30 Ways to save £1 ---Day 6 + More food squirrelling

Very grey and drizzly here today - nasty.

More food preservation today . Thanks to everyone for all the comments about storage of squash, they have been brought in from the hay shed and are now in trays in the spare room. The few green and under ripe tomatoes that were left in the polytunnels are now in the dining room. Last year, due to the weather, we had a lot of green ones indoors at the end of the season. They ripened slowly and lasted almost until Christmas.

The apples from the second to last late tree have been wrapped and stored in a box, we really think we have enough eating apples as these are the ones we are slowly eating our way through at the moment, before we even get to the wrapped ones

and there are still some hanging on the last tree.

I decided to put 3 more squash out for sale and 3 red cabbage and they sold very quickly. I just need to decide how many cabbage to keep for us out of the remainder. One is a monster!

It really has been the most fantastic and wonderful year for home grown food.
Today from the garden and poly tunnel we had lettuce/salad leaves, radishes, beetroot ,tomatoes, onions, red pepper, eggs, apples, white cabbage, potatoes plus pears from the freezer.
Not forgetting the homemade cake, bread and jam!

This afternoon Him Outside went off to collect the tractor from the agricultural engineers -AGAIN. This is the second time this year it has been brought home from there and the third time its been repaired. So another big bill is undoubtedly on the way before Christmas. 

And Finally another one from the April list of 30 Ways to save £1

DAY 6 - Have a look around local industrial estates and see who chucks what.
This is where we find pallets for burning and for lifting hay off the floor in the hay shed. Water butts for storage and the big IBC containers to store huge amounts of rainfall and to sell.
I would love to fish in the rubbish skip at one company because that's where all the Tala kitchen ware is imported - might be some treasures there. But they have security so I wouldn't dare!

Back tomorrow

30 Ways to save £1 ---DAY 5 + Clearing up for winter

Mixed weather here today with rain first thing.

We had decided that we would take down the runner bean canes  but delayed until the rain stopped. So Him Outside did a bit of wood cutting and I did a little house work. I usually take off beans that are starting to dry out so that I can save them for next year but because of the wet warm weather there were very few. That job done I had a look around to see what else needed doing and realised we still had several red cabbages. I'd thought about doing some pickled red cabbage for Christmas gifts but as I'm not sure if anyone likes it and we definitely  don't, they might as well be sold. I'll hang a couple in nets in the shed to keep for red cabbage casserole. I also brought in several red peppers from the polytunnel, wrapped them individually in kitchen roll and put them in the salad drawer of the fridge.

All this storing of food reminded me to have a proper look at  one of the library books borrowed last Friday. This is all about various ways of preserving  food.

  It answers the question of why our stored squash never keep as long as they should, or at least I thought it had and then I turned a few pages and got confused.
On one page it say's keep them in the house at a temperature of between 16 and 20 degrees, then a bit further on it says store at 10 degrees. I've got them in the hay shed at the moment but that will be too cold later whichever page I look at.
There are several ideas for storing food including lots about fermentation the Korean way and from other countries too. I didn't fancy any of the recipes. Some look positively yuck. I think I'm just too old and too English!
I have no intention of paying anywhere near its proper price of £16.99, but I might put it on my list to look out for secondhand sometime in the future, perhaps 1p  from Amazon!


Now, Day 5 of the 30 ways to save £1 was

5. Buy refill packs of things if you can

We used to have a shop locally that we could get refills of Ecover washing up liquid. But it is no more. Large containers of Ecover liquid clothes wash and w-up-liq are available on line but delivery costs are high. So although my idea for buying refills is a good one there are not many available. I do buy good coffee in refill packs. Anyone know of anything else?  ( Does refilling the biscuit tin count?!)


Before I sign off for today, I must just say Welcome to Janice who is a new follower and thank you to everyone for comments yesterday and some from a few days ago too which made me smile.

Cycling in the fog

As I said a week or two ago I really want to get cycling again. I'm just 2 and a half miles from our two small towns so just right for biking and I did it regularly for years. So I set off to Saxmundham this morning and it was just a little misty here but the further I got inland the foggier it got.
No bargains in Tesco- no surprise there. And I only needed milk and a few other bits. Then into the factory shop to get some pretty things for the Operation Christmas Child shoebox, which I must get finished soon. A quick visit to the charity shops and I was soon on my way home again.
I popped my camera in my bag to take a picture of the hill out of the town which, if you are in a car seems to be just a bit of an incline, but on a bike it's STEEP. I've never been able to cycle up it even when I was 20 years younger!

 It doesn't look to bad on a photo but I walked up.
At the top of the hill you can see right across the fields to the pylons near us- Usually!

But not today. Just a bank of fog.

We had a disappointment today because the people we've been going with to a few charity quiz nights don't seem keen on doing it this winter. Shame, as I like quizzing and don't take it too seriously. We are not sure who else would want to have a go.
Anyone for quizzing?

Lovely to see some new followers in the little pictures over there on the right - Welcome. Do leave a comment sometimes.

