the line so that you concentrate on one side at a time.

4. As with washing a car, hose off the dirty water before it has a chance to dry on again. If the day is warm, it may be best to clean the tunnel in sections.

5. Now that the top of the tunnel is done, use the carwash brush to clean the sides. Wet them first with the hose, squirt on a little detergent solution using a hand spray bottle, brush thoroughly but gently and then hose off the muck.

6. The inside of the tunnel film should also be washed, as should any staging and so on, and this should be done in the morning to give the film a chance to dry before temperatures fall. As well as increasing light transmission, this reduces the chance of fungal infections from last season overwintering successfully. Note that lacking rainfall, the inside of the tunnel is highly susceptible to toxin buildup - which is why it is so important to use an organic, plantsafe detergent like Citrox.

7. Well done - now drink the beer!

Living With Chickens

As anyone who keeps chickens will tell you, chooks are a joy to have around. Provided you don't have a rooster they're not noisy,* and their peacful crooning and clucking is a calming "all's well" sound while you work your patch. Despite the terrifying range of ailments mentioned in the poultry books, all but the fastest-growing meat birds are generally trouble-free; it just pays to know what to watch out for.

First thing every morning, either Witchypoo or myself wanders down to the chicken house to let the birds out - but if something upsets our routine and the birds get forgotten, it doesn't take long for them to start shouting for help. Since the chickens get three visits a day it generally makes sense to site the coop as close to your base of operations as possible, but here in the Hollow I decided to put it at the far end of the polytunnel, which means that I cannot accidentally neglect it either - a system that works very well for me.

Our chicken house straddles two separate runs, and has a pop hole on either side so that I can change the chickens' run without actually moving anything. I open the pop hole and sort out the feeder and drinker while the chickens rouse themselves, and then I watch them as they walk down the ladder from the house to the ground, gauging their condition. It's worth taking the time to do this while all the birds are in one place - and pleased to see you! The last job to do before heading back to the house for a shower is to make sure that the nest box hasn't been fouled during the night; it should always have a comfortable depth of clean shavings.

When it's time for elevenses then the chickens get their second visit of the day. This is when they get their snack ration of suitable leftovers - a little cold rice or pasta, or perhaps a handful of corn - and it can be high on comedy value as they chase each other for the choicest mouthful. I really look forward to this time when I'm writing. A cup of coffee, a browse round the tunnel looking for weeds, and the companionable clucking of the hens - could there be a better coffee break? I personally don't think so, and it's rounded off by the main purpose of the visit; collecting the eggs.

Having really fresh and genuinely free-range eggs on tap simply can't be overestimated. Birds raised on fresh grass lay eggs with startlingly yellow yolks which are so tasty they make even commercial free-range eggs seem pale and insipid. Properly fresh, an egg practically stands to attention in the frying pan - and takes longer to boil compared with an older egg. Health advice used to be that an adult should eat no more than three eggs in a week, purely because of the cholesterol content, but our understanding of lipids in diet has moved on since then and current medical advice is that there is no maximum recommended intake, so long as the diet as a whole is balanced. This means that eggs can form a more important part of the protein in your diet, allowing you to cut down on meat.

The final visit to the chickens is at dusk, to put away the feed and close the pop hole after the last bird has returned to the house. Unless you have invested in an electric fence this is the most critical visit in terms of timing, because predators including the red fox are most active from dusk till dawn. As I've mentioned before, a predator attack during the day will lose you just one bird, or an egg or two - but an attack at night will probably lose you the lot. Foxes have a reputation for killing for sport, but this is unfair; their survival strategy is to cache meat when it is abundant, but the noise of a mass cull usually brings humans so the fox flees, leaving a houseful of dead birds. Be warned! A combination of stilts, a pop hole with a batten behind it and a deliberately wobbly ladder makes our chicken house a poor target, although in the daytime the hens would probably be too stupid to use it!

A few weeks ago I repopulated our own chicken house with four Columbian Blacktail yearlings, "rescued" from a local farm which were offloading them at the end of their commercial life, and I thought it might be useful to let you all know just how things have gone. I fetched them from the farm, neatly packaged in a cardboard box and very quiet, and took them home in the back of the car.

