When my husband told me last week that he had bought three sheep, I admit I rolled my eyes skywards. He has Marie Antoinette tendencies which rear themselves from time to time. I imagine livestock, baying at the gate on a Sunday morning, wanting attention while he sips his tea in bed. “Proper farmers get up early,” I tell him, “and they make money.”
I am unconvinced about the economics of hobby farming and suspicious that a little light livestock rearing only gives second home dwellers something to chat about at dinner parties. There’s also the oft heard complaint that the meat gets left uneaten in the bottom of the freezer, because the children refuse to eat darling 'Matilda’.
He left for Dorset on Tuesday to take the delivery. Our flock will live in a small orchard opposite our rented cottage. “Can't we get a nice fat government subsidy?” I ask hopefully. Nope – there’s no grant to be had, since the farmer who owns the land gets the grant. “They are rather ugly,” confesses Dominic, when he telephones that night. It turns out that far from having three adorable young lambs to fatten up, we have bought three spinster ewes for £65 each. Newly shorn, they look like septuagenarian bovver girls. These older sheep are known as 'hoggets’. We appoint a neighbour as shepherd, giving one sheep to her as a 'gift’.
My scepticism over the venture deepening, I do some sums, determined to crow. They are due to be killed this coming October. Our local butcher, Gary Moen, says that by then, there should be between 21 and 23 kilos of cuts on each sheep. Slaughter and butchery costs come to £40 per sheep bringing our costs to £315.
From the roasting joints, various chops, forequarter (middle neck and shoulder), plus breast (belly) and offal, we estimate that there are over 55 helpings of meat per carcase. Add to this a good twenty servings of rich broth made from the roasted bones - especially delicious since hogget have more flavour and bone calcification than a young lamb - and (less the gift to the shepherd) there are 150 helpings to be had from the ladies in the orchard, at a cost of £2.10 each. There should even be shepherd’s pie to make from leftovers. Looking at the equivalent retail value of the lamb cuts if bought over the counter (£225 per carcase), we are paying less than half. The self-appointed sheep baron is triumphant. “It’s just as I expected,” he says. I almost smile as I give him the bad news. The winter cold snap killed off every sprig of mint in the garden.
We should all put our children through the school of rock, says a new parenting book, The Genius of Natural Childhood. Childcare expert Sally Goddard Blythe devotes a section of her book to the importance of traditional lullabies, explaining that they not only lull a child to sleep, but that the stories in Rock-a-Bye-Baby and By Baby Bunting give an infant an early lesson in structure, order and how to exercise their imaginations. The slow rhythm of a lullaby is thought to be similar to the sensations a baby feels in the womb and the natural vibrations of 'live’ singing are more effective for getting a child to sleep than a recording.
Both parents should share lullaby duties, she says, and it does not matter if you can’t sing or even hum in tune. “Your baby or infant will not judge your musical abilities. As far as he/she is concerned, you are the expert,” she says.
I am sure this is true - but when that little babe becomes an adult, how the appeal of a softly sung tune by a parent wanes. Your children fall asleep to the noise of their favourite rapper and the sound of you singing in any context makes them hot with horrified embarrassment. Get a teenager to sleep? No lulling needed. To wake them, though, you have to resort to reverse lullabies. We call it shouting up the stairs.
Don’t we love watching the sisterhood slug it out? This week I revelled in Bette & Joan, Anton Burge’s new West End play about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s tetchy backstage relationship while the two filmed Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, the 1962 horror film in which they play sisters. Greta Scacchi is especially uncannily superb as Davis; her authentic, rasping voice gets the finest of the bitchy lines in the play. Best of her taunts on Crawford, a woman she regarded as a 'movie star’ rather than an actress, was to drink coca cola on set. Crawford had just been widowed, by the creator of Pepsi cola. The children of both women wrote books about them, castigating their behaviour. In the end, it was one-all.
Lycopene is the wonder nutrient in tomatoes now believed to as good as statins for reducing cholesterol – it is also thought to help prevent cancer. The experts from the University of Adelaide who carried out the study advise it is best absorbed by eating cooked tomatoes, recommending tomato paste and readymade pizza or pasta sauces - astonishing, when such convenience foods often contain unhealthy levels of salt. But try this homemade sweet tomato sauce, which my family love: 1 kg fresh tomatoes cooked with 150ml virgin olive oil; three cans of chopped tomatoes; 4 garlic cloves and 3 sprigs of basil. Simmer for half an hour and then liquidise until smooth. It is quite unnecessary to sugar the pill.
Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
We should all put our children through the school of rock, says a new parenting book, The Genius of Natural Childhood. Childcare expert Sally Goddard Blythe devotes a section of her book to the importance of traditional lullabies, explaining that they not only lull a child to sleep, but that the stories in Rock-a-Bye-Baby and By Baby Bunting give an infant an early lesson in structure, order and how to exercise their imaginations. The slow rhythm of a lullaby is thought to be similar to the sensations a baby feels in the womb and the natural vibrations of 'live’ singing are more effective for getting a child to sleep than a recording.
Both parents should share lullaby duties, she says, and it does not matter if you can’t sing or even hum in tune. “Your baby or infant will not judge your musical abilities. As far as he/she is concerned, you are the expert,” she says.
I am sure this is true - but when that little babe becomes an adult, how the appeal of a softly sung tune by a parent wanes. Your children fall asleep to the noise of their favourite rapper and the sound of you singing in any context makes them hot with horrified embarrassment. Get a teenager to sleep? No lulling needed. To wake them, though, you have to resort to reverse lullabies. We call it shouting up the stairs.
Don’t we love watching the sisterhood slug it out? This week I revelled in Bette & Joan, Anton Burge’s new West End play about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s tetchy backstage relationship while the two filmed Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, the 1962 horror film in which they play sisters. Greta Scacchi is especially uncannily superb as Davis; her authentic, rasping voice gets the finest of the bitchy lines in the play. Best of her taunts on Crawford, a woman she regarded as a 'movie star’ rather than an actress, was to drink coca cola on set. Crawford had just been widowed, by the creator of Pepsi cola. The children of both women wrote books about them, castigating their behaviour. In the end, it was one-all.
Lycopene is the wonder nutrient in tomatoes now believed to as good as statins for reducing cholesterol – it is also thought to help prevent cancer. The experts from the University of Adelaide who carried out the study advise it is best absorbed by eating cooked tomatoes, recommending tomato paste and readymade pizza or pasta sauces - astonishing, when such convenience foods often contain unhealthy levels of salt. But try this homemade sweet tomato sauce, which my family love: 1 kg fresh tomatoes cooked with 150ml virgin olive oil; three cans of chopped tomatoes; 4 garlic cloves and 3 sprigs of basil. Simmer for half an hour and then liquidise until smooth. It is quite unnecessary to sugar the pill.
Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
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