The other day I said I wanted to make a regular feature of the things we eat that are home grown, homemade or home produced and then I forgot - hopeless!
So here we go
Home grown, homemade and home produced eaten here today; Bread, Tomatoes, cucumber, courgette,sweet pepper, lettuce, salad leaves,beetroot, red onion, cheese scones, potato, cabbage. Apple, pears and autumn raspberries.Apple pie.
For sale on the stall today; Eggs, squash,pumpkins and cooking apples.
That's it for today, I have a good book to finish.
Back tomorrow.

A picture of Autumn.

This photo sums up the Autumn on the Simple Suffolk Smallholding

Two log baskets full of wood= free heat from the wood burner for a chilly evening and hot water and a hot kettle from the Rayburn.
Lots of squash to sell and lots still on the field.
A trug full of eating apples just ready and picked before they fall off.
A colander full of pears to put into the freezer.
A trug and bucket full of cooking apples to sell.
A big flowerpot full of windfall cooking apples to put in the freezer.

No wonder we are smiling!

Thank you to everyone for interesting comments yesterday.

Attila - could you hide the pears from your DH? :-)  I think they are nasty when hard too, so usually poach them before eating at this time of year.

Pam- Yep, I'll let you know which of the crime books I enjoy.

Bridget- We've never tried just Niger seed for bird feeding, we did use a mixed wild bird seed but most ended up on the ground.

Dreamer- we loved Scotlands Book Town when we visited a few years ago. Missed the book festival by a week but found a book I had been looking for for a long time in one of the book shops.

Sadie- Have you heard about the Clifford Road School air raid shelter in Ipswich?Open for visits sometimes, I've never been but heard it is very good.

Cro - I thought people in France ATE the wild birds rather than feeding them!

Julie- Aren't we so lucky to have free book reservations in Suffolk. It's 55p in Norfolk, another reason never to cross that border!

Cochrane Girl- Thank you for the info about another interesting sounding WWII book. It wasn't in stock in Suffolk so I've suggested it on their website suggestion page.

Fran - My library book photo is a good way of filling a blog once a month! So will keep going.

Lynda- I didn't realise that shipping via Amazon to the states was more than shipping via Amazon  from the states to us here.   I smiled at the thought of you struggling through an airport loaded down with books.

Old enough for thermal vests?

Once you get on the list for a Damart catalogue they seem to come quite often. Every autumn I look and think perhaps I ought to buy some thermal vests. Each year I decide I'm not old enough and I can make do with my summer vest tops when I need an extra layer. Then during last winter I had some days where my back and shoulders just didn't seem to get warm, so maybe I am old enough. In the  catalogue they are £17 each - far too much. I looked on the M & S website and they are £16 for 2 and the same at Debenhams. Him Outside said check ebay and of course they had some M & S, my size. new pack of 2 for auction. Which I got for £9. I shall now be toasty warm on the coldest days, but by golly I will feel ancient!

Him Outside got a nice cheque in the post this morning. It was his pay for the nearly 30 hours he did driving up and down fields with a big tractor and a roller. "The easiest £300 I've ever earned" he said.

It's been another lovely autumn day here, we've been treated to sunshine and blue skies. It was time for a wander around the garden with the camera.

Beautiful Bramley Apples.
 We started selling these on Sunday and for the first few days they were a bit slow going but today I've been picking and bagging and putting on the stand and they've been flying. We decided that as there are so many apples around this year that we would sell them for a £1 for a big bag full- just under 4lb. So good value for everyone to buy and enjoy. Our apples will be in many freezers in the Knodishall area this year.

What a sad sight.
 The last few tomatoes in one of the tunnels. No more to sell as we can eat them as they ripen slowly. Once we get a frost I will pick them, spread them out on newspaper, on trays and keep them in an unheated room.They will carry on ripening and we may still be eating them in December. One or two will go bad before they go red but it's one way of preserving the harvest just that little bit longer.

Food for the future
A red cabbage which could be eaten or sold or will sit in the garden for several weeks.

The view over the road.
This field had a very poor crop of field beans, after lots of cultivation, it's now been sown ready for next year. Probably wheat, we shall see what comes up.

The potato harvest
We originally didn't plan to grow any maincrop spuds  this year but got the chance for a  few cheap seed potatoes and planted them, we might as well not have bothered. Scabby, knobbly, small, no idea what variety they are but it was much too dry here for them this year. Last year it was too wet!
That's how it goes.
Back tomorrow.
PS Thanks to everyone for comments yesterday.If you have a go at the curry or the bhajis I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Thursday jobs.

First job this morning was picking the greengages as they had started to fall off the trees, yet a week ago they were not really ready. I shall do jam tomorrow. In 20 years here we have had enough to make jam only 3 or 4 times. Some years they are badly affected by  a moth larvae, some times they just seem to vanish - squirrels? birds? but mostly the trees are bare of fruit. This year there are even enough to put some bags out for sale, and the chickens are enjoying all the split and damaged ones.

