I greatly admire those B&B's whose dining rooms are attached to or are a part of their kitchen. Everything you do is totally open to scrutiny and you have to be not only totally on top of your game but of exemplary behaviour.
Whilst I think in general I could pass the scrutiny bit, I am sure that I would feel an immense amount of added pressure by having an audience.
However I have to admit that exemplary would not be the first word that I would use to describe my behaviour in the kitchen. For when things don't go the way I wish then I have to confess that I lose a little of my civility and perhaps the odd curse may slip through my lips. I am not proud of this but there it is. What is a man to do?
I was pondering the 'open kitchen' layout of a B&B and how it is probably for the best that my guests don't have to hear such profanities on a Sunday morning when I was reminded of an episode of "The Hotel Inspector". The hotel in question was run by a family whom seemed to disagree about everything and they could often be heard by their guests with some really random comments wafting into the dining area.
This got me thinking about things you would not want to hear being said in the kitchen as you await your breakfast. Here is a list of 20 that would fill me with unease....
1. "AAAAAAATCHOOOOOOOOOOO!"
2. "It's OK, it landed the right way up."
3. THUD. "Ha, GOT IT!" "Bugger.... where did it go?"
4. "Tiddles! Get off that worktop NOW."
5. "What do you think it is?"
"I'm not really sure but I think I can get it out."
6. "Do me a favour and have a smell of this."
7. "Scrape it off over the sink..... It'll be fine."
8. "Is that a current or a fly?"
9. "Did you wash out the bleach from their teapot before you made their tea luv?"
10. "Wow! Earwax is almost exactly the same colour as egg yolk."
11. "Darling is this the olive oil or the sample you've gotta take down the doctors?"
12. "Are those floating bits meant to be there?"
13. "I can see the words 'Use By' but the rest is just a complete mystery I'm afraid..."
14. "Quick the blood is dripping over everything".
15. "What's the 3 second rule?"
16. "Well I'm not going to tell them.... you're in charge, you do it!"
17. "Is this last weeks bacon or this weeks?"
18. "I told you... I don't know how long the fridge was switched off."
19. "Stop the cat and get that sausage back!"
20. "Remind me again did you say that it's all right to serve it if it smells funny but looks OK or if it smells OK but just looks funny... I can never remember."
Happy dining.
Monday, 15 September 2014
Tuesday, 9 September 2014
I nose what's good and I nose what's bad....
On Sunday it was August and still summer and then I woke up on Monday to find it was the 1st of September and Autumn had turned up on the doorstep without a by your leave. The dew covered the lawn with it's glistening pearls only broken by the fallen cob nuts littering the ground.
That old familiar scent of dampness hung in the air and I knew that summer was done.
It is an astounding thing the sense of smell isn't it? It is the ability to remember specific smells that I find most amazing. Autumn has that very specific damp, slightly musty smell and I feel sure that if you were blindfolded and taken in the Tardis to somewhere in Autumn that you would know instantly that it was so. My life is littered with memory points stored by their smell and I am frequently transported back to them in a nano second of picking up a scent that duplicates one of them.
For instant whenever I toast white bread (not brown or Granary, just white and it must be under the grill not in a toaster) I immediately picture the small staff refreshment room in the little Fine Fare Supermarket that I managed in the Goring road in Worthing. Despite being over 30 years ago it conjurers up a clear image of that room with the window to the right, the little inadequately sized table up against the opposite wall and the massively over sized Cheeseplant which somehow had survived to grow the full width of one wall and straddling across half of another. We had owned many Cheeseplants but they had never survived more than a few months at home. On the back wall was the kitchen work surface with a kettle, some cups often left in the sink with diluted bleach in them to get rid of the stains and a couple of loaves of bread donated by the business so staff could have some toast at morning break time. It is that specific smell from that particular grill in that room which my memory involuntarily jumps to and all of the above appears in my mind for the briefest of moments as if I were looking at a photograph of the scene, really powerful.
Another example is the ever so distinctive smell of the road works when I used to live in London back in the 70's. As a kid I walked to school and they seemed to be forever digging some bit of road up which meant digging into the London Clay and that smell is so strong in my mind that I can 'picture it' even now as I write this several hundred miles and 40 years away from it. Whenever I visit London and if I smell it, no matter where I smell it, my mind is transported back to the street in which I grew up.
If I linger a little too long down the Supermarket cake aisle I am reminded of the sweet, sweet smell of the inside of the Mr Kipling and Lyons cake delivery vans. They would pull up to our shop and I would agree the order then myself and the cake van driver would go to the van where he would open the back doors and this strong sugary sweet smell would hit me right in the face every single time.Yet another of those smells that I haven't forgotten.
Probably one of my favourites is the smell of raw bacon in the butchers where I buy my bacon up here. That scent takes me way back to another Fine Fare Supermarket in Leamington Spa. I was in charge of the Delicatessen there and I really loved it. The smell is not just that of the raw smoked bacon but of the bacon first thing in the morning as I set my counter up. The big walk in chiller was closed all night and so the bacon smell built up and when I opened the fridge door first thing in the morning SMACK my nose was treated to an assault of that smoky briny bacon. I am near salivating now at that memory smell.
It is so refined that for instance the smell of diesel soot reminds me of the No.7 Route-master bus whilst the smell of diesel itself flashes up a picture of me standing in the engine compartment of a narrow boat preparing to stuff my hand down the weed hatch.
The list is really big, now I think of it. I was in the village hall gym and as I lay on the parquet floor the smell of the wood mixed with the thin layer of dust took me right back to when I was a cub scout and our meetings in our school hall. It ranges from the new car smell which I hope many of you will associate this phenomenon with through to the sea smell of a Cornish fishing village including the smell of the Off License that I worked in and even the B.O. of a specific member of staff (a sort of stagnant baked beans smell).
