December 2016 home farmer extract

MAKING THE GOOD LIFE EVEN BETTER! For dreamers and realists

December 2016 | Issue 105 | £4.25

Y YOUR KEC L A I T C A R TO P SELF- Y SUFFICIENC

Starting with

SHEEP

Plus…

MAKING A MICRO-DAIRY PROFITABLE

AN EXPERT’S GUIDE TO ANIMAL NUTRITION

…and don’t miss

DOT TYNE’S SMALLHOLDER’S DIARY

9 771756 546074

TRY OUR FAB PUDDING AND PIE RECIPES

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WEEKEND DIY HERB PLANTER PROJECT

December 2016 | Issue 105 | £4.25

PLANTING A LIVING WILLOW FENCE

LIVESTOCK | GROW YOUR OWN | RECIPES | FORAGING | CRAFTS | DIY

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WHAT’S INSIDE 03

THE EDITOR’S BIT Paul ponders…

06 NEWS

Home Farmer related news.

10 10 STEPS TO GREAT HARVESTS

Mike Hedges provides ten

simple steps to great organic harvests.

14 ON THE PLOT

John Harrison discusses crop

rotation, seeds and December chores.

18 GROWING BABY VEG

Baby veg crops early and is

expensive, so Mark Abbott-

Compton grows his own.

YOUR KEY TO PRACTICAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY

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GARDENING UNDER COVER A lull in sowing lets Sue Stickland plan for 2017 while enjoying the winter harvest.

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GOING WILD IN THE GARDEN Elizabeth McCorquodale’s been spying on the Garden Spider this month.

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SEASONAL FORAGING David Winnard finds three very different mushrooms, and makes cocktails.

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KEEPING TURKEYS Turkeys can become very tame, making them a real pleasure, writes Terry Beebe.

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A SMALLHOLDER’S DIARY Dot Tyne’s September entries include foul weather, livestock sales and red mite.

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HOW TO BE A SMALLHOLDER Debbie Kingsley gives sound advice on sourcing livestock for a smallholding.

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THIS MONTH’S ISSUE 46

KEEPING SHEEP Jodi Fenwick looks at some of the work involved before you get your sheep.

50 FEEDING YOUR CHICKENS

Jo Montagu BSc (Hons) of

Marriage’s Feeds looks at chook nutrition.

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OMG! WE’RE SMALLHOLDERS! Gillian Anthony shares her experiences of becoming a ‘surprise’ smallholder.

70 GYO CHRISTMAS DINNER

Gaby Bartai prepares a

complete Christmas

feast using home-grown produce.

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XMAS GIFT IDEAS With Christmas around the corner, we consider gifts for the home farmers in your life.

88 LIVING WILLOW FENCES

Helen Babbs plants a ‘fedge’

– a living willow fence – on her smallholding.

A PROFITABLE MICRO-DAIRY Michael Wale visits Maple Field Milk, a successful co-operative that trades locally.

92 DIY KITCHEN HERB PLANTER 74 COUNTRY WINES

Elizabeth McCorquodale makes

Sylvia Kent creates a Christmas attractive suspended window

‘quicky’ fruit juice wine and three shelving for herbs. liqueurs.

58 GROW YOUR OWN QUEENS 96 HOME FARMER CLASSIFIEDS

Claire Waring shows how 78 CHRISTMAS PUDDINGS

Courses – breeders – seed

to rear a few queens to improve Seren Hollins charts the history

merchants – livestock for sale,

your colonies.

of Christmas puds and prepares etc.

three different types.

62 THE ACCIDENTAL YARN SELLER 98 SMALLHOLDER LISTINGS

Ruth Tott meets multi-talented 81 PORK PIE HEAVEN

A list of the UK’s smallholder

‘accidental smallholder’,

Dickinson & Morris, synonymous groups and societies.

Rosemary Champion.

with Melton Mowbray pork pies,

shares a recipe.

December 2016

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WINTER PLOT CHARLES GROWS PREPARATION IT P

1.

LOOK AFTER YOUR SOIL

l

If you didn’t sow a green manure crop in the autumn, you can protect bare soil during the winter months by using autumn leaves and grass cuttings as a mulch (cover), if necessary covering with netting or fleece to prevent the wind blowing everything away.

