Growing lessons learned 2014

We've been growing our own veg since 1979, sort-of growing to sell on and off for 22 years, growing seriously for selling for 3 years. Each year is different and there are always new things to try, changes to plan and the weather to cope with.

Here is the post I did about growing to make a small profit back in June and this is what actually happened in the growing season of 2014

Daffs and Alstromeria
We may well stop bothering with Daffodils to sell, they take up a whole bed for little return, although I'm not sure we will get round to digging them up this Autumn. I sold several bunches of Alstromeria  early on then they stopped growing. Must remember to cut back and feed them this autumn.

Early potatoes
We had 4 beds of early and second early potatoes in the garden and had plenty to sell and to eat. We are still eating the last of the Charlotte.

Gooseberries
A wonderful crop to sell as usual, our biggest income.

Raspberries
Again these were good, we sold lots of punnets from the summer rows and we are still eating the Autumn variety, picking a basin full every other day.

Tomatoes,cucumbers, peppers and Aubergines
75 Tomato plants gave us plenty to sell for 2 and a half months, anything from 2 to 8 bags a day. The giant Andine variety  have been skinned and put in the freezer for winter. They have now slowed down to only a couple of bags a week to sell. Shirley were the best quality this year. There are still some green tomatoes which may not ripen before a hard frost in which case we will bring them in and put in a tray indoors.
Cucumbers were poor, I grew 8 plants, only 6 survived so we bought 2 from a boot sale. They should have been watered more - 2 or 3 times a day might have helped keep the disease/whatever it was away.
I didn't grow enough sweet pepper plants this year, normally they are still going well into September but there are only a few left to ripen. I've put enough in the freezer to last us all winter - hopefully and sold all the rest. Chili peppers sell slowly, about 2 bags a week, but that is enough to pay for their space. Aubergines looked good but a lot of the early flowers didn't set. We had enough to have some for our aubergine and pasta bake and more to sell. They do make something different to go out on the stall.

Courgettes
We had a dozen plants but should have watered them more, they were very prolific for a while but slowed down quickly.They ought to be still producing but have gone mildewy and more or less died.

Runner and Climbing French beans
The climbing french beans were a great success we sold many, many bags  for £1 bag. Because I had some gaps in the bed I bought another packet of seeds and these were actually better than the originals ( Isabella from DT Browns) The new sort grew longer rather than fatter, and as they are best when they are thin, were ideal. Annoyingly I have no record of what the new ones were, so have left some on the later sown tripod to dry off and use next year.
Runner beans were slow to get going but we have been selling between 2 and 8 bags full every day now for several weeks.

Today's picking of runners

 Onions
Despite buying heat treated sets we still had some problems with rust, so sold a lot straight away rather than trying to keep them. However there were still enough decent quality to hang 3 big nets of onions in the shed, they'll need checking for rot now and again but hopefully we may not need to buy any until next spring.

Squash and Pumpkins
We were beaten by the weeds as the squash were slow to get going. It looks a real mess out on the field and I'm not sure how many squash we will find later. There does look to be a good crop of pumpkins, but slow to turn orange. This time last year we had already started selling them. We do know we have 1 HUGE pumpkin and 4 more nearly as big, I have no idea what I'm going to do with these monsters. We were given the plants, so they were not planned, as I know from experience that extra large don't sell well, people like them football size for Halloween and smaller for eating.

Beetroot
Successional sowing means they are a regular part of our lunch. We sold some early on, many got too big for selling, we now have a new sowing in the poly tunnel and some in the garden to be put in a sand box for winter.
   
Brassicas
As well as growing some from seed I sent for some starter plants and we were able to sell lots of cauliflowers as well as having enough for us. Most crops are still to come of course. Plenty for us and maybe a few green and red cabbage to sell.

No Cooking apples to sell this year, but plenty of eating apples and pears. Plums and apricots have gone in the freezer.

Other crops
We have had lettuce or salad leaves available almost every day. Broad beans were not much good again, we may not grow them next year. Sweetcorn is another thing we may not bother with, simply because it's possible to buy frozen sweetcorn for next to nothing and I would probably spend less than 2 packets of seeds. We have carrots just for us and chard.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

How many more windy days?

This is the 4th day with quite strong winds, they've not done any damage except to the runner beans which don't like windy weather and stop growing, and a few pears knocked off the trees, but I've picked them up and cooked them. The wind hasn't stopped the Climbing Green beans which are coming towards the end now, by that I mean 5 bags out for sale every day instead of 7 or 8. They really have been a wonderfully prolific crop to grow for sale.

