Wednesday, 22 June 2011

The Duty-Free Denormalised.






"Mr. Leg-iron. It Is Time."

"Aye, time for another drink, ya bas."

"No, it is Time to Go."








"Eternity and peace."






















Are you?


Anonymous said...

Interesting post on the self sufficiency stuff. My wife is "not from these parts" and her parents used to grow their own baccy down in the Tropics. We have a bit of plantation there and I'm thinking about growing coffee when I retire - I'm sure that will also be on the "to be banned" list.

Good luck with the stove - we have a Dunsley Yorkshire. Expensive to buy, but an efficient burner that is exempt from our local "smokeless zone" rules. Although I find that pallets tend to be too much hassle to smash up into stove sized bits - a good quality jig-saw helps though.


Anonymous said...

Where I live, in the frozen North, wood burning stoves are the norm. A cheaper solution than building a stone chimney is to install a stove with a steel pipe as a chimney, it is simply inserted through an appropriately sized hole in the roof. The pipe then contributes heat to the house along its entire length.

Sorry the sites are in Norwegian, but the pictures are self explanatory. Nordpeis have distributors in the UK so you might be able to find this info in English.


Avenger said...

If it's the Discworld version of Death, he'll probably end up crashed out on the floor, saying YOU'RE RIGHT - WHT'S IT ALL ABOUT WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO IT?

Then he'd probably have a fag.

Anonymous said...

I amagine that scythe would be useful for cutting down the baccy, too.

Health and safety regs might actually come in useful here, unless of course there happen to be any inspectors within swinging distance...heh!

Anonymous said...


If you want to start soon may I suggest that as a side experiment you also try half a cup of unwashed wild heather flowers, ground to a fine flour, with the 3 to 1 honey mixture in a large mixing bowl covered in cling film,you may be very pleasantly surprised.


Anonymous said...

Top tip for slug megadeath - old coffee grounds, round the base of the plants. Kills slugs but - unlike the blue pellets - doesn't kill birdies, slow-worms, Mrs Tiggywinkle etc when they eat poisoned slugs.

George Speller said...

My plants doing well, also. A lot of variabilty depending on when they were put outside. Left in the crowded greenhouse too long they get a bit spindly and need a bit of support. Some are plnted directly in the ground in a hastily prepared plot - slow progress. I've just learnt to remove side shoots - but "not the ones on the meristem" whatever that is. So - a great learning exprience all round.

Next I'll have to dry them out. I won't call it curing because that might turn them into smokeable tobacco and that would never do! (like during the prohibition when dried fruit was labelled DO NOT ADD SUGAR OR YEAST, DO NOT LEAVE IN A DARKENED ROOM! etc)

nisakiman said...

As Heretic says, a stove is the answer. You can get pot-belly stoves in UK (I know because I bought one about 15 years ago - can't remember where, but it wasn't terribly expensive) and you just run the chimney pipe (It's normally 120 mm here - I always use wood in winter) through the wall, or easier still, if you have multi-paned windows, take one of the top panes out temporarily and replace it with something suitably heatproof with a 120mm hole in it. As Maaarrghk! points out, pallet timber isn't the best - burns too fast really, but fallen branches are ok. I usually burn olive wood here, most of which I buy at €100 per tonne cut and delivered. 1.5 - 2 tonnes usually does the winter.

hms slugger prescott said...

i woz an able seaman me - oi'll navigate that tha moat of yourn an get the baccy, boy. come to think o' it, i don't need no boat does i? i jus' needs ta jump inta tha drink an' tha' drink'll all jump oot like i woz mozes in tha red sea - i thinks 'e likely woz a commie too. ha. shiver me 'ol timbers - me draft's so big nahdays, the queen majesty's gonna rent i as 'er ocean-goin' vessel, baht mosta tha time i is empty.

shandy shagpile (shop assistant) said...

little tip if you're a busy working-mum like myself - just go down to lidl, buy a few cartons of full-sugar fruit-juice, and leave them to ferment in the back of the cupboard for a couple of years. come to think of it, i've got a vintage 2007 solevita grape-juice which, by granny's calculations, should just about have reached its prime - so i'm off to test it...i may not be back...

shandy shagpile (old bird strike narrative) said...


update...actually, no - mum says the solevita's too good to get wasted on a weekday, and i should keep it for my daughter's wedding. apparently over christmas 1999 granny cracked-open a 1989 vitafit multi-vitamin and didn't come 'round 'til christmas 2000, due mainly to the comatose state she'd suddenly slipped into, but she told us kids that she just "had a little nap". mum says they found her wig in the engine of a jumbo-jet which had to make an unscheduled crash-landing at stanstead, but i think she's just exaggerating to try and get some inducements out of vitafit for promoting their gear.

Leg-iron said...

Rose - by a remarkable coincidence, I have a flowering heather just at the back door. Do I need to dry the flowers first?

Leg-iron said...

sandy shagpile - full sugar fruit juice will work but it's too acidic straight off. Speed things up by adding a little bicarbonate of soda to neutralise the acidity and then add yeast and yeast nutrient.

Maybe a little extra sugar...

Leg-iron said...

Maaarrghk! - I use pallets in the chimenea outside. Finally worked out that, rather than pulling out all those nails, just saw them up and burn them.

The nails are easily raked out of the ashes afterwards.

Leg-iron said...

Oh, and ashes are great for crappy clay soils.

Leg-iron said...

Anon- I'll definitely try those coffee grounds since I met a hedgehog in the garden tonight.

I like hedgehogs. Grumpy, antisocial and covered in spikes.

The espresso machine generates plenty of grounds. Then again, if I didn't have that thing I might be able to sleep like real people. Then again again, I don't actually like real people very much anyway. Comes from being grumpy, antisocial and spiky, I suppose.

Leg-iron said...

George - the ones I put outside a few weeks ago are nowhere near as big as those in the greenhouse, but I suspect they are hardier. The slugs mashed a greenhouse one planted out but the first three, despite having a few holes, are still there.

Now they go out in buckets with moats around them. There are some seriously big ones in the greenhouse that will go in the ground once the slugs have been dealt with.

One is planted straight in the ground insiode the greenhouse, as an experiment. If it works, I'll need a bigger greenhouse.

Maybe a plexiglass dome over the whole garden...

Leg-iron said...

hms slugger prescott - you must be a snail. One of those little swines crossed the moat tonight.

He won't do it again.

Anonymous said...


I'm not sure a cultivated heather would do it, it's not so much the heather but the wild yeast and something that grows on it.

I used fresh heather flowers from the local moor in a pestle and mortar.

I wanted to see what this tasted like -


But on further investigation I found this.

"The moss, or fogg, from the heather plant would also likely be a component of mead, not only from its unavoidable presence in the hive but also from the additional heather tops used in mead production. The result would be a remarkable fermented beverage possessing tremendous food properties as well as medicinal and narcotic aspects -- truly a mead of inspiration. Extremely ancient accounts indicate that the Picts and Celts brewed a fermented beverage from heather only, without any barley at all. It is likely that this was a combination heather/heather honey mead.

The fact that fermented heather beverages are considered to be the first "beers" brewed in the British Isles, that their brewing can be traced back some 4,000 years, and that they were brewed by a wandering indigenous culture (the Picts) indicates that barley probably wasn't part of the original heather "beers," that in fact it was produced from heather honey. Some sources note that as early as A.D. 100 the Celts made a heather and heather honey mead that was known to be highly intoxicating."

Well naturally I wanted to do the job right.

I suggested the bowl because it is a very vigorous fermentation and quite fascinating to watch.


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