This will help to stop nutrients from leaching, subdue weeds, and keep the ecosystem in the soil alive and kicking. l By their nature, many organic plant foods such as seaweed meal, compost and manure need time to break down and start working in the soil, releasing nutrients to the plant gradually for strong, sustained growth. Plan ahead and work them in a couple of months before you will be planting out. l Keep off wet soil in all parts of the garden to avoid compacting and damaging the structure. If you absolutely have to walk on soil in the wet, stand on a plank to spread your weight ‒ this is especially important for clay soil. l Start planning your crop rotation for next season’s vegetable plot, and test the nutrient levels using a simple soiltesting kit to highlight any deficiencies that will need correcting before the new season.

2. l

MAKE COMPOST

The composting process takes longer in winter, but with a little effort you can keep things ticking along. The biggest issue is too much moisture, and this can be dealt with by turning your compost heap regularly to aerate it, keep it ‘working’ and generate heat.

Also, make sure you’re adding enough dry matter to balance out the large amounts of wet waste coming out of the kitchen just now. Crumpled up

Mike Hedges is MD of Chase Organics, the edge ike H M company behind Thes Organic Gardening Catalogue. He is a passionate, self-taught organic gardener. All purchases from The Organic Gardening Catalogue help fund Garden Organic, the UK’s leading authority on organic growing, supporting individuals and communities on their journey towards healthy, chemical-free growing. organiccatalogue.com Telephone: 01932 878570

only good things for your garden!

Christmas card envelopes and bits of cardboard are very useful to soak up the excess, keep the air flowing, and they will also provide the carbon element needed. l Any worm bins kept outside will need to be well insulated with sacking or bubble wrap to help the worms survive winter conditions. If possible, find a site in a shed or garage, as the warmer they are, the more the worms will consume. l Collect fallen autumn leaves through the winter months to make leaf-mould.

Pile them up or put them into large bin-bags, keeping them damp. This will provide humus-rich soil conditioner in the spring.

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10 SIMPLE WINTER STEPS

put the plant back inside and close the door. l Remove dead/dying foliage regularly from overwintering plants to prevent mildews and moulds taking hold.

4.

CARE FOR YOUR PLOT

If you have winter-cropping or overwintering vegetables growing, here are a few tips to get the best out of them: l

As winter starts to bite, cover tender plants to protect them from frost damage. l Don’t forget to water during dry spells ‒ even if it’s not hot, they still need enough to survive. l Place straw around the base of parsnips to prevent the ground freezing, which can make harvesting difficult. l Harvest leeks, parsnips, winter cabbage, sprouts and remaining root crops as required – they are quite happy where they are until needed, and the fresher you eat them, the more nutritional value they have.

st to a great organic harve

Ten practical and simple ideas from Mike Hedges of The Organic Gardening Catalogue to get 2017 off to a flying start

3.

DE-BUG

The early months of the year are a good time to get everything cleaned and disinfected. Fungal spores and insect eggs hide away in nooks and crannies and can come back to haunt us next season, so dealing with them while dormant is the best plan. Made from plant extracts, Citrox is an excellent natural cleaner, able to reach into the corners of pots, seed trays and greenhouse staging. It is also good for bird tables, feeders and baths to protect our feathered friends from winter bugs. l Speaking of bugs, whitefly will often colonise overwintering potted-up

l

l

fuchsia plants. Use plant-based contact insecticides such as Pyrol or Agralan Whitefly Killer to keep numbers down when it’s too cold for biological control. If any plants are badly infested with whitefly, carry them outside carefully so as not to disturb them.

Once outside, shake them vigorously to dislodge the whitefly, then quickly

Protect kale, winter cabbage, and broccoli with netting to prevent damage by pigeons. l Remove and compost dead and yellowed leaves on and around winter brassicas, as they can encourage fungal diseases and harbour pests. l For next season’s peas and beans, prepare a ‘compost trench’ using the old stems from Brussels sprouts, kale and other tough brassicas once cropping finishes. The trench should be about a spade’s depth. Lay the stems along the bottom of the trench, then roughly chop them up with a sharp spade. Other uncooked vegetable scraps can also be added. As the veg

December 2016

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SEASONAL FORAGING

FORAGING IN DECEMBER David Winnard discovers two edible mushrooms, a striking but inedible one with a confusingly culinary name, and makes some foraged cocktails

David Winnard David is never happier than when he has a camera in one hand and a foraging basket in the other. He organises tours and workshops, including wildlife photography trips.

More information can be found on his website: discoverthewild.co.uk

I

t has been an interesting month.