I cut some more squash and pumpkins to put out for sale, drove Him Outside to Leiston so he could sort out a prescription hiccup at the doctors plus a bit of shopping, did my back exercises, cleaned the campsite loos, did the dustbins, brought in a load of wood - both fires lit today. Then it was egg collecting and boxing up - the 24 new chickens that we got a few weeks ago have laid their first little egg.  A few bits of cleaning indoors, I should have done the ironing but conveniently forgot! Browsed through the Christmas Lakeland catalogue ( thinking HOW MUCH? for a few tiny jars of jam, chutney, chocolates, biscuits etc.) Do people really spend that much on so little?  Then time for a cuppa while watching Countdown.

Dinner tonight is a tray of mixed roasted veg - beetroot, carrot, potatoes and squash with some of the bargain Ham offcuts that only the Coop seem to have. £3.99 for 750gm. We usually buy this about once every 6 weeks and it will make nearly a weeks worth of  lunchtime sandwiches plus 3 or 4 dinners. Tonight with veg, tomorrow a few bits could be added to the sauce for cauliflower cheese ( our first autumn cauli. from the garden). Then with egg and chips on Saturday and into a quiche for Sunday and Monday.

What a lovely day

It's been a really beautiful day here. If every Autumn day was like this it would make winter seem much shorter.

I took a wheelbarrow out to the field to start the harvesting of pumpkins and squash to put out for sale. These small pumpkins are bright orange already and much smaller than I wanted. There are some bigger which are still green.  There are also a few plants of some that are slightly different- not quite round, and paler orange ( the one on the right) I don't know what they are as they don't fit any of the descriptions on the packets of seeds I planted.
Some of the butternut squash are HUGE, much bigger than I wanted for selling. I spent ages last year trying to find a variety that wouldn't get that big and with the dry weather we have had I'm surprised at their size. I have no idea how much squash cost in the shops so put these out at £1 each - because I sell everything at multiples of 50p to make accounting easier - and they soon all went.

 It's a really good time for seasonal eating with both the end of the summer and now autumn produce available. Today from our garden we could have tomatoes, sweet peppers, green and red peppers, chilli peppers, cucumber, white cabbage, red cabbage, chard,  lettuce, radish, courgettes, butternut squash, pumpkin, potatoes, parsnip, sweetcorn, leeks, onions,  red beet, runner beans, pears, autumn raspberries, apples, figs, greengages, plums and the herbs of course - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme ! and oregano too.

Him Outside has been resting and as I had nothing that desperately needed doing I thought I would have a lazy-ish afternoon too. So when I fished a heap of our local newspaper - The East Anglian Daily Times, out of the campsite bin I sat down and had a good read. It's interesting to see what local news we miss by not having a  paper.

Making a cuppa this afternoon, I glanced up to see a weasel trying to carry something through the orchard. I realised after a second look that it was a pigeon. He was really struggling with it. Who knew weasels could catch pigeons?

Life is too short to plait onions

Thank you from both of us for all the anniversary good wishes yesterday. We celebrated by going to a car boot sale , doing all the regular jobs and reading. Who needs cards and flowers?

I'm having to do this blog all over again as the first time I posted it it came out on top of the previous post - very odd.

Our onions have been out of the ground for a couple of weeks, laying on mesh shelves in the greenhouse with both doors open, to finish drying them off and today I started the job of sorting them out and taking off the dry skins.
In gardening books they often give instructions for plaiting the onions with a piece of string but we just put them in net bags and hang them from the shed roof. No faffing about here! I've often wondered if people are put off growing stuff because they think they have to do complicated things with them afterwards.

After the onions, I did a bit of Autumn cleaning. I don't do spring cleaning because I would rather be outside in springtime. I moved some things around on the worktops, cleaning as I went around, cleaned out a couple of cupboards, sorted out some dresser drawers to make more space, whipped around the house with the feather duster until the feathers started falling out  and then took all the things off the dresser to give them a wash. When they were all clean and shiny I thought I would take a picture of  all the eclectic mix of things I have collected over the years from car boot sales and charity shops.

The chicken tea cosy stands guard and along with the sheep jug on the top shelf are the only things that were bought new.

It was blinkin' cold here this morning and very chilly now, we shall be lighting the woodburner later I think. We've also got some rain at last, although it's been dry all day there have been black clouds all around. A motorhome arriving on the campsite had driven through heavy rain in Essex.

Him Outside has been rolling fields again today that makes a total of 27 hours, which will be a handy income when he gets paid.

My original post had a bit of a rant about a camper wanting me to tell off his 3 year old little poppet because she was noisy. I hate that " be quiet or the lady won't let us stay" NO, I didn't play along. I hope I never used that ploy with our lot. Perhaps they will tell me if I did!

Hope this posts in a new box and not half on top of yesterdays.
Back tomorrow.

Odds and ends on Tuesday

Had lots of phone calls yesterday for bookings for the campsite, so from having an almost empty diary a few days ago it is now looking much better. Good news indeed.

Him Outside went to move the irrigator for our farmer friend W this morning so he is really back into the swing of things, then he went back to rolling fields. His work manager ( at his old job where he does 3 or 4 days a month) thought that he would be entitled to some sick pay if he got a doctors sick note. We were very dubious about this and we were right, he isn't going to get any money from the council after all! He might be entitled to some statutory sick pay, we will find out. I didn't think self employed people got given anything. Anyway he is earning a bit of money again so we are not too bothered about it. He will need another couple of weeks rest after the next visit to Papworth (only two weeks away now) so will be able to start odd jobbing again in October.