Here's what was on the stand this morning
1 bunch of beetroot
2 bags of onions
5 bags of tomatoes
5 bags of green beans
1 bag of runner beans
1 mini cucumber
1 normal cucumber
3 bags of red peppers
1 bag of courgettes
1 marrow
1 bag of chili peppers
2 bags of aubergines
2 cauliflowers
and not forgetting 16 boxes of 6 eggs

C was working at our neighbours again this morning and after a couple of indoor jobs I made a start on pruning the summer raspberries. I got the row in the garden finished so just the two long rows in the fruit cage left to do. I find this quite a satisfying job each year as it has a proper end ( unlike weeding) and I can see where I've been and it doesn't need doing again for a whole year ( unlike weeding!)

All nice and tidy, this years fruiting canes removed and all new growth put between the wires

We had another 'No Show' on the campsite yesterday. A family of 2 adults and 3 children emailed back in June and booked for a tent pitch for 3 nights. Did they forget? Was it the weather put them off? Was somebody ill? It would be really good to know. That's the 3rd lot who haven't turned up in the last 3 weeks. Quite annoying, although I've given up worrying about it. We have a caravan, a motor-home and a tent booked to arrive today.

Thank you to Julee, Claire, Jean, Kev, Chickpea, Dawn, Morgan, Vee, Cro and Knitbakecultivate, Sue and Sadie for  comments about blogging and swimming.
I was quite surprised to find that I wasn't 'stiff as a board' this morning, obviously didn't do enough! or maybe shifting hay bales uses the same muscles as swimming?

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Over packaged

The postman brought a parcel this morning, it was nearly shoe box size, what was inside?

Three tubes of lip balm! Slightly over packaged I think. This Yaoh hemp oil lip balm is the only one I can use without my lips stinging like crazy. I've tried all sorts including natural ones made with bees wax but they always end up being chucked out as they've irritated too much. Because of spending so much time outside I use lip balm summer and winter. Thank goodness for the internet because the shop I used to get them from closed down a few years ago.

I thought I had better do something useful while watching the fascinating game of tennis between Rafael Nadal and Rosol this afternoon so I got another dish cloth finished.

And What else has been happening here today?
C has got the shed finished ( apart from being short of guttering and shelf brackets), I'm just waiting for the coat of PVA that he has put on the floor to dry so I can move everything in.

Two tents arrived on the campsite - very unusual for us to have more than the odd tent now and again, building the shower has made all the difference.

Out for sale today just 5 bags of potatoes, 15 boxes of eggs and 2 punnets of raspberries.
Home produced eaten today - Raspberries, potatoes, salad leaves, tomatoes, cucumber, beetroot, cauliflower, calabrese and broad beans.

Welcome to a new follower on Google, I can't seem to see who you are but welcome anyway and there are 167 on Bloglovin which I think is also one more but Bloglovin seems unwilling to let me in to see the followers list.

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday and yes the flowers will turn into Aubergines as everyone knew. We have 10 plants in the polytunnel this year and they are looking very good. We will eat some  but sell several too.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Growing to make a (small) profit

The other day Dawn asked  how we work out the prices to sell things and a while back Kev asked if I could do a post about growing to make a profit on a smallholding. So this post is the answer to both.

 Just to explain that we've never wanted to be a nursery  business so we only grow what we can sell at the gate and we also don't want to spend every minute of the day growing to sell either.
So I can only tell you what we do. Mainly we grow for ourselves with just a bit extra of things we know will be easy to pick, pack and sell. We are also not young anymore! so don't have the energy to do growing on the field on a big scale.

First, if you live on a very busy  road don't try and sell at the gate or the council will call it a traffic obstruction.
Secondly if you've got neighbours who you don't get on with they'll probably object!
You could try selling at a Country( formerly WI ) market if you are unable to sell at the gate.
In our area as long as the selling is only on a small scale the council seem to ignore it. I wouldn't advise selling anything you haven't grown yourself as that is a different thing altogether and has all sorts of legal and safety regulations.

I would advise buying in some decent packaging to sell things in. People are not likely to want to buy things in old carrier bags and if your stall is right by the road it offers a bit of extra protection from traffic fumes. We have a local company in Suffolk we collect from but there are lots of online places. I buy large brown paper bags for potatoes and cooking apples. Small perforated clear plastic bags for tomatoes and peppers. Large perforated clear plastic bags for anything bigger and 250g and 500g punnets.

Whatever you sell has to be good quality. NOT mouldy tomatoes or green potatoes! Don't give anyone cause to complain.

