Been and gone

It's very frustrating that the weather is so splendid and I have a selection of motorcycles sat in the garage just begging to be used.

My only essential journeys appear to be trips down to Kathy's cottage to attend to the bees and it is never going to be feasible to use a bike to transport the various bits and pieces I need for a hive inspection.

I suppose I am just going to have to be patient and wait for the Social Distancing restrictions to be eased.

Work was equally frustrating today, so I decided that today's entry would be an update on the contents of the garage ...

Back in the Summer of 2016 TP passed his motorcycle test but was without the means to purchase a "proper" bike. To be fair he never complained and was happy to take the occasional ride out on one of mine, but I eventually took pity up him and started to peruse the internet.

Late in December 2016 I found a 2001 Triumph Bonneville in amazing condition, with very low mileage and at a very reasonable price. Within a few weeks it had been viewed, paid for and delivered.

It was the perfect bike for TP. It had much more grunt and much better handling than his Yamaha 125 or my Enfields, but it wasn't so ridiculously powerful that he was tempted to ride at speeds beyond his level of experience.

Both TP and I really liked it and TP used to comment that he used to regularly get approached by men of a certain age that "used to have one  like that years ago".  30% was also rather keen on it. She loved the colour and really got in to riding pillion, as it had a very comfortable saddle and handled reasonably well "two up".

I even located a few upgrades and she sported twin clocks, alloy indicators and a much nicer rear light unit in time for TP's birthday in the November of 2017.

As I said, we both really liked it, but we never actually fell in love with it. It was incredibly heavy to push around and the performance from the air/oil cooled 790 cc engine was nothing to write home about.*

I eventually took her down to Arden Motorcycles and left her there to be sold on a commission basis. Surprisingly one of the partners decided to buy her and gave her a street scrambler conversion.

The Bonnie hasn't been the only change in the garage, but I'll leave that until I have another crappy day at work.

---

* I originally had it restricted so that TP could legally ride it on his A2 license. However a mechanic may have inadvertently removed the carburettor restriction device a few months later,

Picture Post

It was going to be challenging to make Monday look interesting.  I had a minor rant on a call at work, the dogs were walked and I popped down to Kathy's cottage to put a feeder on the shook swarm.

See, I did say I couldn't make it look like fun, so I thought I'd go with a picture post. Now I do like an unusual botanical subject, so how about this "beauty"?

I'm reliably informed by Wikipedia that this is Aristolocaceae grandiflora or the Pelican Flower as it is better known. This strangely evocative* flower is one of the largest in the world and reach 60 cm in length.

30% and I encountered this one at a butterfly farm on our visit to Costa Rica in 2018.

---

* It was interesting that many of our tour companions commented that it seemed vaguely pornographic, but none of us could explain why?

A shook swarm

Today's weather was much improved compared to yesterday and, although cool to start, it looked like it was going to be a fine day.

My plan was to inspect the bees and mow the lawn and I really wanted to leave these until the weather warmed up.  Ideally it should be above 15 degrees centigrade to open up a hive and I always prefer to mow a dry sward.

This meant that I had the early morning to finalise volume five of the Journal, upload it to the Blurb website and place an order for a single copy. The Gods appeared to have smiled down at me today, as I tracked down a 25% discount code just before committing to purchase and a good amount was deducted as I checked out.

I then headed down to Kathy H-R's cottage and checked on the two hives. One was doing reasonably well and the other was absolutely booming.  The very prolific colony was rammed with bees and had nearly filled it's super with nectar. A second super was added to give the bees some space and, hopefully, reduce their urge to swarm. Surprisingly I was also rewarded with a glimpse of each of the two Queens* as I worked my way through the hives

Back at home lunch was taken and then I wandered out to inspect the four hives in the garden.  The first was fine and required little work, other than a clean up of some brace comb and the squashing of a few queen cups.

I then moved on to the second hive and was gobsmacked by the difference. It was very busy and had laid down significant quantities of nectar in the super.  As I started to inspect the brood box it was apparent that this colony was going to swarm as there were a number of queen cells developing. I needed to respond immediately, so a Nucleus Box was fetched and I started to search for the queen.

