I was just planning to have half -an-hour sitting in the sun and it's gone behind a mass of hazy cloud so decided to do this instead. Welcome to new followers now numbering 21, when I started writing I told Him Outside that I wasn't bothered if no one read my ramblings, now every time I get excited by a new person he reminds me of what I said. Funny how he remembers some things and forgets others :-)
Thank you for comments re the campsite and ideas for more income but honestly we don't want the site to get too busy and definitely don't want or need to earn a huge income. We are frugal so can manage on a lot less than many people. We are in The Camping and Caravanning Club Big Sites Book and on their website and as we only take C&CC Members that's all we need really. Last year was exceptionally bad. I think my profit ( income minus outgoings) for the approx 200 days we are open worked out to £5 a day - that is not a lot ( taken as an average that is less £3 a day for the year) and just a little bit more would be good . And then when so many folks said they needed a shower to stay for even one night that's why we decided to spend a bit to do one. But we can't afford to do anything else and the shed we are using for Tourist Information leaflets, maps and a shelf of books is only small so no room for table tennis etc. If we were busy, busy,busy I wouldn't have time for reading, sitting in the sun, watching Countdown or Eggheads, dreaming, writing to penfriends, growing stuff or doing cross stitch. I have to get the priorities right !!
I've got lots more done in the greenhouse today - tomatoes are moved into bigger pots awaiting the new polytunnel. Now here's an odd thing - the plastic to cover this "new" tunnel is no more expensive than we paid to cover a smaller tunnel 8 years ago. Must be the only thing that hasn't gone up. Then I sowed a few more tommie seeds for a late crop and some more squash and pumpkin seeds too. Him Outside has been continuing to get the frame of the above mentioned P.t sorted and deciding how to have the doors and pathways.
I seem to have got people reading Hovel in the Hills after several people noticed it in the pile of books at the top of the blog. Here is another heap of good books, anyone got these on their shelves?

 I've been interested to see blogs mentioning 'no-spend-days'. We have lots of those - more than half of every month I reckon :-)
The new chickens are now all laying regularly and word has got round that we have more eggs, so they are all selling which is good news - lots more happy people eating lovely fresh eggs.
Well, it's still hazy so I'd better go and get the ironing done - shame, as I was looking forward to sitting out for a while. Forecast is for much cooler after tomorrow so may have to wait several days now.

CAMPSITE SORTED !

I'm very pleased that today we have finally got the campsite facilities sorted and declared open our "Tourist Information, Library and Group Room" . This sounds extremely grand but really it is just the end of the farm building that we have boarded out, painted the concrete floor and installed some shelves for books, tourist info leaflets and a table and chairs. This is something I've wanted to do for ages but it was only when we definitely decided that to keep goats again would be too costly and complicated that we were able to use the part of the shed that I'd been "saving just in case I keep goats again''. I kept goats for 18 years until 3 years ago we thought about moving and then I was ill for a while and that was when the goats went. I still miss them.
We've had our campsite since the year after moving here so  since 1993. We started a site because we were campers and had been to some good but a lot of really awful places and thought we could do better than some we had been to. We began with just the basics that you have to have to run a Camping and Caravanning 5 van site ( usually known as a C.S or a C.L). That is a tap, Chemical Toilet emptying point and a dustbin. Then we added a toilet and cold water washbasin for tent campers. Then caravans got more complicated and everyone needed electric hook-up points. For a while we couldn't do this without great expense as the power supply to the  house from the nearest transformer wasn't big enough. Then one night we had a bit of luck as lightening struck a telegraph pole zoomed along the wires and burnt out the transformer pole. When it was repaired the guys said that it had to be upgraded to a much more powerful supply and then we were able to run hook ups. We ticked over nicely for a few years and then found we were getting people who wouldn't come because we didn't have a shower.Then last year was our worst year ever with the weather being so horrible we had weeks and weeks with no visitors at all. So we decided that maybe adding a shower would be a good idea and had to figure a way to get electric to the building.
Now we are all done and just hope that we will recoup the expense before too long.
We've got a church group and a lightweight camping group booked in for later in the year so I hope they will find the room in the shed handy for evenings to get out of the weather if  (when) its wet. Hopefully we will have a good year, I'll keep you posted.

