We published the first five entries in our list of 2009′s ten top moments on the plot yesterday, looking back on our first full year with the chickens, our experiments with home-brew, pickling onions and salvaging bad fruit from the greenhouse. It’s been a varied year with its up and its downs in terms of self sufficiency. Here are the second five entries in our list:
6. Making cider
We’re lucky enough to live close to some public land on which there’s a large, old apple tree that nobody seems to pick from. Rather than see the fruit go to waste, we picked it ourselves and crushed the haul to make cider. We haven’t been able to drink the results yet as they have to wait in the bottle until April, but we’re counting the days.
7. Old fashioned lemonade
Old fashioned lemonade isn’t fizzy. Neither should it be drunk without first diluting it. Just two of the things we discovered when recreating a 150-odd year old recipe in a saucepan at home. The results were tasty, though.
8. The shooting sunflowers
We don’t grow flowers. There are some in the garden, but they were here when we moved in. The exception is sunflowers, as they produce seeds that we can feed to the chickens. This year we picked the spots where we’d grow them more carefully, and the results were pretty impressive.
9. Fitting panniers to the salvaged bike
We do a lot of our shopping at the market and take advantage of the fact that we live close to town to dodge the traffic and parking charges by cycling in. Fitting panniers to a bike we’d salvaged transformed it from an old jalopy to a useful, eco-friendly means of transport that is fun to use and saves us money.
10. How to make yoghurt
This was a great way to close the year. We eat a lot of yoghurt so decided to try making our own – not necessarily to save money, but just because it was interesting. Our first experiment was a complete flop, but second time around we made a litre of lovely Greek yoghurt in time to serve it to guests on Boxing Day.
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