They are indeed not always happy memories, hence I do not like the smell of hospitals, or alcohol on peoples breath or cannabis as they pull me back to specific memory points which I'd rather not be reminded of. But none the less you have to marvel at such a powerful sense, it is truly extraordinary.
Where was I?
Oh yes the Summer........
It had shot by this year faster than I can remember, probably because we had been so busy this year. On Friday we had the first single day in which there was no one staying in either the B&B or the Cottage since way back at the beginning of July. Whilst this is clearly good news in regards to the business it is fair to say that it has taken a toll on us both leaving us quite weary and in need of a break which we aim to take later this month.
With the coming of Autumn so follows some yearly tasks one of which is the ordering and storing away of fire wood. Unfortunately the wood store shares a space with the garden store and in the chaos of the summer the whole thing had become an utter mess. So I took an afternoon to have a complete sort out of both in preparation for the delivery of the wood.
In doing so I ended up replacing all of Percy Gandons gardening tools back in their bespoke brackets.
The guy was a perfectionist. None of these generic garden shed tool hooks from B&Q for him, oh no, no he hand crafted each bracket to fit each tool individually and so I find that despite the shears being blunt and the lawn edge clippers ceased up I simply cannot remove them, it would be wrong.
Finally the two areas now clearly defined I was ready for the wood and a few days later I spent four hours moving the wood from the street to the store. Eventually the task was done and so I did what I do.......... I took a photograph of it. A job well done I feel.
Now it is just a matter of bringing in the rest of the harvest including picking all the apples off that apple tree!
That old familiar scent of dampness hung in the air and I knew that summer was done.
It is an astounding thing the sense of smell isn't it? It is the ability to remember specific smells that I find most amazing. Autumn has that very specific damp, slightly musty smell and I feel sure that if you were blindfolded and taken in the Tardis to somewhere in Autumn that you would know instantly that it was so. My life is littered with memory points stored by their smell and I am frequently transported back to them in a nano second of picking up a scent that duplicates one of them.
For instant whenever I toast white bread (not brown or Granary, just white and it must be under the grill not in a toaster) I immediately picture the small staff refreshment room in the little Fine Fare Supermarket that I managed in the Goring road in Worthing. Despite being over 30 years ago it conjurers up a clear image of that room with the window to the right, the little inadequately sized table up against the opposite wall and the massively over sized Cheeseplant which somehow had survived to grow the full width of one wall and straddling across half of another. We had owned many Cheeseplants but they had never survived more than a few months at home. On the back wall was the kitchen work surface with a kettle, some cups often left in the sink with diluted bleach in them to get rid of the stains and a couple of loaves of bread donated by the business so staff could have some toast at morning break time. It is that specific smell from that particular grill in that room which my memory involuntarily jumps to and all of the above appears in my mind for the briefest of moments as if I were looking at a photograph of the scene, really powerful.
Another example is the ever so distinctive smell of the road works when I used to live in London back in the 70's. As a kid I walked to school and they seemed to be forever digging some bit of road up which meant digging into the London Clay and that smell is so strong in my mind that I can 'picture it' even now as I write this several hundred miles and 40 years away from it. Whenever I visit London and if I smell it, no matter where I smell it, my mind is transported back to the street in which I grew up.
If I linger a little too long down the Supermarket cake aisle I am reminded of the sweet, sweet smell of the inside of the Mr Kipling and Lyons cake delivery vans. They would pull up to our shop and I would agree the order then myself and the cake van driver would go to the van where he would open the back doors and this strong sugary sweet smell would hit me right in the face every single time.Yet another of those smells that I haven't forgotten.
Probably one of my favourites is the smell of raw bacon in the butchers where I buy my bacon up here. That scent takes me way back to another Fine Fare Supermarket in Leamington Spa. I was in charge of the Delicatessen there and I really loved it. The smell is not just that of the raw smoked bacon but of the bacon first thing in the morning as I set my counter up. The big walk in chiller was closed all night and so the bacon smell built up and when I opened the fridge door first thing in the morning SMACK my nose was treated to an assault of that smoky briny bacon. I am near salivating now at that memory smell.
It is so refined that for instance the smell of diesel soot reminds me of the No.7 Route-master bus whilst the smell of diesel itself flashes up a picture of me standing in the engine compartment of a narrow boat preparing to stuff my hand down the weed hatch.
The list is really big, now I think of it. I was in the village hall gym and as I lay on the parquet floor the smell of the wood mixed with the thin layer of dust took me right back to when I was a cub scout and our meetings in our school hall. It ranges from the new car smell which I hope many of you will associate this phenomenon with through to the sea smell of a Cornish fishing village including the smell of the Off License that I worked in and even the B.O. of a specific member of staff (a sort of stagnant baked beans smell).
They are indeed not always happy memories, hence I do not like the smell of hospitals, or alcohol on peoples breath or cannabis as they pull me back to specific memory points which I'd rather not be reminded of. But none the less you have to marvel at such a powerful sense, it is truly extraordinary.
Where was I?
Oh yes the Summer........
It had shot by this year faster than I can remember, probably because we had been so busy this year. On Friday we had the first single day in which there was no one staying in either the B&B or the Cottage since way back at the beginning of July. Whilst this is clearly good news in regards to the business it is fair to say that it has taken a toll on us both leaving us quite weary and in need of a break which we aim to take later this month.
With the coming of Autumn so follows some yearly tasks one of which is the ordering and storing away of fire wood. Unfortunately the wood store shares a space with the garden store and in the chaos of the summer the whole thing had become an utter mess. So I took an afternoon to have a complete sort out of both in preparation for the delivery of the wood.
