Painting Beehives at The Beehive

Today we've been busy constructing our beehives and painting them in the old barn. I ordered these national hives from a seller on ebay last year and it's taken until now to get to this point in the chores list. 

We're hoping that we can finish painting them next weekend and aim to get them out where we want to site them in the next couple of weeks so that the smell of the paint dissipates before the bees arrive. We've ordered a nuc from a breeder in Sussex who expects them to be ready by late May. Plenty more time to read further and panic more!

We should get our planning permission (or refusal) back this week sometime.  We're hoping that there won't be any problems considering we're re-building and slightly modifying something that is already there, but planning permission is a funny animal these days. Keep your fingers crossed for the Beehive this year in both the flying and human varieties!

A Sunny Sunday setting a false sense of security

Okay, okay, so the title for this entry encompasses alliteration but that wasn't really my intention!!

It's a glorious day outside today, what with all the rain we've been having yet again, one should be filled with gladness, rather than that rather cynical sense of doom that this delightful mock March day will soon be underneath a few centimetres of snow or, at the very least, the carpet of green shoots appearing in my front garden will be shocked to death or burnt brown through a late cold snap.

However, rather than dwelling in this frame, we have taken advantage of the warmth and sunshine to get outside and do some desperate tidying and sorting out after a good long walk over the fields with the dog this morning.

The chooks have been recipients of their annual rake over ;-)  We rake the top layer of muck off their run area and then re-lay it with fresh bark and wood chippings from a local horse yard. We've also decided to lift some of their run off the ground because they've been living in a quagmire since the rain began and I feel desperately sorry for them. We have put a couple of pallets in to give them an island higher than the swamp and the other is for them to have their waterer on so that it doesn't continually get crap kicked into it.

Mr Beehive has been smashing up various parts of the patio and back path still on the search for where various drains go. We 'think' we've finally found the majority of outlets, many of which were just hidden over with a patio slab and sand. This could well have been partially to blame to our flood in 2012.

We're currently awaiting the return of our planning permission to see whether or not we get the go ahead for knocking down our old garage/barn before it falls down and rebuilding a new garage/studio/annexe. Hopefully, if we do, we should start on this over the summer. It will give us a spare bedroom alongside a studio area that Mr Beehive could use when he works from home and where I will take my sewing. We might have to evict the drum kit there too!

Other new things this year will are the fact I'm now back playing my clarinet again on a regular basis. I'm currently playing with a local wind ensemble. Interestingly I was asked to play through a lady I met on a beekeeping course, who I'm hoping will mentor me when we get our bees...which are still on the horizon. We now have our hives, but they need painting and assembling. They will go right in the far corner of this picture:

I think we'll either need another one of these sunny days for this...or a new garage that isn't going to leak all over newly painted hives!

2014 and a calm and peaceable end to our year (thank you!)

A very Happy New Year to you all!

I hope you've had a great holiday period with family and friends.

Ours has been filled with relatives and friends and we've had a great time.

I like this time of year to hunker down in front of the fire, to talk long leisurely walks with the dogs, catch up with pals and generally border on hibernation.

The weather has been intermittently kind, although the children have been disappointed that this is pretty much their first Christmas without snow. We have had some glorious days with blue skies that have enabled us to walk through frost hardened fields and enjoy the beauty of the stark bare landscape in winter.

Then there have been days like today whereupon we had to dress up in all our waterproofs for a shortish walk around the fields. These walks tend to be military style hikes as there is less ability to talk to each other as we concentrate on staying upright in the mud or struggle to hear any sounds other than the rain beating on the outsides of our hoods. It is days like this that make us grateful for where we are a year on from last Christmas where we were all living in one room for six months after our flood and also that make us jittery and check the level of the well at least once a day to ensure the pump is working.

I have given up making New Year's resolutions because I strongly feel that they just set you up to fail during the first few months of a new year, I prefer to have one or two goals: things I'd like to achieve, do or places I'd like to go.

I have finally joined the gym so I'm going to at least take stock of my fitness levels what with our 5 peaks hike looming very fast on the horizon. I also want to feel comfortable swimming with the kids on holiday this summer rather than a beached whale underneath a shroud.
I have two big fortieth birthdays this year, one belonging to my sister and the other a friend and I'd like to feel good in a nice dress for both of these occasions.

