Flip-flops and photography foolery.

What a day today. DFS woke me by ringing half an hour before my alarm was due to go off and it was raining. I’m fed up of the rain. The kids wanted to go swimming so I dropped them off and when I came back I popped over to the neighbours. I only meant to have a quick coffee but that turned into almost two hours leaving me only 15 minutes to get ready to go collect the kids.

I want to save some seed off the hollyhock so when I went home I  thought, despite the rain, that I’d nip out before I had to go and collect the kids to take a photo so I remember what the flowers were like. I grabbed my fleece and a rain hat, slipped on my flip flops and ran outside. It was hard taking pics with my left hand but because of my right wrist, I couldn’t use it properly. I  couldn’t get a picture through the fence anyway so I went around to get closer. Getting soaking wet, aware that I would be late to fetch the kids if I didnt hurry, I stepped into the overgrown grass and felt a sharp pain in my right foot. Looking down I saw the end of the plank of wood in the grass and I knew what I’d done. I went to pick up my foot but the wood lifted too. I tried to pull the wood off with my one good hand (remember my bad wrist that’s been in a support for two days) and realised avplanter of sweet peas was on top of it. So I had to try to balance on my left leg,without moving the right, put the camera in my pocket and lift the planter off the wood with two hands but without bending my right wrist nor taking too much weight with it. Achieving this, I had to pull the wood off my foot. The nail that had pierced my flip-flop and foot was very rusty and bent. I semi-hopped (have you tried hopping in flip-flops), semi-limped, and semi-skidded in the rain up to the house. Then I did my best to clean it but there was now mud that had splashed from the downpour mixing with the blood trickling out of the tiny hole and I now had 3 minutes to get to the sports centre to fetch the kids. Typically, the plaster I put on wouldn’t stick so I had to tape it on! I limped to the car, pulled off the wrist support which was now soaked and tried to get in the landy. Not fun with a right hand I can’t bend – hence can’t pull myslelf up – and a right foot painful to weight bear. And guess waht? The wet floor must have caused some type of suction with my foamy flip flops becuase as I lifted my left foot up to get into the landy, the bottom pulled off the bar that goes between your toe leaving the sole hanging off and getting wrapped around my foot! In frustration I flicked it off my foot and drove bare foot up town in a rush as I was now late. The kids were even later and I sat outside (couldn’t go out with only one shoe and a limp on the other!) for another 10 minutes.

When i got back I realised the khaki cambell drake had escaped and was wondering arounf the garden. I left him out. It was still raining and I wasn’t in the mood to chase ducks.

By this afternoon the rain was coming down in gallons and we had our annual eye tests. I took them up and the same as last year, we were split up – I don’t like that. I should have asked more qestions but wanted to get to see what was happening with the kids but the short version is that I need glasses for both reading and driving. I’m not sure why I need some for driving. I know reactorlite will be usefull for me because I really suffer with bright light but prescription glasses? My reading ones i was expecting because I find myself pulling things further away to focus on them – it’s my age they told me. I will research my prescription to see what it means. It seems I also have astigmatism.

I will put my results here if anyone wan’t to explain then (when I can be bothered to go and get  them!)

My foot’s throbbing now. As my nan used to say. I am in the wars!

I think I’ll save seed from these too:

Hairdressers

Am I the only woman that hates going to the hairdressers? I leave it that long that it’s always a major event and I never know how to have it styled. I’m going tomorrow and I’m dreading it. I’m only going becuase we have a family do to go to – which I’m also dreading.

Fruit flies

Yesterday I decided to try making relish’s with the fruit we’ve grown.  I had a couple of large cucumbers that weren’t going to get eaten. I scoured the web and came up with these:

Cucumber & Green Tomato

• 2 lb (900 g) green tomatoes
• 2 lb (900 g) cucumbers
• 1 large onion
• 1 large green pepper
• 2 tablespoons salt
• ½ teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 tablespoon pickling spice
• 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 6 oz (175 g) white sugar
• 1 pint (570 ml) white vinegar

Method:

1. Chop all the vegetables finely. Put in layers in a large bowl, sprinkling each layer with the salt. Leave to stand overnight. Tip into a colander and drain well.
2. Put the vinegar, sugar and spices into a pan and stir to dissolve the sugar. Bring to the boil and add the vegetables.
3. Simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently, until the mixture is fairly stiff but still moist.
4. Pack the relish into hot, clean, sterilized jars, right to the top.
5. Cover and seal immediately.
6. Label when fully cool.