In doing so I ended up replacing all of Percy Gandons gardening tools back in their bespoke brackets.The guy was a perfectionist. None of these generic garden shed tool hooks from B&Q for him, oh no, no he hand crafted each bracket to fit each tool individually and so I find that despite the shears being blunt and the lawn edge clippers ceased up I simply cannot remove them, it would be wrong.
Finally the two areas now clearly defined I was ready for the wood and a few days later I spent four hours moving the wood from the street to the store. Eventually the task was done and so I did what I do.......... I took a photograph of it. A job well done I feel.
Now it is just a matter of bringing in the rest of the harvest including picking all the apples off that apple tree!
Friday, 8 August 2014
If you are planning for a year, sow rice if you are planning for a decade, plant trees if you are planning for a lifetime, plant bloody Broad Beans! Chinese proverb.
I was asked the other day if I regretted taking on the allotment. I guess the inference being that it was just too big a task with everything else that we are striving to achieve here. I was surprised at the speed and vigor of the involuntary answer that I immediately fired back at him. "No, not at all, absolutely not."
Half of my leeks are hidden in a frenzy of weeds, I've all but given up eating potatoes and yet have several hundred pounds of them sitting in the ground. I have experimented with unusual squashes and now have to look up 'interesting things you can do with a squash', most legal and some slightly dubious. My Pumpkin patch is simply becoming enormous and quite scary actually and God only knows what my Sweetcorn is doing. But yes, on the whole it is actually great fun and my only regret at all is that it does play second fiddle to the business and suffers as a result which frustrates me at times.
I have some great allotment neighbours and we have some nice chats and that and it is really special to be working, sometimes topless, on a warm sunny big blue Norfolk sky day in the silence of my own thoughts with just a Black bird singing or perhaps the call of the Oyster Catchers as a pair fly low over the allotments landing in the field beyond.
Lovely.
But my time constraints do sometimes cause issues and the Broad Bean saga is one such example. I have long hated Broad Beans until I grew a few and found out how delicious the young tender beans are. Actually I found that I liked them so much that I was eating them raw straight from the pod on the allotment.
So it came to pass that I decided to plant quite a few seeds this year and who knew, they all came up and soon I was planting dozens of small Broad Bean plants. So far so good. Having successfully stopped the birds from pecking at the seedlings with some strategically placed netting I waited for them to grow. Which they duly did, unrelenting and with some spirit I felt. Soon I was forced to remove the netting and it wasn't long before the birds clearly thought that the Broad Beans looked far too menacing a proposition and left them well alone.
Time passed, the business got bookings then more bookings and then more and I started to pick the odd pod for dinner but the race was running at too fast a pace for me. The plan to catch 'em young and freeze 'em hard passed us by as more and more B&B bookings flooded in and it was not long before my visits were barely once a week.
Then one day I squeezed a little time to go and water the Toms that I had planted in the poor excuse for a greenhouse up t' allotment and I saw that the Broad Beans were no longer my friendly buttersweet little succulent beans, but were now fully blown giant pods of a bean. These needed picking and fast. I started picking with great gusto and enthusiasm. After 20 minutes that waned a little, a further 20 minutes and some nasty insect bites later I'm getting a bit bored of this. After an hour or so I really could have just given up.
Eventually I had picked all that there was to pick, the harvest was ready to bring home and I filled two large market garden trays with them. These I loaded onto my mini Eddie Stobart truck which is called 'Claire Rebecca' and I hauled the cargo back to Alison.
I found out two things when I got home;-
Firstly that I had harvested 40lb of Broad Beans (in their pods).
And secondly that Alison's "You've got to be kidding" face is not that dissimilar to her "What the *?@*" face that she pulls when I bring home from the auction one of my more interesting finds such as a Lobster pot or indeed 5 chimney pots.
A little later I also found out that 40lbs of podded Broad Beans equates to about 20lbs of loose Broad Beans and that my wife apparently has "the patience of a saint."
It was as we were podding the beans we realised that these were just over the edge as far as using them on an actual dinner plate and that in attempting to eat them we would look a little like those tobacco chewing baseball players, chewing on the same bit for some 10 minutes before eventually having to give it up and spitting it out of the mouth in disgust.
Well I for one was not interested in composting all this hard work and so a plan was hatched.... We would make Broad Bean soup I announced. Alison did not seem to be filled with the same verve as me with this suggestion and enquired if indeed there really was such a thing as Broad Bean soup?
"Yes, of course there is," I lied....
"What's in it?"
"Broad Beans" I replied smugly. She wasn't impressed and so I added...
"And Bacon!" Where this came from I know not but it sounded doable to me.
"And Cheese." I pushed my luck a little too far at this point and 'A' went off to google it.
Well I was soon vindicated and soup it was to be then. Only one problem you had to par boil the beans first then move the tough outer skin on each and every bean a count that we estimated to be getting on for a thousand beans and it could only be done one by one... by hand.
It is fair to say she wasn't happy.
We set our selves up at the patio table with a bowl full of beans to be 'shelled', another bowl for the discarded grey skins and a third bowl for the fresh young beans within. It was slow at first as we picked a bean, cut it carefully then picked at it until we extracted the bean from the skin. It was laborious and took forever. After several minutes I 'experimented' with different techniques and it wasn't long before I had discovered that a quick slice down the spine and a pinching movement between the thumb and forefinger would cause the bean to fire out like a tiny bullet. Right, we were away now and having shown Alison we were spitting the little fellas willy nilly. There was some collateral damage as every now and then a bean would scoot off into the distance or would bounce off my nose. K-poww and one would ricochet into Alison's arm. Alison even managed to fire one straight up into the air having it about turn and dive straight back down again right into her cleavage. I insisted that it was not to be put back into the 'soup' bowl, naturally.
