For our sins we are going to be on next week’s ( start 4th July) 4 in a Bed program on Channel 4
Mike and I spent over 2 weeks in April filming this cult reality program
We travelled the length of Great Britain by car and ferry to gain a whole new set of friends!
The whole process was a great learning experience ,we certainly relished the challenge of mixing honesty with pickiness and humour , with a bit of back biting and soul searching thrown in .
The crew and the folks on the studio team were the most fascinating part of the trip and helped keep us all motivated and often under control!

Its seems a long time since we had the iron framework made for the construction of the Shepherds Hut
Thwaites engineers at Morland tackled the job, with a few alterations to get it in proportion.
With a sprung base and articulated back wheels the frame looked enormous.
What a struggle to get it back to Crake Trees
After winter we managed to find a room indoors so that the body work could progress whatever the weather.
But progress was slow as other more pressing hobs got in the way
It was not until we had a booking that Mike had to change up a gear and enlist Malcolm’s help to get completed by August
The galvanised sheeting cladding went on fine, but the curved roof caused a lot of brute force, and the internal insulation and boarding a frustrating amount of waste.
The next hut will be altered slightly to allow more economic use of the timber
When the lovely oak floor went down, it all began to look rather smart.
We had much discussion over the size of the windows and the placing of the door.
Then, adding a verandah and getting it balanced and looking ‘right’ was the next hurdle.
I sometimes thought we had too many opinions , from too many differant folks.
The construction was certainly creating a lot of interest in the village and also to walkers doing the footpath that goes down through the farm to Reagill.
But , at last it was time for me to paint the boarding , scrub the windows and floor and try to get the Shepherds Hut pulled to just the right place , by the pond , with the best view , and level of course!

The Hut certainly looked the part, as you drive up the track it looks like its always been there.
Mike then had to build the Oak bed and the special slate stand for the tiny wood stove.
I had some simple blinds made , with an old handmade crochet rug , a bright shaggy rug and some wonderful locally forged candle holders ,all was warm and welcoming.

So… the first guests came to stay one balmy August evening and we were relieved to hear next morning , as they had breakfast in the house. The night had been a great success.

Asparagus in May

Right at the front corner of Nana’s bungalow garden at Crake Trees there is a small patch of Asparagus Fern .

Laura picked a bunch for a wedding flora demonstration she did at Debenhams,Carlisle.

There lurking in amongst the ferns were some lovely small asparagus shoots.

These proved too tempting to leave and flower so I had a bunch of tender Westmorland asparagus to enjoy.

Growing at 700 feet above sea level, would the asparagus be edible? or too tough as it had to survive an exposed westerly plot.

But the wonderful sunshine of April, together with no rain, meant the shoots were short , slim and snappy.

I had some puff pastry in the deep freeze and needed to make a tray full of savouries for a party supper at St Lawrence’s Church down in Crosby Ravensworth,

So here are 2 recipes for Spring time party nibbles

Goats Cheese and Asparagus Bites

Cut pre rolled puff pastry into approx 3 ins squares

Nip up the corners to make then stand up

Chop a block of Hootenanny Cheese from The Appleby Creamery

Sprinkle the cheese onto the squares

Followed by a dab of Pesto sauce ( Aldi fresh pesto is best)

Two pieces of asparagus that has been blanched for 2 mins

And a tiny vine tomato cut in half

Drizzle with olive or rape seed oil and cook in HOT oven

Roast Vegetable Bites

Use pre rolled puff pastry as above or make some rich pastry with half butter to Splet flour from The Watermill at Little Salkeld.

Roast in the oven , on a flat tray with olive oil

Red Onion , Courgettes, Yellow Pepper, Garlic plus mushroom if liked

Pile onto the pastry squares , sprinkle with walnuts and some fresh herbs

Cook . on the floor of top Aga oven, or similar.

Great with a glass of sparkly

Summer really has begun when the young cattle are turned out into the fields after having spent the first months of life inside the cattle sheds. We have a regular supply of six week old Holstein X Danish Red bull calves that arrive from Brackenbrugh Estates dairy unit throughout the year.

They stay in small groups of similar size , but naturally more calves are born in autumn and winter, so we have a few big groups of  30 or so ready to go out at the beginning of June. They have had their T.B. test at 1 month and need no more medication until they are sold …..in two ways:-

Selling through the Fat Ring at auction or direct to an abattoir means the bulls are sold deadweight
Selling through the Store Ring at auction means selling live weight to go on to another farmer

Young bulls are sold deadweight at about 11 – 14 months of age
Young bulls sold live weight are usually 6 – 8 months of age

Last summer’s calves would be too big to turn out, as after about 8 months they really cannot be trusted in open spaces. Folks walking or even us feeding them would not be safe.

As they grow and mature the bulls become very much creatures of habit and do not relish any excitement. A change of diet, a different person feeding them, or a change of habitat will upset them, meaning  bloat, pneumonia or a spate of group bullying .

Once , many years ago  a whole pen full of 10 month old bulls escaped at Meaburn Hill during the night , by morning they had rampaged through the fields routing up fences and lifting gates from hinges , we found them all laid exhausted only too glad to be herded back to the sheds.

