Food, again.

If it's made from a plant eat it, if it's made in a plant don't eat it.
This sounds like good advice to anyone who cares about real food, and was emailed to us from a Natural health care site.It appears that the UK government is emasculating the FSA and handing over to the food manufacturing industry responsibility for informing the public about healthy eating. Talk about the wolves caring for the sheep.

Food quality

We have always had an interest in good food, having been organic egg producers we always tried to produce the best quality, we also only bought real food, by that I mean food that you don't have to read the attached label.
We recently had some visitors from the UK and they very kindly offered to bring over anything that was not available here. Well, Marmite was top of the list followed by mature cheddar cheese and a couple of nice gammon steaks.
I guess it's the thought that counts, and these people knew us only via emails, however we now realise that a lot of "food" sold in the UK is not what we would call fit for purpose.
A pack of three X two gammon steaks for only ten pounds! sounds too good to be true, as the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is not true. The weight of these gammons proclaimed them to be 1386grams, in reality on reading the label 16% was declared as not to be gammon, the label further stated with added water, we assume that this was in addition to the 16%, in reality what we ended up with was about nine hundred grams of meat after cooking, bringing the true price of this item to over 30% higher than the stated price, each pair of these steaks were vacuum packed, then placed in a polystyrene tray, cling filmed, then all three placed in an outer vacuum pack. If that was not bad enough, the steaks when cooked exuded a white gunge and the only taste was salt. This is not food, whoever are these powers that be that grant licences to produce such rubbish? It might be safe, although we have our doubts about that, but why treat food with such contempt?
These people also brought with them a five kg pack of chicken breasts, only five pounds, that's less than fifty pence a pound for chicken breasts, certainly less than production costs even allowing for the fact that these poor factory chicks would have been slaughtered at just forty two days old, still cheeping, having had no life and unable to walk because of their vast weight.These birds are just reconstituted henfeed.What many people do not realise is that chicken, along with other meats get recycled, when a product is nearing a remove by date or sell by date these products get returned to processing plants that turn them into a different form, such as chicken breasts, chicken nuggets [with added fat] spiced chicken wings etc.
Our goslings are doing well and are well cared for by five mothers and the gander, we have had a great crop of blackcurrants, the strawberries just keep coming and the raspberries are excelling, with plenty to make jam from as well as eat. we have some very cross blackbirds who seem to be stamping their feet in frustration as they are unable to get to the soft fruit, still we consider we did our bit when they cleaned us out of cherries.Our new chicks are so far doing well and are confined to what we hope is a pine marten proof run and house, we also have a further twelve buff Orpington eggs in the incubator, friends kindly brought the eggs over from the UK for us, hopefully, these birds will go on to be our breeding stock for our tablebirds.

The stork is one of our more welcome visitors, we just hope he is eating the crickets and not our frogs and toads.

It's hard to believe that the year is half over, I'm not sure what happened to the first six months, but we are now suffering a heat wave, well I guess we have to complain about something, we are having to water the garden and tunnels every day, The solstice has now gone, although there seems to be differing dates for this,with most sources quoting the 21st June this year, here in Galicia they celebrated it on the 23rd, with the usual noise and very loud fireworks erupting till the wee small hours, around 3am in the case of our local village.
Beside the vast array of predators that we have we also have some friendly wildlife, we have two resident pool frogs who go in for croaking competitions, and several toads, all welcome. One of the local storks is a frequent visitor to our field, eating we hope, field crickets. The raspberries are now ready, but unfortunately the canes have got completely out of hand, we will have to have a rethink on our fruit cage as our blackcurrants bushes are huge, they are trying to become trees but are laden with fruit.
The roses this year are wonderful and the air is sweetly perfumed with them. Our new chicks are doing well but I'm very nervous about putting them out into the ark, this is something else that we must rethink.

We are rather feeling that we are feeding all the wildlife in the country.

