Cutting Back - In More Ways than One

The piece of land that we still rent, as a nod to our farming days, has been overcome over the last few years with thistles and nettles.  It's a damp squib of a no good corner which is the only reason we got to rent it from the Crown Estate,  and our being busy for the last year or two working to try to pull up our income means our farming activities have been severely curtailed.
Although we're committed to organic production, we won't have been alone among organic types in considering a one off spray to get rid of all the darn things. We're not certified, so  we can do as we please, and we called a local contractor to get a quote.
The guy has a living to earn, and I don't think his price was unreasonable, but it was untenable. We don't have £660 to spend on clearing up weeds.
So, we've added an after work workout to our schedule that beats any gym.
There are very few things we possess in duplicate, His'n'Hers models.  In fact, apart from the Bible, of which we each possess multiple copies (a freedom by the way we should not take for granted,) and John Seymour's Complete Book of Self Sufficiency, of which we definitely do possess such, I can only think of our beloved scythes.

Daily, we advance on the field and its rampant nettle and thistle growth and we spend a solid half an hour scything. Oh boy that works some muscles. Half an hour does well for now. We may need to increase as we build up stamina and technique. You can scythe for a very long time if you are very good at it. I am medium good at it and unfit. Frugal triumph number one, a saving of £660

In other frugal news, H and I took a quick trip into town to spec out the charity shops. I do feel they have gone to the dogs a bit to be honest. Prices are silly high and there is not much of any quality on offer - the annoying practice of copying retail stores and grouping all the clothes by colour instead of style, just does not work in a charity shop. It's all well and good leafing through the rose greys and loving things but no use if they only exist in an 8.

What with all this and a long day's gardening, supper was limited to a classic from my own days of youthful penury - tuna rice and peas.  Mine with soy sauce, Neil's with chilli sauce, and H's with kind of pop up Marie Rose sauce - i,e, a squirt of ketchup plus a squirt of mayo.   The funny thing was, my own skint student, upon whom I clearly had not previously inflicted this delight, at least not recently enough for her to remember, was in paroxysms of joy about this new cheap and swift supper, and has sworn to add it to her repertoire once back at uni.

Oh and a General Election was called. Of which, I fear, very, very much more later.

Small Plates

I've been thinking a lot about losing weight.

I seem to have fallen out of love with Slimming World, and as we try to keep a very tight rein on our finances, the weekly cost can't be justified when it's just not working.

I have always had a bit of a thing about how much our meals have changed in my lifetime.

It began with Christmas, when I would wonder how on earth, as kids,  we ate a big Christmas breakfast of cold cuts ( a Midland thing, I think),  turkey and all the trimmings at lunch, tea with cake and trifle, and turkey sandwiches for supper.  The only conclusion I can draw, is that the portions were much  MUCH   smaller.

I've dwelt on this, and I'm sure I'm right,  The plates were smaller!  Everything was smaller.

I was born fourteen years after the end of the second world war, but scarily, only five years after the end of rationing. My mother could make a shilling do the work of two and feed a family on next to nothing. My father was ill, for the whole of my life, but worked relentlessly.  They had been through impossible to imagine hardship.

I'm absolutely certain that what to them was the untold luxury of unrationed food, of imported treats and the birth of supermarkets and frozen foods - to us, today, was meagre fayre still.

So I've got this theory I might be able to gain control by just eating like my parents did.

Fortuitously I found three plates sitting in the greenhouse which are more the size we used to have. They've had a good clean and are in the kitchen.

For lunch, I had a ham and tomato sandwich. Just that. And a cup of tea. It had un slimming world spread on the bread, but it was not accompanied by any extras.

For supper, I fished lamb chops out of the freezer - ours are huge by shop bought standards but we've still often had two each. One today, with plentiful vegetables and rather less potatoes - though it was the spuds which were always piled up to feed the men! The men, incidentally, had bigger plates. More the kind of size we now use.  In a real nod back to childhood, there was bread and butter on the table, and the teapot warming for straight after the meal.

A small dessert of tinned peaches and one small scoop of icecream.

I struggle to find time in the evenings to do the things I need to do - study, do the garden, do some sewing - so I plan to simplify meals, and make them smaller. In summer, night after night we'd have salad - which amounted to plain cos lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and a dab of salad cream - with some new potatoes and either ham, cheese, or egg.  I see a few of those in our future. I can produce most of that!

We talked about packed lunches - one round of sandwiches - just cheese or maybe fish paste - a small slice of cake if you were lucky, and an apple.  Neil can remember with his two brothers, having a bag of crisps to share!

I'm happily fascinated. I must dig out Nella Last.  And get to using the small plates.

