Ooohhh.........

Today's most definitely a crunchy day.

I'll show you why tomorrow!

Sue xx

Living Simply

I'm hoping that by the end of Summer this year we will have jettisonned completely all the unnecessary clutter in our lives, and have left in this house just enough to let us live comfortably and happily.

In the back of my mind I am already planning the next move and I am determined that we will be able to pack up and move so much more easily with just all the necesary things we need to make our lives enjoyable.

Even after the clutter busting season we had last year there still seems to be 'things' that just sit there, grinning at me from the back of cupboards, some things that are just pretty but do not seem to have a use. 

Well let me tell you 'things' ....... sometimes pretty just don't cut the mustard!!

Sue xx

Birds and Cats

The bird feeding station has been full of families of birds for the last few days, as all the chicks reach adolescence the mummy birds are bringing them to feed on the peanuts and fat balls that they are still needing due to this strange weather at the moment.

On warm sunny days the place is quieter with the birds gettng their fill of insects and other wildly gathered food. But on cooler, wetter days they reappear again.

And get their fill of the yummy things on offer. That is until a certain someone shows his face....

... Archie knows exactly where to hide to wait for a tasty snack. I am jumping up and down like a yoyo in my office chair at the moment, so I can bang on the window to give him a shock every now and then, so he jumps and looks round and gives away his position, and then the mummy birds can gather their young and retreat to safety.

Sue xx

The Longest Day

Today is the 21st June, the Summer Solstice, well traditionally the Summer Solstice, officially it was yesterday this year because of the Leap Year.  But I always think of today as the longest day of the year.

It's a day we should be out in the garden harvesting the veggies, trying to keep the weeds under control and taking things just that little bit slower. An hours work, a coffee in the shade of the parasol on the patio and then straight back, refreshed and raring to go to more jobs.  Instead we are dashing around in the sunshine one day, trying in vain to keep things as much under control as a garden can ever be, knowing, just knowing in our hearts that the next day could be rain and we would be stuck indoors ....yet again.

Today is miserable and grey, as the drizzle falls past the window I sit and think of things I should be doing out there, but I have no desire to get as wet as this fine mist like drizzle gets you, so I sit and ponder what I should do indoors.

I ironed and hoovered yesterday while it was dry outside, mad misguided fool that I am, so today the place looks clean and tidy and the wardrobes are full.  So I have, just this minute as I type, decided to blitz the spare room, pull out the last few bits and pieces that are lurking in there that could be Car Booted.  I am determined to reach my £2012 in 2012 by hook or by crook, or in my case by unused items that we no longer need.

Off I go to see what I can gather.

Are you Car Booting this Summer, buying or selling.......or both?

Sue xx



Slicing the Meat and Pocketing the Pennies

I mentioned yesterday that I went to the supermarket to stock up on meat for the freezer, so here's a little round up of what I bought.  The joints above were for cooking, as they all took around 2 hours to cook I wanted to fill the oven to get maximum benefit of the heat and cost.

As it was Monday I got some good bargains, this is usually the case as the shops want to get fresher stuff on their shelves for the week ahead.  You do have to have the time when you get home though to process them in whatever way they need as usually the date is up on the day or only a day or two away. 

Some things were full price and pretty expensive at that, but you get what you pay for and I prefer (whenever possible) to either buy the highest welfare I can or not at all.

As soon as I got home the things that just required packing away into the freezer were processed.  All the chops and pork loins wrapped individually and then put into labelled reused icecream tubs.

The joints were popped into the oven and left to cook nice and slowly.  By the time they were done Lovely Hubby was home for work and he sliced up the Lamb Joint, some for his tea, scraps for the dogs and the rest wrapped and frozen once it had cooled.  The other joints were left to go cold and then popped into the fridge.

Then yesterday morning I got out my electric food slicer (I got mine from here and it has paid for itself over and over). 

 Because the meat was chilled from it's night in the fridge it sliced beautifully, lots of nice even slices.

I wrap mine in Easyleave because I have a great big roll of it at the moment, but you can use whatever you have to hand, greaseproof paper, cling film, re-used cereal box inners etc.

Once everything was sliced I labelled it clearly, although you can see what is in each wrap now it doesn't mean you will be able to recognise it once it has lived in your freezer for a while and got a bit frosty.

As I was doing all this I weighed and then counted out how many portions I had, to double check it was the right way to go.

Beef   8.07 -  made 5 packs @ 1.04 per 100g -  price bought ready sliced 2.99 per 100g

Gammon  5.99 -  made 7 packs @ 78p per 100g -  price bought ready sliced 2.41 per 100g

This is just a sample of the facts and figures.

Watch out when buying the ready sliced meats in supermarkets the pack sizes vary so much, so always look for the price per 100g on the shelf edge sticker.