My plan was to create a shook swarm. **  This management technique should create two colonies rather than letting nature take its course and watching the original queen and half the colony bugger off in to the wide blue yonder with little chance of catching them.

I eventually located the queen and placed her in a small nucleus hive with a couple of frames of brood, a couple of frames of stores and shook a frame of bees in to keep her company. The shook swarm was sealed up and then TP and I took it down the road and sited it in Kathy's garden.

This left two more hives to inspect. One was doing well and second super was added to create room for the bees. The second was fine, but needed nothing more than a standard inspection.

Its early in the year for swarming behaviour and the swarming season lasts through until July.  That means three months of preventative management. I may need to consider brood reduction to keep them in check.

After the fun and games with the bees, I was ready for a kip, but I fulfilled my promise and the lawn was shorn first.

---

*  They can be challenging to spot, especially in a large colony and, as an alternative, I often resort to checking for eggs or young larvae to confirm that the colony has an active, laying queen.
** A shook swarm is a management method where the beekeeper removes the queen and four or five frames of stores and brood. These are all placed in a nucleus hive and a few thousand bees are shaken in from the original hive.
The nucleus hive with the shook swarm is then sealed and relocated a few miles away. At its new location it is opened up and the colony is provided with a feeder filled with syrup to sustain them.
In due course the nucleus will be transferred to a full size hive as the number of bees increase.
The original colony is closed up and left well alone for about a month. Hopefully the queen cells will hatch and the young queen will have a successful mating flight, returning to start laying and thereby creating a new colony.

Remember, 50% of the population is below average intelligence.

Today's weather was pretty miserable.  The day started with heavy rain which eventually petered out leaving an overcast sky and a chilly breeze.

A consequence of this was that I spent much of the day sat at my desk polishing the turd that is volume 5 of the Journal. I've sort of proof read it and performed a visual check of the page layouts and formatting. I even managed to find my way in to the Blurb files of an earlier volume, so that I could check the RGB values* for the cover and thereby ensure that volume 5 will match volumes 1 to 4 on the bookshelf.

TP and I eventually persuaded ourselves that we should walk the dogs and headed out on to the Three Miler in the early afternoon. It was obvious that a significant proportion of the village had the same idea and we must have encountered 15 people in the first half mile of our walk.

It also appears that the International System of Units (SI) has redefined the meter and it is now 60% of it's former length.  This observation is based on the Social Distancing applied by most of the people we encountered and also at the village shop.

Not being particularly tall myself, it appears that, as a result of the revised Covid-19 definition of the meter, I will now be able to walk under tables without ducking.

---

* R 0, G 159, B 0 ...  if anyone is interested.

Filling in some of the gaps

In any spare time I had today I finished copying the last of the Journal entries from the Blogger web site in to the Blurb book wright software on my Mac.

Once I've finished formatting, editing and proof reading, these will become the fifth hardback volume of the Bad Man's Journal.

As I scanned the entries from 2016 it dawned on me that the Journal recorded the trials and tribulations of my first year of beekeeping, but I had left the story unfinished.  At the point of abandonment I had two hives, one of which had been re-queened, and the beekeeping year was coming to a close.

Well I can report that both of those colonies survived the Winter of 2016 / 17 and over the intervening years the number of hives has increased. At the start of this year I had five in the back garden and one a mile, or so, down the road beside Kathy H-R's cherry tree.

We took our first honey crop in 2017 and our two hives gave us 90 lbs of honey.  As the number of hives has increased, so has our crop and we produced 145 lbs in 2018 and close to 185 lbs last year.

We've designed some rather natty packaging and seem to have developed a reputation for producing a quality local honey. As a result we have no problem selling a good portion of our crop from the doorstep.

 We have been invited to sell at a couple of local food fairs and even went "International" for a while when the Cardiff Deli, that employed TP, decided to stock our Honey.  Now a Deli is exactly the sort of outlet where you would expect to find a small scale local honey, but our honey has also done really well being sold from a local Hairdresser and currently from a rather bijou little Jeweller in Alcester.

