Oh you lucky people - 2 moneysaving tips........

..........in one day, because I forgot to do one yesterday!

The 9th tip for saving was cut down on how much shampoo, toothpaste lotions and potions that you use to see if less will do the same job
and the 10th was Before you buy anything STOP and think if you already have something that will do the same job. Which is why we don't have a dishwasher because I have a person who can do the washing up much more cheaply!

Did you see the programme about Aldi?  They didn't sound like very good employers and their attitude to health and safety regarding fire exits was dreadful. I wonder if Lidl are the same? Hugh FW War on Waste was good again, we've both signed his petition and I've vowed to try and use the fruit and veg shop in Leiston as much as possible. If I'm heading the other way to Saxmundham then there is no choice except Tesco and Waitrose.

We have no need to buy apples for a while. This is our late apple tree seen from the back door, it's behind the Bramley and still has a few apples hanging on,

  it's only when you get closer you realise there are actually quite a lot

So most have been picked wrapped and boxed, six layers deep. There is also a basket full that are either small or windfalls to eat first.

We've got a trug full of earlier apples out in the shed and another trug full in the craft room that will need eating before we even start on the ones in the box.

We had to pop to Woodbridge today to take all the forms to the solicitor and it seemed silly not to go to The Grape Tree to get the fruit I needed ready for mincemeat and Christmas cake although of course that meant spending money in November that would have waited until December.We also needed milk and yogurt and a few other bits.The last time I opened my purse was last Friday so to add to the £49.12 Food and £29.24 other stuff we have another £9 on store-cupboard stuff and £6.50 for things that go in the fridge. I also picked up just over £8 worth of food things that will be gifts  or made into gifts for the hampers.
No spend November? Ha Ha Ha ( But I was a good girl and only looked at the magazines in W.H Smiths- again!)

Thanks for comments yesterday. Bovey Belle asked if we were right off the Wales idea. The answer is not completely but because of this latest health issue and wanting to have a short chain we are basically looking for something empty that we can move into quickly. Not a forever house and not something perfect but just somewhere small and inexpensive(?) to live while everything is sorted out.When we know what is the matter with Colin this time we  can then either stay or rent it out and move somewhere else. Our original plan was to go back to the mid Suffolk area of Stowmarket that we know so well but there is nothing for sale there that's suitable at the moment AND it still means a 15 mile journey to hospital. Whereas where we looked yesterday, although we may pay a bit more for a smaller place, the rental return would be a lot more and it's only  a mile and a bit to hospital.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Saturday odds and ends

Welcome to Here We Go Looby Lou and A Kentish Maid who are both following via Google and Karen and Catherine on Bloglovin'.

This morning I took C to the surgery for a flu jab, apparently having heart issues qualifies him for a jab for free. Even though I'm 2 years older than him and had pneumonia this year I didn't qualify- I feel quite left out!
 While waiting for him I popped into the library and found this lovely book on the For Sale shelves,The island in question is in Strangford Lough and the photos are gorgeous. I paid £1.50 for it and it's in lovely condition, I can't work out why it had been withdrawn for sale after only 4 years.


Still no frosts here on the Suffolk coast so the tomatoes and peppers are  hanging on in the poly-tunnels and the beetroot outside are still OK in the ground. I've been waiting for more seed catalogues to arrive so I can sort the seed order but still only Marshalls, The Organic Garden Catalogue and Suttons. What's happened to Browns and Kings this year? Maybe I'll write my list of what we need tomorrow as the forecast is awful so I don't think we will be going far plus there is tennis on TV in the afternoon.
Today has been fine and a load of washing was dry by lunchtime. We did another bit of wood cutting, adding some more small stuff to the wood heap and filled up the chicken feeders. This afternoon C took the pressure washer to the empty chicken shed( mower trailer in use again), fixed up the hosepipe and electric and got into his waterproof overalls to give it a clean out.Another job done.

