Steel Kitten: gardening

Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts

 



I wanted to finish off the jumper I started knitting last year after mum died and was searching for something to have on in the background that I could peer over my needles at. I find period dramas are great for that kind of thing. Modern programming has too much going on to wring as many dopamine hits out of the audience as possible but period drama series move nice and slowly through the story at just the right pace to match the needles. I decided to watch Downton Abbey. 


Everyone went nuts when this came out in 2010, so much so I avoided it completely. It was like mass hysteria, which I hate, so I resolved to not be drawn in but watch it one day when I felt ready. That day was last Tuesday evening eleven years later. I'm quite enjoying it and am on season 4 now but finding the whole drama with the Bates' getting a little irritating. I feel like it is really being strung out and from what I understand it continues right into series 6. There are other characters it would be nice to see more time devoted to. 


I’m not particularly happy with the fit of the jumper to be honest. The gauge swatch is spot on, and when tested my knitted piece matches the gauge but the jumper will be fractionally too small. Obviously I won’t know for sure until I wash and block the final piece but this yarn seems to have very little positive ease. I deliberately knitted the next size up so I could have some room and feel comfortable but realistically I’m unlikely to wear it if it going to be snug, especially around my middle. I cannot stand the feeling of being restricted. Still, as the wool only cost me £1.50 I'm not that much out of pocket and it's good practice for doing the pattern again with a different wool.


-oOo-


I had brother in law Staying over on Friday night, as he and Martin were going to Silverstone all weekend and it was easier to go from here then his own house early in the morning. That gave me the perfect opportunity to give the bathroom a deep clean so it was visitor ready. Being in lockdown I had let my standards slip a bit, after all, who was going to see it, but I hadn’t appreciated the psychological impact that has on me. I like seeing something tidy and clean. Starting with a bucket of hot slightly soapy water I cleaned the walls, the panelling, the door and the tiles. I descaled the taps, plug holes, shower head and toilet. I cleaned the window, windowsill (inside and out) and mirror. The cat litter trays were sanitised. The floor was scrubbed, as was the sanitary ware. It was very satisfying, and made me realise I actually don't need to repaint the paintwork, just attack it with elbow grease. It took me two hours but should take me a lot less in the future as I intend to stay on top of it. I’m setting my sights on deep cleaning one major room each weekend, with ad hoc sessions on smaller areas. 




Part of the problem with cleaning this place is clutter. Each week I’ve been sorting a box to go to the charity shop and dropping it off on the way food shopping, and trying not to replace the items with new purchases. I did buy this wine rack though, as I needed one for the pantry. We have a lot of bottles left over from Martin’s birthday party and guests also brought some as gifts. We're not big wine drinkers so we have about one bottle a month, if that. They’re currently stashed haphazardly in the pantry and every now and then I kick one one over. Luckily never broken but it's an accident waiting to happen. 


-oOo-





I'm back on the diet again as of today. Plenty of salads and vegetarian food to see if I can shed another 10lbs before the autumn.  I've managed to keep off the last 10lbs I lost so I'm quite chuffed. The salad greens are massively prolific at the moment, the tomatoes are just starting to turn red, the mange tout and green beans are coming into their own and the cucumbers are getting to a nice size so I shall have some big fresh salads in the coming weeks.


-oOo-


Had another shooting lesson on Saturday. Managed to hit 14/17 and got all excited but then the instructor tested me to see if I was any good at tracking clays above me and I managed 0/8 😂 Brought down to earth there but in his opinion I was doing incredibly well for only my second lesson. However, this time I am covered in bruises just in the crease of my arm, above my armpit, where the edge of the gun butt pushes in. I also have a big black one on my jawline, so I obviously wasn't holding the gun as firmly as I should have been to prevent it bouncing up after firing. I'm having to wear make-up to cover it up in case someone thinks Martin and I have been fighting. I'm going to make myself up a pad for my arm/shoulder and face this week to help prevent the bruising.


-oOo-




I managed to squeeze in a trip to the garden centre yesterday, which was next door to the blood donation centre. It was time for my quarterly outing to give blood and I like to have a putter beforehand. I photographed this wonderful stag that I would love to have in the garden, but I'm afraid £800 is out of my price range. 😵

To prepare for giving blood, I started taking time-release iron supplements last week and will take them for another couple of weeks to make up for the worst of the iron loss. Each donation amounts to a loss of about 200-250mg of iron, which is made up at a rate of 1-2mg per day afterwards. Supplementation can help that process go faster. I've been investigating becoming a plasma donor recently, donating every two weeks instead of 12 for whole blood, but have been declined. I do not weight enough apparently. At 5ft 3 I need to weigh more than 13 stone (182lbs) to have enough blood volume to take a pint (560ml) of plasma. Not sure why they can't take smaller quantities from women, perhaps a third to half a pint. I suspect they would see their donation levels rise considerably but perhaps the whole process is an expensive one and they need to maximise every donation.  

