Waark!com

No, I’m not here, but I’m forward thinking which means whilst you read this, I’m probably either drinking at a party, out and about (it’s two years today since I proposed to my now wife) or asleep at home.  Either which way, I’m not on my mac.

So what’s your new years resolution?  Mine is one of blogging and sustainability.  I’m going to make a lot of effort to make my life more green, especially with the forthcoming purchase of a new house (unless something changes over the next month) and the DIY renovations I’ll be making.   I’m going to make more effort to evolve the blog too.  Just you wait…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music/newsid_10000000/newsid_10003400/10003411.stm

Nothing like a bit of consumerism to get the blood pumping.  Of course in reality this has a lot to do with Gaming Theory - which I was reminded about last night by QI.  How does the charts work in gaming theory, well compare the music industry to the tobacco industry, granted one product allegidly gives you lung cancer, the other just persues you for damages in intellectual property for filesharing.  Both of which are guarenteed to give you a bad day.   But to answer my own question, each music promoter has to push equally hard spending hard cash to make sure their artist is in the top 40, be that through childrens TV, the now defunt TOTP, magazines etc, or x-factor.  They can’t stop because if they do, the other person takes home the bacon.  If they all stopped, everyone would have equal chance of business.  Sort of.

Then some group of internet people get fed up with listening to repackaged barf and decide to protest.  The promoter doesn’t really loose out here because Sony BMG still gets the same (if not increased) revenue, the artist will still get the same cash and less of this pretty much undeserved self hyped fame.  In the meantime Rage Against the Machine will get a bit more promotion hopefully helping yet another generation pick up the political torch.

And mostly, it’ll continue to annoy Simon Cowell.

Apologies for my absence, but I’ve recently had a hernia operation which has kept me from doing anything of substance.  So it’s about time I focus more on the site.

Foam backed wallpaper.  Novamura.  God I hate that stuff.  Our kitchen was obviously wallpapered with love and attention.  It was seemingly cut perfectly to fit round window frames, boilers, even behind the fixed pipes and radiators.

Novamura was marketed in the 70’s as pasting the wall not the paper – its thickness and polystyrene backing meant it didn’t shrink once put on and there is various rumours that you could peel it back off and wash it in a washing machine.

Give it to a small child and they’d instantly stick their nails in it which it would never recover from. 

Three days later, we’ve almost managed to exterminate it from our kitchen.  It seems it works best for us if you steam it a bit so that it shrinks and becomes a little tougher and you can then peel it off in 2″ sections.  It’s horrible.

Most green kitchen ideas use the idea of sustainability and ask you to hand over cold hard cash.  It’s green profiteering.  We’re going down the route of removing the rubbish from our flat and reusing it, whilst using things like the cupboard shells stay in place and are freshened with a 2nd hand set of stylish reused cupboard fronts from ebay.  The taps will be refurbished and sold on ebay and given modern 2nd hand ones.   The cycle of reuse continues.

The Novamura will however end up in a landfill site.  The toxic chemicals in it and the wallpaper paste make it impossible to use in any other way and it was badly damaged and peeling off the walls, so I couldn’t leave it there evermore…

Regardless whether you’re in the UK or the US you may be paying too much for your liquid fertiliser.

Making your own is so easy you’ll wonder why you never did it before!

All you need is a watertight container (such as a bucket) and err, some nettles and water.  Stick nettles in water in bucket and leave to brew.  Tada! Horendously smelly fertiliser!

More indepth details here: http://www.nettles.org.uk/nettles/activities/nettlemanure.asp though whether the additional steps make the blindest bit of difference in the long term I wouldn’t like to say.  What I do does the same job, it may just take a little longer.

My newly made fertiliser container is made from a discarded council green waste bin.  I drilled a 25mm hole in it, stuck in a water butt tap and filled with nettles and water.  The good part is that the bin has a close fitting flip lid.  This stuff stinks, but at least now I don’t need worry about offending the neighbours.

There’s some talk about even using horsetail and how to make a nettle brew smell nicer http://www.seasonalgardener.com/Tips/Liquidplantfertilizer/tabid/3190/Default.html

My last post was about overwintering lettuce and onions – now I’m trying garlic too. My garlic is always overwhelmingly unimpressive. I planted elephant garlic this year and what I planted I pretty much got back, except that it had infact gone from one clove to one-clove-split-into-eight-but-the-same-size. Which I don’t count as sucess.

So I’m thinking I’m not planting early enough, so I’m planting some store bought garlic now. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to give up. Three years and no bleeding garlic, it’s just plain wrong. It’s supposed to be easy!

Green manures are very useful: quick growing, nutrient rich and cheap. I bought half a pint for about a quid. You sow directly onto the ground, wait 4-8 weeks and dig in. For dense soils wait until it flowers and the extra fibers improve the drainage too.

Mustard is apparently the easiest to erradicate when you’re ready to plant and you can do this most the year. I’m sowing mine now on last years beds.

Two visits to the plot this weekend – it’s been a long time.  It’s really amazing how many times you can not visit your plot.

The last two years I’ve always missed out on harvesting season and this was no exception! Loads of over ripe tomatoes, corn was set hard and raspberries shrivelled on the plant.