So my total haul of meat for the freezer cost me £41.91 and works out to make around 35 meals, so a cost per meal of £1.19.  (As I don't eat most of this only one portion is usually required per meal.)  So using home grown veggies straight from the Veggie Patch or from the freezer, or our own eggs etc  to accompany a pack of meat for each meal, this means that a meal for two averages out at less than £1 a head.  Just what I was aiming for.  I say around 35 meals because if I defrost say a pack of Gammon slices I may sneak a couple of slices out and use them in another dish, so that portion would in effect go into 2 meals creating even better value for my money

If you are wondering why I decided to go down the 'slice it myself route' (apart from the obvious saving in money) it was because when starting the Harcombe way of eating I discovered (by reading the ingredients lists of everything I bought) just what additives there were lurking in an ordinary pack of sliced ham or chicken.  Even when copntemplating buying the most natural looking product I found that it had additives to aid preservation, colour and taste, and it made me suddenly stop and think.  Be very aware though that even some of the joints I found had some extras added in.  So if you want to go down this route get used to reading all the ingredients lists, soon it becomes second nature.

Now that I have a good stock in the freezer I am switching back to using the local butcher, his meat is fresh, trimmed just the way you want it and you get good advice thrown in on cooking methods if you need it.  Oh, and another reason to use him is that I don't have to go back to the supermarket, and witness mass consumerism on a grand scale.

Sue xx

Living Simply

Last year the subheading for the Blog was the 'Year of Living Simply', just because that particular year is over doesn't mean we've changed in any way.  This year we decided it would have a subheading of  'From Simple to Frugal....and Beyond' (one couples journey to jump off the consumer bandwagon and live more simply),  to continue on our living simply lifestyle path but also to encompass our need to save as much as possible for our future 'forever home'.

This living simply really is the only way.

I played a Joker yesterday and went to the supermarket Mr Sa**sburys to be exact.  I needed to stock up on meat for the freezer.  Lovely Hubby is a dedicated follower of fashion I mean meat eater and the prices at the local butcher were just too much to be absorbed by my self-imposed £50 a week housekeeping budget.

More about this tomorrow, I'm mentioning this today because suddenly stepping back into the world of huge supermarkets selling everything under the sun at 'bargain prices' and seeing folk filling their trolleys up to the brim with over packaged and over processed foods made me so glad that we are living the life we are living. (The lady in front of me spent over £400 pounds how she even fitted it all in the one trolley had me baffled!)

Before setting off for my retail exercise I had already shopped at home.  I pulled up some radishes,  some lettuce and some mixed leaves, I cleaned out the chicken houses and found 2 early laid eggs.

Popping these into my bowl I checked the little broody house, left in Chicken World for the girls to sit on or in, and shelter from the sun or rain and found another egg nestled inside.

I added this to my bowl and went back to the house. 

 I actually fancied a soft boiled egg for lunch and put it on, but got so engrossed in someones Blog that I forgot all about it and so it was cut into eighths and eaten as a hard boiled egg along with my mornings 'shopping'.

Later in the afternoon I went over to give the chickens their daily corn treat and spied some lovely red strawberries lurking happily in the shades of the leaves, so these were brought back for an afternoons nibble with my coffee.

Now this is my kind of 'shopping'. 

Fresh, and simple.....and oh so  lovely.

Sue xx

Meet Mother Goose.......

Meet Mother Goose (the hen) and Harry, Larry and Mo, her little Gosling children.

Lovely Hubby let them out of the Eglu for the first time yesterday, and sat on a log drinking his coffee in Chicken World to supervise the reaction of the other chickens to the newest babies on the farm as they mingled together.

He need not have worried, Mother Hen  is a fantastically attentive Mum and she always protected her babies when the others got too close.  The only birds she backed down to were the Hylines, my only idea about this is that probably as the oldest chickens in the flock she didn't see them as too much of a threat to her motherhood, they are secure in their position at the head of the pecking order so they were just curious and then left the goslings completely alone.

Harry Larry and Mo, and no we don't know if they are boys or girls yet.  I hope they are all girls as I've been told Goose eggs are absolutely delicious and twice the size of hens eggs, but knowing our luck they will be boys, if so they will be still welcome here as guard geese and lawn mowers.

 To be honest we don't know much about Geese, these are Chinese Grey Geese, but in our usual have a go fashion we are simply staying one page of the book ahead of their development and needs.  We do know that in a couple of weeks they will be needing a bowl of water for them to paddle in and wash and waterproof their feathers, but at the moment they are all fluff, so they just need lots of drinking water.

They are brilliant lawn mowers and have a preference for all the weeds and clover that is lurking in the grass, we have to move the Eglu to a new position after half a day to give them access to more,  hence LH's idea to get them used to mixing with the big birds.  Although at the moment this can only be when we are home and the dogs are around as they would be very susceptible to predators, especially the overhead sort.  We have Red Kites and other birds of prey around here.

You can see Mother Hen holding out her wings slightly here as LH approached to take the photo, this is what a hen does to protect her young from danger, in a frontal attack she stretches up her neck puffs out all the feathers and holds out her wings to make herself as big and as aggressive as possible. She looks very impressive when she does this.

Luckily she is a very big bird, bigger and heavier than all our other Hylines so she is coping well with looking after these large babies.  It's lovely so see them all cuddled down for the night with the goslings cuddled under Mum, just their heads peeking out to see what is happening as we check them last thing.

When they start to sit down in a little cluster and fall asleep we know it's time to herd them back to the safety of the Eglu after an exciting half hour or so playing out with Mum, it also means Mum can relax again too and not have to be so alert.

It's so nice to have new, young life here on the farm again.

Sue xx