Wednesday 30 September 2015

Good reads from the library

As I have been resting a lot over the last week with the bad back I have got through the latest library books in record time.

"Deep shelter" by  Oliver Harris was a very interesting concept as it was set in the left over cold war deep shelters underneath London. My husband started to read it and researched the settings on Google earth and you can see the entrance  and ventilation buildings mentioned in the book! You can see one here -

 http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/c/clapham_south/index.html


I suspect we will be looking out for these strange buildings when we next visit London.

After all the Scandinavian thrillers (and TV shows) my other book went further north into Lapland and was a crime novel involving the Reindeer Police. No? Yes, really! The chapter headings traced the daily increase in day length from 40 mins to 4 hours. As the days are growing shorter at the moment it was a strange time to read it. "Fourty days without Shadows".Oliver Trac.

Both these were new writers and were refreshing reads.  I slumped back in bed with 2 other books from a favourite series. CJ Box's Joe Picket novels are about a game warden set in Wyoming. They are very descriptive and also have a lot of social comment about deepest America and the effects of the economic downturn on working people, But as usual with America series some of the plots are a bit far fetched.

Have to go to the dentists on Friday for an emergency filling so will be able to get some more books then for the weekend!



Tuesday 29 September 2015

Monday evening's sunset

Following Sunday's rust coloured moon light we had a magnificent sunset last night. My digi camera does not do justice to the blood red sky!

Monday 28 September 2015

Food budget

I have been looking at our record of spending over the last year to see how growing our own veg has helped out budget.  Leaving aside the costs of gardening in seeds and compost etc.

Up to 2013 with me still working full time and mostly cooking from scratch and having a small suburban veg patch our food bill was an average of £72 per week.
In 2014 with us both retired, and cooking from scratch before we had a veg garden our food bill was £63 per week.
In 2015 over the 3 months when 90% of our fruit and veg has come from the garden (including a poly tunnel)  the food bill average is £52 per week.  At present we have groceries delivered from Sainsbury;s but shop for meat and fish locally, going to those place once a fortnight and buying enough to last. This is probably not the cheapest options but it creates more time for gardening and cooking at home rather than being out shopping all the time!

Talking of budgets, our target of £30 of electricity for the month is getting closer, with a little pruning of this and that we are now on the 27th and are only 5% over budget!  What we can't work out is what we did at the beginning of September to cause the over spend. There may have been a couple of extra washes as we had visitors over the Bank Holiday and we had a couple of roast meals so that may have caused a rise. Will be watching the SMART meter all of October to see what our pattern of use is.

Will be looking at what we spent on gardening lat year and setting a budget for seed buying before those tempting catalogues arrive!

Sunday 27 September 2015

First sign of geese

Had a day out and went to the seaside! We explored Burnham Overy Straithe, a nice creek and harbour. (Free to park).
We then went on to Holkham Beach (£3 to park for 2 hours) and although the tide was coming in its about a 1.5 mile walk across the sands.

While walking back we spotted the first V of geese coming into the bird reserve. That made it really feel like autumn is coming!


Thursday 24 September 2015

Back in the garden

The bed rest worked and I am back on my feet but taking it slowly as it gets sore if I do too much. Thanks to people for their good wishes.  Not sure if it was the break from housework but we have definitely saved on the electric!  My husband has found some new buttons on the SMART meter and set the budget for a month which has dropped from 8% over budget to 7%.. We have 5 days left to see if we can keep to the £30 for the month.

  As part of my sitting around "resting " I have been watching BBC 1's "money for nothing" programme where found objects are transformed by artisans designers.  Some things are great, others I think are a waste of time! Certainly got some ideas for future projects

Weather has been fantastic in the afternoons and the light in the trees has an extraordinary clarity. Runner beans and sweetcorn are nearly finished so it was a nice change to harvest some leeks and cabbage!


Sunday 20 September 2015

Blogging from bed

For the first time in years I am wasting a lovely day - I am staying in bed with my bad back!  In 4 weeks I have had three bouts of back pain lasting 3 or 4 days each time and  yesterday I could scarcely walk. I feel decedent and guilty as my husband is outside digging a new bed for a row of gooseberry bushes. This may be the only cure - complete rest and then some very gentle walking to the veg garden to direct husband to dig up some carrots and leeks. So far requests to help with cooking have been a bit fraught as last night he had to strain sweetcorn, runner beans and rescue the chips and find the left over main dish in the microwave all at the same moment when I finally collapsed and it got a bit much for him to cope with!

On the good side I am neither cooking, vacuuming or washing today and the SMART meter has reduced our electricity overspend for the month to 9%.  If I stay in bed for a bit longer we may be on target for the £30 a month bill.

