Grow your Own

Firstly, add four pinches of insecticide. Two pinches of fungicide. And two measures of herbicide.

After picking, store in conditions that reduce the oxygen from 21% to 3% and replace with the corresponding amount of CO2 . This is perfect for stopping the aging process so the salad still appears fresh, but it can't stop the goodness being lost with each day that passes.

Keep in this state for anything up to a month.

Then take some chlorine, 50mg per litre should do it, a measure the equivalent of 20 times the strength of your local swimming pool. And gently rinse.

Then simply bag, ready for sale.

- From Howies

And that's why we'll be growing our own salad leaves this year.

We're also going to be getting most of our veg delivered by a local Veg Box company, Farm Around North. They deliver to our area on a Wednesday. We'll be getting a standard veg box and a standard fruit bix at first, then seeing how things go.

Darlington Farmers' Market

Darlington Farmers' Market is third Friday of every month:

Darlington
Certified
Location: Market Place
Town: Darlington
3rd Friday Monthly
9:00 am to 4:00 pm

From NAFM.

Organic and local

We're trying to be healthier and wiser.

We're only buying meat from our local butcher; it's all locally farmed, well cared for, properly butchered and tasty gorgeous. We take our Ellie (2) to the butchers with us; she knows ham, pork, sausages and gammon all come from pigs, and that mince and beef come from cows.

At the supermarket, we try to buy organic where we can. Just about all of our meals are cooked from scratch, without even using sauces from jars. We're looking into a local organic box vegatable service, so we can buy even less from the supermarket. Even food that seems like a good choice at the supermarket is questionable; the salad bas and fruit are generally covered and washed in all sorts.

This summer, we're going to try growing some salad leaves from seed in growbags, and maybe some potatoes in pots, and tomatoes.

Ellie (usually) eats whatever we're having. When Libby (4 months) starts on solids, we'll be giving her selected bits of our meal blended up, rather than jars or preprepared food. We all sit at the table together to eat, and the TV is turned off. Sarah has started baking with Ellie every weekend, making things for our teas and my packed lunches.

Our car sits on the front for much of the week. It gets used occasionally on a weekend, and on a Monday; very rarely at any other time. We're going to get a smaller car next time, or maybe not bother replacing it. I ride my bike to work, Sarah and the kids walk just about everywhere.

I'm going to start putting up some links and things here related to all this, and photos of the veggies and food.

I'm back baby!

Wireless internetting, with a fresh XP install. Fabbo.

Also, drinking a lurverly 15 year old expression of Laphroig single malt my dad brought me back from Scotland. Thanks, dad.

Swaledale - Moresdale Road and Fremington Quarry

Another quick post before I forget.

Last Saturday (18th February) I met up with a few guys from the Hamsterley Trailblazers forum, for a ride in Swaledale. Great ride, with cool people, in fantastic weather. Of the five of us, three were riding full-sus and I was the only one with rigid forks, but I didn't lose too much time on the downhills. The climbs were much easier than I remembered them being when we rode their every week; riding to work every day is definitly good for you!

Distance: 17 km
Surface: Off-road
Time: 2 or 3 hours (broken watch)
Weather: Cool, but dry and sunny
Bike: Inbred, with 2.1″ knobbly tyres

Home internet access problems

I currently have net access problems at home, which the nice man on the NTL helpline pinpointed as being a problem with my computer, rather than the modem. Unfortunately, I need a guaranteed working laptop more than I need net access at the moment, so I'm not fixing it till I get the current lot of marking done, which means no net access at home for a while (and I've had none for 2 weeks already). Plus, between kids and work I just don't have the time to get it fixed at the moment. As I'm now just online at work updates to this site will be even less frequent than they have been...

Site borked

Looks like my Del.icio.us bookmarks include is broken and that's messing up the site. I might fix it at some point, if I get time or can be bothered. Or, it might fix itself.