Farmer badge

 One thing I love about Rebel Badge Club is the range of different activities to choose from. I also find that it encourages me to try different things, that I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. For example, I’ve never made a Christmas cake before, nor have I made royal icing, but I’ve done both this year! Chance happenings this year led me to doing several things that are clauses in the Farmer badge, and it just went from there!

It was when I was looking at instructions for science experiments that I found something about making butter. I had a tub of cream in the fridge, so decided to give it a go. I put the cream in a kilner jar, along with a clean marble, and then I started shaking. It took maybe 15-20 mins to get the cream to turn, but it felt like longer! At first the cream got very thick, and then even thicker, and then I couldn’t hear the marble moving at all. It seemed that nothing more would happen, but I kept shaking, all the time believing in the process. In time the cream started separating, and soon I actually had something that might look like butter. After it had separated, I strained it, and then washed it, beat in some salt, and then wrapped it in greaseproof paper. It tasted okay - although my cream should probably have been a bit fresher.

The next clause of the badge I completed was picking homegrown fruit - although technically I had completed this earlier in the year, as we have fig trees in the garden. We’ve been harvesting home grown fruit for at least 10 years now, and I have to say that home grown figs are so much better than the ones you buy in the shops. The bees and birds also love them - we have to keep an eye out, so that they don’t all get eaten before we get to them.

Last year my husband was given a box of blended spices from The Spicery in Bristol. This has been a revelation, as accompanying them was a Curry Legend World Tour book, containing recipes for lots of different curries around the world. It has been fantastic trying many different curries. I’ve needed to top up my spice blends (although it was his present, he told me I could cook the recipes), and when you buy from The Spicery they send you a free sample and the monthly newsletter. In October (or maybe November) the free sample was for Bonfire Chutney. As one of the clauses calls for making chutney - this was ideal. It was a very easy recipe to make and tastes delicious. Thinking about it now, I may have toput some in a turkey sandwich!

The next clause I chose was to brew beer. I opted for brewing ginger beer. I started a ginger plant, with ground ginger, sugar and water. Once I had fed this for about a week, I then strained it, and heated water, sugar and lemon juice, and then added the strained ginger plant to it. The resulting liquid was bottled, leaving a bit of a gap at the top. I kept the paste from straining the ginger plant, so that I would have another starter, to make more ginger beer in future. I wasn’t sure how the ginger beer would turn out - I stored it in a cupboard under the stairs for three days, opening the bottles each day to make sure they didn’t explode.

After three days I kept the bottles in the fridge, so they didn’t continue to ferment / sparkle. On tasting them I was quite pleased with it - it was not as strong or as gingery as I expected. It was also quite sweet. I’ve been feeding the starter again, and will make the next batch tonight - I’ve been adding more ginger to it this time, so it will be interesting to see if it turns out more gingery.

For the final clause, I decided to make quick pickled carrots - and quick pickled red onions. The quick pickled carrots were made using chantenay carrots, and I used ginger and turmeric as additional flavourings. These were so tasty that I ended up making another batch a week or two later, and added more cloves as well. I want to make these pickled carrots again, next time using sliced carrots. I’ve found that these carrots are ideal as a snack in between meals.

I also made pickled red onions - my inspiration came from some pickled red onions I bought at Aldi last year. The bought ones were flavoured with sloe gin, so we kept back some dregs of sloe gin, and I added this to the pickling mix. I used red wine vinegar for this recipe, but I think I may use distilled vinegar in future to see how much difference there is in the taste.

This concludes my clauses for the Farmer badge. I really quite enjoyed doing these activities. It has challenged me to try new things - and I’ve found new healthy snacks. I also want to make some pickled ginger, and I also want to try pickling baby corn. I have tried pickling garlic too - I have jars of three different curry flavour pickled garlic. I did this as about 15 years ago we have a jar of curry pickled garlic from the garlic farm on the Isle of Wight and they were delicious - we couldn’t get enough of them!