-oOo-




So, this week is set to be a quiet one. Work is much less busy, as my clients are on holiday, and my evenings will be full of Downton Abbey, knitting, and garden pottering as I make up my iron levels. I'm going to take a leaf out of Georgie's book and nap a bit at lunchtimes. He's an expert napper, especially on my knitting bag.

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I was pleased to see the back of last week. It was very stressful for me but I'm hopeful I have resolved the problem, which my current reading list should hint at its identity. 


I start my working week on Tuesday but lately my brain has convinced itself it should start Monday evening at 11pm. It rolls around all the work issues I could face the following day until I fall into a fitful dozing session around 3am only for me to jolt awake 15 minutes before I am due at my desk at 8am. I reached screaming pitch last Tuesday morning. After having a week off I looked just as tired on my return as on my leaving. The problem - in a nutshell - is my own inability to say 'bugger off' when yet another impromptu zoom meeting/call/instant message rolls in from my colleagues. The constant interruptions and lingering meetings mean I am behind on my work. That is what is keeping me awake worrying.


I spent the whole week being ruthless with my time, blocking off my calendar, refusing meetings, not answering the phone, blocking everyone on video-conferencing software and cracking through everything I had been behind on. My entire calendar is now blocked off in chunks over the next few weeks to accomplish a list of goals to get my backlog of work completed. Anything else is secondary. I sellotaped this phrase to my screen as a reminder to use it: “I’m sorry I’m completely scheduled this week with no free time, perhaps we can put something in the diary for next week or the week after?” Funnily enough, it sorted out a lot of people who just wanted me to do their work/ thinking for them on the spot. The rest had to be dealt with by blocking on video conferencing software so they couldn’t get through to me. I set my profile to Do Not Disturb and now no-one gets through unless on a safe list, and only my manager and the CEO are on it.


The second step was resigning from a social committee at work. I was flattered to be asked a year ago to represent my department. In  all honesty I knew it wasn't a good fit for me but decided to give it a go. I hated it. The emails were never-ending, the zoom meetings impromptu and stretched out by extroverts who loved nothing better than to wile away the time yakking - meanwhile my workload was piling up behind me and I was behind on my promises. The final straw was volunteering me to represent an additional 'hobby' club at work. Enough was enough. I felt like a massive weight had been lifted the second I pressed 'Send' on my resignation message. They weren't that happy but I don't care any more. I can't do hobby stuff in deference to my revenue-generating work.

-oOo-



Despite the heat this weekend I decided to get out and go to a car boot sale on Sunday, the first one for quite a few years. I have got out of the habit of doing them, not sure why, Probably because I got fed up with bringing a load of stuff in and not having a place to put it. We really got back into the gardening again lately so I was on the lookout for anything gardening related. 



Didn’t find much in that respect, however, I did find a brand new leather belt for Martin (£1.00), six new handkerchiefs (50p) to replace some that are fit for the rag bag, two Oxford pillowcases (£1.50), a Stephen Fry book (50p), a piece of Laura Ashley fabric (£2.00, about 2m) and two dresses (£3 and £2). Total spend £10.50 plus sunburn. I got that for free.


-oOo-


Thursday was our 15th wedding anniversary and we went out  to the local Nepalese curry house to celebrate (coincidentally, it was also five years since we completed on the property). It’s the first time I’ve been out for a meal in 15 months and it was absolutely wonderful. But there were signs all around of the fallout from COVID-19. The food is very good and the restaurant used to be packed with tables crammed in cheek by jowl. Now of course with social distancing the tables had to be a prescribed distance apart and there weren’t that many people eating. In the old days  the place would be full, despite being a Thursday night. This time there were only six tables out of a possible 15 and by the time we left at 8:30pm just three tables remained. Another post-COVID change was with portion sizes. We normally have a Tandoori mixed grill, which comes out on a sizzle platter and is absolutely piled with meat. This time the meat was all neatly arranged on the platter with no piling - as sign of economies to avoid having to put the prices up on the menu (and probably incur more expense having them reprinted). There was enough food though, but I guess we'd used to taking some home in containers and having it the next day.