Another hour of our lives lost for good then. Well a good few hours later 'A' has made 26 pots of soup paste (It looked uncannily like green polyfilla) and stashed it in the freezer. That's lunch for me for nearly a month! Having enquired it would appear that no one else in the house will be partaking of this culinary delight so it looks like I'm going to be the sole consumer.
I have to admit that I was hoping to share the burden, no erm the... task of getting through this putty but apparently it is all down to me.... did I mention that broad beans give me wind?
So here we are a week or so later and I'm fighting, or working, my way through them. Broad Bean soup every lunch time, mmmmm, D E L I C I O U S! That's after I've added a ton of black pepper, watered the paste down with half a pint of milk and added some cream and a good dose of grated cheese, any cheese will do just make sure it is a strong one as it has quite a battle on it's hands!
Next week Onion & yellow Zucchini soup (300 onions to use up) and if you thought Broad beans left me windy you don't want to be around after my onion soup supper!!
Half of my leeks are hidden in a frenzy of weeds, I've all but given up eating potatoes and yet have several hundred pounds of them sitting in the ground. I have experimented with unusual squashes and now have to look up 'interesting things you can do with a squash', most legal and some slightly dubious. My Pumpkin patch is simply becoming enormous and quite scary actually and God only knows what my Sweetcorn is doing. But yes, on the whole it is actually great fun and my only regret at all is that it does play second fiddle to the business and suffers as a result which frustrates me at times.
I have some great allotment neighbours and we have some nice chats and that and it is really special to be working, sometimes topless, on a warm sunny big blue Norfolk sky day in the silence of my own thoughts with just a Black bird singing or perhaps the call of the Oyster Catchers as a pair fly low over the allotments landing in the field beyond.
Lovely.
But my time constraints do sometimes cause issues and the Broad Bean saga is one such example. I have long hated Broad Beans until I grew a few and found out how delicious the young tender beans are. Actually I found that I liked them so much that I was eating them raw straight from the pod on the allotment.
So it came to pass that I decided to plant quite a few seeds this year and who knew, they all came up and soon I was planting dozens of small Broad Bean plants. So far so good. Having successfully stopped the birds from pecking at the seedlings with some strategically placed netting I waited for them to grow. Which they duly did, unrelenting and with some spirit I felt. Soon I was forced to remove the netting and it wasn't long before the birds clearly thought that the Broad Beans looked far too menacing a proposition and left them well alone.
Time passed, the business got bookings then more bookings and then more and I started to pick the odd pod for dinner but the race was running at too fast a pace for me. The plan to catch 'em young and freeze 'em hard passed us by as more and more B&B bookings flooded in and it was not long before my visits were barely once a week.
Then one day I squeezed a little time to go and water the Toms that I had planted in the poor excuse for a greenhouse up t' allotment and I saw that the Broad Beans were no longer my friendly buttersweet little succulent beans, but were now fully blown giant pods of a bean. These needed picking and fast. I started picking with great gusto and enthusiasm. After 20 minutes that waned a little, a further 20 minutes and some nasty insect bites later I'm getting a bit bored of this. After an hour or so I really could have just given up.
Eventually I had picked all that there was to pick, the harvest was ready to bring home and I filled two large market garden trays with them. These I loaded onto my mini Eddie Stobart truck which is called 'Claire Rebecca' and I hauled the cargo back to Alison.
I found out two things when I got home;-
Firstly that I had harvested 40lb of Broad Beans (in their pods).
And secondly that Alison's "You've got to be kidding" face is not that dissimilar to her "What the *?@*" face that she pulls when I bring home from the auction one of my more interesting finds such as a Lobster pot or indeed 5 chimney pots.
A little later I also found out that 40lbs of podded Broad Beans equates to about 20lbs of loose Broad Beans and that my wife apparently has "the patience of a saint."
It was as we were podding the beans we realised that these were just over the edge as far as using them on an actual dinner plate and that in attempting to eat them we would look a little like those tobacco chewing baseball players, chewing on the same bit for some 10 minutes before eventually having to give it up and spitting it out of the mouth in disgust.
Well I for one was not interested in composting all this hard work and so a plan was hatched.... We would make Broad Bean soup I announced. Alison did not seem to be filled with the same verve as me with this suggestion and enquired if indeed there really was such a thing as Broad Bean soup?
"Yes, of course there is," I lied....
"What's in it?"
"Broad Beans" I replied smugly. She wasn't impressed and so I added...
"And Bacon!" Where this came from I know not but it sounded doable to me.
"And Cheese." I pushed my luck a little too far at this point and 'A' went off to google it.
Well I was soon vindicated and soup it was to be then. Only one problem you had to par boil the beans first then move the tough outer skin on each and every bean a count that we estimated to be getting on for a thousand beans and it could only be done one by one... by hand.
It is fair to say she wasn't happy.
We set our selves up at the patio table with a bowl full of beans to be 'shelled', another bowl for the discarded grey skins and a third bowl for the fresh young beans within. It was slow at first as we picked a bean, cut it carefully then picked at it until we extracted the bean from the skin. It was laborious and took forever. After several minutes I 'experimented' with different techniques and it wasn't long before I had discovered that a quick slice down the spine and a pinching movement between the thumb and forefinger would cause the bean to fire out like a tiny bullet. Right, we were away now and having shown Alison we were spitting the little fellas willy nilly. There was some collateral damage as every now and then a bean would scoot off into the distance or would bounce off my nose. K-poww and one would ricochet into Alison's arm. Alison even managed to fire one straight up into the air having it about turn and dive straight back down again right into her cleavage. I insisted that it was not to be put back into the 'soup' bowl, naturally.
Another hour of our lives lost for good then. Well a good few hours later 'A' has made 26 pots of soup paste (It looked uncannily like green polyfilla) and stashed it in the freezer. That's lunch for me for nearly a month! Having enquired it would appear that no one else in the house will be partaking of this culinary delight so it looks like I'm going to be the sole consumer.