Popped down to Leiston this morning and amazingly I found some yellow sticker sausages (Locally produced too) in the Coop Solar. £1.30 for 1lb, stocked up on three packs. Didn't bother with their reduced price lamb chops, £1.90 for two of the teeniest chops you did ever see. When we kept sheep and bred our own lamb we ate lots, but I can't remember when we last had some.
 They also had lots of yellow sticker bread rolls so I got a couple of packs of wholemeal to pop in the freezer just in case ( 40p). Although I make bread every week  it's handy to keep something in the freezer too.

I've discovered some comments on old blogs that I didn't know were there, so apologies to various people for not replying or even acknowledging them.( dreamer and Stacey plus Karen for comments on Sunday and Monday) Also welcome to Kev as a follower and there are new followers by Bloglovin too that I keep forgetting to look at - welcome one and all! Apparently I get emails via the blog somewhere too but don't know where they are!, so it's no point anyone emailing me!
 Judith has left a comment now and again and I thought her blog was called Terriersintiaras which is her user name, and was all about dogs!!. But I was being totally thick and her blog is Lemon Drops which I have added to my sidebar. I've deleted The Other Stuff from the list as Scarlet  is not posting anymore which is a shame. I must add Staceys blog to my list too. It's all going on on that sidebar! Kev said he liked the picture at the top of the blog and I know lots have people have been encouraged to  read or reread some of the books from the pile.
Talking of reading, did anyone see on the National News today the pictures of the HUGE new library opening in Birmingham. I wasn't overly impressed by the design of the outside - weird. But inside looks incredible. The thing people are worried about is that the huge expense of this new library will force some of the smaller branches in the city to close. My friend S in Hagley is planning to take a look at the new library when all of the fuss has died down. The news pictures today showed it absolutely packed out.
Having spent my ( only 10) working years in various types of libraries and an awful lot of time in them ever since, I'm always interested to hear about them in various parts of the country. I actually cried when Norwich (Norfolk) City library burnt down about 18 years ago ( maybe more years - time flies) losing all those wonderful books, libraries and people all over the world donated books for the new library.

Spotted these  ready today- figs number 4, 5, 6 and 7 more than we've had for ages. Lovely.

Nothing else of interest to report
Back tomorrow.

Thursday Notes

Thank you to heleng, Gill at Frugal in Derbyshire, Sft at saving for travel, Angela at Tracing Rainbows, Attila and Dc at frugal in Norfolk for comments yesterday. It was interesting to do the maths on AF orders - keeps the old brain active.
Also welcome to some new followers - very pleased to see you.

Another lovely day, we have been so lucky with the weather here although we haven't done much outside today as I made bread and organised dinner for tonight when our youngest and her other half will pop round for a roast. It will be the very last chicken in the freezer from some we raised from "off heat" age a year ago. We used to buy them in at 6 weeks old from a bloke who got the "leftovers" from one of the big poultry producers. Unfortunately he can't get them anymore so the next chicken we buy will be from a butcher or supermarket. The other alternative is to buy in meat breed chicks at a day old, but the minimum order is 100 and when we last did this we had problems selling on some of the chickens for other people to finish. No room in the freezers here for 100 chickens!! and not allowed to sell them prepared for the table without all the proper butchery rules and regulations and approvals. Red Tape - Don't you just love it! I'm wondering when the time will come when some city person will decide that chickens need Electronic Identification Ear Tags too!

Him outside went to get a new packet of tablets out of the cupboard and found they had been missed off his last prescription, so he had to make a special trip down to the doctors to sort that out. He also bought a new battery for the jeep to see if that will improve the starting of the blinkin' thing when the weather gets chillier.

Good news on the empty campsite September diary problem after two phone calls today. First someone coming for 2 WEEKS! - Quite unusual. Then the day they go another caravan in for a week.

After being stuck indoors all morning I was planning on getting back to the raspberry pruning, but it was so hot in the fruit cage I decided to leave it for today, so I had a wander with the camera instead.

The very old Bramley loaded with apples.

Plums slowly ripening

One row of raspberries pruned. One row still to do

More Conference pears than we have had for years.

The Fig Tree, hope some more ripen, after two bad years the tree looked dead, but looks better now

 That's me done for today,
Back tomorrow when I hope to do the blog about budgeting that you may have glimpsed when it got accidentally posted before it was finished.

Getting some work done

After 3 lazy days when the minimum of work was done, it was time to get back to normal.  So I started the day by doing some baking. I made a big batch of currant shortcakes mainly for putting in the freezer for Him Outside.

 SHORTCAKES
8oz SR Flour
4oz Butter
4oz Caster Sugar
3oz currants
1 egg
Egg  for brushing on and caster sugar for sprinkling.

Rub fat into flour stir in sugar and currants, mix in egg.
Roll out as thin as the currants will let you. Cut into squares, oblongs, whatever.
Put on greased baking sheets. Brush with a little beaten egg and then sprinkle just a little sugar.
Bake in medium not TOO hot oven for 10 - 15 minutes until golden. Watch them to make sure the currants don't burn. Leave for just a couple of minutes to cool then use a fish slice to move onto cooling racks.

