Pears for winter

We had some rain this morning but not enough for the carrot fields so C had to go and move the irrigator, but he was back again in 15 minutes because the tractor had a flat tyre. He had to wait for the tyre place to come out and mend it before going back later.

We picked off the rest of the pears as some were starting to go rotten on the trees, I looked on the supermarket web sites and pears are currently about 5 for £1, so this is about £6 worth but

it's a pity that all this lot only make about 6 bags of prepared pears, but at least they are now safely in the freezer for winter. I like to eat fresh pears only when they are dripping with juice, but ours always seem to go bad before they get really ripe.


 C was out again after lunch as someone up the road had asked him to tow a very old VW camper-van from one place to another. I think it took longer than he thought, or maybe just longer than I thought! They had to put new wheels on it to get it moving.

It was such a gloomy morning that to cheer things up I made a few scones and then fiddled about with odd jobs and later fiddled about with card making, achieving nothing much on both counts! Thankfully I was saved from a wasted day by an unexpected visit from my sister and brother-in-law who have decided to cross the border and move back into Suffolk. ( They were only in Norfolk, but we always say passports are needed to get there!)  Hopefully they will find something in our part of the world.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Omniverous thoughts on a Saturday

I bought a small gammon joint from the butchers yesterday, it's Christmas since we last had one so that's been cooked up today. Proper ham sandwiches, roast chicken and the fact that I can't eat pulses are the three reasons I could never become a vegetarian.
 I don't know how many people saw Ilonas post over at Life After Money the other day when she had been reading about all the nasty bacteria that can be in chickens, she avoids this hazard by not eating chicken or any other meat come to that. It sparked a huge number of comments which - had the people been face to face looked as if it would have come to blows!
I'm all for live and let live and if people want to eat meat or not it's up to them and I've no intention of getting into any of the debates about how much grain/water etc it takes to raise animals or how much CO2 is given off by cow manure or what would happen to upland farmers if they couldn't raise animals. I'll leave that to people more knowledgeable.
For most of the years we've lived here we raised all our own meat. I've eaten our own pork, lamb, goat and dozens of chickens. Since the children all moved out it has never seemed worth keeping sheep and pigs just for us, then along came double tagging, electronic tagging and the paperwork got more complicated so we'll not be keeping animals here again.
Over the last few years we've cut down on meat eating and it's more usual for us to have a veggie curry rather than a meat version. I can't remember the last time we ate roast beef and a leg of lamb is a special treat for when we have friends around.
Our son's girlfriend doesn't eat meat so when they visit we all leave out meat, although I'm not at all keen on some of the replacement 'pretend meat' products available which they use regularly, although I've probably not given them a fair trial.

One thing we never go without here is fresh vegetables and fruit. I was reading Dawns ( Doing it for ourselves) post on Thursday when she mentioned figs. FIGS I said loudly, put the lap top down and rushed outside. Our fig tree is near the now empty chicken shed and not needing to go there for egg collecting I'd forgotten to look for over a week to see if any figs were ripe . Drat it! 2 over ripe and squishy but 5 ready to eat and delicious. C doesn't like figs, which bothers me not one jot as I get to eat them all myself. Mmmmm. The worst thing ( no probably not THE worst thing , but nearly) about being in England is all the baby figs on the fig tree that never get to ripen each year. Such a shame.
I'm keeping a much closer eye on the Victoria plums, squeezing a few gently everyday to find the first ones ready to eat. C made three props to keep the branches from breaking. We lost 2 branches one year because of their heavy load.
I've picked up some of the fallen pears and picked some that the wasps have had a go at off one of our small pears trees. They are rock hard and nowhere near ripe, but hopefully cooking them will make them edible.
We've sold the first of the cauliflowers for £1 each, they are supposed to be autumn ones for cutting September/October. 16 plants were purchased for £6.50 from Marshalls, that makes them a tad over 40p each.  I always buy cauliflower and Brussels  sprout plants because every time I grow them from seed they seem to get too leggy, yet I have no problem with red cabbage from seed.

Thank you for comments about the library book haul, I do read quite quickly but may not get through all these in 4 weeks and I never bother to finish a book I'm not enjoying.

Welcome to Mikemax and Freyamae who are new followers on Google friends.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

The forecast for tomorrow is awful - car boot sale visit unlikely :-(

Cheap Heat and remembering childrens books.

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

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

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

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

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