Alan's Allotment

On the 29th January we got our three hens. We decided on three different breeds - a Splash Orpington,  Crested Legbar and a Cemani. They would give us three different coloured eggs (blue, brown and white) and the Cemani is  good winter layer (so I am told). Having been beaten by the weather, they spent the first week in the greenhouse while I finished building their house. That was actually quite good thing in the end as they gave the ground in the greenhouse a thorough weed, rake and fertilise ready for sowing. Having got them at 6 weeks of age, they were not yet ready to lay (usually 18-24 weeks old is when they start) but each day we still checked for eggs. I closed off the nest boxes at first so as to not get them into the habit of sleeping in there. This is a really easy habit for the chickens to get into, but a hard one to break. We don't want them soiling the nest boxes and eggs!  Knowing that the day was getting close, last week, ...

At the back of our new garden we have 6 apple trees. We're unsure what they all are. Some could be eating apples and some are definitely cookers.  Given that we've already eaten several crumbles and pies, we thought we'd turn our hand to cider.  Several years ago we got a lot of beer and wine making kit from Freecycle. One item we'd never used was a fruit 'crusher' which attaches to a drill. After a couple of goes with the battery operated drill, I upped it to the mains drill and had much greater success.  We'd brought the press online just after w moved in as a present to ourselves, hoping that we'd get round to cider this year and now we were ready to use it. In all we got two demijohns (2 gallons) of juice. Dutifully following the recipe in the book I'd got with all the free kit, we then sterilised the juice with a couple of Campden tablets in each. Unfortunately, I then read a few blogs which advocated using the ...