Small But Perfectly Formed, Colour all around and getting on with things.

The small but perfectly formed in the title are our last cauliflowers.We had one each for dinner on Monday night along with a pie using the recipe that I borrowed and stretched from Frugal Queens blog last year. ( It's here if you want to look) This time I used a tin of condensed mushroom soup and made 8 pasties and a pie.

I should have put something beside these to show their size  but they were about 2 and a bit inches across.

 The sun was shining all day Monday although we had that horrible East wind back again. I thought I would share some of the colours from the April garden.
Dark green is a Bay tree in a pot that I've grown from a seedling and grey/green  is a birthday present I had from Cols Sister and husband. It's a standard Lavender, a Cotton Lavender? I think.

Above is a Red Hazel, also grown from a seedling, from a nut, buried by a squirrel from the original Red hazel which is now  nearly 15 feet tall.
Below is the absolute opposite of a seedling as it's a Mahonia that is at least 30 years old. Originally about 6 foot tall  it looked very sick 2 years ago and we cut it right back. It's sat there doing nothing much since then but suddenly produced a wonderful show of yellow this month. Whoops! there's a nettle on the right - missed when we weeded.

I wasn't keen on wallflowers until I got some perennial plants for free in with an order of shrubs and plants bought for the new front flower border two years ago. These  bright orange  and dark purple will be in flower for months IF we get some more rain.

Here is something that will be red/ purple in a couple of months - a bed of beetroot seedlings, under the fleece is a newly sown bed of more beetroot. We love beetroot! when I was young it was always called red beet, was that just in Suffolk or generally? I think it was to distinguish it from Sugar beet which was grown widely in Suffolk and known just as beet.
Plenty of white blossom on the old Conference Pear tree in the background - I hope the flowers set.

The first pink blossoms on the big Bramley Apple are just showing.

Below is the beginning of something Green which will keep me busy - I hope. Last year I picked and sold 233 x 500g punnets of gooseberries! Fingers crossed for a good crop this year.

All around our little 5 acre plot is a Field of Oil Seed Rape, now in flower. I don't mind the flower smell, it's when it dies off and smells like rotting cabbage that is not so good! 

And look at our Big Blue Suffolk sky. 

On Tuesday my bike was squeezed into the back of the car and I drove down to Leiston to take the car to the dealers garage for repairs while it's still under warranty. They have been brilliant at sorting out all the small and larger things that we have found  wrong. I did a bit of shopping, paid a bill at the bank and then it was a windy bike ride home. Col was working at our neighbours while I was out. Later I tackled the rubbing down of skirting boards in the small bedroom, I had done the walls on Sunday, we are not in a hurry so it's being fitted in with other work.

Wednesday was grey and windy and ideal for getting a load of compost from the bins into the poly-tunnel ready for the cucumbers, I loaded the wheelbarrow, pushed it across and Col dug it in. It's all about division of labour here! We have rather too many cucumber plants this year as I had 11 out of 12 germination which is Very unusual ( well, for me anyway). The 5 biggest are now in the tunnel and 6 smaller have been potted on. I'm not sure where they will go later, big pots probably. We should have enough cucumbers to sell at the gate this summer!

 We also had an hour cutting wood in the shed so as to clear a space for our youngest daughters furniture, she is moving back here for a while soon.

Later we got the dust covers all down again in the small bedroom - after giving them a shake outside - and Col put a coat of paint on the ceiling. We found we didn't have enough white left from the living room so we are using pale blue left from the kitchen instead.

Thursday - last day of the month, time to do the accounts. A few big expenses in April  - Campsite Electrical test, Cols 2 new pairs of glasses, the TV License and the birthday meal and of course Council Tax Direct debit kicked in again after our two months off.  Thank goodness for the small spending  -  Meat £4.50. Washing soda for clothes washing 99p.  A new clock for the living room - 50p.

