On the move

After seven years in Spain we are returning to Ireland, we always thought we would and had in fact planed to put our house on the market next year, however, through chance, a helper who knew people who were wanting to move to Galicia things have moved forward somewhat. Having had no plans for a move this year, our pets, nine cats and three dogs did not have their pet passports so we have had to start from scratch,they will be able to move the middle of July, in the meantime we just have to be patient waiting for the day that we can go. On the whole we have enjoyed our stay in Spain but it is an alien country, the language has always been a problem, first Catalan and now Gallego and the way of life is very different from either the UK or Ireland'
So, what will we be doing in the future? Well being selfsufficient is our way of life so nothing will change there, renovation? Never again, it is quicker and cheaper to build from scratch. We have learnt a few things living in Spain, never take water or electricity for granted, and you can never have enough insulation.
So what are we moving to? A typical Irish country cottage with two acres of land, we have learnt here that it is quite possible to grow all you need on very little land, one acre will be used for planting a woodland for coppicing, the other acre will be for the veg, fruit,poultry and rabbits.The cottage is in an area that we knew as it was on our delivery round and we have friends and an organic net work to work with close by.
In the meantime we will try to help the new owners of this house with the animals and give them guidance on growing their own food, and hope that they learn to enjoy it as we have.

Earth Stars

Spring is definitely here, the daffodils are now in bloom and the Mimosa is looking beautiful, the storks are very busy in and around their nests. This week we found our fist ever Earth Stars,on our land as well, these are a rare fungi and in fact had been though to be extinct in the UK, but then in 2006 they were discovered again. As you can see from the video, they are very interesting fungi and quite early.
Our geese are now laying very well and there are three nests of eggs, I wonder how many will hatch, providing the dogs dont start raiding the nests, which they are very prone to do.
There are big changes afoot for our selves, more news on that later in the week.

Spring is coming

There are definite signs that spring is not far away, last week we saw the first storks , we will look forward to watching them building new nests and repairing the old nests, then seeing the heads of the young appearing and then their first flights.
We had the first goose egg of the season laid today, hopefully they will lay a nice clutch and sit them, then we will have goose to eat again.
Nature is such a lovely thing to watch, we are looking forward to hearing our pool frogs calling to each other, hoping that we have the same ones as last year which we could easily identify, they got quite used to us and showed no fear, we were allowed to get close to take photos of them.
We have also seen the first primroses and our hazel is full of catkins, hopefully we will get the nuts this year instead of the squirrels.
Our willow is also bursting with it's buds and the Camellias are blooming again.
I love spring, it is my favourite season, as is summer, with all the fruit, and then of course Autumn, with the mushrooms, so maybe it is just winter that is not my favourite season. But even winter has it's compensations, lovely wood fires, and the smell of the crispness of a frost on the air.

Traceability

For quite a while the buzz word with major supermarkets has been traceability, as anyone who read our blog will know, we buy very little from this type of store and try to source locally or at least buy stuff that is produced in the country we live in. Today I wanted to buy some prawns, the only so called 'fresh ones' I could find were from Saudi Arabia, the label stated that they were a farmed product, however what was missing from the label was a farm reference number or even a lot number. I walked away and decided I would look at the frozen sea food section, there it was even worse, although there were plenty of different types of prawns on display only one section had country of origin been displayed, the others just said prawns, not even what class they were.I'm sure that things are no different in other countries, and that supermarkets only insist on traceability on the soft touches, i.e.the local farmer selling fresh food. If it comes from one of the big distributors it seems that this traceability goes out of the window. So yet another good reason not to shop in supermarkets.

Where's the winter?

We should not be complaining, but what has happened to our winter? This year has been the mildest winter since we moved to Spain, yet other parts of Europe have had lots of snow and some places have had the lowest temperatures for decades. We had a few hours of snow the beginning of December, but since then we have had hardly any frosts and no more snow. It has rained the last four days, in some places very heavily and the river Mino has burst it's banks in Lugo, but today we have had spring like weather and I have even spotted wild birds gathering grass and twigs in preparation for nest building which could spell trouble for them if the weather does change and we get a late winter.
A lot of trees are showing buds and we have even seen some ornamental prunus trees in bloom, the Mimosa trees are already showing colour, this is all a month ahead of normal.

