We are migrating to a new web host at the moment, so nothing is as it should be !

Most of the blog entries are missing, presumed eaten, but please bear with us as we attempt to sort it out.

Ladies and Gentlemen – it is official. We have chipped our last branch for 2012.

Actually, that’s not true – but we have chipped the last branch that was cut in 2011 (shows how far behind we are!). All we need to do now is collect them all up, and give them to the pigs..

We can fit about 5 cubic metres of chippings in the truck and trailer, which means that we have maybe 20 trips to do, all around the valley. As I type this, I am smug in the knowledge that we are down to perhaps ten more car and trailer-loads, so might even be finished by the end of this week.

So, next week, I can start the spring pruning of the olive trees – yup – will be cutting more branches off trees, and then putting them through the chipper – can’t wait!

We are still chipping. It’s madness! No end in sight! I have repetitive chipping injuries now. I need help.

Actually, I need not to chip.

Still, here is a photo of the new chipping pile.

This is about one third of the expected total, if we ever get finished, and collect it all up. The tree-stumps and buoy are there to provide entertainment to the inmates.

MkII compost turners. The one at the front is nearly ready to turn into bacon, but shhh! don’t tell him! And if you’ve seen the previous chipping post, don’t ask what happened to Doug!

Above is where last year’s chippings were. At the back you can see what is left, collected into a pile. This is the good stuff, and is now being thrown around the place – today was raspberry cane feeding day, for example. We have planted potatoes directly in the ground where the pigs and compost used to be, on the theory that there must be some good stuff left in the ground, even if we have picked up most of the compost. All we need to do now is put up a fence to keep the chickens and sheep out. This needs to be done before the potatoes actually get out of the ground, otherwise we will poison all the animals. So, no pressure then.

We are making our own pasta. This sounds like such a worthy thing to do, and fairly pointless, given that you can buy pasta for less money than the cost of the flour. But, we have eggs. Lots and lots of eggs. We are collecting something like 15 a day at the moment, which is nice, but it does mean that if you don’t feel like an omelette today (and after fried/poached/boiled eggs for breakfast, pancakes for lunch, and egg sandwiches for supper you may or may not feel like an omelette)you will have 30 eggs tomorrow. 45 on Tuesday. And so it goes on.

So, rather than boil them up and feed them back to the chickens (which we have done), or boil them up and feed them to the pigs (a fine idea, and we do this as well), we make pasta. The recipe is: 100 grams of strong flour, and an egg. Not exactly rocket science. So, half a kilo of flour in the food processor, six eggs (i.e. five eggs, and one for luck because we are trying to get rid of the things), and whizz it until it makes a nice ball of dough. a few drops of water can be added if it’s still too crumbly, which ours is when we are using up some dubious brown flour that we bought to make bread, but which doesn’t rise, so is now pasta dough.

Showing off with a continuous loop of pasta on the machine – fun, but actually better results if you just wind it through as one long strip. We will leave the flashy stuff to Masterchef contestants. Note the flour dredger – you can’t shake too much flour onto the dough, really. Be enthusiastic with it!

And the finished article, drying That is about 2 kilos (2 kilos of flour, 24 eggs, and perhaps some sweat).

Ok, perhaps it is less than 2 kilos, after tax.

Incubating eggs the hard way – ideally our chickens would do this for us, but frankly, they don’t appear to be qualified. We need 100 chickens a year in the freezer, and thus far our hens have managed three chick (which snuck out of a hedge this morning, as a bit of an early Easter surprise)

28 eggs crammed in to the incubator, having taken out all the bits of plastic that keep the eggs sitting comfortably, all so we can squeeze in a few extras.

Here they are cooking – 37.5 degrees and 45% humidity for 18 days, followed by 65% humidity for the last 3 days. There is a cradle to rock the whole thing for the first 18 days that isn’t shown.

And here is the ensuing mayhem when they all hatch at once. We have 17 healthy chicks from 26 eggs, which is a reasonable (but not outstanding) result. They look cuter later on, I promise. The first batch of the year gave us 12 chicks from 19 eggs. The third batch are currently baking at gas mark three – to be continued.

Our second new arrival (20th February), brings the total number of sheep up to an enormous six. Wow. We are sheep-breeders of extraordinary proportions

And this little chap is our new ram – we have high expectations of him this summer. Rather than being the usual generic local sheep, he is a high-value German import (actually sold as a “Mercedes” of the sheep world). The theory is that he will produce lambs with some meat, rather than the skinny, manky local breeds that are favoured for their milk production. So with this addition, we have SEVEN sheep!

Here  they are, in all their glory, mowing the lawn by the house. Exactly why we have them.

The reason that there has been no entries for weeks is simple – every time I have managed to get near a computer, I have been researching aquaponics, instead of doing real work.

In case you didn’t know, aquaponics is the art of growing food hydroponically, but using fish waste as the nutrient source. Therefore, you connect your growing beds, nutrient film system et al to a fish tank, and then cunningly recycle the water back to the fish. So, the fish eat (and grow into supper-sized portions), excrete in the usual way. various bacteria then convert ammonia into nitrites into nitrates, and your veggies scoff the lot.

The whole point of this is that (allegedly) the plants grow from 4 to 8 TIMES FASTER than in normal growing conditions (i.e. the ground). This is not actually a believable point, and frankly, I will wait to see if it is true. The other point, which is even more important to us is that aquaponics uses LESS THAN 10% of the water that standard growing techniques require.  We use around 3,000 litres a day in the summer, up until the point where we run out of water, turn the garden off, and lament all the dead plants and lack of food. So, if this is even remotely true, it will be astonishing. Halving our water needs would be impressive, but 10%? really don’t believe it, but we will be finding out soon.

OK, so it’s official, I am a born-again aquaponicist in waiting. Let the wild rumpus begin!

We (I say we, but actually I mean I, at 4.00am mostly, because Ellie is much more sensible and sleeps at night.) have worked out that, because there is no possibility of finding old scrap water-tanks, grow beds or other paraphernalia for cheap, we are going to have to make the system from scratch, out of concrete. The budget looks like it will be up around 1,000 euros at the finish, but it will be a fairly large installation – a 5 or 6 thousand litre fish tank, initially two 2×4 metre grow-beds, with river-gravel as a medium, and some nutrient film system thrown in, mainly because we do have a stack of old guttering hanging around looking for a new home.

The new site for the new system inside a new poly-tunnel  Have even cut down an olive tree to fit it all in.

So, this will be the beginning of a fabulous new world of year-round veggie excesses, fish suppers and free pig-food. We hope. It might turn out to be a mamothian white elephant; 8 cubic metres of useless, badly poured concrete that will be a permanent reminder of the folly of internet research. Will keep posting.