It was dark at 9pm last night. Ridiculous. Where has the summer gone?
I'm starting to freeze and dehydrate a few bits out of the garden now to enjoy the harvest for a bit longer. I've rediscovered tzatziki after circumstance dictated I find a home for six huge cucumbers, some from the neighbours and some from a kind farmer on Martin's delivery. I used my own home grown garlic and dried mint, which I was quite chuffed about, and that made a few nice lunches.
The farmer also gave us 18 courgettes which, while it sounds lovely, simply transferred the problem of courgette gluts onto someone else. Unsurprisingly, after ploughing through that lot I'm not so keen on courgettes any more and unlike her I couldn't give any away. We're also producing pounds of tomatoes but the aforementioned farmer has also supplied us with loads as well, so I am currently part way through loading a full five layer stack on the dehydrator to preserve a few.
I realised last night that we only have about two weeks before it is Autumn, and I'm just about keeping up with my chores to get ready for winter. The biggest one is getting the new boiler fitted and that is bang on schedule. It's due to happen on 3/4th September, and we're just preparing the site now. We're moving from an indoor to an outdoor boiler, as there is no possible way we can fit a new oil boiler indoors that will abide by current regulations. I ordered the new boiler at the end of last month for delivery in time for the heating engineer's inspection last week. I chose to research and buy a system myself, as I know he marks up any products he buys. In this case, that would have been several hundred pounds on top of the usual trade discount I'm sure he gets.
Then an electrician came in yesterday morning to move some electrics out from where the boiler will sit, which the former owner had put in for outdoor lighting. It used to be a seating area that we kept our gardening paraphernalia on as we didn't like sitting there. Now all we need to do is buy and lay two large concrete paving slabs on a dry sand/cement mix and our part in this will be complete.
In the end I did buy 500 litres of heating oil, which is galling as last year the sum I just paid covered the majority of a 1000 litre order. I'll wait to see if the prices come down in the autumn; they can't keep on rising - sooner or later they'll come down. I've ordered 10 bags of solid fuel and rang our local wood supplier, who owns an ash forest, to ask for a delivery of two cubic metres of wood. Next year we're hoping to build up enough wood that we don't need to buy any in, as a poorly apple tree in the back of the paddock has to come down and I want to get that cut up and under cover to dry out and season properly.
Two things I won't be doing this year is having someone in to sweep the chimney or empty the septic tank, which together usually cost me about £170. We have our own rods now to do the chimney and with so much heat this year the septic tank will be lower than normal so can keep going for a bit longer. I might get some beneficial bacteria to empty down there and keep things ticking over, and then inspect over the winter.
So that's the big stuff being sorted. Just got to write a list of all of the little stuff.
No comments