smallholderwannabe

This blog is mainly a rambling kind of diary of the transition from smallholderwannabe to smallholder.

Monday, November 30, 2020

Bits and Bobs

A new lady at the allotments has taken over a plot. Our year at the allotments runs October to October so we have time to tame a previously unoccupied plot before spring arrives, I assume. Her plot has a medlar tree on it and she doesn't know what to do with them (yet!). So my friend and I each fell heir to a bagful. I have never made anything with medlars before so I made medlar jelly because it is another thing to put in my Christmas hampers. All adults are having a Christmas hamper this year so I need lots of things to put in them. Medlars are not high in pectin so I put in a couple of pounds of apples in order to guarantee a set. It is very nice and my husband was pleased when there was a little drop over that would not fit in the jars. He very kindly offered to use it up for me.... : )

I now have three members of my family in isolation. Two of my grandchildren have been sent home from school to isolate for two weeks because somebody in each of their school years has gone down with Covid. In fact, in their school, there are 5 classes in rather than the 21 there should be... And my daughter's school has had one member of the senior management team go down with Covid so all the staff have been sent home to isolate so therefore the school has had to be closed. Fun times.

I went to Lidl to do my shopping and got a scratch card for £1 off my shopping. Exciting! Only £1 but it was free and will be used against a Christmas treat for us : ) Also, I was sent a £2 coupon for Comfort fabric softener. Comfort is one of the few I can use without coming out in a rash. I don't use fabric conditioner very often and a bottle normally lasts me about a year or perhaps longer. The coupon had to be used at Sainsburys and they had their large bottles at £3 so it cost me £1 with the coupon. I was happy to pay £1 for my next year's supply : )

I joined Olio a few weeks ago to see where that would go. Olio connects people with food to spare with people who would like to use it. Some of the members in my area obviously work for a supermarket or some sort of food shop as they list umpteen heads of broccoli or whatever. However I am finding that the cost of petrol far outstrips the value of the item to be collected. So I have not collected very much from Olio yet. I did get a bag (unopened) of gluten free bread flour for my gluten free granddaughter and also 4 x litres of UHT semiskimmed milk. I still think Olio is a good idea because it stops food going to landfill.




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Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Thirty Ways to Save a £ - part 1

 I have been reading with interest Sue's posts including the list of Thirty Ways to Save a £ at:
https://attheendofasuffolklane.blogspot.com/2020/11/no-spend-november-and-30-ways-to-save-1.html 

Way back in April 2013 lots of bloggers, including me, wrote their list of 30 ways to save £1 and sent it off to Money Supermarket to earn £30. I remember being so thrilled that my list was included. Sue was wondering if the list was out of date or still up to date so I looked back for mine to see what I had written, because I could not remember. Here is the first part of my list with my notes in a different colour print. I would be interested to see other people's lists too.

Thirty Ways To Save A £


I've enjoyed reading other people's ways of saving so I thought I would write down some of mine too.  It would be very easy to go on and on as ideas creep into my mind whilst writing down others.  As I have a bit of a butterfly mind, they are not particularly logical in order but here goes anyway:

1   THINK before you buy anything.  Is this a want or a need?  If it is a need, can it wait a while or not?

2   If it is a need, then is the item on offer somewhere? Internet comparison sites and google can help here whether it is food or non-food.  If you are buying this needed item on the internet, don't neglect sites like Quidco and Topcashback.  They give cashback which mounts up to a little bit extra by the end of the year.
Both of these sites had lists of groceries that qualified for cashback. Topcashback seems to have stopped this but have occasional offers eg for Halloween. they offered £2 back on a pumpkin costing at least £2. I got my £2 pumpkin at Sainsburys where I needed to go for something else and the pumpkin cost £2 so it was free. The groceries on Quidco used to be really good but lately they have been weird and wonderful things that we don't eat. I still check every few days, though, just in case...                                                                                                                                                                                                               3   3. 3  Before you buy clothes or other non-food items, do look in your local charity shops several times just in case what you need is on sale there.  If you need a tool or gadget, then can you borrow it from a friend rather than buy something that is not going to be used very often?
I seem to buy very few new clothes these days other than shoes and underwear. And certainly our family are firm believers in checking what mum and dad have before spending their hard earned cash on new tools and gadgets.

4   I shop for food knowing what I have in the cupboards/fridge/freezer and I also have a vague menu plan in mind.  That way, I buy what I need to fit in with what I already have but I can also be flexible enough to swap one item for another that is on special offer and cheaper than the one on my list.
Definitely still do this.

5  I put some items that I don't buy very often, like Marmite for example, on my shopping list when I open the last jar/pack.  That reminds me to check for offers so I don't pay full price unless there hasn't been an offer on that item by the time I run out.  If I find a really good offer, then I will buy a supply to last several months or even longer.  When Tesco had an offer of 3 for the price of 2 on dried fruit, I bought enough sultanas to last us a year.
Still do this

6   If it is possible, always check the price per 100mls/100g in the supermarket.  Don't assume that the larger "economy" size is automatically cheaper.  A smaller size on offer may well prove cheaper per 100g so read the labels on the shelf.  I had to buy baked beans for a church meal recently and was required to buy a top brand rather than my usual own brand version.  At the supermarket, I found that the individual tins were on offer but the 4-packs were not so that 4 individual cans cost just over half the cost of the 4-pack. 
Still do this

7   The cheaper own brand items are usually on the bottom shelf at the supermarket whereas the most expensive ones are placed at a level where they most easily catch the eye.  Always look around the shelf before choosing which brand to buy.

