Oh Happy Day

Him Outside is never happier than when he is outside and riding around on a bit of machinery of some sort. So today he was a happy bunny as he has hired a mini digger to lay a new water pipe for our neighbour.

I'm happy too as the sun shone and I have  got a load of washing dry outside, done a whole lot of hoovering, baked a few fruit and a few cheese scones, poached the last of the pears  including the small odd shaped ones, picked a small tub of autumn raspberries, brought in all the eating apples off the next to last eating apple tree ( the birds had found them) and generally had a good day.

32 years ago I was also happy, having given birth to our son after spending a day and a night fiddling about in hospital trying to persuade him to arrive. I had gone up to hospital thinking he was about to arrive but when he didn't they wouldn't let me home again as my blood pressure was a bit high. Our daughter of 17 months stayed  with her nanna and wondered when we were going to come home. Now he is a 6 foot plus archaeologist.
Happy Birthday M.

Missing gloves and reminders of Tales of the Green Valley TV series

Under the chair, just inside the back door we have a small plastic box to keep the work gloves in .But look what happens

5 right hand gloves and only 2 left hand. So where do they go? An unsolved mystery!

A Warm welcome to two new followers - The Gardening Shoe and John Wooldridge.  As I'm interested to "meet" new followers I clicked to see more about them and on the link to Johns blog was another link taking me to a living history reconstruction in Australia and on there was a mention of one of my favourite ever TV series  - Tales from The  Green Valley. This introduced some of the people who went on to feature in the other Historic Farm series.( Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn). The Green Valley Farm was a project started in an old farm in Wales to show what life was like on a farm in the 1600s. Stuart Peachey - also in the Green Valley series was an author and one of the instigators of the project. Unfortunately there was some sort of disagreement after the TV series finished, so although he wrote a book about the reconstruction project he was not allowed to write anything about the series. Then came The Victorian Farm, The Edwardian Farm and the dreadfully badly produced Wartime Farm which had so many inaccuracies in it that we almost refused to watch.
These have not been repeated on TV ( at least not that I have noticed) but luckily we have the DVDs of the first 3 - the Wartime one is not worth watching again! I often watch these during winter afternoons when I'm stitching. Then I remembered that last time we wanted to watch a DVD we discovered that the blinkin' DVD player has packed up. Definitely something to save up for before winter sets in.

Cheap Heat and remembering childrens books.

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday. I did reply to all but some of the replies have vanished into thin air - very odd. They were there and then they weren't!

Mostly we burn wood for heat. Our woodburner in the living room only needs a few bits to soon warm us up. The Rayburn in the kitchen also uses wood and anything else you like really. We get through a lot of wood every year and it's mainly free, except for buying a new chain for the chainsaw or a new chainsaw every now and again. We've got hedges and trees all around the field which we thin out and we can pick up old pallets for free from a couple of places locally.
BUT the problem with wood is that unless you are lucky to have some nice big bits of oak, you can't keep either the wood burner or the Rayburn in overnight. Which means by morning the house is cold - sometimes VERY cold. When I was younger this didn't matter but I certainly feel the cold more now I'm heading towards 60 and we started to get a few bags of coal in each winter to keep the Rayburn in on very cold nights.
Years ago every town had a coal merchant and we were able to get loose cheap coal or similar locally. When the last man retired we just bought a few bags where ever we could. Then a few months ago when our friend P brought the 9 chickens and a load of wheat over for us as he was giving up hen keeping he said he had several coal bunkers full off coal and Homefire ovals which he had got in return for work done, and as he would be moving soon he said we could buy it cheap if we went and collected.
So off we went early this morning with a big bundle of 50 paper feed sacks, 2 wheelbarrows and a shovel and our old horse box trailer.We came home a few hours later with enough coal for about 10 years! all for £200. Bargain.

This afternoon we picked the rest of the pears off the tree before the windy weather hits us tomorrow. I think I will be spending the day putting them and more apples into the freezer. We came to the conclusion that we had to turn on the second chest freezer if we wanted to keep all of this years bumper apple and pear harvest. Once we had 3 chest freezers, back in the day when we bred sheep we would have up to 8 lambs in half lamb packs in the freezer waiting to be sold. The second  chest freezer hadn't been used for a year but luckily after a bit of juddering it got going and seems OK.

