Three Cheers For The First New Potatoes!

Here is a picture that is a pleasing sight.

These are our first early potatoes dug today. The variety is Swift and this plus 3 larger ones that I quickly cooked for a potato salad for lunch are all from one root. This means we don't have to buy anymore potatoes. How good is that!
More signs of hopefulness on a cold June Sunday.

Tiny Plums have set.

Gooseberries are growing.

We might beat the blackbirds to the Morello cherries.

Our Green Man is still watching over some trees we planted 8 years ago.

Now settling down to watch mens tennis Final from Paris, plus doing a bit of  cross stitching.

(PS thank you to everyone for comments yesterday and welcome to Wendy at Blue Borage)

June 8th? It's more like January!

SOOOOOOOOOOOO cold here today. If  you couldn't see there were leaves on the trees you would think it was a winters day. The wind is a strong North East - straight down from the arctic and not a glimmer of sunshine.We didn't even bother to open the polytunnel doors. The Rayburn was lit for hot water earlier and now the woodburner is alight for warmth.
 Apart from collecting eggs I've been inside all day which is very depressing. Him Outside took the tractor with the topper to do the meadow at the second-home, then visited the elderly friend whose job it used to be. I fiddled about with ideas for card making but inspiration was sadly lacking.
At the beginning of the week  a cheque arrived for the  machinery that Him Outside took to the collective farm  auction last month. I put it away ready to add to the ISA. Then next day we got a letter to say that a computer glitch had caused the wrong date to be printed on all the cheques and we had to send it back. The date printed was 32/10/51! I wonder what the world will be like in 2051?
Dinner tonight was cold chicken with salad and potatoes and stewed apples and raspberries from the freezer. I had a good sort-out in the freezer depths the other day and was surprised that we still had several small bags of fruit left - mainly raspberries and redcurrants with a 2lb bag of gooseberries and a few bags of apple slices. I think I might mix the g.gogs with some raspberries and redcurrants and make some tutti- frutti jam. I'm checking the gooseberry bushes  for sawfly caterpillers most days and the crop is looking good as long so as the weather is  warm and we get some good rain  it won't be long before I'm putting this years harvest into the freezer.
Now going to watch Rugby - England  v Argentina. French Open tennis finals tomorrow, Queens Club tennis next week and Wimbledon very soon = My favourite time of the year!

Nosing into other peoples shopping trolleys!

The supermarket car park was half empty so I thought it would be a quick dash round and out, but there were so few checkouts open I got stuck behind someone with a HUGE trolley full. Now I like looking in other peoples trolleys and as the person on the checkout behind me also had a massive load of stuff I was able to be really nosy. They both had tons of things that I never buy. Dishwasher tablets- No, we don't have a dishwasher, Gi-normous boxes of highly advertised smelly washing powder - No, I use tiny amounts of Ecover liquid plus a spoonful of old fashioned washing soda. Fabric Softener - No, have never bothered with this - working on the principle that if you never do something you won't miss it. Large quantities of famous brands of sugary coated breakfast cereals - No, Him Outside has muesli that is packed by a regional wholesaler and sold in a simple package in the Co-op. Packet mixes for making cakes - No, I start from scratch and the only time I tried one of these it was artificially  nasty. Loads of packet of biscuits- No ( well mostly no, occasionally we buy a packet and then regret it) mostly I make from scratch. Ready Made jellies in little plastic pots - No- I bet the plastic pots cost more than the filling. Pre-grated cheese - No, I don't understand that at all.
I could go on all day but that would be really boring!

Watching the weather forecast it looks as if the whole country is bathed in warm sunshine with temps. up to 22. But over here on the East coast yes, we have sunshine but the wind is still very, very cold. All the blossom has been blown off the quince and apple trees and the wind is drying out  the soil so that we have had to start watering which seems crazy after the wet spring. What this weather is really good for is getting the washing beautifully dry in no time at all.

