Happy meals : )

 I am happy to report that all the members of my family who were ill, have now recovered. However Covid then decimated the numbers at our church, including all the people who do most of the work including the minister. On one Sunday this month we had less than 25 % of our normal congregation attending. I am very glad to be able to report that neither my husband or I have had Covid this time when so many around us got it. The first time was quite enough!

The hens are definitely of the opinion that spring has arrived. Despite supplying all three kids and their families and a couple of friends, I am giving eggs away because I have so many. My husband is not pleased now when I say that it is farmhouse omelette for dinner - again. But we have lots of eggs and various bits and bobs from the allotment so why not? I have to admit that I feel really pleased when we eat a meal that is totally home produced  : )

Our allotment is looking very good at the moment. Everything has been tidied up and dug over and it looks very brown. Later on when we can't keep up with the weeding, it will look very green, but right now, we can see lots of goodlooking earth. We (the royal we as it is my husband who has done the heavy work) have dug out one of the enormous compost heaps and much goodness has been dug into the beds.  

We have started with this year's crop and have planted two sorts of potatoes - King Edwards and Wilja. We also have various seeds started and are hoping that there will not be too much heavy frost in our future. The broad beans are looking good and we are hoping for a good few dinners off those. I like them best when they are really young before that skin on them gets really thick.

We have three sorts of kale now as well as our leaf beet which are all producing well I have just picked all the sprouting flower heads off those to eat in the same way as the purple sprouting broccoli which is just coming to an end. The sprouting broccoli flowered earlier than we had expected so we have not managed to harvest as much off the plants as I would like because I really enjoy it for dinner.

Just off to start preparing dinner now and it will contain lots of the sprouting flower heads from the kale plants - yum.

The longest day

Today has been the longest day of the year. I love summer (so long as it is not too hot) but the one disadvantage is that the hens have not gone to bed until after I feel like I should be asleep. It always surprises me how quickly the days seem to shorten a bit after the end of June so that I can go to bed when I am feeling tired and without the aid of matchsticks to keep my eyes open until the hens have stopped partying.

The hens are still laying well. earlier this last week, I had ten and a half dozen eggs and was wondering what to do with them all. Since Wednesday, I have had so many friends requesting eggs (socially distanced doorstep visits) that I now have barely two dozen left. Although I have put six bags each containing four beaten eggs in the freezer for the winter when I will be complaining that I have lots of hens all eating their little heads off whilst laying very few eggs. At least I know that we will be having six farmhouse omelettes over the winter months : )

My leaf beet (perpetual spinach) is slowly coming to an end. One plant which had totally finished giving us any leaves was brought home and given to the hens. Within a quarter of an hour, there was only the thick main stem left. Everything else had been scoffed completely.

Today is not just the longest day but also Fathers' Day. We had a special delivery from Postman Pat alias our grandson and his mum. We had a socially distanced chat on the doorstep. Three passers by stopped to say hello to a rather shy Postman Pat. He did look so lovely in his outfit : )

After lunch we went for afternoon tea to our son's house down the road. We ate our tea in the garden with us on one side and the rest of them on the other side. Very nice too and with homemade chocolate buns : ) And when we got back to our house, we found that our other daughter had been and left a tray of not-hot-cross buns in the hall with dad written across them all in the paste that the crosses are made from. We had one each after tea and they were lovely : )

It has been a lovely day but I am ready for bed now and the hens are all still up and doing   : (

Sad times

I've lost my chicken Nugget. She would have been nine years old in June. She was an old lady and liked to take herself into her nestbox and have a nap in the afternoons. One afternoon she simply did not wake up again. At least I know that she was not ill and did not suffer. She was a real character and I will miss her dreadfully. My husband and I have this dreadful virus and I did not see her for her last week. But she was still laying three eggs a week for me which is pretty good for an almost nine year old Buff Orpington.

Just stay away from everybody and stay safe and healthy

Time is Marching on

Here we are in March already. Hopefully some of those March winds will dry up the ground a little because my hens are not happy hens at the moment. The runs are just waterlogged and the poor little things are just paddling. Ducks are happy with their feet in water but hens are not. We have put down what wood chips we have and all the leaves that we had gathered up in the autumn in an effort to have their feet up out of the water as much as we can but it is not working because there has just been Too Much Rain.

We have been to a funeral today for a work colleague who taught history for 50 (!) years at the school we worked at. He was a lovely chap and I remember him fondly. There were about 400+ people at the funeral so you can tell that he touched a lot of lives.