If your sell by weight you have to have proper scales tested by  Council Trading Standards.  We sell by the punnet, bunch or bag. For instance I'm selling new potatoes, I weigh them so there is a good 500g in the bag but then write on the paper bags ' Fresh Dug Potatoes 50p bag'
Make sure you have the prices of things labelled clearly or people will be put off buying or they will be constantly knocking on the door to ask.

If you live in a village or town where people can walk to buy from you then you will probably be able to sell more and at a better price. We are on a quiet back road used by people going to and from work or to and from town for shopping, so it has to be worth their while  to stop. That's why we sell eggs all year round so that folk are used to looking  and stopping.

I price things to sell and to make a small profit, I don't want to be left with stuff and the end of the day. I often have a look on supermarket comparison sites to find out what things are going for. I also try and sell for 50p or £1 which people put through the letterbox in our front door. It keeps things simple and avoids people knocking on the door for change.

It's probably best to start small, to see what will sell in your area and a good idea is to find things to spread selling throughout the season.

This is what we grow to sell

Daffodils and Alstroemeria - Just a few. Daffs are the first things we sell each year. Not a huge profit if you take into account the cutting, bunching, elastic bands, a pail of water to stand them in. But they add a bit of colour.

Early Potatoes - We grow just a few beds of early potatoes in the garden to have enough for us and to sell, usually at the same time as gooseberries. We don't sell maincrop potatoes, they take up too much space and there are lots of places locally to buy by the sack.

Gooseberries - On a profit per square foot these give us the best return. We have gradually increased to 20+ bushes. Many grown from cuttings. These sell really well as they are not easily available elsewhere. Not much fun to pick though! I pick and sell for about 3 or 4 weeks until they are finished.

Raspberries - Another good seller and they follow on from the gooseberries. They take ages to pick but good profit per space.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines. Now we have 3 poly tunnels we grow around 75 tomato plants, which will give about 3 - 6 bags of tomatoes everyday for several weeks.  8 cucumber plants should give 2 - 4 cucumbers per day. I put lots of peppers in the freezer so sell whatever we don't need. There are around 15 sweet  pepper plants and a few chilli pepper plants. 10 Aubergine plants this year.
Of these tomatoes are the best sellers.

Courgettes We grow about 2 beds of courgettes, so only double what we would use. Some years they sell well and other years not so well in which case the chickens get any we don't use or sell.

Runner and Climbing French beans.  Really good profit per square foot especially the lovely pencil thin Climbing French beans. I was able to sell for £1 a small bag last year.

Onions These sell well but we only have the space to grow two beds ( double what we ourselves would use) We sell by the bunch. People don't mind them tied up with baler twine!

Squash and pumpkins. We grow to sell because we have the space on part of our field and because they come right at the end of the season when everything else has finished. Not viable otherwise as they take up so much room.

Brassica crops We grow just a bit more than we need in early summer and then autumn , just to add a bit of interest to the stall. I don't grow any to sell over winter as they would need more space( and energy) than we have. We protect with enviromesh to avoid caterpillers. I wouldn't recommend selling anything that is pest damaged.


Cooking apples - We sell only if we have enough from our two trees.


We don't sell root crops as they are not good enough quality here. ( Except for a few beetroot if we have enough ) Lettuce doesn't sell here for some reason ( plus they have a very short life once cut and bagged). We also don't sell leeks or sweetcorn as we use all we can grow.

Other things we sometimes sell.
If we have enough of decent quality we sell Broad beans, Strawberries, Cherries.

I think that has just about covered everything and I hope this is useful to someone!

Back tomorrow ( library book photo)
Sue





 

Mondays catch up

Goodness me, there were  23 comments on the Cost Effective Self Sufficiency post. Thank you to everyone for reading and commenting. It's interesting to find other people who have had a go at various ways to be more self sufficient. For so many years we thought we were odd!, now it seems we were not the only ones :-)

On Saturday morning we had decided to take a trip to a car boot sale that's only held once a month from May to September. The weather was a bit iffy and we had some thunder early but we thought we would go and have a look anyway. Unfortunately the uncertain weather had put off lots of people so the sale was smaller than usual. All I bought were 5 packets of seeds for £1 the lot.
2 of the packs were runner beans which we have put out straight away to replace a whole bed that have been eaten by mice ( I guess, as there is no sign of any beans anywhere under the ground). We will be short of beans for selling if this new sowing doesn't grow. Next year I shall have to put the whole lot into trays inside. I did 5 big seed trays full this year which is enough to fill one bed. The one bed planted out are looking really sad with yellowing leaves, as are the climbing French beans.
This year seems to be a constant battle with disease and pests in so many areas. We have an invasion of huge black aphids on our big Christmas Tree, these are producing lots of sticky excretions which I think is called Honeydew and it has attracted every bee and wasp for miles. As this tree is right next to our sitting out patio it's all a bit off putting. Our neighbour said it's a good thing she no longer keeps bees as they will swarm to any tree where this happens.