                                                                            -oOo-



I've been trying to propagate as many of our existing plants as possible in an effort to reduce our garden spending. Over the years the driveway has been a good source of thyme, oregano, poppies, foxgloves, gooseberries, strawberries, alchemilla, wallflowers, fleabane, lavender, bluebells, nigella, aquilegia, tomatoes, spinach, and buddleia. Every now and then I have a wander round, dig them up and pot them on. I find the occasional self-seeded sweet pea but that does not like being transplanted so it has to take its chances against the cars. 


It's very helpful on months like this one, which is shaping up to be a pretty expensive month. We’ve managed to have the house insurance, classic car insurance, an oil delivery and payment for having a Wills updated all come in the same month. I did start the Will process quite a long time ago but what with work being busy and the solicitor going off on holiday, we’ve only just now managed to go in last week and sign them so that’s one worry off my mind. 


I've had a few nice little frugal wins though (although not quite on the scale to balance the outgoings). 


The boss stumped up £20 per person to cover snacks and drinks for Euro finals night so we had pizza delivered. 


The regular savers matured so that was £100 in interest. 


Then I realised that the healthcare plan I have at work has a dental and optical component to it that I hadn't used so I quickly ruffled out my receipts for my sight tests, glasses and dental check-ups since February and put the claims through. That should pay me back about £120. My firm 'gives' us about £250 to ‘spend’ within the health plan, and you can shape different components to suit your circumstances. If it costs more than £250, you can pay extra out of your salary. I have a basic health plan, which reimburses me £60 for sight tests and £60 for dental check-ups and hygienist fees, as well private consultancies, hospital treatment if necessary for any illnesses, and complementary heaIthcare (physio, acupuncture, etc). In addition I've chosen critical illness cover to pay out a lump sum of £50,000 if I become seriously ill. That costs me £5 a month. Absolute bargain. 

                                                                            -oOo-

So, all in all, a quiet but productive week. I successfully cracked through a load of work and accomplished all but one of my goals. Tonight will tell...will I sleep or not...?

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It’s the end of a long and tiring week for me. I consider Mondays my ‘end of week’ now rather than Sunday and thank goodness I have it free today. 

Last week I covered someone at work while she was on holiday as well as doing my own job. Thursday and Friday I was visiting a client in Durham so had to work on trains and in a hotel room, although I managed to squeeze a trip to Durham cathedral in so I could light a candle in memory of my mother. 



The next day, Saturday, I drove to Thame to scatter her ashes with my father and sister on her birthday (and discovered the most beautiful damask rose bush to pop her under). Sunday I went with Martin to look after his stall at a model aircraft swap meet. 


I’m shattered frankly. I’ve been awake before 6am every morning, and when I’ve eventually got to sleep I’ve tossed and turned and not stayed asleep. My sleep pattern is dreadful at the moment because I am stressed.


But thank goodness for Mondays. I had a nice lie in this morning until 8am and now I have lots of energy to get done the things I want to accomplish. I've changed MIL's bed and washed the sheets, then cooked up a batch of egg shells to grind up in the chicken feed for extra calcium. 


Shortly, I'll be tackling a job that's been annoying me - I am drowning in blankets, throws, duvets, fleeces, patchwork quilts, bedspreads, eiderdowns and curtains. There are piles in every room. I’ve taken in a lot from Martin’s aunt’s house and some of my mother’s items and now I’m inundated. I need to sort out the ones to be washed, get those done and then fold up the rest and get them away in the airing cupboard. That is in a dreadful state as well so I have to sort that out before anything can go in. I’ll hopefully end up releasing more stuff for the charity shop and making some room. 


Later on this afternoon I am potting up a load of tomato plants and cucumbers for the greenhouse. Martin found a greenhouse for £50. Bless him, he spent all week clearing the space for it, painting the wall and putting it up. It’s a bit rough and ready but as long as it protects the plants and keeps them a bit warm it doesn’t matter. 



Because I feel more rested with three days off I'm now spending the time doing more cooking, rather than throwing quick meals at people. Dinner tonight is a nice pork joint, but previous weeks I've done lamb shanks and a vegetable lasagne. 





After that I'm doing some studying for my herbal course and reading some of my new books. Last week I decided to add some vintage books on frugality/simple living to my collection. Every now and then I get a £25 voucher from work for something I’ve done well so that's been burning a hole in my pocket for a few weeks.




I was particularly pleased to find good copies of books by enthusiastic and penny-pinching cook Shirley Goode written in the 80's. Although she is no longer with us, she left behind a great legacy  - she had a blog where she talked about all sorts of ways to reduce household spending on food (among other topics). I've read it all before but will be going back through again. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. I also have The Farmhouse Kitchen Cookbook after finding a couple of vintage episodes of The Farmhouse Kitchen on YouTube. It only dawned on me recently that the woman who hosted it was Scottish and not from Yorkshire at all. 