 These are almost the last of our eating apples, picked off  the small trees before tomorrows weather knocks them down. There are a few of the very late variety still on the bigger tree in the garden, they are well sheltered so should be OK. Last year we picked them off in November, wrapped them and they stored until mid January. This year there are so few I think we will have eaten them all by mid December.

And finally a view from right at the top of our field, the furthest end from the house, there is a gap through the hedge and the countryside stretches away with the pylons marching  into the distance all the way to the outskirts of Ipswich.

 Back Tomorrow
Sue

Today and yesterday in words and pictures

Yesterday
First of the butternut squash went out for sale, priced at 75p for the smaller ones - just under 1kg, then £1 for middle sized and £1.50 for some huge ones almost 2kg. The first lot - 8 I think - sold so quickly I had to put labels on some more  and get them out too. We also sold the last 3 large pumpkins. There are a couple of dozen big ones still  a bit green and a few small ones to sell.
I made  Sweetcorn Relish first. It's a variation on piccalilli. Brilliant with burgers both veggie or meat.

If anyone can tell me how/why this picture turned round by 90 degrees from how it was in the file I would love to know and how do I turn it back again?
The Autumn raspberries are coming to an end. Just half a basin full today, so I got some of the apricots out of the freezer for my one of my five a day. So gorgeous, what an exotic treat. C is eating stewed apple at the moment, which is my least favourite way of eating fruit. We are bringing in a few eating apples  to eat too. I don't think there will be many to wrap and keep this year, the quality is awful. Hopefully we won't get too much windy weather to knock them all off the trees before they are ready.

 Do you remember me saying that I had to buy some biros as we'd not had any free ones? Lo and behold in the post today. From the Red Cross - how many tens of thousands of these do they send out? Presumably it's worth their while doing it. Today there were 2 greetings cards, the pen, a bookmark and a little note book.

This one turned round too- very odd.

My other main job was having a big sort out in the airing cupboard. Our youngest had borrowed the sleeping bags to go to a festival and when they came back they were just shoved in any old how. So I had a tidy up. Got rid of 4 old very faded pillowcases that were lurking and a sheet that's gone to the shed for future use as a dust sheet and found 2 pillows that I didn't know were there.

C was away down to the village early to move the irrigation stuff. Then he went to work for his customer in Leiston. He was putting the glass into the greenhouse and nearly got finished just needing to get one more pane which was a different size. He took the small trailer with him so as to pick up a couple of IBC containers because yesterday we had a phone call asking if we had any left. The bloke at the factory said they had loads waiting to be sold if  we wanted some more we could have them cheap. These 1000 litre containers are originally used for water soluble stuff like car cleaner and they get sold off when the taps are no longer good enough. For water storage they are still fine once they are washed out.  So after lunch he went back with the big trailer and came back with 8 more. We'll advertise them in The Suffolk Smallholders Newsletter.

  He was back out  to move the irrigator again at 4pm and when he got home decided to load the HUGE pumpkins onto the trailer, to bring them round to the front drive. This is how we got them onto the trailer, rolled them onto a board on the front forks and then rolled them off onto the trailer. Except for the BIGGEST which went on a board on a pallet to shift it.

  we went out of the top gate with me sitting on one pumpkin to keep the biggest steady and drove down to the house drive way. No other traffic around for those few moments - thank goodness. Now they are parked where everyone can see them  but Heavens knows if anyone will want them.

And Today
There have been people stopping to take photos of the pumpkins but no one has offered to take one away yet.

C decided to tackle taking down the old shed. I was needed to hold things while he cut them up and to load bits onto the mower trailer and into wheelbarrows and to tidy up afterwards - as usual. There is now a huge builders bag of wood for me to cut for kindling, bigger bits in the shed to be cut for the woodburner and a bag of rubbishy bits for burning sometime. All that's left is the concrete bases of shed and greenhouse to be broken up and removed.

View from kitchen  this morning 

and then a while later

 
C went to move the irrigation equipment for the final time, it's gone back to the farm and if we get all the rain forecast for next week it might not be used again this year. Then he was cutting grass for our neighbour and some here too.My jobs this afternoon were ironing and cleaning  indoors, eggs collected and sorted.