We're still alive

Earlier in the week 30% had served up a splendid Lamb and Chickpea curry.

We tucked in and were thoroughly enjoying it when TP commented that the Lime Pickle tasted a little odd. I sampled it and agreed that it lacked the expected zesty tang. At this point I enquired about the Use by Date and 30% waffled that Lime Pickle didn't go off.

I reached for the jar and saw a date in the middle of 2016!

We're both still breathing and I think the jar has been thrown away.

The irony is that one of 30%'s favourite Sunday morning jobs is to go through the kitchen cupboards; tidying and seeing what provisions are needed ...  Checking sell-by-dates is obviously not part of the job description.

More nonsense

This time it's somewhat less amusing.

As I've mentioned, things are livening up at work and I now have almost enough to keep me busy.  Today my Boss gave me couple of new activities to add my "to do" list.

Task no. 1 was to fill in a spreadsheet that his Boss had asked him to complete. "Don't spend too much time on it" he said "An hour should be plenty".

I took a look and saw that I was required to assess ninety projects and provide yes/no responses to 6 parameters for each project.* We discussed it and agreed that I shouldn't let poor project descriptions and incredibly vague parameter definitions get in my way.  I didn't challenge my Boss' crappy estimate, but I did dodge delivering it today and instead got him to agree to a joint review the following day.

As a result I was going to be spending two hours tomorrow morning populating a spreadsheet with data of the worst possible quality ... At least it will have his name on it rather than mine.

Task no. 2 was to attend a call to get an overview of a piece of work that a Contractor is working on.

It was an absolute train wreck of a call and the amusing thing is that the Contractor is so clueless and out of his depth that he didn't actually pick up on how badly it was going.

There is much work to do to get this deliverable back on track and me and another Colleague have been asked to shadow, mentor and step in as necessary to make sense of his nonsense.

---

* If you do the maths this works out to be 6.67 seconds per parameter, or about 45 seconds per project assessment.

Back to work

I was back at my desk this morning and my plan was to draft a requirements document that I should have been given last Thursday, when I was engaged on the latest project.

It's mildly irritating that I need to do someone else's job, and then make sure that they agree that I have done their job properly, before I actually do what I am paid to do. Ah well, at least I'm adding value.

If I'm honest I had real problems applying myself after the long Easter weekend and I was frequently to be found away from my desk on vital errands. *

On one of these forays I wandered in to the lounge and found Marauder watching Homes Under the Hammer. **

"Wotcha doin' Pip?" I asked
"Watchin' this" she replied

She then went on to inform me that, based on her understanding of the rental property market, the chickens' coop rental payment of four dozen eggs per week was way under market value, especially in view of the fact that I was providing full board too.

She suggested that I kick the buggers out on the street or demand an immediate improvement in improvement.

She is a very wise and knowledgable dog.

---

* 30% was frequently to be heard applauding my efforts with a hearty "Will you get out from under my bloody feet and go and do some proper work?"
** Some of the finest daytime TV there is.*** A strangely orange tinged man from Cheshire previews a ratty property that is up for sale, then goes to the property auction and collars the landlord that buys it. He then returns to the property after the landlord has splashed a bit of magnolia emulsion on the walls and gets two chubby Estate Agents to provide a sale and rental valuation. A TV Commissioning Editor actually heard this and agreed to produce several series of it ... go figure?
*** This is sarcasm

The last of the 2019 crop

Back in August last year we harvested 160 lbs of honey from our five hives.  Most of this was bottled and has been sold over the intervening months. We did hold back a dozen, or so, pounds for gifts and personal projects, but in the past couple of weeks we noticed that supplies were dwindling.

It was time to break out the "Reserve". This had been sat in a sealed, 10 litre container in my study since last September and now it was time to crack the seal.

The honey had crystallised in the intervening months and I would need to use a water bath to gently warm the honey to get it to return to a liquid state.  This sounds straightforward, but a 24 lb slug of honey was going to take a very long time to warm up and become runny.  My approach was to scoop it out and put it in to smaller Kilner jars. These were then placed in the water bath and within an hour I was able to decant it in to jars.

