Inside I'm screaming

So, I'm getting close to fever pitch at the moment.

I always thought I'd thrive if I was put into a situation where I couldn't go anywhere, as long as I had my books. Well I have my books - and much more besides - and I'm not ok. I didn't realise how much I needed useful revenue-generating work.

Since being furloughed I've worked hard to keep active, even going so far as to put together a schedule for myself, but the uncertainty surrounding whether I will have a paying job or not at the end of all of this is weighing me down. I'm sleeping badly so every 2-3 days I resort to taking a pill just to get some rest and allow my body to repair itself, although it usually means I'm a bit too sleepy the next day to do anything worthwhile. I'm having to carefully plan any big jobs to coincide with the point where I am rested and awake.

There's another aspect to furlough that people don't really talk about, and that's the rejection and loss of self-esteem. You think you are a necessary part of the team until furloughed, and then you realise that you have been classed 'a non-essential worker'. It feels like a slap in the face. In fact, I feel exactly as I did when I was made redundant in 2013: unnecessary. I'm not someone who deals well with being considered unnecessary. What makes it a bit worse is I know that my firm is ok money-wise, with plenty of reserves on the bank, so this was just to grab some free money. Three people have handed in their notice since and two have already gone. I wonder if the management will ever grasp the damage they have done.

Anyway, that's how my week has been. Don't get me wrong, I've been keeping my mouth firmly shut and ploughing on ahead with things round here. Being furloughed on full pay is a gift. It's just that bloody word (and its synonyms) going round and round my head: unnecessary (unneeded, pointless...).

Right, moan over. Shut yer face, Sarah.

So, we're cleaning up the 'building site' at the back of the barns.

We've not been successful trying to get rid of the 3,000+ bricks to anyone so we've been skipping them. I decided to bite the bullet and just turf them out. We've been here four years in July and enough is enough. Once clear, I'll be siting a greenhouse down there, as it is a wonderful warm spot next to a wall that gets the sunshine most of the day and I can grow lots more tomatoes for pasta sauces.

Talking of tomatoes, I ordered some tomato plants from a local nursery that was doing a lockdown special delivery service for people in my postcode so I managed to get eight + growbags: six for the mini greenhouse and two for hanging pots.

The hanging pot I got from a charity shop for £2, along with a couple of retractable pulleys (also £2) for easy watering.

I was delighted to find someone had stuffed two brand new hanging pouches in the growbag box when I opened it up so I shall be finding some plug plants to go in those this year.

I decided to plant up some heavily sprouted Tyson potatoes, left over from our last sack, in the pig pen, as it has lovely friable fertilised soil thanks to the efforts of our last two pigs.

I've also planted another pear tree and blackcurrant bush that I bought way back last summer and gave my blueberry a good water and feed. I was annoyed to find my two cranberries didn't make it through the winter. They were completely dead with rotted roots so I've yanked those out.

Finally, I have a few self-seeded gooseberry bushes, a tayberry and a loganberry still to plant up, but not today. Today it has been raining and it was really needed. Loving the sunshine and all, but it felt weird to be watering dry pots every day in mid-April 😁

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Steel Kitten

Morning all!

So, I'm back. I'm feeling stronger, a lot wiser and ready to post again with some semblance of regularity. I'm still pretty tired, but that comes and goes in waves and I'm more relaxed than I have been in years.

First order of the day - Fleagle. We're very sad that she is gone and miss her very much: she was a funny cat with very human ways and her loss opened up a gap in our lives. Georgie was obviously missing Fleagle too, much to our surprise as we thought they never really got along but it appears that having another cat in the house made him feel secure. He was very clingy with us, off his food, and kept going round and round the house yowling and looking for her. He stopped going outside for anything more than a sniff of the wind and suddenly started to shadow us from room to room.

We never planned to get another cat so soon, but one thing led to another and we had the opportunity to adopt a three year old Maine Coon called Snowy. Her owner was moving from the Midlands to a small flat in London and wanted to find her somewhere rural so she could have a better life than she would have if she went with him.

We weren't sure how Georgie would take to another cat; with him being deaf and also losing his sense of smell we thought introductions would be tough. However, within a week of having Snowy he is relaxed once more, going outside for longer periods and scoffing food again. They're not 100% relaxed in each other's company but they are able to sit about a foot away from each other without incident and sniff noses occasionally. We have plenty of catnip to hand to make sure every interaction is a positive one so they build up trust.