I think we have reached the age now where we go to more funerals than we used to. I was thinking last year that I need to have a couple of "funeral-going" outfits so that I don't wear the same thing to every funeral. With church and being in the worship group, we are often called upon to provide music for funerals. So every time I go into a charity shop, I have got my eye open for something funereal as well as everyday stuff. So far I have one outfit of trousers, top and soft jacket with a second top to ring the changes a little bit. Another jacket type thing would be good so I need to keep looking.

Back again

Well, here we are again back from another trip to Cambridge for my husband's business meetings. It was the first longer journey in the new car and it did fine. On the last day, I had to leave the hotel room by noon. All our possessions were on view in the car so I didn't want to leave it and go somewhere warmer. I couldn't cope with the thought of them somebody breaking in just in case anything was valuable. Nothing was but I don't want to have to cope with any insurance company again for a VERY long time, if ever. I had several sheets of puzzles to do to keep me occupied but I was absolutely stiff with cold by the time my husband appeared. I really missed the blanket that I kept in the car that was stolen last month. My friend has a load of samples that she has done of patchwork patterns from the class she goes to. She says that she has far too many of them so will join some together into a quilt with a fleece backing that I can keep in the car so that I won't freeze in future. How lovely!

This rain has not let up for very long at any one time. I wish we could have a little rest from it. My cream coloured hens and my white hens are unbelievably brown with mud. The brown hens are muddy too but it is just a little less obvious. The runs are just liquid mud that they are wading through because the heavy clay soil just cannot drain because the water table is so high. We have used up all the leaves that we gathered up in the autumn to put in their runs to keep their poor little feet a bit more out of the mud.  I am playing Grabbyword (fun word game) with a lady in Australia who is not very far from the bush fires. She was so pleased last week because they actually had 15 minutes of rain...…..

Hens

I haven't posted about my feathered friends recently. I have lost one and gained four so I have 19 at the moment. My youngest are the 6 Amberlinks and they took forever to start laying but are now laying reliably although there is rarely one from each of them in a day. I got them at the end of September 2019 at supposedly 16 weeks old but they did not start laying until Christmas. These type of hens start laying at 18 - 23 weeks...  Usually they take it in turns to have a day off. The next oldest are 2 1/2 years old and white. There were five of them but I lost some and was down to two. My farmer friend was about to despatch his remaining four white ones but gave them to me because they were still laying some in the winter and I was having trouble supplying my couple of regular customers. His white hens and mine were raised by him from day old chicks so I was happy that they decided that they could all live together in one house and run again. That makes my life easier because I didn't want another hen house in the garden. Of course, when they came to live with us, that was the impetus needed for the young Amberlinks to start laying so the extra white ones were not really needed... And then there are the 3 1/2 year old brown Warren types that have come back into laying after moulting late so I have gone from hardly any eggs to loads very quickly as they all decided that spring started at the end of January due to the mild winter.

I have two more hens, both old girls now. One is the remaining survivor of the previous Warren type flock and must be about five now. As she thinks it is spring, she is laying an egg every day but I don't suppose there will be many at all laid after Easter. And then there is chicken Nugget who was hatched in school in our very first hatching in June 2011. She laid two eggs a week all through last summer but has not laid any this year yet. She is a Buff Orpington so lays fewer eggs in a year than the other types of hen that I have but is expected to live longer. She is my pet and will follow me around the garden and I am very fond of her. I will be sad when she goes.

Egg problems and bargains

My new hens -  I've had them since the end of September but number 4 of the five just started laying this week and there is one still not laying. They were supposed to have been about 15 weeks old when we got them and should start laying between 18 and 22 weeks old. The first started laying after 9 weeks and then another started 3 weeks after that and the third about 3 weeks after that. Had them 16 weeks and the fourth has just started laying and one still to start. If they were 15 weeks when we got them as they should have been, then that makes them over 31 weeks old. These are just commercial little brown layers and I've never had one go beyond 20 weeks before it started laying in 20 years of keeping hens so something is wrong somewhere...