Some garden photos next. The Horse Chestnut leaves are just opening.

butterfly on a dandelion

There should have been a picture of the fruit cage with it's net over the top and the nice green gooseberry bushes - but it's vanished - who knows where?

Final picture is part of my baking session this morning. Some extremely delicious Chocolate Cappuccino cakes - recipe taken from the WI book of cakes and biscuits.I bake these quite often! but cut them into 16 small squares instead of 8 bars and they freeze very well. Always handy to keep in the freezer for visitors

and very good in the mornings with a cup of coffee for people who don't eat breakfast!!!

Monday Thank-yous

This blogging is fun, I keep getting some lovely comments and finding people with the same books on their shelves is good. So thank you to Karen, Mean Queen, Frugal in Derbyshire, Pam, sft and Dc  and  anyone I've forgotten for all the input. Still only one other person who has heard of The Penny Pincher Paper and that was buttercup do you have a blog buttercup? She asked ( I'm guessing a lady :) ) if I ever wrote for the Penny Pincher Paper ( see yesterdays blog) and the answer was yes. I wrote bits called "From a Suffolk Smallholding" every other month for a couple of years and was quite upset when John and Irma Mustoe gave up and the Paper stopped. Although I reckon it took a lot of time to put together a 30 page Newsletter every month. I have also been writing on and off for about 15 years for the Suffolk Smallholders Society Newsletter. I just love writing.
Yesterday I got on my soapbox and |I really shouldn't do that as I sound like a grumpy old person, But I think I'm only grumpy now and again. At least I HOPE its only now and again.
Watched the Countryfile  7 day weather forecast yesterday and they are saying we will be back to cold and frosts by the weekend which is a worry as the plants in the greenhouse are getting quite big. The cucumbers are in 4 inch pots and have teenie baby cucs appearing, so I shall have to get them out into the polytunnels soon and then cover them with fleece if it looks like freezing. Cucumber seeds are so expensive as because we sell them I only buy the F1 all female variety. The tomatoes will need moving into bigger pots if I can't get them out to the tunnel soon.

Yesterday we went a few miles up the road to a regular fortnightly car boot sale,  we took a shopping list as we needed to look for some things for the new campsite loo/ shower. Luckily  we found everything :- a rubbish bin with a swing top lid =£1, two pine-framed small mirrors =£2.50 each, a tall plastic jug for 50p which will do for the loo brush( that I already had), a mop bucket and mop = £3 and finally a pine shelf unit =£1. Unfortunately all this frugal luck was somewhat spoiled today as I had to order a couple of non-slip door mats and a 'slippery floor' sign from Viking- the office supply company. When running a business you have to - Think Health and Safety at all times!! - Our public liability insurance is one of our biggest costs.
I also found 6 sheets of peel -off stickers for cardmaking for £1 for all six, I could have bought lots more card crafting stuff but had to be very strict with myself. And my final purchase was a couple of sets of old but unused commemorative stamps - over £3 worth of stamps for £2. They just need making up to the right amount to post at todays prices with a few 1p stamps.
Him Outside got the best bargain as he found a complete set of really good quality drill bits for £5 ( about 15 various sizes in a proper case). A couple of weeks ago he broke a masonry drill bit while fixing the campsite loo to the floor and had to buy a new one which was £6 just for 1 !

