Our New Life in the Country: Collecting Free Food

Thursday, 14 May 2015

Collecting Free Food

I seem to be collecting lots of lovely free vegetable seeds at the moment. This month my newly subscribed to magazine came with more free seeds, £4.53 worth ...

...and inside there was an offer to get even more, which of course I immediately did. I am keeping notes of how many freebies I acquire, but I will of course knock off the cost of postage which I had to pay to get my extra free seeds.

I also bought this magazine, which is running a series on polytunnel planting that I'm following and it also just happened to also have free seeds with it .... £11.26 worth :-)

I'm thinking of all these free seeds as totally free food for next year, when I hope to rise to Lovely Hubby's challenge of us growing and eating all our own fruits and vegetables for as little outlay as possible.

I did actually pay for these seeds which is something I don't seem to be doing very much of at the moment, and I paid full price..... which is even rarer. I buy most of my seeds for the following years growing at the end of the season, when garden centres sell off their stock for around 50p a packet, but with all my freebies it's starting to look like I won't have many, if any to buy for next year.

In other news .....

The first section of the foundation for the retaining wall was laid yesterday in glorious sunshine, with the concrete being poured through welded cages for extra strength. Today the guys are working in persistent, miserable drizzle while they hack out more of the stone that is in the way of the next section going down.

And in other, other news ....

THANK YOU to Sarah (aka Compostwoman) for your donation to my Live Below the Line challenge, which very nicely brings my total up to a very respectable £449. Thank you so much.

Sue xx

11 comments:

Living Alone in Your 60's14 May 2015 at 12:48
I'm always on the look out for free or reduced seeds. My daughter works for an agricultural company and she sometimes gets seeds so I'm a lucky lady as she passes them straight to me.
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Linda Kay14 May 2015 at 13:00
Getting free seeds or reduced price seeds has not been on my mind for many years, since I don't garden anymore. So fun to see your excitement at your "finds"!
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Gill - That British Woman14 May 2015 at 13:13
you said it would be well worth your money getting that magazine subscription and you were right,
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Dawn14 May 2015 at 13:56
this year most of the seeds I have sowed are freebies that I collected last year, the only ones I bought in were parsnip and some heirloom seeds, the garlic chives you have there I sowed the other week and there all coming up, I was reading this morning about making a pesto with garlic chives :-)
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Kev Alviti14 May 2015 at 14:20
If there's a seed swap in your area I can really recommend it, I picked up so many. I'm planning on saving more and buying less although it's not as straight forward as I originally thought. I need to build a little retaining wall but nothing like yours!
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Martin and Amy14 May 2015 at 17:09
I always seem to find that I buy some new seeds and then the month after the exact same seeds are given away with one of the magazines that I buy!

Typical!
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Compostwoman14 May 2015 at 18:26
My pleasure Sue :) well done - a worthy cause :)
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Compostwoman14 May 2015 at 18:27
And I subscribe to the same mag and bought the other one for the same reason :)
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Anonymous14 May 2015 at 18:59
Save your own seed from heirloom veg and the food is free forever!
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The Quirky Bird Gardener14 May 2015 at 20:56
That's great, all those free seeds, and if stored properly they last for years, happy sowing :)
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Jo@awholeplotoflove15 May 2015 at 07:26
They soon mount up 'free seeds', I know I have a couple of boxes worth x
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Comments are now turned off for this old blog of mine. Thank you for reading the posts, I hope you enjoyed them. xx

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

This was my Blog, just me writing about our day to day life learning all about and then living the smallholding life. First we started on a farm in Oxfordshire, then we moved to a smaller place in Berkshire (both in England) and then we found a place of our very own at the bottom of a hillside in North Wales. Along for the ride were all our various animals, and we ended up with just our dogs, Suky and Mavis, our cat Ginger .... who secretly thinks he's one of the canine gang, a sheep called Ethel who wandered in off the road and stayed... and a roving band of egg laying chickens that live cheek by jowl with the local wildlife.

We grow our own fruit and vegetables, selling surplus plants and edibles at the gate. We sell the eggs the chickens lay, we reuse, recycle and rethink ... and life ticks over at a pace that suits us.

It was simply the wild and wacky ramblings of a 50 something townie turned country girl called Sue, who lost her heart to a sailor and started a new life in the country .... many years ago. On a path that took us from Cumbria to Oxfordshire, to Berkshire and then we found our home at the bottom of a wet and windy Welsh hillside by a busy main road.

Pull up a chair, grab a coffee and relax into a world of dogs, cats, chickens, polytunnels and veggies with the occasional grass munching sheep thrown in for good measure.

Sue xx

Disclaimer

Our New Life in the Country is my blog.

I use it to chart the day by day, week by week, year by year goings on in mine and Lovely Hubby's life. In it I also express my views and opinions, and say what I do and occasionally how I do it. I am hoping that this will prove to be a useful reminder for myself of how we did things, as we continue in our learning process.

If you chose to follow my practices it is assumed that you will do so with care and consideration, and question where necessary any methods or techniques I use to your own satisfaction and match them to your own circumstances.

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