There just don't seem to be many bargains around any more. When I see a yellow sticker, my beady little eyes light up and then I see they have only knocked 10% off the price and I go away without it. A few yellow stickers not only gladden my heart but they surely make the pennies stretch a lot further. Sometimes the yellow stickers can also mean that we eat something (I'm thinking steak here) that we love as a treat but is normally way out of my price range. However pickings have been slim around here for over a year now. Still, I did find a big bargain this week. I was down at church and popped across the road to Asda afterwards, about 8pm. There were not many reduced things there but in the reduced section someone had put a whole tray of pint pots of double cream dated for that day. But there was no yellow sticker. I spotted a chap restocking the shelves nearby and went and asked him if he knew the price. He looked at the date and said that if I waited a bit, he would go and reduce them. He reduced them to 20p! The low price must have been because of the quantity of pots of cream and the lateness of the hour. I can make almost 10ozs of butter from a pint pot of double cream and this will cost me 20p instead of £1.40. Yum! I brought home eight of the pots of cream : )             I divide the butter up into small portions of about 4ozs and freeze them. I find my homemade butter does not keep as well as bought stuff but small portions work just fine. I make the butter in the food processor and keep the initial whey and the water/whey mixture from the first washing and use that for making bread and scones. Lovely! My husband loves it when he gets homemade scones spread with homemade butter and homemade jam.

Chickens

My chickens are like the rest of us - they are getting older.  And when chickens get older, they don't lay so many eggs. So we now have some new chickens. Just your typical little brown hen. And the first one has laid an egg. Just a little egg but so lovely because it is the first one. Now if the others would just follow her example, I will be well pleased.

I still have most of my old hens although we have lost several over the summer, which is why we have an empty hen house. Chicken Nugget is still with me and must be eight years old now. She is a buff Orpington which is one of the biggest domestic fowl breeds. She is a real little (big!) character and will sit comfortable in my arms because she is very tame. She was hatched at school and has been used to being handled from day 1. The boys named her and the others who hatched with her, all after some chicken dishes that they all liked. From February and all over the summer, she laid two or three eggs every week. My other old hen is a little brown hen of about the same age but she stopped laying eggs a couple of years ago. I still have two of my white hens from the last lot of new ones and four from the little brown ones who came before that. So I have 13 hens now in total but it is the new ones who will earn their keep and pay for the food for the others.

And when I got my new layers, I also got six who are destined for the freezer. Their appetites are enormous and I think I am going to have to buy more hen food to keep them supplied. The nearest reasonably priced feed merchant is now about a forty mile round trip (which is a lot of diesel) since the Countrywide chain ceased to trade earlier this year. I buy as many sacks of hen food as I can fit in the car and store them anywhere I can but I don't think I bought enough on the last trip. I can, of course, buy hen food closer to home. I can think of three places but the hen food is almost 50% dearer. A forty mile round trip at 17p per mile (elderly diesel estate car) costs £6.80. Local hen food costs at least £9.50 and some places £10.50. At the cheaper feed merchant it costs £6.75 per sack. So it does not take many sacks before we are winning as just three sacks more than cover the cost of the diesel. so I'll be taking a little road trip soon : )

End of March already

I've been busy making lots of soup for the church coffee shop, acquiring wood for the woodburner for next winter, looking after grandchildren, visiting friends, knitting little chicks that will contain Cadbury's cream eggs for Easter, knitting little jumpers for "fish and chip" babies in Africa....  and there might have been a little bit of washing and cleaning and looking after animals as well.

I'm running out of ideas for different soups to ring the changes at the church coffee shop. So far I have made tomato, carrot and lentil three times, leek and potato, carrot and coriander, parsnip and ginger, tomato and basil, broccoli and stilton, vegetable (tomato based). I make two to three gallons each time and it gets divided up into boxes and frozen to provide a variety of flavours. It must be vegetarian and not too expensive to make (so I won't be making any asparagus soup even though I love it). If anybody has any bright ideas, then please do tell me. Thank you : )

We are giving little chicks with crème eggs to the children associated with the church during the Easter week. We need around 200 and I have produced 50ish. I've lost count at the moment. The knitting is very straightforward but then they need sewn up, a ball of polyester stuffing put in the head, a gathering thread run round the neck and fastened off to provide the shaping for the head, eyes glued on, a felt beak cut out and stitched on, a flat bow made and stitched on. The finishing takes as long as the knitting does! I am feeling that I am all chicked out now.

We have managed to acquire various bits of wood to squirrel away for next winter. Some of it came from a couple of skips near where we live and some is from a medium size tree that was taken down in my son's garden. It was old and leaning badly and looked like a gale would bring it down anyway. It is amazing how much bigger their garden looks without it. Had it been in good condition, we would not have taken it down but we have not only prevented a lot of fencing being broken (at the very least) but we have also got more wood for next winter. Considering that this winter was fairly mild, I am amazed at how much wood we have got through and so I am happy at having more for next winter.