I'm going to slowly work through the house and have a really, really big de-clutter over the next month. I started this morning on my drawers in the kitchen and am gradually boxing things into clear plastic boxes so I can see at a glance what I have where. Once I've done the kitchen I'll start on wardrobes and bedrooms.

Another thing I want to make more time for this year is crafting again. I want to get my sewing machine out more and also spend more time knitting.

One thing we are going to do is open our Good Times Jar tomorrow evening and take delight in recalling the memories of 2013 that we put inside it and we will then start a new one for 2014.

Other than that, the diary is currently  light for the year, which I'm kind of relishing at the moment. I know it will soon begin to fill up and the joys of watching this season fade into the next will soon begin hurtling me through the year once more.

But for now, I'm going to begin 2014 in front of a fire, listening to the snoring of the dogs, the laughing of the children playing in the den, the turning pages of my brother in law's book as he sits and reads and the clattering of Mr Beehive setting about a new batch of cider making in the kitchen. Ah...bliss!

Christmas time 2013

It's nearly that time of year again.
Term ended for myself and the older two last Friday and for the Little Miss, this week.

We started our Winter with a short weekend near Dover... some Christmas shopping in Canterbury, lattes in coffee shops and walks along the beach and cliffs. Sea air and some time away was a lovely, gentle start.

The holidays began for me with a weekend with my best friend in London. We had such a blast, not really doing anything other than catching up, laughing, eating and drinking...we might have sneaked a small amount of retail therapy in there too.

However, the frivolity was followed for me by a week of sinusitus, which has had me fairly miserable until late this week when finally my head decided to give me space again and the pain subsided.












































It didn't stop us putting up our trees last week though, as long as I didn't bend down.

 I love unwrapping the Christmas decoration box each year. My trees may not be 'Home and Garden' but they hold a huge amount of memories amongst those decorations: places we've travelled, places we've lived, decorations to represent each of my children and their hobbies or talents.

We have also caught up with other friends and their children last night and are expecting the cousins to arrive sometime tomorrow as long as the threat of bad weather keeps away until after they arrive...


Mincepies are made, biscuits crafted, store cupboards stocked, stockings dug out from the attic, fires lit, singing voices prepped and ready...

Have a wonderful Christmas and I'll be back in the New Year.

Instilling a spirit of giving

This is something that I struggle with year on year, trying to instill a spirit of giving in my children at Christmas time. Don't get me wrong here, I feel we should be doing this throughout the year, hence the fact that Mr Beehive and I do things as many others do such as sponsor a child and give to our favourite charities and we try to encourage the children to participate in charity events or collections.

In previous years the children have made shoeboxes of gifts to donate to other children who have less, but I'm not always happy with some of these bigger organisations' underlying messages that seem to be a part of the receiver getting the gift.

We have, in the past, made boxes of needed clothes up to send to families who have less, we did this through an American forum called Mothering, for several years. However, we can't find anything similar in this country.

We've made secret gifts that we've mailed to someone we know has had a rough year and sent them anonymously.

We've drawn and framed pictures or given cookies to residential homes and donated toys to other appeals.

We have also used places like the Oxfam gifts whereupon we've bought chickens for a family as a gift for friends or we've knitted hats for newborn babies in Malawi.

But I'm sure that there is much giving that can be done at home throughout the year and not just at Christmas time. One of the ideas that tickles my fancy at the moment is buying the coffee for the person behind me in the queue and then just leaving.

So the big question I have to ask is, am I doing this in order to instill a spirit of giving in myself and my children or am I doing this because if feels nice for me to walk away knowing I've done this? Oh I feel a Phoebe-quandry coming on but you'd better hurry up because for the next few weeks I may be that person in front of you in the Costa queue ;-)

Perhaps though, if we all just chose one or two nice things to do for the person in front or behind us, that we don't normally do, perhaps help them load their shopping in the car, let them go in front of us in the queue if we have more time than them, sweep the leaves of our elderly neighbours' lawn whilst we're out there doing our own? Offer to put our neighbours' bins out or put them back in once the dustcart has gone? I'm sure there are endless ideas.

Please share your giving.