On a Sunday Soapbox

I was browsing in blogland last night while watching that programme " Should British people without talent be on TV" when I came across a blog where somebody was saying how they didn't want to join in the £30 for 30 tips thing because the things they did were not what other people did and they didn't want to be seen following the crowd and "making up" tips just to get the money. ( I couldn't find the blog again and not sure where it was)
Surely the whole point of Frugal Living is that everyone is different, everyone has different reasons to live the way they do and different ways to do it. Probably one persons frugal tip is another persons extravagance and vice-versa. But that doesn't matter, it is up to individual choice.
Our reasons for being frugal are over on the sidebar and so is the way we do things. We've often been told we are lucky for owning a smallholding but we are old and started way back when houses were cheaper and we were able to buy cheap, do them up and sell a few years later. We did this 5 times including living in a caravan for a year with 2 children under 5 and working late every night on a house that had been declared uninhabitable by the council. But we made choices to do that, like buying childrens clothes at jumble sales and not Mothercare as was the norm at the time. Later when the children were older we choose not to holiday abroad, even though they said all their friends were, and camped in this country instead. We choose not to have new or even newish cars and we were lucky because Him Outside can turn his hand to most practical things. Yes, we were lucky as we didn't have debts and a big mortgage and we were able to pay it off early but we choose not to buy things that we couldn't afford. Our first new sofa was bought only a few years ago and we've been married for 34 years! but that was our choice. Yes, we were "lucky" that my Dad died a few years back and left us some money to build a kitchen extension and to modernize the house to make it more fuel efficient so it was cheaper to live here, but we choose to do that rather than go on a cruise or whatever. We are so lucky to have a choice and I know some people will say they have no choice to do what they do and I'm sure that's true and that's the sad thing about the world. But we can only do what we do and as far as I know  we don't upset anyone doing it. So I shall carry on being frugal in our own way and enjoying it.

On a much lighter note I had a reply to a blog last week mentioning The Penny Pincher Paper and I was so excited to find someone else who had heard of it. ( Apart from my 6 PPP friends - Hello Sandra, Alison, Mary,Janet,Jill and Gill !) It was a small privately published newsletter that ran for  around 5 years. Produced by John and Irma Mustoe who appeared in the VERY early series of Scrimpers in around 1992 or 3. They then did a book and followed that with The Penny Pincher Paper. I have no idea how many people subscribed to it, but as lot's of different people contributed their own ideas on living better on less, it must have been several dozen at least. So is there anyone else who subscribed out there? The Mustoes  were frugal because they loved travelling, so they choose to live simply in other ways to afford their world travels. Everyone is different. Which is  a good thing as it would be a pretty boring world if we were all the same.

A Beautiful Saturday

What a beautiful day here on the Suffolk coast, wall to wall sunshine. The kind of day that makes you think things WILL be OK. The wind was a tad chilly but we can forgive that. We got lots of jobs done outside and in the greenhouse. More seeds sown, small courgette and pepper plants moved into bigger pots, tidying up in the new campsite shower, clearing out the shed  where I'm going to put tourist information leaflets and a mini library, delivering the very last load of hay to a friend.Best of all Him Outside got the frame of the "new" polytunnel sorted. Its actually a very old frame given us by a friend who wanted it shifted, several of the metal pipes have rusty ends and wonky bits but he has rescued the best and it is huge. Plenty of room for growing dozens of tomato plants to make lots of tomatoes to sell. Now we just need to measure it and send for the plastic to cover it. I've also found I need a new automatic window opener for the greenhouse as after many, many years of use the one we have has broken and it's no good relying on my memory to open and shut the window!
Nice surprise in the post was a belated birthday present from our eldest daughter who works in the busy, busy world of textile design in London. She rang in a panic on the day apologizing for forgetting to post it as she has been so busy at work and with organising a friends hen party.
She sent this lovely tea towel designed by a small company called Beetroot Press.
Whoops........ seem to have uploaded all 3 pictures at once. 1st is the left-hand greenhouse shelf, lots of plants.2nd is the new polytunnel frame and 3rd is the lovely tea towel. Now the other day I'm sure I saw a way to turn photos round but of course now I don't know where I saw it. Any ideas?