Our son and girlfriend were here overnight on Saturday after going to yet another wedding of one of his school friends. He has kept in touch with so many of the lads he was at school with and being a popular fella has been invited to what seems like dozens of weddings. Next year he will be a best man to his best school friend just two weeks before his Sister gets married, busy boy!
Our youngest daughter  and her bloke came round to join us  for a family lunch on Sunday and, having picked more than 4lb of strawberries, of course we had enough strawbs and ice cream for 6 people ( plus some to spare for us for today and a couple of small punnets out for sale). The children were reminiscing about the years here when we grew even more strawberries than now, and how after about 3 weeks having them every day they would begin to go right off them. I love it when they talk about things I've long forgotten.

We ( mainly C actually) got some bits of weeding done early Sunday morning, we are slowly catching up on that never ending task. We've run out of space for planting out the sweetcorn and leeks until  the first potato bed has been cleared. 

Did anyone else watch the mens Tennis Final from Paris? It was a good match I thought, although I was a bit worried about Rafa  who looked just about all in due to the heat. Probably a good thing Andy Murray didn't get through to the final, with his fair Scottish skin he would have been frazzled.

 Today C has been doing some more work on the shed, it's coming along nicely and I have been

The roof is half plastic and half metal sheets over felt.

  catching up on housework and having a go at Elderflower Jelly which was one of the recipes in the Home Farmer magazine that I picked up last week ( also on someones blog recently but not sure who - apologies, let me know and I'll edit and link you in here). The Elderflowers had been soaking in water since Friday. I hadn't got special jam sugar but I did have sachets of pectin, which I thought would do the same job. But maybe not! Even though I boiled for several minutes after adding the pectin the blinkin' stuff still didn't look like setting. So I potted it up anyway to see if cooling it would work. Mmm, No it didn't!
Then I had a choice, I could pretend that I meant to make Elderflower Syrup which I think will be lovely with some lemonade added or poured over ice cream. Or I could tip it back into a pan, bring it back to the boil and add more pectin.
I tipped most backed into a pan, brought it back to the boil added half a sachet of pectin and then waited for it to reach setting point, which it seemed to do ( tested on a cold plate). So I poured it all back into the jars and guess what............it still didn't set. I give up!

In between everything else I've been picking gooseberries, just a slow start this year because although they are huge I'm still not at all sure they are really ripe enough. So I pick about 4 punnets full and put them on the stall without putting out my blackboard sign with GOOSEBERRIES writ large. (Once I do that the cars stop to buy so many that I have to pick all day to keep up).
 12 punnets sold today at £1.50 each, plus 4 bags of potatoes at 50p, 3 bunches of flowers at £1 each, 2 small pointed cabbages at 30p each and a couple of small calabrese heads in a bag for 50p. Not forgetting 16 boxes of 6 eggs at £1 each.

I caught a few minutes of tennis from Queens Club - the build up to Wimbledon had begun.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

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A Buzzy problem

A much better day today even a little bit of sunshine this afternoon. On Radio 4 this morning they mentioned that Weybourne on the North Norfolk coast had 33 hours of continuous rain, I'm glad we didn't get that much. The big motorhome decided to stay another night as they know they are on hard ground and will be able to get off OK.

C has got the frame of the shed done and stood it up so I could see how big it is = HUGE. My old shed is 7' x 10' and the new one at 14' x 8' doesn't sound much bigger but there will be room for everything. I'm sure I shall soon fill it up and being the shed that's nearest the house all sorts of things get dumped there while waiting to go elsewhere.

We put the first produce out for sale today - 3 bunches of  flowers (Alstromeria, is that how to spell it?) at £1 bunch, and 5 bags of 'Fresh dug new potatoes' at 50p a bag.(Approx 500g) C wanted to see how the potatoes under fleece were getting on but as he had to dig 4 roots to get this amount, we will wait a while longer before digging anymore to sell. We never sell things by weight because if you do you have to have special scales which need testing by Trading Standards- much too much hassle. So everything is sold by the bag, by the bunch or by the punnet. If people think they are not getting value for money then they won't come back but as we sell everything we put out that's never been a problem for us.

