Deep Fried Lard

Well I have been rather absent in posting anything here of late, and my overriding excuse is working on the house. For the past two months the majority of my time out of work has been spent doing DIY on our house as we finally got our building warrant through. I did manage to sneak in a wee trip over to Musselburgh and Deep Fried Lard, hosted by the Legendary Wee Derek.

It was a fantastic day, and this time I stayed around for the curry which really does make a fine end to the day. Getting to sit around and chat all manner of things, especially wargames, with fellow Lardy Lovers was great fun.

I got to have my first ever shot at Sharp Practice, and a game of CoC in 15mm which was a new experience too. I could go over what games were available and show some dazzling pictures of them but frankly this has been done much better by Jim here and Jeremy has posted fantastic pictures here too. So instead I'll dump some of my pictures here but also give a brief run through of the one of the games I played, and some thoughts on the other! Exciting stuff!

The battlefield perspective from the Garibaldi deployment point

Sharp Practice - Biscotti Wars (Garibaldi)
This was a delightful setup, terrain, figures and configuration of the table! The board itself was setup on a number of packing crates so that the playing surface was raise above the table. This meant there was a lower admin space for off table troops, dice rolls, unit rosters, QRS and biscuits! Those requiring a nibble could express support by selecting garibaldi or bourbon biscuits!

Choose your faction! Vote with your mouth!

The terrain it self was all Grand Manner and painted to an incredible finish, laid out on a Tiny Wargames mat, with a one piece crafted road, cut to size and shape out of a larger piece of rubber or pond liner type material.

Jaw dropping Grand Manner Monastery

So pretty!

The scenario itself was beautifully simple and gave a really good game. Both sides deployed on the same short side of the table (opposite corners) and the objective was to get a unit into the large monastery on the far side of the table and hold it for a turn. This gave both forces an interesting dilemma. Do you make a run for the monastery and try to fend off the other force, hoping you move more quickly, or do you engage early to delay the other force and potentially clear the way for your own to move up to the monastery?

The Leaders and forces available to Garibaldi

As mentioned earlier, I had never played Sharp Practice before this, although I do own the rules and have read them! I decided to play the forces of Garibaldi and would try to disrupt the Bourbon forces as they deployed whilst simultaneously trying to sneak a unit up to the monastery. I hoped to utilise my skirmishers to harass the deploying bourbons enough that they would be distracted enough not to go for the monastery at first.

Things pretty much didn't go to plan almost immediately! I deployed my skirmishers and another unit and looked to move the skirmishers forward to some light cover.

They pretty quickly got hit and some shock from the Bourbon troops with their longer ranged rifles. Bad shots and muskets don't do much to impact a well ordered force at a distance! This ended up sucking in another group to try and absorb some of the firepower.

I did follow part of my plan in setting a small group off to the monastery under the command of a Status 1 leader.

The Bourbon hordes poured onto the table and started marching in column towards the monastery. This force would annihilate my small group heading towards the monastery so some preventative action was needed.

I decided (on earlier advice) that to stand any chance I needed to get my chaps into close combat led by Garibaldi to smash up the less physical (but better drilled) Bourbon forces. I gathered up three units of men and tried to advance towards the bourbons, and picked a gap between two buildings to launch towards.

Sadly it was deemed to be a bit constricted and would impact my ability to charge through, this lead to a bottleneck and basically standing in a group in very close range waiting to get smashed up by the bourbons. Which is exactly what happened.

Rather than let Garibaldi get hit in this bogged down and rather fruitless manouver  I moved him towards another formation and worked on getting them into a position to charge a bourbon unit to the rear, if successful I would potentially be able to attack the bourbons in a flank or rear and relieve my beleaguered troops. Sadly the Bourbons were able to reload and faced the charge head on, I also rolled appallingly which really caused more of the problem! and Garibladi was thrown back with a huge casualty rate.

Now this all was going rather badly, however my sneaky little status 1 leader was making decent progress and by throwing a supplementary leader towards the small group meant I could really get them motoring and remove any shock resulting from the double time marching. The heroic if somewhat pathetic actions at the deployment end of the table had managed to hold the Bourbons back long enough to get within spitting distance of the monastery. All I need was a good run of cards and to survive the long range fire of a solitary bourbon unit.

As luck would have it I got to move my troops to the entrance of the monastery and then only had to endure one instance of bourbon fire before being able to move fully inside in the subsequent turn.