 Meat £4.50? Yep that's all that was spent on meat this month. A Co-op off-cut ham pack is £3.99 and did us for a week of lunches, a variation of a spaghetti carbonara main meal and ham omelet for Col   ( I had a herb omelet) The other £1.50 was for 4 chicken thighs. Other meat used this month was from the freezer -  two half pound  bags of Sainsburys "cooking bacon". Half went into the pies and pasties on Monday and the rest was used earlier in the month in a Mac/Cheese/bacon meal and a quiche.  A roast chicken early in the month which fed the two of us for 3 days main meals and 2 days lunches. Bacon chops, also from the Sainsburys pack and 2 portions of Bolognese sauce. We ate veggie meals or Fish from the freezer the rest of the month. The freezer is starting to look a bit sparse in the meat department so I may need to spend a bit more next month.

The small bedroom had another coat of emulsion on the ceiling and one on the walls and now looks clean and tidy. The carpet is NOT so good but it would be daft to spend money on a new one if we are selling so I shall position the single bed to cover the worst of the marks, ( Don't tell anyone!). Just skirting boards and window sill to paint.

Which brings me  around to today, and I have to go to the Dentist, my second worst day of the year!  (The worst day of the year will be if I have to go back for a filling.)But like everything else here, I had better just get on with it.

Have a good Bank Holiday Weekend and I'll be back soon.

Sue

Two years blogging and still growing

 Apricot blossom against a blue sky - it must be spring!

I forgot all about my 2nd blogging  anniversary. I started on Blogspot on April 4th 2013 after trying Wordpress for a few months and not being able to work out how to do stuff that people using Blogger were able to do. I struggled with some things at first, especially when pictures wouldn't download, but that turned out to be a connection problem rather than me being dumb. I didn't know back then that I would still be writing after 2 years. We didn't know that Col would have heart problems and stents done and a small heart attack too and that we would be thinking about moving. Funny how things can change in just 2 years. I changed the header photo a few months ago and more recently the name of the blog - although no one noticed!

One thing remains the same - our enjoyment in growing our own food and at last a bit of warmth has got all the seedlings in the conservatory putting on a growth spurt.

Since my last post Col has been out earning a bit of money over at our neighbours and for his Leiston customer and I've been bread baking, doing housework and we've both been  gardening.

 The first of the early potatoes are doing well and have been earthed up. The gooseberry bushes are now green, and there are a few leaves on the raspberries, Col had put the first of the Climbing french beans into the poly-tunnel. More potatoes have been planted and we've got to the end of the weeding of the long flower border, lots of the annuals from last year have seeded themselves but the whole garden is so very dry.
We are still getting plenty of salad leaves from the polytunnel and the first two or three asparagus spears are just peeping through if you look very hard. Brussels sprouts and parsnips have finished  and the beds cleared.Stored beetroot have finished, over wintered beetroot in the poly-tunnel are sparse, outside seedlings are just coming through. So this would be a hungry season without Purple Sprouting Brocolli, veg from the freezer and a supermarket up the road.
Several more vegetable beds have been prepared with compost from the bins and Col doing the rotovating with our extremely ancient machine (bought second -hand in 1981!) which this year sounds as if its on it's last legs . It's got very LOUD and now refuses to start without a squirt of Easy-Start - I suppose we will all be like that one day!

A few more spring garden pictures.  The sink pond, birdbath, elephants ears ( Begenia) and a conifer. Spot the two model frogs sitting on the stones. All the stones ( and the slate from Wales) have been brought back from various holidays around the country. We don't have any stones like these in Suffolk, just flints.

From the back door one path goes along the back of the house passing the conifer and sink pond and the other path heads to the poly-tunnels. The new small herb garden in the V bit with Col's rain gauge and sundial. That's Mabel on a walkabout. There is a honeysuckle arch at the end of both paths.

The two quinces are in the foreground, leaf buds just showing, with the path that visitors follow from the campsite to the front door to check in when they arrive on site. A fantastic year for primroses, these  have gradually spread by themselves over the last 23 years.

The gooseberry bushes in the foreground with the fruit cage behind, full of raspberry canes, redcurrant and black currant and a few more gooseberry bushes.

After the fog has cleared we've had sunny afternoons over the last two days and we actually sat outside for a while, I even changed from leggings to shorts for an hour ( not a pretty sight!). The forecast is for rain tomorrow - we certainly need it as there has only been 3mm of rain in the last two weeks.
Nothing else to report from this week except I read the Moon Cottage Cats book that I picked up from the boot sale. No car boots this weekend - shame.