I also did a plain sponge in square tins. This will also go in the freezer either to be used as a sponge cake or cut into fingers to use  for trifle bases.

My other bake was a packet of the carrot cake mix that came from approved foods when I got the Bread Flour.( Did anyone else take advantage of that offer. I still can't believe I have 12kg of flour in the cupboard for £2 !)
I NEVER usually buy cake mixes but carrot cake is one of my favourites that I don't bother to make very often. So when I saw 4 packs for £1, I thought they were worth a try. They are actually very nice. I was puzzled by the smell of the packet of icing mix - bad feet! It turns out the icing has cheese powder in it to imitate the cream cheese that would normally be used to ice carrot cake. I wondered whether to use it but decided to give it a go and used a few drops of lemon juice to add a tang and that turned out OK too.

I am not converted to ready made cake mixes as I'm not keen on the list of weird ingredients on the packet. But I'm hoping that as a one off ( 4 times!) they will not do me any harm.

After baking it was back to the fruit cage to do some more pruning of raspberry canes. Summer fruiting raspberries have to have all the canes that fruited this year cut out at ground level and the new growth of canes that will fruit next year are gently bent to go up between the wires to hold them in
place. I managed to get to the end of one whole row. So just one more left to do.

While I was baking and it was still foggy outside Him Outside did the downstairs hoovering for me ( he is getting quite handy with the hoover, since he has been helping indoors more so that I can help  him outside with more jobs ) Then he got  busy clearing a veg bed that had finished, covering with compost and turning it in with the rotavator, and finished off the day by transplanting some lettuce plants.

We had three caravans leaving and 3 new ones arriving so quite a busy day on the campsite. By this time next week we will be empty for the first time for months. The September diary is very quiet although we might have a group of teenagers and their teachers coming here while doing their Duke of Edinburgh award.

We had a Once-a-Year dinner tonight!

Pasta, Aubergine and cheese bake.
 For 2 people
1 Large Aubergine or two small.
3oz Pasta penne
3 Tablespoons Tomato Puree in third pint hot water
4oz grated mature cheddar
Salt & Pepper

Cook pasta as usual
Slice aubergine fairly thin and fry in olive oil ( I use rapeseed oil) until browned.
Layer aubergines, pasta, puree mix in a baking dish, with a little cheese, salt and good twist of pepper
Save most of cheese for putting over the top.
Bake for 25 minutes in hottish oven.

Forgot to take picture until we had started eating, so this looks a bit messy but tasted lovely

 The reason we only have this once a year is because it is a bit greasy as the aubergines absorb a lot of oil. Also aubergines are not something I buy as we try to eat only our own vegetables most of the time, so we can only eat this if we've grown them in the first place! Which we did this year and have a good crop mainly to sell or we also roast them in a mixed vegetable roast.

Tonight we will be watching New Tricks. We only "found" this programme about 2 series ago and have no idea why we didn't watch it in the earlier series. I'm interested to see how Nicholas Lyndhurst fits in as he is much younger than the other actors in it. There's also a repeat of Only Connect on in a minute - good brain testing quiz.
Better go and put the TV on and the kettle too I think.

Apricots - what a treat

Welcome to a new followers - Retrowren Wren  and John Gray- I see I now have 56, did anyone read Johns blog  (Going Gently) the other day when he was wanting more followers so as to get to 600! I think I have a way to go.
Lovely sunny day here today - still need rain though.
We weren't sure what jobs to do today but needed to get some blackthorn out of the fence beside the campsite driveway where it had appeared. ( Don't want a camper or a dog to walk into one of the sharp spines - Health and Safety!) While we had got the secateurs out we decided to start on pruning. Raspberries first, taking out this years fruiting canes and gently bending all the new growth up between the wires. The long bed in the garden was finished, but it got too warm to do the  two new rows in the fruit cage. This is usually a job I do on my own, but with Him Outside not doing any work for anyone else at the moment I had some help. He also did some odd bits of grass cutting in various places and put the topper on the tractor to do some more serious cutting up between the trees at the top of the field.
We had an hour sitting out in the sun this afternoon - the joy of self employment and simple living!

And look what we had for dessert tonight - Our own Apricots.

 We planted two trees in 2008. In 2009 - nothing. 2010 - 2 apricots. 2011 - 4lb. 2012 - nothing. This year 9 apricots. Not exactly a good return on investment, but we are ever hopeful. So for a while we are fruitless as the summer raspberries have finished. Next will be damsons and plums and the autumn raspberries, then apples and pears.Then the long wait until the rhubarb season next spring.

MOT Pass - Thank Heavens!

