The Start of the Week

A new week has started and to kick things off my latest addition of my gardening magazine has arrived .... with yet more free seeds ...

... my little seeds tin for next year is almost full now and there is a good selection in there ready to start us off on a year of eating extremely cheaply.

The walls leading up to the house have been taking shape ...

... on both sides now.

The guys are here today filling in earth behind the new retaining wall which is now at full height. With just its topping stones to go on, it's eleven blocks high, two layers deep infilled with metal reinforcing mesh and concrete, and will now be responsible for holding back the section of hillside that it stands in front of.

We now into a 'tidying' part of the work while we wait for the steels to be manufactured, they will be the framework for the garage and workshop.  The mountains of earth have to be shifted, most of which will be behind the wall, all the large stones will be moved ready to be used as wildlife havens in Nut Wood and as edging stones for the road past the polytunnel to hide the block edging of the tarmaced road that will eventually be there.

In other nicer news, Mother Goose is now the proud Mum to two little Lavender Pekin Bantam chicks.  She was sat on six eggs, two chicks died shortly after hatching, these two little cuties are doing well and she has two eggs still under her.  One of them I really doubt will hatch as she ate one of her original fertilised eggs (hens do this for the nourishment it gives them if they know the egg is not viable for any reason) and replaced it with one she snaffled that Poppy had laid.

I will let her continue to keep these under her for as long as she is happy to have them there, but she is leaving the nest regularly now to give her little babies lessons in eating, scratching in the dirt and how to act like a chicken.  They are doing it very well.

This is their little 'broody house', having them living on their own mean no bad tempered big chickens pick on little inquisitive chicks and it gives Mum and babies time to bond well.

I have run a length of chicken wire underneath it, leaving the roll in place to block any gaps at the side, to give them a layer of protection from mice or rats.  And the thicker mesh from the old henhouse window is under the house part, you can just about see it sticking out in the picture above this one.

Even if the other two eggs don't hatch it is nice to have some fresh little life on the place, our first pair of little Welsh chicks.  This little brood are in complete contrast to her last babies, Harry, Larry and Mo, the Chinese Grey goslings, who grew and grew and grew and developed their liking for water .... much to their Mum's displeasure.

I better get over to the polytunnel now and open the doors, it's starting to get very warm here, with glorious sunshine all over the valley, June really is bursting out all over.

Sue xx

My 1701 Post

Who knew that when I wrote THIS post in January 2009 that I would still be writing this blog over six years later, that so many of you would have followed us on this amazing journey from living in the middle of a town in Cumbria, to living in wild wooly and rural Oxfordshire, Berkshire and now in our final destination North Wales.

Make yourself a coffee, and pull up your chair and pretend you are in the front seat of my car .... we are going on a journey.

Who knew that when we set out along this track ...

... taking a photo at each bend in the road.

With the mud splashing the car ...

... not knowing 

... what was at the end.

Bend after bend ....

... until we came to a farmhouse, knocked on the door and Jill jumped in her car ...

... leaving her dog to guard the house ...

... and we continued along the track.

Past farm vehicles sat in the muddy grass ...

.... past barns and even more old and new farm machinery.

Past the tractor that stayed in exactly the same position as a landmark ...

... for all future visitors ...

... who travelled this well worn track to see us in the middle of nowhere.

Round more bends than you can imagine,

... through the fields where one day we would walk our dogs.

Along the almost final straight ....

... until there is a glimmer of what might be there ahead of you.

Until finally in the distance ....

... the house that was to start our adventure and be our home for the first three trial years of self sufficiency.  

Of learning about country ways, of joining in with Farmers Markets.  Raising chickens and pigs, growing veggies and fruit.  Spending time with family and good, good friends made along the way all through our journey.

Who knew that my musings would one day be read by thousands of lovely folk all over the world,  who joined in with us, despairing when things went wrong, buoying us up when times got hard, wet and miserable.    Who encouraged us when we took in rescue chickens and learnt with them how to scratch for our food in the earth.  When we bought and raised pigs, wallowing alongside them in more mud than we had ever seen before.   

All along the way you were there watching our successes, our failures, our fun, joining in our laughter, loving our animals almost as much as we did ourselves.  Sadly the original trio are no longer with us but they paved the way and opened our hearts to other furry characters that have overlapped, joined in and found their little bodies warmed by our open fires and their tummies fed by food grown by us, aided by them and watched by you.