Welcome to janzi a new follower in the Google pictures and Cathy a new follower on Bloglovin'.

Back in a day or two
Sue

The Middle of March

First, thank you one and all for the 33 comments after my last short post about the weather in the West and that obnoxious bloke on TV. The interesting thing about blogging less often is that I seem to get more readers for each post and more comments. Sorry I didn't reply to any of the 33 but there wasn't much to say really except..... Thank you!

We have had some nice bright weather here since that last post, but more very grey cold days too, the first few daffodils were brought indoors but other than that it is still quite quiet in the garden. In other parts of the country people have rhubarb several inches tall, we have just the first signs of it growing through the compost, I've told the asparagus to hurry up but it's ignoring me!

 At least we have got 4 nets of onion sets planted and covered with fleece and still good quantities of salad leaves from the poly-tunnel.
And at last the Purple Sprouting Broccoli has enough spears to make a meal -Yum.

   The pots of crocuses that I had flowering in the kitchen last month have  been transferred to the garden and 2 small tree seedlings that were popped into pots last year have gone out on the edge of the campsite.

More preparation has been done for opening the campsite, mainly Col grass cutting and turning the water and electric on to check everything is OK and I've ordered the leaflets about local places of interest for the information room/library. Our first visitor is due on the 1st of April and we have 4 caravans booked in for Easter Weekend...... fingers crossed they all turn up.

Mothering Sunday fell smack bang in the middle of the month and I had cards from our 3 children and a lovely cushion cover from our eldest daughter, while the youngest daughter treated us to a takeaway on Monday night.

Just need to find a fatter cushion pad to fill the cover

  We didn't  go out on Mothering Sunday, not even for a walk - the East wind was just too darn cold, instead we got the dining room back together again after it's coats of paint ( found matching emulsion in the cupboard that we didn't know we had so didn't need to buy any) and did an hour wood cutting in the shed. I'm pleased that we are getting the house looking smart in case we sell. Just a bit of filler to do in a couple of  cracks in the new plaster of kitchen and living room, and a touch up with paint. Plus the back door needs painting when it's warm enough to leave it open all day.

In 1994 Col bought an old Grey Ferguson potato planter for £50, we've used it for years and it got gradually more rusty but it's now been sold and delivered -sight unseen- to another smallholder for £150. Maybe that's the difference between old and vintage! It was one of the things that made the weekend of the 14th/15th a good weekend for income, because apart from the bit of  tatty machinery we also sold 18 bales of hay for £45, 13 boxes of eggs = £13 and Col earned £30 for working at a neighbours. That's how our income arrives, in small bits, but it didn't stay here long because the electric bill also arrived, followed closely by the bill for business insurance and the bill for the solar thermal service - an expensive time of the year!

Talking about expensive- did you know the price of postage stamps goes up on the 30th of this month? I've invested in £20 worth  to beat the increase, which should last me most of the year. Now I come to think about it, the Post Office are missing a trick here by having stamps marked with 1st and 2nd instead of the price. In the old days it was necessary to go and buy a whole lot of 1p stamps to add to old ones when the price increased.

I've not mentioned books that I've read for a while but two more have been added to the list on the separate page on this blog.
 One from my own book shelves - Dorian Amos - The Good Life up the Yukon - Panning for Gold.

 This is the second book about a young couple who moved from England to the freezing forests of North Canada to live in an off grid cabin often cut off from the nearest town by a river. It is fascinating to read about coping with the sort of cold that means getting up several times during the night to keep the fire alight and having to don 6 layers of clothing before stepping out of the door. Brrrrrrrrr!

And Finally for today......... welcome to Melanie, a new follower on Bloglovin' .

Back in a few days
Sue

What we've been doing

C has been working outside, testing himself with what he can do without getting out of breath. So far he has trimmed the top off the front hawthorn hedge on both sides of the gateway and cut down some of the small  Ash and brambles that were creeping under the Horse Chestnut tree, taking light and moisture from the things in the fruit cage. The Ash were only cut back about 5 years ago.