The Forestry Commission seems to have backed down on their ‘look but don’t touch’ policy for the New Forest (see last month’s article). It’s certainly not the Commission’s role to create the laws of the land, and it was a short-sighted idea. However, I do believe it is indicative of what’s to come. We shall no doubt be engaged in more and more battles to protect our right to our countryside.

I am hearing more and more from other foragers about new restrictions on where they can and can’t forage. These are sad times indeed.

This month I have been playing a game of ‘do you really know what you are picking?’ It’s not a game I recommend, and I have only played it with close friends.

When people find out what I do, they constantly tell me that they choose to pick only the Field Mushroom (Agaricus campestris) because it is the only one of which they can be certain. Whilst I agree it is an easy mushroom to identify out in the field, I often ask about a few key features, then mix them up with lookalikes to see if

One of the UK’s most common edible mushrooms: the Field Mushroom (Agaricus campestris).

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vensis) people genuinely know what they ms (Agaricus ar Horse Mushroo are looking for. I am not doing this simply to catch people out ‒ I want to know if they really do recognise a particular mushroom, or if they just pick it together with other lookalikes, which runs the risk of picking something poisonous from the same family.

So, off we went on a fungi hunt.

I knew we would find two species on which I wanted to test people: Macro Mushroom (Agaricus urinascens) and how they were just like the ones they and Horse Mushroom (Agaricus arvensis). had picked when they were younger.

We found a number of different species One even said Macro Mushrooms were along the way, but when we found our exactly the same as the Field Mushrooms target specimens (both small and not he picks off his local patch. fully grown) everyone said they were Field I felt slightly smug, I have to confess, Mushrooms. I didn’t disagree with them but I’d proved something. The Agaricus ‒ at least not out loud. They then took family actually contains many species, all home their finds, messaging me later to say similar looking, and some, like the Yellowthey’d enjoyed the ‘Field Mushrooms’, Stainer (Agaricus xanthodermus), which we

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Aniseed Funnel (Clitocybe odora).

have discussed before, are very poisonous.

In fact, this latter species is the one which accounts for most of the mushroom poisonings in the UK. It is always incredibly important to question yourself when picking plants and fungi from the wild; ask why is it this particular species rather than a lookalike, and what else might it possibly be?

Only when you have eliminated everything else are you left with 100 per cent certainty of identification. If you are going out picking mushrooms, ask yourself how confident you are with regard to lookalikes, and remember: only ever pick something if you are 100% sure you know what it is!

This month we are having more fun with fungi, with three species to look out for: two edible, one not quite so edible; and we have some foraged cocktails to try out, too.

Happy Foraging!

ANISEED FUNNEL (Clitocybe odora)

I was asked the other week what my favourite mushroom was, and I couldn’t answer – at least not until I recently rediscovered this lovely blue/green mushroom with a strong smell of aniseed.

It wasn’t the first time I had encountered it, but it brought back lots of memories.

It’s one of the first mushrooms my grandma taught me to identify, and I still remember her setting me the challenge of finding it for her amongst all the undergrowth. The fact that it is such a lovely colour and smells of aniseed makes it a clear favourite.

Before I discuss using it, let me say that you should only ever pick this mushroom when fresh, and by that I mean strongly blue/green and totally smelling of aniseed.

Older or drier specimens can lose their

colour and scent, and should be avoided due to a risk of confusing them with other poisonous mushrooms. Remember: only pick distinctly blue/green specimens smelling strongly of aniseed. And nor is it a mushroom I would recommend eating in the normal way; however, it is wonderful when dried and ground into a powder for use as a seasoning.

There are some other blue/green mushrooms that are not fit to be eaten, but they lack any smell of aniseed, and as that is principally what you are after, it should not be a problem. Occurring commonly in leaf litter, especially beech, they can be found throughout autumn and into winter so long as there are no hard frosts. They never seem to grow very large and are usually quite solitary, occasionally being found in small groups, but when you find them in one area you can usually find enough to make an excellent aniseed mushroom powder. The gills are pale, and small specimens start off with rounded caps, becoming flatter as they mature, then funnel-shaped.

The distinctive Aniseed Funnel cap.

December 2016

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FEEDING YOUR LIVESTOCK

ition r t nu l a m ni a o t e d ui g F H The Part 1

CHICKEN FEED

Jo Montagu, BSc (Hons), nutritionist for Marriage’s Feeds, considers the dietary requirements of your chickens

T

here are many different poultry feeds available on the market today.