At this point we called it a day, without having to hold the monastery for a turn, and also called it a draw. A fair result I think as although I made it to the monastery, the rest of my forces (90%) were in absolute disarray, and had only survived by being forced back under bourbon fire behind a building which resulted in breaking line of sight and therefore no further morale rolls. And Garibaldi himself had been knocked down and had not yet recovered!

This was cracking good fun! So much so that I now need to sort out a few small forces to give Sharp Practice a go with my erstwhile gaming chum!

The other game was an early war Chain of Command scenario - Going with a bang! I played the Germans, trying to secure a route forward against the defending French who were looking to blow up two culverts before I could seize them.

A brilliant game, where I had my head thoroughly kicked in! I really didn't think losing could be enjoyable but it actually was. It was in 15mm which I hadn't played in before and my goodness it is almost a different game at that scale. I loved it. So much so it has thrown me into confusion over what to do with my collection of 28mm models for a number of future chain of command projects! I suspect I will be unable to part with anything yet so will continue in 28mm but will certainly attempt to build up 15mm too. Easier to strore, cheaper to acquire, and the space on the table is simply glorious!

However as I have most of 28mm para force collected, not to mention some plastic russians, variety of brits, some painted DAK and random FJs,  I think I'll persevere in 28mm for now. All I lack just now is time!

On pigs and products

So the last set of pigs, a pair of Tamworths, finished at the end of last year and went to the local abattoir. My dad helped me butcher them which was the first time I had butchered an animal and it was a huge learning process, very interesting. The girlfriend still hasn't forgiven me for that one and refuses to eat any of the pork that has resulted. Rearing pigs for meat was always my goal and it was only on their arrival that she then realised what amazing animals they are!

This year we have started earlier so we aren't having to deal with an abattoir trip in the ice and snow. We got three Tamworth cross Mangalitsa weaners from a farm out near Lochgilpead and have had them for about 6 weeks now (small post here).

The three girls are coming along well and are rooting up their area a treat! I've slightly reduced the supplementary feed as they have had a good amount of vegetation to go at, and this will continue when we increase their enclosure size in a few weeks.

Onto the products part. I still have a good amount of pork in the freezer from the last pair and a slab of pork belly is getting cured for bacon, with a view to testing out (after making) a cold smoker. Also keen to see what flavour I get off smoked bacon compared to cured and air dried.

The curing is a pleasingly simple process which I have done successfully on two prior piece of pork belly. I got the cure recipe from the River Cottage Curing book which a family member gave me, presumably to encourage the development of such culinary delights! It is basically 50% salt 50% brown sugar (pretty much any sort can work I'm using a soft brown sugar rather than demerara although I couldn't tell you the difference!) with some spicing of your choice, mine is simply pepper and a little garlic for this one.

The cure is rubbed into the pork belly all over and ensuring it gets into any nooks and crannies, of which there can be a few as my knife skills are still developing. This repeats ever day for 5 days (or until ready, if you have a thicker bit of pork it would likely take longer)

 The picture above is immediately after the first dose of cure has gone one, it already looks good to me! The pork darkens with the curing and it becomes more firm, just looks more and more delicious really.

And these are the pieces once the curing is complete after 7 days, I let them cure for a few extra days as I was away. I must say I enjoy seeing how dark the meat gets, just looks so good in comparison to store bought stuff, or it does in my eyes. These pieces had the excess cure washed off under cold water from the tap. They are then patted dry and wiped with a cloth doused in distilled vinegar. This is supposed to prevent any growth on the surface in case something inadvertently came into contact with the meat. The pieces are then hung in my Heath Robinson meat cage - cobbled together from part of  a broken polythene shelf for plants, wrapped in hardware cloth / wire mesh and hung up out in a cool outbuilding.

My slight concern is that the temperatures this week are due to be in the 20's (C) which for Scotland is rather warm. I'm hoping the shade and shelter of the stable will maintain a sub 15 Celsius or as close to that as possible. I have a tracking thermometer to keep an eye on it. It will only hang for 48 hrs and then it will be into a cobbled together Heath Robinson cold smoker. There is a definite theme in my construction abilities!

I'll do a separate post on the smoking (construction and the deed itself) the bacon is technically good to use, the air drying and smoking are additional steps.

The start of the Easter Dunsyston Sheep Flock

This weekend marked another first for me, and that is the beginning of a flock of sheep! We selected a black Shetland ewe with her first ewe lamb at foot, and a Ryeland Ewe with a Texel cross lamb at foot, her second.

