FoodNet

Hilda's diary of a Cape housekeeper

1902

Page 17 · 1 recipe record on this page

Presented as published in 1902. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
Raisin Yeast is used in the eastern part of Cape Colony. Crush in a mortar half a cupful of raisins, and put in a 2 lb. fruit bottle, with i tablespoonful of sugar ; fill the bottle to within two inches from the top with tepid waterRaisin Yeast. It will be fit for use when all the raisins Jioat on the sur- face. This quantity is sufficient for 4 lbs. meal. Mix and knead the dough over-night, use all the liquid, pouring it on the flour in the bowl and adding warm water to the yeast sufficient to mix into the ordinary consistency. Start at once making fresh yeast by putting in the same quantity of raisins, but dorit wash the bottle, and leave a few old raisins in it. This sets it fermenting next time. Poultry. — Just a few words on this subject, strongly to advise poultry farming in connection with any other kind of farming you may undertake. Many books and hints have been written on the subject, so I will not go into detail, but just say that I find Minorcas excellent layers ; but Buff Orpingtons are splendid birds for growing, being hardy, and fit for killing in five or six months. I speak from experience, and would say that everything depends on judicious feeding and physicking. I have never had any disease in my poultry run. Once a day the fowls have a good hot mash of bran (about 1 lb. of bran to 18 fowls) and scraps, and early in the morning some mixed food, such as supplied by Calder and Co., Forage Merchants, Main Road, Wynberg, at ioj. per 100 lbs., consisting of mealies, barley, oats, and split mealies. This is very whole- some ; and the reason why so many people lose their fowls is owing to mealies being given as the sole food. At night we give them just a sprinkling of dry food again. Before 34 THE POULTRY YARD Jan. moulting begins I give them daily, for a week, a table- spoonful of sulphate of iron, dissolved in hot water, for 12 fowls and mixed up with the bran mash ; and once a year when moulting, they get sulphur in the same proportion for a week or more. Unless fowls have a very large run they require these tonics. Our poultry run is about 60 feet long and 25 feet wide, and we keep 12 hens and i cock. Mealies are too fattening for laying hens, unless you have a very large field and only feed them with it at night. The supply of eggs and poultry is not equal to the demand near large towns, so one should always be able to get a market for one’s poultry and eggs. Poultry, if properly managed, can be made a great success.! A gentleman who came out for his health (neither he nor his wife being able to live in England) took a small farm on the Wynberg Flats of about five acres. He grows successive crops of green forage, and one crop of potatoes, which he puts in when his vlei (or pond) dries up; this vlei fills with water in winter, and is ready for planting in January. Of poultry he keeps 200 hens and 10 cocks, both Orpingtons and Minorcas. The former are splendid mothers, and the chickens grow out very quickly, being quite fit to kill in five or six months, and the young chicks are very hardy and find their food in a most in- dependent manner. The Minorcas are the best for laying ;