There is one job here that Him Outside didn't get around to doing when we sorted out the front drive and turning space last autumn and  we were wondering how on earth we would do it now that heavy lifting and strenuous jobs are out of the question. For 8 months we have had no path along the back of the house. He took up all the odd bits of concrete path and then was so busy with front drive, new campsite showers, poly tunnel and garden that the path didn't get done and for 8 months we have been walking through rubble and mud or doing a detour all round by the poly tunnels to get up to the washing line, workshop, chicken shed, freezer sheds etc etc. But there is light at the end of the tunnel as he asked some of the guys that he used to work with on bridge maintenance, and hopefully at least some of the work will be done over the next couple of months. This is how it has looked since October .The slabs laid on chippings were "temporary" to take us around the rubbley bit. Keep your fingers crossed that they won't be needed too much longer.

A morning out.

First of all thank you to everyone for kind wishes re Him Outsides heart problems.
You've probably gathered by now that we don't stray far from home, local car boot sales, local shopping ( and now hospital visits) are often the furthest we go for most of the month. Just occasionally we venture a bit further for a tour of charity shops in a different town. We had a garden  voucher left from a gift last year and then we got sent another discount voucher plus yet another voucher for free coffees from the Wyevale Gardening Club, so as the weather forecast said today would be cloudy (they were wrong - the sun shone!) we decided to have a morning in Woodbridge, a small town about 15 miles from us.
We've recently made a new flower bed after taking down some huge Leyllandii a couple of years back, and although I sent for some cheap perennials to fill it they are still very small, leaving lots of space for weeds in between. So after seeing this on TV we are hoping for an amazing show of annuals in the gaps between the small perennials.

I'll let you know if it works! It was blinkin' expensive ( although we used the voucher) but cheaper than buying a whole load of bedding plants. ( I'm NOT advertising this - just telling you what we bought!). We had our free - luke warm -coffees, then went into town.
A trip around all the 7  charity shops  didn't result in many bargains although I spent the last of my birthday on a tunic for £4.50. Then I found a book that is on  my Amazon wish list, something to add to my collection of war time home front books. I thought it was a brilliant bargain at £2.99 as the last time I looked at the price on Amazon it was well over £5. So I was well fed up to come home, go onto Amazon to delete it from my wish list only to find they had one copy at 1p! How annoying is that, I could have saved 18p!! This is my collection and the book I've added.

I know more than I want to know about agricultural waste exemptions!

This morning I 'lost' three quarters of an hour of my life  registering for New Agricultural Waste Exemptions on the Environment Agency web site.
Because we have land rather than just a garden and we are a registered smallholding we have to comply with waste regulations. Normal things like having a bonfire, building a compost heap or cleaning a ditch, which more or less everyone with a garden can do without any problems, we have to fill in a blinkin' form on the computer!
We had to do all this about 10 years ago and then re-register every now and again. But now they've jigged about with all the exemptions so we had to start from scratch. EVENTUALLY after ringing them up to find out why we couldn't get any further than  the first page and then having to search for a grid reference on another website and then going backwards and forwards from page to page. I clicked on the Submit bit and hopefully we are now legal. At present there is no charge for all this but I can just imagine that sometime in the future someone in a city office will have an idea to bring in more money and will start charging us.
 I think the most annoying thing is that the HUGE farmers like the ones who farm 10s of thousands of acres all around us and for miles right down to Essex, have to fill in exactly the same form as we do with our little 5 acres and a compost heap! And they can employ someone to do all their paperwork for them.
Yesterday and today the  sun is shining here on the edge of Suffolk but by golly the wind is cold. It's a north easterly so we are feeling the worst of it straight off the sea. Yesterday Him Outside worked for a customer in the morning and then cut the campsite grass ( sitting on the ride on mower isn't causing him any strain) and I got the small mower out to do all the fiddly bits of grass cutting. Today we've got lots more odd bits of gardening done mainly weeding and tidying and Him Outside was in the poly tunnel taking the side shoots off the tomatoes until it got too warm.
 Here's a nice sight- tidy ranks of healthy onions

 He managed to get in to see the doctor yesterday to get more advice on all the tablets that the hospital dished out without any discussion after the angina diagnosis, but when he stopped the tablet that gave him a headache he got the serious pains again and had to use the under the tongue spray for the first time. It's all such a sudden thing we don't know what he should be doing and what not to do.
I suppose he will get sorted out eventually.
Yesterday, at last, I picked up my needle and started a quick and easy cross stitch picture for a card and also got into the first few pages of Confusion- the third in the Cazalet family saga by Elizabeth Jane Howard.
Finally I must say welcome to Dragonfly, a new local visitor to my blog. Thank you also to everyone for comments and advice re the angina issue - we need all the advice we can get I think!