Makes 3 -4 lbs (1.4 kg – 1.8 kg) of Cucumber and Green Tomato Relish. Ready in about 4 weeks.

Cucumber and Pepper

• 1 lb 8 oz (750 g) cucumber
• 2 large red or yellow peppers
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 6 fl oz (175 ml) red wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons mustard seeds

Method:

• Cut the cucumbers in half lengthways and remove the seeds. Chop coarsely into a colander or sieve, sprinkle with the salt and leave for at least an hour.
• Squeeze out the excess moisture.
• Core, de-seed and thinly slice the peppers, put into a bowl with the lime juice and mix well.
• Bring the vinegar to the boil and add the cucumber, peppers, lime juice and mustard seeds.
• Simmer for about 10 minutes.
• Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal.

Makes about 1lb 12 oz (750 g) of relish.

I used all of the green tomatoes we had from two baskets and I had to buy another cucumber to make up the recipie. The recipes say to chop the veg but last time i made a relish, I left the pieces too big and I dont like it so I thought I’d chop it all small. It took ages, a good hour or more. The recipe then says to sprinkle with salt and leave. (Why is that? to remove the excess fluid? Why?) So I did and today it’s full of hundreds of fruit flies. And we have no more fruit to make more and this is just worm food. At least I’ve prepared it nicely for them…

Beans

I don’t really like beans. It’s probably not a fair statement as the only beans I’ve ever really tried are baked beans from a tin but I’m not keen on those. Trouble is, I’m reading all these blogs and forums and when people talk about them and describe themthey sound lovely. Perhaps someone can recommend some good recipes. I’d also appreciate someone explaining about what I think are different stages (which I used to think were different beans) shellies, haricots, driers, green, snap, flagelot etc etc?! How confusing is that?

I’ve also discovered the many types of beans there are to grow! There are lots of colours; green in varying shades, orange, brown, red, black and white, yellow and even blue. I want to grow them as much for the variety in the beans and the flowers. Again, I’d need to learn. Can I plant them all in my garden or plot and have the beans breed true or do I need to isolate and hand pollinate as I’ve read you need to for cucurbits such as courgettes and marrows?

On a forum recently I was reading about beans and they were discussing different types. When I said that I’d never seen one type of bean they were discussing, one member (TS) pm’d me and offered to send my some in exchange for the stamp and an SAE! Aren’t some people lovely!

I wish I’d been growing my own for years. I feel like I’ve wasted all this time buying and eating supermarket food and I should have been learning how to make our food from scratch and showing the kids as I did. There are so many skills that are being lost. I vaguely rememebr being a little girl and watching my great gran when she had a baking day. We were shoed out of the way but I remember bread and pastries covering the tables in the dining room and she seemed to just throw it together and it came out gorgeous. Sadly these skills weren’t handed down and most of what I cooked and served as an adult was “ready” meals. fish-fingers, chicken nuggets etc . Over the last year or two, that’s changing and I’ll learn but I wish I’d done it a long time ago when the kids were little. Oh well, it’s never too late to learn and hopefully the kids aren’t too old to want to help in the kitchen…

Fluffy feet

The lavender pekin chicks have started hatching. One is out and it has fluffy feet. I don’t know why but I’m mesmerised by them. They are so cute! I love chicks when they hatch and wobble around for the first day or two.  There are another two pipped in the incubator.

Rain stopped play

The rain, that we wasn’t supposed to be having today came down in dribbles or downpours so I gave the allotment a miss today – it will probably do my wrist good, which is still quite painful, .

Instead, I’ve spent the entire day trying to sort out discounts for the allotment then a way to send out the information I have! I scanned the discount seed catalogue we had from NSALG which ended up being 30 mb and I tried to upload it somewhere, anywhere, for members to download. The only place I could put it was on my website and I didn’t really want to lose my anonymity by giving everyone my web address. I dont even know thats me! I signed up with Yahoo groups but I dont think everyone will want to sign up, I found a free web hosting service for community groups and charities which looked great but I found out that it wouldn’t host files  once I’d set it up.

