2014 is just around the corner, sit tight we are in for a ride!

A white Christmas! 25/12/13

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to everyone! Another Christmas has been and gone in a flash. The highlights for us was eating our own homegrown vegetables for dinner and spending that all important time with family. What about you what did you enjoy most? Maybe the crisp sounds of opening presents or the smell of snow, yes snow does have a smell!

I was fortunate enough to get some lovely gifts from my friends and family. Sport gear, guitar accessories and chocolate. But what I really liked was a device that looks, well like this:

Now what on earth could it be? A pen, a special telescope? If you follow my Facebook page you will already know what it is, a refractometer. This is a clever gadget that test the nutrient quality of vegetables and apples so I can find how high the quality of our homegrown produce are. Proud to say that our apples rate 15 which is just above good on the chart. Here is a description that I find that shows it really does do it's job as a quality tester.

Within the given species of plant, the crop with the higher refractive index will have a higher sugar content, higher mineral content , higher protein content and a greater specific gravity or density. This adds up to sweeter tasting, more minerally nutritious food with lower nitrate and water content, lower freezing point and better storage attributes. 

I am so pleased how clever this thing is, the lemons we used to put on some Salmon were 9 which was above good, but sadly the oranges we brought for the cake scored 7 which was between average and good so I need to find a healthier source. Anyway this is the coolest thing I have ever had. I am hoping to go around local and national shows one day (with permission obviously) to test which person has won the highest quality apple or any other fruit or vegetable. I have the feeling many videos will be on the way about this!

Anyway 2014 is less than a week away and a brand new year so what will I be up to - well exams. But that won't take up the whole year because this is going to be a gardening extravaganza like Ray would say. That rhymes but anyway lets keep on track. Hopefully and I will try and persevere to do it is write my first gardening or cooking e-book, that is my target and a project to start on these cold miserable winter nights. I think it will be fun and also get some of you to contribute some stuff if you want and get a honorable mention or something. But that is the first thing I would like to do. Secondly it to improve my YouTube channel, another present I got from a guy named Santa, you might have heard of him, is a really cool video editing program and it looks great so that should add a bit of fun. Also invest in a new camera so the videos won't look slightly squashed and get a nice microphone for better sound quality. Finally I am hoping to make some gardening related products and I have some thing in mind like 'Christmas in a box' but I am going to keep this quiet in case some rotten-spuds will steal my idea.

So that's that. I can't wait for this new year to start and hopefully we will all have great fun, but for now go back and enjoy the rest of your night.

Merry Christmas! Ho ho ho!