Our electricity meter was read at the beginning of September, but no bill arrived, so about 10 days ago I rang to ask why and gave the lady the meter readings and she said a bill would be on the way. Today we got a phone call querying the meter mans readings as it was extra high so I read it again and my reading was 10,000 less than the meter man!  So I'm SO glad that someone picked up the discrepancy, I would have had heart failure had a bill that big arrived. Hopefully it's now sorted and we will now get a bill and settle up. I don't like owing or being owed money. Which reminds me we must get in touch with the bloke who had all the round bale hay, he still owes us £900!

Library day picture tomorrow, I have at least 16 to pick up. *loud cheer*


Welcome to Jana and Jane following via Bloglovin'
Back Tomorrow
Sue

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.

Back Tomorrow

Another Library Book photo

It was a windy cycle ride down to Friston this morning to get to the library van, but I was blown home again with this lovely bagful of books. 3 or 4 are new books by favourite fiction authors, there are a couple of new authors to try and some non-fiction too.

 Once again I've borrowed the book about The Building of the Green Valley to have another look through, after being reminded of it because if Monastery Farm being on TV. Then I found the information about  an older TV reality re-inactment - Surviving The Iron Age. I remember the programme but I'm not sure if I've seen the book before... it was published in 2001 ....so maybe several years ago.

The overnight storms have caused more damage here - another bit of fencing blown over.

  All due to using some rubbishy posts ( obviously we didn't know at the time that they were such poor quality!). So that's another expense and another job for Him Outside in the New Year.
He went to work for the County Council this morning and then got a phone call from one of his gardening customers to ask if he could go and do a temporary repair to some of her fences which were also blown down last night.

We are still eating our way through the Christmas day leftovers, all delicious except for the Aldi 3 bird roast which we thought had  very strange flavoured stuffing as well as some really tough meat. I certainly won't bother with one of those again. The Christmas cake only had a small slice eaten on Christmas day so that will be a treat with an apple and piece of cheese for many days to come.
This Christmas we were given a total of 6 various boxes of chocolates! Never had so many before, I think they will last us until mid summer.
Apart from milk we will not need to visit a food shop until well into January. Our own eating apples are still keeping well so I've managed to  avoid buying fruit apart from some clementines for Christmas.

Now  I'm going to fill in my new diary with all the birthdays to remember and dentist appointments etc.

Thanks to everyone for comments yesterday.

Back Tomorrow

30 Ways to Save £1 -- Day 18 + Christmas Cake Recipe

I've been forgetting to welcome two new followers who've appeared over there on the right in the last few days. Apologies and Welcome. Thank you also to Janice,Pam, Compostwoman and Kev for comments yesterday.

The weather today is just as nasty as yesterday. Him Outside was around at our neighbours most of the day, this time shifting the muck from the bottom of the heap using her mower and tip up trailer, down to her garden.

I was in the kitchen finishing the Christmas cakes. I had put the fruit to soak on Friday and had been stirring every day. The recipe I use is a Mary Berry one but from way, way back, long before she started doing the Bake Off thing. She was freezer expert for a magazine called Family Circle and one year did loads of traditional Christmas recipes. I cut out the pages and have kept them ever since.

This is the recipe

Victorian Christmas Cake

1lb mixed dried fruit including peel, soaked in quarter pint of cold tea, sherry or brandy for 3 days, stir daily.
Add 4oz chopped raisins, 4oz glace cherries, rinsed of gloop, dried and halved, 6oz butter ( softened by beating well), 6oz muscovado sugar, grated rind of one lemon and one orange, 4oz plain flour, 2oz self raising flour, 2oz blanched chopped almonds,1tsp mixed spice.
Stir everything together.
In a jug beat 3 eggs and 1 tbsp black treacle.
Add this to the mix and stir everything until well mixed.