I have to admit that I was hoping to share the burden, no erm the... task of getting through this putty but apparently it is all down to me.... did I mention that broad beans give me wind?
So here we are a week or so later and I'm fighting, or working, my way through them. Broad Bean soup every lunch time, mmmmm, D E L I C I O U S! That's after I've added a ton of black pepper, watered the paste down with half a pint of milk and added some cream and a good dose of grated cheese, any cheese will do just make sure it is a strong one as it has quite a battle on it's hands!
Next week Onion & yellow Zucchini soup (300 onions to use up) and if you thought Broad beans left me windy you don't want to be around after my onion soup supper!!
Saturday, 2 August 2014
Thursday, 3 July 2014
Lets spare a thought for the Pump Out man.
Lets spare a thought for the Pump Out man,
a thankless task emptying out another man's 'can'.
He'll put on rubber gloves and the wellies too,
just to remove the things that you and yours do.
Along the lane he trundles in his tanker so small,
emptying every body's septic tanks or their cesspool.
It's a lonely job and not the place to be..
especially in a heat wave at 36 degrees C!
They toil all day rolling out their pipes and kit...
It has very little kudos pumping out another person's...
pit.
You'd have to enjoy it or it'd be a bummer of a rap...
Peering deep into the tank to look at your fellow man's....
trap.
It's hard to impress the girls when going out on a date,
if you tell her "I'll pick you up at 7 in my tanker mate!"
Ostracised by one and all, they even reject your money at the bank,
You know it's bad when the Fishmonger says "Cor blimey he stank!"
So spare a thought for the Pump Out man,
for removing tons of feculence is not grand.
But it is a noble job which someone has to do
and thanks be to God that it's him and not you!
M.Thomas
Our pump out guy came last week, he is often seen passing by in his bright blue tractor with matching tank being towed behind. More often than not his wife is riding 'shot gun' in the cab with him, true love runs deep (about 6' deep actually). I am truly staggered at just how much 'stuff' is processed by our tiny septic tank. It is a very old structure, could easily be 100 years old. Brick built it is just 6' deep and at best 3' square with all our waste entering through one pipe at the top where the solids drop to the bottom. On the opposite side there is one pipe exiting the pit. It's job is to take the liquids away to an area to soak into the ground (in a neighbours garden!).Well in that year I have had hundreds of nights with B&B guests all busy flushing, showering, washing etc. I and ours all doing the same, the holiday cottage occupants too. On any one change over day my washing machine is normally running for at least 8 hours constantly. Absolutely hundreds of washes go through in the year. On top of that all of the rain water running of the back roof of the main house and the whole of the east wing also runs into the tank. So I think it is quite astonishing that this tiny tank can process that volume. My pump out man was very impressed and said that I "Had a lovely crust formed on the top of my solids". I'm so proud.
Summer is here and things are growing fast and furious. We picked several pounds of Blackcurrents the other day and have made some lovely jam from it which the guests are already eating up.The Raspberries are good and the Loganberries prolific so more jam urgently needs to be made there.
We spent several hours picking Gooseberries down the allotment too, it seemed to take for ever. Tub after tub of the things. We spent the evenings watching TV whilst we topped and tailed them. We have still not finished the job and so ave not weighed them all yet but we reckon there's between 24 to 28lbs of them.
Picking, freezing, picking, preserving, picking, jam making, picking, eating, picking......
Did I ever mention that I left work to get away from the drudgery of it all?
The Redcurrents look like they're next and all the time the Rhubarb keeps cropping so we pick it and freeze it for crumbles for our guests in November / December.
I have a small field of New potatoes which I need to start digging and I have about a hundred Onions which look like they are just about ready to harvest.
The Brassicas are in eventually and as you can see my little trolley was very useful in getting them down to the allotment.I think of my little trolley much like Lieutenant Hubert Gruber from "'Allo'Allo" thought of his little tank with much affection and pride, but not in such a gay way.
I really don't like fully grown Broad Beans but these are delicious and I can't eat enough of them.
Now cast your mind back to September 2012 and this was the allotment plot which I had inherited...
And from the same view point you can now see a bed of 300 onions ready to be pulled....
I have to admit that I'm pretty chuffed with myself now I look back at the progress made. Despite the full on business, the renovations to The Old Bakery and even squeezing in a few holidays my 'patch' has actually done quite well.
So here are a few photos to show what I have replaced the weed infested plot with....
A small field of both 'New' Potatoes (Kestrel and Casablanca) and main crop (Desiree and King Edwards), all staggered to give me different cropping times, hopefully taking me right through to January as they did last year. This is handy as I use these in all the guests meals right up to Christmas.
 |
| Kestrel New Pots, Mmmmmm! |
I had some nice carrots & Parsnips last year, but not many because the weeds over took them both. This year I worked really hard to minimise the weeds and so far it is looking promising.
I'm hoping that this Sweet Corn is productive too, I have doubled the plants this year because I so enjoyed the taste of last years crop. It has been bone dry with hardly any rain and I have been using plenty of my stored water to get all of the young plants going.
A large patch of assorted squashes, Black Beauty Courgettes, Patty Pans, De Nice a fruit rond and Yellow Scallop are in there somewhere. I have also planted A LOT of Pumpkins which I may sell on my garden wall again like last year (depending on the success of the crop of course). Oh and I'll make my favourite Pumpkin soup too.
A great crop of Blackcurrants, many of which are really large the biggest being as wide as my thumb nail.....
 |
| Mmm, perhaps I need a manicure. |
And Next up are the Redcurrants which are also prolific and pretty large too.