All I need to do now, is get them labelled

I wonder whether this will last us until this year's crop is ready for extraction?

Beekeeping notes

Yesterday's Journal title mentioned the bees, but they got nothing more than a name check in the actual entry. Instead I spent too much time rambling on about the delights of home cured bacon.

So, today's entry is about yesterday ... an update on the bees.

It has been a beautifully warm Easter weekend and yesterday (Saturday) was just perfect to have a proper inspection of the hives. Shortly after lunch I donned my bee suit, lit my smoker and took a look at the four hives in the garden.

Three of the four hives had been supered the previous Sunday and all were doing well. The colonies had expanded up in to the Supers and nectar was already being stored there.  The bees are clearly doing well. There are no crops of Oilseed Rape in the vicinity, so they must be working hard amongst the Spring flowers and hedgerow blossoms to be bringing in significant quantities of nectar so soon.

I moved on to the fourth smaller colony, expecting it to  still be somewhat smaller than the hives I'd just inspected.  It was a pleasant surprise to see the brood box absolutely brimming with bees.  A Queen Excluder and Super were quickly grabbed from the shed and added to the hive.

Later in the day I headed over to Kathy H-R's cottage and added an excluder and super to the colony that I relocated there last weekend. I also took a look at the hive that has overwintered there. If I thought that the hives in the garden were doing well, this one was amazing. The Super was already heavy with nectar and I would estimate that there was a good 15 or 20 pounds of nectar already stored within.

---

In previous years I had overwintered my hives with a brood box and super. I was always concerned that they would run short of food and starve if I removed all of the supers in the Autumn. There is a downside to this approach as the Queens often move up in to the supers and start to lay. This means that the Queen has to be located and moved back down in to the brood so that an excluder can be put in place.  Then there is a three week wait whilst any eggs she has laid in the super complete their larval and pupal stages before the young bees emerge.

Last Autumn I took a different approach. I have been befriended by a delightful, retired Gentleman who has a semi-commercial operation of about 50 hives. He has been a wonderful source of guidance and information and it was he who suggested removing all of the supers and feeding the bees on an inverted sugar syrup. He reassured me that they would be fine overwintering in the brood box and he was right.

I'll admit that I did give them all a pack of candy in December "just in case", but all six of my colonies came through the Winter and are now starting to produce this year's crop with far fewer management issues than I have had in previous years ... Thanks Pete.

Bacon & Bees

I woke early on Saturday and, after letting out the chickens, I wandered over to my smoke box.

As I approached I could smell a faint aroma of wood smoke and I couldn't resist a peep inside. As soon as I removed the front panel I was rewarded with the most fantastic aroma and the sight of a beautifully smoked loin of pork

The eighteen hours of smoking had turned the skin an amazing tan colour with a very firm texture* and I could see that hand slicing the rashers was going to be a pig of a job.  I'd anticipated this challenge and had decided that today should be the first outing for my new bacon slicer.**

Once breakfasted, TP and I headed out to the garage with the loin and he guided me through the finer points of the slicer's use. It worked beautifully, slicing through the firm rind and soft meat with ease and within twenty minutes we had about 7lb of smoked back bacon rashers and a few lardons.

I then headed back in to the house with the bacon and my vacuum packer and spent the rest of the morning getting this lot packed, labelled and stored in the freezer.

The rest of the day was equally productive, dogs were walked, bees were inspected, the slicer was cleaned*** and gin was consumed in the garden.

---

*  I usually remove the skin before curing as it can be very challenging to hand slice. On this occasion I was just too lazy short of time, so decided to get the cure underway and deal with the bacon rind at the end of the process.

** This mechanical marvel had been lurking untested in the garage for about 18 months and had arrived courtesy of TP.  The brief back story is that TP had worked in a Delicatessen whilst he was a student at USW's Cardiff Campus. The Deli had an absolutely fantastic meat slicer that was going spare and a deal was done. This allowed me to replace the decrepit slicer that I had given up on using years ago.

*** As I scrubbed the slicer I asked TP how it used to be cleaned when he worked at the Deli. He took one look at the blade guard in my hand and said " we never used to take that off". I commented on the food hygiene certification of the establishment and he grinned and advised that he only used to get paid £8 an hour.

