Busy, busy

Busy time of year, this. Lots and lots to do in the garden. We're making good progress creating a large area for the boys to have as 'their' bit. It's pretty much cleared now and just (!) needs levelling and then a bit of turf transferred onto it. Our two smart new compost bins needed filling up - now one is almost full of some compost-in-progress. We really need to improve the soil in the area of the garden that's going to be our veg patch - so two beds are now covered with newspaper, which is then piled to about 4 inches deep with fresh compost and covered over with plastic to improve things there. Add to that general tidying and cutting back and our ongoing war on shrubs and it's a little daunting trying to get it done before the weather gets cold. Loads of ex-shrubs now needing shredding too for building up the compost heaps again.

We're also thinking about new things to sell in our shop on Etsy for Christmas. Ali's blog is full of updates on new things she's making. Our Christmas website also needs a major overhaul - and it's currently offline, as our old web hosting went excessively peculiar. The old site needed a bit of tweaking and we've got lots more new content on Christmassy music, films, books and more to put up. Suddenly Christmas seems very close!

The pages will be transferred across this evening, hopefully - if not, then tomorrow! I'll link from here (as well as updating other links elsewhere, groan) as soon as it's done.

We've pretty much finished all our makings - all the chutneys are resting in their jars, the Rumtopf is doing well, the various rhubarb vodkas as well as the sloe gin, wild plum gin and everything else are maturing away.

Brewing-wise, we're really enjoying the latest one - a clone of Banks & Taylor's Black Bat (pictured above). At 6.5% it packs a bit of a punch, but it drinks a lot easier than the strength might suggest! It reminded Ali of Harvey's XXXX Old Ale that we enjoyed many years ago in Lewes. High praise... The latest brew is fermenting away nicely, to be ready in the 3rd week of November. And then I'm going to do another brew to have a first go at bottling.

I think a lot of our presents for our friends and family this year will have a boozy theme!