River Cottage

I'm sure many of you know that Paddy and I are big fans of the tv show River Cottage. At the beginning of summer we had a chance to go there. River Cottage is situated in Axminster on the Devon/Dorset boarder. Mum and the kids friends Jake & Sheena came with us.

I'm sure many of you know Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for his Chicken out campaign (which I am signed up to) Take a look for your self http://www.chickenout.tv

Anyway we had a lovely day and are going again in September. Below are a few pics from our day.

OMG Snow and a New Green House

Its seems hard to belive that not 2 weeks ago we had snow!!!!, and today I was out in the sun.

As you can see by the picture I now have another green house this I was given by my friend Mandy.

Mandy & Eric have a darling little boy called Bruno (he's the dog). Well it is all his fault that I find myself with the green house, well one day Bruno decided he would like to take a walk on the roof of the green house and went straight through it. Poor Bruno had some very serious injury's to his legs (see picture) and it took weeks of Mandy & Eric taking him to and from the vets as the cuts wouldnt heal. But the good news is he is back to his old self.

Perfect Preserves

As I have mentioned very briefly in a previous post I tryed my hand last summer at making Jam, Chutney and Pickles. I have has some small succsesses selling them in the form of hampers and individual jars.

I am in the process of building my own web site www.perfectpreserves.moonfruit.com So should you know anyone wanting Jams etc.... give me a shout.

Coco

The Moore household is now minus 1 member. Coco cabana one of our cats went missing on 4th February. We put up posters and put flyers through many letter boxes, and some very kind people called to say they thought they had seen her. I think the not knowing what has become of her is the hardest.

Our New Kitchen

As I have mentioned before, when we moved here the place needed alot done, the one room that needed alot of attention was the kitchen. Well to be honest we were some what lacking in the kitchen department due to the very tight budget of our local council!!!!!!!!!!! (lots of their other property's have had all singing all dancing kitchens, oh but not us , we actually look after our home so we won't get anything done. I think to meet the councils criterier you have to be filthy pikies who don't look after their property and live off of benifits), we had in the way of a kitchen one sink unit and one wall cupboard that fell apart when we loaded it up.

Once we knew the council couldn't give a s**t about what we were living in we raised the funds to put in our own kitchen(that we will be removing should we ever move from here).

These are pictures of how things looked before the work started.

Paddy took a week off work and he really took his time to get things right, we had to get someone in to do the work tops, but the rest was done by The Paddsters own fair hands and here is the end result.

I think you would have to agree that The Paddster has done an amazing job.

Please Don't Die (at last an update)

Happy New Year to you all. This update may be bit long winded due to the fact that I havent bothered updating since last July!!!!!. I think Patsy ansd Dave have given up checking back to see if Ive updated (they can now pick themselves up off the floor).Oh my god where do I start?

SUMMER

The veggie patch was all in all a succsess dispite the fact my second crop of potatoes and all of the tomatos were destroyed by blight!!!. This was ashame as I had great plans for the tomatoes.In early summer my thoughts turned towards christmas, as most of you will know I love to make things myself, so I thought I'd try my hand at making my own jam & chutney with what we grew in the garden and make up small hampers as presents for family and friends.

As I mentioned before an attack of blight set me back some what, but on the plus side if you can call it that, all my neighbours were also effected so I couldn't let all those green tomatos go to waste. The result was some very tasty green tomato chutney. I have since made many many jams and chutneys (well a lot more than many!!!), with produce from my local farm shop. Friends, family and neihbours have all been guiniepigs for me ( Nigel & Karen our next door neighbours being chief tasters).

Another of my neihbours Nicky also took a basket of my produce with her on her gardening rounds and sold quite a few jars to her customers as well.

The 1st September we held our Hillbillie BBQ.A night that I shall remember (or not) for quite some time due to the fact that I got very very drunk and was very ill. Everyone made a great effort do look the part. I think all the kids enjoyed playing apple bobing and harrassing Paddy as he got more intoxicated, I think he played his part too well (drinking moonshine in large amounts). I will say the Paddy and Simon gave a very good demonstration of how they thought Hillbillies should dance!!!!!. (see below)

At this point I feel it only fair to mention Nicky (she is going to kill me) like myself she got herself in to a bit of a state if I can call it that. Both of us hit the shots rather hard, this Nicky anticipated as she place a bucket in her car for the journey home. Poor nicky colapsed on the decking before leaving and then again on her front lawn after Mike her partner finally got her home, he informed me that he left her there while he unloaded the car and went in and saw to the dog before going back out for her.

Long Over Due - UPDATE
Where does the time go???
We have done soooooooooooooooo much since my last post, but so little in the garden due to the weather.
Remember that lovley picture of my cabbages - they didn't remain lovley for long. Some thing ate their way through most of them we only managed to eat 2 of them. But we have managed to eat our way through a few runners, french beans, tomatos and courgettes (we have had many of these, so many I made chutney with them, more of this later). To my horror quite a few of my sweed have split this is due to the amount of rain we have had!!!! Yesterday morning I had another shock when inspecting the vegggie patch, my tomato plants have started to turn brown!! (BLIGHT)I have discovered that we are not the only ones to be suffering the effects of the bad weather. My very very good friends Patsy & Dave have also been hit hard on the veggie front - they live in suffolk and due to the land beeing very flat and heavy clay it has been really awful for them.
Take a look at Patsy's blog, I would kill to live like them.http://2007goodlife.blogspot.com/ .

The kids briefly got the chance to enjoy the pool, Ronan spent most of the time teasing his friends about not getting in even though he wouldn't get in either!!!! Pot Kettle and Black spring to mind.

At last an update!!!!!

You can pick yourself up off the floor now!!!!!!!!!! To say this up date is long over due would be an under statement. Because I have left it sooooooooooooooooo long I will be adding several posts on the happenings in the Moore household over the last few months (well since the 17th June to be precise Patsy' Birthday).

This as you all will know was our first year attempting to grow our own veg. And despite us having a few hiccups, I think we didn't do too badly. Our first crop of spuds were a success, but the second crop were hit by blight as were all of my tomatoes. We had runner beans in abundance and the freezer is now well stocked for the winter. The onions, carrots, courgettes and parsnips have all done well as well. We lost our Swede due to all the wet weather, but we did manage to eat one before this disaster struck.