We have had pounds of Strawberries and at least 10lb of Loganberries from the garden along with something similar in weight in Raspberries from both the garden and the allotment. There are about 30 Runner Beans growing plus Berlotti Beans, a whole row of Autumn Raspberries, yet to crop and a good hundred Leeks in their early stages. I have even planted some Sweet Potatoes but I'm not too convinced that we'll see much happen there.
So all in all looking quite promising, just need that Summer rain now.
An update on the fedge... Well as the photo above shows all my canes seem to have taken and with the Mock Orange pouring over the arch the room has really come together now. We even had a little girl go in their (from the cottage) so mum would read her bedtime story in there.
It is Poppy season again and there are a few fields out there just blushing with poppies. They look spectacular and I just can't resist taking more photos of them.
Friday, 27 June 2014
Being effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar. Alexis Ohanian
You know that when the holiday postcard from your dear family member/ friend doesn't come through the letter box but into your inbox or onto your phone that the ways that we are communicating are changing. When even 'creaky old back-packing travelers' start to embrace different forms of social media then the times they really are a-changing (to paraphrase Bob).
And so it must be with our businesses: The Old Bakery enterprises which include The Bakehouse holiday cottage; the preserves division and the photography retail section; Gladstone Coaching - training, coaching and mentoring and linking in with The Old Bakery enterprises - Starting a B&B course and coaching retreats; and now Norfolk Patch - patchwork lessons, workshops and talks across Norfolk and quilt retreats in The Old Bakery.
Having just reduced my time with the NHS to 4 long days a week, I now have Fridays to devote to the administration and marketing of our various enterprises. I've drawn up a spreadsheet to make sure that we are organised about how we will start to use social media appropriately and regularly to increase our presence in the wider world.
We'll wait and see what impact these have but this is where you'll currently find us.
Facebook: You can find The Old Bakery and Norfolk Patch on Facebook. We mainly post photos of the B&B, the garden and the local wildlife and pictures of my quilts on Norfolk Patch.
Twitter: We tweet at @gladstonecoaching and @norfolkpatch. Finding something to tweet about once a week is a big challenge but I'm reliably informed that we should be tweeting 4 or 5 times a day to make it worthwhile. Who knows if we'll even manage one a day and whether it will make a difference. We'll report back!
Pintrest: In case you've not come across Pintrest it is just up my street. A chance to create online photo boards that you can share with others and pin new photos that you come across onto the boards that you create. I have one in my name which is also known as Norfolk Patch - along with quilt boards, coaching quotes and various recipe boards I also have one for all things cauliflower (the wonder veg we are eating in place of rice, potatoes and anything else that is laden with calories - cauliflower wine anyone?)
LinkedIn: The professional job and networking site (the business equivalent to Facebook where you can post you CV). You'll find me here too - not that anyone has offered me a job yet!
Blogs: This blog is not one we share with our guests; although we are careful to make sure we don't talk about our guests on here in case they come across it inadvertently. I've started a blog to promote Norfolk Patch; you can read about it here: http://norfolkpatch.wordpress.com/
The next task will be to start again with my Gladstone Coaching blog - I did a few when I first left HSBC but this needs to be done regularly to be of any worth. Stuff on management, leadership, coaching etc - well I'll enjoy it and there are a few out there like me that may read it. More importantly it will enable me to provide helpful information and show what I know and that may drive business.
Wherever all this tweeting, pining and blogging takes us we need to be mindful that ...
And so it must be with our businesses: The Old Bakery enterprises which include The Bakehouse holiday cottage; the preserves division and the photography retail section; Gladstone Coaching - training, coaching and mentoring and linking in with The Old Bakery enterprises - Starting a B&B course and coaching retreats; and now Norfolk Patch - patchwork lessons, workshops and talks across Norfolk and quilt retreats in The Old Bakery.
Having just reduced my time with the NHS to 4 long days a week, I now have Fridays to devote to the administration and marketing of our various enterprises. I've drawn up a spreadsheet to make sure that we are organised about how we will start to use social media appropriately and regularly to increase our presence in the wider world.
We'll wait and see what impact these have but this is where you'll currently find us.
Facebook: You can find The Old Bakery and Norfolk Patch on Facebook. We mainly post photos of the B&B, the garden and the local wildlife and pictures of my quilts on Norfolk Patch.
Twitter: We tweet at @gladstonecoaching and @norfolkpatch. Finding something to tweet about once a week is a big challenge but I'm reliably informed that we should be tweeting 4 or 5 times a day to make it worthwhile. Who knows if we'll even manage one a day and whether it will make a difference. We'll report back!
Pintrest: In case you've not come across Pintrest it is just up my street. A chance to create online photo boards that you can share with others and pin new photos that you come across onto the boards that you create. I have one in my name which is also known as Norfolk Patch - along with quilt boards, coaching quotes and various recipe boards I also have one for all things cauliflower (the wonder veg we are eating in place of rice, potatoes and anything else that is laden with calories - cauliflower wine anyone?)
LinkedIn: The professional job and networking site (the business equivalent to Facebook where you can post you CV). You'll find me here too - not that anyone has offered me a job yet!
Blogs: This blog is not one we share with our guests; although we are careful to make sure we don't talk about our guests on here in case they come across it inadvertently. I've started a blog to promote Norfolk Patch; you can read about it here: http://norfolkpatch.wordpress.com/
The next task will be to start again with my Gladstone Coaching blog - I did a few when I first left HSBC but this needs to be done regularly to be of any worth. Stuff on management, leadership, coaching etc - well I'll enjoy it and there are a few out there like me that may read it. More importantly it will enable me to provide helpful information and show what I know and that may drive business.
Wherever all this tweeting, pining and blogging takes us we need to be mindful that ...
"Good social media is authentic. What makes social media work is actually having something to say."