I  managed to get the file size down to 1mb and made another accoutn with another free provider but despite it saying it accepts files up to 8mb, it wont accept it.  Then I tried to use my BT digital vault. I tested it by sending an invite an alt email of mine an invite but 2 hours later and i still hadn’t had one so i did it again – that was an hour and a half ago….

so I’ve given up and sent the files via email – i hope I don’t upset anyone.

I was really pleased with the potato company I mentioned yesterday. They were very helpful and patient with my questions and sent out a list that I’ve also sent to everyone. I hope people order from them because they have been very accessible and friendly, responding quickly to my emails. I would (and am to the association) highly recommend them for service alone – lets hope the spuds aren’t rotten! Just kidding.

It doesn’t seem like I’ve done much does it?  Blimey, How time flies..! it’s 1/4 past midnight and I’ve been at my computer since about 1 this afternoon!
I have to go to tesco now to get something for dfs’s lunch tomorrow…what fun and just for a change, i’m tired.

In a follow up to the wasp and worms, i think the towel did the trick. Not sure because the rain today might have kept them at bay – hopefully the weather will improve tomorrow

what a plot of messing about!

Over 3 hours, yes three hours,  this morning it took 7 of us to measure the plots and it turns out that we can all have one the same size despite the illusion that the site tapers. DDJ came with me and must have been bored silly! The plots will be good sizes  at 10.6 x 26 metres with 1 m paths between each. We’ve allowed an extra metre on the one side of the site to allow for the conifers (I’ll have to get someone to hazard a guess as to how tall they are  but I’d guess, maybe, 30 feet?) and it leaves a good sized path up the centre of the plots. We didn’t hack into the brambles today to measure the last plot but the person who will be cultivating it has lots of machinery to do that himself. The posts don’t look like they line up but anyone is welcome to grab a tape measure and check their plot size!

After measuring I came home to sort out dinner and went back later for an hour before it got dark ( by 5 to 9 tonight it was too dark to see what we were doing – wait winter, I’m not ready!) . I was really disappointed because I went to have another go at digging the bed for these potatoes on my own plot and my right wrist is quite painful. I tried for a while and managed about 2m x 50cm which was hard going because I couldn’t get my fork in past all of the stones but in the end I had to give up because of my wrist. I’d already bent my fork trying to dig and I’m really tired because I kept waking last night; maybe I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as I have been.  Anyway, I didn’t do much and now my wrist is painful to move. I’ve taken ibuprofen and I really hope it’s better tomorrow – they’ve forecast rain coming on Tuesday.

Just before we came home, DSK (whom I’d dragged over to keep me company even if he was just sitting on a deck chair with his nintendo ds!) and I went to harvest some comfrey leaves from the pathways to use on the potatoes. I’ve read you should line the base of your potato bed with them so I’m going to do an experiment (1). While we were wondering up the site, I noticed a fairly clean crisp packet blowing about and, thinking someone was littering the site, grumbling and went to pick it up. When I did I noticed the expiry date was 1996! The packet is older than my kids!

• Other news today:

• I emailed a well known potato supplier yesterday to ask about allotment discounts and gave the link to our newspaper article to show what we were doing (or rather, the papers take on what we were doing) and they have responded immediately and positively. I am very pleased and would publicly praise the company but I’m not sure they want hundreds of people requesting discounts!
• I’ve also been volunteered to be on television as the BBC are coming to do a story about what we’ve done. I really don’t think I can do it. I couldn’t even do a presentation at uni.  The thought makes me feel sick and what do I say?! It’s only next week too so I’ve got some thinking to do.

(1). I have two 4m x 1.5m beds to fill with these potatoes. I’m going to plant half in each bed with a lining of comfrey leaves and half without. Then one bed will be mulched with the hay that we’ve cut and left and the other bed will be earthed up with soil. Then we can compare whether comfrey makes a difference and whether we find earthing up of mulching to be a better way for us to grow potatoes.

wasps and worms

I thought I was finally getting the hang of the worm bin I set up before and was beginning to add large quantities of kitchen waste. Every time I took the lid of a mass of worms tried to bury from the light. Recently my kids discovered jam making and badgered me to buy fruit. So off I went and bought punnets full of strawberries which sat in the fridge for two days and went off. I threw them in the worm bin which has encouraged hundreds of wasps. I hate wasps.

