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

Odds and Ends

How are some people able to buy 4 pints of milk for £1? I've read this on a couple of blogs lately. Around here CO-OP and Tesco have just both put their semi skimmed up by 10p to £1.39. Waitrose are the only other shop locally, I expect they are the same. I know some people have swapped to powdered but too many years of Scout Camps with horrible powdered milk - with lumps- has somewhat put me off, although I expect it is better quality nowadays.

We had even more stuff out on the stall-at-the-gate this morning as the runner beans have finally got going. They were covered in flowers which set then seemed to go slow. I was only able to give them a good watering two or three times over the last couple of weeks but with rain a day or so ago and another good downpour last night they are now  growing quickly.

Sara at Afrugalwife has been blogging about ways of cutting  laundry costs, this made me look at at my laundry costs over the last year. (I know there are only 2 of us , so with Sara's two tots a lot more washing would be done! and she has done really well.) My laundry costs - not counting electric - for the last 15 months have been about £22 ! I bought an Ecover Non-Bio Bag in a Box 5L laundry liquid. This is decanted into an old 5L container and then again into a smaller bottle as needed. I have a plastic thing once used to fill an iron with water and into this I put about 2 Tablespoons of the liquid and then top up with hot water and add about a tablespoonful of Washing Soda Crystals (99p kg). This goes into the machine. I don't use fabric softener and keep a bar of Vanish soap in the cupboard for stains. I guess we do about 4 or 5 loads of washing a week. Bath Towels are hung over the banister at the top of the stairs to dry after one use and only put in the wash after the second or even third use. When we go out and are forced to wear 'good clothes',  I change out of them the minute I come in the door and then hang them up at the end of the rail to wear again. Old work clothes are worn until they are dirty. I don't think we smell!! We do have a tumble dryer as we rescued it from my Dad's house after he died, but it is out in the shed and doesn't get used much. Clothes are dried outside whenever possible, over the airer above the Rayburn to finish them off  in winter. We have the advantage of living in the dryest part of the country so I can usually guarantee enough dry days in a week to get the washing at least partly dry outside. To save electric on days when I know the washing will dry outside, I turn the spin speed down. All washing is done at 40 degrees with an occasional hot wash to help clean the washing machine( We use Ecover as it is better for the septic tank and also because we  LOATHE the smell of both the cheap and the posh soap powders.)

It was bread baking day today. I'm very puzzled at the price of bread flour which seems to be going up and down at random. Allinsons was still £1 last time we went to Aldi so I stocked up with 4 bags and Tesco own brand was also £1 after going up and then down again. If I didn't have to cut costs I would buy Marriages flour from the CO-OP as they are an Essex Company using wheat from East Anglia. They do a lovely Malted Grain flour which, many years ago when there were 5 of us at home, I would buy by the sackful from a wholefood warehouse in Norwich.

GRRRRRRR - another cancellation for the campsite today from a family who were due to be here all next week. I suppose I should be used to it after all these years.But I still hate doing the crossing out in the bookings diary.

I'm now going to have another look at the Approved Foods site. Everyone keeps raving about their bargain buys yet every time I look I can't seem to find anything I would normally buy and is a bargain really a bargain if it is something that would normally not be bought?

It's all just Common Sense

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Lovely surprise in the post this morning

Look what I got in the post this morning

What a lovely surprise. Someone who has stayed on the campsite has taken the trouble to contact the Camping and Caravanning Club and has nominated us in the category of " Most friendly welcome".
Makes all the toilet cleaning worthwhile!

We had a complete change in the weather this morning, as a bank of cloud moved over giving us a little drizzley misty rain, not enough to ruin the hay thankfully. Him Outside spent some time in the polytunnels catching up on tomato de-shooting, which it has been too hot to do for a week. Then he got some weeding done with  me popping in and out to help between making bread and biscuits.

Guess how much mess a split bag of chicken feed makes in the back of the jeep- answer = LOTS!
In all the years of bringing home  bags of feed this has never happened before, but the pellets went everywhere, trickling down into gaps and even getting inside one of the folded down back seats. Took us ages to collect up as much as possible, then the rest was hoovered up with the hoover bag then tipped into the chicken run.

I'm still gooseberry picking and have picked and sold 107kg so far- that's 214 punnets!!!

Scratching a living!

As it says over on the right hand side, we live a fairly frugal simple sort of lifestyle so that we can manage on what we earn here and a few other bits of income and so that Him Outside doesn't need to do his old job for more than a few days a month.
So we don't get the £1,650 pay cheque at the end of the month like we used to before March 2012. Now our income comes in little bits and mostly in the summer. We have the campsite income which varies depending on the weather and on people actually wanting to stay here from April to September.  We have the income from a savings bond which we started with some money my dad left me when he died ( and you know what's happened to interest rates in the last 5 years - down and down). We have the "proper job" income which varies depending on how many days he is needed, anything from two days to four days a month (and that might end in October). We have the income from Him Outside grass cutting at the second home, a half or whole day once a week, again only in the summer.We have the income from the odd bits of work he does for 5 other people - not regular but perhaps adding up to a few days a month. We have the egg income from selling on the stall at the front gate. We have the income from selling hay that we make from 3 fields( and that depends on the weather and now the B...... mower has broken down again!) and last but not least we have the income from selling whatever we can on the stall at the gate. So Thank goodness for gooseberries! They may be scratchy and a pain to pick, but when we sell 30 punnets in one day like we did today at £1.50 a punnet it's a really useful bit of money!

3 photos on a beautiful sunny day

Alstromeria cut ready to bunch up and put out for sale

Honey suckle over one of our trellis arches

Beautiful clusters of flowers on the Black Elder.

Gooseberries,gooseberries and even more gooseberries.

We have quite a lot of gooseberry bushes, probably 22 I think. Some were here when we came - that makes them well over 20 years old, we added some more when we found that gooseberries sell well on the stall at the gate and then a few years ago we thought about moving and I took some cuttings to take with us and most grew, so  when we didn't move after all they were also planted and are now 4 years old and fruiting.
I started this years picking just under 2 weeks ago, but lots were not very big so I waited until today to really get going. People have been knocking at the door asking when they are going to be ready so I wasn't surprised when 24 punnets sold today( and 6 more delivered to a friend) as quickly as I could get them picked and sorted. The forecast is for rain tomorrow so we carried on picking until we had enough to put out tomorrow too.

Just a few gooseberries!

Picking gooseberries is not a bad occupation for a fine day. I've got an old milk crate that's got a carpet tile fixed to the bottom, so a comfy seat to sit on - much better than stooping, and I'm hidden behind the big old Bramley apple tree, so I can see everyone who stops to buy stuff and they can't see me until I shout "Hello" and make them jump a mile!
What a good income it is too.