I’ve also discovered a wonderful YouTube channel, courtesy of Rhonda over at Down to Earth, featuring a lovely Turkish couple cooking outdoors in all weathers. There’s no talk, it’s just the sights and sounds of their activities, which is amazingly soothing and fascinating. Her chopping blade is something else! 


So tonight I will round off my day and relax watching an episode.


I used to dread Mondays. Now I look forward to them 😊


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Last Tuesday I made myself a fresh coffee, settled into my work chair, grabbed my planner and began my usual routine of daily organisation. There was a 'ping' from my phone and a calendar reminder came up - 'Hedges by 1st March'. My schedule for the week suddenly went out the window. 


I had completely forgotten that our boundary hedges had to be cut before the cut-off date of 1st March so we don't disrupt the nesting activity of the birds. It's in our deeds to do the hedges so the farmer can get his combine harvester into the field to cut the crops in the autumn. A hasty Zoom call to my boss and I managed to secure Wednesday and Thursday off work to try and get the bulk of the cutting done. 


Luckily I didn't have to do as much as I feared. We had cut back some overgrown laurel bushes at the front of the property in October so people could walk on the grass strip and not in the road. Also one side of the smallholding has very little hedge and more trees so that rarely needs anything, just big branches once in a while if they look like they'll catch the combine's cab as it passes. The area I needed to cover was actually only on two sides of the smallholding. All told, I had approx 160m horizontal cutting on the outside and 55m on the inside, and 80 metres of vertical cutting to take down the height. That's a lot of cutting. 


Wednesday was horrendous - high winds and 35mph gusts don't work well against with hedge trimmers and chainsaws but I managed to get some done. Cracked on again the next day and by 4pm I had manage to get about 80% of what I needed to do. I finally completed the task on Sunday in just a strappy top as it was so hot in the afternoon! All told, it took me approximately 14 hours.


I had a few dramas along the way. I have a small electric chainsaw, nice and light for a small person like me, but occasionally the chain jumps off so I have to put it back on. 



Luckily it's simple to do. 


So, over the next few weeks I'll finalise the hedge trimming all over the property, save the big stuff for the fire and the non-thorny stuff for kindling, then the rest goes on the growing pile in the paddock for a nice man with an industrial chipper to come late April to reduce it to a lovely pile of wood chip to rot down. 


The cats have loved the sunny weather this weekend. Prior to that the high wind meant they spent a lot of time indoors next to me. Baldrick wants to burrow and prefers to sleep like a toddler under a blanket...


...Missy just wants to snuggle...


And Georgie? He's just being an old cat with dementia, an overactive thyroid and arthritis. We keep him warm, medicated, and well fed and try not to get annoyed when he goes for a head rub and then bites us.

*****

I alluded to some big news in my previous post and now I have my hedging whinge out the way I shall tell you.


Martin will be retiring this year. 


Two major things have happened which has accelerated our plans for his retirement two years ahead of schedule.


1) We've found out that Martin can take some of his pension now. I hadn't appreciated that with every change of pension scheme Royal Mail made they dedicated the old fund to specific retirement milestones that can be taken without affecting the other bits. So the Final Salary scheme that closed in 2008 make up his Age 60 benefits while the Defined Contribution pension that ran from 2009 to 2018 make up his age 60 benefits. The current Defined Contribution pension accumulates and is used to pay out his 25% lump sum if he wants it (and we do). My widow's pension if he dies is the same whether we take the lump sum or not so I want to take it now and stash the cash because with COVID who knows what the future holds. So, there's a lump sum payment plus pension income to come from March. 


2) One of Martin's aunts has died, leaving a small legacy to him. It amounts to replacement salary and what we would be putting away into pensions over the next two years so Martin could retire at 62. 


We rolled around the house in a bit of a daze for a week, before sitting down and coming up with a plan of attack for the next few months. Then we found out that Royal Mail is running another round of early voluntary redundancies in his offer this spring, and if he is able to he will be applying. He has 27 years with Royal Mail and is the exact age that Royal Mail likes to try and 'ease' out 'lifers' of the business in favour of hiring younger, cheaper staff on poor employment contracts. Cue more wandering around in a daze.


I hope he gets it. The thought he could be retired and sitting on the patio by the summer makes me feel so happy for him. 