Turn into a greased and double lined 8 inch cake tin. Level top.
Bake in centre of oven at Gas 1, 275F or 120C Fan oven for about 3 and a quarter hours.
Store up to 3 months in a cake tin. ( The cake can be "fed" while in store by making small holes in it and dripping some teaspoons full of brandy into them). Cover the tops of the large cakes with a bit of foil if the start to look a bit too brown

This year because I'm doing some hampers for family I made triple the recipe and it made this lot.

1 Large, 1 medium and 3 mini cakes. This is before they went into the oven.

Some frugal tips for making lots of cakes.
The cheapest fruit is value sultanas so I used more of these and just a few raisins. Always sort through value sultanas for bits of stalk. I soaked the fruit in cold tea, the juice of the oranges and with just 1 tablespoon of brandy. I used less flaked almonds and an extra couple of ounces of flour instead. I bought the cherries and peel very cheaply off AF a couple of months ago.

To make things easier I use parchment strips and circles when lining the tins available from Lakeland as are the mini tins which I bought many years ago when I used to bake for the Country Markets.
The medium cake took 2 and a half hours and the small ones started on the bottom shelf of the oven and took just over an hour and a quarter. ( It would have been less on the middle shelf).
The small cakes will just fit in the two little tins that I found at a car boot sale earlier this year.

The medium one will fit into a tin I picked up at a charity shop - also Christmas themed. I hope the family members who get these for Christmas will enjoy them! In fact I'm loathe to give the tins away as they are so nice!

It seems never a day goes by without doing something with apples. Today I sorted through a whole lot of windfall cooking apples that had been in buckets and a trug out in the shed. With the temperature forecast to drop tomorrow, I've brought them indoors, some will be taken to a friend when we go to visit next week and the others will be given to another friend on Wednesday when she comes around for eggs. There is a limit to how many windfall cooking apples two people can eat before they go rotten!

Day 18 of the 30 Ways to save £1 was
18. Borrow recipe books from the library before buying them and see how many recipes you will actually use. This is a timely hint at this time of year when cookery books are one of the big sellers. How many will be sold on at a car boot sale next year? In my opinion Celebrity Cookery books must be one of the easiest ways to waste £25! .

30 Ways to Save £1 ---Day 16 + Yet more apple news

Number 16 of the 30 Ways to Save £1 was
16. Poundland and 99p shops are sometimes very good value but not always, so know the prices of the things you buy- keep a little price book in your bag.
Supermarket prices seem to go up and down but mainly up - that's what I've found by keeping a price book! It is handy in Poundland because we don't go there very often and they seem to have different things in stock each time.So I'm able to have a quick look in the book to check £1 is less than I last paid somewhere else.

Apples from the mystery tree have been picked and I think Gill at Frugal In Derbyshire might be right. She suggested Jonagold and while I thought they were a duel purpose tree now I've had another look at the Jonagold page they do seem to almost fit the description. We should have picked them a few weeks ago before the birds started pecking them but as we are not short of apples this year it's not a problem. It seems odd that we've not really thought about what they were before but I think it's because the tree has never given us so many apples before.

 We have lots of Blackbirds back in the garden after not seeing many during the summer. I only found out a few years ago that our winter blackbirds arrive here from further north each year. This morning, when I walked round the corner of the house to take the eggs out to the stall, 6  flew off from the pyracantha. It's still covered in berries but they will soon be gone. At least they will have plenty of windfalls to peck at under the trees this winter. I hope we will see Fieldfares back soon too.

Before picking apples this morning I made a big batch of Pumpkin and Onion soup to put in the freezer. We had a couple of pumpkins that didn't ripen in time for selling prior to Halloween and we know from previous years that no - one wants a pumpkin in November.

Him Outside delivered two more of the big IBC containers. 3 sold and 3 left to sell. We put an ad in the Suffolk Smallholders Newsletter, but no phone calls from that ad, so he chained one to the fence by the front gate with a For Sale sign on and that seems to be working.
His cheque for work yesterday just about covered the National Insurance bill that came in the post this morning. Also in the post was the bill for the tractor repairs. A Rather Large bill that will have to come out of savings. Hopefully the tractor is now sorted for a while as the darn thing has cost us over £1000 this year. But we would be struggling here without it.