Snowy is very timid and addicted to tuna in brine, which we are going to have to work hard to replace as it is no good for cats as anything other than an occasional treat. They need a complete food with plenty of taurine. Already after a week her playfulness and loving nature are shining through. She is extremely inquisitive and once she finds her feet, she's going to be a beautiful little terror! She knows that she is on Georgie's territory and he is the boss, which helps with the introductions enormously. When Georgie arrived on our doorstep in 2007 he was the opposite and he tried to take over, only to be repeatedly slapped down by Sophie and Fleagle. He never stopped trying. It's only taken him 12 years to be Head of the Feline Household :)

The pigs and sheep have gone to the abattoir so I now have four freezers full to them brim with meat, which should last us around 18 months.  The sheep went in June and the pigs last Monday. We won't now have any more animals until 2021. The pigs were pedigree Oxford Sandy and Blacks and were tremendous diggers, so much so we feared for the trees, but they produced some great lean meat.

I was very strict with weighing their dried food, after the last lot of pigs had kilos of excess fat due to me mismanaging this aspect. They also had all the grass, apples, pears and acorns they could stuff themselves with, plus the odd slice of bread as a treat. I kept my distance and did not get too attached, and the trip to the abattoir was as good as it gets. Everyone was friendly and calm, and they simply walked down the ramp and into their pen without any fear or fuss. I was so grateful to the abattoir staff who were exceptionally kind and professional.

The rest of the smallholding is in a bit of a state. Being so tired I just don't have the energy to do more than the basics but the wildlife will thrive on my neglect so there's a silver lining there.

I've been focusing on my physical and mental health and wellbeing. I've managed to lose 10lbs by walking for a minimum of 45 minutes 5-6 times a week, so I fit better in my clothes, and I'm making sure I spend less time doing chores and more time doing things I enjoy.

I'm knitting Martin a jumper, getting back into baking and cooking, doing some painting by numbers and lots of reading.  And of course, bargain snuffling.

I even managed a trip to Cyprus with my sister. Here's me fishing off the back of a boat near Larnaca. I was up the competitive end with a load of Russian men and I caught a fish. They didn't :) 

So all in all, still ticking along :)

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Steel Kitten

Rendering lard

Right, after my last post I feel a bit guilty about claiming I have nothing to blog about. All this contentedness has made me a teeny bit lazy (as well as put on 5lb but that's another story!). There was a time when I used blogging as my diary, and have frequently referred to it when trying to remember dates and happenings. Then I've realised that I've stopped doing that and, in doing so, lost a valuable part of my personal history.

So, I sat down and made myself write out all the things that have happened over the last couple of months, then went through the digital photos. It's surprising just how much I wrote down and, in turn, how much could have been consigned to the dusty recesses of my mind to fade away. One of the more memorable things that has happened has been lard rendering so I thought I'd kick off with that.

Our pigs were fat, massively so. A pig should have about 0.5-1.0cm of fat when slaughtered, and this figure is led by consumer demand for leaner cuts of meat. When paying for meat by weight, consumers don't want to pay for too much fat. Our pigs had 2cm of fat on them!! On a pork chop you could see the natural healthy fat attached to the outside of the meat and a whacking great additional 1.5cm laid over the top. There was a visible line between the two layers. I peeled this off all of the meat and ended up with kilos of the white stuff, which was earmarked for making soap, in particular hand soap.

We get through so much hand soap here due to having animals and needing to frequently wash after touching them but the shop stuff leaves our hands quite rough, necessitating a lot of hand cream. That's because manufacturers realised years ago that the natural moisturising glycerine in soap could be extracted and sold separately, leaving behind a product that is drying. Then they cottoned on the fact they could sell us a hand/face/body cream to add the moisture back in and if that didn't work, add 'luxury' moisturising ingredients, like shea butter or almond oil, and charge even more money. It's all one big giant rip-off so that's why I want to render down the pig fat into lard and make hand soap.

So, a few weeks ago I started rendering lard. It was a very stinky greasy week, made worse by the heat. It didn't go as well as I hoped to start with but got better as the week progressed.

My first attempt was rendering it in a slow cooker (see above picture). According to the many sources I found on the internet, it was a slow gentle process and should have provided a nice clean white lard. Unfortunately, it 'cooked' the lard a bit and left it slightly orange and with a bit of a porky whiff. I need nice snowy white non-smelly lard to make soap. I haven't shown a picture of this as my camera isn't accurately reflecting the orangeness. So net result was two pints of lard that could only be used for cooking, unless I find a way of getting it pure white and non-porky smelling.

My second attempt was much more successful - I rendered it on the stove top in a large ovenproof pan, pouring off the fat at regular intervals before it had a chance to cook.

My equipment was fairly rudimentary - I just strained the liquid fat through an coffee machine filter into a re-usable soup container.

This was much better - I could see straight away it was a light golden colour, no orange in sight, and it solidified to a snowy white. I reuse microwaveable soup containers for stocks and fat. I actively look for these in M&S when the soup is yellow-stickered to 50p because they are nice and strong.

Now I have something to make soap with, but I have to render down the other few kilos of fat first. Having suffered and sweated in the heat, I've learned my lesson and earmarked that job for a cool rainy day, if we ever get one in the UK!

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Steel Kitten