He is finding that working upright is no problem, but bending up and down soon makes him feel not quite right so that he needs to stop.
 We now have heaps of prunings all along the front fence and in the orchard waiting to be cleared up.

On Tuesday and Wednesday he also worked at our neighbours for a couple of hours sorting out her strawberry bed which had got in a mess. He brought home a few runners and has put them in some spare growbags in the poly-tunnel, they hadn't really rooted so may not survive - we shall see.

Last year, after Looking at all the Christmas trees we have on the smallholding we bought a cheap artificial one from B & Q ( did you know some fake trees are over £200)  This year, because we have a crowd here, we put our tree up in the conservatory. But the living room was looking so un-Christmassy I had a brainwave and we carefully picked it up and stood it on a small table wedged in the corner behind the TV - we wouldn't have been able to do that with a real one! It looks a bit odd but at least it's cheered up the living room.
We don't do 'hanging things' anymore because the room was re-plastered when the extension was built and the few bits we have pinned in resulted in bits of plaster all over the floor and cracks in the ceiling. We don't want to have to decorate the room before we move.

One of my favourite clearing up jobs it to sort through STUFF, get rid of the useless and make everything take up less room than before. I spent most of yesterday clearing out everything from a small pine bureau in the craft room, tidying up and clearing out things from a tall chest of drawers and fitting the useful things from the bureau into the top drawers. Now the small bureau ( bought off ebay many years ago) which seemed such a good idea but actually never got used properly as the drop down front bit wasn't high enough to sit at, can go out in the shed ready  to go to the auction house or car boot sale.

Today I put the marzipan and icing on the Christmas cakes and wrote lists.
Here is something to bring joy to list makers everywhere - A List Of Lists!

•  shopping list for the 23rd
• the jobs that need doing between now and 23rd
• jobs for Christmas eve
•  things I want to do between Christmas and New Year
• ideas for things to make for next Christmas
• things to look out for in the sales ( that's a very short list only wrapping paper and presents)
• things to look for at car-boot sales next year

Now I only need to write a job list for Christmas morning and I'll be sorted, with dinner for 12  on the table by around 1.15 to give us time to take Cs Dad down to Aldeburgh for some sea air in the afternoon. ( Hopefully leaving the kids behind to wash up!)

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Breaking the bank AND concrete.

I finished yesterdays post by saying I would be back today with a frugally post unfortunately that was before I took Polly to the vets. £97!!!!!!! It's been ages since we last took an animal to a vets, I had no idea that vets fees had gone up so much. Polly needed to be looked at because she was looking a bit tatty after I used some cheap flea stuff on her and I remembered a cat we had many years ago having the same problem. So a steroid injection, 6 months supply of  decent flea treatment, two lots of different wormer and I was nearly £100 worse off.

The vets is right next to the tool hire place so while I was being robbed C popped in there and hired an electric concrete breaker so we could get that last bit of shed base done. He was doing it bit by bit with a sledge hammer and had spent twenty minutes on it just an hour before the Hardly a Heart Attack 5 weeks ago.
Me and the breaker

did all the rest in half an hour easy peasy!

Look at this for a late autumn treat, because the weather has been fairly dry and extra warm the autumn raspberries had a late flourish.

And Finally for today,
 Spotted in M&S yesterday
Specially for  your bed for Christmas
You don't decorate your bed for Christmas?
M&S think you should, they have this Christmas Duvet cover or you could have reindeer or Santa

WHY? well why not?
after all it's only £59!

Back Tomorrow

Sue

 Sue         

Odd jobs on Saturday

Nice and sunny here until the clouds arrived and the wind strengthened in the late afternoon.
C was working for a customer in Leiston this morning and after I had done a clean up in the kitchen I did what I like best - pottering around in the garden. Weeding the newest raspberries, putting the two peppermint plants into a big pot until I decide where to plant them. Digging  Welsh Onion and chives  plants from the old herb garden and potting them up. Watering all the pots, Tidying the shed (again). I found our other campsite sign that we put down the end of the road, which C did when he got home.
And Good News......Our first unexpected visitors to the campsite......one small motorhome, without an electric hookup for two nights = £20.
Our 22nd year of running a small  campsite has begun!