Who knew that one thousand seven hundred posts would go by and still we would be here ...  it's been a journey, as long a journey as that first drive through fields seemed at the time, exciting and never quite knowing the direction things would take, being one step ahead of ourselves and at times one step behind where we should have been.  Thank you for sharing it with us ..... we are still on the path of learning that is this rural country life and enjoying almost every minute of it.

I hope you will continue with us as we carry on living ..... Our New Life in the Country

(The drive you just accompanied me on was just over two miles long ... and our route to the village and civilisation for three years, we only got snowed in a couple of times amazingly.)

Sue xx

Talking of Coupons .....

My purse was full of bits of paper the other day, I hate this!!  

I usually carry minimal change, tipping all the bits and bobs of money into my Sealed Pot after every outing that I might have acquired some change from, and keeping credit, debit and loyalty cards to the minimum, although I do seem to have quite a few of these now.  Some of them Pets at Home and Holland and Barrett luckily hang from my car key quite neatly.

Well anyway looking through them there were quite a few bits of paper that actually meant money, including a reciept from Boots the Chemist that told me I had £13.65 in loyalty points to spend.

So I went out with the intention of seeing what I could get from my bits of paper.

I spent £13.64 in Boots ... phew how close was that then!!  You can only pay for your shopping with your points  if the total is within the amount of your points.  So all the items in the above picture cost me nothing at all, and I still have 1p on my card   :-)

Next I called to Asda with my new voucher (see yesterdays post) ...

... and got four tins of tuna for free :-)

I had a £2.50 loyalty voucher to use up in Holland and Barrett, at first I couldn't see anything I needed, but then I spotted the EasiYo selection of yogurt mixes, this one was £2.79, so in hard cash it only cost me 29p ... result  :-)

One voucher I decided not to use was this one, I simply didn't need £15 worth of anything and I wasn't just spending for spending's sake!!

So it went in the bin before I got tempted.

When I got home the postman had been, in amongst the bills and circular on the mat were my latest M&S loyalty vouchers.  I've got so many this time because we paid a rather large building supplies bill on the credit card (before paying it off immediately with the company debit card) which meant I got all these lovely vouchers, £71 worth in fact :-)

And along with these various 'double points' and 20% off vouchers it means that once again I have a purse full of paper, it's a good job I made some space in there.  But this sort of paper is well worth having.  So while I am flushed with success at my freebies I have decided on a mini Challenge!!

Can I last for the whole of June using only these vouchers for our food shopping and continuing to whittle away at the contents of the kitchen cupboards and the freezers.   Of course now we also have lots of lovely nibbles available in the polytunnel so I can spend less on salady stuff and things for the Nutribullet.

I think I can do it  .... do you?

Sue xx

Sunsets, Diggers and No Noise

Last nights sunset was pretty special ....

... after a dismal wet and windy day, when I stayed mostly indoors, even taking this first picture through a closed window as the rain was aiming for me.

Arthur had made a board with a long slit to allow him to aim his diggers shovel full of  concrete into the narrow gap between the walls.  Ingenious, he's full of good little idea like that.  The guys pushed in any concrete that missed the hole with their spades and they slowly and surely made their way around the huge wall until it was all filled in.   The last concrete mixer that delivered had a long tube that could get the mix in place easily but they weren't available when we needed them and we had to use a different supplier this time.

Watching Arthur with his big boys toys is amazing, it's almost like they are part of him, he spins round, picks up and drops off anything he needs to almost as though he is using a third arm and hand.

The sunset last night seemed to herald the change in the weather that we have been promised, and this morning the sun is shining and the day is looking very promising.  I'm about to hop in the car and nip across to Manchester to spend the afternoon with Mum, Rosy is sat hopefully by my feet, she always seems to know when I am about to jet off and leave them, I'm sure she reads my mind.

Trust me to be going out on what is a lovely quiet day.   Arthur mixes his cement in an old wheelbarrow so there's no constant drone of a cement mixer today or the sound of big machinery moving earth rocks and blocks, he is busy working on the wall by the road, so when I get back I should be greeted with some more of his amazing stone work.  It's nice to go away and see a change when you get back, something Lovely Hubby gets on a weekly basis while I, unfortunately, know every bit of what is going on to achieve our finished result, and all the noise and mess that happens along the way.

As John would say ...'Hey Ho'.

Sue xx

Bargains and Coupons

I was in Asda the other day, I buy the dogs Iams dog food from there as it's the cheapest place round here for it and I wanted to use up the voucher I got the other week.

I spotted these humungous pizzas in the reduced chiller cabinet, so straight into my trolley they went.

.