Morgan at Growing in the Fens did an interesting post about reading and as she put a link into to my library book picture, I thought I would put a link in to her blog!
People often say that children need to have lots of books at home to get into reading but I love books and reading and yet we had very few books at home. My Aunties would get me a book for Christmas or birthday and we had one every year at the Sunday School Anniversary as an attendance prize.There were some Enid Blyton books around but I don't remember my mum or step dad ever reading a  proper book, although Mum read magazines and Mills and Boon type books when our neighbour lent them to her. She certainly never ever took us to a library. It must have been primary school that got me interested in books, I remember  Swallows and Amazons and of course all the Narnia series being read to us and  sometimes when the Schools Mobile Library came round we would be allowed on to choose some. The series by Will Scott about two families and their holiday adventures were my favourites and  several years ago  I found a copy of one in a charity book sale. I was so excited to find it and remember those stories. One year, on a visit to Hay on Wye we went to the Childrens book shop as our son was into collecting Biggles books and there I found another book that I had loved as a child. So had to buy it to relive those memories again. Just seeing them sitting on my bookshelves makes me smile.

GOOD HEAVENS ABOVE - I just looked on Amazon to see if there are any other Cherrys books and one like mine is £180!!!! I'd better put it under lock and key!

Blimey where did 34 years go?

On September 8th 1979  Him Outside and me got hitched at the Registry Office in Stowmarket in Suffolk. I was much thinner than now and he was positively skinny! And I never ever let him wear such a pale coloured suit ever again!

 We had met several years earlier through the Scout Group where I was the Cub Scout Leader and he was Assistant Scout Leader.

After our wedding we went to his mum and dads house with the immediate family for lunch then in the evening we had a bit of a do at the Scout Hall with family and friends. Our honeymoon was a week in a tent ( borrowed from the Scout Group) on a campsite on the Isle of Wight.

And we've carried on being frugal ever since!

When I'm cleaning windows

Anyone over forty-five will remember Windowlene. A thick pink stuff that was rubbed onto windows and then rubbed off again to get them clean. I think it was the only thing available at the time. I hate cleaning windows and I'm sure it was because my Mum, who was extremely houseproud, was often window cleaning and we would be inside the house telling her where the smeary bits were and then she would spend ages going in and out trying to get rid of all the Windowlene marks. So boring!
Cleaning the house windows has always been my job and I would have started out with Windowlene, and  moved onto a spray stuff when that became available. I've tried all sorts of things over the years but now I just use hot water and white vinegar and lots of old rags.
Anyway, I'd put off doing them as long as possible so got on with it after doing other jobs this morning. Him Outside came home after finishing the field rolling job and volunteered to do the insides while I was outside- he can reach across the kitchen worktops easier than I can. As I had help I carried on all around the downstairs outside, so he had to as well! He reckoned it was the hardest physical work he had done since he came home from hospital - poor old thing! As for the upstairs windows, they will have to wait a while longer.

First thing this morning I got on with some more preserving. This time I made 4 jars of Marrow and Ginger jam, and also made 2 loaves of bread. Home made bread and jam what could be better. At lunchtime I had a look at the blogs I read and there was Karen at Chelmarsh Chunterings also making bread and jam yesterday, strange coincidence.

My way of making Marrow and ginger jam differs from any recipe I've seen, putting bits of two recipes together- I do that a lot with jam and chutney making.

Marrow and Ginger Jam
3lb Marrow flesh cubed. ( Chickens will love the middle seedy bit and the skin)
Ginger. - Can be a piece of root ginger grated, 2 tsp ground ginger or some stem ginger preserved in syrup whichever you want.
2lb Gran sugar
Either the juice of a lemon or few tablespoons of bottled lemon juice.
1 sachet of pectin

Cover the marrow cubes with water, bring to boil  and then cook gently until they are starting to go soft and translucent. About 10 - 15 minutes.
Tip into a colander and leave to drain well for several minutes.
Into a preserving pan put 3/4 pint water, lemon juice and the sugar and heat gently until sugar is dissolving.
Add the strained marrow and cook until thickened. Keep stirring frequently as there is not much liquid.
I usually mash the marrow cubes up a bit as I'm cooking it rather than leave cubes.
Add sachet of pectin and boil for 4 more minutes.
Pot into sterilised jars and cover.

There are variations to this. Like using preserving sugar, grated zest of lemon and rest of lemon cooked in a muslin bag in the jam, instead of a sachet of pectin. Also one recipe where you use more water, the cubes are left quite big and then strained out into the jars with a slotted spoon. Then the remaining liquid is boiled hard to reduce and poured over the cubes in the jars.
I've had years when this has gone a bit mouldy.  It needs keeping in the fridge once opened.
Just realised that as this only makes 4 jars there is half a pound of sugar in each jar!

  This afternoon we sat out catching the lovely sunshine for half an hour but I got driven nuts by the noise of a loud whining tractor ploughing over the road. He then went off to pick up chicken feed before going to the first farm sale of the Autumn. It's unusual to have a sale starting at 4.30pm, I don't think there was anything we wanted up for sale but he will look for smallholder stuff going cheap which we can sell on via the Suffolk Smallholders Newsletter.