Good things come to those who try hard

It's been a pretty miserable week for the eldest Beehive. Following a rough night on Monday we went to the doctor on Tuesday only to be sent up to the children's ward at the hospital. We didn't leave again (or rather he didn't) until Thursday afternoon.

At first the doc thought he may have a pneumothorax, so wanted a chest x-ray, however, the docs on the ward decided that they'd reassess after putting him on a nebuliser.

Long story,  cut short, he eventually got his sats above 94% and kept them there and, by Thursday was able to go four hours between inhaler sessions and now we have our boy back home. He's on some preventative meds now and still has his inhaler, but, with luck, we hope we can try to keep him well.

He's doing so much better now.

However, he has also learned that patience and doing your best will pay off in the end having received a wonderful opportunity this morning.

About three months ago he went on a selection weekend with the scouts for a one in a lifetime chance to go to Japan for a Jamboree in 2015.
Despite being riddled with eczema and again, being in hospital for treatment, he decided he had to go and push through it.
Unfortunately he wasn't selected, but he did really well, missing out by only a few points. He had to go through some grieving, disappointment, a sense of failure and all the other emotions that come with really wanting something but it being out of your grasp and, because my child is normal, the green eyed monster because two other members of your troupe were selected and you weren't, but still, a maturity lesson.

This morning he was invited by one of the original selection committee to take a place on the Icelandic Jamboree next year. We are all so excited for him.
He has a year of hard work ahead of him as he has to fund raise a considerable amount of the travel but it's going to be a fantastic opportunity with lots of other learning curves!

The younger boy beehive has also done fantastically well this week. He yet again secured a silver medal in his age group at the APTI national tae qwon do competition and then three days later managed to get his blue belt with a grade A pass.

The littlest is singing her heart out with a solo spot coming up in her Stagecoach cabaret and she's entering the local young musician in her age group this year.

All I can do is sit back and watch them with my heart exploding with pride. We are just loaned our children to help them on their journeys and I am reminded this more than ever, not only when they disagree with me or each other, or make completely different choices to me, but when I see them try and succeed, or try and not succeed in things that mean so much to them.

A cowboy cookout

What a glorious evening, that started as a very, very dubious day. On the tail winds of the St Jude Day Storm we thought that we were doomed for LMB's very early Cowboy Cookout party. Armed with stacks of indoor crafts that we could do inside the yurt should the weather decide to turn on us, we headed over to a very new Yurt site that is close to us. We'd hired this fantastic yurt for the night and invited several cowboys and cowgirls to help us celebrate.

All cowboys were encouraged to chip in and peel things that they most definitely would not be eating!!

Older cowboys were assigned to the fire pit and the making of hot dogs, baked beans and corn on the cob. You can only see by the look on his face the sheer delight he gets in the simple things in life! The hat made an appearance too.

This photo was just too amazing to miss. Are we in Oxfordshire or are we in Montana? The clouds give the illusion of mountains in the background.

I was unable to take pictures of the birthday girl blowing out her candles as the wind did it for her everytime, but as this was an early party, she has another opportunity to do this on her actual birthday in a couple of weeks time.

After the guests had left, the cousins settled down for a movie and an overnighter in the yurt.

The sisters celebrated the end of another successful birthday party with some well deserved  bubbles!

Finally, the yurt glowed in all it's Hobbiton glory in the failing sunlight....

Snuggled under layers and layers of duvets, sleeping bags, cowboy ponchos, gloves, hats and each other, we all lay down on futons for the night to dream of cattle rustling and lasso knots....

Well, until the ruddy Carbon Monoxide alarm went off this morning at 4am! In all seriousness, it could have been a very different story, in fact, maybe not even one that I would have been telling, but we are all fine.

The wood burner had been out for over 5.5 hours by the time the alarm sounded, so we are all somewhat confused, but perhaps the vents weren't completely closed on the fire, maybe there needs to be ventilation panels in the doors, however, the CM alarm worked successfully and woke us all. If there is one thing it has taught us, it is that carbon monoxide is EVIL and an alarm a necessity as there was no smell, no headaches, no funny tastes, nothing visually evident. If you don't have one and have an open fire or woodburner, GET ONE! I think new legislation states that all woodburners fitted by a professional have to have an alarm installed with them, but if yours precedes this or you just don't have one, please get one.