 And finally, this is a library book that I finished yesterday. It's fiction based on fact and tells the story of Mary Anning who was the woman who found all the fossils in Lyme Regis. I enjoyed it. It was published in 2009 so I expect I may be late with the info on the book and everyone has read it already.

 That's it for now, Rugby and Strictly to watch
Back Tomorrow

30 Ways to Save £1 -- Day 15 + More about apples

Is it just me? After seeing the trails and remembering the books that I read to our youngest many years ago, I want to watch Katie Morag on CBBC! Am I too old?


DAY 15 of the 30 ways to save £1 was
15.If you have an answerphone set it to the longest number of rings so that you can get there in time to answer and don't have to ring them back.
We have an answer phone so that people wanting to book onto the campsite can leave a message when we are out. We often find that people are very impatient nowadays, if they ring and leave a message  wanting a pitch, by the time we've got home and rung them back they will have found somewhere else! Another reason to stay at home as much as possible in the summer.
This winter we decided to put the answer phone away and just use our old normal one as the answer phone needs electric to run it. I reckon this should save us at least 50p!! :-)


I've done loads of catching up work indoors today, and as it was lovely sunny day another load of washing dried outside then floors washed, carpets hoovered, veggie curry prepared, freezer contents  listed. Halo polished! and  then also decided to bake a couple more loaves of bread as I want to turn some into breadcrumbs to store in the freezer ready for bread sauce or for drying.

Him Outside was away early again to work for the same customer as Wednesday, he was back with a cheque at lunchtime. After lunch he has been turning off and draining water from various places outside before next weeks snow that is forecast. Perhaps the Express were right when they said weeks ago that we were in for a long very cold winter starting in November.

From one kitchen window I've been keeping an eye on this apple tree. Here we are in mid November and lots are still hanging on despite that windy weather three weeks ago

It's in a sheltered spot between the conifer hedge and the Bramley and there have been some windfalls which I've picked up. They are extremely sharp so must be a variety that ripens in storage.

I've compared them to everyone of the 144 varieties described in this beautiful book

  (I originally bought this cheap from The Works - it has damaged pages at the front- to sell when we used to take books to Country Fairs and The Suffolk Smallholders Show, but then couldn't bear to part with it) but it doesn't really match any of the descriptions. It's a tree we planted and is about 15 years old, I've always thought it was a duel purpose tree but now I'm not so sure.
Like all of our other trees it has never ever had such a good crop.
I'm planning to pick all the rest off tomorrow and store them.


And a PS -Thank you to Gill and Karen for comments yesterday.

Back tomorrow.

30 Ways to save £1 ---Day 6 + More food squirrelling

Very grey and drizzly here today - nasty.

More food preservation today . Thanks to everyone for all the comments about storage of squash, they have been brought in from the hay shed and are now in trays in the spare room. The few green and under ripe tomatoes that were left in the polytunnels are now in the dining room. Last year, due to the weather, we had a lot of green ones indoors at the end of the season. They ripened slowly and lasted almost until Christmas.

The apples from the second to last late tree have been wrapped and stored in a box, we really think we have enough eating apples as these are the ones we are slowly eating our way through at the moment, before we even get to the wrapped ones

and there are still some hanging on the last tree.

I decided to put 3 more squash out for sale and 3 red cabbage and they sold very quickly. I just need to decide how many cabbage to keep for us out of the remainder. One is a monster!

It really has been the most fantastic and wonderful year for home grown food.
Today from the garden and poly tunnel we had lettuce/salad leaves, radishes, beetroot ,tomatoes, onions, red pepper, eggs, apples, white cabbage, potatoes plus pears from the freezer.
Not forgetting the homemade cake, bread and jam!

This afternoon Him Outside went off to collect the tractor from the agricultural engineers -AGAIN. This is the second time this year it has been brought home from there and the third time its been repaired. So another big bill is undoubtedly on the way before Christmas. 