Meat Fest

I probably need to start with a warning that this is probably not one for the Vegetarians ...

Two weeks ago I started to cure a loin of pork.  I do this every couple of months, having become disillusioned with commercial bacon.

The loin sat in the cure mixture for six days before being dried, wrapped and hung from a meat hook for a further six days. Early this morning it was taken down, unwrapped and a butcher's hook was inserted in to one end.

The loin was then hung in my smoking box and a cunning little device* manufactured by BBQ Dave was filled with applewood sawdust, tamped down and lit with a blowtorch. I made certain that I had a good ember smouldering in the smoke generator and then placed it at the bottom of the box. The smoke box door was put in place and that was it for the next nine hours.

I think this is version 4 of Dave's smoke generator

The smoke generator will need to be refilled with sawdust this evening and the loin will continue to smoke overnight.  Now 3kg of smoked pork loin might seem like more than enough protein for one day, but I had other plans ...

After walking the dogs I headed in to kitchen and took two whole chickens from the refrigerator. I'd promised 30% and TP that I'd do Beer Can Chicken on the barbecue and it is fair to say that they were delighted. For those of you that have never sampled this delight I can say only this "stop fucking around with sausages and burgers on your Barbie and cook something worth eating".

It is simplicity itself to prepare and cook and it tastes incredible. You can also leave it pretty much to itself while it is cooking, so there is no need to hover over it getting smoke in your eyes and missing out on the gin, nibbles and chat.**

At this point I should state that you need a kettle barbecue as this is cooked "lid on". The recipe is as follows:-

1 whole chicken (1.5 kg or thereabouts)
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 tsp of Thyme
1 tsp of Rosemary
1/2 tsp Brown Sugar
Salt and Black Pepper
A good glug of oil
2 tsp of Paprika
1 oz of butter
1 can of beer

1. Mix the chilli flakes, Thyme, Rosemary, sugar, salt and pepper together in a small bowl.
2. Place the chicken on a large baking sheet and drizzle oil over it. Gently rub the oil on to the bird to ensure that it is completely oiled up.
3. Now rub the mixture of chilli flakes herbs and seasonings on to the skin of the chicken.
4. Take the can of beer and wash the outside thoroughly. You'll see why in a minute ...
5, Open the beer and pour half of it in to a glass .... you can drink this.
6. Place the half filled beer can on a baking sheet and position the chicken so that the can sits inside the body cavity and supports the chicken as shown in the photo below.
7. Now melt the butter in another small bowl and stir in the paprika
8. Then brush the butter and paprika glaze over the outside of the chicken making sure that you cover all of the skin.

9. Set up your barbecue for indirect heat.  Basically this means that the charcoal is lit and then split in to two piles, one on either side of the grill. Some barbecues have charcoal baskets that make this straightforward. The key point is that there is a central area with no burning coals. ***
10. Place the grill bars over the coals and put the lid on. Leave the barbecue to heat up to about 180 degrees centigrade and then add the chicken on the centre of the grill.
11. Cook for about 80 minutes. You can use a meat thermometer to check whether it is cooked. It should be at least 75 degrees centigrade in the middle of the breast meat.

12. Remove the chicken from the grill and let it stand for ten minutes before shredding the meat from the bones.

The chicken is absolutely gorgeous as the steam from the beer keeps the meat beautifully moist and the herby rub, paprika glaze and barbecue smoke gives the most fantastic flavour.

You may be wondering why I cooked two chickens when there are only three of us here at The Pile ...

Once you've tasted this you will understand that one is never going to be enough and we will make several meals from them. It's great as a main meal, in sandwiches and a multitude of other dishes. The carcasses make a fantastic smoky chicken stock for soups and as for potatoes roasted in the oil that collects in the trays!

---

*  Sections of perforated steel have been riveted together to create a zig-zag channel about 1" in section. It is filled with sawdust that is tamped down and then lit at one end. Over the course of about nine hours the smouldering ember burns along the channel creating a continuous stream of smoke.  Simple and incredibly effective.
** This obviously refers to social events that were allowed prior to Social Distancing.
*** Add pre-soaked chunks of apple, hickory or any other wood that is suitable for smoking for a fantastic smoky flavour.