In the meantime, I'm number crunching and budgeting. All the money will be tucked away securely, and there will be very little spare money from our new income for any luxuries because I intend to go hell for leather pumping up my pensions and savings to get me ready to retire. I want to stop work sometime between 55-58 years old, at whatever point I can get the numbers to work out, so Martin and I can go and do some travelling while he is still young enough. 


Scary and exhilarating times ahead!

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So, I'm getting close to fever pitch at the moment.

I always thought I'd thrive if I was put into a situation where I couldn't go anywhere, as long as I had my books. Well I have my books - and much more besides - and I'm not ok. I didn't realise how much I needed useful revenue-generating work.

Since being furloughed I've worked hard to keep active, even going so far as to put together a schedule for myself, but the uncertainty surrounding whether I will have a paying job or not at the end of all of this is weighing me down. I'm sleeping badly so every 2-3 days I resort to taking a pill just to get some rest and allow my body to repair itself, although it usually means I'm a bit too sleepy the next day to do anything worthwhile. I'm having to carefully plan any big jobs to coincide with the point where I am rested and awake.

There's another aspect to furlough that people don't really talk about, and that's the rejection and loss of self-esteem. You think you are a necessary part of the team until furloughed, and then you realise that you have been classed 'a non-essential worker'. It feels like a slap in the face. In fact, I feel exactly as I did when I was made redundant in 2013: unnecessary. I'm not someone who deals well with being considered unnecessary. What makes it a bit worse is I know that my firm is ok money-wise, with plenty of reserves on the bank, so this was just to grab some free money. Three people have handed in their notice since and two have already gone. I wonder if the management will ever grasp the damage they have done.

Anyway, that's how my week has been. Don't get me wrong, I've been keeping my mouth firmly shut and ploughing on ahead with things round here. Being furloughed on full pay is a gift. It's just that bloody word (and its synonyms) going round and round my head: unnecessary (unneeded, pointless...).

Right, moan over. Shut yer face, Sarah.

So, we're cleaning up the 'building site' at the back of the barns.


We've not been successful trying to get rid of the 3,000+ bricks to anyone so we've been skipping them. I decided to bite the bullet and just turf them out. We've been here four years in July and enough is enough. Once clear, I'll be siting a greenhouse down there, as it is a wonderful warm spot next to a wall that gets the sunshine most of the day and I can grow lots more tomatoes for pasta sauces.

Talking of tomatoes, I ordered some tomato plants from a local nursery that was doing a lockdown special delivery service for people in my postcode so I managed to get eight + growbags: six for the mini greenhouse and two for hanging pots.






The hanging pot I got from a charity shop for £2, along with a couple of retractable pulleys (also £2) for easy watering.


I was delighted to find someone had stuffed two brand new hanging pouches in the growbag box when I opened it up so I shall be finding some plug plants to go in those this year.


I decided to plant up some heavily sprouted Tyson potatoes, left over from our last sack, in the pig pen, as it has lovely friable fertilised soil thanks to the efforts of our last two pigs.







I've also planted another pear tree and blackcurrant bush that I bought way back last summer and gave my blueberry a good water and feed. I was annoyed to find my two cranberries didn't make it through the winter. They were completely dead with rotted roots so I've yanked those out.

Finally, I have a few self-seeded gooseberry bushes, a tayberry and a loganberry still to plant up, but not today. Today it has been raining and it was really needed. Loving the sunshine and all, but it felt weird to be watering dry pots every day in mid-April 😁




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Completely out of the blue.

Along with 22 other colleagues, we have been put on two months furlough. The government is offering to reimburse 80% of our salary's under its new job retention scheme and luckily our firm has agreed to make up the other 20% so I'm on full salary. Trouble is, will I have a job to go back to at the end of May? Currently, two people have split my job between them, and the worry is if they soldier on doing my job and theirs in the 'spirit of the Blitz' the firm may decide to make it permanent.

While two months paid leave sounds nice, it is in fact not when you wake up every day wondering if you will have a job in the summer, should you be job hunting and what if you find something? I have nearly six years with this firm - it could mean starting again, no job security until two years after starting, six months probation, interruption of pension, maybe having to work in an office again.

Right, so the negative stuff out the way. Now for the positive.

Maybe it is time for me to move on, get a pay rise, more responsibility, challenge myself, etc, etc. I have got very comfortable working from home, sat on the bed, meandering through my days. Maybe it is time for a change.

So, the plan it to clean up the house and garden thoroughly and get all the outstanding jobs done, while simultaneously updating my CV, improving my skills by actually learning how to use some of this professional software I have on my work computer, and then job hunting. I will make me feel better to take some kind of positive action.