Back Tomorrow, I decided if  it's fine we will be at the car boot sale but if it's wet I'll make scones instead! Sounds good.

Sue

PS Thanks for comments yesterday

A way of life that's gone and new life appearing

Did anyone see Countryfile last night?
They had a short feature about Hope Bourne, a lady who lived a very self-sufficient life on Exmoor for many years. She died, I think they said, in 2010 and left all her paintings and sketches to the Exmoor Society.
I first heard of her way back in the early 1980s when I found her book "Wild Harvest" while we were on holiday in Minehead.
For much of her life she lived in a tiny caravan, shot game to eat, grew vegetables, walked everywhere, wrote and painted. A way of life that would be difficult now.
I found two more of her books more recently.
If you come across them anywhere they are worth a look especially "Wild Harvest"

The warm weather over the weekend has encouraged some new life in the garden.
I'm very pleased to see the frog spawn in the mini pond.

Blackthorn blossom has been around inland for a couple of weeks but only now appearing here.

New leaves appearing on the willow hedge between the campsite areas

White violets

Leaves appearing on the gooseberry bushes

Poor photo and I can't remember the name of the shrub - Escalonia?

Perennial wallflower

Thank you for comments yesterday
Back tomorrow

Sowing the seeds and weeding the weeds

 Now that  most of the poly tunnel plants are growing well and we are carrying them from the conservatory to the kitchen every night and back again every morning it was time to start on all the other seed sowing. Outside the heavy clay soil we have is still much too wet and cold, so seeds that don't need any heat are always sown in pots and trays in the greenhouse.

Calabrese, Chard, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Leek, Purple Sprouting Brocolli and Mangetout are the first things sown today.
(The parsley plants in the middle of the picture are for potting up to sell later).

Although the beds are too wet for seeds I have been able to start weeding. The new  strawberry bed was first. We pegged down 2 dozen runners from the oldest plants and moved them to a new bed in the Autumn but the wet winter didn't do them much good and we've lost several plants. The Autumn raspberry bed also got sorted.

The forecast for tomorrow sounds wonderful, if they are right we should be able to get lots done 

Thank you to blogging friends for comments yesterday.

Back Tomorrow

A bit blowy

The wind is very strong and bitterly cold here today although we have had no rain ( so far). I put a couple of loads of washing through the machine yesterday evening so I could get them out early today and I needed 5 pegs on everything to keep them on the line. All more or less dry by 2pm. By having enough clothes so that I can wait for a dryish weather forecast before doing the washing, I have only needed to use the tumble dryer once( for towels) all through the winter. I've seen blogs where people limit the number of items of clothing they have to use, but surely this means doing more washing? with maybe a less than full load?

We got around to watching some of the Olympics live this morning, just in time to see the first ever British medal on snow- according to the presenters. Exciting stuff. I don't know how they do all that leaping about on a board - young and fearless I guess. While  watching I got the second bit of cross stitch done of the two I'm doing for putting into 'things' for Christmas presents.

We have had a couple of weeks with no fresh salad stuff from the poly-tunnel but today Him Outside rummaged about and come up the this lot including a few bits of chickweed which is edible but tasteless.

Our lunch is always 'something' and a salad - usually using whatever we have . His 'something' is in a sandwich but |I go without the bread! We are still having beetroot everyday from what was stored in sand and  buy celery and sometimes cucumber during winter for added crunch. ( NEVER tasteless tomatoes!). Our 'something' varies; tinned sardines, chicken if we've had a roast, ham when I buy the pack of off-cuts from Co-op, quiche if there is some leftover, hard boiled egg or cheese when we've nothing else in the fridge.

Here is another picture of spring - the pink catkins on my Red Hazel.

The shrub behind is a type of hybrid Holly - I think. It looks like Holly but without the prickly leaves, as usual I didn't make a note and the label was lost long ago.

That's me done for today,

Back Tomorrow

Searching for spring

The day started cloudy yet again so I went out around the garden to look for something that would show that spring was on the way and I found the first snowdrops under the cherry tree

 A few violets under the Horse Chestnut

 The first Hellebore

Daffodil shoots in the bed where we grow lots to sell.