However, with an intermittent monotone voice and shrieking alarm telling us there was a 'Carbon Monoxide Warning', this little band of cowboys had to pack their things, saddle up and climb aboard their noble steeds to head the 3 miles home to beds that didn't consist of small children, hard slats and the need to wear the whole contents of their winter wardrobes. Glamping is apparently what it's called...I'm not entirely convinced !!

Today, to clear our lungs of any possible nastiness, we have been at the allotment making a path. I'm debating whether to invest in two or three small maiden bare root apple trees to run along one side. I would train them as espaliers. My neighbour allotmenteer (is that a word? Well, it is now!) has a polytunnel that runs alongside where I'd put these trees, so I don't want anything tall to take away any of her light, but equally I think that this area is going to be better suited to a higher fruit tree rather than veg. However, another part of me thinks that this is rather an investment to put onto an allotment. Hmmm, what would you do?

Anyway, I'm off to learn how to make proper bread now with the GB Bakeoff masterclass...

Bacon

We picked up our share of our pig this weekend and have set about having our first attempt at making bacon from some of the belly.

All being well, it's an incredibly simple thing to make and means we'll have our own store of bacon for the next few months.

Whilst I was searching for something simple, I discovered that there are a wealth of ways to cure bacon, but I wanted something that I could cold smoke and then freeze that wasn't too fiddly or faffy. In my opinion, if you have to spend a week messing over fiddly stages, then it's not worth it.

So the recipe I adapted was along the lines of this:

I used 8.5lbs of belly pork that I cut into six easier to manage slabs (when this is cured completely, I will slice it and freeze it in usable batches).

Fro the 8.5lbs I used around 1lb of salt
1 packed cup of brown sugar
and 8 pints or 1 gallon of water.

The best way is to dissolve your sugar into half your water before you pour it into the other half, that way you can visually see if you have grains of salt left or not.

I used a large cool box to store the brine solution and belly in.

So:

Mix up your water, salt and sugar until it has all dissolved, then place your belly into the brine solution.
I then weighted it under the solution with plates to hold it down.
You don't want to let any creep above the liquid or you'll end up with rancid pork which will tarnish all your meat.
Put it somewhere cool - my recipe said the fridge, however, my fridge is not a walk in size and therefore as I was doing this in October, we put it in the back of the garage for 24 hours.

After 12 hours take a look at it and mix up the brine to ensure full coating.

After the 24 hours, I got our smoker going. Again, the recipe called for Applewood chips, but with Mr Beehive being in Kenya for the week and this being my first attempt at smoking, he advised we used Oakwood chips as they have less of a tendency to go out.

The meat was removed from the brine, I washed it thoroughly and patted it dry. Then each slab has been hung on various levels in the smoker. I may swap them over later today or, after 10 hours, which is the length of time the oak tends to smoke for, re-smoke but swap the levels over then, so the upper ones get as much intensity as the lower.

Once the smoking is over, I will take them out and, according to my recipe, they'll look a little moist, so will need to be patted dry. Then I'm going to attempt to slice one slab up. I'm hoping my useless knives will work on the meat. I think if I refrigerate for an hour first, the meat will solid up a bit and be easier to slice. Then it'll be frozen...apart from the slab we eat for dinner this evening! Mmmmm.

There are alternatives which I intend to try next time including using maple syrup and maple sugar. I have NEVER seen maple sugar in the UK, so if anyone knows where I can get some, or if any of my US pals want to airmail a bag to me ;-)

On the other side of our thriving little cottage industries, the cider has had a bit of a disastrous start this year!

The first batch we made up may have been 'killed' by there being some sterilising fluid that got into the juice! None of the yeast got going and despite following lots of advice from the cider makers, we just couldn't get it to go.

However, with Mr Beehive going to get the pig last weekend, he happened to 'stumble' across a Zummerzet Zyder farm and managed to wangle himself two large sacks of proper cider apples for £4!!!!!!!!!!!

