An eventfull week

However much we have tried to skip Xmas it just never happens and we now concede that it's a good time to have friends round and enjoy a meal together, compleat with all the trimmings.
This year was mainly home produced,however, I dont think prawns are something we can grow ourselves, well I suppose we could try fresh water cray fish but that might be taking self sufficiency a tad too far, so we are happy enough that the geese and the veg were ours, the sausage rolls, mince pies, Christmas pud and cake all home made, the greenery to decorate the dining room was all from the hedge rows, decorations that did not entail the uprooting or cutting down of a tree. Keeping it simple is fun although a lot of work! somewhat a contradiction in terms.
The past week seems to have be very busy, Simon had the last three of our table birds to slaughter, they all weighed about the same 6.5 lbs, and are definately worth doing, we have only cooked one so far, and it tasted like chicken should. Then came the slaughtering of the Xmas geese, this is quite hard work, and they are one thing that neither of us feels quite right about killing, geese have real personalities. Still that's the price we are prepared to pay. So the job was done, and all that was left was the baking, until Thursday. Simon went out to pick the greenery for the decorations and came back in with a new born kid, we instantly named him Noel, photo taken and the kid returned to mum and there was the second one. So we now have two more kids, Noel and his sister Gabrielle.
Christmas day was bright in more ways than one, we had our two newly married friends over with their helper, and after the meal played silly Xmas games,and had deep conversations, putting the world to rights, although it was conceded that is no longer possible to do so. The latest Wikileaks are an eye opener.We are glad that we did 'DO' Christmas this year, for who knows what the future has in store?

Organic chicken

Today we have slaughtered the first of the four table birds that we got three months back, we have reared them for around 100 days, and the first one has weighed in at 6lb 4ozs, approximately 28000 grams, he looks good and has good breast length, under organic standards, slaughtering should not happen until at least 84 days so we were more or less on target. At least we know what he was fed on, and that he enjoyed his life. He will get stuffed with a few herbs and served with all our own veg.
Wednesday has been set aside for the slaughtering of the two geese that we reared this year, this is our Yule tide celebration meal which we will be sharing with some friends, although we shall miss having so many geese around we know that our dinner enjoyed their life's and have been fed on the best of feed, totally GM free. Hopefully they will taste as good as they look.
There have been a few hard frosts, but so far no more snow, the days are still sunny for the most part, tonight there seems to be a fog descending.
This coming Tuesday is the solstice, [the shortest day] and there is a Lunar eclipse, I'm sure this must have some significance, although we don't know what it is, no doubt someone will tell us. We are not too sure if we will be able to see it, I shall have to Google to see where it is visible from.

Yule Tide

For two decades we have tried to skip Christmas and to some degree we have been successful, we refuse to become part of the consumer frenzy which surrounds this time of year, it is above all the celebration of the shortest day, and looking to the future, the longer days, the planting of the new crops and of new life in the spring, somehow it has been hijacked by the big corporations to make loads of money. Even here in Galicia we saw the first signs of Xmas at the end of Oct. We will celebrate, but it is very home spun, we always make a cake, but this is because we like a nice rich fruit cake, we will have a special meal,but they are still running around the field at the moment,[goose] and we always have a 'Xmas Pudding' but again, this is because we both love Xmas pudding, the veg is from the garden. What day we will have our Yule Tide meal has yet to be decided.If we do decorate the house it will be done a day before our celebration from whatever greenery we can find.As we have no open fires we can't have a Yule log, but we always make a candle holder from whatever interesting log we find.
We have a puppy lodging with us for the next month,owned by friends who have gone to the warmth of Tenerife for a month, he has settled well and our cats are fine with him, however our two kittens do not like him, they have had little contact with our own dogs, but no doubt, after a month they will at least tolerate him.
The last couple of weeks have been unseasonally warm, this warmth followed early snow which was very pretty and didn't last long, today however it feels as though the weather is about to change again, although sunny there is a distinct chill in the air.

Winter has arrived

The weather has up until now been quite good, it was a very mild and dry autumn, just a few days of rain although a couple of those days it did rain quite heavly, a few light frosts, just enough to give good autumn colour.
Today we seem to have caught up with the rest of Europe and have had our first fall of snow, a couple of inches fell overnight and everything has a lovely frosting. It's nice to look out at. Our house is a warm house mainly because of the metre thick walls, double glazing, useful in the summer as well to keep the heat out, and of course lots of roof insulation, I dont think you can have enough insulation, the cost envolved is money well spent. Of course we also have our wood burning stoves, the Aga, which does both our hot water and radiators. So we are nice and snug, mainly thanks to a great helper, Rod, who spent a week or so cutting and chopping this years wood supply. Many thanks Rod.
I have still not planted either the onions or the broad beans, next week we have warmer weather forecast so hopefully I can get them done then.

Two paces of life in Spain

Most things in Spain are done slowly, well anything that involves bureaucracy at least, however, last week there was the exception to the rule .We have friends who were wanting to get married, the main delay seems to have been waiting for official translations of birth certificates and waiting for their interview to assure the authorities that theirs was not a marriage of convenience, after being together for twenty four years hardly likely. We had made the cake some weeks before hand and had done the first layer of icing but had delayed finishing it as the icing would have been too hard. Monday I received an excited phone call, 'we have the date for the wedding'. Great! weeks of waiting and it was really happening, so when is it I asked? This Friday at 1pm !Help,! I could here Mike in the background and there were definite sounds of panic, also at our end. Although I had been trained as a cook this was many years ago, and cake decoration was not something I had ever enjoyed, probably due to the fact that I don't like icing, however, there was a job to be done, and done quickly. In the end it took just two hours, and come the day, Mike and John were over the moon with it.It was a beautiful day, crisp and sunny, the food, all done by Mike and John was superb, and we were all waited on by their two exceptional helpxers. Well done to every one who made this day so special for two very special people.

Strawberries

This year seems to have gone with the blink of an eye, it's hard to realise that it's only a month until the Winter Solstice and the nights will start drawing out again, however living this far west we don't get the very long winter nights and it is still not quite dark at six thirty.
We are still picking strawberries but not too many, they are back to being a luxury, still we will probably get yet another picking before they take a well earned rest.
The weather so far is being kind,although we have had rain the last couple of days, it is still very mild and we have even seen a viburnum bursting into bloom.
With the days fast heading towards the end of the year reminds us that we have still done nothing about making a cake or pudding for Xmas, maybe we really can skip it this year, what a lovely thought.

Winter is on it's way

We had avoided all the bad storms that we had been hearing about however it has sort of caught up with us now. We had visited friends on the coast yesterday and by the evening it started raining and the wind started blowing, the drive home was a little hair raising over the mountains, as by then the rain was very heavy with a gale force wind blowing, but when we got to Lugo there was no sign of the rain. Today things changed a little with some heavy showers and hail stones and it is now feeling quite chilly, time to start lighting the fires I think.
On our trip yesterday we did get some nice photos of the wild horses, although we have seen them in the distance before we had never managed to get good photos.
We now have our Organic hen feed from an Organic coop about 60k from us, they have to import the maize from Italy, as they explained to us that all the Spanish maize is now GM contaminated. The hens love it and cost wise it is only 50cents a 40kg bag more expensive than the conventional feed.This coop also do Organic feed for cattle, pigs and rabbits, make Organic cheese and we think are probably the main producers of Organic eggs with some 30.000 organic hens between several farms, it made us quite nostalgic and brought back happy memories.It was nice to talk to Organic people again, although our Spanish is still bad.
We have collected quite a lot of wild mushrooms and have dried them, we hope that they will retain their flavour so we can use them for soup.