The first thing that surprised me was just how light they were compared to our old birds as I popped them onto the perch in the chicken house, and closed it up for the night. The next day Witchypoo left them in the house until lunchtime to allow the idea of "this is home" to imprint, and then out they came; even so, come nightfall the birds had made no effort to get back into the house and so I had to pop them all onto the perch for a second time - hardly a surprise, since chickens aren't the brightest of animals.**

The condition of the birds was a cause for concern, and although I wormed them immediately we lost a bird on the third day to what looked like the common cold. I had been warned that this was a possibility with commercial birds, which is why they cost so little - but losing any animal to illness is always upsetting. I did telephone the farm to warn them, but although they offered me a replacement bird they were almost heroically unconcerned. Losses in winter, it seems, are par for the course in a commercial setup.

From the off it was apparent that my idea of free range and the farm's idea of free range are two completely different things. The birds needed help negotiating the ladder to the house, which I had expected, but weren't strong enough to jump to the perch at first - which I had not. To begin with they were reluctant to stray more than a few feet from the house, and showed no interest in eating anything but layer's pellets; hardly what you'd expect from a free range bird! But three weeks later, I'm happy to say that all three of them have brightened up, and are foraging and exploring well and returning to the house on their own at the end of the day.*** The sudden drop-off from artificial light and heat has stopped them laying - one egg a day between the three of them - but that's to be expected. God knows, they deserve a rest.





* Although do read up about your chosen breed. There are exceptions!

**Understatement alert. I've known hatstands with more initiative.

***Although one of them still hasn't got the message about perching and prefers to sleep in the nest box. 7 out of 10, must try harder.

Previous chicken article <<

Roll For Initiative

Last weekend was set aside for strangeness, it seems. First there was the Dorchester Transition Town meeting, of which more anon, and then there was my first ever role-playing gamers' conference. Talk about thinking outside the box.

Gamers don't generally get good press, and it's not hard to see why. Stick 500 people with an eccentric hobby into a conference hall together, and some of them will dress up; add a bored photojournalist and it's not hard to predict what's going to happen; something like this.

Personally, I had no idea what to expect and just went with an open mind (in fact, the DTT meeting had given me such a lot to think about that my mind was probably rather more open than might have been wise). I discovered Dungeons & Dragons in the 80s, about two years before I discovered girls*. It appealed to me on many levels, since it involves storytelling, obsessive attention to minor detail, and being allowed to bellow things like "You are weak!" at your friends without being thought odd. Oh, all right, without being thought any more odd than your friends at any rate. By the way, if you have no idea what I'm talking about then start here.

I picked the RPG thing up again at University, where it was a useful pressure valve (being cheaper than drinking and considerably less likely to involve catching an STD), and have come back to it periodically ever since; and the first thing that struck me on entering Conception UK was just how normal everybody looked. Over the course of the weekend I had my taste for adventure reawakened by a piratical quest for the Tree of Life in Call of Cthulhu, learned to hate being the last Greek hero off the boat in Agon, and found myself trapped in a parallel dimension in Serenity.**

However, for me the best fun of the weekend was to be had in a little-known game called My Life With Master, in which players assume the role of minions serving a hideously deformed genius who terrorizes Paris from a subterranean lair. Or something. It was fabulous, with hardly any rules and no pre-prepared "script" at all. In the half-time break I was prompted to text my friend Weasel, who couldn't attend.

Fab time- so far 2day have killed author with meat tenderizer
and spirited 3 children out of their beds. Master will be pleased

About ten minutes later, I got a reply which surprised me a bit.

Make sure u debrief thoroughly b4 u come home u sick bastard,
don't want that evil in my house

Yes, I'd sent the text to Witchypoo by mistake *sighs*.




*Can you guess how long my D&D phase lasted? Yup, about two years.

**Sadly the parallel dimension was not confined to the game itself. I was shepherded to a chalet near the conference for this one, and entered a strange world where the game referee and the "captain" - his wife - held court over a wretched band of satellite personalities who seemed to have been there for some years and had clearly given up all hope of escape. In this world, body odour was considered de rigeur; eating (and in one case, cooking) at the gaming table was normal, and an innocent in-game question such as "what's in the box?" could trigger a detailed technical description of the contents. Here was a man who really knew what was in the box, and couldn't wait to tell you. After four hours of this the end of the game was nowhere in sight, but that was okay because neither was the middle. I decided to continue my run of firsts for the weekend by climbing out the bathroom window, and legging it to the pub. For all I know they're still there, opening boxes.