Hence the fact he is now brewing the 'real' stuff on the windowsills which is doing VERY well and all the gallons of wasted stuff :-( has been replaced. He's learned a cruel lesson this year, that is to say that sometimes you can 'over clean' and it be just as bad an outcome. We all need some good bacteria ;-)

Finally, a sneaky pic of my sis and me. We managed to take mum to see Wicked in Manchester for her birthday last weekend without her figuring it out until she was standing underneath the signs in front of the theatre! We had a lovely time and had such a laugh trying to give it away but her not getting any of it. This included me wearing my Wicked t shirt and trying to fly down some stairs and us throwing song titles and lyrics into conversation wherever we could. To the normal human being this made us sound like utter tits the whole day, however, maybe mum is used to us acting like drongos and therefore, nothing seemed out of character! Yay mum, cheers!

Eczema update

I've decided to do a little update on Master Beehive the elder's eczema since I last posted on the topic and to also highlight the National Eczema Society a little and a sponsored challenge we're undertaking in 2014 to raise money for research.

Interestingly, what has prompted this post was a lady in Sainsbury's this morning, collecting for Teenage Cancer.
I immediately dug into my pocket and handed over some cash, thinking how lucky I am that none of my children have this terrible disease and hoping that it will long, long remain that way. I thought about how I'd not want to be in the shoes of any parent in this situation with such a life threatening illness.

All of this is naturally very very true and I'm not even going to compare eczema and cancer, but what I am going to do is lay it out a little barer today, explain to you exactly how and why eczema is ALSO life threatening to many teenagers (and adults) in the UK today and hope I do that without sounding as if I'm belittling ANY condition, after all, we're all very true to the causes that we have to live through and endure and most of us will fight passionately in order to spread awareness or find help etc.

Let's start at the very beginning:

For those of us with children, we often find little rashes and marks on the skin of our newborns. Most of these are put down to unspecified rashes or perhaps an intolerance to some food or other. Some of these cases will go on to be diagnosed as atopic eczema. Atopic, just means 'on the skin' and is the most common form as far as i know, although there are many other types.

Most babies will grow out of it, a few won't. What they don't tell you is that a few will then get it again, perhaps through puberty, perhaps after a period of stress - no-one actually knows the true trigger. It's quite possible that, like the cold sore virus, it lies dormant in the body until moments of weak immunity and then it's triggered, perhaps by a bout of chicken pox or flu.

What I do know is that there are literally hundreds of people with eczema in the UK, of varying degrees, all of whom are individual and therefore to get a remedy that works for your child's skin takes time and trial and error.

During this period of trial and error, you will try creams - most likely beginning with Aqueous cream and progressing through things such as Aveeno, E45, Cetraben, Dermol, Emulsifying ointment etc.
Then there are the steroid creams and the hydrocortisones - (0.5%, 1%, 2%, elacon, Daktakort, Dermovate, Betnovate...) Of course, as any concerned parent you will be a little concerned about things such as skin thinning, so you'll do your darndest to find the root cause: hence you'll probably intermittently make his life miserable by removing dairy, or wheat, or gluten, or meat, or everything. You'll introduce herbal remedies, wash his bed linen every other day, freeze his cuddly toys to remove dust mites, hoover until you realise that your arm has actually become an extension of the vacuum cleaner. You'll keep food diaries, stress diaries, photographic diaries, environmental diaries, mood diaries, diaries of when he last did a poo and what the colour was....nah, alright, I am getting a little carried away there, but you understand the intensity!

During this time you're hoping that his skin doesn't get infected and he end up with Staph or Strep or Pneumonia or Impetigo. Yes, I think this is one area that people don't realise and that is the link between his immunity to infection once his skin is broken. Periodically he'll have to be on antibiotics to clear up an infection...that'll mean he'll get an upset tummy, so you'll need to get him on pro biotics. He'll sometimes need prednisilone because the topical creams won't even touch the sides. Sometimes the infection might hospitalise him or keep him off school for a week or more.

And how does it feel? Well, if you've never experienced it and believe me, I haven't, so this explanation comes from my observations of him and trying to associate it with things I DO know:

Imagine that you have been bitten by incredibly itchy sandflies all over your body. You itch the bites, you know that you shouldn't because it releases more histamine, but you have to. You scratch so frequently and violently despite taking anti histamine tablets, that you begin to break the skin. Over a long period of time, this skin becomes weak and susceptible to splitting open. At the breaks it weeps. Your skin is now red raw. Like a seriously bad sunburn...everywhere....all the while. Anything you put on your body such as clothes hurts so, so badly...if it doesn't stick to your skin first. Some of the earlier bites heal and bleed and heal and bleed, you know that you'll be scarred. Nothing helps. Water gives temporary relief, but then your skin dries up like a wafer and cracks open again. You put moisturiser everywhere every few hours, but it stings like antiseptic on a graze, the steroid does the same. You cry, it hurts on your face when you cry...salt stings.
That's eczema from an observer's point of view.

