OneGuyFromBarlick

Morning Young Tom! Soot was a very common tooth cleaner in the days before we became a consumer society. Also used for deterring slugs!

I think we all know how seductive a display of kitchen equipment is in an ironmongers. One of the most expensive items is top of the range kitchen knives. Here's my total armament of knives, all of them second-hand from oddment boxes on antique stalls and all of them razor sharp. The message is that it isn't the knife that guarantees the cut, it's how sharp it is! Instead of spending a fortune on new knives buy a good medium carborundum stone and a modern steel. Old non-stainless knives take the best edge, forget to miracle ceramic blades that never need sharpening, try practising on an old table knife and you'll find that you can get an edge that will cut anything. You only have to touch a tomato with one of these and it cuts the skin immediately, a good test for any knife. That's why my knives are mounted high up so kids can't get at them when they visit and I always remind my daughters to be careful with them, they cut fingers just as easily as tough cartilage!

Just an experiment to produce a "Big Kev" front page

PS on knife sharpening. You can sharpen scissors just as easily. The best test for a pair of scissors is to see if they will cut wet tissue paper. Ernie Roberts once told me about a knife-sharpener who had a good trade in Barlick. Most itinerant knife-sharpeners had a cycle that had a grindstone mounted on the front that could be driven by the back wheel if the cycle was up on a stand. They were a common sight in my youth. The last one I saw was a man in Rochdale who went round restaurants and butchers, he had an electrically driven stone in the back of the van. Ernie's Barlick man had no such fripperies. He used to go round the corner and sharpen the knives on the first smooth doorstep he came to!

One thing I have noted over the years is the way proprietary products have taken over from common usages of natural products. Wintergreen oil (LINK) was used for almost everything from penetrating oil and rust removal to a painkilling rub for painful joints. My mother had what was then called Infantile Paralysis and the 'cure' was to rub it frequently with Neatsfoot Oil. (LINK) Neatsfoot was used for everything from preserving leather to making the finest oils for lubricating watches and clocks. Castor Oil was a standard lubricant before the advent of mineral lubricating oils, that's how Castrol got its name. Linseed Oil was very useful. In it's raw state it was edible and a good waterproofing oil, when boiled it would set after application and was the basis of all oil-based paints. Make your own list, we fended for ourselves in those days.

I'm using a new herbal remedy for my pony's sweet itch which has linseed as the main ingredient. It actually seems to be working, despite a very midgy season.

Linseed oil is wonderfully useful. We treated the old oak beams at Hey Farm with a mixture of raw linseed oil and vinegar and after a few applications they came to life again. You could almost hear the old beams saying thank you as it soaked in. Totally natural and very effective. I don't know if any of you have ever noticed chimney stacks being painted by steeplejacks and finishing up looking shiny. Two coats of double boiled linseed oil every five years does wonders for protecting the brickwork and pointing.

Wendy, can you still get Driffield Oil? That was a good thing to have on the shelf!



A well-travelled bottle of Driffield oils by Margison's. It's based on Stockholm Tar and I always had some with me on the cattle wagon as part of my portable doctoring kit. It's a very good disinfectant as well as being a lubricant and if you covered your hands and arms with it it cut down on the chance of infection when you were far from things like water. Great stuff when you are lambing as well. Apart from anything else it has a lovely clean smell.

No idea I'm afraid but I always have a tin of Stockholm Tar handy for the hens. In fact we slapped some on poor Alfie yesterday. He must have somehow caught a cats claw on the tip of his ear leaving a small cut that wouldn't stop bleeding. He kept shaking his head as well, spattering the house with tiny blood specks. Before I had chance to remember the wound powder I keep for the horses Col had decided that Stockholm tar would do the trick. It didn't, because it was soft with the heat and we started to get tarry blood spatters instead. Alfie then spent the rest of the day with a black stained elastoplast stuck over the tip of his ear....and he was very proud of it.

I had a furtle. No mention on Google of Margisons or Driffield Oils. I must be well out of date!

If you're in Barlick call in and I'll give you a little bottle of Driffield Oil.

My mother had very bad circulation on one of her legs because it was withered by Infantile Paralysis when she was young. This is a very common trigger for chilblains and often leg ulcers. She suffered from chilblains but they never developed into ulcers perhaps because she treated them by rubbing them with surgical spirits. She swore by it and used it on us kids without mercy! I still use it on tender skin, after the first blast of pain it stops the problem!

How to make butter that will spread straight from the fridge.

This is a good tip if you live in a hot climate and cannot leave the butter on the table without it turning liquid. Our ambient temperature is above 30C for about 8 months of the year and butter turns to oil. It is also very useful if you live in a cold climate and want spreadable butter at low temperatures.

Put a block of butter in a dish and leave it in a warm place to go very soft, usually at about 30C. Slowly add about 25 to 30% of a good quality edible oil and stir in until homogeneous. I just use a table fork to to do this. Put into a fridge or cool place until set. This can then be stored in the fridge or left on the table if you live in a cool climate.

We use flaxseed (linseed) oil because it has a good taste and colour but I would suggest using a good quality olive oil as an alternative.

We use this method out of necessity because margarine and spreads are very expensive here, so we only purchase Anchor New Zealand butter.

Note: Linseed oil mentioned in the previous postings is NOT food grade and contains other additives and must not be used.