Over the weekend I ripped into the sunken garden, which had got out of hand. The variegated ivy had completely taken over one bed, killed off some shrubs (it was actually choking the little conifer on the left of the picture) and was snaking its way down across the paving, so I ripped it all out and cleaned it up. I was annoyed to find that the ivy had forced its way through the wall, which now has a big crack running down it and a edging piece lifted that will have to be repaired and concreted back. I have a large shrub stump to get out as well. The rosemary is looking bedraggled and very sorry for itself so once the flowering is over and the bees have had their fill, I'll be dragging that out and planting a new one.



In general the sunken garden it looks unkempt and a bit straggly. Around the outside is a semi-circle of lavender, which is quite old and has started getting woody and dying back in places. I had a search through my seeds and found some dwarf lavender, so have decided to rip out all of those big lavenders later this year and replace them with tidy dwarf lavender plants interspersed with a bright orange early spring perennial (if I can find one). I'd like to get some more early flowers for the bees.



Martin has been very busy cutting down a massive conifer that had got so big it was obscuring the light into the kitchen and blocking out view of the garden. That's now just a stump so we'll even that off and add a pot of something bright and trailing.


So, lots to do, as ever, and now I have the time to really crack into it.
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With everything going on, I've been thinking about the best way to use my food supplies to ensure I can stretch it across the longest time possible and still keep our food interesting. My intention is to make our food last out as long as we can to allow others who have greater need to buy food at the shops.

 I can't say how long my food store will last as I never built it up with a 'target' in mind. I just bought extras of what we normally use during a month when they were cheaper, on multi-buy deals, yellow stickered or when I had the extra money to do so. I was routinely putting surplus fruit and veg in the freezer or dehydrating it last year so I have some supplies in that respect. 

So, I had a think last night about some of the things we currently do and how we can adapt those to work better in the current environment and decided I'd share some of my thoughts.

1. Not eating the same things at the same times day in, day out. I'm guilty of this, and to a certain extent so is Martin but as he is a postman, eating out on delivery has to revolve around things that are easy to handle and wrapped as he cannot wash his hands properly. 
I don't have an excuse - I often just have cheese and crackers or a cheese sandwich for lunch because it is quick and I don't want to think about it. However, gluten-free bread is so expensive and currently in short supply so I'm planning on making what bread I do have go much further by rotating my lunches to include a lot of variety. I probably won't worry about baking bread - I've had too many failures trying to make a decent loaf and it uses up a lot of ingredients with every failure. Now is not the time to perfect my skills.

So, for example, lunches for me might look like:

day 1: sandwich
day 2: soup and breadsticks or add some pasta to the soup to bulk it out
day 3: crackers with the normal sandwich filling
day 4: one slice of bread to make half a sandwich (or an open sandwich) and team it with some fruit and a yoghurt
day 5: baked potato and the sandwich filling
day 6: salad and the sandwich filling
day 7: something not traditionally lunch
day 8: use up protein powder as meal replacement shakes
day 9: leftovers from the previous night's dinner
day 10: pancakes

Other things I thought of:

2. Pasta is not just spaghetti or recognisable shapes – it’s also macaroni and broken up lasagne sheets. I was reading about shelves being stripped bare of all pasta apart from those two and was surprised. They are both pasta and can be used. 

3. Consider replacing pasta with a vegetable, such as something spiralised or cut into thin strips using a potato peeler. 

4. Consider eating foods out of the normal sequence – nobody says you can’t have a bowl of porridge for dinner, or cheese on toast for breakfast. In fact, no-one said you have to have breakfast at all. Most days I don't feel like eating until late morning anyway. 

5. Eat less by reducing potion sizes

6. Use less cheese at a time by grating it. 

7. Eat last night's leftovers with some additional carbs or veg

8. Have a bowl of soup before, or a more veg with, a smaller dinner.

9. If I run out of pasta, I have a pasta machine lying dusty somewhere and it is easy to make, just a bit time-consuming. 

10. Drag out the back of the cupboards and see what's there, lying forgotten. I did this yesterday and found a sachet of peanut satay sauce, an out of date mini Dolmio stir through sauce, some shredded coconut, a tin of pilchards, and some lasagne sheets. So tonight's dinner will be satay chicken for Martin and Audrey, pasta for me with the mini Dolmio sauce (peanuts give me gut ache) but in all honesty I'm not sure about the pilchards. I don't even know where they came from! I'll probably try and lose them in a fish pie. I'm the only one in the house that likes coconut so I might try to make some coconut 'milk' to drink and for porridge.