The hens are laying very well at the moment. Old Hen died yesterday. I shall miss her because she was one of my "characters". She was just a little brown hybrid hen but she was over seven years old. I was chatting to her on Monday afternoon and she looked so old that I knew that I would not have her for much longer . I have another hen that is seven years old but she is a buff Orpington and they are usually longer lived. I've never had a little brown hen older than five years before.

I had a lovely mothers' day. I hope you did too. My son turned up at our church with his family. It was meant to be a surprise so I didn't let on that grandson had let the cat out of the bag during the week when he was talking to me. When the two year old spotted me at the front of church, she ran as fast as her little legs would let her and gave me a big hug and said "Happy mothers' day". Then she went to Grandad and wished him the same : )   In the afternoon, the girls came to call with their families and then my son popped in again too. One daughter had baked me a loaf of bread with sundried tomatoes and parmesan and it was lovely. I do like presents that people have made rather than just going to the shops.

I've been pleased with my perseverance at clearing things out. I do really find it very hard to part with things especially if there is a chance that they might come in useful in the future. A little bit of clearing out leaves me feeling quite stressed. My husband tells me not to be so daft but I don't find that very helpful as a coping strategy...  My total has risen quite a lot now so I am only a little bit behind my target.

82 items gone

March musings

Well, March already now.  I've been trying to keep up with the decluttering and am going on alright. I've got a nice little pile waiting to go to the charity shop and another pile waiting to go to a contact who works in a homeless shelter.

And we've been given a tree that was blown down in the storm last week. We've given half to my friend down the road who also has a woodburner. It is ash so it will burn well next winter : )
We've got through a lot of wood this winter so it is lovely to have a bit extra arrive.  We've got plenty for next winter because of the wood we were given last year which was not dry enough to burn this year but will be great next year. There are lots of skips appearing in the streets so I need to keep a look out for any useful bits of wood in them. I would rather that I got it to burn than it go to landfill!

I was reading an article today that was flagged up by the Real Junk Food Project about bread being the number one food item that is thrown away today. They are saying that a recent study by The University of Sheffield shows that the fertiliser used to grow the grains produces 43% of all greeenhouse gas emissions! This is a link to the article on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/weneedtotalkaboutbread?source=feed_text&story_id=650639801793427

The hens are doing well and it is obvious that spring is on its way because the hens have started their spring mega-laying. At the end of January and early February they were hardly laying any and now they are laying loads. Even my oldest hen has laid four eggs in the last ten days. The middle aged ones haven't laid any and probably won't. they are your typical little brown hen and for them, middle age is the end of laying. My oldest is a Buff Orpington, a really big breed of hen, and they lay a lot fewer eggs each year but keep going for more years. She is my favourite and every time I set foot out of the back door, she hears and shouts to me to bring her a treat. It might only be a green leaf but she is happy with something extra. And she really shouts at me and tells me off if I don't arrive with the requested treat too : )  It never fails to make me smile.

38 items gone

Whizz........

2017 seems to be whizzing past. We had a lovely family Christmas but it feels like months ago not just a few weeks.  We've been doing lots of things in the last month: acquiring wood, cutting up wood, finding yellow stickered things to share with my friend and my son and his family, sharing yellow stickered goodies that my friend found, cooking, knitting, making soup for the church coffee shop (a new activity for 2017), going for a trip out and buying hen food whilst out, and lots else. Hen food is cheapest for average quality at a countrywide store, I have found, but there are no stores near where we live. If we are travelling out of our area and passing nearish to one of these stores, we call in. Currently they are selling three bags for £18 and closer to home, we are paying £8.75 for the same size sack.

I did have one evening recently when I was cooking and suddenly there was an almighty crash and the microwave turntable shattered into hundreds of pieces. Didn't half make me jump! Fortunately the food was in a covered dish so no glass got into our dinner. We've only had the oven since May and it is still under warranty so we phoned up Tesco where we had bought it and eventually they agreed to refund or replace. I only wanted a new turntable but they thought that it must be faulty. The problem was that I had bought it in the last session Tesco had of doubling up the clubcard vouchers. They couldn't give me back the full number of vouchers and they couldn't refund the full price. They could not replace it because they don't stock any similar combination oven/microwaves (maybe they have had lots with faults.....?) but they eventually came up with a solution that was a happy outcome for us. Yesterday we collected our new one (from a different shop and a different model too) and I look forward to learning how to cook with that one.