The whole ‘turning out’ procedure needs patience and perseverance to get the job done without a catastrophe. The youngsters need pushing into the trailer as they view the black hole and the noisy ramp with terror and are frozen  until a few adventurous bulls make the mighty leap up the ramp. But once we drive into the field and carefully let down the back door they all explode from the trailer into the sunlight with bucking and snorting , and skinny legs going in every direction .

It takes a few minutes for the bulls to get their limbs co-ordinated…..then there’s no stopping them , they are off, full tilt to the far end of the field with that glorious sense of freedom that summer will promise.

12 oz Medium and Fine Oatmeal
8 oz SR Flour or Spelt plus baking powder
1pt Milk and plain Yogurt mixed
1 pt Water
½ tbsp Salt
½ tbsp Sugar

Mix with a wooden spoon and soak overnight .
Re-mix well and maybe add a drop more water.
Cook the oatcakes as you would cook pancakes using a few drops of melted oil/butter mix to grease the pan.

It’s quite a job that requires a lot of patience, and the skill of a good oatcake comes with much practise. I can never make them as well as Agnes, who used to work for me. Polish people have a natural talent in the pancake department. When you have a good stack of oatcakes, freeze them interwoven with greaseproof.

They are served at Crake Trees Manor with 2 slices of smoked bacon and a tot of maple syrup…..
OR
At dinner time with a grating of hard ewe’s cheese from the Appleby Creamery and homemade apple & date chutney.

Breakfast can be taken in the house 9.30 – 10 am
Milk and basics can usually be bought from the house
A pub in the village The Butchers Arms is 10 mins walk away

Remember we have no hook-ups, tracks to tents, or straight lines

£10.00 / tent includes 2 occupants ( little ones under 10yrs not counted)

 Wild Camping – The Rules

Please enjoy the great variety of wildlife & birds, be respectful…..the farm is their home and breeding ground
1 dog per tent on a short lead at ALL times…..Bins available for dog waste
No fires to be lit , a disposable BBQ is ok…..We will lend you a small preparation bench to keep food & gas stove off the grass

Please arrive before 6 pm if possible…..Ring if you are held up
Remember a flash light as its dark here , you will need a light  when walking to the toilet after dark

But most of all…..enjoy the experience of Wild Camping at Crake Trees…..Mike & Ruth Tuer

I cannot imagine how he came to theI can job. Maybe it was a profitable diversification for a hard pushed small dairy farmer and he was a renowned local good shot with a rifle.

Saturday was pig killing day, a day rigidly divided between the sexes, as to each part of the process from live pig to well hung carcass. My male cousins were allowed to witness the death, even pull the trigger on the gun, if they had turned 12, we girls hung around the far end of the yard, waiting for the squeal, we could all now heave a sigh of relief, and the most horrible of tasks was over.

We would scurry back to the house, with just a glimpse into the milking parlour (temporary abattoir) to see if we dare catch sight of the deceased pig. Us farm girls were not fazed by the process of pig killing, but there were usually some town cousins or village girls who made a real fool of themselves with their ashen faces and retching stomachs, I was full of self importance, after all my dad was the most important man of the day, his attitude and skill was the pivot to the success of the operation. It was imperative we all were quiet and behaved, or we were banished to the farmhouse sitting room to look after the babies…Yuk!

It didn’t seem more than a few minutes until the calm farmhouse kitchen changed suddenly to production line factory. Up to 4 sisters or sister-in-law were ready for action, fully aproned and ready to make black pudding.

My memories of the actual process are unclear but I remember the great stainless steel buckets of blood, the constant battle to keep the cats out of the kitchen, and the smell, that is most vivid, not horrible, but unique, THE smell of pig killing mixed with the smells of spices, salt, warm oatmeal and the humid atmosphere amongst vats of boiling water. Above all, the constant stirring, and stirring, of the fresh blood. It was essential the blood be kept moving; it must not coagulate, so I can remember sharp voices and much tension as every spare hand was kept busy with massive wooden spoons stirring and stirring till the blood was cold.

What happened next I’m not sure, but by evening the blood was cold, and mixed with the oatmeal, salt & spices & left in the dairy, ready to be mixed with chopped white fat and cooked on Monday in an array of flat baking trays in the bottom ovens of the Aga.

The men folk meanwhile set to scalding, shaving and opening the pig carcass, that would hang upside down from the strongest beam of the coolest outhouse.

All this went on as quickly and quietly as possible. Far away from the pig pens, so that the poor pig’s mates would not be upset, needless to say the other pigs didn’t eat much for a few days but they soon seemed to forget. The afternoon soon came to an end, all was washed down, tea time approached and Dad had to get back home for milking.

I had enjoyed the whole day, spent with my cousins, with great drama & excitement, a good dinner, lots of snippets of grown up gossip to digest, and the knowledge that my Dad was the best pig killer in the whole parish of Crosby Ravensworth.

Whilst Laura & William were also very young there seemed to be short bursts of snow each January, but it’s been neither here nor there for the last 15 years so we seemed to lose the tradition of making snow pancakes.