Busier than expected

I had hoped that today would be a gentle coast through to the long Easter weekend and it started out looking like I simply had to kick my heels for a few hours and then knock off early and enjoy the glorious Spring sunshine.

However, a couple of minutes before half past two I was "pinged" to ask if I was joining a call. I responded that I had not received any invitation, but was free if I was needed.

It appeared that I was needed and spent the next forty five minutes trying to make sense of a rambling discussion which could actually be condensed to a couple of sentences.

This engagement stems from the recent request to pick up work from the departing Contractor.  He had waffled about this on our initial hand-over call and made very little sense. It now appears that the Architect of this solution is an equally skilled communicator and spent much of the first half hour describing existing network components rather than outlining the key support requirements that needed to be implemented.

I'm not saying that this is a piece of cake, but it looks to be a fairly simple job involving making sure that a Supplier can talk to our Support teams and that the Support Teams understand which components are supported by which Supplier. None of this appears to be a particularly novel feature, so I'm bemused by the amount of waffle and irrelevant information I was fed this afternoon ... Maybe I've oversimplified and I am in for a horrendous learning experience.

The day still wasn't over and I needed to chase a couple of individuals and send out some pricing before I was able to close down the laptop and enjoy the late afternoon sunshine.*

TP and I headed out around the Three Miler with the dogs and I then put a new spark plug in the lawn mower and gave the lawn a much needed trim.**

---

* The surprising thing about today was that I learnt that the "mega-urgent" activity, that I had been waiting on for the past week, was still not clearly defined and it would be next week at the earliest before I was needed.
** Mowing the lawn is definitely my preferred transitional activity to adjust from the working mindset to "home mode".  Many people have their daily commute to mentally file away the work crap and, instead, think about their home, family, personal interests etc.  As someone who works from home, I don't have that transitional activity and have long understood that I need something to switch from one mindset to another. 

Parcels galore

With the majority of retail establishments closed at the moment, the on-line retailers and distribution companies are seeing a significant upturn in their businesses.

We're all doing our best to keep the economy going and, today, we had a plethora of parcels delivered, including an illustrated German vocabulary text for TP*, a set of replacement toothbrush heads, a new queen excluder and a service kit for the lawn mower.

I am now set up for the Easter weekend and will be sporting a dazzling smile whilst trimming the lawn and inspecting my hives.

---

* His girlfriend's mum is from Austria and the whole family is bilingual. TP is making good use of his enforced incarceration by learning German

Job for Life?

Work is starting to pick up.  I would hardly say that I am close to capacity, but at least I have a few things to keep me busy. 

At the back end of last week I was summoned. along with another colleague, to a call with our Boss.

It appears that the Coronavirus pandemic is starting to impact the piano moving industry. Apparently our customers actually have an increased demand for our services, but their revenue streams are being driven downward by Social Distancing.  There have even been requests for payment holidays.  As a result the Corporation is looking to "restructure" its workforce and a number of Contractors are to be released.

We were asked instructed to become familiar with the workload of another Colleague who will be leaving us in about three months time.

Today the discussions started and it is certainly going to be an interesting experience.  This colleague is notorious for his muddled and waffly narratives that wander so far off topic that his entire audience either looses the will to live or actually does die.*

He is actually quite a nice chap, but his unstructured narratives are indicative of his working style and there are concerns that we are about to open a can of worms.

---

* 30% worked with him many years ago and summed him up thus; "He gives old women a bad name"

Bugger!

I've noticed that one impact of Social Distancing, or The Lockdown as it is referred to in the media, is that it has a tendency to induce a reluctance to get on with domestic tasks that are still actually achievable.

I mentioned this to a frolleague and he confessed that he, too, was experiencing the same sense of inertia.

With this in mind, I'm doing my best to keep myself occupied and so, since I have recently returned to The Journal, I decided it was time for another book.