All the while he will be subjected to torments from kids whom he meets that don't know him, weird looks from passers by because he can sometimes look exhausted, red under the eyes and a little like a drug addict with all his skin flaking off.

The shock of being told that he needs to see a psychologist when he eventually gets to see a consultant dermatologist and specialist eczema teams hits home that he is in a category of kids who are at higher risk of suicide!

So, this is why Mr Beehive and I are climbing five peaks in the Lake District in 12 hours next Easter. We will do Crinkle Crags, Bow Fell, Esk Pike, Great End and Scarfell.
I will put a link on the blog so that, if you feel you can contribute, however small, we would be very grateful.

And, just for the updated record, he has, for the first time in three years, got smooth skin and his eczema is non visible and he is not itchy. We appear to have found the steroid/moisturiser package that is working for him. We are incredibly grateful for the consultant and her team at the JR and hope that if we can raise enough, then more children will get more help from teams like her on the NHS and through the eczema society's continual campaign for awareness and support.

Open your eyes

Yesterday evening I dropped the boys off at a Scout camp and, as I didn't have the youngest hobo with me, was able to meander back from the camp.

As I came over the brow of a small hill (believe you and me, my area only does small ones) the clouds appeared above the line of trees like snow topped mountains.

It completely took my breath away.

It's moments like this that help me recharge my batteries. That make me put the rest of the weeks' insanities into perspective.

Fluffy white clouds disguising themselves as grand and imposing mountain ranges, transporting me away from the Oxfordshire countryside on an Autumn Friday evening and into the depths of the Rockies or the Appalachian range. I can pretend, momentarily, that I'm driving close to Boulder or I'm on my way home to Connecticut to our little clapboard house in the woods.

But not once in a weekend, twice! Obviously someone felt that I had a lot of recharging to do this weekend!

Walking back from a meal at our local pub with LMB, the sky appears to have erupted this evening. There is a harsh chill to the air, not one to make your breath appear before you, but enough to make you realise that maybe you haven't quite put on enough layers for this October evening (and one to make you worry a little bit about those boys in that field on that camp!). There is also no moon.

There have been few times in my life where the skies have been clear enough to see the milky way. I remember clearly seeing it lying on a beach in South Africa back in 1990 as a teenager. A few years later, camping under the stars on the banks of the Dordogne river and then here, in this house. I have seen the milky way and this huge expanse of night sky here a few times, but nowhere else I have lived or travelled, have I seen it as clearly as these times.

I know it's been there for me to see but I just think that sometimes there are times when your eyes need to be opened wider to the beauty that surrounds you. Your eyes need to be hot wired to your heart and soul on these occasions. It may be there at other times but if your eyes aren't truly open, then you won't see. Tonight I needed to see so the banalities that came through a build up of tiredness and everyday pressures could then pale into insignificance.

Tonight I am just grateful for seeing.

Agh, just agh...that's all!

Apparently Bridget Jones is now as old as us. She's a widow and still living her life in measurements of wine units, caffeine consumption and waist line expansion. I'm sure her knickers are no smaller than ever they were either.

If my life were documented in Bridge's terms, I swear that this week and last would look something like this:

Number of hours spent in the car transporting kids hither and thither - 150

Loads of washing put on - 15

Number of trips to various hospitals and doctors - 3

Number of irritated letters sent to teachers in relation to out of order behaviour by the teacher (yes, don't go there!)  - 2

Number of water related issues - 2 so far, if you don't count the wooden floor that has risen yet again and the fact that, yet again, we have had to take it up...the other two incidents where water has come through the ceiling are minor, no, mere blips in comparison!

Number of weeks husband has been out of the country - 2 and counting

Number of turds picked up from the lawn - at least 35!! I have dogs that seem to feel it is their duty in life to ensure at least one poo has been done by the time I've picked up the previous 467!

