Some more harvest

The rain forecast for today did not arrive and it has been another warm day today. It's been a good one though so without any further ado here goes.

Sun rising

There was no alarm set today which was nice but it was still not much past 7am when sleep became a thing of the past and we got out of bed, made a brew, and went out to feed the boys. They were very good this morning, other than Rambo bounding out the gate when we came in which I don't like allowing him to do as he should wait to be allowed out of the enclosure. Other than that, as I say, they were very good. Today I didn't do the filling of their water bowl however Ralf still didn't finish all his breakfast again today so maybe it wasn't me leaving yesterday which meant he didn't eat it yesterday. The sun was fully up by the time we headed back onto the balcony and I took the morning picture.

Up the ladder, harvesting the apples

The main task set for today was to go around and harvest as many apples as possible from the trees over behind the entrance driveway. I took the ladder over and, with A footing it, climbed up and picked as many as I could possibly reach, first of all on the tree with lots of large apples, and then moving further up the land to the tree with the tiny apples which I had harvested from before.

Loads of apples

It didn't take long, maybe half an hour, and we ended up with half a bucket full of fruit. Brilliant. Sitting on top of the apples is a large fruit from a tree down by the front fence which we were unsure of but now think it is a quince. I am going to harvest these another day and make some quince jelly.

Adult tortoise which lives on my land

Underneath the second tree we found the tortoise which Rambo has been barking at during the nights. It was hiding in the undergrowth and obviously didn't like Ralf and Rambo sniffing round a lot as, as soon as they wandered off, it dug itself deeper into its hiding hole. It was probably munching on the fallen apples that are all over the place there. Rambo also took a bite from one of the apples but really wasn't very impressed.

All the fruit I chopped today

Before I was able to get going chopping and preparing the apples A had made a lovely breakfast of porridge which set the day up well. We still have no paid water so she had a go at washing up with water boiled in the kettle which is always difficult. After this I set to with my chopping board and knife, and she set to do some audio typing work, and we sat quite happily quietly working away at our jobs for an hour or so. I did about 1kg of chopped fruit before we decided that we wanted to take the boys for a walk so I stopped chopping and started cooking out the fruit I had prepared.

I was using the new cooking book (thanks Rob, and here's a link) to inspire a recipe but I kind of did my own thing as well as per usual. First of all I put just enough water in to cover the fruit and turned the heat up full to get it to boil. I mashed the fruit and stirred it regularly, then went outside and did the watering round (the Zinnias are looking ace, I will take my camera tomorrow) and I got back to the pan and stirred again pretty quickly.

And add the sugar

Once it was soft and easy to mash I added 1kg of sugar into the pan and A stirred it in. I left the heat high then turned it down once it started to roil and I kept stirring regularly to prevent the mixture from sticking or burning. The smell was lovely while this was going on.

Nice and liquid

As I don't have a food processor or anything I did not do any "whizzing" of the food and just left the chunks of apple as large as they were, though I was still breaking them up with the spoon and mashing them on the side of the pan to reduce the chunkiness.

The yield

After a while I figured it had boiled down enough and so, rather than bottle this I spooned and poured it into Tupperware boxes to put into the freezer. This paste can be used now to make apple crumble, maybe, or some other dessert. I took a cheeky spoonful to check the flavour and it tasted lovely.

Both in the water

So we packed up and got ourselves ready (including me changing into swimming trunks) and then walked down the the dogs past the farm along the little rock track and down to the river at the bottom of the hill. When we got there I let Rambo off and he went charging straight into the water. A still had Ralf on his lead (there were other dogs around) and he followed Rambo in. This was not fully expected but he had to chase Rambo didn't he?

Doggy paddling

Of course the only thing I could do then was to go straight in after them and so I did, finding the water was a really pleasant temperature; not cold but not too hot either. Ralf was swimming around loads and seemed to be having a great time. He was paddling away like a lunatic, all around my legs, and even when I went to pick him up he kept kicking away. Bless, we're so chuffed that he has taken to the water like that and I'm; looking forward to the next visit already.

