Being pushed towards a decision

Once again health issues are forcing us to think about our future.

A couple of weeks ago Col had an overnight stay in hospital for a small investigative operation in the Urology Department ( nuf said about that!). What he was told afterwards was no driving and no heavy lifting for 2 weeks. They did say that some people may need 4 - 6 weeks off work. Of course he didn't think  HE was one of those people. But he should have been because on Sunday evening another problem meant a quick dash to hospital and a 2 night stay with some quite nasty procedures - Ouch. Anyway he is home again and OK-ish but really must take things easy for a while.
This means that the man who had never been in hospital before 2013 has now been "inside" 7 times, and after each hospital stay we say we must cut down on what we do here, because of the way things are set up this is definitely a  two person smallholding.

We've decided that the chicken numbers will be cut again down to just enough for us and our neighbours and no pumpkins and squash will be grown out on the field after all. Once our youngest daughter has sorted out a flat rental and our eldests' wedding has been and gone -  the smallholding will go up for sale - probably!. All the internal decorating and tidying has been done and much of Col's might-come-in-handy stuff that fills the workshop could easily go in a skip, so really we are ready. We both fancy a move to somewhere completely different for a while and if we buy a house in a Suffolk town to rent out for income we will have somewhere to come back to in a few years time if needs be.

Meanwhile apart from all the mental turmoil that comes from having to decide what to do next things are relatively normal.

We are enjoying several delicious meals from the garden. Imagine home made bread toast covered with scrambled eggs with deep yellow yolks fresh from our hens and topped with our own asparagus spears. Followed by strawberries from the poly tunnel. Or we could have, also from the poly-tunnel, salad leaves with some chopped crunchy radishes and warm new potatoes mixed with a little mayo with rhubarb fool as a dessert.

The poly tunnels are all planted up.
Luckily Col had finished the job of staking the tomatoes in the big poly-tunnel before his unexpected  hospital stay.

I haven't actually counted how many tomato plants we have, I know there are 5 different types. Over on the right are 7 cucumber plants. I hope we can sell all their produce  without having eggs out on the stand to draw people in.

The middle poly-tunnel has salad leaves and radishes with the strawberries in growbags raised up on planks on benches. The potatoes we are eating are from the plants on the right, planted as soon as we got them from The Potato Day on Feb 14th. In the left hand bed are all the peppers and aubergines.

We are not growing much in the small tunnel as it is now too shady and dry from the trees. There is a circle of French Climbing beans at the back, a very sparse crop of early beetroot in front. On the left are more cucumbers in pots. Runner beans in trays and there are leeks too in pots waiting for better weather. Right at the front, all that green stuff that looks like grass is actually Garlic Chives. Whatever I do I can't get it to stop growing in here, it's very invasive and extremely hardy. Useful for Pesto too.

Not much has been done outside except I got the strawberry and raspberry beds weeded  yesterday and I've been checking for Gooseberry sawfly most days although we had that blasted  North East wind back again today and it's been really cold. No one on the campsite today so I got instructions for grass cutting and got half the site done, it wasn't a very warm job.

Two more books have been added to my Books Read In 2015 page, namely  Shadow of The Hangman by Edward Marston and Holy Spy by Rory Clements. The first was dreadful! I don't know why I bothered to finish it. Edward Marston churns out two or three of books a year. He has done many series of historical crime  starting with The Elizabethan Theatre series in the 80's through to The Railway Detective series with a new one of those due out next month. I fear just lately quality has been lost.
Holy Spy by Rory Clements is the 7th in the John Shakespeare series, set in Elizabethan England John Shakespeare is an intelligencer working for Sir Francis Walsingham on behalf of the Queen. This story is about the plot against Elizabeth by Mary, and her Catholic friends.

That's brought things up to date here and we are round to Mobile library day again tomorrow.

Back Soon
Sue

First new potatoes and beetroot

First of all welcome to new followers - bojanpr and weekend windup who have clicked the Google button ( now at 168) and Sam and Sandra who are following by Bloglovin' ( now at 140). Hope you like reading about the Simple Suffolk Smallholding. Many thanks to Sue, Jean,Gill,Paid in Chickens, Out my Window, Laura, Karen ,Pat, Weekend Wind up and Shirley who commented yesterday. Pat said that writing a list of positive things must make us feel satisfied with the way we live - and yes it's nice to gather together all the good things that happen in the month. I just hope it doesn't come over as being a bit smug about our lifestyle. I think it is Shirleys' first comment  and she said she enjoyed reading the blog which is lovely to know.

