22 August 2023
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Switchel

What is switchel? A historic drink popular in the North Eastern United States of America that, like me, you’ve probably never tried before. Apparently it was popular with field labourers and reputed to be highly refreshing. A simple recipe is 500ml water, 25ml cider vinegar, 50g molasses and 2g ginger powder. You whisk it all together and serve cold.

There is the option of adding rum, which I didn’t have on hand. I also found I didn’t have ginger powder so used some of the syrup from a jar of stem ginger instead. The recipe is based on the proportions in the video below and I think it could be tweaked a bit more. I barely noticed the vinegar so that could probably come up in relation to the molasses. In fact, it is the molasses I’d probably reduce in order to bring down the sugar level. I’ll do some more experimenting and see where I get.

21 August 2023
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Six months of chainsawing(ish)

It was in February this year that I picked up a small electric chainsaw. It would be disingenuous to say that I’ve been using it for six months — I don’t have that amount of wood to saw up — but I’ve owned it for that time, it still works well and it continues to prove its worth.

It meant I got through all the logs I picked up in February very quickly. Many were larger than I’ve processed before and, if I was still on the handsaw, I’d have bulging muscles and probably still a good number of that batch to get through. I also used it to work with others to take down a medium sized tree at church, where half was clearly dead and the other half looked like it might be going that way.

This afternoon, I was out again, helping some friends prune a cherry tree that turned out to have a very generous interpretation of ‘dwarf’ and had grown beyond a height they now felt comfortable climbing up to. I took smaller branches out with loppers but the bigger ones, up to about 10-15cm in diameter, were easily removed with the chainsaw. Although the saw is small, that is an advantage, making it much easier to handle.

I doubt I’ve mastered chainsawing and I’ll probably revisit some of the safety videos before long to top up my knowledge. However, I know how to hold it safely, how to keep the oil topped and the chain sharpened and I think I’ll be glad of it many more times before I wear it out.

20 August 2023
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So, why do we sing in church?

To find out my answers, you can now watch the video of this morning’s service from All Saints church, Thorpe Acre with Dishley:

The service fades in partway through a song before the readings with my talk running from about 3:40 to 20:00 (followed by another song and an affirmation of faith).

19 August 2023
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BBQ

We broke out our barbeque grill for the first time in a long while today. Unfortunately I hadn’t quite completed the construction of a new garden bench from some of the old pallets we’ve collected but our camping chairs meant we could still sit down comfortably. The bench took longer than planned not only because pallet wood requires a lot of engineering to make good use of the material but also because most of the time I had available was spent on getting a decent foundation for the bench to sit on.

After all that hard work, relaxing at the BBQ was much appreciated.

18 August 2023
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Down in the Hole

I think a lot of people discovered Way Down in the Hole, by Tom Waits, when it featured as the theme tune for the TV series The Wire (2002-2008). Each season a different artist’s recording was used, with Waits’ original not being used until season 2.

Myself, I learned it from my stint backing up Mudslide Morris in that home of the Blues, Oxford (Oxford Blue, that is… Pantone 282). It is based on a 16 bar blues form and is one of those riff-based tunes that I’ve managed to get into my fingers enough that I can sing it at the same time. Here’s a bit of the version I presented (on double bass) at The Plough singaround in Loughborough on 12 August:

Way Down in the Hole

The next plough session is on 26 August – all welcome, whether with a song or two to share or as the much-appreciated audience.

17 August 2023
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Summer’s Bounty

Allotment - August 2023 — *Allotment – mid-August 2023*

There’s plenty going on at the allotment – things I’ve planted and an abundance of that tree spinach (Chenopodium giganteum) I mentioned the other day, which all came as ‘volunteers’ from last year’s plants.

I’ve also been blessed by wood chippings. A month or two back, a nearby oak tree was being taken down from where it had overgrown a local garden. It’s sad to see an oak go but one of my allotment neighbours spoke to the tree surgeons and arranged for the chippings to come to us rather than going down to the tip. Given that I’d been on the verge of ordering a load or two myself, I was very happy to find that I could dig into this huge pile to my hearts content for free.

That has let me finish covering most of the ground I’m not using with a decent layer of chippings, which is a better surface to walk on when it is wet and keeps weeds down. The chippings also help retain moisture in the soil. When I’ve had to push it aside to plant through, there are lots of happy little worms down there. That does seem to encourage some kind of animal digging around (badgers are what most plot holders seem to blame) but I can easily kick the chippings back in place and it seems to distract them from digging up my plants!

16 August 2023
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Making Walls

Jane and I both made it to one of the local ‘green gym’ sessions today. The task was repairing dry stone walls at the boundaries of Loughborough’s Outwoods area.

For the kind of wall we were working on, there were several things to bear in mind: put the length of the stones across the wall, keep the base wider than the top, aim for a flat surface and a good flat face to reject water from getting inside, use smaller stones to lock the bigger ones into place.

It is hard labour, both physically and mentally, as you try to solve a complex 3D problem while hefting heavy pieces of stone. However, it is also satisfying. Hopefully, if we return in a few months, we won’t easily be able to see the start and end of the bit we worked on (and the whole thing will still be standing!).

15 August 2023
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Tuba progress

Looking back on the blog, I see it is about thirteen months since I took up the tuba. I have to admit that I’ve slacked off on my practise a bit but I think I’ve made decent progress for that period. At a push, I can cover about a two and a half octave span and I’d mark the range from my lowest Bb to a couple octaves higher as fairly safe. Some of the songs the training band started on after Christmas had sections where I’d marked in that I’d need to play an octave lower and, by the time we broke up for the summer, I was able to manage all the notes as written.

I’m still a long way from mastery but I think I’ve moved past the stage of rank beginner too.

14 August 2023
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Why do we sing in church?

During the summer period, we have been having a series of “preacher’s choice” messages. It is bitty, compared to the series-based teaching we have worked through before the summer and having coming up in September, but summer is a bitty time, with people coming and going. This way, the various people who regularly preach have an opportunity to share things that are important to them without trying to shoehorn them into messages on other topics.

I’m up tomorrow morning and Sunday and I’m turning to the question of why we sing in church? I think I’ve got my material sufficiently ready but I’ll leave you to ponder it for a few days. Early next week, once we’ve filmed the Sunday talk and put that online, I’ll probably post the video here so you find out my thoughts.

13 August 2023
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Spinach like trees

In the summer of 2010, not long after purchasing our house in Oxford, I came across an intriguing plant called Chenopodium giganteum (also known as Tree Spinach or Magenta Spreen). I can’t recall how I heard of it but I found a source of seed somewhere and, by early the following summer, I was trying my first harvest.

The photo above was taken a week or so later. It is a striking plant, which can grow to about 6-8′ tall on a striped central stem. The heart of leaf clusters is decorated with a bright purple dust, which comes off during cooking but makes them unmistakable even when the seedlings are small.

Candidly, it isn’t my favourite leafy green but it is very easy to grow. You can tell that because there are some years when I haven’t even bothered to pick any and yet, if you visited my allotment, it is the most prolific crop up there at the moment, from a few volunteer seedlings that I transplanted from my back garden last year. It grows like a weed but is easy to identify and remove where you don’t want it (today’s contribution to a church lunch mainly came from one that I decided to take out of my polytunnel). It manages to be both beautiful and edible – not such a star on the plate as in the garden but a good green to back up things up. Equally importantly, it is hardly touched by pests and diseases in the UK climates I have tried it (unlike regular spinach or many other greens).

Looking back down the years, that was a good bit of research from 13-year younger me, wherever it was I discovered this fascinating food crop.

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