11. Using less meat and padding out main meals with grated veg and/or pulses. We routinely use pulses but have not yet tried veg so I will start doing so. Instead of using a whole tin of pulses we'll use half and add some grated veg.

 12. There will be limits to how many of each product we can have when we eventually do have to buy some food, if any is on the shelves at all, so we have to think outside the box. For example, if I can't get chopped tomatoes then I'll look at passata, fresh toms, sundried toms, plum toms, ketchup, tomato puree, baked beans, tomato soup, etc. Think of all the different ways a particular type of food can be treated and get something different. 

 13. Grow some. Some things are quick to grow. Lettuce leaves, spinach and herbs are quick and simple and can form the basis of a salad. I have beans I can sprout. 

 Anyway, that's all of my thoughts on food for the moment. Hope some of my ideas might be useful for you. 
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Apologies for my slow rate of posting lately. Since I came back from holiday my health has taken a downturn due to having a low white cell count, which would account for my headaches, fatigue and general soreness and aches. I had a short cold about a week after we came back, which I think may have triggered an immune flare. Combined with the new gym workout, busy period at work and psychological stress of starting to drive, I've triggered a storm.

So, progress has been slow and I haven't been able to do a great deal. I decided to focus my attention of repairing/maintaining some of what we already have rather than starting any new projects. I finally cleaned up the Victorian cast iron downpipe near the barns which has been annoying me since we moved in nearly three years ago. The flaky blue and green paint has been replaced with smart black paint and the huge grey rectangular cracked water butt has gone.




I have three nice green butts to take its place that I found secondhand on eBay so I just have to connect those up.



We've started giving the summerhouse a bit of a makeover. I've cleared out the Plague chairs, two old chairs that were infested with insects and who knows what else (hence the name). I left them outside for a couple of days to let the inhabitants relocate before they went onto the pile for the tip. I've painted the unfinished wood supports either side of the structure at the front with some old cream Cuprinol paint. I rescued two full tins from someone who was throwing them out because they'd gone a bit rusty in their damp garage. The contents were perfect and both had £24.99 Homebase stickers on them!


To replace the chairs, we found a two-seater wicker sofa and armchair plus a small pine side table on eBay locally for £95. The rug is a bound carpet cut off I unearthed in the attic (along with the clock), while the lamp came from my father. I remember that lamp in the house when I was growing up so it has to be a good 40 years old.




The sofa throws are actually curtains; I found them for £6 in a charity shop a while back in a William Morris Golden Lily pink and light green colourway I've not come across before. The two patchwork quilts are also secondhand finds, one from a local charity shop and the other from a car boot sale in Australia.

I now work in there during the day to get some peace and quiet from the cats and MIL's phone habit. At the moment we have to run an extension cable reel in there for electricity but there is power to the pond pump about 15 feet away so we'll sort out a more discrete arrangement for power at a later date using that. I still have to add two front pieces to top of the summerhouse so you don't see the joists, do some flower baskets for the outside and add some pictures to the inside.

Finally, I'm trying to get the back lawn to look halfway decent. The previous owners cut the lawn on a high setting and never scarified it so the grass is bent over and soft and springy underfoot, as well as uneven and full of ankle-spraining hills and valleys. Some pieces of the grass are over six inches long but about four inches of that runs along the ground with only the last two inches popping up to be cut.



So, last week I started scarifying and cut it back hard. I've extracted five full wheelbarrows of thatch and moss and I'm only a third done on it. Once complete, I'll mix up some sterilised topsoil and lawn seed and rake that over to even everything out. With any luck, by the autumn we should have a half decent looking lawn that we can cross without twisting an ankle.

I haven't posted lately about my Grow Your Own efforts as that has been dismal so far. Poor germination, dying seedlings, cold, cats, birds, mice, you name it we've had it. I'm too annoyed and tired to post about that! That could be an epic whine so I'll leave that for another day.
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I underwent a lot of quiet reflection during our holiday.

 We've been here for two years and during this time we have not made any major changes to the smallholding. The plans we had before we moved here revolved around making us as self-reliant as possible by growing our own food and producing our own energy. Smallholding, homesteading, pioneering, that has been a strong interest of mine for many years but I was having problems making it a reality here.

 At the point we went on holiday I was drifting, wanting to do more but just not. I've felt a bit like we've been flirting around the edges of smallholding. I keep animals, but only during specific months; I don't keep them year round or breed them. I grow some fruit and veg but not extensively and in any great quantity. I harvest some of the existing fruit from the trees but not in any great quantity. We have wood burners but buy in logs instead of sustainably harvesting from our own property and finding free logs. We have a funky old (probably useless) well and plenty of roof space that yields thousands of litres of rainwater and sunshine every year yet we pay full whack for mains water and electricity. 