Yesterday stayed fine just long enough for us to get the path between house and poly-tunnels finished. Since we had the kitchen extension, our back door is in a different place and  the path along the back of the house is narrower  so we've had rough rubble and a temporary bit of path bridging the gap. The new path is two slabs wide and looks a bit  straight and stark at the moment, although we are using old slabs, but when we get the new herb garden planted up on the left  and maybe some shrubs on the right it will look better. We know from experience how annoying it is to have a narrow path with things growing close so that every time it rains you get wet legs walking through.

What a treat it is to grow some potatoes and beetroot in the poly tunnel and to eat them as early as the first of May. We only needed 2 roots of spuds to feed 4 of us easily. The variety are Rocket and they were planted as soon as we got back from the potato day on the 8th Feb. Growing and eating your own food is just SO satisfying.

Which means that from our garden and poly tunnels yesterday we had potatoes, mint to flavour them, beetroot, radishes, lettuce, salad leaves and asparagus. Apple and gooseberries from the freezer in a crumble. Fresh eggs from the hens and home made bread.

With drizzley rain all afternoon yesterday C decided it was just the right weather for washing the 2 poly tunnels that haven't had new plastic this year. It makes such a difference. The plastic needs to be damp then a long-handled brush and Ecover washing up liquid gets the green off, then a bucket of clean water chucked over to wash off the bubbles.

This plastic on the big tunnel was new last year but you can see from the back half which has not been cleaned how green it was and how much more light is let in after it's washed

Today has turned much colder and we are planning to cover as much as possible tonight because a frost is forecast . How to cover the twelve foot high Apricot trees - that is the question.

Today  C has been at home again and able to get some more things done. Two more beds cleared and weeded and the old  overgrown herb garden has been dug out and leveled. I shifted the last few slabs of the old patio by sack barrow and potted up a few more self sown herb seedlings and a couple of young Ash trees - or they might be Rowans - that had appeared in the garden.

For most of the winter we have had 3 of the big 1000litre IBC tanks here waiting to be sold. They've been advertised in the Suffolk Smallholders Newsletter each month, then suddenly we had 3 phone calls from the May ad and they've all sold and C will be visiting the place that chucks them out to see if we can get some more.We've also had some income from the campsite with people arriving for Bank Holiday weekend.

It's a good job we have had income as this months shopping was more than I wanted to spend. But several things  on the list  were reduced so I ended up buying two months supply. I also had to buy onions for the first time in 9 months as our home grown finally ran out. I'd been stretching them by using leeks instead wherever  I could but the leeks have run to seed so that's the end of them.

I think that's it for today
Back tomorrow - I might get the new herb garden planted up.
Sue

P Day

P Day = Putting Plastic on Poly-tunnel.

The plastic and frame of our middle tunnel were damaged in the gales on December 24th.

The plastic was taken off straight away so the frame wouldn't get more damaged.
 Then the trench all around the bottom where the old plastic was held down, was dug out. C repaired the frame and new plastic was ordered from a poly-tunnel supply company and arrived safely. We put the hot spot tape on the metal frame yesterday. This will be the second time this plastic has been replaced on a secondhand frame first erected in 1995.
 We were just waiting for the right day - a bit of sun, no wind and both of us at home for several hours.

When you get proper poly-tunnel plastic it is folded and rolled to make it easier to find the middle and to unfold both sides. Here it's over the frame and roughly held down with clods of the dug out soil.

Then starting at one corner put more soil in the trench and stamp it down. After taking this photo I then went round to the back to pull it tight as he back filled all the trench down one side.

One side done.We then left it for a while to get warm in the heat of the sun. The heat helps the plastic expand so we can pull it tighter.

The other side with spare plastic being cut off. We had to buy slightly wider than we needed. Which is better than not having enough!

After side two trench was filled and stamped in we pulled the back tight and held that down in the trench in the same way. Later the oblong will be a window covered in mesh, with plastic inside that can be rolled up and down.

C at the front with both sides and back finished. The door frame is there and he will make a door to fit which will be covered in plastic and hinged on one side.
Considering the frame was secondhand and not particularly even to start with, we've done quite well to get it nice and tight. Ideally it should have been done in warmer temperatures but we needed it finished to get the tomatoes in ASAP.

C said that if we had the proper frame with the proper fixings what we would do after putting the plastic on would be to adjust the hoops up from the inside to get everything tighter. 

After shoveling in dirt  and bending at a funny angle for several minutes while pulling the plastic tight my back seized up! Time to sit down for lunch.