With vivid packaging and ranging costs, choosing the right product can seem like a challenge. Knowing the differences between feeds and the importance of their main components will help you to make the best choices for your poultry.

Jo Montagu Jo has a BSc (Hons) in Animal Nutrition and Physiology, and is the nutritionist for Marriage’s Feeds.

She owns an Exmoor pony called Toad and they are regulars on the show circuit scene where she competes. Jo also has a small flock of bantams.

WATER: THE ESSENTIAL NUTRIENT Before selecting the perfect feed, remember that there is an essential nutrient in a chicken’s diet without which they cannot survive, and that is water.

Half of a chicken’s body is made up of water, and eggs are made up of around 65 per cent water. During the winter months it is important to check that drinkers are not frozen, and that a continuous supply of fresh water is available. Feeders should be emptied and

cleaned regularly, as the damp winter weather can encourage feed to go mouldy.

If a hen is deprived of water for twentyfour hours, she may be staggering around, sitting hunched, or lethargic. Fresh, clean water should be provided immediately.

If she will not drink, dip her beak into the water to encourage her, and if the problem persists, seek veterinary advice.

BUILDING A SOLID FOUNDATION FROM CHICK TO GROWER Good quality nutrition right from the start will give your chicks the best possible chance of survival. When a chick is born it will live off its yolk sac for twenty-four hours, but then a good quality chick crumb should be introduced.

Chick crumbs have a fine consistency and are available with or without a coccidiostat. A coccidiostat aids the

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prevention of coccidiosis, a disease that can be fatal in young chicks. It will give the extra protection that chicks require and enable them to become strong and healthy.

Coccidiostats are not suitable to feed to ducks or ducklings.

A good quality chick crumb has a high protein content, typically 18 per cent, and should be fed for approximately the first five weeks before moving on to a grower’s feed. Grower’s feeds are either pellets or mash. When moving from crumb to pellet, gradually mix the pellets in with the crumb over the period of a week. Once a grower’s feed has been introduced we are aiming for steady, gradual growth, and a lower protein content of around 15 per cent will help enable this. Having correct levels of the essential amino acids methionine and cysteine present within your grower’s diet encourages excellent continued growth and feathering. A grower’s diet should be fed until point of lay, which is approximately nineteen weeks, but can vary depending on breed, type, and time of year. From point of lay, a layer’s pellet or layer’s mash ration should be provided.

Layer’s pellets.

Layer’s mash.

for your birds. If you do change from one feed to the other, it is important to do so gradually. Mix in a little of the new feed and slowly increase the ratio over a week.

Not only does this give the hens’ digestive systems time to adapt to the new feed, it also allows them to become familiar with its appearance. Hens select their feed by size and texture, so changing from one form to another may mean that they do not initially recognise the new feed as something to eat. They will get used to it in time, though.

WARM MASH – A WINTER FAVOURITE

“If a hen is deprived of water for twentyfour hours, she may be staggering around, sitting hunched, or lethargic” LAYER’S PELLETS OR LAYER’S MASH? There is no nutritional difference between layer’s pellets and layer’s mash.

Both contain all the ingredients required to produce strong, healthy birds and effective egg production. The difference comes in the form. Layer’s mash is a coarsely ground mix of ingredients; layer’s pellets contain the same ingredients, but they have been pressed into a pellet.

Feeding pellets is popular because it can often produce less wastage and dust.

Mash is useful in helping to encourage foraging, especially for hens with limited ranging space. Feeding mash will keep them occupied for longer and can reduce feather pecking and other boredom-related issues. Ex-battery hens will usually have been fed on a mash and may need time to adapt to eating pellets.

Choice of feed is down to personal preference, so just see what works out best

“Feeding mash will keep them occupied for longer and can reduce feather pecking and other boredom-related issues”

An old favourite in the winter is to provide a warm mash in the mornings.

This can help to keep your birds warm and increase their energy. The benefit of using a good quality layer’s mash over, say, porridge oats is that you will ensure the birds are receiving all the vitamins and minerals essential to meet their basic nutritional requirements. To make a warm layer’s mash, simply add warm water gradually to your mash and stir with a wooden spoon. Keep adding water slowly until you reach your desired consistency.

If you add too much water, the feed will become wet and sloppy and the chickens will not find it appealing. In the winter months, ensure that you keep an eye on

December 2016

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YOUR SMALLHOLDING TALES

HOLY COW!

We’ve bought a smallholding!