It is a quite Sunday otherwise, just the potato harvest lorries thundering by as the crop is lifted a few fields away.

Back soon when up and around again.


Thursday 17 September 2015

Bonfires and spinach

We have waited about 8 weeks to have a bonfire. First there was the cereal crop at the end of the field which was finally harvested last week, then we had to wait for the wind to be blowing away from the houses and for the stuff to dry out.  We got all the gear out and in the wheel barrow - fork, rake, matches, fire lighters, bits of dry wood and a chair ( well its a long way down the field and it was going to take all morning!). My husband was adamant that we had to take the pile apart first as he had recently filmed a hedgehog near by. As it was 6 ft by 6 ft pile, 8 ft high that was a hard task spreading it out and shaking the branches loose.

Found nothing and got a good fire going and piled it all steadily back on till 70% was gone. THEN a stupid, smoking slightly, mouse popped our and made a run for it!  Husband found it in some long grass and it seemed all right if terrified. Honestly its not as if we had not given it fair warning!

Took advantage of some cooler mornings to work in the poly tunnel and tidy up some of luxuriant growth,  Pulled up some more of the floor covering and created another 8 ft by 3 ft bed and put in some spinach plants. These should give us some fresh greens up to Xmas. Especially, as I am not a great fan of the Brussel sprout and only 2 plants survived the pigeon attacks.!

Tuesday 15 September 2015

Good exchange for vegetables

Visited son and family at the weekend and took them a car boot full of vegetables! I know they have a wide circle of family and friends locally so they could share the bucket of beetroot and box of runner beans. Four e-supermarket mushroom cartons of tomatoes (about 2 kg each) were raided by my eldest grand daughter who spent the afternoon popping in small sweet baby toms while the younger one sliced cucumber to nibble. No wonder they are growing so tall!  Daughter in law's mother phone mid afternoon and reserved the some tomatoes and the red chill's promising to turn the hispi cabbage into a curry for them all the next day.

Son texted later to check we had got home safely and he had spent the evening making a big saucepan full of leek and potato soup using the 3 leeks and giant onion I had given them.  I am so glad I encouraged all 3 boys to cook - they all pull their weight in cooking for their growing families.

In  exchange my daughter in law had saved a stash of fabric from bin bags being jettisoned by a friend.
I washed them all and got them on the line just as the neighbour lit a bonfire. Rather cross as it took longer to dry them indoors and get them folded and ready to go in the sewing cupboard. 
So excited by the sewing projects I can achieve over the winter!


Monday 14 September 2015

New things to harvest coming

As the season progresses we are looking at some new things in the veg garden. The butternut squash are coming along and I will try one soon.  The chilis are going red and the green peppers are starting to colour in the poly tunnel where we are keeping the doors closed to keep up the temperatures. This will help the tomatoes too.

 I am planning some chili jam and have checked the cupboards for the ingredients - just need to add red wine vinegar to the shopping list this week.

Our other crop ripening is the Inca Berries
Not found many recipes for these besides making jam with some pineapple juice. Apparently dried they are a super fruit good to add to breakfast dishes.  I think I will try them as a fruit compote with yogurt.
My strawberries outside have had a few odd flowers in the last week but I doubt they will come to much as there is a gale coming with lots of rain.  It is dark and stormy looking.



Friday 11 September 2015

High speed harvesting

Two fine days have brought the cereal harvesters out again! Wondered what the cloud at the end of the garden was until the combine emerged!





40 acres of cereal done in 3 hours. Luckily the wind shifted and they moved further into the field so we did not get choked.

My picking runner beans and tomatoes by the bucket full does not involve dust or complex machinery driven at high speeds!

I am pleased to record that I have finally finished mulching the 50 feet of raspberry canes. It was rather hard work as I first had to uncover the bottom half of the compost heap and then barrow the mulch about 250 feet up the field. I think it was at least 25 barrows worth.  I have started on the various trees and hedges that have been planted since last autumn.  My cunning plan is to reduce the compost heap to 50% of its current size and have something more compact and with a faster turn over instead of a sprawling mess.





Tuesday 8 September 2015

Boating and blackberrying

Weather very variable in Norfolk and we are waiting for an Indian summer, went for a short river trip on the Broads. Just a short motor journey as we are still sorting some issues out with the boat.


This riverside cottage is built from an ex helter skelter. It is the most unusual building in a row of sweet holiday cottages along the banks.

While the husband was fiddling about with ropes I did a little blackberrying along the boundary of the boatyard. Another pudding taken care of!