Number of animals dead - one :-( a stiff guinea pig by Sunday evening :-(

Average time I have sat down each evening this week - 9.30pm

Average amount of hours slept - 5 - if I'm lucky enough not to have a child in my bed

Caffeine drunk - not enough

Wine drunk - seriously not enough

And this is with a part time job flung in the midst somewhere.

So how have all you Bridget Jones' coped this week ?

Hopefully normal jollies will resume once said husband is back in the country and I'm no longer the local cab service, water defence league, house elf, homework companion, caviidae funeral director, chief poo picker, dispute resolver and angry mama bear.

Toodle Pip!

Elderberries

What a hive of activity in my kitchen this afternoon.
After Mr Beehive and the younger two Beehives spending another morning shovelling horsey poo into our compost bins at the allotment, he came home to the spankingly clean kitchen - yes, that's right readers, I had even washed and scrubbed the floors and cleaned out some of the cupboards, it was that "touch my house and you die" kind of clean!
He decided that today was the day to turn this spankingly clean kitchen into a less than spankingly clean brewery!

Two demi johns later and still a good quarter bucket left of elderberries I decided to join him and make some cordial with the remaining.

Elderberry Cordial:

This is a very simple recipe, there are hundreds out there, but this has been the best one I've found so far:

Elderberries
Water
Granulated sugar
Cloves (whole, not powder)
Citric acid
Glass bottles with plastic lids

You need your elderberries in a pan, washed and taken off the stalk. You can do this with a fork.
Put them in a heavy bottomed pan or maslin pan and just put in enough water to cover them.
Gently bring them to the boil.
Then reduce the heat and let them simmer for 20 mins

Take it off the heat and then strain it either using a muslin or pressing through a sieve. I do both.
I tend to push through a sieve first and then squeeze the remaining juice out by wrapping in some muslin cloth.

Once you've done this it's time to put in the sugar.
Sterilise a measuring jug and pour your juice out.
For every 600mls (1pt) you need 1lb of sugar.
Return your juice and sugar to the maslin pan, add around 6 cloves per pint and gently allow to simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat.
Add a 1/4 tsp of citric acid

Allow the cordial to cool a little and then pour it into your sterilised bottles.

I used green coloured bottles because the cordial keeps so much better in the dark. You can keep it in the fridge and it will keep, unopened, for up to 2 years or so I've been told.

I'm not sure about its preservation without proper pasteurising or canning if you don't keep it in the fridge.

However, I really don't think ours will last that long, it's delicious!

My kitchen, on the otherhand, lasted even less time...they do make for a rather beautiful purple hue though do elderberries!

Eczema

Term has well an truly re-entered our lives this week. We're back in full flow for music lessons, clubs, parties, homework ad infinitum and tired kids.

Master Beehive the elder is suffering a lot at the moment with his eczema. In short, he suffered a lot as a baby, then appeared to grow out of it. It made a reappearance in year 7, two years ago and has remained ever since. It seems to crawl around his body, once we've got rid of it in one spot, it rears its ugly head elsewhere. I do think it is related to puberty and his body changing and believe it was triggered this time around by stress. As a baby he had a pretty stressful birth, so that could have been a big factor in its initial appearance. In year 7 he had all the stress of a new school, change of friends etc etc and he is an anxious child at times. Now of course it's clinging on to stay.
We have tried it all from a holistic angle: Chinese herbs, dairy free diets, vegetarian diets, he bathes in salt water, this gives him temporary relief, but after a couple of hours he dries again. The dryness isn't the problem, the problem for him is that in areas where he sweats, the skin gets so irritated that it rubs up sore against itself.
He has been through all the prescribed creams on the shelves. His current routine is Cetraben as a moisturiser and Elacon which is a mild hydrocortisone. We're also currently trying Salcura, both the zeoderm spray and the intensive repair. This has had some wonderful results for friends, but we're struggling to get on top of this particularly nasty flare up, thus the Salcura isn't touching the sides at the moment.

Before we went on holiday this summer he had to have a short course of oral steroids to remove the beginnings of an infection that was starting. This is something that I really hate the thought of having to do, but when your child can't see out of his eyes because they're so crusted and sore and his neck is sticking to his collar on his school shirt, there is no conversation.