Wanting more space, Gillian Anthony’s family moved from town to country, then began to realise all the things they didn’t even know they didn’t know

Our Story…

Gillian Anthony recalls how her family ‘stumbled’ into smallholding, following their quest for more space to grow vegetables.

We welcome fresh ideas from readers. If you have a ‘good life’ experience you want to share with other home farmers, please check out our guidelines on writing for us at: https:// homefarmer.co.uk/write-forthe-home-farmer, then put your idea down in an email and send it to: ruth@homefarmer.co.uk.

I

ronically, the first thing we didn’t know we didn’t know was that we had actually bought a smallholding.

We knew we’d bought a property ‒ it wasn’t as random as when my mum went to buy a sewing machine and came back with a caravan ‒ but it hadn’t dawned on us (at least not on me) that it was a smallholding.

We’d been living in a Victorian terraced townhouse, but had wanted more space ‒ space to have a proper vegetable garden. We’d been looking at properties for three years, but most were too small, too dark, too remote, and too rocky/boggy/ hilly for trees or outbuildings, so when we saw a spacious, light, four-bedroom bungalow with six acres of flat ‒ yes, flat!

We live in South Wales, so flat is rare ‒ we went for it. From viewing, to moving in took just ten weeks ‒ hardly time to draw breath, and no time to find out those all-important bits of local info, as well as all that ‘how-to’ stuff. This was (and still is) a very sharp learning curve.

I quickly found out that you can’t buy rural insurance through comparison websites. If you need to insure a house with land, you need smallholder insurance, and that’s when it dawned on me: we’d bought a smallholding!

Two weeks later we were at the Royal Welsh Spring Festival in a state of shock.

We had booked tickets in advance, but there is a huge difference between going for a day’s window-shopping and realising this is the world in which we now live.

We watched Tim Tyne wrestling a sheep ‒ aka ‘sheep handling’ ‒ as he explained how to hold a sheep to clip the feet and give injections. Wait! What?

Rewind… you give injections yourself?

I hadn’t thought you’d bundle sheep into a cat basket and take them to the vet, but had I given it any thought, I’d have assumed the vet would do the visiting.

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Fact!

be further than You will never iler m a piece of ba fro eight yards twine.

their pocket, or the shed, because there’s bound to be some there… or in the hedge.

Fact is, you will never be further than eight yards from a piece of bailer twine.

BIN DAYS AND LETTER BOXES

“If you need to insure a house with land, you need smallholder insurance, and that’s when it dawned on me: we’d bought a smallholding!”

ALL HAIL JEYES FLUID AND BAILER TWINE One of the first things I learned about was Jeyes (the wonder) Fluid. I hadn’t known about this amazing disinfectant that deodorises and cuts through the smell of dog wee (important when moving into a former dog breeder’s). Rumour says it can apparently even be used for ringworm in fence posts, and if it wasn’t intended for external use only, it would probably be promoted as both a hair restorer and elixir of life, for all the praise it gets.

And then there is bailer twine, used for everything from tying up gates to holding up trousers. Straw is held together with bailer twine. You cut open a bale, remove the twine and stick it in a bucket for later.

Need a long bit? Just tie it together. If you don’t have any, you find someone who does, or you find some in your pocket,

Many ‘little’ things remind me that we live in the country; bins and mail spring to mind. One bit of advice handed to me was to find out what days your recycling and rubbish collections are on before moving.

Like living in town, if you miss your day you end up with three-and-a-half-weeks’ rubbish to be squashed into the bins.

So, why do I mention this? Well, in town you see everyone putting bins out. If you have an extra bag and kindly neighbours, you may even be allowed to shove it in their wheelie bin. Here you don’t get wheelie bins, and you can’t see any neighbours, let alone what they’ve put out, so it’s useful advice.

Here, post is only delivered to the end of your drive. You have no letter box in your door. Instead, there is a box marked ‘POST’ nailed to a fence. This will not be big enough, especially if you forget to go and check it, having been used to it coming through the door. This is what children are for ‒ sending up the drive to get the post or take the recycling out, because it gets tiresome rolling up your trousers and wedging your feet in wellies.

However, the people are friendly.

There is a feeling of community, a willingness to help and to share experience and knowledge. There’s a sense of it being a small world, where people know each other – even if they come from different parts of the country. Locally, most people haven’t heard of the hamlet we live in ‒

December 2016

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CHRISTMAS PUDDING

Nothing beats

A FLAMING PUD! Seren Hollins charts a brief history of Christmas puddings and prepares three mouth-watering variations to finish off a festive feast

Seren Hollins Seren is a food historian and professional cook, who can be found most weekends dressed up in historical costume cooking up meals for various events and festivals.