A Quiet day

Today I am tired. We live in the middle of arable fields. Only 2 other houses within 100yds yet last night at 2am I was woken by noise and bright lights and looked out to see A TRACTOR AND ITS ATTENDING LOADER SPREADING FERTILIZER ON THE FIELDS- 2am !! What the heck? We have a new farmer farming land around us, they farm 1000s of acres from here all down the coast and right into Essex. They are efficient and produce a lot of food including vegetables to feed a lot of people and I've lived in the country, and been associated with farming, long enough to know some work has to be done quickly while there is no wind or before rain BUT 2 am??? So today I'm tired and as I'm a person who needs my sleep it will take me days to recover.
I did summon up the energy to cycle a mile and a bit down to the village for the library van which due to " cutbacks" now only comes once in 4 weeks. Came home with a good pile, most of which I had ordered on-line, but only a couple that I'm really looking forward to reading. Several are authors that I've not read before so shall see what they are like.

Yesterday I wrote about finding the blog of Shirley Goode, so today I got her books out to have another look and found, folded inside, cuttings from old magazines also about her ideas for money saving in the kitchen. The books are well thumbed I think all except the Goode Kitchen  came from carboot sales years ago. The largest of the books was one I didn't know about until I found it at our local car boot just a couple of years ago. Looking through the books was like visiting  old friends. They are well thumbed as they were used a lot when the children were small.

Dinner tonight was a frugal lasagne which uses ( for 2 people) three quarters of a tin of pilchards in tomato sauce which is mixed with some dried herbs and a squirt of tom. puree. The lasagne is made in the usual way, white sauce, value sheets of lasagne. Cover with foil for 20 minutes in oven the top with grated cheese and finish for 5 minutes uncovered. When I've described this in the past I have seen people turn up their noses but it is really  surprisingly tasty. The other pilchard will make us sandwiches tomorrow.
Just heard worrying thing on local news. A group of 5 traveler families moved onto a big campsite about 10 miles from us, refused to pay, refused to get off and when bailiffs and police were called they didn't make them move but let them stay until Monday. I've heard this happening in other places but never in Suffolk. It might be a big problem and we shall have to install some sort of way to stop them coming here but when legitimate  visitors to the site are coming and going it's difficult to know what to do.
That's my lot for today. Sleep well!

£30 reward - yipee!

Thank you to Ilona at Life after money for the hint about the £30 on Moneysupermarket. Him Outside is well pleased as the £30 has gone into Paypal which is used mainly by him for bits and pieces for the smallholding !
If you read my list of 30 ways to save £1, you will notice several typing errors and spelling mistakes, my excuse is that I did the list in a rush and didn't proof read. Very embarrassing as I did my RSA 1  typing in about 1977 and I ought to remember, then I did proof reading as part of a City and Guild Library Assistants course in about 1979 -what a long time ago, in a different world.
Not a lot of gardening done today as it was too cold and windy, so I had a really good tidy up in my craft room/ office/spare room and made a space to spread out the paperwork for my tax return. Luckily the campsite never earns enough to pay any tax and is quite straight forward to do. I like to get it done quickly in case I forget and there are fines involved if it isn't done by October on paper returns.
I was playing in blog land and came across a couple of frugal type blogs by blokes which I thought would be interesting to have a look at for a different perspective on things. Then I found a blog done by a lady called Shirley Goode who wrote several books about living on less - especially cooking- back in the early 1980's. She also appeared on TV doing cooking. It was a surprise to find that she had her 80th birthday on the same day as my 58th.
My only frugal tip for today is if you need to make 6 sausages feed 4 people without looking mean, then twist them in the middle gently squeezing the meat, cut through to make 12 mini sausages and put into a Yorkshire pudding. Then you can dish up 3 half sausages each and it is plenty for even husbands and hungry 25 year olds.