And we have been out this afternoon to collect some nice silver birch branches from a friend who has had a tree pruned. Silver birch burns really nicely when the wood has dried out nicely. Those branches will get used next winter.

Losing a month

My goodness me, where did August go?  I seem to have blinked and missed nearly a month here.

We had holiday club at church. So that took up a week.  I was working with a group of six year old and my husband had seven year olds. My goodness were we tired by the end of the week! We had over 80 kids in total, aged from three to ten but with a couple of twelve year olds as well. It was a good week, though, and we enjoyed it and the kids did too. We had all the parents in with the kids for a bbq on the Friday. That was very popular. I ended up serving burgers. I don't thing I have ever even seen so many burgers in one place before. Think 80 kids with parent/s and sibling/s...

I have been making lots of jam and also a jar of pickled eggs.  I have been updating my previous "Preserving Year" post so that I know what varieties of jams I have made. The family will be pleased as none of them make jams at all.  I have been dithering about investing in some Kilner jars and trying my hand at bottling. I have got as far as looking up the price of the jars on Amazon and Lakeland. The thing is that the rings or metal discs have to bought new each year and that sounds expensive.  I know the food would be fresh and if grown yourself then you know what fertilisers etc have or have not been used. The food used would have to be cheaply acquired but then there is all the gas used and the cost of the seal not to mention the work involved.  Tins of tomatoes are on offer at four for £1 at the moment in Asda. That is cheaper than the cost of the seal and without any effort involved other than carrying the tins home.  I don't know anybody round here who does any bottling and I would love to have a chat with somebody who does. My freezer is always full and this would be a way of preserving some fruit for the winter without using the freezer.

Do any of you do any bottling?

We have also been trying to tackle our wood pile. In the spring, our chop saw broke. Then the chain saw developed a fault and needed a new part. It was still under warranty and we had a bit of trouble but eventually we got the part replaced and had a working saw again. And we got the chop saw sorted. The thing is that we were into exam season by the time we had the saws working again so my husband had no time at all left over to do anything with all the wood we had collected. So yesterday, our son and son-in-law came round and the three of them spent the whole day cutting up wood with both saws and also with the axe. They got through a lot of wood and we are very grateful to have such help and to have a good amount ready to burn : )

Our granddaughter came round in the afternoon and acted as gofer for the three of them. My job was to keep them all fed and watered. No easy job with the amount of physical labour involved in cutting up the wood.  I went shopping on Thursday evening and was delighted to get some of our favourite bread rolls reduced to 10p a pack. I would have made some nice bread in the breadmaker for them but these were posh rolls for less than it would have cost me to make the loaf. My secret weapon was a plentiful supply of cake and a huge pile of scones served with homemade jam and cream. There were only three scones left by the end of the day so I know they were appreciated : )

And then there is the allotment. Blink and you can't see the plot for weeds. The war is on!

And my little hens are laying well now. And eating for England, just like teenagers with hollow legs. Yesterday was the third day in a row that they have laid an egg each. Hence the pickled eggs mentioned above as it is a means of preserving some for the winter (for my lunches, probably in a salad) without using the freezer. I expect I shall be pickling a few more now that they are getting into a rhythm with laying.

220 items gone

Catch up

I haven't posted in a while.  This time, however, I have an excuse - I picked up an infection and have been rather poorly.  Health is one of those things which you don't always stop to appreciate until some bit of you stops functioning properly. I am so pleased to be back to normal now : ) 

I am so behind with everything.  I am thankful for a couple of dry days so that I can catch up with the washing.  I am pottering through lots of cleaning.  The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it when I first ventured downstairs again and is slowly coming back to something resembling normality.  My new vacuum cleaner has been earning its keep. And while I was marooned upstairs, the new tv was in use too.

Being poorly also meant that the elderflower champagne did not all get drunk.  It is absolutely fabulous now and we really enjoyed a glass with dinner tonight. I've finished my lemon cordial and am now on the lookout for some bargain lemons. If you haven't tried making or drinking real elderflower champagne, I can recommend it. So easy to make and just fabulous to drink.

I have some new little hens now so my chickenopolis population has gone to 11 from 6. The new girls are young - too young to lay yet. Maybe there will be more eggs next month. The old girls are taking it in turn to lay so I'm looking forward to having lots of eggs. My farmer friend wanted some new girls too so we ordered them and shared the delivery costs. Doing it like that meant that we saved lots in diesel costs, which is A Good Thing.