 It took until almost the end of the holiday, nearly three weeks away from normality, for the penny to drop. Being interested in something is not being committed to it. For a long time at the old house I was interested but not committed to living well there because I never considered it my home. We bought the old house with the intention to renovate and move on within a couple of years but we got caught by the recession and ended up living there for 11. We decorated it with sale in mind, keeping colours neutral and never quite unleashing our creativity. Everything was done with The Sale in mind. I got used to being interested in how much I could make but not committed to living in the house and I brought that here with me.

There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses - only results.

KEN BLANCHARD
I haven't allowed myself to emotionally attach to this place, I'm still not committed to it. I'm not psychologically invested and this has translated into taking the minimal actions I need to maintain the smallholding, I haven't been putting in the daily effort needed to develop and deepen my commitment. I couldn't see it while knee deep in daily life here, I needed that time away to develop that perspective.

 So, when we got back I took a look around. I actually do love this place. The peace, quiet and space, even though I don't always find it easy to live with my MIL which, if I'm honest, has contributed to me feeling unsettled.

 I pulled out my plan for the smallholding. By now we should have: 

  • a polytunnel in the paddock
  • part of the front lawn laid to veg beds with the aim of achieving sufficiency in 90% of our fruit and veg for 5-6 months of year
  • increased the energy efficiency inside the house to the maximum possible to try and get us to an EPC rating of B of above (currently D)
  • completed some kind of resource generation activity, such as solar panels, a rainwater harvesting system or growing our own biomass to burn to achieve 50% sufficiency in energy. 

So far, all we've done is installed a new efficient boiler outside when the old indoor system became dangerous, and replaced a few halogen bulbs with LED ones when they blew. 

 I realised I couldn't make up for lost time but I could make a start. 

Over the last month I found some cheap collar boxes on ebay and have begun arranging them to create an area of raised beds to the side of the house. The small patio garden will get higher beds and more soil. 
Over the last couple of weeks I have expanded the fruit trees in the paddock with raspberries, black, red and white currants, a gooseberry and a couple of tayberry bushes in front of that. All of these either came with us or were bought last year but never planted up.

The fencing is all temporary so I can make changes if necessary, but at some point over the next 12 months permanent stock fencing and a gate will go in. At the moment the chicken pen forms one side of the section, but I'll be moving that back by a pen length and adding a fenced area for chicken scratching. 

Talking of chickens, we now have three new ladies in the chicken pen, who moved in about two weeks ago at the ripe old age of 22 weeks old. They are part of the commitment plan, as they need daily care and attention. 

Finally, solar panels. I've wanted solar power for many years, but have never been able to take that step. Obviously at the old house my lack of commitment to living there wouldn't allow me to make that jump. It's not just the upfront cost but also because you commit to a) being settled in one place for a long time and b) changing your energy usage behaviour, which includes quite close monitoring of the system. A lack of commitment doesn't go hand in hand with having solar panels. 

 MIL and I are both here during the day, and we tend to run our household electrical devices then. With solar, we could get quite close to the maximum benefit possible by running all our devices when the panels are generating electricity at the peak times during the day. In addition, there are the Feed-In Tariffs (FITs), which pay a householder with solar panels a small amount of money to generate and export their surplus energy to the grid. It's only about 9-10p a kWh but it is a handy little bit of extra money into the household and is index-linked for 20 years. However, this is coming to an end on 31st March.

 I did a few calculations, working out the theoretical return on the money from the panels being drip fed into pensions vs just putting it directly into pensions, and while the panels just nosed ahead they had the added psychological benefit of the satisfaction from producing part of the energy we consume and lowering our bills. How much they lower our bills by is down to us and our consumption habits.

 I took a deep breath, did some ringing round and quote gathering and a few days ago we placed an order for a 6kWp system for the south-facing roof of the barns. We're aiming to reduce our electricity bill by 50% through a combination of using what we generate, changing our consumption habits and the FITs. In addition, we decided to have an iBoost fitted to our immersion heater, which is a diverter system that directs a small amount of surplus electricity to our water tank to heat it instead of the boiler firing up. So we estimate that for six months of the year our boiler probably won't be firing at all, which will help lower our annual oil bill. 

So, the solar panels team is coming next week to put the panels up and by next weekend we will be generating some of own power. It's only a small step, but psychologically it feels like the biggest one to date because of the mindset shift that comes with it.

 This smallholding is my home and I am committed to it. 

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