C went to pull out the cement mixer to bring nearer the house for doing the concrete base of the shed.
He was surrounded very quickly by several  small annoyed  bees. They are not Honey bees and not as big as a Bumble and there are not hundreds of them, they spend a lot of time on the raspberries and we can't afford to lose them.

Difficult to take a picture of bees under a cement mixer but the brown bit almost in the middle of the photo is a bee and that's where they have decided to live for the summer. We have another lot in the roof of the workshop.
We don't want to have to dress in beekeeping gear to make cement for the shed base so it looks as if we may have to hire a mixer unless we can borrow one.

I'm trying to catch some of the French Open tennis on TV, I love the tennis season - French Open, Queens Club and Wimbledon. It's a pity it comes at our busiest time of the year.

Welcome to a new follower - Countryside Tales on Google friends and to some new people following on Bloglovin'- Elizabeth, Jane and Kate are all new I think although numbers have only increased by 1, so someone or two have un-followed! Shock Horror!
I'm pleased to see Vintage Vicki back in the world of blogging. She is the blogger who lives closest to us on the edge of Suffolk.
Thanks also to everyone else for comments yeserday.

Back tomorrow
Sue

The first cucumber

Yesterday we had our first cucumber from the poly tunnel. This is several weeks earlier than most years and quite a treat. Most of the teeny weeny cucumbers have now been taken off the plants so that all their energy can go into growing upwards and onwards rather than producing too many cucumbers too soon.
Lots of tomatoes have set and we will now start feeding them and the cucumbers and peppers. We use Comfrey"tea" and an occasional bottle of Tomarite or something similar.

So available from the garden or poly-tunnels today  we have- potatoes, asparagus, lettuce, salad leaves, beetroot, cucumber and rhubarb.

I'm still checking the gooseberries every other day for sawfly caterpillars and squishing as many of the destructive little things as I can find. It takes nearly an hour to go round all the bushes but worth the effort. The bushes are laden with fruit and maybe I will pick even more than last years record which was  over 130kg = 130 x 2.2 = errrrrrrrrrr......................somewhere near to 300lb! I think. Although when C got carted off to hospital and had to stay there for 2 weeks while waiting to go for the stents, I maybe stopped counting.

This morning we got the squash plants out onto the field, 24  I think with some more in the conservatory just beginning to grow. It then turned into the hottest day so far - I hope they will survive. We gave them all a good watering so fingers crossed.

Each plant has the soil earthed up around it so it sits in a small hollow. This is to protect from wind damage and to help catch any rain. With any luck, in a few months time, this area will be completely covered with trailing plants and plenty of squash and pumpkins to sell. Over on the left are our 6 rows of main-crop potatoes just beginning to grow through the ridges.

Earlier this morning I went to Saxmundham to visit Mr Ts supermarket and as I had a letter that needed to go quickly I walked through town to the postbox at the sorting office. You can tell what a quiet life I lead as I got really excited because a new shop had a poster up " Opening soon" selling Antiques, collectables and SECOND HAND BOOKS! Sounds very interesting. Then I went a bit further past  the small wool shop, which at first glance looked as if it had closed down. But they had a poster in the window saying it was having a big refurbishment, would be re-opening in early June with new craft materials and CRAFT CLASSES. Things are on the up!

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Februarys Frugal accomplishments and todays news

February = 28 Days of frugal-ness - except for re-homing the cats with the required "donation" to Cats Protection!

Made our own bread every week
Avoided shopping and spent nothing on 19/28 days
Started knitting dishcloths so that we can stop using the sponge scourers which  don't last long.
Read library books for free
2 Free Jute shopping bags from the potato day.
I cut his hair and he cut mine.
Collected a free load of ply and other wood that had been destined for a skip.
Used free wood for heating house/water all month
Used the Rayburn/wood burner as much as possible for heating kettle.
Used the Rayburn oven as often as possible for cooking dinner
Used mainly our own vegetables so spent less than £7 on salad stuff.
Avoided using tumble dryer all month
Ate our own apples and frozen fruit + dried fruit so no spending on fresh fruit all month
Bulk buy of 10kg of Bicarb  for cleaning
My personal spending = NOTHING 


What news have I got for you from the east coast today?