8   Reduce, recycle, repair, reuse.
This bears repeating over and over again.  And I love things that help the planet and my purse.

9   Don't neglect the pennies - they do mount up.  There are always a couple of opportunities in a year to save (ie not spend) £100 or more when it comes to buying insurance or a necessary large item for the house.  However there are literally thousands of opportunities to save 10p or even 5p.  Make use of all these opportunities and the pennies will mount up to a sizeable sum by the end of the year.

10    Learn some very basic sewing skills.  It is not rocket science to be able to sew a button back on a garment.  I spotted that my shoe laces were starting to show signs of wear.  I spent 5 minutes just reinforcing them with some black thread and using a basic in and out running stitch.  Nobody can actually see the stitching because it is hidden in my shoes but the laces will last another year or two now.  A new pair would have cost over £1 so that is one way of meeting the criteria in the title : )

11  Reuse things for another purpose - my hand towels go over a rail in the bathroom when in use and everybody tends to dry their hands on the end bits while the bit over the rail remains unused.  I cut off the worn ends and hemmed the middle section so I now have a new kitchen towel and two floor cloths from those worn ends. I also patched my cotton oven mitts with the best bits from a very elderly tea towel. When finished with, cotton items like these will end up in my wormery.

12  Can an item be mended easily rather than thrown out?  Many things can be put back together with a bit of glue or some tape and a few minutes work.  My son was once heard to state that just about anything can be mended with a bit of thought and some duct tape : )
My son has been known to mend his slippers with duct tape so that he could get some more wear out of them : )

13  Grow your own.  Not everybody has the time or inclination to work an allotment but most people can grow a pot of herbs on the window sill.  How about a tray of lettuce seedlings too?  Ours (lettuce and herbs) are outside but in two tubs beside the back door so it is not far to go even in the rain.  The lettuce don't need to be as far apart as the books say because they don't grow to full maturity.  I pick a leaf or two off each plant when they are big enough to eat but still young. Lovely!  And how about some pea shoots too?  Just soak some overnight and plant whole dried peas in the same way as the lettuce.  They'll be ready to eat in just a couple of weeks.

14  You don't have to spend lots of money on pots for growing things - just recycle and reuse what you have.  Cut off the larger bottom section of a milk bottle; use yoghurt tubs; use butter/marg tubs.  For larger seed trays, I use the large, flat tubs that mushrooms come in.  Just use a skewer or something sharp to poke a few holes in the bottom for drainage.  If the trays are going by an indoor window, then they won't mark the sill if the trays are used double.  I put the tray with the drainage holes inside one without holes but with a few flat pieces of polystyrene packaging (or gravel) in between so that the top one drains into the lower one and not on to the window sill. If the trays are particularly flimsy then I use them double anyway because two together is so much stronger than just one.

15  By extension, I use the clear plastic tubs that fruit often comes in to keep drawers tidy.  Used double, they are great for keeping things visibly in place and to stop the drawer becoming full of mere clutter.
I don't do this so much now because I try to  buy loose fruit where I can but I still have some double tubs in use that have lasted for years.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Harvest Thursday 12 November

 We are still harvesting some things from the allotment, so I am very pleased about that.

leaf beet - there is much less but still enough to have some a couple of times a week.
courgettes - I have picked the very last two finger size courgettes this week so they are finished now
cabbages - there are still several cabbages left, both red and green
asparagus kale - we had lots of volunteers of this around the plot and we transplanted them into one area and they have thrived. I have dried and powdered a jar full of this so that I can add a spoonful of kale to every soup through the winter/ It has a much milder flavour than the more usual curly kale and I really like it. It is an old heritage plant and I was given a few seeds years ago and it spreads volunteer plants every year. So I am hoping that I have it for life now. 

There is also purple sprouting broccoli which is coming on nicely and I can look forward to that in the spring. The above little list is getting really short now but I am pleased that it is as long as it is given that we are now well into November. And we haven't finished eating the potatoes yet. Nor have we started on anything that got stowed in the freezer. 

And a kind fellow plotholder gave me some wonderfully big and flavourful cooking apples and I have made the French apple jam from Thrifty Lesley's website. I have been drying the peel from the oranges that we have eaten and powdering it in my coffee grinder so I used that in the jam instead of the orange peel puree in the recipe and it has worked well. We have been eating it on our breakfast toast and I think I will be making it again next year : )

French apple jam recipe:

https://thriftylesley.com/home-made-french-apple-jam/





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Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Lockdown 2

 My children are worried about the aged parents and want us to shield more during this lockdown. I suppose we had better go at least partway to meeting their expectations to keep them happy.

I thought about all the panic buying in the last lockdown so I thought I had better go shopping and get some more things in stock - both to stop us having to go to the shops and to make sure that there were still some things left on the shelves. I was pleasantly surprised because Lidl was not particularly full of people nor were the shelves empty. Maybe people around here have learned from last time...  Anyway we have enough milk (fresh and UHT) and other fresh stuff to last 2-3 weeks and plenty in the cupboards and in the freezer. That should keep the family happy for a while even if they don't like that I have been in the shops today. And of course, we are allowed to go to the allotment and there are still some veg to be had there : )

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