It's supposed to be very hot tomorrow and we've just heard that there might be muck spreading on the field all around us. That should be nice and smelly- we may have to go out!

 

Two emails

Had a lovely email this morning to say that a friends daughter had got the A levels she needed and has got into CAMBRIDGE! So very well done P! She had already got through the interview bit so it all hinged on her results. She worked VERY hard and it has all paid off.
Sadly in the same email my friend also said that their lovely old dog had gone. Always  a sad thing. Him Outside said taking our old dog Lucy to the vets a few years back had been the worst thing he had ever had to do. We buried her under a sweet chestnut tree and she has never been replaced. She was a collie cross rescued dog and was just SO clever, she seemed to understand everything that was said, there was never any need to raise our voice to her. 

An email yesterday was interesting as it was from the Chair of the Suffolk Smallholders Society asking for our help in producing a booklet of memories to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Society which happens at the end of this year/ beginning of next. No one is exactly sure, because it took a while from the first group of people who came up with idea to the Society actually getting started. We got involved almost from the start and Him Outside was Vice Chair and then Chairman while I did the  membership secretaries  job  for AGES! I also wrote a regular monthly bit for the newsletter for most of the last 20 years, until April when I decided that I was repeating myself just a bit too much and started blogging instead.

 Sadly ( in our view) the Society has changed in the last 6 years. At the start it was quite a social group with regular monthly meetings where we had a speaker and then chance for a chat - a useful way to get to know fellow smallholders. We had an annual Smallholders Show which was brilliant for catching up with old friends. ( It was due to promoting the Society and the Show that we got ourselves into the East Anglian Daily Times twice! The second time the headline was 'The Real Good Life Couple'!)  Now it is more of a training group, with courses run for new smallholders, occasional smallholding visits but no regular meetings and no annual show. There are over 300 families who are members yet they now have problems finding enough people to sit on the committee and some of the things that are organised are not well supported. The AGM comes around in September so maybe a new committee will be able to get things done. There was a mention in the newsletter during the winter of maybe starting some daytime get-togethers for those of us who work full time on our holdings and may not get to see many folk. ( Last winter was so long and cold that many people felt isolated) I hope this idea is actually acted upon.

This morning we got yet more weeding done and have nearly caught up with it all.Then two things that seem to mark the change from summer into Autumn, emptying a compost bin onto the rhubarb beds and taking the net off the top of the fruit cage.There is no getting away from the fact that Autumn is just around the corner with winter not far behind.
 

It's all just Common Sense

We needed to go and get some chicken feed, wheat, oyster shell and hen grit from the Feed Milling Company and some packaging for vegetables, so that was our morning out. Him Outside is not allowed to drive for this week but he came along for the ride. I don't mind driving a 50 mile round trip on country back roads but the same distance to Ipswich I shall need more practice at. We  needed some perforated plastic bags and and small punnets for this year but thought that as we were there we might as well  stock up on punnets for next years gooseberry crop too, so I now have 500 x 500g punnets and 350 x 250g  punnets - be prepared is my motto - after 20 years as a Cub Scout Leader their motto rubbed off on me! 

Two things in the news have interested me.( Well, three things really if you include news about food banks, food price increases and the rush for the rich and famous to jump on the frugal food bandwagon) Anyway what I want to say was I heard about a survey that said how many people were unable to point to the part of their bank statement that showed the balance and didn't know that was how much money they had available (or not available as the case may be). The second piece of news was about the number of people on zero hours contracts. Zero Hours contract is when you are             " employed" but only if they want you to work and you only get paid if you do work. You are not unemployed therefore no benefits. This seems to hark back to the thirties where the men would queue at the docks or outside a factory and wait to see how many men would be taken on that day. In a way it is similar to being self employed. If you don't find a way to earn money then you have no income and you don't get any benefits either, at least not in the short term.

How can you educate people about money, surely it must start in the home and at school. I'm old enough to remember savings stamps at school where you took along sixpence ( that's 2 and a half p to anyone born since 1971) and bought a little stamp. This was stuck into a book and at the end of the summer term a lady would come to school and give out the money that you had saved ready for the summer holidays. An easy way to learn that if you save a little bit regularly it adds up a lot. 

As children we spent ages rubbing coins with paper and crayon, then cutting them out and playing shops with toys or whatever. I think there are plans to bring personal finance into the school curriculum, hopefully that will help.

We've never been in debt, thanks to Him Outside always being in work, although well below the national average for much of our early years together. And I have to say also thanks to my skill at working out what was  important to pay for and want we could cut back on.

The mortgage was always top priority, then council tax (or the rates as it was called back then). Water rates, electric bill, TV licence were saved for bit by bit. At that time you could buy savings stamps at the Post Office to save towards many things- stuck on a card to save them just like school days.