They've settled in well over the bank holiday weekend although are still keen to sleep in the stables and munch grass around the "garden" rather than out in the fields! I'm sure they will work it out soon that the fields have much more available. Just now the Shetland lamb is not yet two weeks old so I'm happy having them come in at night just in case any foxes managed to get to her. With the horses living out and the pigs nearby I doubt any fox would be brave enough but not keen to take that chance just yet.

These will all be for breeding some new lambs for next spring. The idea being to keep any new ewe lambs and use the male lambs as meat wethers. We shall see how it goes and whether I get too attached to them!

New Pigs

Got our new pigs two weeks ago/ They've had two weeks inside getting accustomed to us and trained to come running when I shake a bucket of feed!

They got moved outside at the weekend despite a slight breakout on the first attempt they've settled in and have made themselves at home. Some hasty re-fencing sorted that out the escape route - now up to three strands of electric fencing to make sure they don't accidentally jump through!

There was an old massive tree trunk in their area which has been utterly demolished in their search for bugs and grubs! Always amazes and pleases me to see them in action rooting around.

Electricity/Telephone poles

I'm sitting in a rather happy position in that I now only need to sort out a small stream for Map 5 of the 29 Let's Go campaign, and other than that I think I've got everything I need for the remainder of the games. I'm strongly tempted to get some small streams from Fat Franks and close that bit off.

Anyway this has meant that I've finally managed to spend some time on bits of scatter I have had lying around in various stages of completion. I mean I've also started some new scatter but I'll get to that.

First up are electricity poles. I had a few "prototypes" from various bits and piece I had lying around but settled on what I feel is the best option and rather economic to boot. I used some old plastic sprues to create them, it seems the airfix aircraft come in a rather handy round sprue which can be combined either with itself or with rectangular bits of sprue. My favourite for this job are Gripping Beast sprues, partly as they were to hand but also as they had great additional points on them that can act as the insulators on the cross beams. Undoubtedly my terminology is wrong but hopefully you get the idea.

You can see the them rather clearly on the examples above (the three on the left) I now realise that the one on the right is glued on in the wrong way, The box on that one is supposed to be a transformer or some such thing. Not sure if they did it the same way back in 1940s but it adds a bit of variety to it all so I'm overlooking historical accuracy on this!

It is all very simple, especially with plastic cement type glue. Clean up sprue, glue on cross piece (in correct orientation of course), drill hole in mdf base, glue sprue into mdf base. Then the usual, sand glued onto mdf, basecoat, paint, flock.

These were the initial prototypes for the sprue version. I've painted the insulators white as I seem to recall white ceramic ones being used, again not sure on the historical accuracy but it gives me some more scatter to fill up my table.

And now for something completely different

So there has been a number of posts following my hobby of wargaming, however there are other things that occupy my "free" time. About 18 months ago I (well the girlfriend and I) moved to a new house, and the rather important bit for us was that we managed to get a bit of land with it. Rather helpful as she has a horse, however it also means my inner tinkerer can build and make things with a good amount of room for manoeuvre! First up is to get a new coop and enclosure for my hens.

The original coop and enclosure, just after completion. There is much more greenery around now!

A little over a year ago I made a chicken coop out of free wood and some that I got for a very reasonable sum off a furniture maker on gumtree. Well a year on and I have realised that where I sited the coop and the area I enclosed for the hens protections is not ideal. The coop itself is alright but with the experience of the last year I can do better now, and make it a bit more hospitable, functional and easier to clean. That last bit really make a difference!

When it snows the enclosure gets carpeted and needs cleared before the hens will venture out.

I've worked out that there is a more suitable site, with more protection from the elements in particular the wind, but also the snow. When it snows up here the chooks have little inclination to leave the coop, understandable but not ideal when the food and water is all situated outside. I end up having to clear the area of snow and scatter some straw before they make their way out. Not ideal when I have to get to work of a morning! To counter this I've moved them into the stables over winter but ideally I'd like them to be able to stay in their home all year round. Hence the new project!

The view of what will be the new area, prior to the addition of my four-legged superstars!

 Step one was clearing a space - helpfully achieved by my two Tamworth pigs. This unearthed a lot of material that had been dumped from a previous outbuilding nearby. I spent a morning trawling through the area and picking out bits of string, plastic, glass and general rubbish that appeared. There are still a good amount of bricks and stone lying about but for now it will do. These stones and bricks will be used to help secure the new enclosure from any predators trying to dig their way in, and also in helping landscape the area a bit to make it all easily accessible to the hens.