The only worry is that with it being so mild  we may still be in for some harsh weather in February.

Him Outside was away early to do some more permanent repairs to the fence for one of his customers in Leiston. He did the temporary repair before Christmas but she was getting worried that he would have to stand on all her bulbs in the garden by the fence if he left it any later.

I made some tomato and herb rolls and tried a recipe for chocolate cheesecake. If it turns out OK I want to make it for when our friends come round. A. has to limit the gluten in her diet so I'm always looking for desserts that don't use very much flour. My other job was to prick out the lettuce seedlings, they have got very lanky on the kitchen windowsill with this gloomy weather so I'm not sure how they will survive, but hey ho you have to try. I also filled some more small seed trays and have put them in my little electric propagator to warm up ready for tomato seeds. The peppers sown on the 4th are looking OK. Germination is 80%. A nice surprise was seeing the parsley seed come up. Using an old packet of seed doesn't always work but lots have germinated.

That's it for today.

Back tomorrow - January 17th - a special day in the apple orchard!

Lovely sunny Sunday at the end of the year

We should have been out for lunch today but our host was poorly so it's been put off for a while. But we had to go out anyway across to Mid Suffolk to return part of Father-in-laws wheelchair that had been left in our jeep on Christmas Day. Luckily he hadn't been anywhere to need it between then and now as he gets around the house OK with a couple of sticks. Of course as we were passing a place that has a small regular Sunday Boot Sale we stopped for a quick look.

Him Outside found 3 new hosepipe connection thingys for £1 and I bought a bundle of new Christmas  and Birthday cards for 40p.

 I've decided to have a huge clear out of my card making stuff in the spring, there is so much that I know I will never use. I'm far from being good at card making and I'm not often happy with my results, on the other hand I love fishing through boxes in charity shops and car boot sales to find cards for a few pence. So it seems silly to keep so many odds and ends just-in-case. I shall keep all my cross stitch threads, aida and charts and all my card blanks, peel off labels, 3D decoupage sheets and themed craft papers, but there are lots of odd toppers, kits and bits that need a new home. Maybe we will do a boot sale ourselves again next year after all.

Thank you for lots of interesting comments after my blog yesterday about our simple living plans for 2014 here on the Suffolk smallholding. It's a shame that there always seems to be someone who wants to make us feel guilty for choosing to live the way we do. I have to say it wasn't always a choice. Our income when we first married was the below average wage of a council road-man who worked overtime in winter on the gritting lorry and in summer on the tar and chippings lorry to make enough to pay the mortgage and  have a weeks camping holiday with our two small children.
When we decided to save for a smallholding we moved house 4 times, each time working long hours to do up, decorate, improve, repair so we could sell at a profit to go up the housing ladder. For a year we lived in a caravan ( with 2 under 5s) fixing a house that had been declared unfit for human habitation. Now we choose to live simply so that Him Outside doesn't have to do a job that had changed so much so that it was just driving miles and miles around Suffolk every week which he didn't enjoy. We still work - cleaning toilets on Bank Holidays wouldn't be everyone's idea of fun!

Apart from filling in the birthdays etc in my new kitchen diary and drawing lines in the back of an A4 paper pad ready to fill in all the expenditure in 2014, I've also prepared the garden growing plan for next year. It's just lots of oblongs for all the beds at the moment but Him Outside will look back at the old plans and work out whats going where. He will pencil them in as a reminder  and then write them in with the date when the beds are filled.

We try to leave a gap of a few years between growing the same family of veg in the same beds and use compost on some of the beds each year. Somewhere around the house we have these plans going right back to 1993! Although we have managed to squeeze in more beds than we had then.

Well, while I've been fiddling about on the computer  the sun has gone and evening is closing in. I see there is a new Miss Marple on TV tonight so that's what we will watch after the Countryfile Weather forecast  for the week. What happened to the dire warnings from the Daily Express for the longest, coldest winter since heavens knows when?  Today we had the first frost hard enough to freeze all the outdoor chicken drinkers and we are nearly at the end of the year.

Back Tomorrow - Keeeeeep Frugalling!

PS Welcome to 2 new followers recently, hope you enjoy my ramblings from Suffolk.