 Living in the country a car was virtually a  necessity, so road tax,insurance,MOT were also saved for in tins in the kitchen cupboard. Just as now, the things that could be cut back on were food,clothes,furnishings and extras. The trouble is that now many people think the extras are theirs by right. Somehow a lot of folk are going to have to take a different outlook on what they spend their money on.

We are self employed, we only earn money if we work. We have no pensions yet or insurance. If Him Outside is unable to work for other people for the next few weeks then our only income will be from the campsite, what we sell at the gate plus the bit of interest from investments.  Someone visiting yesterday to see how he was seemed very surprised that we had kept the campsite open for me to manage on my own. Last week another person phoned to ask how things were going for him in hospital and was surprised to find I hadn't been to see him for a couple of days. But chickens need tending to, plants need watering and campers need looking after. That's why I stayed to look after things and because of our skill at managing we will get through whatever happens. Can you learn that at school? or is it something that seems to be sadly lacking in so many areas of life nowadays-good old Common Sense. 

This morning Him Outside asked if I had ever taken a picture of the stall at the gate when it was fully loaded with fruit and veg? Then he passed me my camera - so here it is - full of goodies for lucky people to buy. I say lucky because by midday the whole lot except for the marrows had been bought! 

A small step onto my soapbox due to our County town of Ipswich being featured on the BBC

Did you see that programme last night? It was called something like " We're the tax payers who pay your benefits" and paired up people on benefits with people working hard but not earning very much. It was a surprise when Nick Hewer, one of the presenters, said " we're off to Ipswich". Hardly ever featured in TV programmes but chosen apparently for it's averageness (is there such a word?). I was interested to watch as I like to know how it is that some people can or can't manage on benefits without looking for a job and others who want to work but can't find work so are forced into benefits. Having read lots of historical books about workhouses or even earlier when there was no help at all for people unable to work, I wouldn't like to see the country going back to that. What annoys me is that some folks receive more in handouts than others who work. One woman featured had a dog, cats and various other assorted pets and treated herself to nights out with vodka as a norm.  I expect many people watching thought " Hang on, something's not right there." The programme continues next week. I shall watch. Him Outside HATES programmes like this - full of whingers he says. Part of me agrees but the other bit thinks what would we have done if we hadn't been able to somehow manage on the very average council roadmans income.
How did we pay a mortgage and survive?
 Him Outside worked lots of overtime in summer ( surface dressing roads) and in winter ( on the gritting lorry). We grew our own stuff right from the start, meals were made from scratch, bought clothes and toys  from jumble sales, holidays were a week in a tent, cars were old. Going to the pub was definitely out and takeaways were a special treat. We had evenings out - volunteering as Cub and Scout leaders! We once qualified for free milk- for about 6 weeks until summer overtime started. I did small jobs when I could - dinner lady, child minding, cleaning. Outgoings HAD to be less than income and were pared to the bone.
When our eldest was about  9, she asked if we could pay for one of her friends to go on a school trip as her friends mum couldn't afford it. I asked her where had we seen her friend playing as we came back from Grandma's last Sunday? - In the garden of the local pub with her mum and dad drinking nearby. I explained we chose to do things differently. I don't think the children knew how little spare cash we had because we always found what they needed for school trips etc. Luckily all this was in the mid 1980s before the age of mobile phones, computers, designer clothes and other must-have gadgets. There were less outside pressures on families then I think.

Back to normal diary mode and

 HIP HIP HOORAY IT'S LIBRARY VAN DAY!

All this lovely reading for free, I'm glad that part of peoples taxes are spent on libraries. We earn so little that we don't even pay any taxes any more! So who am I to say what taxes should or shouldn't be spent on. Perhaps I should keep my thoughts to myself!!

A Poem Wot I wrote!

A couple of other blogs recently ( plus talking about writing a life story for the children to read) have reminded me of growing up in the 1960s. I looked through a some boxes of odds and ends to find this poem which I wrote several years ago as an entry in Knodishall Flower and Produce  Show - 'Poem of up to  12 lines about childhood'. As I have not much to blog about - it's been a quiet day here of bread baking, weeding, hoeing and catching a little bit of sunshine. I thought I would share this with you

CHILDHOOD

Red cherryade in a dolls teapot

Sixpence to spend at the travelling shop

Aunties and Uncles coming to tea

These are the memories of childhood for me

Visits to Grandma, in town, once a week

Cousins who came and played hide and seek

Sunday School outings by bus to the sea

These are the memories of childhood for me.

Hot sticky traffic jams all the way to the coast

Softly boiled eggs and buttery toast

Long summer holidays, so good to be free

The fifties and sixties were childhood for me.

I think I won a prize for this, probably about 60p! Which reminds me that show schedules for this year are available down at the shop and I must pop in and pick one up.