It's a very strange time for us at the moment at Alledal Gård.
We've been here in Sweden for over 4 years, and during that time we have had some down moments, but mainly we've had a wonderful time trying to make a success of our little farm in Skåne. I have no regrets about coming to Sweden in the summer of 2006.
Now, I'm afraid, the end is nigh, and we are shutting down the farm. Over the last few weeks the chickens, ducks, and geese have found new homes, and hopefully in the next few days the goats will have new homes too. By the end of 2010 Alledal Gård will no longer be an active farm.
We've had some wonderful successes with the yellow ducks and the chickens particularly, and have found it to be incredibly rewarding. And for me personally, a fantastic way to switch off when I come back from work on my main job.
This is the beginning of a new chapter for us, and hopefully over the coming months we'll be able to share more of our plans for the future. If you've followed us over the years, many thanks, and I hope that we've brought some pleasure to you from our little corner of the Swedish countryside.
The bokashi was set up two weeks ago and put in its "yoghurt maker" to ferment. The liquor was ready last weekend, but we didn't have the time to get sorted, as we didn't have all the resources for stage two.
This is what we did next.
The fermented liquor, as it said in the instructions, has flecks of yeast on the surface. We decided to make our own bokashi bran for adding to bins, compost and for the poultry runs - all suggested uses for bokashi, and ones we are interested to see if it works!
The method we found for doing this was on The Kitchen Garden Company , who have a very nice YouTube video showing you how to make it.
Basically you need....
1 tbsp of mineral rich sea salt
3 litres of hot water (around 60-70C)
30ml of molases
30ml of innoculant (ie the wonder brew we made)
and 10 lb of bran
Finding the bran was the reason for our delay. It came back into stock in our local feed merchant this week. The molases, salt and water all got mixed in, as did the innoculant, mixed till it was all damp but not wet, and no dry spots remained, then put in a large plastic box and sealed for 2 weeks. We'll see what happens in a few weeks...