When I was a teenager I was sat upstairs on the front seat of a full double decker bus. I could see the wasps on the front window buzzing around. Occasionally one would swoop across the seat at me and I’d try not to fly up in the air. Then one landed on me and I tried to brush it away gently but it kept coming back. In the end it flew up and behind me out of the way. A short while later I felt something crawl down my back through the neck of my top. I tried to arch away from it hoping I wouldn’t squash it. I was in my terrified creepy crawly stage but trying not to look like a raving lunatic on the bus! Of course it stung me and wasn’t satisfied with one sting but went on to sting several times across my back and my dignified appearance was the furthest thing from my mind as I bounced and jumped about.

Anyway, it means that if I see a wasp now, I normally run, arms flailing and squealing in the opposite direction. OK maybe that’s exaggerated but I try all evasive manoeuvres. And now I have wasps in small swarms just feet from my back door. The aren’t happy staying there either but want to come in the house and the car and follow you around. The lid to the wormery has gone brittle (cheap but very effective worm bin) and the clips on the edges have snapped off which means I can’t shut the lid snugly and the wasps are crawling through the sides. I noticed them last week but there has been more wasps each day. This morning I thought it was quiet on the waspish front as there weren’t any flying about. I wanted  to gently open the lid to check and then move the wormery down the garden away from the house and back yard. Of course, as soon as I flipped the lid up a miniature cloud of yellow and black burst into the air accompanied by my hasty retreat.  Once they’d settled back down to a particularly decomposed grape, I hesitantly approached to return the lid. Managing this with thumping chest and running shoes warmed up I reached for the broom to push the lid a little more firmly from a distance and managed to push a bloody big hole through the top!

Today DFS has had to shoo over 20 out of the kitchen and I was complaining about them to my neighbour who told me that they’re having the same problem but on the other side of the street. So maybe my worm bin isn’t to blame. This afternoon as I came through the back door from being at the lotty, I noticed a shadow on the rim of my baseball cap right above my eye and I realised what it was just as DFS went to warn me that I had a hitchhiker. With lightning speed I’d managed to whack the front of my cap with my palm and realise that it wasn’t going to come off as my pony tail was through the fastening hole at the back. A split second later I’d gained almost panic status trying to rip off my cap without touching it and within 3 seconds of being in the back door I’d hurled the cap with the offending insect right at DFS! Luckily the wasp had taken quite a impact as it hit either DFS or the kitchen cupboard and was walking around slightly concussed instead of trying to revenge itself for it’s treatment – get em before they get you I now feel.

Although I don’t like killing things and I know they do a good job, I have put up a wasp trap. I’ve baited it with overripe strawberries in the hope that it will distract them from the wormery and I can begin using it again for our household waste, or move the wormery or, if the trap is very successful, move the trap away from the house.

Once it got dark tonight, I’ve taken the lid off the wormery, placed a folded towel over the top and replaced the lid. I hope that stops them going in. I also moved the trap to the other side of the garden. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Home Grown Food

I’m pleased with myself! Everything on my plate has been produced at home. The eggs from the hens, the beans, courgettes, tomatoes, onions and even the herbs are from out of the garden!

New folk arrive – and so do me spuds!

I Know what you’re thinking.  Is that the new folk or the spuds in that photo? Well its the spuds!

I went to the site this morning to meet and greet new people  – I like that part. Already though, issues have been raised that I hadn’t considered.

The first related to the fee we are charging.  As we are a new association there are costs involved in setting up the site. I don’t know what they are all going to be but I can think of:

• security gates, posts and fitting plus labour and delivery of items
• access gates  plus labour and delivery of items
• locks
• pathways clearing, weed membrane (?) covering (bark). plus labour and delivery of items
• car park clearing, and creating some type of hardstanding
• rubbish removal such as skips
• possible water supply or at least have the water board survey the site.

There are probably lots more but as we are new to this, we don’t know. We have also found that although people have said they definately want a plot , some aren’t turning up to work on them and certainly aren’t helping with clearing the site – it ends up with the same people (less than 5…) to try to do all of it.  At the last meeting we decided to ask people to pay a fee (£50) to secure their plot, show their commitment and it would also help to pay towards the items we need to purchase.  Considering our council are charging more than double this amount annually, the fee seems fair although this could change when we’ve assessed everything involved. If the fee isn’t paid within a specified time limit (mid September which gave them 2 months) they will lose their plot.

