Success and failure at Self Reliance?

The idea of being self sufficient has appealed to me since reading the John Seymour book in the late 1970s. The reality is that it is nigh impossible but we can be more self reliant.

Which is why this isn't just a picture of  some apples.

These are our apples, cooking and eating, and it's February17th and they are still looking OK. That's success! We've never had such good quality, long keeping before. AND we still have several wrapped in newspaper in boxes in the shed.

I checked through  the last net of onions today and had to chuck several. We have enough to see us through another few weeks but we've not grown the over-winter type this year after a couple of years of failures so we will have an onion gap over the summer.  That's a sort of failure at self reliance.

Aubergine seeds have been sown and popped in the propagator and I came across a packet of sweetpea seeds that were free last year so I've sown them in pots too.

While in Saxmundham picking up Him Outside from the railway station, I nipped into Tescos for milk. As I went past the reduced fruit and veg. section I noticed yellow stickers on some small packs of raspberries and strawberries. You'll never believe what the "reduced" price was -- £2.89! Reduced? I don't think so! and  probably pretty tasteless too at this time of the year. I wonder how far they had flown to get here. We will stick to eating our own apples and our own fruit from the freezer until rhubarb season.

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday. Lovely to hear that people enjoy reading my ramblings from Suffolk.

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