30 Ways to save £1-- DAY 27 + The Winter Garden

Before I forget, I must welcome two new followers - Aileen and Emma, I hope you enjoy the ramblings from a Simple Suffolk Smallholding.

Number 27 of the 30 Ways to save £1 was
27. Do  you really need to buy a book straight away - wait for paperback version or buy from Amazon later when you can get it secondhand or even better use your local library.
If you love reading and owning books as I do this could save you a Huge amount. Using our library van to collect books I've ordered and then looking out at Charity shops for ones I would like to buy is much more fun for me than just buying everything straight away. It means I have money for other things.

What a mucky grey day we have had here today with wet fog and no sign of the sun.
Him Outside went down to the village to mend a fence this morning ( this was the job he should have done last Wednesday but cancelled due to the weather). This afternoon he covered some more vegetable beds with compost and plastic. This should stop them getting too waterlogged and worms will take the compost down into the soil overwinter.

The vegetables that we have still in the garden for winter are leeks, Brussels sprouts, cabbages, parsnips and chard. Then there are beetroot in the polytunnel and some stored in a sand box. Onions hanging in nets in the shed, squash under the spare bed, a couple of red cabbage hanging in nets in the craft room and broad beans, sweetcorn plus peppers in the freezer. Reminds me of the scene in The Good Life where Barbara shows Margo all the cupboards full of vegetables in their spare bedroom!

I've been at home all day wrapping some more Christmas presents, doing some housework and trying to get warm. Because we were out all day yesterday the Rayburn was lit and shut down and the wood burner was only alight for an hour, so the house feels cold.
My friend that we visited yesterday and I share the same taste in books and she had lots of new ones, so I've made a note of them and looked on the library web site. There is a waiting list of 72 people for the new Elizabeth Jane Howard book! It's the 5th in a series and I very much enjoyed the first 4 so I've added my name to the library list, it may be quite a long wait. She also had two WWII home front diaries that I hadn't come across before. The library haven't got either  so I shall fill in the box on their "suggestions" page and hope that they will buy them. 

30 Ways to Save £1---Day 22 + Simple living

Number 22 in the 30 Ways to save £1 was    ( see them all here)
22. Read your local or National newspapers in the library or ask a friend or neighbour to save them for you.
What news will you miss by not having a daily newspaper?
How much money can you save by not buying a daily newspaper?
That's what you have to weigh up for this money saver.

I spent far TOO long fiddling with that seed list yesterday, trying to get it right, so that I began to wonder if I'm spending too much time blogging. Writing my blog, reading those I enjoy following, reading comments, answering comments, writing comments. 

The blog was supposed to be just a diary of our simple life here - out of the consumer rat race. Explaining how we survive without a regular income, without traveling far and generally living a plain and simple life. That shouldn't include half a day in front of the computer screen. If I wanted to do that I might as well be stuck in an office somewhere!

To remind me of the simple life I want to live I've been looking through a couple of my back to basics books, " Swimming with Piranha  makes you hungry" by Colin Turner and " The Plain Reader, Essays on Making a Simple Life" by Scott Savage. A quick dip into these and "The Hovel in the Hills" by Elizabeth West should sort me out.

Another cold day here, lots more rain overnight and on and off all morning with some sunny bits in between. The sun caught the colour of this Hedge Maple beautifully.

There has been more muck shifting today, this time to our fruit bushes. After producing that wonderful crop of gooseberries that gave us an income of several hundred pounds this summer, they need a jolly good feeding. The summer raspberries will also have a good mulch of well rotted horse muck too.

After advertising them in The Suffolk Smallholders Newsletter we sold a couple of cast iron pig troughs this morning, both had small cracks on the edge but still held water. A handy £40 income.
These were the last two of a huge job lot that Him Outside had picked up at a farm auction last year.

Back Tomorrow

Loving this blogging thing!

I've only been blogging since April but I'm really enjoying the contact with people all over the country and around the world. Take yesterday for instance, we knew what effect the storm had here and there were pictures on TV but it was even more interesting to hear from blog friends. So thank you to Pam, Buttercup and Dc, who are  in the Eastern half of England, Kris in the US, Vicki who is just down the road, Bridget in Dorset, Pam in Norway, Alison on the south coast, Em on Dartmoor, Kev in Malvern and also Attila who is somewhere in the UK, but I'm not sure where! Everyone had survived the storms without too many problems but it sounds as if many places had a lot more rain than we did - as usual. We are always one of the driest parts of the country.