With Him Outside not being able to have a look at or service our pain-in-the-a**e of a Jeep Cherokee before it went for it's MOT, we were not at all sure if it would pass. Thank goodness it did, one less thing to sort out. The darn thing has been a pain ever since we got it although it does what we got it for - that is pulling a big trailer everywhere including over fields easily. It is very comfortable to ride in and feels very safe as it's built like a tank! But we have to take a fuse out all the time as it runs the battery down for some strange reason that no-one has been able to fathom. So we can't use the radio or central locking (slightly annoying) unless we are on a long journey and then we put the fuse in. In winter we have to make sure it's tucked up in the workshop or it's liable to sulk and not start. Every now and again we discuss changing it but then decide we might as well keep it as its 10 years old now and any other secondhand vehicle might have just as many problems. We've had it  5 years so  we've got our moneys worth out of it .

We have a pointy pepper DISASTER! the pointy peppers are NOT SWEET! it was a packet bought from a car boot sale, they look right, but they are hot as chillies. The proper sweet ones are one of Him Outsides favourite things in a salad, so he is bereft!

Hip Hip Hooray - it's library van day! It doesn't seem like 4 weeks since I last had the book photo but here it is again. This is today's haul and the problem is that I didn't have time to read all of last months so have rather a lot of library books to get through in the next four weeks.

Actually that's not a problem at all!

Campsite Inspection Day

Every year the Camping and Caravan Club site inspectors come around to look at our campsite. The couple who've been coming for several years are retiring so this will be their last year. They don't get paid, only expenses and spend several weeks in summer just going around looking at Certificated Sites. It's not a job I would like, apparently some site owners are awkward and don't like the inspectors coming, it doesn't bother me as I know everything on site is OK. My biggest moan every year is how little mention us small site owners get in the Club Magazine. Lots of information about the big Club sites though. They need us CS owners as membership of the Club increases year on year and without us there wouldn't be enough pitches for all the members.

Before they arrived we had a visit from the Healthy Heart Rehab Lady. I wanted to listen in to find out what Him Outside will and won't be able to do. It seems he needs to take things steady until the next stent is done and then build up strength until he should be able to do almost everything he could do before, except avoiding things that causes strain on the chest area, like really heavy lifting and pushing a heavy wheelbarrow. So that's good news as it means between us we should be able to manage all the normal work here.  Keeping his blood pressure low seems to be the most important thing, so that will need regular checking, and we had better not have any arguments!

I heard a bit of interesting news early this morning on the radio. It has been discovered
- probably- that drinking two cups of hot chocolate drink every day could have a good effect on slowing the narrowing of blood vessels in the brain that cause dementia. It was a very small survey and seems to be all ifs, buts and maybes, but I reckon two cups of drinking chocolate everyday sounds like a very good idea, whatever the effect!

See How They Grow!

This is the first photo I took of the tomatoes in the new big polytunnel

Here is the second, several weeks later

Here they are today after a good tidy up and lots of leaves removed to let the light in, and a close up of some of the best plants. We are dissappointed with the San marzano plum plants this year they are poor , some with only 1 truss of fruit set.
I had a count up to see exactly how many plants we have in the 3 tunnels. There are 75 tomatoes, 8 cucumber, 7 aubergine, 11 chilli peppers, 10 traditional shaped pepper plants and 12 of the pointy pepper. We are selling 5 or 6 bags of toms ( just over 8oz in each bag) every day and 2 or 3 cucumbers. The chilli peppers are sold in a bag of about 8 for 50p, with a bag selling every other day roughly. The other peppers are still to ripen to red.
8pm and jobs done for the day, a load of nothing on TV so it's time for a good read.
Back tomorrow

Eating my words

Before I forget I must say welcome to a new follower lisamaywalters, now up to 52 followers, may be a while until I catch up to Ilona and Frugal Queen!

Yesterday I finished by saying I was off to check Approved Foods to see if I could find the sort of bargains other people blogged about. And what did I find straight away? Bread Flour! which I had also mentioned on my blog yesterday. AF had Hovis 3kg  ( i.e. double normal size) for 50p a bag - now that IS a bargain. I also found some other things which were on my shopping list for this month or next month, the cheapy tins of mandarins at 8 for £1 which they always seem to have in stock(  for winter stores) and a couple of things for next weekend when the family are coming to visit to check their Dad really is  OK! Total just a fraction over £16, with a saving of over £30. I'm semi converted. Although it was the bread flour that persuaded me and I probably won't buy from them again for many months.

Him Outside is beginning to get some energy back so we finally got around to doing some much needed weeding in poly tunnels and veg beds, which I hadn't had time for in the last fortnight. There is still a lot to do but we are taking it steady. He now has a date for the second visit to Papworth - Mid September, so not too long to wait.

We also had a look to see what our main crop potatoes are like - Oh Dear! Not good at all due to  signs of blight and lack of rain. The squash plants are also suffering from the prolonged dry spell. He then held the bottom of the step ladder and used a hoe to hook down the branches of the Morello cherry so that I could climb up and pick some from higher. Normally it would be me on the ground and him up the ladder!

Anyone else take Craft Creations Magazine? Its the only one I like as it is produced by the Craft Creations card making supplies company so there are discounts available for subscribers. Plus it is only 4 times a year for £12, so not wildly expensive like most of the crafting magazines at the newsagents. I had a card featured in the Readers Gallery in the latest edition and was expecting a voucher - I think it was £10  I had last time, but nothing has arrived. Maybe they don't do that  anymore. I shall email to find out.