Anyhow, most of December 2008 has been very cold with odd bursts of snow, but at Crake Trees we have had a proper snowfall last night and woke up to a beautiful silence and sunshine that surrounds the countryside for a short time on that first morning of winter snow.

The sheep are happy, the horses want to be out straight away without rugs and the Jack Russells go mad rolling over and over, even 14 year old Milo thinks she’s a puppy again.

Apart from all exposed water pipes being frozen at the cattle sheds life suddenly seems good again. India wanted to make pancakes for supper, the snow is crisp but fluffy and just right for that important task of being the premier ingredient for the pancakes.

What is there about snow? Who thought of using snow in the pancake mix? I do not know, but they certainly taste wonderful and have a strange texture that the frozen air molecules create.

When following my recipe be careful where you gather your snow, not where the dogs have had a wee or any other suspect area.

I collected it from the top of our Oak seating blocks from the front garden, where no birds have been hopping about on either.

We had the snow pancakes with left over Rum Butter from Christmas and a squirt of lemon to sharpen them up a little.

Mix 9 oz of Plain flour (I used half plain and half Spelt flour) with 4 beaten eggs and about 2 oz of melted butter and a drop on vanilla essence.

Slowly beat in ½ pt of milk (with a wooden spoon) and then the ½ pt (by volume) of fresh snow.

Make the pancakes with a very little extra butter and oil used to grease the pan.

Layer up and keep covered and warm.

Remember the first pancake is the cooks perk, which can be eaten whilst the second is cooking.

Windy Ridge was ploughed, then Hiltons field and ¼ bank, with our adapted Overund plough I bought up in Perthshire whilst on the way back from buying breeding Ewes in Lairg – Sutherland. Alas as we got going on the working up with disc harrows it was like concrete! The discs could not touch it so we harrowed, still no joy. So I had to leave it until rain fell to soften the sod.

The other two fields worked up well and were soon sown. We usually have contractors to sow the barley and oats but the very modern air pressurized drills get the seed in too deep for very heavy clay land which gives a slow and poor germination. So I purchased a 2^nd hand Falcon corn

Drill from County Durham, which is 3 metres wide and will hopefully match up to my tram lining.

William was home 1 weekend and we managed to get the up & over field seedbed worked up and sown in one day.

Ewes and lambs at Peaslands are doing fine after a summer of being plagued by fly strike. Constant attention and rapid “dealing with” of affected ewes and then a good spray together with worming means they are now doing well. All lambs have been speaned, brought away from mothers to home at the 3rd week of September. Been wormed + trace elements and had their backsides clipped out ready for going onto lush grass of fields that have been cut for silage or hay.

Ruth & I usually go up to Sutherland at end of September to buy replacement ewes. The journey up in beautiful Autumn sunshine was wonderful, the weather getting warmer as we travelled north! The sheep are sold at Lairg Auction mart, a lonely place by the railway 70 miles north of Inverness. 14,000 ewes out of Caithness and Sutherland are gathered from large estates and tiny grazing committees for the annual culling of regular aged ewes, over half seem to go into Cumbria as we see neighbours and colleagues that we met last year around the same ringside. Our average was down £2.00 on the year to £31.50. Got approx 600 plus £2.20 haulage home. The first load beat us home the following day.

Mark (our roving shepherd) and I then had the long job of marking worming and clipping tails before they went straight out with 14 young Texel and Beltex x tups on Halloween. The tups stayed out until the week before Christmas, then we removed them well away from the ewes to recover, as they are shadows of their former selves. It will take the tups all winter to get back into shape and inevitably some don’t make the grade or break their necks fighting, when they haven’t the ewes to take their minds off constant conflict.

After a spell of soft rain the barley comes through and is sprayed and then left to mature ready for the harvest.

Visitors have been coming to stay with us since April, and the courtyard bedrooms were finished just in time for Appleby new fair, always busy with regular guests who booked hopefully, months before!

We had two inspections in May & June and are at last graded by the English Tourist Board… five diamonds-silver…

The final landscaping took some hard graft and superb team work by Ian Masons gang with Richard doing 52 days of “finishing off” jobs and Carl coming to help with the front garden, I cant believe how posh it all looks with an expanse of lawn, oak edged beds of herbs & roses and an enormous pergola of green oak that will hopefully provide a base for climbing things that can survive the westerly winds that are usually at the end of the house.

We had an Open Night on the 1st August, which certainly warmed up the whole place. As well as being a thank you to all suppliers tradesmen and official supporters, it was an opportunity to show interested people what we are up to ”up at Crake Trees” and over 200 folk enjoyed a real good look around, drinks & canapés and dancing to a Jazz band and disco in the tent. It was the first lovely night of the summer and even warmed up by 2am! The weather has certainly been summery since then and allowed us to get an easy harvest of firstly winter oats and this week we have just finished the spring Barley, which was very slow to ripen.

Mylo had puppies in May and they all went by the end of July, but due to a disaster at one of the new homes we now have on little one back so at the moment 3 jack russells are I too many!