Food Forest Fruit year one

The Food Forest is starting to take shape and offering an abundance of fruit even in its first year. In this video I have a look at some of the fruit that is growing well at the moment.

It you can't play the video below, you can see it on YouTube here.

Behaving Badly, thoughts on the human condition

Here's a slightly off topic post, but all the same one that I feel very strongly about. The gist of this is 'please be nice to one another'.

It's not so much to ask really, but increasingly I see less and less evidence of folks being nice to each other. It seems to me that in the last year or so things have changed, the mood has changed (and not for the better) there is a level of acceptance that people can be horrid, rude, bullying and downright aggressive towards other people and that it is no longer acceptable to have differing opinions. Nowhere can this be found more, I feel, than online. 

If this video will not play on your phone, tablet etc. you can watch it on YouTube here.

So here's the thing and it is, of course, just my opinion - in a time when even the leaders of nations seem incapable of conducting themselves with dignity, self-control or compassion, I think it is even more important that we keep ourselves in check and behave towards others in a, well, humane way.

As I said, it is just my opinion and if you don't agree with me, well that's okay by me.

Structure and Form on the Homestead

As the wind continues to batter our home, I have managed to do a few tasks, but it's certainly slowing down the growth in the garden.


If you can't see the video below, you can see it on YouTube here

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Orange Sponge Cake with Dark Chocolate Icing

 After I had posted a photograph of this cake on social media I was asked for the recipe, so here it is.

Ingredients

4 ozs lightly salted butter
4 ozs sugar (we use unrefined granulated sugar)
2 eggs (medium to large)
4 ozs gluten free self-raising flour (standard flour works just as well if you don't have a gluten intolerence)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 pinch sea salt
1 and 1/2 teaspoons orange extract (if you don't have this, use the finely grated zest of one large orange)

For icing
1 oz lightly salted butter
icing sugar
cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

Preheat oven to 375F, 190C, Gas mark 5 and grease and flour two 7 inch cake tins

Cream the butter and sugar together
Add the eggs and stir well until combined
Add the vanilla extract, salt and orange extract
Add the self-raisng flour and fold in carefully.
Divide between two cake tins.

Bake in the centre of the oven until golden.
Turn out onto a cooling rack and leave until cool.

For the icing.
In a bowl combine the butter with some icing sugar and cocoa powder at a ratio of approximately 50:50, this should give you a dryish mixture. Add vanilla extract and a very little cold water. Mix to a smooth paste, adding drop by drop of water if your icing needs to be smoother or less dry.

Cover one layer of cake with icing, put the second layer on cake on top and carefully cover with icing.

Did MY channel on YouTube get HIJACKED?

Our new friends Jonah and Trish agreed to an idea I put forward (not my idea, I can't take the credit for it) and today we have taken over each other's YouTube channels, so today you can see the video that Willow Creek Homestead would have put on their channel and to see my June Homestead Tour, you will need to head over to their channel.

Don't worry, there are a couple of easy to click links on this video that will take you to my June Homestead Tour. If you enjoy their video, please subscribe to their channel, they have some super animals and a fabulously positive outlook on life and I have spent hours quietly watching their vlogs and immersing myself in the 'hard on the body, good for the soul' life that they lead.

If you can't see the video (sometimes it doesn't show on a mobile device), you can see today's video here.

I hope you enjoy getting to know Willow Creek Homestead.

Our 10 Reasons for Homesteading

There's a really lovely, thriving and supportive network of folks who are smallholders and homesteaders (the American name for smallholding) that I've bumped into via social media. While I've known this about Twitter and Facebook for a while, I didn't know until recently that a similar network existed via YouTube.

Anyway, one of this network had a fabulous idea for a collaborative challenge whereby vloggers are invited to make a video about a particular subject. This one is about our reasons for choosing to be smallholders.

As usual, if you can't play the video on screen, you can watch it on YouTube here.

I have depression, so what! | Dealing with depression and hypothyroidism

If you can't see the video (which happens sometimes on a mobile phone) you can watch it on YouTube here.



Please share this vlog far and wide to help raise awareness of some of these issues and to give a small voice to those unable to speak up for themselves at the moment.