Thanks for chicken and egg comments yesterday to Out My Window, Pam, Paid in Chickens, Kev, Stephanie, Gill, Cro, and Sue also Dawn who has a blog called Doing it for ourselves. I was fascinated by Dawns blog as they are REALLY self sufficient. I thought we were pretty good but what we do pales into insignificance compared to all the interesting things on Dawns Blog. I hope she will continue to write regularly after her house move too.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Bumper Bread Bake and poly tunnel news

I never have any trouble getting up when the sun is shining and this morning it was beautiful. So by 7.15 am the chickens had been let out, first lot of eggs collected and the washing was flapping on the line. I decided there was plenty of time to have a bumper bread making session.  2 loaves of bread, a dozen white rolls and a dozen tomato and herb rolls were cooling on the rack by noon. In between the bread rising and cooking I nipped in and out to do some clearing up in the garden.
An untidy bit with an ancient wheelbarrow full of broken pots that's lurked beside the garden shed for the last 20 years has been sorted. The shed is coming down too soon I hope.
 Over at the damaged poly tunnel

(This is what it looked like after the storm in December before we took the ripped plastic off)

I've tidied away some odd bricks, posts and bits of wood and pulled up lots of weeds.

C. was working  at our neighbours  this morning but this afternoon he barrowed some compost onto the beds and used the rotavator to sort out  the middle tunnel - much easier to do it while there is no plastic on it. We ran the tape measure over the frame ready to order new plastic. There is just one bit of frame broken so  hopefully he will be able to fix it.


I started a new book yesterday but abandoned it after half an hour. It had such promise - being an historical crime set in the 1890s in London. But it was just full of mistakes. It was written by an American author who hadn't done enough research about late Victorian Britain! Really annoying.

 Yesterday evening I had my feet up on the settee and look what happened. I couldn't shut the laptop for fear of squashing a small black comfy cat. I think we can say that Polly has settled in nicely!

Welcome to three new followers on Google friends - Alison, Dawn and Lea and to someone on Bloglovin' too, although I can't find your name at the moment. Hope you enjoy reading about our quiet life here. Leave a comment sometime, I like reading what people think of the blog.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Oh what a night. Late December in 2013

There's windy weather and then there's VERY windy weather. I can't remember a night when it's been so windy for so many hours. I kept turning over to see if the clock was still going and then trying to work out how I would do a Christmas dinner for 6 with the Rayburn oven and the gas hob if the electric did go off. Thank goodness  it stayed on so I needn't have worried. Some parts of the country were not so lucky.

Our thoughts go to those who have lost family members in the storms just 1 days before Christmas. Loss of electric would have been a minor thing compared to that.

At day break we could see that our middle polytunnel had collapsed at the front, with the plastic tearing along the top and at the back.Everything else around the smallholding was OK. This is the first time in 22 years that we've lost a tunnel to storm damage.

Christmas Eve has chugged along with lots of list ticking and jobs done. Not too much left  to do really.
So tomorrow we will have
An Aldi 3 bird roast ( never had one before so hope it's OK) £9.99
Roast potatoes - Home grown - effectively free as we sold lots earlier in the year.
Roast Squash - Home grown -  "   "  "  "  "  "  "  "     "    "      "      "       "     "   "
Roast Parsnips - Home Grown - almost free
Brussels Sprouts -  Home grown - almost free
Swede  -  Home grown - almost free
Red Cabbage - Home grown - almost free
Carrots - Part of a value bag from Tesco approx 20p
Aunt Bessies Yorkshire puds 12 for £1 on offer at Tesco
Pigs in blankets in Honey mustard glaze - good sausages on offer at Co-op + value streaky bacon
                         from Tescos glazed with wholegrain mustard and honey.       
Bread Sauce - oddments of bread saved in the freezer over the last few weeks + home grown onion
                       Milk made from value powdered   + home grown  bay leaf +pepper+ bit of butter.
Cranberry Sauce - Value from Tesco, warmed in microwave with 2 teaspoons of port 50p + ?
Gravy - Chicken oxo cube plus thickening with cornflour - 10p + few pennies
Bottle of wine - A gift
Co-op pressed apple juice 75p
Water


Desert - choice of ( or both!)
Christmas pudding - Home made - not sure how much it cost
Custard Made with Birds custard powder and milk from value powdered.
Single cream
Chocolate Meringue Gateaux - recipe is here  about £3. - 2 portions still in freezer - YUM

For anyone still hungry ( Brother in law!)
Cheese and biscuits  £ 1 savoury biscuit mix from Poundland + cheeses
A decent cup of coffee.
AND FINALLY
"After Eights" A look-a-like box from AF. 2 boxes for £1 - I think

Believe it or not some people will still want something at around 6.30 or 7pm 

So Christmas tea on the table for those who will want it ( Father in law, brother in law and Him Outside) will be the delicious ham, celery, tomatoes, bread rolls, chutneys, cheeses. Christmas cake, mince pies, scones. I shall be on the settee watching TV with a ham roll, scone, jam and clotted cream.

Back tomorrow

Happy Christmas to all out there in blogland