If you have a child with such severe eczema, you weep to see the pain they're in and your inability to actually help. It's almost as if his body is rejecting the skin he's in.

He's lucky in so far as he has known his friends before his eczema got as bad as it is now, therefore they love him for who he is and however he sometimes looks, so he has a great support of pals. Strangers, on the otherhand, often stare, which is hard for him. I know people mean well, but when you have a condition that affects your appearance, staring is going to happen. I'm teaching him currently how to try to educate people that do ask questions. People are only curious and genuinely concerned for him. I, on the otherhand, feel more irritated when I'm shown a small patch of dried skin on someone's elbow and have to listen to how they have 'terrible eczema too'. Really, don't wish it on yourself. Skin conditions are the utter dogs bollocks.

Tomorrow I'm taking him to a salt cave. I've read some good reviews about the benefits of salt and perhaps this could give him some relief. He also sees the dermatologist again on Wednesday, so if the holistic approach needs a boost, hopefully we'll get one.

Mr Beehive and I are also going to do the Five Peaks in 12 hours challenge next Easter to raise money for the National Eczema society. It seems such a shame that with our expertise in medical science that there just isn't more understanding of the causes of, or successful cures for this condition. We will have a justgiving page up in the near future where we will be trying to raise sponsorship, watch this space.

In the meantime, if you have a child, in particular a teenager, who suffers from severe eczema, please get in touch as I'd love to know how you help them cope with it. You can leave me a note in the comments below.

She's a' blowin'

It's coming.
I can smell it and I can feel it.
The early mornings now are veiled in that amazing low level mist. I can't even photograph its beauty it's so raw and fragile. When I open the curtains and look over the allotment, a shroud of white, wispy mist that is not even as high as some of the plants, levitates until the day begins to warm.

That first fall of early leaves has begun.
The ancient horse chestnut next to the well in the village has huge fruit on its branches. I wonder if we'll see any this year or if everyone else will beat us to it.

We're starting the beginning of fall clear up. We were granted our allotment last week which we are thrilled with, however, as with most allotments that become available, it is neglected and in need of some tlc. Mr Beehive spent most of today upcycling some pallets to make a three bin composter down there and we began some of the clearing of the plastic and beer cans that seemed to have made their way into this long lost plot.
Our next task will be to have the area sprayed - yes, not exactly the organic start we hoped for but unfortunately the ground is too overloaded with those persistent weeds such as bindweed and stingers and, it's a rule that the allotment society seem to have, that they spray before the next owner moves in.
Once the round up has been applied and has done its job, ours will be to dig, dig, dig.
I'm trying to resist (and failing) looking at seed catalogues just yet as we have so much groundwork to do, however, I also don't want to miss the boat and find that I'm then behind in the greenhouse because I didn't think about the early spring soon enough.

In case you're wondering what we're going to do with the veggie plot at home, we are going to turn it over to herbs and more fruit bushes. We found this year that, for the first time, we had a good crop of raspberries and redcurrants. We didn't have too many blackcurrants as we haven't put so many in, nor blueberries. However, now we've been gifted more space at the allotment, we can use the space at home to put in more of these to enable us to have a realistic crop that we can actually do something with.

Here at home I'm drying peppers and chillis from the greenhouse to then preserve in oil I think, although I need to look up a good recipe after having been put off preserving things in oil on reading about garlic preservation and the risk of botulism. This pdf file is a good read to ensure, if like me, you have a glut of garlic this year, you harvest and preserve safely.

We've also lit the woodburner in the sitting room for the first time since winter even though we don't 'really' need it, there is a slight chill in the air these evenings and there is nothing nicer than watching the glow of flames through a nicely spring cleaned woodburner.

How is your early fall/autumn?

Off to secondary school: take two

Wow, it's a special eve here on 1st September 2013.
It's the eve before my younger son starts at Secondary school.

It's a huge transition for him, made easier because his older brother is already there, but still hard because he is a young 11 and he's leaving all his friends behind once again.




His first day is just the year seven groups and he'll only be in for half a day.
He's been away on scout camp this week, so luckily, he's exhausted so hopefully this will mean he'll crash and sleep without any anxieties or restlessness in apprehension of tomorrow's new adventure.

Whether his mother will sleep tonight is another story.