194 items gone

April showers

April has been a funny month, weatherwise.  In the last week, we have had daytime temperatures of from 5'C to 15'C.  We have had brilliant sunshine but also rain, hail, sleet and snow showers. It makes it a little difficult to plan work outside as you can guarantee that it is raining when I am free to go to the allotment.

We have hired a giant shredder for the bank holiday weekend and will be shredding the enormous piles of clippings and small branches etc etc from clearing three gardens. I'm hoping that there will be enough dry spells to get round all three houses to do the shredding.  We've also borrowed a trailer to transport said shredder as it is too big to fit in the back of our big estate car. The hens will benefit in the winter as I'll be able to spread the shredding in their runs as well as whatever leaves I collect in the autumn.

Speaking of hens, I lost another of my youngest (read "very middleaged" here but they are still my youngest) hens this week. Thankfully she went in less than 24 hours from when it was obvious that there was something wrong. That flock of seven is now a flock of three. The rest of her flock are looking very healthy and are laying just about every day still.

I've been at a school show this afternoon. My grandson, aged six, had got through to the final of the his school's "got talent" competition. I may be just a tad biased here but I do think that his was one of the best acts : )    Actually, he came second to another girl in the same year whose piano playing was amazing. Most of the other acts were good but would have been better if the kids hadn't been filled with stagefright when stood on the stage looking at the whole school and all those parents and relatives facing them. Looking at a big audience would be enough to put me off too. Proud grandmother here : )

165 items gone

Fewer Hens

I've lost two hens in the last two weeks, both little brown Warren hybrids.  I'm always sad when I lose them because they are my pets as well as my egg providers. One hen was one of the old age pensioners and the other was one of the youngest group.  When I say 'youngest', they are actually very middle-aged but they are the youngest that I have. I could do with a few genuinely young ones so that there is a reliable supply of eggs. The girls are laying right now because spring is on its way but that won't last and I doubt if some of them will lay any more eggs after this.

I went to visit my farmer friend yesterday to see the first of the lambs. Very cute! Lambs are always very appealing and innocent looking. One of the mother-to-be ewes is so wide that she is wider than she is tall - maybe triplets? They lost one ewe last night because she had a prolapse. Being a smallholder is sometimes difficult.

Their hens are getting old too although they are not as old as mine. They are going to get some day old chicks after Easter so we are thinking about getting some with them and sharing the cost of delivery.

On the way to the farm, I called in at the large Tesco at yellow sticker scrum time and came home with a nice bagful of goodies.  Still nothing for my son but I got three meals of fish for my friend and enough things for lunches for us for over a week (some went in the freezer) but just one dinner this time. In Tesco, I was just bending over to lift something from the lowest tray of goodies when a lady came up and literally pushed me right out of the way so she could have whatever she had spotted. I was appalled at such behaviour. There was plenty of goodies for everybody there to go home with a bagful.  I obviously need to sharpen my elbows before I go there again although I probably won't be out that way until the calves are born on the farm. But a bagful of such goodies really makes the housekeeping str-e-t-ch : )

128 items gone

Leaves and pumpkins

We are busy collecting leaves again as we have done each autumn for several years.  Since the hens have scratched up all the grass in their half of my garden, we put down leaves in their runs.  We have very heavy clay soil and when it rains, the ground turns into a quagmire.  It rained very heavily all day recently and when I went out to the hens in the afternoon, you couldn't see their feet at all.  They need wellies! Failing that, they have leaves which keeps them out of the mud a bit.  Leaves are also very good at keeping their feet off the frozen ground when the temperature plummets.

 

A couple of Christmases ago, our son gave us a thing to help us fill bags. I've looked it up on Amazon and apparently it is called a bin bag loader. We just call it "that plastic thing to help us fill bags"...   : )

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bosmere-G185-Bin-Bag-Loader/dp/B000TATVQ0/ref=sr_1_1?s=outdoors&ie=UTF8&qid=1446066480&sr=1-1&keywords=bag+filler

 

 

You put it into your bag, then fill it and remove the plastic thing and there you have a bag filled with leaves or garden rubbish  - and the bag is not torn by all the little twig etc.  Not only that but the bag stays nicely open for you to put things in it.  It more than halves the time to fill 20 bags with leaves. In fact I would happily buy shares in the firm that makes them because it is so useful.

