It's all down hill from here

At 2.29 this morning when most people were tucked up in bed  the Autumn equinox happened, that's when the length of day and night are the same, so it's all downhill from here! (Unless you are reading this in Australia in which case you've got spring on the way - lucky people!)

 I never look forward to winter, for so many years it meant feeling cold, lonely and depressed even though I wasn't actually cold or lonely, that's one of the problems of depression it magnifies things out of all proportion.
 Now I can cope better with winter but I still don't like it and I HATE being cold.

By coincidence last night was our first night with nobody on the campsite since......(and I had to look it up in the bookings diary)........... June 2nd.  Pretty good going and so different to years in the past, before we had all the mod-cons.

 I've been feeling loads better over the last couple of days,  I'm really getting back to normal, taking back some of my jobs that C has been doing for 5 weeks. FIVE WEEKS! I've never had that long "off work" before. I'm not sure what we would have done if we'd have still had goats, C couldn't milk ( he has got funny thumbs!) and our neighbour away and then ill at the same time as me, it would have been a real muddle.

So what's happening here on the Suffolk coast.
Yesterday we had the big  lorry come to pump out the two septic tanks - ours and the campsite. One of the benefits of having no mains drainage is the we have no sewer charges and getting the tank pumped out every 2 or 3 years is all we have to pay for. It was £75 for each tank. Not too bad and no more than 3 years ago. I dread to think what sewerage charges are nowadays.
C was here all day yesterday apart from going down the road twice to shift the irrigation stuff, we've had so little rain they are still watering the carrot fields. Farmers are very worried about the oil seed rape seedlings which have come through the ground and then stopped growing, although the farmers with sugar beet like dry weather as it makes it easier to get  up out of the ground and concentrates the sugar content of the beet so they get paid more. We don't have as much sugar beet grown around here as in the past when there was a sugar beet factory in Ipswich. Now the nearest is in Bury St Edmunds which is across the other side of Suffolk. When I worked in Bury many years ago the sweet sickly smell drifting over the town when the campaign started was always a sign of winter on the way.

Today C  loaded the greenhouse staging he's been making into the trailer and went off to work for his customer in Leiston. He came home with a cheque for labour and payment  for the greenhouse that he forced  made her realise it was just what she needed,  to buy off us!   The cheque will go into the ISA savings. C was off again after lunch  shifting the irrigator again and  then did some grass cutting here.

I did a pile of ironing, put a load of windfall cooking apples into the freezer and  made a vegetable curry while yesterday was bread baking  and hoovering up day.

With the weather cooling down and less sunshine we shall soon need to start lighting the Rayburn for hot water, it's yet another sign of winter on the way, when bringing a wheelbarrow full of wood down from the shed becomes a regular daily job.

Welcome to new followers on Bloglovin' and to 1st Man, a new Google friend follower.

There were all sorts of comments about pumpkins yesterday.  I have to say that we get very few things stolen off the stall, especially since we had the new kitchen extension built with a big window overlooking the front gate where the stall is. I have a sign on the stall which asks people to put the money through the letterbox in the front door, which means it is safely in the house out of the way. The majority of people are scrupulously honest, even ringing the doorbell or leaving a note to tell me if they are 5p short of change! and they put in in when they next go by. Thank goodness for our quiet  friendly bit of Suffolk.
The big pumpkins I mentioned are far too big to carry, this one - the biggest - is now even bigger than this photo. There are 4 more nearly as big. No one will even be able to lift them into a car without help.

That's another point about our stall and where we live. Someone once asked why we don't deliver eggs to our customers, it's because they are not close to us- no one is close to us except our few neighbours. We are over a mile from the two nearest villages and people stop to buy things from our stall when they are passing by in cars, they could come from anywhere and are on the way to work or  shopping or whatever. I recognise a lot of people because they are regular customers but mostly I don't know who they are or where they live.

Right, I've waffled on enough.
Back Tomorrow
Sue