The weather was bright first thing  so I got out to the shed to prick out the seedlings and pot up the largest of the tomato plants from modules into 3inch pots. I then sowed 4 of the frighteningly expensive cucumber seeds.
I had  a count up of seedlings/ plants growing so far, if they don't die on me we have
18 Sweet Pepper plants
10 Aubergine plants
75 various Tomato plants
All of the above are for the poly tunnels to produce things for us to sell
And several Parsley plants also to sell


Then I  washed all the pots and seed trays that have been used so far this year.

Him Outside has been starting to line out the new gents toilet shed.

Once it started to rain we decided on a lazy Friday afternoon.

I only found out last night that a lady who has just started commenting on my blog is the Nan of our youngest daughters partner. So an extra welcome to Janet!

30 Ways to save £1 ---Day 9 + The seed order

We got more dead stuff out of the poly- tunnels this morning, tomato plants to burn, chilli peppers to dry and the plants and weeds into the compost bin. The big pepper plants are still there as they still have  some peppers on them, they may ripen to red. It also leaves these, some late sown beetroot.

They are a decent size.  Him Outside thinks he put them in after the early salad stuff, probably in July. He also put in some carrot seed at the same time but they are still teeny. We shall be able to eat the beetroot as soon as we've had the last few from the garden.

After lunch a bit of woodcutting was done and then we watched the rugby, although I was doing our seed order at the same time which took a bit of sorting out. I've ordered mainly from DT Brown seed catalogue this year, plus a few vegetable plants and onion sets from Marshalls and a smaller seed order from the Organic Garden Catalogue. The total cost is HUGE coming to just over £100. But if I tell you that our earnings from gate sales of fruit and veg this year were nearly £2,000! Plus that doesn't count what we had for ourselves you will see that our order is worthwhile.

When I've got a bit of time I hope to do a blog on what varieties of vegetable we will grow this year.

 30 Ways to save £1 -- Day 9
 9. Cut down on how much toothpaste, shampoo, lotions and potions you use. See if less will do the same job.
I can remember toothpaste adverts which showed about an inch of toothpaste on the toothbrush. I use a small pea size amount and it works fine. Shampoo works with just a 10p sized blob on my short hair. I suppose if you have very long hair you might need more.
Cutting down on all the things you use is worth a try. It might only save pennies, but pennies soon make £1.

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

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.

Sunday sort out

First job this morning was to unpack the 4 boxes of books brought back from the AGM yesterday. I  made 4 heaps; charity shop, to keep, campsite library shelves, and car boot sale. The problem with the "to keep" pile was that I hadn't got room for them. So I had another sort out and moved some books out into the shelves in the front hall where I keep the campsite leaflets. The car boot ones have gone into boxes into the roof cupboard as we are not planning to do a sale for a couple of years. Charity shop ones are in the car ready for the next time we are in town and the ones for the campsite library will go out there next year. So THAT'S IT. No more selling books at shows and DEFINITELY no more buying books to sell.

Next to sort out was cooking apples, squash and pumpkins to put out for sale. We've already sold about 40 squash and there are around 100 still to sell. Our best ever year for squashes. Pumpkins are not so good, lots of little ones but not many Halloween pumpkins and the biggest are still very green.

Third on the sort out list was to work out what we are having for dinners next week and to decide which jobs will get done in what is actually a very busy week. ( Him Outside has 3 trips to hospital outpatients for a start).

After the only caravan on site left at lunchtime Him Outside sorted the campsite by cutting the grass and emptying the bins. We are now empty on the site until next weekend.

I spent a little while sorting out tomorrows blog - my review of the month for September. Doing tomorrows blog before today's is what you call getting ahead of yourself!

My final sort out job was to collect sort and box up the eggs. The 24 young hens who have now been here a month are starting to lay, with 11 little eggs today.

I'm pleased to report that I now have 70 followers over there on the right.( I don't count bloglovin followers as proper followers as I like to see the little pictures!)  Welcome and thank you for clicking.

Back tomorrow with that review of the month.

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.

Slaving over a hot jam pan

The weather today has certainly warmed up and it was a bit too hot in the kitchen when I made the Greengage Jam turning these

into this

According to an old jam making book if you want greengage jam to stay green you need to use a copper jam pan, but as mine is stainless steel it went the same colour that plum jam always is. Shame really but I know it will taste OK.

I went to cut the cauliflower for dinner tonight and found there were 3 ready so 2 went out on the stall along with more small pumpkins, squash, greengages and plums and everything sold very quickly. We've finished selling tomatoes, cucumbers and runner beans. Next will be cooking apples. It is all so different to last year when there was not a single bit of tree fruit to sell.