We still got a respectable harvest – hundreds of potatoes, some edible sweetcorn, loads of tomatoes, courgettes, chilis, beetroot etc.  No pictures though

The pumpkins are looking quite fine – small though they are.  I’m looking forward to carving a few faces and getting some lovely pumpkin cakes from them.

Apart from harvesting we also pulled up the dead stuff – this meant the three sisters bed was pulled to pieces and the last of the early potatoes dug up (they were already starting to reroot to grow over winter!).   On the sunday I filled both raised beds up with plenty of compost from the heap.  This had the unfortunate effect of throwing my back.  So todays link is curtosy of my agony:

http://backandneck.about.com/od/activitiesofdailyliving/ss/shovelingbackst.htm

There are fewer pursuits better than spending an afternoon on a boat with beer, friends and a fishing rod.

Especially when not only do you catch a fish, you actually catch the only fish of the voyage.

Followed by more beer on the shore at the local pub, followed by scampi and chips.  mmmm.

I was lucky to get the invite out – my friend Ben has been working hard with his family to restore this old boat (a snip at £6,000!?) which he assures me is slowly sinking off its moorings on the River Deben.  It was the first time I’d used my fishing gear since around 2000, since then it’s been sitting in my parents garage awaiting liberation.  As Ben and his brothers fancy themselves as amateur fishermen I’ve left my rods and line for them on the boat – this’ll mean they won’t need to rush off to buy some (bit more eco friendly) and as it’s a proper sailing yacht they can sneak up on that sea bass!  Hopefully it won’t be my last fishing session with them.

My next step is to do the Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall thing and go properly out to see to catch myself some eatin’ fish.

Our shed last year was broken into.  It wasn’t much of a pain because they actually left more than they took – I gained a really good spade and fork from the experience.  I did ask around whose they might be, but the rightful owner was never found.

Now it’s not powertools they’re after, it’s food.  I’m assuming that the credit crunch really has started to bite around our area – it’s a very poor area and a lot of families are on benefits.  It’s difficult to describe how annoying it is to pop down the allotment to pick something up to find some blighter has been there first and pinched the one surviving spagetti squash you were looking forward to…

I hope they’re really in need and are the sort of people with children to support and aren’t spending their money on drink, drugs and cigarettes or just see my plot as an easy meal.  I’ll never know of course, but I can hope karma keeps an eye on them.

Similarly if you’re feeling particulously generous today, why not give a visit to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4equalsides/the-square-project and donate a bit of spare cash.  The reason I sponsored her (and her team) is many sided.  First of all I have absolutely no interest in fashion what so ever.  In fact I’m a poor ethical consumer on this front, I’ve generally bought cheap and cheerful probably employing a small child labour force to satisfy my capitalistic urges.  The reason for this is because I’m 6ft 5ins and nothing fits me.  The ethical brands usually stop short of my particular sizes because I’m not average.  I have to buy whatever I can find when I find it.  Take shoes for example.  Last year I needed a pair of steel toecap shoes to wear out in my ambulance.

How many shops did I visit? 17.  How many pairs of shoes did I find that were a) steel toecapped and b) fit me? Answer: one.  All were specialist shops for industrial use, but only one actually bothered to get something in size 13.  Even normal shoes I walk into 95% of shops and they stop at size 12.  Occasionally I get a choice, last time it was ‘blue or white’.  I can’t buy online because sometimes I’m a size 13, sometimes I’m a size 14.

It’s not disimilar with trousers or shorts, if I find something that fits, regardless of its ethical background I have no choice other than to buy it.  Get it from a charity shop? Nope, that’s a joke too, anyone my height never throws out clothes, you have to wear them till they drop off.

A while back I found a ethical producer of shoes using american labour and recycled materials.  Other than they went bankcrupt before I got to their website again they stopped at size 12.  I’ve tried and failed.

So whilst I want to buy hemp shirts, bamboo shoes etc, I can’t.  Meantime I’ll support ethical clothing how I can.

For some it’s about putting food on your plate, some it’s so they know where their food comes from, for some it’s being able to eat organic, some the social, some for the fitness and others it’s just having that little retreat away from daily life.

For me, it’s definately all about the eating.  My wife has made loads of jam this year – it’s her first attempt and whilst a large amount hasn’t set she’s finally excelled herself with a (pictured) raspberry and gooseberry jam.

I’d love to say the gooseberries and raspberries came from the plot, but they didn’t – mainly from the inlaws back garden, but it’s still only got a couple of food miles at best and the jars are reused from our daily routine.

The other picture shows an evening vegetarian meal we made – the centerpiece was processed Quorn (quorn steaks with a goats cheese and cranberry topping breadcrumbed!), but the rest was from the allotment (carrots, potatoes and courgette).

It should be noted that often you’ll end up digging up potatoes to find a lot of very, very small potatoes.  I like to boil them and mash them with a bit of milk, butter, salt n’ pepper.  No need to bother with this peeling m’larky – the skin is full of nutrients and I’ve never seen the point of spending endless hours peeling just to get silky smooth mash.  Give your mash some texture!