PET HATES.Shopping Centres. We buy very little in supermarkets, only what we would call utility items, we both find these stores soul destroying, this week however we bought even less, every store in this shopping centre had pop 'music' blaring out of their speakers,very, very, loudly. Of course every shop had different 'music' and the result was an assault on the ears, things did not get better as we entered into the supermarket, there the noise, I will refrain from calling it 'music' was so loud we could not even talk to each other to confer on what we needed to buy. The result, a nearly empty shopping trolley, the cat and dog food, a plastic bag of sugar [ they still have not replenished their stock of cane sugar] and that was about it. We could not even think what we wanted, let along discuss it. Why do these stores play this rubbish at full volume, it's bad enough that they play it at all, but customers do need to think, or maybe that is the game plan, dull everyone's senses so they buy unnecessary items. With us this just does not work and we left, having spent about half of what we would have normally spent.

Bread Making.

On and off throughout our life we have been making our own bread, and for the last twenty plus years we always have made our own. When we first moved to Ireland we found the bread unacceptable, so started making our own by hand three times a week. As our organic business took off we often found we were out of bread and had no time to make it so we bought a bread maker, this was OK, it gave us quite good bread, but not as good as the hand made bread. Since moving to Spain we have reverted to hand made bread, sometimes we use the food mixer and sometimes we do the process by hand. We think the food mixer with a dough hook gives better results, although it takes about the same amount of time.
So to make bread.
1lb of strong white flour or half and half of white and brown. We always use Organic flour.
Half a pint of half milk half water, just warm.
1 egg.
18grams fresh yeast or two level teaspoons of dried yeast.
1 desert spoon of sugar.
1 level teaspoon of salt.
We always add the yeast to the warm milk/water with the sugar although it is not necessary to do so, we find this works best.
Place the flour with the salt in a large bowl or the food mixer bowl with the salt. Wait for the yeast to foam up,add this to the flour and add the egg, mix together well, if using a dough hook this takes about 10 minutes, if by hand about five minutes, with a further five minutes kneading, using the heel of the hand to work the dough, stretching and folding the dough under until it is pliable. You will know when it is ready by pushing your finger into the dough, it should spring back.
Shape the dough roughly to the shape of your tin and place in the greased floured tin, brush the top with either milk or beaten egg and sprinkle poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top, leave in a warm place to rise. When it has doubled in size, bake in a moderately hot oven about 30- 35 minutes. It is as simple as that,it should sound hollow when cooked, you can do what they call a double rise, this does not give a better loaf. You can of course add various thing into your bread, from garlic to stinging nettles, nuts to fruit.
Try it, it's fun and very rewarding.
Unlike pastry that needs the gentle touch, bread likes to be pummelled, it also likes warm hands, unlike pastry.
Last week we were forced to buy our sugar in a plastic bag, the shop had run out of the brand in the paper bags, the sugar in the plastic bags is made from sugar beet, so more plastic to get rid of, although it is a cent or two cheaper. The sugar in the paper bags is cane sugar, what we had not realised is that beet sugar is sweeter than the cane sugar. I had the second batch of Marmalade to make using the beet sugar we found is was far too sweet for our taste and had to use a couple of lemons, this of course changed the thickness of the marmalade so it is very well set, I just hope we can spread it on our bread.

Food for free

Today is a jam making day, or more correctly a marmalade making day. Monday we were at friends for the day and they have a large, heavily laden orange tree in their garden,the winter months are when the oranges are ripe, one of those trees that flower and fruit together, we came away with eight pounds of oranges, far too many for us to either eat or make into juice but we both love marmalade, I have the first three pound simmering away, marmalade is not a quick job unlike most of the jams that we make, it requires several stages. This Christmas I was given a zester, so half of the orange peal has been zested and the other half grated, hopefully by this evening we will have our first batch of marmalade made. Of course marmalade is normally made with Sevilla oranges, however I have never been able to find them in Spain, maybe they all go for export.
So far the winter has been kind to us unlike other parts of Europe, we are getting lovely sunny days, very little frost and just one day of snow, it's also been quite dry, with only a few wet days. We just hope that the snow is not storing up ready for the peach blossom, this happened a couple of years ago resulting in a failed peach crop.
The new kids are doing well and enjoying themselves frolicking around in the field with the other kid.