Broken Machines

1-week-old Ashley is taken out for his first walk

Alcohol may be banned at Pilsdon but nicotine and caffeine certainly are not, and many of us indulge in one or both of these addictive substances to one degree or another. Smokers of cigarettes (electronic or otherwise) congregate in the “smoker’s TV room” or the “smoker’s hut”, the two indoor places where smoking is not forbidden.  The smell of stale cigarette smoke tends to deter all but the most socially-minded non-smoker from hanging out here.

In addition to the provision of tea and instant coffee at the 11am and 4:30pm breaks, there is a hot water dispenser in the Aga Room that is kept permanently on to allow people to make hot drinks at any time of day or night. That is, until last weekend when its thermostat broke and it started to boil over before Matt noticed it and pulled the plug. 

While we wait for a replacement thermostat, clearly we couldn’t simply stop drinking tea and coffee or life as we know it would end, so our provisional solution has been to keep ready large kettles of hot water on the Aga top plates. Leaving the top plates open with the kettle on for too long would cause its oven temperature to drop too far so we tend to heat the water to boiling then close the plates and park the kettles on top with thick towels over them in an attempt to retain the heat. Arguably this system is more favourable to community life as people hang out together waiting for the kettles to heat up again for their brew.

The new "garden scales" being put through their paces.

As far as I know cream is not classed as an addictive substance yet I’m sure it’s near the borderline based on the fear I’ve seen in people’s eyes as they’ve been told that we’re also going to be out of cream for the time being. Another vital piece of machinery, the Separator, has given up the ghost. This is the cunning whizzy thing into which our full-fat Jersey milk is poured every morning and spun so fast that the cream is removed leaving the skimmed milk, or more accurately low-fat milk. (The term “skimmed milk” of course comes from the days when the milk was just left to let the cream rise to the top and then skimmed off.)

The replacement Separator arrived yesterday but it wasn’t an exact replacement - it was made of plastic not metal and was deemed unlikely to survive the rigours of daily separating for long. It’s being sent back and we’ll have to wait a few more weeks for the metal version to become available, which means two things. No cream and therefore no butter unless we buy some from a shop. And our milk will be full-fat for a good while longer, which actually I rather like on my breakfast cereal. I think we’ll survive.

My first scones (and Rachel's)

It also means that cheese-making becomes easier, which needs full-fat milk. Previously anyone wanting to make cheese had to ask those in the Dairy change the routine and skip the separating process, just pasteurising it. Ermentrude* and I have had a go at making something called Lemon Cheese which is a soft cheese created by warming the milk to 77 degrees C, adding lemon juice, stirring, waiting for it to curdle, then pouring through a muslin cloth and hanging for a while. The results were not quite what we hoped for. It was extremely crumbly and had a kind of powdery texture, which we’ve improved a bit by mixing with more milk. At least it was more successful than our attempt to make Buttermilk Cheese which used the buttermilk (obtained when making butter) in place of milk - it simply didn’t form any curds at all.

The soft cheese winner so far has to be the Yogurt Cheese, and it’s also the easiest. We make our own yogurt from the milk, and then we just take some and put in a muslin cloth to hang over a bowl, no heating required. The next day, the liquid will have drained out and what’s left is a delicious cheese, especially when mixed with garlic, salt and pepper. All our adventures in cheese-making find their way to the Saturday evening cheese platters, and so we await the reception of our latest creation with bated breath.

The sea is a bit slopey here

* names changed