It was hair cutting day today. No trips to expensive hairdressers for us. We have the cutters so he does mine - a 6 all over, and I do his - a 3 all over with a 2 round the edges. Simple, cheap, tidy. What more do you need from a haircut! How much does your hair cut cost? In the interests of frugality would you ever DIY?

He is home safe and sound!!

Him Outside is now Him at Home Resting!
He had quite a nasty time at Papworth ( although the food is a lot better than that at Ipswich apparently), things didn't quite go as easily as they might have done. But he is now home and sitting in his armchair, feeling better than he has done for more than two weeks. The doctor told him that he is on "light duties" for 4 - 6 weeks until he gets back to Papworth for the second stent. I suggested this could be cooking dinner, washing dishes and wiping up !
Now I must say a HUGE BIG THANK YOU to all these people who left best wishes for us over the last week and a bit.

Pam

Trudie

Vicki

Sadie C

dreamer

Bridget

Julie

Sara

Gill

AlisonB43

Angela

Janice

Liz

Scarlet

Ilona

The Domestic Storyteller

Morgan

And I hope I haven't missed anyone

It was really nice to find all the lovely messages every day and it has  helped me  to know so many people were thinking about us.

Now some replies to questions

The giant tomatoes are a variety called Andine Cornue and I got them from The Organic Gardening Company. This is the third year we've grown them and the tomato I took the picture of is the biggest one we have ever had. They are grown in the poly tunnel and originally come from South America.

The campsite is a Camping and Caravanning Club C.S. site. In their Big Sites Book or on the web site we are 156/165. We are open until the end of October as long as the weather is OK. We should have had 5 caravan/motorhomes on site tonight but then I had a cancellation this morning. It made me smile as the lady, after apologizing for cancelling the three nights, said "we are self-employed so have to work around things". I thought -well so am I and that's £36 that I've just lost out on!

I shall have an early start tomorrow to pick and pack stuff for sale and then to choose the best 2 courgettes, cucumbers and peppers to take down to the local show. Entries have to be in before 10.30. Then I shall dash down again at 2pm to see if I've won anything and to check out the secondhand book stall and then pop back again at 4pm to collect any winnings! ( first prize =£1 second prize is 70p and third prize is 50p. So big money involved! and to bring home the cross stitched things. I'll leave the rest for auctioning off.

It's two days into August and I wanted to do my review of July but still haven't had a chance to think about things.Except to hope that August is slightly more peaceful so that I can go back to being just a Simple Suffolk Smallholder.

Flower show entry and a giant tomato

Many thanks to everyone who kept fingers crossed for Him Outside.News from Papworth is sort-of OK. He had a heart-stopping moment - literally - when they did the worst bit of the collapsed artery so although he will be home tomorrow he will have to go back again in a few weeks time with resting in between. Looks like I will still be busy!
I suddenly realised that the local village flower and produce show is on Saturday and as I had already made the jam and craft things I really wanted to enter them.

 Today was the last date for entries so I did a dash down to the village with my form. I decided not to do masses of cake cooking entries - not a lot of time for baking - so I'll just do Suffolk Rusks, Fruit Scones and Cheese Scones, with just a few things from the garden and the craft things. A total of  15 classes entered.

The poetry entry was a short poem about a village.
This is what I came up with

A Village

A chapel, a Pub and a Church

A lady who'll cut your hair

A School for village children

With a shop and a Post Office there

This is the perfect village

Once found both near and far

 Then along came modern life

When everyone has a car

But it is people who make a village

Who stop to laugh and chat

And the village flower and produce show

Is the ideal place for that.

My final photo today is the first of the giant Andine Tomatoes, pictured beside a £2 coin so you can see it's size. It weighed just over 13oz. They are a pain to get germinated, difficult to grow and always look as if they about to keel over. But the taste!! With virtually no seeds and a very thin skin they are just delicious.

Yes, honestly, that is a tomato! I had half for my lunch and the other half for my dinner. YUM
I really WILL get around to answering comments especially to potential campsite visitors as soon as I have a bit more time. I also need to do a review of the month for July too. Just need more hours in the day.
 Thank you everyone for your bloggy support.

We can't see the raspberries for the leaves!

First job of the day is always putting yesterdays eggs out on the stall at the gate, next letting the chickens out and checking their water, then it's a zoom around the garden picking and packing stuff to put out for sale with the eggs.Today there were three bags of courgettes, two cucumbers, three bags of fresh dug potatoes and two small punnets of raspberries (and enough for us to eat too of course!)
The problem this year is finding the darn things amongst the leaves and next years new growth which is really lush.

They were far enough apart when we planted them in the autumn before last - little canes about a foot tall. Last summer with all the rain there was plenty of new growth which is now fruiting for the first time this year. At the end of the summer this years fruiting canes will be cut out and all the new canes will be put between the wires to hold them upright.

Something else that's having a good crop this year is the tayberry. I'm not keen - they have a sort of perfume flavour but Him Outside likes them. There are never enough to sell.
Before the kitchen got too hot I made 4 pastry cases to go in the freezer and a batch of peanut biscuits.