One of the newcomers asked me how long the £50 rent lasted for and when he’d be required to pay again. I explained that our constitution says the fees are paid annualy in  January (which is when the council request the rent) he suggested that as he wasn’t having the plot for a full year, the fee should be reduced.  I wasn’t prepared for questions regarding fees and struggled to find answers on the spot although I did explain that we were all paying the same amount for the same length of time and that trying to regenerate the site costs money that we all had to contribute to. I didn’t suggest that he pick up a fork, rake, scythe etc and actually do the work with the other few of us for everyone, in his own time and for free like we are! I didn’t think to change his perception that the fee he was paying was an annual rent and he didn’t seem satisfied my reply. He suggested that the annual fee was a priority we should be sorting out and advised that we came to a better agreement at our next  meeting. I felt as if I personally was trying to rip him off – probably an over reaction. After discussing the issue with other plot holders, I feel that I responded correctly. The fee is not an annual rent but a holding fee that goes towards securing a plot and clearing the site – we personally have invested a lot more and if you include time and labour… well… At our next meeting we are going to try to make this clear.To be honest our priorites hadn’t been fees as we weren’s expecting new people to come along yet and if they did, we (well I) was assuming they’d feel the same as us that the site and it’s clearing etc was to be shared between us all. Our priotities so far were getting the council to agree to us using the land, then getting insurance and an official association in place so that the council agreed, then trying to clear the site and then discuss gates etc and thats as far as we’d got until people got wind of the site and turned up wanted a piece. Maybe new people see us as “a landlord”?

Anyway that was one issue. The other was plot sizes. I have been trying to measure and plan the plots on my own (well with DSK) and I think I’ve done ok. There are still 2 plots to mark out but you have to clear the land before you can access it with a tape measure! Like me, people want to know exactly where their plot is but again, I couldn’t give a definate answer. They had been told that the plots measured 10.6 metres by 27 metres but this isn’t correct. The site looks like it tapers so my plot which is midwaymight not be 27m long so those further up could be even shorter. One plot holder wanted to increase the width of the plot because of how much shorter it looked by eye but we’ve plotted the width of the plots and there will be people either side of him so that wouldn’t be reasonable. I suggested that once we know the annual running costs of the site, and calculated average fees, we could charge per total area  instead of per plot ( I hope that makes sense, I’m getting tired and I’ve had a couple of lagers! lol). Anyway, when everyone was gone and the regular few people were there, I told them what had happened and said I’d be there in the morning to try to clear the 7-8 foot high bramble covered debris to mark the plots which means making a  pathway 20 something metres back, then another 11.6m across, then another 20 odd metres back again and then repeating it). The regular reliables immediately offered to come down in the morning to help. So the plan now is to forget the sunday lie in, grab a brushcutter and get our thick clothing on and try to clear the perimeters of another two plots or three … What fun and who will appreciate it? No one, the way I feel at the moment I’m expecting complaints about the size and the fee but I am tired and grizly ao I could be miles out ! Oh yes. The plot that wants a reduced fee is the biggest on the site…

On a lighter note, my Bambino Winter potatoes came today from Dobies.

The catalogue says:

“Potato Bambino

Good all-round disease resistance

In field trials Bambino was one of the highest yielding varieties and showed good all round disease resistance which will suit those who prefer to avoid using garden chemicals. The tubers are round, medium-sized with creamy-white very tasty flesh. “

and

“Bambino – Organic Salad Potato
It is a light and creamy but less waxy variety to other new potatoes. It has good resistance to tuber and foliage blight and scab.”

There was supposed to be 20-30 tubers but there is more like 40. The courier gave them a bashing despite the fragile stickers all over the parcel and some of the tubers are damages. Now I’m gutted because I’ve spent so much time on everything else thatthe ground isn’t prepared for them and I have to try and dig a very large plot asap!

Just another snippet. It seems that our plot is inviting all sorts of interest. We were told tonight that a neighbour to the site stopped a few teenagers from carting off with some of the water butts. We knew that uninvited people had been on site taking the old metal but hadn’t realised that others were on site too.

Other visitors – or possibly residents – we have are rabbits (well at least one which has been spotted on many occasions) a fox, pigeons, a dead rat (live ones too more than likely but none spotted) cats, and I think a perigrine falcon, sparrowhawk or hobby which swooped the length of the site low to the ground last night, skimmed over my head and landed on my shed. It looked at me for a second or two and was gone agian. Whatever it was looked like a grey bird of prey.