Once home they were cut into quarters, individually wrapped ...

... and popped into a freezer box ready for future 'ready meal' use.

With a handful of fresh veggies, maybe some meat for Lovely Hubby and a bit more cheese sprinkled on top they will be tasty and quick meals for when the inspiration simply doesn't strike.  And it's always nice to have something to go with all the salady bits we are getting from the polytunnel.

They were on these two large pieces of white cardboard and I just can't bring myself to throw them away, they will come in useful for something.  A quick wipe over and they have been put into the cupboard, waiting for more inspiration to strike!!

The coupon I had was through doing the 'Asda Price Guarantee'.   I honestly thought the receipt that I checked would not have meant I qualified for a coupon but it did .... and for £6.13  I was amazed.  You get them if your Asda shop would have been cheaper elsewhere, and Asda guarantees to be at least 10% cheaper, if they are not you get the difference in the form of a coupon to spend next time you are in there.

Once I got home with my pizza shopping and the other things I bought while I was there, a total spend of around £30 I entered that coupon into the box on the website and guess what .....

.... I qualified for a coupon of £2.44.

Good stuff, every little helps ... or maybe that's another shop ... Lol    ;-)

Sue xx

Plans and Teabags

I was only talking to my son on the phone the other day, trying to work out between us what the measurements of the newly built wall were.  He saw the pictures on the blog and thought how big it all looked.  So I counted the blocks, he knew the approximate measurements of them plus the cement in between, and between us we guessed at around 53ft by 12ft.  We weren't far out.

Lovely Hubby printed out a new set of drawings for the builder yesterday and we had to go out with the long tape measure and check all the measurements for the revised position of the garage and workshop.  (We hit a bank of extremely hard rock and had to pull things forwards by almost a metre, but we still comply with planning permission - just ... PHEW!!)

It turns out the wall measures 18.7m x 5.1m, which is around 57ft x 15ft ... pretty big then,

The reason it's so big is because it is a double open fronted garage area ....

... with a workshop attached.  

Inside the workshop will be a small room for the solar panel controls and battery backups.  The entire roof of this garage and workshop structure will hold solar panels to power the house, garage and hopefully enable us to sell back some of the power generated to give us a small income as well as obviously free power for ourselves.  We are also hoping to get a hybrid car in a year or so, which will mean that some of our motoring will also be powered for 'free'.  

The workshop will be Lovely Hubby's domain for designing and making the things he wants to to sell to give us an income in the future when he gives up the 'day job' and retires to the small holding full time.  With his wooden furniture and accessories and my excess veggies, along with the eggs from the chickens we hope to have enough cash to fund the things that we can't supply for ourselves.

How it should look.

Talking of supplying things for ourselves, usually we have lots of compost to enrich our raised veggie beds and the ones in the polytunnel, but obviously with moving we have none to use now, although the chickens are valiantly pooing for Britain and the weeds and grass grow tall and lush with all this Welsh rain so we should have some for next year.  

At first glance our soil when we dug out the beds on the hillside and filled the polytunnel beds, looked rich and really good,  but the plants have told us otherwise.  So we went to our local nursery, Tal Goed for some expert advice and we were pointed in the direction of 6X.

I have to say it's brilliant stuff.

We have sprinkled the pelleted form of 6X round all our Laurels and the trees planted last year and they are slowly recovering from being nutrients starved for the last few months.  We should have guessed really that living at the bottom of a hillside that gets so much rain, meant that the goodness in the soil would also get washed down the hill and away.

I also made myself a 'teabag' out of a zip top freezer bag simply filled with some of the bagged 6X and pierced a few times  and dropped it in the water trough in the polytunnel.  After a few hours the water turns a rich deep brown colour and you can even smell the goodness ;-)

I've  watered everything in the tunnel with this lovely nourishment a few times now and soon with lots more applications the soil should start to hold the goodness and pass it to the plants it is nurturing.

The first 'teabag' lasted for four trough fills before it started to lose its vibrancy, so that one has now been emptied onto one of the beds and a new one is about to be dropped into the trough.

I'll have to take my camera over to the polytunnel and get a more up to date shot of everything, most things are doing well.  We are getting a handful of strawberries each and every day from the hanging basket along with salad leaves, radishes, spring onions and pea shoots for our evening meals, that is of course along with the snacking I do while I'm over there working, well it would be wrong not to sample what's for tea to make sure it's okay wouldn't it  ;-)

This is NOT a sponsored post, just something I highly recommend.

Read more about the product HERE.

Sue xx