Giving him a rest

As he was paddling so hard to stay still I picked him up a couple of times to give him a rest. He was so happy, grinning away and then pleased when you put him back down so he could go back to swimming again. We stayed down there for a while then went to walk back along however we got out the water a little earlier than planned as a chap had brought his two young daughters for a swim and over here they're not normally that comfortable with dogs. We made our way back up the hill, slowly and with regular pauses as it was really quite warm now, and then when we got back we had fish finger butties for lunch before A went for a lay down to rest after the walking and heat.

The Hugelkultur needed weeding again

Most of the rest of the afternoon was taken up with resting as I went and joined her and fell asleep as well. It was a very nice way to rest up but when I woke I was gasping for a brew so made both of us one. She fell back to sleep so I went out to do my planting but got distracted by weeding the Hugelkultur. It wasn't a massive job, though a few of the weeds had grown quite large in the past couple of weeks. I had been thinking about putting some strawberry seeds in but I changed my mind and am going to start them off in England over the winter and them bring the seedlings back with us next spring to plant in the Hugelkultur.

Planting beetroot. I do not like beetroot

I did, however, get out the fork and prepare one of the beds in the fenced garden (pulling out loads of little seedlings which I think could be Red Orach ironically enough, seeing as I'm going to be planting them in their own little bed tomorrow I hope, and then did three rows of seeds in a shallow trench. A joined me after playing fetch with the boys so you are treated to a picture of me doing the sowing.

Watered rows of seeds

After this point A went to turn the hose on for me (I have bought a splitter, and a long hose which reached up to the fenced garden, so watering in there is easier) and I did a little weeding around the vines before the water finally came through (no ViK water, very low bes pare water; it's tough at the moment water wise up here) so I watered the vines, then put a liberal amount onto the newly sown beetroot seeds. Fingers crossed they do well.

This tree can grow to increase the privacy

After this I set myself to planting the tree seedling. Now this came as a hanger-on with one of the silver birches saplings and I have been growing it very successfully in a pot up til now however I think today is a good day to put it into its final home as there is rain forecast, and heavy rain at that, for tomorrow. I dug out a hole then we both walked down to the manure pile and filled a bucket up. On the way we were accosted by the Little Lady and Usmivka who asked us to come for coffee. We said we would be over after we had finished this and they were very pleased. It did not take long and now the tree is in, with a couple of big rocks to shelter run off from watering so it doesn't all evaporate.

These will be honeydew melons!

I washed myself off using the solar shower which we had filled with water earlier, and the water was lovely and warm. They were calling us while I was washing up so with no more delay we headed over. I had a lovely coffee and A had water as she had already overdosed on caffeine today and we had what counts for a pretty good conversation, all things considered, as we sat there. It was really nice to be invited in again and as we were leaving we were plied with aubergine, cucumber and tomatoes. Dinner was cooked by me (so much for me not being allowed in the kitchen any more) and was a very good spaghetti carbonara with bacon, onions and mushrooms. It really filled the hole and we had fun watching some videos on YouTube while eating, and I also played a couple of tunes.

Sun going down

So I have spent the intervening time tippy tappying on this while A tried to finish the audio typing but bounced off the dreadful quality of the recordings. During the time I have been typing She popped onto the roof to get the requisite sunset shot and what a corker it was. We were going to watch a film tonight but maybe we may not in the end.

Clouds

Ralf had refused to follow A onto the roof for some reason, instead running to me at my desk so I headed up onto the roof with him and watched the sunset with A for a while, then marveled at the dramatic clouds that are building away to the north east. They will be heading our way and dumping huge volumes of water on us tomorrow.

It is still about 30 degrees in Room 13 so is by no means so warm elsewhere in the house so I think once I hit post on this we will adjourn to a cooler room. Just as I was uploading the pictures I was disturbed by the Little Lady shouting from the gate. She brought me milk, and took away the clean containers from previous deliveries and then, after searching the Green building, her hay fork.