When I was blogging regularly I used to produce a hardback copy of The Journal every year or so and four volumes sit on the bookshelf in my study. Volume 4 ran from 21st April '13 through to 20th October '14, so I estimate that there are about 290 unpublished posts. This is certainly enough to fill the next volume.

I used an on-line self-publishing company called Blurb previously, so I logged on to my account and started to reacquaint myself with the tools. I recall that the actual desktop application was a bit glitchy as the file sizes increased, but this was offset by the functionality that allowed one to literally "slurp" the contents of a blog direct from Blogger straight in to application. It was then simply a case of formatting and editing, as required.

It came as a very unpleasant surprise to learn that this functionality was no longer available and I will be copying and pasting each and every post from the website to the tool on my desktop ...

That should keep me busy for a while.

TW3

Saturday
I started Saturday enthusiastically with my planned activity; Sour Dough Bread ...

Unfortunately this was nowhere near as successful as I had hoped. The end product was edible, but I don't think I knocked back the dough sufficiently and ended up with loaves that had large voids, rather than a more light and consistent texture.

It went well with 30%'s Fish and Chorizo stew in the evening, but it was certainly nothing to crow about. I plan to make another attempt next weekend, but, if I am going to put the effort in to making bread by hand, I think I'd rather go with a recipe that uses yeast.  They're more reliable and without the faffing around maintaining starter cultures.

Another activity that didn't go to plan was my attempt to mow the lawn. The mower started, ran for a few seconds, died a death and then refused to start. I performed a few basic checks and determined that the spark plug had died. The air filter looked well overdue for cleaning too ...

A service kit was ordered, but it looks like the lawn will go untouched until next weekend at the earliest.

The day wasn't a complete failure. TP and I managed a pleasant walk around the Three Miler and I did some preparatory work for the beekeeping I have planned for tomorrow. Supers and Queen Excluders* were removed from the shed and a hive was prepared** for relocation to Kathy H-R's garden early on Sunday.

---

* Modern hives are modular allowing a beekeeper to add or remove sections depending on the Colony's needs for space and nectar storage. Supers are sections that are added to the top of the hive where the bees will store nectar and convert it to honey. A Queen Excluder is a wire grid that prevents the Queen from moving up in to the Super and laying there.
** The hive entrance is closed of and the floor and crown board are strapped tightly to the hive body to prevent any escapes. A car full of annoyed bees is never going to be fun!

Sunday
At eight o'clock in the morning TP and I loaded the hive in to the back of the Land Rover and headed over to Kathy's house.  The hive was set up in a matter of minutes and we were soon removing the foam entrance block and heading back home for breakfast.

I'd planned to complete my first proper inspection of my hives today, but I needed to wait for the weather to warm up before that happened. I therefore occupied myself by attending to the pork loin that I am curing.

The loin was removed from its bag and the cure mixture was washed away with cold water. It was then dried off, wrapped in muslin and hung from a hook in the kitchen. It will hang there until the end of this week before it is smoked.

After lunch I grabbed my smoker and hive tool and headed out to look at the hives. TP accompanied me and we spent a pleasant hour assessing the state of each of the colonies.  Three of the four in the garden were doing incredibly well with large brood nests and fresh stores of nectar and pollen. Each of these had a Queen Excluder put over the Brood Box and then a Super was added to give the colony more space. 

The fourth hive was not so prolific. There are no concerns, it is just smaller than the other Colonies and it will be a two or three weeks before it needs Supering up.

I then returned to Kathy's garden and inspected the hive that had overwintered there.* The Colony was a reasonable size, so an Excluder and Super were added.

The remainder of the day was spent with a minor reorganisation of the garage before 30% and I joined a virtual Cocktail Party for a couple of hours with some old friends from our College Days. We had met up recently at a rather significant event and, since then, have made efforts to stay in touch more frequently than we have previously.

We had an absolute hoot, courtesy of Zoom Conferencing Services and were all quite "relaxed" before we disbanded and headed off for our respective Sunday Dinners.  Another event is planned for next weekend, with the agreement that we will all "dress up".

---

* The hive I moved this morning will be given a few days to settle down before I disturb it with an inspection.

It's Alive!