W

hilst our spending grows with each decade that passes, when it comes to food, festive feasts of yesteryear put our modern Christmas fayre to shame. In Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present appeared sitting on a throne of Christmas plenty. The description is fittingly mouth-watering, and a challenge for the most extravagant of modern-day festive offerings:

“Turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oyster, red hot chestnuts, cherry cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes and seething bowls of punch.”

Even Scrooge’s downtrodden clerk managed to enjoy a feast worthy of praise; with a spread that included a goose with apple sauce and mashed potatoes, followed by a Christmas pudding “like a speckled cannon-ball… blazing in half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck in the top.” The festive scene is completed with them roasting chestnuts in the fire and drinking “hot stuff from the jug.”

A flaming Christmas pudding once celebrated the fruits of the British Empire: sugar, spices, citrus fruits, nuts and brandy.

Hidden charms added to the mix, provided an element of chance and excitement, as well as evoking the ‘Twelfth cake’ that was popular in the 1840s and 1850s, whilst

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the mix of alcohol, fire and gambling harked back to the vestiges of ancient midwinter feasts. Victorians started their pudding preparations well in advance, and it was customary for all the family to get involved in the stirring of the ingredients, each making a wish as they stirred from east to west, replicating the journey of the Three Kings.

The dark, rich, bomb shape we know as a Christmas pudding is a Victorian creation, but our love of plum pudding goes back centuries, and our ‘traditional’ Christmas pudding originates from the 14th-century ‘frumenty’ made from beef, mutton, dried fruits, wine and spices.

This was often more like a thin porridge or soup, and was eaten as a fasting meal in preparation for the Christmas festivities.

By 1595, frumenty was slowly changing into a plum pudding thickened with eggs and breadcrumbs, and was given increased flavour with the addition of more alcohol and fruits, eventually gaining popularity as a customary Christmas dessert around 1650.

“A flaming Christmas pudding once celebrated the fruits of the British Empire: sugar, spices, citrus fruits, nuts and brandy” A TRADITIONAL PUDDING

(From Modern Cookery for Private Families by Eliza Acton, published in 1845) Being very moist and not too dense, this is a must for pudding connoisseurs!

Miss Acton recommends it as a remarkably light, small, rich pudding boiled in a cloth in traditional style, though it can also be cooked in a bowl.

INGREDIENTS

(From Victorian decimal-free times) 3oz plain all-purpose flour 3oz finely grated breadcrumbs 6oz grated suet 6oz raisins 6oz currants 2oz candied peel 4oz grated apple 5oz brown sugar ½ tsp grated nutmeg ½ tsp grated mace or cinnamon Small glass of brandy

Remember e a dark, mellow

achiev If you want to g is a long steamin pudding, then time g in short a cook essential. Too for a se , bland excu results in a pale and the gh it long enou pudding. Cook but , en ise and dark sugars caramel comes be t ui and the fr cook it too long bitter.

3 medium eggs A pinch of salt

METHOD

(In Eliza Acton’s own words) “Mix and beat all the ingredients together, tie them in a well-floured cloth (scald it first), push a wooden spoon through the loops of the cloth and suspend it in a full pan of boiling water. Bring the water back to the boil, turn down the heat a little, and lid.

Boil the pudding for 3½ hours. Unwrap the pudding onto a warm plate and set in a medium oven for 10 minutes to form a rich dark skin.

If you prefer to boil the pudding in a bowl, butter it first. Drop in the batter: It should fill it nearly to the top.

Lid with a circle of buttered kitchen paper. Tie a clean cloth over it, with a fold so that the pudding can expand. Boil for 3½ hours in a pan of water that comes threequarters of the way up the bowl. Keep it loosely lidded, and take care to keep the level topped up with boiling water.

After 3½ hours, when it is ready, let the pudding stand in its bowl for 5 minutes before it is dished, to prevent its breaking.

You can store this pudding under a clean cloth. It will need 2 hours to reheat and lighten again. To flame it, make sure that the brandy is warmed before you pour it over and set it alight.”

SEREN’S TIP! This pudding calls for fresh suet, so a trip to a traditional butcher is needed. It can be made with dried suet, but it doesn’t create such a moist pudding. This recipe is ideal for those that like a lighter pudding!

December 2016

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