And Finally another one from the April list of 30 Ways to save £1

DAY 6 - Have a look around local industrial estates and see who chucks what.
This is where we find pallets for burning and for lifting hay off the floor in the hay shed. Water butts for storage and the big IBC containers to store huge amounts of rainfall and to sell.
I would love to fish in the rubbish skip at one company because that's where all the Tala kitchen ware is imported - might be some treasures there. But they have security so I wouldn't dare!

Back tomorrow

30 ways to save £1----DAY 1 + Library Day

NO!
No sun- no moon

No morn- no noon

No dawn- no dusk-no proper time of day

No sky- no earthly view

No distance looking blue

No warmth, no cheerfulness,no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member

No shade, no shine,no butterflies,no bees

No fruits,no flowers,no leaves,no birds,-

NOVEMBER

From A poem by Thomas Hood published in 1884. I Think he was an early sufferer of SAD! 

Way back in April lots of people were doing 30 ways to save £1( mine are here) and sending it to Moneysupermarket.com to earn £30. So as there are 30 days in November I thought I would have a closer look at my 30 ways.

Before the number 1 of the 30 days, I must say hello to two new followers, Debbie at SimpleSligo and A frugal Mrs. Both are new to blogging so a special welcome to blogland.


30 ways to save £1
1. ASK TO PICK UP ANY WINDFALL APPLES THAT YOU NOTICE
They can say two things, either " Yes" or "No". 
Last year when we had a apple-less year due to the rotten weather, we asked for and were able to pick up windfalls from 2 different peoples trees. Without this we would have had hardly any fruit in the freezer for winter pies and crumbles. So asking saved us probably £20 - £30+.

For many years we fed windfalls to our goats, goats LOVE apples, but this year even though I've picked up loads for us to use and freeze there are still lots on the ground for the birds in the winter.
No one has ever asked if they could pick up windfalls here. I would say yes- help yourself!

Library day - hip hip hooray!

Here is my regular picture of my library books collected from the library van

 Not many favourite authors here  today but I should be OK for enough reading for the month.

Loving this blogging thing!

I've only been blogging since April but I'm really enjoying the contact with people all over the country and around the world. Take yesterday for instance, we knew what effect the storm had here and there were pictures on TV but it was even more interesting to hear from blog friends. So thank you to Pam, Buttercup and Dc, who are  in the Eastern half of England, Kris in the US, Vicki who is just down the road, Bridget in Dorset, Pam in Norway, Alison on the south coast, Em on Dartmoor, Kev in Malvern and also Attila who is somewhere in the UK, but I'm not sure where! Everyone had survived the storms without too many problems but it sounds as if many places had a lot more rain than we did - as usual. We are always one of the driest parts of the country.

Our chickens have been moved from the fixed shed to their new accommodation (the old campsite toilet block) right up the top of the field. We are wondering if they are the only chickens with vinyl flooring! We moved them yesterday afternoon and left them shut into their new shed until after they had laid their eggs this morning. This is what we always do when we move hens so that when it gets dark tonight they will know where they have to go to find their perches. It will be good for them to have grass again as they had turned their old chicken run into a mud bath.

Despite having 5 acres of land our apple trees are all squashed together, the trouble is when we planted them we thought they looked far enough apart but of course they grew! Anyway, it's turned out  as an advantage this year because the very, very, late apple tree is so sheltered that even after all the wind they are still hanging on.

  They are a duel use variety, sharp cooking apples early then eating apples if left long enough.( No idea of their name)  I think we will pick them soon and wrap them in newspaper to store in a box so we can leave them out in the shed as I've already got several trays of apples indoors.

I hope there is a bit more passing traffic tomorrow. It's half term here so quieter than usual and we have lots of eggs unsold. Even with the stormy weather and trees down we sold out as usual yesterday. Snow is the worst thing as lots of our egg buyers are elderly and they all stay at home.

That's it for today
Back tomorrow