Peapods

I decided to crack on with the peapod wine today as the pea plants have got horrendous powdery mildew (thanks to the hot dry weather) so felt a bit now-or-never about it. I set Amber to work picking all the pods:

and then shelling them:

Peggy wasn't a great help

Then, having halved the recipe that I found on the selfsufficientish.com forum, I simmered the pods in water til soft. There's something very elemental about things bubbling away in a preserving pan on the stove, it brings out the alchemist in me! I went and hung out the washing and Amber asked me how it turned in to wine so I was then trying to work out the chemical formula for sugar + yeast = alcohol + carbon dioxide but I got my C, H and Os in a muddle. Amber of course had long since gone...

Not looking frightfully promising at this stage

So with the homebrew underway, I started making up frames for the beehive, and again Amber got stuck in:

See - she can be really quite helpful. Sometimes :-)

Unfortunately my decision to wash the kitchen floor every morning failed today and it was only Day 3 but perhaps it was a bit ambitious. If only the hens wouldn't come in and shake after their dustbath, and if only the dog didn't come in and shake after his walk. I don't let the ducks and their adorable little webbedy feet come in to the kitchen so it's not as bad as it could be.

I'm in my usual pre-Summer School state of low-grade panic about going away but this is my last one so I really want to enjoy it. I was telling Charles all the things I was worried about and I realised afterwards that I hadn't mentioned anything about the children!