Free Seeds

I started ordering some more seeds for next year today, lots of different colours of carrot. Some red, two different purples, yellow and some orange (mini and giant.)  I’ve tried to order non-F1seeds, the mini and giant are, so as I can have ago at saving some seed from them, and the yellow coloured ones are an heirloom verity. I’m a member of an online survey site, were you fill in questionaires, mostly about shopping, and you collect points which can be exchanged for lots of different things including PayPal credit. 

I’m really pleased with myself, I picked out the seeds I wanted a while ago and have been saving up my points until I had enough for the seeds I wanted. It feels good and I can’t wait until the seeds arrive.

The new T&M catalogue came the other day, I’ve add up how much all the seed potatoes that I want and it’s £50 worth, ouch. There are two heritage/heirloom collection that I want, I want all the different types potatoes but both collection add up to 160 tubers so I have posted a ‘potato share’ in the LETS newsletter and the Freecycle café and have had a fair few responses from people interested. One of them is someone from a community garden who have offered to swap for some of the heritage seeds that they have saved.  

One of the other kinds that I want is a new verity called Mimi. It is a first early and are “unique cherry-sized, red-skinned salad. Huge numbers. Delicious tasting. Dwarf foliage and ideal for growing in containers.”

It started to feel like winter today, it was a nice day and the sun was out but it was cold, and still is. I think there might be a frost tonight. I’ve said for a couple of days running that I think we need to light the wood burner but it really had to be done tonight. Tomorrow I’m off and one of my jobs is going to have to be getting a new chain for the chainsaw. Normally we use a handsaw for cutting up all the wood for the wood burners, it’s always been everyone’s job to saw a box full of wood each day in the winter when we were growing up but this year we’re all almost grown-up, not that I feel at all grown-up, and there just isn’t the time in the day anymore.

We’re getting ready for Apple Day at work, it’s in two weekends time, and today I went out collecting apples (from Freecycle) to put through the press and it was really nice. I wish we had apple trees, the only ‘useful’ tree we have is a sweet chestnut tree. When me and mother went to get Kniteshade on Sunday the motorway was lined with apple trees covered in fruit, all going to waste. My dad has a theory that the reason motorways and railway lines almost always have fruit trees along them is because of people throwing their cores out of the windows.

When the sun is shining…

I’m working.

It feels like every time there has been even just one day of reasonable weather, and I don’t even mean sunny weather, I’ve been in the middle of working flat out for one reason or another. This weekend is was because the museum that I work for was taking part in Heritage Open Days, up and down the country buildings or sites with ‘heritage’ interest were open for free to encouraged people to visit. Of course unless you are a museum in Wales (and Scotland ?? ) or are run by a council and are luckily enough to have all your running costs paid for, if you’re not taking money on the gate for visitors you have to some how make some money to cover running costs.

This time it was a ‘Forest Fair’, we had duck races round the mill pond, face painting, milk a cow, hoop-a-frog, etc. and the weather was good, not sunny all the time but it wasn’t overcast or about to rain and at some points the sun was even out. Which made the event even better, but I did keep thinking about all the out door things I could have been doing at home.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I really enjoy my job, I get on with the people I work with and the site is beautiful but now that the nights are getting darker again then days off are becoming more precious, and days off when it’s not pouring with rain even more so. A weekend of dry weather could have made a big difference too, at the moment we are re-doing the gate pen so as it drains better.

Last weekend it poured down, and when it wasn’t pouring down it was building up to the next down pour, but still me, Rhys and middle-sister were out there.

A few more sets of water-proofs are on my list of things to get when I next get paid.

There is also a large corner of the veg garden that needs the nettles pull, a bonfire and a few tip runs with the rubbish from it, it’s half a dry days work. And then there’s the private tree that needs cutting out, and the strawberries to re-pot… and I want to sow a few more buckets of carrots to grow in the poly-tunnel… and so on.