Our chickens have been moved from the fixed shed to their new accommodation (the old campsite toilet block) right up the top of the field. We are wondering if they are the only chickens with vinyl flooring! We moved them yesterday afternoon and left them shut into their new shed until after they had laid their eggs this morning. This is what we always do when we move hens so that when it gets dark tonight they will know where they have to go to find their perches. It will be good for them to have grass again as they had turned their old chicken run into a mud bath.

Despite having 5 acres of land our apple trees are all squashed together, the trouble is when we planted them we thought they looked far enough apart but of course they grew! Anyway, it's turned out  as an advantage this year because the very, very, late apple tree is so sheltered that even after all the wind they are still hanging on.

  They are a duel use variety, sharp cooking apples early then eating apples if left long enough.( No idea of their name)  I think we will pick them soon and wrap them in newspaper to store in a box so we can leave them out in the shed as I've already got several trays of apples indoors.

I hope there is a bit more passing traffic tomorrow. It's half term here so quieter than usual and we have lots of eggs unsold. Even with the stormy weather and trees down we sold out as usual yesterday. Snow is the worst thing as lots of our egg buyers are elderly and they all stay at home.

That's it for today
Back tomorrow

They didn't forecast rain all afternoon- did they?

Mucky weather here this afternoon. Wet and nasty.

Before the rain started we picked more cooking apples and then got a bit of concreting done.When the mini digger was here Him Outside pulled up a bit of concrete path between the house and buildings that seems to be in a frost pocket because it keeps cracking and breaking,with grass growing in the cracks. So now its been replaced and will look tidy again.
 This house and the original farm buildings  were built in 1955, but until we moved here in1992 no one had ever got around to putting a proper path through the vegetable garden between the house and buildings, yet  it must have been walked thousands of times. I think a bit of shingle was put down at one time but the "path" made from frequent walking was about 4 inches lower than the grass each side. Every time we had rain it was like walking up a stream. Needless to say a concrete path was soon installed.

This afternoon I fiddled about with some new craft papers and eventually made a card and then tidying up the craft room/office. Him outside was in the shed cutting some firewood.

Homemade, Home grown and home produced food eaten today:- Bread, tomatoes,cucumber, lettuce, salad leaves,pepper, beetroot, cheese scones, cake, eggs, parsley, chives. Apples, pears,autumn raspberries. Apple pie

For sale on the stall today:- Eggs, Pumpkins, butternut squash,Cooking apples, red cabbage, white cabbage.

Hope the weather is better tomorrow or the very last car boot sale will be cancelled.

No other news today

Back tomorrow.

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.

The new patio = threequarters done

When we had the conservatory built several years ago we just put down some old paving slabs by the door because we knew that sometime in the future we were going to have to re-do the paths after having the kitchen extension built. So now at last it was time to sort the patio out. We have lots of reclaimed paving stones, Him Outside had enough energy back to lay them and to load the cement mixer, the forecast was good and I was general dogsbody shifting stuff.
Of course the best laid plans never go exactly right here. We ran short of stones because some were more damaged than we thought and the underlying concrete which was done in a hurry was a bit too high in places. So it's three quarters done and now someone has to sort through a giant rubble heap to find some more usable stones, and take some edges off other stones that are a bit too wide.

But by 3o'clock we had both done enough for one day.

Thank you to Buttercup, Pam, Fran and Morgan for comments left  yesterday. It seems that several people may try the sweetcorn relish so I hope it works out OK. Also a special welcome to another follower ' A Suffolk Girl'. I love finding out about other Suffolk bloggers.

Still no sign of the Sizewell men who were supposed to be coming to the campsite yesterday but we have had a booking for the first weekend in October. It looks as if we may have an empty site after this weekend which will be the first time since early June. So completely different to 2012 when we had more nights empty than we had visitors, thanks to the awful weather and the Olympics.