And on the 6th day Badman said "let there be life" and there was life ...

Sour Dough Starter

Close up showing bubbles of carbon dioxide

I'll acknowledge that it is a very simple form of life*, but my sour dough starter is most definitely ready for use. The recipe has produced about a pint of starter plus the half pint that I froze on day #4.

Unfortunately I actually had some work to get on with today, so this was put in the fridge until tomorrow when I will make my first attempt at a sour dough loaf.

I also made up another batch of tomato soup in a free hour I found in the early afternoon. We're really pleased with the results, so I've jotted down the recipe for future reference.

1 lb, 8 oz ripe plum tomatoes, quartered
10 fluid oz chicken stock
1 medium potato, finely diced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tsp dried basil
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
salt and black pepper

1. Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pan
2.  Add the onions and potato and cook on a low heat for 10-15 minutes until they are softened
3. Add the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes
4. Add the stock, garlic, basil and seasoning
5. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes
6. Liquidise with your weapon of choice**
7. Add a healthy glug of single cream and serve

These quantities will make a couple of pints of soup. I actually tripled the quantities and ended up with nearly four litres.

Well, that's about it for today.

---

* Mind you, it's a few evolutionary stages beyond some of the people I've seen in the media recently.
** You can freeze the soup at this point in the recipe

Waste not, want not

A combination of the panic buying public fuckwits, empty supermarket shelving and being confined to home has tended to make us more focussed on our store cupboard than we usually are.

30% and I are batch cooking more than normal, thereby making sure that we have plenty in the freezers and limiting the frequency of our shopping trips.

Today 30% headed over to a nearby Farm Shop to pick up some fresh vegetables. This establishment has a reputation for being a little on the pricey side, but that's not the case if you know what you are doing.

The shop is part of a local estate that hosts game shoots and, quite surprisingly, the majority of the Guns have no interest in taking the pheasants and partridge home at the end of the day.  The Shoot Organiser is quite happy to give the birds away "in feather" and over the course of the season our freezers become well stocked with free pheasant breast fillets.

Another shop secret is the waste vegetable bin.  Overripe and wilted stock is not seen as saleable and is removed from the displays and is placed in a bin "round the back".  30% discovered this little gem and our chickens have reaped the benefits, being rewarded with a regular supply of greens, bruised apples and so on.

Today she popped out to the bin to collect some chicken treats and came across several pounds of overripe tomatoes.  These were brought home and we took a look at her spoils ...

After a wash and wipe they were found to be perfectly acceptable and I spent an hour or so knocking up four litres of tomato soup. The only ingredients I needed to add were three potatoes, three onions, a glug of Olive oil and a pint and one half of Chicken stock. I think my total investment is less than £1 for ten or twelve servings of a rather tasty soup.*

Whilst still on culinary matters, today is day five of the Sour Dough starter preparation. The recipe instructed me to remove half of the starter and discard. I couldn't bear to just throw it away, so this is now carefully labelled and placed in the freezer. It means that I can thaw it and create another starter that will be ready for use in about 24 hours if I decide to do this again.

Having split my starter in half, I added 150 ml of water and whisked in 150 g of white, bread flour. It was then covered once more and placed in a warm spot. Apparently it will be ready for use tomorrow.

---

* I do acknowledge that the cost will go up when I add a liberal helping of single cream, just before serving.

Sour Dough day #4

With very little to keep me occupied at work it seems that a few of my colleagues are doing their best to fill more of my time.  Their current approach is to make things unnecessarily complicated and take the most circuitous routes to achieve the simplest tasks. Ho-hum!

As it says in the title, today is the fourth day of my Sour Dough starter recipe. 180g of strong white flour, 100 ml of water and 40 ml of milk were mixed well together and added to the starter culture. It was then covered and now needs to be left for another 24 hours at a "warm room temperature". More on this tomorrow.

In other news, 30% took delivery of ten cubic feet of polystyrene beads as our bean bag is looking a little deflated. I inspected the enormous box and advised her that all I could see was a huge amount of polystyrene packing material with no sign of her actual purchase ...

She was about to phone the supplier until today's date registered.