The end of the beginning

Debt Snowball

Today, our sheep went.
Yesterday all eight goat kids went, and today, it was the sheep.
After the rather sick-making incident with the cocky kid, I advertised them elsewhere, and immediately got full price, and a very nice man came today and took them to play on cliffs in Dorset. So they won.
We still have four nanny goats, two of which at least must go,  a pony with no purpose, a few lambs and hoggets, and a straggly bunch of chickens, but I'm pretty confident we have less livestock tonight than we've had in about twenty years.

It feels strange. I haven't cried, though I want to, but it would be ungracious, because we're in a hole, and we're being handed a spade.  Selling those sheep helped us to complete Dave's Baby Step One, and now we can be intentional about getting a hold of this situation.

We've done this before. We've made a start, but got distracted and started having bright ideas, and all those bright ideas involved spending just a little bit of money, rather than paying off debt and keeping to a written budget.  This time, we mean it.

Homestead Snowball?

I've pared my grocery budget down to pretty lean, but I'm ashamed to say, I am spending money (and quite a bit of it!) on vegetables! It's true! In my obsession with 'creating a business on the land' I forgot to grow our food!

So I'm on homesteading Baby Step One as well! : Plant a Garden.

Today is the first day of Spring, and it's as good a day as any to commit to going back to basics.

My challenge for the next month or so is to reorder my time, so that outside of extended working hours, I can get out onto that garden, and be productive.

Catch up with our antics

on www.chestnutsfarm.com

We spent most of the day today at the Devizes Food Festival, and despite an early soaking had a good day, handing out information about our Permaculture project and Veg Box Scheme.

The girls got their photo taken for the local paper, and I had a chat with our local MP about sustainability and Transition Towns.

We're running an Introduction to Permaculture course in October, and all the goats are about to kid.

More in depth thoughts when I've recovered from today!

Just a now post

It's good to be eating from the garden again. Cooking dinner with freshly picked veg - and yes we did rear the pork as well! - is what it's about.
Just trying to keep going at the moment, having started training for at home call centre work, and finding myself short of hours in the day.
But here's the thing, I've been thinking - on my feet - always on my feet - about what to do about blogs, and I've come to a conclusion.
This blog has become depersonalised and less intense, because I'm trying to start a business, and I've tried to avoid writing stuf which will upset or offend anyone. Well, that doesn't work for me on my personal blog.
It has become less about my faith, my relationsipe with God, the raison d'etre behind our whole lifestyle, the core of what we are. Less about how I'm feeling how I'm doing, what's for supper, how'd I save some money, what's the latest in the sewing room, and shall I make more soap - and because of that, I've become less interested and engaged with the whole thing.

So.

I have the farm blog www.chestnutsfarm.com which I am attempting to keep more updated. It really is a farm blog, it just deals with what's going on on the land, and the business side of things.
This blog is going back to being my personal journey - and if you are uncomfortable with that, I'm sorry, and I hope you'll stay, and bear with me, but if you really don't want to know, there is always the farm!

I realised I was avoiding saying things, because I have non christian readers, non English readers, politically different readers, readers even with different attitudes to food and farming - and then I realised I read their blogs, often - and I'm interested, and I love them dearly, and I gain from what I read, and I don't expect to agree with every last view or relate to every belief or idea.

And dull as it may have been, I want to go back to my everyday farming homestead blog, with the soap and the sewing, and the prayers and the principles. My family is battling at the moment, as I know many are - I want to share our journey and look into yours. If they're different, that's fine. Please stay, please bear with me!

I only ask that you are kind, not contentious, if some bits irk you, skip 'em. If it all irks you, I hope you'll check in with the farm blog.

Now, knowing me, I'll not say anything more for a month!

What I learned at Ragmans - Part One

The title has a ring of 'What I Did in My Summer Holidays' - one of those first day back at school essays which my mother swore were just a not very subtle way of checking out your family circumstances, and spying on your parents. My sister once spent an entire summer doing the most exciting, stimulating things she could think of with her youngest daughter, to give her some real fuel for the fire, and come open evening, opened her book to find she had written 'we went down the pub and I played on the swings'. You can lead a horse to water, and all that.

This was no holiday. What I learned on site was one thing, and what I have learned, having sat back and thought about it over not quite a week, is another.

Ragmans Lane Farm is in Gloucestershire - I referred to it as the part of Gloucestershire that should be in Wales and nearly got shot for such a political statement - what I meant by 'should' was not in any sense meant to trigger a border conflict. I didn't mean politically. I meant logically - in other words, it's the far side of the Severn Estuary, where almost everything is Wales, but the Forest of Dean isn't. It's England. Which is OK. Breathe!