Early in the year we had a caravan on the site belonging to men working at Sizewell Power Station where they were putting up security fencing. Today one of them called in and asked if they could come back on Monday for 3 weeks. They've been working elsewhere all summer but are now back to do more at Sizewell. That will be a handy bit of unexpected income. All bodes well for saving for the winter months when regular income will be down to just the egg money and some for hay.

I managed to 'forget' the ironing again today, so I MUST get it done tomorrow!

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?

Green Tomato chutney recipe

Thank you to everyone for comments on yesterdays blog, Some I haven't got around to replying to - Sorry!
Welcome to new readers, especially when you say you enjoy reading my ramblings!

A lovely day here again, although the weather men predicted rain for yesterday we only had an early morning shower, so still VERY dry and a strong breeze here today will dry things up even more. No good for plumping up the apples.

I finished making the green tomato chutney this morning. It is an old, simple recipe and makes a type of chutney that is good with cheese or dolloped into a curry.
It comes from a very old cookery book, the sort that actually has more recipes than pages, unlike the glossy celebrity cookbooks nowadays that have a huge photo on every other page. My copy is tatty with splodges and spills on all the pages but as I've had it for nearly 40 years that's not surprising.
By the way you will find I always do recipes in imperial rather than metric. That's how my brain works! I'm English rather than European!! 

Mucky pages - shows it's well used!

Green  Tomato Chutney

5lb Green Tomatoes
1lb onions
2tablespoons salt
1lb sugar
2 pints spiced vinegar
1lb sultanas( or half and half sultanas and raisins)
1lb cooking apples

Slice tomatoes and chop onions and mix in a basin with the salt, cover with a tea towel and leave to stand overnight
Next day tip the tomatoes and onions into a colander and leave to drain, the salt draws out lots of water.
Put the vinegar and sugar into a preserving pan  and heat slowly, stirring to dissolve sugar
When its just boiling add sultanas and apples and simmer for a few minutes.
Add the strained tomatoes and onions and simmer until thick - about 1 hour.
Pot into sterlised jars and seal.

It made plenty to last all year.
In the cupboard from last year I still have 3 jars of Pumpkin and pepper, 5 Marrow and Apple, 3 Gooseberry and Date, 1 Courgette and sultana and 2 Onion"Marmalade" . Then the new jars of Red Hot Relish made the other day and now these 9 jars of Green Tomato. I still want to make Beetroot and Ginger, Sweetcorn Relish and maybe just a few jars of one or two other sorts.
That will give me enough for presents and for us.

We started putting the Damson/Cooking plums out for sale and they fairly flew off the stall and we picked about 4lb of the eating ( Victoria?) plums that seem to be riper than the rest. 3lb were stoned and put into the freezer and the rest will be snacked on - delicious.

This afternoon I carried on pruning the gooseberries. When I say pruning that sounds as if I know what I'm doing. But really I have only  a vague idea that a gooseberry bush should look like a wine glass on a stem. Ours look nothing like that!  So I take out any dead bits, anything very low to the ground, any branches that seem to be going in the wrong direction and I also trim the tips of some of the very long branches and try to make a gap between the bushes.  Him Outside came to help so that we could get the job finished. He said that two people who didn't know what they were doing was probably not as good as one person who did. Although I think they look tidier now and a bit better air flow through the bushes can't do them any harm.
.
I have brought two Conference pears in to see if it's right what someone ( sorry can't remember who without searching back) said that they will ripen well off the tree so should be picked earlier rather than later. They usually get ruined by wasps so if I can save a few for us it will be a good thing.

Strictly starts tonight - Good news indeed.  I love seeing how they progress through the months.

Think that's all for today
Back tomorrow.

What a pong!

Welcome to two new followers - Meg and The Squirrel family.

It's been a smelly day here today as they have been spreading chicken muck on the field all around us. I've mentioned before that we have a big farming company farming all the fields near us after the man who used to farm them retired  last year. They have different ways of doing things and MUCH bigger machinery. I don't remember the other bloke doing muck spreading anywhere. I guess he just relied on chemicals.

I was picking tomatoes ready for putting out for sale this morning when I realised that if I didn't do green tomato chutney soon there wouldn't be any green tomatoes left to use. Green tomato chutney is so much easier than any chutney using red tomatoes as you don't have to remove the skins. So 5lb of green tomatoes have been chopped, along with a pound of onions and both have been put in a big bowl and sprinkled with a couple of tablespoons of salt. The bowl has been covered and then tomorrow I shall get on and finish it.

