Battening down the hatches

You have boards Merlot ?? We have newspapers on top of the bare earth!

Newspapers? We have edge to edge Kindles and iPads - so much more modern

In the true spirit of 'Wartime Farm' I'm going to make a feather duster.....I just need to get a chicken to stand still.

Love this thread(grandmother who saved paper bags is my role model)Joan please write a blog. I never buy anything unless it's reduced apart from shoes as I have 8 AA feet and they are expensive to look after, herring boxes without topses are hard to find these days. M&S dine in for £10 is a very good buy at times as I have made a chicken +extras last most of the week in different guises.

Yes, brilliant idea Stansgran.Do it joan, you can combine your gardening with you U3A writing and we'll be your biggest fans

Ha ha.
I loved the nanadogsboy's post and the bits following. Reminded me of The Four Yorkshiremen:

www.funnyordie.com/videos/a3a01da38e/monty-python-four-yorkshire-men-from-montypythonfan

or you can get the script here:
www.phespirit.info/montypython/four_yorkshiremen.htm

Er - I have never considered a blog and have no idea how to do one.

What about the idea of shopping at certain times when supermarkets want to `get rid` of food items. Is it a myth or do supermarkets tend to offer `quick sale` bargains at certain times of the day or week. Has anyone any experience of this type of shopping?

speck Years ago DH reckoned you could get some amazing bargains in Tesco at 4pm on Christmas Eve. He only suggested it once though...The lump on the top of his head didn't go down until Boxing Day!

Merlotgran
M&S start reducing at about 4p.m. but you have to be careful! Not all reductions are thet e.g.
toms £2 per pack or 2 packs for £3 reduced to £1.50 per pack.
I'd rather buy the offer and have a longer 'sell by' date!

Over the summer we have taken to going to ASDA about 21.00 hrs, so that we do not have to drag the DGC around. At that time of night, bread and rolls (6 for 5p), fruit & vegetables (eg cabbage for 5p), eggs, milk and a small assortment of fish and meat - prices cut to the bone! The downside is that these items are on date so require to be eaten/cooked immediately or put straight into freezer. Also there are often empty shelves but the flipside of that is that shelf stackers are busy loading up for next day and you can often get very fresh things with long sell by dates. Not the best time to go if you have a set shopping list but bargains to be had if you are flexible and no queues at the checkouts.

Not sure we will continue with our nocturnal shopping during the dark winter nights. Brrrr.

We really notice a difference this time of year when we are harvesting our own stuff from the garden. We concentrate on things that can be expensive, salad, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, raspberries etc. I know not everyone has a vegetable garden, but I think even a small raised bed or a growbag or two can make a real difference. We grow the "cut and come again" salads and these save a lot of money. This week OH has made ratatouille and minestrone, all from our own crops. He makes large quantities and freezes the rest for later in the year. I have been collecting bags of raspberries and windfall apples and will turn them into raspberry jelly to have on toast for breakfast.

This is the time of the year when we don't get much time out of the kitchen -making chutney, wine and freezing fruit. I find those little plastic containers that Chinese takeaways use are an ideal size for pie or crumble fillings and they stack neatly in the freezer. We rarely have a takeaway so I get DD and her friends to save them for me. DH also uses them in his workshop for storing all kinds of workshoppy things.

merlot

My father was one of a large family and my grandfather used to go down to Deptford market late on Christmas Eve to buy one of the large turkeys not yet sold which butchers were by then desperate to offload at any price as they would not last over Christmas (no refrigeration). My father said his main memory of his childhood Christmases, when presents and the like were few, was the huge and magnificent turkey that always came to table in the best Dickensian fashion.

What about free stuff like going picking blackberries and has anyone tried making nettle soup? Saw Hugh Fernly whitting thingy making some & we all tasted it. Some people thought it was either spinach soup or broccoli soup. Anyway it was very tasty. Any more ideas on free food? Will try anything except road kill !!

There are lots of Fen mushrooms about at the moment. Some of them push their way through the gravel in our drive and sloes will soon be ready for making sloe gin.

Here in Australia I find mulberries and macadamia nuts in a nearby abandoned garden. Passion fruit grows wild sometimes too, and is easy to grow in a home garden, as is paw paw. You can drink the nectar from some tropical flowers if you have the patience!(A gardener at the Roma Street Parklands in Brisbane showed us - he was always having this little sweet snack himself) Also, loads of weeds are available for my chickens: English plantain, any dandelion relative, wild purslane, and of course chickweed are the best.

I'm thinking of doing a bit of guerilla gardening - dropping pumpkin seeds etc around the grassy byways. You can wrap seeds in balls of clay/mud, let them dry, then throw them where you want them to grow. They germinate (hopefully) when it rains.

Back in England as a young 'un it was blackberries, mushrooms and crab apples. As kids we also ate the spherical bit under the purple thistle flower, and took nettles home to Mum for soup, though she did not appreciate this, being always rushed off her feet.

Once I found some Caribbean gherkins growing wild near a grassy footpath near here, but didn't recognise them as food. They have disappeared now.