It wasn’t all bad though. One of the days another LETS member came in and I’ve got an order for some more paper pots for the next meeting, which is a nice ‘watching-TV-in-the-evening’ job, and I do like working. I can’t imagine not going out to work at least part-time, I just wish that I could enjoy the work and have more time for the outdoor things at home. With the same (or more!!) pay.

September LETS Meeting

Last night was the September LETS meeting, I still don’t have another car sorted but mother took me.

It looked like it was a very busy meeting, there was a mix-up with the times for it, the newsletter had said 6.30 but the Yahoo group reminders had said 7.30, so I ended up being late and didn’t ‘trade’ that much.

I did get a load of veg though, a carry bag of potatos, runner beans, a bag of peas (mostly purple podded, I must look up what typy they are), some TVP, horseradish vinger, a rain poncho, purple sprouting and a bunch of sweetpea flowers. I’ve also got a load of old clothes for trying patchwork and have arranged to go and see a load of wood that might be suitable for building another goat house.

More freecycle

I was working today but have had quite a busy freecycle day as well.

There was a want post a few days ago for someone who wanted jars for pickling so I arranged that she could have some of the boxes full of jars that I got from LETS a while ago. Not all the jars are suitable for what I want and what goes around comes around doesn’t it? We’d meet a few times, during the winter I often offer sacks of manure on there and I often ask for sacks as well. Work is half way between both of us so we arrange to meet there, she bought me some sacks she’d saved for me and I bought her the jars.

I also asked for a rabbit hutch a few miles from work and got it. It’s a really good hutch and looks like its hardly been used.

Also, yesterday on the way to picking the chicks up me and Mother picked up some soap nuts from Mrs Green, very interesting looking things.

Weddings & LETS meeting

Me and Rhys are going away for a few days for a friends wedding, it’ll be my first time driving on the motorway. We’re going to make them a hamper as a gift again, this time I will try to remember to take photos before giving it away, but they’re going on honeymoon for a couple of weeks so we’ll make it up and take it to them when they get back so nothing goes off or gets wasted.

I sorted out loads of things to take to the LETS meeting that was tonight but there was still things to sort out before going tomorrow tonight so I didn’t end up going, it’s a shame as I was really looking forward to it but the next meeting is in my favourite pub so I’ll make sure I go to that one.

LETS Meeting

Tonight I mangaed to get to the LETS (Local Exchange Trading System, there is a link to the main site on the side) meeting, I’ve been a memeber for just over a year now and have only ever got to one meeting and that was a year ago.

Last month I planned to go to the meeting straight from work but got in the car and drove home and only remembered I had planned to be somewhere else at about 9 o’clcok at night.

Any way, it was a really nice evening out, very smiliar to a carboot or local market only with more people talking. I ‘bought’ a jar of raspberry jam and some baskets and ‘sold’ two jars of homemade mustard and a plastic bag peg loom rug.

A weekend of half dones

Last weekend was hot, I was off Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I think only on the Thursday was it cool enough to be outside working all day. The other days had a few hours mid-afternoon that just had to be spend sat inside in the cool until outside was cooler.

So really it doesn’t feel like much was done, Rhys did very well at cleaning the kitchen. We started taking down an old chicken shed ready for a move round and new goat pen, we collected and shredded a load of gorse for the goats and picked branches for them all but Sunday, changed over the water butt by the goats as the old one had started to drip and we were given a much bigger one, gave most of the sacks of muck that had been collected away on Freecycle (me and mummy were told a very funny story about mice and shampoo), I picked out wood for splitting one of the goat houses in two ready for kidding at the start of next month but we didn’t actually manage to split the house.

I half-heartly started planting some more potato’s in sacks (we eat alot of potatoes and I can’t bare the thought of any being left in the ground so they’re all going in sacks) but gave up because of the heat. I thought about planting some carrots and beetroot in the garden (cats have messed mummy’s up) but never got out there to do so.

Ooh, I did pick up some ‘new’ hutches for the quail to go in from someone belonging to LETS, it’s my first time spending Deans and the people I got the hutches from had an interesting holding and might want some quail…

…Basically lots of things got started and were on My List but never got finished.