 

Today we filled 20 bags with leaves. We really only have October to collect a year's supply of leaves so we need to get out there when it is dry. 20 bags is pushing it and our backs are tonight reminding us that 20 bags is more than we usually fill in one day.  We must have about 60-70 bags filled already but that is not enough yet. The bags we use are the charity bags that come through the door and are never collected again.  We have not yet used all those that have come through the letterbox this year....  We are fortunate to live in a road lined with sycamore type trees.  Our neighbours don't tend to use the word "fortunate" during October but they don't mind at all when they see us out sweeping them up : )

 

Any Topcashback customers around?  Have you spotted in their Snap and Save section that they will refund you the price of a pumpkin up to the value of £3 until next Tuesday?  I feel lots of pumpkin soup coming in our future. Yum!



 

 

 

660 items gone

Trouble with moths

We're having a lot of trouble with moths at the moment.  Anyone else suffering with moths? Every evening we "do" for about 20 or so clothes moths in the bedroom.  I got my summer trousers out the other day.  They are knitted cotton and too lightweight for the rest of the year.  This year, they are decorated by a series of little holes all down one leg where some moth or moths had dinner.  Grr. The last couple of days, we have had fewer of the clothes moths and more of a slightly smaller and darker coloured moth.  I don't know whether or not they eat clothes too but I'm not taking any chances.

Last week, I opened a cupboard door in the kitchen and some pantry moths flew out. So we had to reorganise the job list and sort the cupboards out.   There was a huge number of eggs laid everywhere and moths in every packet.  The packet (new and unopened) of coriander seeds was absolutely full of moths trying to get out.  Just about every packet was either full of eggs or contained some moths.  Yeuk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I'm so cross that so much food was wasted although the hens were happy to help dispose of quite a number of the packets.  It is not that long since I sorted and washed the kitchen cupboards but I admit to being totally horrified at the state of my food. I did discover that the packets containing any form of ginger were totally untouched so that is one thing the moths don't like.  In future, everything that comes in a packet will be going into a glass jar before going into the cupboard!

I've lost two hens this week.  One died of old age although I'd expected her to live on another couple of years as all my other bantams have been very long lived.  I could see that she was going so it wasn't a big shock.  She was one of the first two hens that we hatched at school and she lived with the other one who was much larger.  A bantam living with a Buff Orpington (a particularly large breed of hen) - they were a real comedy double act.  Do you remember Little and Large on the tv many years ago?

The other one was a shock as the hen managed to get out and a fox had it and all that I found was a little pile of feathers.  The flap of wood that covers the join between the house and the run had been broken either by the hen forcing herself out or maybe the fox helped.  I don't know and probably never will but the result is that I have lost one of my two youngest hens and a very reliable egg layer and I don't like thinking about her horrible end.

And my old cat is hanging on by a thread.  She is noticeably weaker but not showing many signs of pain.  She still obviously takes pleasure in some things but the day of reckoning is drawing nearer and I'm dreading it even if I know that it is the final kindness that I can do for her.

432 items gone

Catch up

It is the middle of March and I saw a weather prediction for a warmer Easter. I think that I would like that! We have used far more wood this winter than we thought so we have already used wood that we thought might well be available for next winter. We have wood that is drying and maturing for next winter and some that is freshly cut that will be ready for the winter after.  We need to keep our eyes open for new opportunities for wood so that we don't have to pay for any for  long, long time.

I had a very nice Mothers' Day.  I hope you did too.  I don't like the family to spend lots of money on me - I would rather see them or at least get a nice, long phone call from them. My son and family brought me some flowers - a pot planted with seed and with three little seedlings poking their heads through. the tag read: for a blooming marvellous mum.  My grandchildren helped plant it and that is fun too. One daughter made a lovely dinner for us (lamb in a red wine sauce) and our other daughter came to eat too and brought a lemon drizzle cake and ice cream for dessert.  It was really nice to see them all.

At church, we have the tradition of sending every lady home with a bunch of daffodils on Mothers' Day so they are sitting in a vase here beside me as I type. They were tight buds on Sunday but now they have opened up into really beautiful double daffodils.  They are such bright and cheerful flowers.

I have made lots of trips to the little local supermarket in the hope of finding reduced groceries that I can pass on to our son and his family but all I have come up with are two packs of lambs liver and some turkey mince.  We will love them and they are now in the freezer but are of no use to my veggie son.