The Permaculture Design Certificate course I was attending was tutored by Patrick Whitefield with the assistance of Sarah Pugh. If you're asking, 'what is permaculture?' - well, that's a huge question, and you can find some answers here but the real answer is to go on an Introduction course, and find out for yourself, what permaculture is to you - because it's not a dogma. It's easy to condemn it out of hand as 'not for you' because it can appear to belong to a 'tribe' - a converstion I had with Ciara Cullen all too briefly as we were leaving Ragmans - but it doesn't. The more diverse the people who become engaged with permaculture, the more possible things become. If you think permaculture is not consistent with christianity, you and I will have to agree to differ. Unless perhaps by reading this you can see where I'm coming from?

So rather than the actual course material, I'm thinking about what I learned about myself, I suppose, and what I'm thinking now.

Firstly, living in community. This has been something of an obsession of mine since I spent the briefest time with Marthe Kiley Worthington probably 30 years ago on Mull. Although the experience of actually living in community at Ragmans was halved by the fact that in the end, Patrick asked me to take the caravan as extra accommodation for the first three weeks and my own for the last two, it was still a taste of what it is like to share all your meals, your bathroom, and all the living spaces.

I think, as I have said earlier, that the time has passed for me to do this - my community now, is my family, and living in it is at least as complex as an intentional community. I thought about how, when we are sharing our space with non-family, we consider at great length how we will get along together, how we will make decisions, how we will respect each other's differences, how we will capture a vision, come to concensus, solve disagreements, put plans into action (framework shamelessly nicked from the above-mentioned Sarah Pugh's communications session. Thanks, Sarah!) and yet, in our family home, we fail dismally to think these things through. We simply expect that because we are tied by blood, all will be well. Big food for thought.

I also learned, finally, how to make sourdough bread by the really wet method, with a long lived starter shared by Ciara and skills shared by the lovely Olivia Heal - which in turn I shared with my daughters, of an evening, upon my return. Again, we share skills consciously, and with care, among strangers, but as our children grow older, if we are not careful, we just expect them to absorb what we do, and we lose the pleasure of sharing, as much as they lose the joy of learning, traditionally, from mothers and fathers, the sustaining skills we value so highly.



We visited Royate Hill Community Orchard as well as St Werberghs, Eastside Roots and Easton Community Allotment on a day field trip to Bristol, and it got me to thinking - the city can be a vibrant and wonderful place. Towns can be good. We still live quite an isolated life, in the countryside, which, on balance we prefer. We have considered of late, moving into the small market town where we go to church - because of the ages of the chidlren, and because, you know, sometimes, a change is a challenge, and a challenge wakes you up and gets you going all over again. We've thought about it all quite long and hard, and it seems maybe we won't do that (always worry when I commit such things to black and white ...) but the experience of the hidden green spaces and brilliant community feel of Bristol, made me view the idea quite positively, rather than with fear and dread, as previously.

Well, this has lumbered on long enough, and has earned the extension 'Part One' to its title. I hope there will be a part two - I certainly feel like I learned a lot!

So, who's up for a challenge?

OK, I am way out of the loop, the last to know about anything.

Only just found the fabulous Shirley Goode via Frugal Queen's blog - and have already waded in to join the February challenge.

What a lot of good, solid information there is on there!

I'm back for another read to and to get some recipes tonight. It would be fun if lots of us were joining in.

One Good Idea.

If you're very, very short of money, and you have any garden available to you, which you can in any way utilise - give this a thought.

A packet of Suttons or T&M or similar seeds costs around about a couple of quid. There are some cracking varieties available, and some tempting descriptions to ponder, as well as beautiful pictures, a fabulous catalogue, and Alan Titchmarsh or his like (is there such a thing?) grinning at you from the depths.

This lot cost under ten pounds.

I bought Lidls seeds for my Dig For Victory garden last year and the yields were fine. Some of them were exceptional. Yes, I'd love to meander back through the hallowed halls of the Real Seed Company or even my old faithful, Edwin Tucker - but beggars, it seems to me, can't be choosers and we are in a corner here.

29p, one of those smaller packs at the front costs. If you grew a dozen of those lovely lettuces, or a pound of those tomatoes, you'd be quids in. No, it's not ground breaking horticulture. Yes, I'd love to stick to heritage varieties (the germination rate and yield of which have often been woeful, to be honest) but you know what, I can't afford to.

It's seeds week in Lidls. If you have a patch of bare earth, or a patch which could be bare earth, do yourself a favour and spend ... maybe even 87p:


to supply yourself with good, solid, staple food - vitamins, minerals and real flavour for a fraction of the cost in the shops. And it's going to go up more, believe me.

And yes there are one or two flowers in there - I treated myself. I do however eat sunflower seeds and calendula flowers!

Now, moving on, I have finally finished batch one of the marmalade, six pounds of pure tangy bittersweet joy.