Pastry cases made for taste - not for their good looks!

 Then the next job was picking lots more gooseberries ready for our friend P to collect as a swap for redoing the picture frames and glass.  This afternoon I sat out and topped and tailed the gooseberries just in case P doesn't get here tomorrow, then they can go in the freezer until we can do the swap. I may pick a few more when the temperature drops tonight to make it up to 12lb.

Meanwhile Him Outside has been turning the hay at Saxmundham, checking the irrigation system for our farmer friend ( and one of these days I'll explain why our farmer friend W has to be away working some where else so that he has to pay Him Outside to move the irrigation system on his own land), rowing up the hay behind the second home just up the road, Moving the irrigation system when it was time, baling the hay and then driving around the field with a trailer so the person who is buying it ( and his family) could load  it. Then bringing some back here and some to another barn for storage. Then he had just had half an hour sit down tonight  when the phone rang with a message to say that  someone had noticed that the irrigation has stopped so off he has gone again to see why. They are irrigating onions at the moment on the light sandy soils down the road. I wish we had enough water to irrigate our onions, they really need it but our water has to be saved for the polytunnels.

Thoughts on stocking up for winter on a sunny day.

Him Outside loved his job for years. He spent his time driving around Suffolk, inspecting things, organising the repairs and then supervising the men who did the work. Then it all changed, preparing for being contracted out they called it - one of the County Councils ideas for saving money. His job involved just driving round, filling in forms, putting stuff on the computer and listening to the men moaning about the lack of organisation. He decided that at 55 he would pack up, go self employed doing odd jobs. The council put him onto casual hours and now he works just 2 to 4 days a month for them. So most of our income now arrives during the summer and last winter was our first living in this new way. It wasn't easy, we weren't exactly short of money but I did have to take a cut in housekeeping. This meant that by spring the cupboards were not as well stocked as I like to keep them. So as July is always a low spend / good income month I'm planning to re stock the cupboard ready for the winter. We are also stocking up the instant access ISAs with spare bits of cash and best of all we have started stocking up the freezer. We picked more gooseberries and put in the freezer  most of the broad beans have been put into the freezer after a quick blanching and then the very first basin of raspberries.

Delicious raspberries - my favourite fruit

 

 

 

 The raspberries have started just in time as strawberries are finishing. I always put lots of bags of raspberries in the freezer as they go so well with apples to make a pie or crumble in winter.

Him Outside worked like crazy yesterday ( with me checking he felt OK and making sure he had the angina spray with him at all times!) sorting baling of hay and getting it collected, stored here or carted away. Things didn't go as planned- they never do - more breakdowns as usual, but it was done by evening. So today was supposed to be spent turning one more lot of hay and sitting out listening to the cricket. Then his ears pricked up as he heard someone cutting a hay field a way down the road. Did this mean our farmer friends mower was mended? would he be able to cut the field we rent in Saxmundham? If it isn't done this week the opportunity to do it will be gone. He was up the road like a shot, but it wasn't our friend but someone else on yet another borrowed mower doing a favour for our farmer friend. Phone calls were made and yes, this chap could cut the field for us. So off Him Outside went to walk the field ahead of the mower to check for ragwort. Perhaps tomorrow will be restful?

Looking Back at June

Before I forget, must say welcome to 2 new followers recently, now up to 40, pretty good after just 3 months I'm told.
Looking back at June

1. Oh dear, we spent more than we earned, mainly because of paying for a years pre-payment prescription card for Him Outside, the electric bill, ballast and cement for the path and the dreaded dentist( although campsite income is not counted in the above earnings)
2. The electric bill money and dentist money were already put to one side so we didn't need to dip into savings.
3. The income from campsite and Him Outsides cheque for the 2 months grass cutting at the second home have been tucked into the ISA for the winter.
4. We have STRAWBERRIES!
5. Lots of things in the vegetable garden and poly tunnels are doing well, despite the cool weather.
6. Him Outside has tested out the hospital service in Suffolk for the first time.
7. Egg sales are still eggsellent!( Sorry, I must stop that awful pun every month) bringing an income of about one third of our total monthly requirements.
8. We have started to sell gooseberries, strawberries, courgettes, cucumbers, early potatoes 
9. Have put a small amount of broad beans and 4lb strawbs into the freezer.
10. Thanks to the help from two ex-work friends, half the pathway at the back of the house is finished.
11. Decided to make the effort to enter things in the local Flower and Produce show.
12. Made 1 small cross stitch card, plus a small cross stitch Xmas decoration for the above show.
13. Wrote a poem about A Village also for the above show.
14. Had a wonderfully large pile of good books from the library van. 
15. The raspberries are constantly covered by bees of various sorts and look to be very prolific
16. Found some interesting and hopefully useful card crafting stuff from Car Boot sales
17. Lots of lovely tennis to watch on TV with Andy M. winning Queens, just sad to see Rafa knocked out of Wimbledon so early.
18. Him Outside was able to get the parts for doing the jeep brakes off ebay, and got them fixed- saving a fortune on garage bills.

Conclusion:- An odd sort of month, weird weather, weird health issues. But we got through.

Raspberries to look forward to in July