Said son ran a cookery course at his work which had a Mexican theme and brought us home some of the leftover ingredients.  Sometimes the sharing of booty goes both ways.  We were able to cook refried beans which I knew I would love but my husband was very suspicious.  I wish I'd had a video to record his face and tone of voice when he discovered that he liked them after all. He is so determined that he likes good British food best - like pizza and lasagne, I suppose : )

My hens are laying for England now but fortunately I have another new customer to take up the surplus.  I miss my old Bluebelle, though. She hatched in autumn 2008 and had started laying again at the end of February, which amazed me.  She was so old that I had not expected her to lay again but she is gone now.

Bargain hunting

I've been bargain hunting quite a lot recently.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you don't but this week, I've done well. 

My son has recently had notice that he is being made redundant and with three kids and a mortgage, I've been bringing them bags of goodies when I've found them.  I want to help but not to be patronising.  Anyway, they wouldn't like it if I spent lots of money on things for them. If I bring them a bag of yellow stickered goodies, then I'm just sharing the spoils and it has probably cost me £1 to fill a carrier bag.  It means that they have a little bit saved from the housekeeping that week to put away for what may be lean times ahead.  They are the ones with the baby on special milk at £11 for a little tin.  The baby is taking to solid food like a duck to water so that helps a bit too and the baby's big sister has just come out of nappies so that is also a help : )

This week I popped into Asda when I was passing and got 6 boxes of eggs (free range!!) for a total of 95p.  The eggs had been dropped and overwrapped in plastic so that they would not drip everywhere.  I felt the boxes carefully for solid feeling eggs and chose my boxes carefully. The 6 boxes yielded 22 whole eggs plus two that were very slightly dented but not cracked right through the shell. That is roughly 4p per egg!  Yes, I know that I have hens but the laying has not quite picked up for the spring yet (mainly middle aged hens) and I needed to buy eggs because I had promised to bake some cake for church.  And when I popped into the mini Tesco near me to get some milk, they had reduced the large loaves of bread to 8p : ) It would cost me far more than that to make them, so I had one for us and three for my son's family.  That means a nice lunch of scrambled egg on toast for under 10p per person, ignoring gas costs. That is definitely a winner for our budgets : )

Edited this afternoon:
Just been out to collect the eggs and give the hens some mixed corn. The laying is just about starting to pick up for spring but not reliably and those who are going to lay again (some are too old ever to lay again) are laying funny sized eggs.  Last week there was one egg that weighed about 10g.  Today, poor old Star went the other direction and laid an egg that weighed in at exactly 100g grams.  A medium egg weighs about 60g and that is what she usually lays...

Long weekend - yay!

So it is May already.  I'm sure that time is speeding up somehow.

My husband has tidied out one small shed this week.  It is one where he stores his wood that is useable for projects and not for the woodburner.  The door doesn't quite close and when he got to the back corner behind the wood, there was a pile of leaves and a hedgehog curled up asleep in it : )
I wouldn't let him turf it out because I can see that a hedgehog might be a good friend and eat up some of the things that I don't want visiting my garden.

And we've collected even more wood.  The further into the future that we can postpone having to actually buy wood, the better.  My friend left us an answerphone message to say that she had driven past a house with a pile of branches at the front.  So we went down to the house and my husband sat in the car and sent me to be cheeky and ask at the door if we could have them. We could so he ventured out of the car and we filled our estate car twice over.  It always amuses me that he stays in the car and sends me out.  These are freshly cut branches again so they will be for the winter after next.  Tonight, we've been to a work colleague's house and collected a car full of wood and a roof rack full of fence panels.  This is the second time we've been to this person's house and come home with just about the limit of wood that the car would cope with.  Last time, some of the lap fence panels got used to roof two of the new log stores.

I've lost another hen this week.  She was old but not my oldest and she had not laid an egg for well over a year.  Actually my oldest is currently laying about 4 eggs each week and she is the sole survivor of her little flock.  The flock that succeeded hers have all gone and so have most of the flock that succeeded them.  So Bluebelle is doing really well!

I notice that I've had loads of visitors to my blog this last two weeks.  I've had as many visitors in two weeks as I usually have in 3 months.  People are very welcome to stop by but I'm just curious as to what it is that has sparked people's interest.  I love it when comments are left here and I go and visit other blogs written by people who think along the same sort of lines as I do. I started writing this blog as a sort of online diary so that I could look back and see what I've been up to and I'm always a little bit surprised but very pleased when other people read my ramblings especially as I've not really got the equipment to put lots of nice photos on the blog.  So if you are new here - then you are very welcome!

I am so looking forward to this long weekend.  I know that I've only been back at school for one week after the Easter holiday but tonight I feel that I could sleep the clock round.

Yawn...   Goodnight!