My two tamworths start work on clearing the area.

There was a bit of a wall left from an old outbuilding, it seems to have been an old barn which was torn down before we got the place. This wall needs removed, and some of the blocks will be retained to create a foundation for the new chicken coop. The coop itself will be sited close to the existing stables, seen to the right in the pictures above, to start to provide a wind-sheltered area.

The view post-Tamworths.

 The piggies did a wonderful job, in fact they have unearthed a lot of stuff that was clearly dumped behind there by previous owners, remnants of the barn. The rubble sack is there to collect all the stuff I can find, I keep seeing more whenever I go past it.

In the picture above you can see where some horse bedding has been dumped. This is intentional to act as a compost pile which the chickens love to root through. The increased temperature seems to attract bugs, as well as the horse manure no doubt, this makes it an ideal way to occupy the chooks! It will also slowly fill in the natural dip in the land a little.

Well that is where I have got to so far. Next steps:

1) Keep scouring the area for any bits of rubbish that needs cleared (it's mainly small bits of glass that worry me, the rest is relatively benign)
2) Fix up the fence that borders the road (not really visible but essentially just in front of the big dead looking tree)
3) Put in some hedging by the fence line to act as a wind break and more cover.
4)Start building the actual coop!
5) Measure up enclosure and dig post holes and trenches between them
6) Deconstruct existing enclosure and coop to re-use the parts.

It goes on but those are the next bits that can sort of be worked on concurrently. A busy load of weekends up ahead!

Going to the chapel (1)

Right, after feeling rather pleased with myself over the last scratch build for the 29 Let's Go Campaign I decided to try my hand at it again. This time it is a church for scenario 3. I was planning on buying either an MDF kit or picking up a cheap plastic railroad one and just doing a bit of decoration but I have a fair bit of materials to use and I rather enjoyed the last build so why not?!

I googled the church and got an idea of it's shape and formation, again not to build an exact replica as I just do not possess the skills to do that, but to make a serviceable model that could be used in a variety of settings. Or so goes my thinking.

With some eye squinting and guesstimation based on the scenario map I come up with a size of 10x8in for this build. I marked it out roughly on a piece of hardboard and coated the reverse side in a good coat of paint. Some helpful TFL forum members suggested this as a solution to potential warping and from some other small bits I've done in the interim I would say it works a treat.

For a bit of variety (and to start learning about different materials) I am using polystyrene foam to make this. This is the cheaper expanded polystyrene rather than the denser extruded variety. The basic structure is made out of the foam by cutting slices off to create the walls and gluing them in place with some PVA and cocktail sticks to hold the sections together.

The main structure is finished off and then the roof is tackled. The sub-structure is from foam, carved to the basic shape and then with card panels glued into position. I glue paper over the seams of the card to give a smoother appearance. The top cross is actually a piece from Supreme littleness designs which I got a while back, thrown in for free when buying a selection of patrol markers from them.

Although at this stage I realised that it really needs another window in the front of the tower, up at the top. It just doesn't look right blank.

The whole thing is coated in black emulsion. This is partly to seal the foam but I think it will also help the next stage.

The next stage is of course smearing plaster (mixed/thinned slightly with PVA) everywhere. In some areas I tried to texture it a bit using a bit of soft packing foam, however I didn't get as much done as I would have liked as I got called away onto something else and it largely dried by the time I got back to it! The dangers of a hobbyist.

 In one corner I've added a bit of cobblestone, just etched foam, to add some detail and difference. The windows are not even, largely because I free-handed them, but it has made me think it would be useful to make a small jib/stencil that I could use as a template. I'll try even up the windows a little but I'm not going to spend too much time on it.

Once dried the whole thing got a good coat of a dark grey. This was followed by a range of other colours (yellow ochre, beige, sandstone, fresh barley) mainly tester pots, to try get a sandstone like finish. Strangely enough Sandstone is not quite sandstoney enough for my liking.

At this point I don't think it is too far away from the look I was aiming for. I think it needs a little more grey dry brushed on in some places, and probably a wash to tie it all together and weather it a little. And of course the roof to be finished.

It is pretty shoddy construction work, not flush, not at right angles but it has been thrown together quickly and it has given me some good ideas for the future in how to go about making some buildings out of foam. I also am running hard with Rich Clarke's philosophy of pieces not needing to be exact scale models but rather give the impression of the environment or building. That gives me suitable leeway to be as cackhanded as I am!

You can see the end of this build here.