Does anyone love baby spinach leaves as much as I do...

When I buy them I keep the air in the plastic bag and secure/tie the top up to stop them being squashed and place them on top of my other shopping. At home I line the bottom of a sistema plastic container with kitchen paper, pop in the leaves, put another piece of kitchen paper over, then seal with the containers lid. They last for quite a few days in the crisper.

Thanks China. Flaxseed good source of... (stop it David; the oil purists will have you)... I was going to say good for us veggies.

Vegetarians need all the help they can get....
Nice to see this topic cropping up again. I often wonder when I see the supermarket shelves full of products guaranteed to kill 99.9% of germs at ridiculous prices if people have completely forgotten about the virtues of cheap, old fashioned thin bleach. It's the best germ killer and cleanser there is. After my first pot of tea in the morning I always sterilise and clean my mug with boiling water and a drop of bleach. I use the washing up brush to make sure the pot is clean and then pour the hot bleach solution down the plughole, fill the pot with cold water and leave it sat in the sink while I make my coffee. Last stage is to fill my pot with boiling water as I brew the coffee and swill the sink with it before pouring my coffee. The result of all this is that besides a clinically clean pint pot I have a sterilised washing up brush and a sink and plughole clean enough to eat your dinner off. The bleach has also cleaned the waste pipe and the manhole in the yard. [I lifted mine the other day to look for my curtain hooks and it was spotless, not a bit of dirt or grease about.]
Another tip is to use a piece of Sycamore plank for a chopping board. People shy away from wood because they assume it is more prone to contamination than plastic or metal. They are wrong and tests have proved this. Sycamore was always used for shelving for maturing cheese because it is a natural germicide. One a week soak the board in boiling water and a drop of bleach. Drop all your sink gadgets in the water as well and after ten minutes soak you have a sterile board, implements and sink as well. The board will be snow-white as well once it dries. Oh, and it doesn't blunt your knives!
We still have a lot to re-learn from the old ways. Our grandmothers were a lot smarter than many people imagine!

Total agreement with veggie comment!

Very taken by your bleaching Stanley, but you forgot to mention dealing with your gobblers during thin bleach processing...

We're on a septic tank and were advised not to use bleach, as it would prevent proper processing of 'waste'. Does anyone know if this is right?

Definitely yes! Don't use bleach on a septic tank it upsets the natural anaerobic process because it kills the microbes that are breaking the crap down.

I use bleach very occasionally and it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on the septic tank, which hasn't had to be emptied since we came here 15 years ago. My problem with bleach is our "Bleach Baby" cat, who adores the smell and rolls ecstatically over surfaces which have just been wiped leaving hairs and footprints everywhere....so not much point in doing it really. We had quite a falling out over it the last time I was trying to get the kitchen fit for visitors and I ended up getting some nasty scratches!

Doesn't sound like you got your way Wendy!

15 years sounds a bit, er, bunged up...

I'll back up Stanley on bleach being the best germ killer, there's nothing subtle or complicated that can allow the bugs to build a defence against it - it just dissolves them, zap, gone! Also agree that bleach can kill the bacteria in a septic tank and stop it working, but....it depends how much bleach. A small amount, or very dilute bleach probably won't do any harm. Bleach reacts with all organic matter and is quickly deactivated, so when a small amount enters a septic tank most of it is going to be mopped up by the organic matter.

Tip given to me by a septic tank man a long time ago, if you're starting a new one or wanting to revive an existing one you can't beat a dead cat....
I used to run the sewage digester at West Marton Dairy which got a lot of cleaning chemicals in it. It worked as an aerobic digester, we pumped air into it via big fabric socks 24x7. Most days the overflow ran like gin but occasionally, for no discernible reason it would suddenly run like weak coffee. Never did fathom it, I was glad when I got back on tankers!

Ours now is one with an air pump.

We've always sworn by a dead mouse... no shortage round here.

I wonder if those tips were ever in Woman's Weekly?

Stanley wrote:Most days the overflow ran like gin but occasionally, for no discernible reason it would suddenly run like weak coffee.

Sounds like a metaphor for the banking industry - boom and bust!

David Whipp wrote:Thanks China. Flaxseed good source of... (stop it David; the oil purists will have you)... I was going to say good for us veggies.

Here's another few words from the oil purists... Having finally lowered the levels of bad trans fatty acids (TFA) in our diet by cutting back on the use of hydrogenated fats the manufacturers have now found that there are still some TFA lurking in the oils. It turns out that these arise during the normal refining of vegetable oils. Which means another brownie point for unrefined oils such as the extra-virgin versions of olive oil and rapeseed oil. You heard it on OG first...(A food scientist friend in New Zealand alerted me to it today.)

I'm a fan of Il Casolare oil from the Co-op. Unfiltered and expensive but a lovely taste and even the inferior oils are dear these days.
Tiz, your news about TFA in some refined vegetable oils doesn't surprise me. The edible oil industry offers almost unlimited scope for manufacturers to be creative in the search for profit. The nearer to natural oils and fats are, the better they are for you.
We have always been wary of natural oils in Britain. During the war the government issued Cod Liver Oil free at the clinics for children and it wasn't until well after the war that olive oil finally escaped from the little bottles sold by the chemists for ear ache.