Pulled up the courgettes today, may have got a few more but I think we are "done" with this vegetable now. The butternut squash will soon be ready to replace them. 

Another bowl of tomatoes bit the dust this morning as they turned into tomato soup.  My husband wanted more taste I added one of our red chilies. Bit too much of an after burn for me, but it certainly warmed us up.

We reached the chill limit today and lit a fire tonight.  No cost, as we had a pile of scrap wood to burn.




Sunday 6 September 2015

September is here

6th September and holding off lighting the fire or turning on the heating. We have set ourselves a 18C limit in the lounge and so far it is around 19C in the evenings.

I love black berrying. I won't pick along a road side and try to find a hedge along a footpath.  On the way back from the health centre where I had collected my prescription I found a nice grassy footpath so I emptied the completely unnecessary paper bag, and put the pill packets in my pocket and filled the bag with berries.  At home we  planted two bramley apple trees last year and these provided a couple of apples to add to the black berries and make a crumble that lasted two days.

The blueberries are ripening gradually and every few days I gather enough from one bush to make a cheesecake pudding.  I crush 4 biscuits (digestive or oaty biscuits) and mix with 2 oz of butter and spread in a flan dish. This goes into the fridge.  I mix 4oz of soft cream cheese with 2 tablespoons of icing sugar and then add the fruit. This tops the biscuit base and goes back in the fridge for 20 mins.  These works well with raspberries and strawberries as well.

Meanwhile our Inca Berry fruits are rapidly ripening and I will be researching how to use these.

Vandal

My husband has spent a year rebuilding this stable block and is now just ready to take the old wood off and re clad. This woodpecker has decided to help by making holes. If we wait long enough we won't have to take off the rotten OSB board just sweep up the bits!
Taken early in the morning with a camera trap.


It has turned cooler recently but this afternoon it was gloriously hot. We dug the third row of potatoes and filled two buckets. These were much larger than the first earlies probably due to giving them more water. Other veg is coming to an end and we are clearing various rows and thinking where to put the winter cabbage and kale.  Have had a terrible time with swede and they are rotting in the ground. There is nothing like the smell of rotting swede!



Saturday 5 September 2015

Travel cross country?

Two things on the TV sparked a discussion today. Firstly the early morning news about refugees finding their way across Europe and walking across countries and Michael Portillio taking trains from Pembroke Dock to Cambridge in another of his Great Railway journey programmes on BBC2.  We love "geography", traveled a lot in the distant past and are interested in learning more about the world.

Firstly we had to imagine a map of Europe and then update ourselves on modern countries and borders. At which point we decided we needed to get up and find an atlas! We saw some refugees were using SMART phones GPS to find their way by road which is something we could not do! We need paper maps!

Not quite finished watching the railway programme but we could not work out the railway routes. We want to go from the east coast to the south coast (Hampshire)  without going through London and can't find enough information to crack it!  I wonder if the programme researcher would do the leg work for us and come up with a reasonable route and cost??  Travel in England is silly - there is no easy way to go across the country by road, rail, canal, or river!  We have some friends in the south who declare they will only visit us by using their small light airplane as it will be easier!


Can't afford to go anywhere this month - car is repaired and collected at an eye watering amount.

Collecting tomatoes from the 20 plants in the poly tunnel in a bucket now.  Will be making passat tomorrow as that will keep in fridge and be useful in a variety of dishes.

Tried a new recipe today to work through the various piles of veg in the kitchen! One branch of one of my bell pepper plants broke off this week so there as a pile of green peppers, some were a bit mis -shaped! Some of our sweetcorn are not perfect either so I stripped off the kernels with a sharp knife.  I found this on an internet search.

Soak the sweetcorn in some olive oil and then fry in a little more oil with some herbs, Put to one side. Blanch a green pepper after removing the stalk and the seeds. I cut mine in half first. I drained them and sprinkled salt on the inner side. If I had wrapped them in a cloth I think I could of got the outer skin to peel off - but it did not matter.  I then packed the halves with the sweetcorn and topped with cheese. They went in the oven to brown and cook through. Quite nice, I will try to improve on the dish next time by adding some garlic to the sweetcorn as suggested.




Thursday 3 September 2015

Car disaster

I regretted the decision not to have coffee or lunch at the garden centre just before this happened! Also regretted not taking a mobile phone or knowing the name of the local garage or keeping snack supplies in car (3 hours later)! But we got to know a lovely lady nearby who phoned for us and a nice lot of garage people  who eventually helped us to get home on the local bus with our very prickly shrub!


Oh well, have to spend 3 days at home weeding while the thing is repaired.