I must once again apologise for not blogging much over the last week or so. The growing season is in full swing here and my garden is starting to produce more but is in desperate need of some attention. This week has been spent haymaking, painting for a friend, making jam and pease pudding, trying some new liqueur recipes and the usual daily jobs of feeding/watering animals, a small amount of housework and watering the garden etc. We still have some hay to collect from the field and hope to get it done this weekend.
I'm off out soon to collect green walnuts, mulberries and anything else edible that I can find, plus I really need to take some new photographs of my surroundings and things that interest me. The garden can change overnight as blossoms die off, others bloom and everything continues to grow. I'm not sure what is going on with my blogger settings right now as I can't seem to upload any photo's, hopefully this will fix itself and I'll add some snapshots later on.
The kids seem to be having a good time on their holidays but I'm still missing them like mad, although the peace and quiet is quite nice and I definitely seem to be getting more work done than normal despite having extra jobs and animals to care for.
My sister in law's dogs are staying with us right now so that means we have 7 dogs here for a few weeks. I've got to say that the dogs are behaving far better than I thought and apart from howling a few times they've been no bother at all. They spend most of the day in the shade sleeping and seem to quite like their temporary kennels that were made out of the sides we cut off the camper van. I've more plans for the leftover camper van parts but will post about that another day.
The lettuce and radishes have now all finished and needed pulled before they bolted, I've left a couple of the lovely Lollo Rossa lettuce to go to seed in the hope that they'll provide me with another crop next spring. The garlic is about ready to be harvested and my experimental winter sowing showed that they did better, grew bigger and formed proper bulbs instead of large cloves as they did in the previous 2 years. I'll be planting another larger crop around October time.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Monday, 14 June 2010
Happy Birthday Son!
Today is my son's 13th birthday and I hope he's having a great time with family and friends in the UK. I'm a little sad not to be sharing the day with him but it was his choice of where to spend his birthday.
I've been out painting for some friends this morning and by 1pm was flagging in the heat, did a little weeding then walked home for a cold shower and some cool down time before a nice lunch of salad, salami, homemade pease pudding and pickled chillies mmmm. We didn't get around to picking up the hay from the field last night so will be going over there later to load it onto the pick up truck and bring it home to store in the barn for winter - best not forget the mosquito spray as they seem to be everywhere this year, probably due to the wet spring we had.
I've picked a bag of morello cherries today to make some jam so will get on with that later if I have the time. Preserving and jamming fruit was something I'd not done a lot of before moving to Bulgaria but I really do enjoy it, especially when winter comes round as out of season produce here is very expensive and a jar of plums or other fruit can make a lovely treat.
Soon we'll have loads of other fruit ripe and ready to pick so my choices for jam making and preserving will be almost limitless, I've stocked up on sugar in preparation and will try and sort out some freezer space too, we may have to start eating more pork to make more room in the freezer though and I'd like to have a BBQ or pig roast this year and invite our good friends around.
Time's ticking on here and it's almost 6pm, hopefully it will start to cool down a little now and i can get on with a few jobs. Very rarely do we sit down before 9pm in the summer although obviously the winter is different and daylight hours shorter. The horses now get a minimum of 12 hours per day grazing and are piling on the weight! I'll have to get the cart out and get them doing some work to stop them getting any fatter and hopefully I'll have a paddock to ride in built this year so I can concentrate on schooling Maya more.
Right then, back to work I go. How do you spend your days?
I've been out painting for some friends this morning and by 1pm was flagging in the heat, did a little weeding then walked home for a cold shower and some cool down time before a nice lunch of salad, salami, homemade pease pudding and pickled chillies mmmm. We didn't get around to picking up the hay from the field last night so will be going over there later to load it onto the pick up truck and bring it home to store in the barn for winter - best not forget the mosquito spray as they seem to be everywhere this year, probably due to the wet spring we had.
I've picked a bag of morello cherries today to make some jam so will get on with that later if I have the time. Preserving and jamming fruit was something I'd not done a lot of before moving to Bulgaria but I really do enjoy it, especially when winter comes round as out of season produce here is very expensive and a jar of plums or other fruit can make a lovely treat.
Soon we'll have loads of other fruit ripe and ready to pick so my choices for jam making and preserving will be almost limitless, I've stocked up on sugar in preparation and will try and sort out some freezer space too, we may have to start eating more pork to make more room in the freezer though and I'd like to have a BBQ or pig roast this year and invite our good friends around.
Time's ticking on here and it's almost 6pm, hopefully it will start to cool down a little now and i can get on with a few jobs. Very rarely do we sit down before 9pm in the summer although obviously the winter is different and daylight hours shorter. The horses now get a minimum of 12 hours per day grazing and are piling on the weight! I'll have to get the cart out and get them doing some work to stop them getting any fatter and hopefully I'll have a paddock to ride in built this year so I can concentrate on schooling Maya more.
Right then, back to work I go. How do you spend your days?
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