First was a total disaster with our young Buff Orpington and Jersey Giant chicks. Simon had carefully brought the eggs back from the UK and we hatched them in the incubator, then brooded them, all with loving care. We transferred them to their run, which they loved, we had made sure that they would not fall foul of the buzzards by covering the entire run with netting. All was going well, they were growing well and then were killed, all of them, by a Pine Marten one night. The Marten had managed to get under the netting and bled them all. We tried to trap it in a human trap, but all we caught was the neighbours cat who was most annoyed to find that tasty food left in the trap did just that, trap . Simon went out late at night to see if we had success in getting the Marten to find poor puss waiting to be let out. A few days later the Marten returned, this time taking a broody hen and the Speckled Sussex eggs we had set under her, they would have hatched just a day later.

We now have twelve chicks that we had hatched in the incubator last Sunday, and now we have to do a total re-fencing job to keep these little ones safe.

We have our yearly visit from the dreaded Colorado beetle, however, our fermented nettle juice seems to be keeping the grubs at bay. We have lost a few of our kale plants to mice, you can see their teeth marks, bless them, and a fair amount of damage has been done to plants by field crickets, who eat just about everything, roots, seeds, grass, they have even had half of the Florence Fennel, this is a plant that I would have thought would have been left alone due to it's strong flavour, it's a shame that they dont eat weeds, I would put up with some damage if they did.

We should have had a couple of kilo of Morello Cherries, but the blackbirds had them, but we have foiled them on the blackcurrants and the raspberries, having totally enclosed the fruit area with netting. the whole place is taking on the form of a prison camp, except we are fencing to keep things out, not in. Oh, the maize, well last year we lost most of it to a mini tornado, this year our geese have decided that electric fencing doesn't hurt them and they have had a field day!

Apart from that, all is growing well ,but we could do with some warmer weather.

The last two months have flown by. We should have been going to the UK for a week in April,and had spent two weeks or more making sure the garden was OK to leave for a week and to arrange all the animals so they would be easy to look after but, due to a volcano erupting our flight was canceled, our animal/ house sitter was already here, having come four days before our departure to learn about all the animals, who has what, when and so forth, so we took a few days off to show her the area. Fortunately she was willing to return to us a month later, and this time we did get away although the flight was delayed.

This was not a holiday trip, but a trip to clear out my mother in laws cottage which has to be sold to pay for her continuing care in a care home, she is now ninety eight and a grand old lady, but is no longer able to care for herself, it just seems so wrong to me that someone who has worked all their life, and in her case until she was ninety, to own their own home should have to sell their property to pay for care in their final years, whereas someone who has been housed by the state and subsidised by the state, get their care free.

When we arrived on the Monday evening we thought it would be a good idea to go to the cottage to take stock of the task ahead, it was daunting! and even I, the optimist had my doubts as to whether we could really clear out sixty four years of accumulated memorabilia and furniture, I had already contacted various charities and we managed to recycle most things, we thought we were going to have a problem with the piano and chaise lounge fortunately, the postmasters son has just started learning the piano so was thrilled to have it, and his wife loved the chaise longue so these items are still in the village where they have been for over sixty years.

A few items have been put into store, again with help from the village, for us to pick up when we can.

This was my first real trip to the UK in over twenty years, when we escaped Thatcher's Britain and I was agreeably surprised. The people were helpful and polite, everything was so clean and well kept and the food in pubs was first class, the UK does have a food culture, all local, fresh and of first class standard, to say nothing off the real ale which we enjoyed several pints of! We were also surprised at the prices for food in the pubs which worked out about the same as we would pay for a reasonable meal in Spain, but of course, no vegetables in Spain, we dont understand how they stay so healthy and live to ripe old ages if they haven't been killed on the roads.

Spring really is here, we saw the first swallows today but so far we have not heard the cuckoo, the peaches are now in bloom, just hoping we dont get any frosts now other wise we will loose the crop. The strawberries are in bloom in the tunnel so we should be eating them in the next few weeks the broad beans and leeks and cabbages are all fairing well and so far no slug damage no doubt this will change soon then back to the wonderful job of slug picking, I'm sure they must have some use in the greater scheme of things but we have yet to work out what.

The building work on the independent accommodation is coming on quite well with a new interior wall built and the lintel in place for the archway, it should be good when it's finished but I'm not putting any date on this job, when it's done it's done!Still it's quite exciting planning the new decor and once it's done we only have one more job scheduled, but this will probably change, these things normally do, no doubt we will find another project.