Sunday, so can you guess where we went this morning?

Yes, of course, we went to the local car boot sale!  But after 2 months we are now starting to see some of the same old stuff every week. So very few bargains today, just 3 things bought actually. For £4 I found a huge box of Whittards tea bags with 9 different sorts of tea to try. I'm sure I have seen them in the Whittards shop in Ipswich for about £18. It will be interesting to try some of the weird varieties that we would never normally buy. I also bought a virtually brand new hard-back book for 50p which I shall hide away until Christmas as I think Him Outside will enjoy it. ( It's about cricket - which he listens to on the radio whenever possible). Him Outside bought a pack of new paint brushes for £1, ready for whenever we do the next bit of decorating. Then we came home again!
Unlike yesterday, the sun has shone all day today and we got the Pumpkin and Squash plants planted out onto the field. We pulled a little barrier of soil around each one in the hope that they will be protected from any strong winds that might blow them about. Some years we have covered them with a huge long length of fleece but that is quite hard work, which neither of us thought would be a good idea this year.

Here are the Pumpkin plants, potatoes are in the ridges on the right and then further over are the two rows of squash plants.

And here is a sight no small campsite owner wants to see! This is the caravan side of the site where the electric hook-ups are, and it is EMPTY! and we have no-one booked for 2 weeks. Oh well, at least I get a break from toilet cleaning!

Tomorrow morning Him Outside is off to help one of his customers with her allotment and I'm not sure what I'm doing yet, but I'm certain I shall find something that needs doing without looking too far.

Looking back at May

Oh dear, in some ways May wasn't a good month, but they are at the end of the list!
Here is a look at all that happened on the Simple Suffolk Smallholding  in May

1. Once again we earned more than we spent- always a good start to a review of the month.
2. Thanks to the guys working at Sizewell Power station, the campsite income was our best ever start to a season. ( Campsite income is not counted in the above )
3. Income from campsite has gone into ISA ready for winter.
4. I earned some money working as a Poll Clerk 
5. We got the new poly tunnel covered and planted full of tomatoes which we will sell later
6. We also got everything else planted out ( except for pumpkins and squash plants - we are running late with them)
7. Him Outside got another regular bit of work - looking after the grass cutting and strimming at a second home.
8. Egg sales were eggscellant!
9. We got rid of 3 years worth of unwanted odds and ends at a car boot sale - income £85
10. I managed to sort out all the small pots of herbs, and prepared them to sell at the gate.
11. We re-potted or chucked all my huge pots of weedy Hostas - something that we should have got done at least 2 years ago!
12. Some good boot-sale bargains have filled in lots of spaces in my Christmas present book.
13. We were able to eat the first and only (so far)  mini cucumber from the poly tunnel.
14. I've had lots of good books from the library and done loads of reading.
15. Co-op divi and Tesco voucher both arrived at end of the month- handy saving  of £29 for June  food spending.

BUT
Him Outsides sudden health issues are worrying.
 The awful weather means that lots of things in the garden are running very late or looking sad and things are on go slow in the poly tunnels.
Another month has gone by and I've done NO cross stitch again.
The food budget was way over because of trying some different things from  different places and having almost nothing from the garden.( Although the food cupboards are now full and June food spending will be down).
Campsite electric hook-up annual test found things that needed repair = Big Bill.
There had to be some spending on working boots for him and clothes for me.
We had nothing to sell at the gate except eggs and a bit of rhubarb.
Conclusion - Not a very frugal month. Must do better!