(Steven Levitt)
Wednesday, 18 June 2014
The return of the Creaky Old Backpackers.
Where have we been you may ask. Well the short answer is Scotland, busy with guests, down the allotment, Jam making, cottage maintenance and gardening.
Firstly we took a ten day jaunt up to the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. With just a rucksack each we flew to Edinburgh then wandered through Scotland by train ferries and buses. We got full on sunshine and at times drenched by rain but we had a really great time and plan to do something similar next year in Europe. Having traveled around on so many holidays by car it was, for us, a really interesting exercise in packing the bare minimum especially knowing that we could expect a huge mix of weather. We did seriously discuss the possibility of posting our dirty underwear home but as the temperature back home was in the high twentys we thought that they might hum a little by the time we got back. We also considered what if they went missing but decided we wouldn't report it, just too embarrassing, so there would be the same stinky package sitting in some poor guys office for the next 3 years.
Anyway just to make all our friends absolutely sick of us and our bloody blogs we created a new one purely as an extended 'postcard' of our trip. So if you wished you may view it here... "The Creaky Old Backpackers".
FYI the card actually starts at the very bottom of the page that you are signed into and then progresses up the page.
At the end of the holiday I was concerned that Alison seemed to have gone native in the ways of the Scots...
award for 2014.
This always plays second fiddle to the B&B and Cottage work and so I often get behind with it making it all the harder to play catch up when I do get some time down there. That said we have been serving The Old Bakery Strawberries in our fruit salad for several weeks now and we have served our beautifully tender Broad beans to our guests that had an evening meal here Oh and served them our classic Rhubarb & Orange crumble made with freshly picked rhubarb. The New Potatoes have also started to be harvested.
Last year we lost all of our Gooseberries to the pigeons, currents to the sparrows and Blackbirds and the Cabbage Whites even managed to squeeze through our netting and decimate the brassicas. So this year Alison joined me to erect several fruit and veg cages.
Rather than messing around with makeshift 'cane' or 'pipe' tunnels I decided to invest in some metal cages which have a long life.
As I write this I am pretty much on top of the weeding, but a little bit of sunshine and rain and I'll have my work cut out for me. We have had practically no rain for several weeks and I am relying on the 2,000 litres of stored rain water that I had collected over the winter months. The long days have afforded me the opportunity to be hoeing as late as 9:30pm which is why I am not too far behind.
The allotment is just too far to pop down to and back quickly unless I cycle so it has been a chore to move plants and stuff down there up until now. Sad as I am I asked for a small trolley for my birthday (thanks mum, dad, and mum & dad in-law) and so now I can move bulk quantities of things in my truck, all I need now is a Yorkie chocolate bar.
JAM MAKING and PRESERVING.
Well the season is still in it's early days but we have made about 30 jars of Strawberry jam which is selling fast. we have also frozen over 7lbs of Rhubarb securing the raw ingredient for our most popular winter dessert, the aforementioned Rhubarb & Orange crumble. The Gooseberries look almost ready to harvest and so that will be our next job.
Being well over 200 years old naturally the fabric of this building requires a lot of TLC and so it is a constant battle to keep the old girl in a fit condition. There is rising damp, a little woodworm and some movement but nothing too severe yet but that's enough about Alison! The tiles in the Self catering cottage's shower are slowly easing themselves off the wall and whilst I have made a temporary fix to get us through the season I can see that this will be a winters task (unless they fall off any sooner!).
However the general condition of our cottage is still excellent and we have just been graded by the Visit England tourist agency and once again achieved a 4 STAR rating.
Many comments about my 'Fedge' and 'Stumpery' most impressed, a lot want to create one in their garden and a handful just think I'm nuts. "Why an earth do you put the stumps upside down?" "But what does it mean?" Or simply an incredulous "Why?" That's all fine because we have already had one small child stay who loved having stories read to her whilst she sat on the bench in the stumpery. We add a little 'magic' to the area by hanging some Ikea lanterns from the walls and the arch. The lanterns have been pimped by my sister in law, Helen who gave me lots of stained glass replacement windows for the lanterns and they really make the area magical.
Once again we have had lots of birds nesting in the garden with fledgling Blackbirds, Goldfinches and Blue Tits. The Blackbirds and Tits both had two broods and sadly I have had to lock our cat in on several occasions because the fledglings were out and vulnerable. One of the Goldfinch fledglings even entertained my guests at breakfast by clinging onto the wooden french windows for about 5 minutes, very odd.
The blackbird had 2 chicks in the first brood and 5 in the second! It was comical seeing them all squeezed into the nest. It looked like a group of old ladies crammed in on the top deck of a bus on a shopping trip. The Mother Blackbird has been a real nuisance continually making it's warning call, really irritating. My Dutch guests got so sick of it that they tried to download a Hawks call to see if it could be scared off, but sadly to no avail.
The breeding season is a good time of year for spotting some of our more hidden birds as they have to get out and feed their young. For the last few weeks Alison has seen a Barn Owl just down the road as she drives to work and so she suggested I take my camera down there.
I only really had one opportunity this week because I had breakfasts on most days to cook, so I jumped on my bike at 7:45am and cycled down the road to the farm.
I stopped a fair distance away and eventually I saw a Barn Owl enter a barn then I cycled down and waited. When it appeared I followed it and then found a good spot to wait for it's return trip.
The subsequent photos are my best ever of a Barn Owl and so I feel compelled to show them right here....
Why Dorothy shouldn't let the 'Tin Man' use a Scot Rail toilet.