A while back I said we had a pointy pepper disaster as what should have been sweet peppers seemed to be really hot - more like giant chillies. Well, I tried the odd one off some of the plants and they were as sweet as they should be, so we were really confused. I didn't dare sell them as sweet red peppers in case they were hot and I couldn't sell them as hot peppers if they weren't. So there they have been sitting getting redder with me wondering what to do. Today I decided I had to sort things out and brought in  one ripe red pepper from each plant - one at a time, cut it, taste a tiny bit and if it was sweet I  would cut it into slices and pop them in a bag and put in the freezer and if they were hot chilli type I would at least be able to know which plants were which. I tried one pepper from the first 7 plants and they are all normal sweet delicious pointy red peppers.So now I have 4 large bags of sliced pepper in the freezer and I'm nearly as confused as I was before. I still have to try one pepper from the last 5 plants - will one of them be really hot or are we going mad? Were they hot early on and have now turned sweet?  Another mystery.

Talking about mysteries. Do you remember The Mystery of The Missing Postbox, the one at the end of our road which " got demolished". Well, according to a bit in the freebie paper I picked up the other day we are not the only ones to lose our postbox. Two more have been stolen from other villages around us. What a weird world we live in! Our MP has been roped in to try to get the one that was nicked in the village of Blaxhall replaced. So I might have to contact her and see what she can do for us.

And finally here it is - this months heap of borrowed books collected from the library van today.

I'm a bit puzzled as I've had some of them before, so not sure why they got themselves re-ordered and have turned up again. The mobile library only stops for 15 minutes in Friston so there is not a lot of time to sort out any problems and it isn't long enough for the driver to get the satellite dish up and running  to check the computer for any queries. So I just brought the whole lot home. Most of these I had pre-ordered via t'internet and a few came from the library van shelves. I also collected a bag full almost as big as this for Him Outside. Good job the wind blew my bike up the hill on the way home!

 After all the discussion about Jamie Olivers' programmes on "cheap" cooking I thought I ought to borrow the book and see what all the fuss is about as I have no intention of watching it.
Very few fiction there to read so I may have to resort to my bookshelves here  which shouldn't be a problem.
What would this lot cost if I had bought them? about £220!! Thank goodness for the library van and the free ordering system we have here in Suffolk. Borrowing books from the library is one of our best ways of being frugal.

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.

How the day goes by on a simple Suffolk Smallholding

 A beautiful sunny morning and we were up and outside by 7am  so that by 8am we had picked, packed and put out on the stall  

 10 boxes of eggs

3 cucumbers

4 bags of good tomatoes

1 bag of cooking tomatoes

2 bunches of beetroot

2 bunches of carrots

2 bags of onions

1 bag of courgettes

4 bags of potatoes

3 large bags of runner beans

1 small bag of runner beans

1 bag of chilli peppers

2 aubergines
And 1 large courgette masquerading as a marrow ( or vice versa)

(By 11 am the whole lot had gone!)

A couple more jobs indoors, washing hung out and we were ready for a cup of coffee by 9am. Bread started, lots of weeding done and  we had another coffee at 10.45!
2 cheques in the post for campsite deposits and new cartridges for the printer. So cheques put away, printer sorted, more campsite welcome leaflets photocopied, potatoes prepared for dinner,bread finished, campsite loos cleaned, some things shifted with the tractor bucket and we were hungry and ready for lunch( lots of home grown salad with some blue cheese, then raspberries) by just after midday.
An hour sitting down, then washing up and wiping up and tidying up. Checking chickens water and collecting and sorting eggs(me) bashing the old hay mower with a hammer to see why it stopped working(Him) and by 2.30 it is time for a proper rest ( Him) and I'm ready for a shower.( No early showers here as we have to wait for the sun to heat the solar water thingy on the roof).
Then a cuppa and a biscuit and some brain work as He watches  Rachel Riley Countdown and I half watch while pinning up the hem on a pair of too long shorts that I'm shortening.
More weeding ( Him) and sewing up the shorts  hem ( me).
Then it's outside to check the chickens water and to pick up any late eggs (me) while he checks emails, then goes out to the poly tunnel to prepare an empty bit for seed sowing.
 Next I pick and prepare some french beans for dinner and we get dinner sorted. ( The other half of yesterdays cheese and tomato quiche,fried potatoes and the gorgeous french beans.) A few more of the last raspberries for dessert. Local news on TV, more washing  and wiping up, watering polytunnels, a shave and shower for Him,  an evening reading and watching TV (and blog reading for me) and that's another day gone!

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday, the whole of blogland has now got men peeing on compost heaps! and Bridgets comment made me smile.