And what's interesting is - either of those would qualify for a 'Choosing Contentment' slot - simple things that can fill your life with joy. Homemade marmalade - minimal cost, maximum flavour. Cheap seeds, that nevertheless hold God's promise, and really can feed a family. All that's required? Sun, rain, earth and hard work.

As the very wonderful Jonathan Brain would say (you'll have to shout to get the feel): WOW! HOW AMAZING IS THAT?

Pig

Oh my goodness, time to breathe would be nice. Oh, and the ability.
I have my winter chest infection settling in nicely, a stinking cold, right as the girls' term draws to a close and all the stuff happens - including H going into meltdown about the injustice of it all - and then the pigs got butchered.
I have dry cured about 5 kilos of streaky bacon, well actually H did most of that, yesterday, put an enormous ham into a wet cure (this is the first time I've done any of this, I'm doing it all in hope and prayer!) and then today made an ENORMOUS pork pie.
I have taken some photos and tomorrow I promise I will look for my camera lead.
We've moved some goats around - Paisley and Poplin are being dried off and must be covered soon, we're struggling to find a stud goat this year - and Linen and Lace are moving down to Mill Farm to be with their mummies, re-establish their family links, and scoot around outside a lot. It's a great place to be as they have a huge open yard, so they can be outside when ever they like but are not in mud and mire. Then there are open fronted barns, so they can also be inside when ever they like.
Scallywag has moved back up to the barn, where we will feed her up, which she will love, and she will milk through, if her record is anything to go by. She is too old to kid again, and we don't want to put that stress on her, a nice easy season of just eating and giving milk, going out in the head high weed paddock, and keeping ponies company, will suit her.
Three days more of school, and then we will get ready for Christmas - we haven't done the whole November thing, not even made our cards yet!

Day in the life

A few weeks ago, we got a bit of a shock. Neil is self employed, but for two years, he has had one major client, who has bought up most of his time, and there was no reason to suppose that would change.
At the beginning of September, this man's younger son went to senior school - an expensive private school which, rather than requiring of his mother a long haul school run as had his prep school, provided a bus, which picked him up, along with his older brother, and thus has freed up Mama - as she put it after the event - to go back to working with the sheep.
Without warning, our income disappeared. The usual Sunday evening phonecall, which would have confirmed three to four days of well paid work, asked to book him only for the week of half term - to cover for their holiday.
Insult to injury. They obviously knew that was what they would do. They were so selfish, that just in case - just in case - Neil should prove so dishonourable as to take a hike when they mentioned their plans, despite the fact that he has never never let them down and has been nothing but open and honest - just in case, they decided to let another family suffer terribly, and give us not one minute's notice.
Since then, we have been selling what we can, surviving on nothing, and making hard decisions about our lives. And to stop us from starving completely, Neil has been out taxi driving. Last night until 3am and then today again from 7am.
So the girls and I had a day of doing .. well everything, and it was always going to be a busy day, anyway!
While they got up and fed chickens, I quickly put the sloes picked yesterday to soak - for sloe wine, which I think I am right in saying, is not so much a table wine, as a remedy, one of the many traditionally made from hedgerow fruits - the girls picked blackberries today, so the blackberry vinegar (our cough remedy) will be brewing soon.


Next, Boo and I set off to the landlord's travelling chickens - this is a job we have as a trade, it lowers our rent - and Neil does it normally, but we had planned that it would be 'my' job, so I am just getting used to it - today was the first time I'd done it without Neil's help.
After the chickens come the goats - I milk in this awful position because my back refuses to use the stool - it's on my list to build a milking stand, to put this situation to rights. Sadly my list is very long. H took this photo and I have to say I am more than a little concerned about the perfect tonal resonance between my hair and that goat's bottom!

We came home and loaded tack up, and for the first time in far too long, went out for a ride, all three of us together. Not far, it has to be said, since poor old Arch has been lounging round in his dressing gown for weeks and is all blubber and puff. But at least we got out.

Home again to clear up, make lunch, put together supper, chiefly from the contents of the garden with a little help from Lidl. Using up apples, so an apple and sultana crumble added to the bounty.
After supper, the girls and I pitched into some tomato bottling Yes, this is bottling, not canning, oh my American chums, straight out of the Rayburn Cookbook, as more than likely carried out by our own dear Miss Marple. Whole, unskinned tomatoes, placed in the oven for an hour and half, before topping up and sealing.
I must admit, I did actually revert to some techniques from the Ball Blue Book - for example I did add lemon juice, as I understand that modern tomato varieties are sweeter than old fashioned varieties - and therefore may just miss out on being acidic enough for non pressure canning.



And so finally to bed. Been a long day. Still many garden and kitchen jobs waiting to be done. But we made a start!