SCOTLAND
Firstly we took a ten day jaunt up to the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. With just a rucksack each we flew to Edinburgh then wandered through Scotland by train ferries and buses. We got full on sunshine and at times drenched by rain but we had a really great time and plan to do something similar next year in Europe. Having traveled around on so many holidays by car it was, for us, a really interesting exercise in packing the bare minimum especially knowing that we could expect a huge mix of weather. We did seriously discuss the possibility of posting our dirty underwear home but as the temperature back home was in the high twentys we thought that they might hum a little by the time we got back. We also considered what if they went missing but decided we wouldn't report it, just too embarrassing, so there would be the same stinky package sitting in some poor guys office for the next 3 years.
Anyway just to make all our friends absolutely sick of us and our bloody blogs we created a new one purely as an extended 'postcard' of our trip. So if you wished you may view it here... "The Creaky Old Backpackers".FYI the card actually starts at the very bottom of the page that you are signed into and then progresses up the page.
At the end of the holiday I was concerned that Alison seemed to have gone native in the ways of the Scots...
BUSINESS
We have been very, very busy and so far this year between the bookings that have already stayed and those that have booked to do so we have already matched the Total amount of bookings achieved last year and it is only early June!Our Tripadvisor reviews have reached 45 all of which are excellent. Consequently we are proud to have received a Certificate of Excellence award for 2014.
THE ALLOTMENT
This always plays second fiddle to the B&B and Cottage work and so I often get behind with it making it all the harder to play catch up when I do get some time down there. That said we have been serving The Old Bakery Strawberries in our fruit salad for several weeks now and we have served our beautifully tender Broad beans to our guests that had an evening meal here Oh and served them our classic Rhubarb & Orange crumble made with freshly picked rhubarb. The New Potatoes have also started to be harvested.
Last year we lost all of our Gooseberries to the pigeons, currents to the sparrows and Blackbirds and the Cabbage Whites even managed to squeeze through our netting and decimate the brassicas. So this year Alison joined me to erect several fruit and veg cages.As I write this I am pretty much on top of the weeding, but a little bit of sunshine and rain and I'll have my work cut out for me. We have had practically no rain for several weeks and I am relying on the 2,000 litres of stored rain water that I had collected over the winter months. The long days have afforded me the opportunity to be hoeing as late as 9:30pm which is why I am not too far behind.
The allotment is just too far to pop down to and back quickly unless I cycle so it has been a chore to move plants and stuff down there up until now. Sad as I am I asked for a small trolley for my birthday (thanks mum, dad, and mum & dad in-law) and so now I can move bulk quantities of things in my truck, all I need now is a Yorkie chocolate bar.
JAM MAKING and PRESERVING.
Well the season is still in it's early days but we have made about 30 jars of Strawberry jam which is selling fast. we have also frozen over 7lbs of Rhubarb securing the raw ingredient for our most popular winter dessert, the aforementioned Rhubarb & Orange crumble. The Gooseberries look almost ready to harvest and so that will be our next job.
THE COTTAGE
Being well over 200 years old naturally the fabric of this building requires a lot of TLC and so it is a constant battle to keep the old girl in a fit condition. There is rising damp, a little woodworm and some movement but nothing too severe yet but that's enough about Alison! The tiles in the Self catering cottage's shower are slowly easing themselves off the wall and whilst I have made a temporary fix to get us through the season I can see that this will be a winters task (unless they fall off any sooner!).However the general condition of our cottage is still excellent and we have just been graded by the Visit England tourist agency and once again achieved a 4 STAR rating.
THE GARDEN
Many comments about my 'Fedge' and 'Stumpery' most impressed, a lot want to create one in their garden and a handful just think I'm nuts. "Why an earth do you put the stumps upside down?" "But what does it mean?" Or simply an incredulous "Why?" That's all fine because we have already had one small child stay who loved having stories read to her whilst she sat on the bench in the stumpery. We add a little 'magic' to the area by hanging some Ikea lanterns from the walls and the arch. The lanterns have been pimped by my sister in law, Helen who gave me lots of stained glass replacement windows for the lanterns and they really make the area magical.Once again we have had lots of birds nesting in the garden with fledgling Blackbirds, Goldfinches and Blue Tits. The Blackbirds and Tits both had two broods and sadly I have had to lock our cat in on several occasions because the fledglings were out and vulnerable. One of the Goldfinch fledglings even entertained my guests at breakfast by clinging onto the wooden french windows for about 5 minutes, very odd.The blackbird had 2 chicks in the first brood and 5 in the second! It was comical seeing them all squeezed into the nest. It looked like a group of old ladies crammed in on the top deck of a bus on a shopping trip. The Mother Blackbird has been a real nuisance continually making it's warning call, really irritating. My Dutch guests got so sick of it that they tried to download a Hawks call to see if it could be scared off, but sadly to no avail.The breeding season is a good time of year for spotting some of our more hidden birds as they have to get out and feed their young. For the last few weeks Alison has seen a Barn Owl just down the road as she drives to work and so she suggested I take my camera down there.
I only really had one opportunity this week because I had breakfasts on most days to cook, so I jumped on my bike at 7:45am and cycled down the road to the farm.
I stopped a fair distance away and eventually I saw a Barn Owl enter a barn then I cycled down and waited. When it appeared I followed it and then found a good spot to wait for it's return trip.
The subsequent photos are my best ever of a Barn Owl and so I feel compelled to show them right here....
 |
| The Owl's chicks are at the back of this Barn and after a quick shake she headed off for more food... |
 |
| I followed her (or him) and then waited for it to return. |
 |
| Then silently it came straight towards me following the route of the road with a mouse firmly held in it's talons. |
 |
| And nearer... |
 |
| And so close that my zoom lens struggled to focus on it. |
 |
| The poor mouse swinging helplessly below it. |
 |
| Then resting for a moment with the mouse held under it's left foot befor disapearing into the barn to feed the chicks. |
AND FINALLY....
Why Dorothy shouldn't let the 'Tin Man' use a Scot Rail toilet.
Talk about being stuck on the loo all day!
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