Quick picture roundup

My lovely Silver Wyandotte bantam cockerel has really found his voice now and has to be kept shut in until about 8.30am so he doesn't disturb the neighbours.

One of the younger Buff Orpingtons posing by perching on the feeding trough in the new pen - a nursery pen for them until they are big enough for the laying flock's run. Two pens were amalgamated into one here so there was some pecking order sorting out to be done this morning.

This is one of the gorgeous Light Sussex which hatched on 1st July. They are all well and healthy and I am rather proud of them as our first incubated hatchlings!

My bargain of the week! We went to a car boot sale after church this morning and I noticed a heap of rather drab looking cloth and realised that there was an absolutely gorgeous quilt hiding there. All piled up, it looked nothing, but washed and out on the line, you can see how lovely they are - yes, there were two so perfect for the FGs to have one each. And they were only £5 each - they are easily worth many times that!

A closer shot to show the detail.

The spiced Apple butter from yesterday - one jar has been given away and the rest safely in storage.

This is the incubator we have borrowed. We turned it on last night and it easily got to temperature by this afternoon so we have loaded it up with a dozen eggs and are praying hard that it works. It is automatically turning the eggs as they are on dowels which are connected somehow to a motor which rolls them this way and that.

They say that what goes around, comes around.......I took a small jar of the apple butter up to the older gentleman who gave me the apples, to share with him and his wife what I had made from his apples, and he gave me two cabbages! When I walked home with them, I re-gifted one of them to my neighbour who loves cabbage and who has been sharing his cherry tomatoes with us...I had already been given a cabbage on Friday evening so didn't need two more, so I was pleased to know someone who would appreciate one. Truly a community garden around here!

Butter and babes

I was given some apples the day before yesterday and have been struggling to know what to do with them as we already have too many bags of cooked apple in the freezer. I came across a recipe for Spiced Apple Butter at this great website, so I made it this afternoon. Picture of the finished product to follow. A similar recipe is also in the River Cottage Preserves Handbook. I have to say that it was a lot of work; the apples have to be cooked in quarters without being peeled or cored as the recipe says that you need the pectin found in the peel and core to help the butter to set...mmm, well, the trouble is then that once they are pulped, you have to sieve it all to get the bits out. I think that it was worth it, as I have got about 8 jars of varying sizes of this lovely stuff, but my wrist aches rather from the sieving!

The FH has borrowed another incubator from the editor of the Smallholder magazine who lives locally, as we weren't going to get all the eggs in ours. It is an automatic one so there'll be no turning necessary. I'm going to plug it in tonight and make sure it reaches the right temperature before we set the eggs.