A bit of light weeding . . .

Yesterday's loaf, which was a Sunflower loaf, half and half wholemeal, with some spelt flour in too.  Scrummy.

This morning I baked a batch of Raspberry Muffins (raspberries from the garden) to take into Carmarthen Antiques Centre as they celebrated two years trading in their new building yesterday.  They were gratefully received!

Meanwhile, yesterday afternoon I got busy in the garden, using the strimmer, and then (wo)manpower to remove the nettles, brambles and waist-high grass which had got everywhere during June, when I couldn't get out there because of the pollen levels.

I didn't take a "before" photo but here is after.  The ancient roserie de l'Hay rose is no longer held in thrall of grass/brambles/nettles . . .  I also edged the top end of the driveway, but you can't see that.

Work in progress here - you can see how overgrown it is in the paddock plot.  The Lemon Balm is about 2 feet high and the weeds (grass) taller still.

Above and below: yet to do . . .  I'll get there in the end.

However, this weekend I am off to Sheffield to stay with our eldest daughter Tam, so it will have to wait until my return . . .

We make a good team

Self-sown Nasturtiums flower happily by the Damson tree.

This was one of my weekend jobs: clearing the 10ft high Snowberries, and the 15 ft high blackberries which had climbed up into the apple tree (early eater) in the last couple of years, when I was too unwell to tackle them.

My husband was also busy whilst I sawed off dead branches, and ripped out long lengths of brambles - which didn't help matters by getting through to the tree canopy and then branching out into a bouquet of branches and fresh growth which defied all attempts at dragging through the apple tree and had to be cut up (with me hanging off the ladder to reach) and pulled through.  A selection of tools was called for - secateurs, a hoe, a long-handled pruner, stout gloves and determination.

He was busy preparing to make a corner repair on the lid of the 1740 coffer . . .  First straighten broken edge.

First he needed to check through his Wood Resources (e.g. a LARGE stable which is the dumping ground for all Useful Bits of Wood) for a piece of suitable age, size and thickness.

Possible candidates - but discarded.

Then the corner of wood needed to have holes and dowels fitted.  The "lollypop" dowelling here came from the old piano we burned the other week.  These were the felt bits which eventually attach to the keys.  The wooden "dowel" they were on was just the right size . . .

The cats are not interested in gardening or furniture repairs . . .  Theo (above) and below is Fluff.

Here is the finished coffer down in my mum's.  This is as far as the improvements go - the brighter brown along the bottom below the panels is old lead paint.  Whilst we could take Nitromors to it, we aren't too bothered at the minute.  Both sides are also lead painted.  My husband quite likes the authenticity of it in its present state, so who am I to argue?

The repair is there (far back left) but unless you are looking for it, it's difficult to spot.  My OH wasn't too happy with it, and said perhaps he should have spent another day making it perfect, but he wasn't feeling 100% so "bodged" it, as it's for us to keep rather than to sell.

With the light of the flash, it is more obvious here as the wood isn't so golden-looking with the light on it, but tbh, without the flash it just seems a tiny bit darker.  He's reasonably happy with it anyway, and since this only cost me £50 at auction, and it's now a useful piece of furniture for storage, no complaints here.

Here is some Hasty Jam.  As you can see it's Hasty because I didn't let it boil long enough and it's a soft set, with Floating Strawberries in it.  That's what you get of being in a rush, but that said, it tastes gorgeous and it's a good colour!  Just not show jam . . . and at least the strawberries weren't wasted. They weren't good enough to eat - hard and not ripe. Two punnets for £1 though, so no complaints.

Here's my copy of Carla Emery's book which I showed to Dawn recently and had her reaching for her Amazon one-click!  I've not looked at it for a while, but already is has seen me cleaning the loo successfully with White Vinegar and Bicarbonate.  So now I can ditch the bleach entirely.  It doesn't do septic tanks any good whatsoever.

I bulk buy my Bicarb. on-line - I think this was an Ebay purchase.  I use the bicarb. and vinegar for cleaning generally but didn't realize it would do what bleach does down the loo as well.

Finally, above and below, two books from a selection on offer at £2.99 each at Aldi at the moment.

Other titles in this Made at Home series include Breadmaking, Vegetables, Curing and Smoking, and Eggs and Poultry.

As you can see, we keep busy.

Inspiration

I had local-to-me bloggers Dawn and Pam visit me yesterday.  We had a lovely morning chatting about all sorts, and how our lives have developed to get us where we are now.

Dawn mentioned being inspired by the books of Elizabeth West - Hovel in the Hills, Kitchen in the Hills and Garden in the Hills.  They were my inspiration too, although I have to say I think their frugality from necessity - they were on the Dole and found, as English incomers in 1960s North Wales found that paid work was very hard to come by - was a little daunting.  To literally have NO spare money at all, only money for absolute essentials isn't easy - and I can speak from experience in our early years here in Wales. The Wests grew all their own vegetables, had a stove for heating, hot water and cooking which would run on the cheapest coal, wood or even turf.  They had a windcharger on the hill which supplied them with electricity and their water supply came from a spring and in summer, showered in the garden!   They were "Eco-friendly" almost before the term ever existed.

Then came along John Seymour with his books on self-sufficiency and added fuel to the fires of inspiration.  I can remember dipping into an illegal overdraft limit to buy his book when I saw it in W H Smith's Above Bar shop in Southampton.  I just COULDN'T leave the shop without it!

I read all the books written by Derek Tangye about their idyllic-seeming lives on a Cornish clifftop smallholding, with a tiny cottage where they still were able to entertain the good and the great who they had met in their London days.  I didn't think growing flowers for the London market was for me, but the books were inspiring in their own way and I loved reading about the donkeys and the cats and the beautiful Cornish scenery and their way of life had great appeal.

Radio 4 used to run a delightful series on a Saturday morning, when A Small Country Living with Jeannine McMullen was aired.  She would travel around the country, interviewing real country people and their connection with country living.  I can remember ducks with the "July sprawls" to this day!  She lived in a delightful smallholding in the Carmarthenshire hills at Llandeusant, looking across to the Black Mountain and wrote about it so beautifully in her books "A Small Country Living", "A Small Country Living Goes On" and "The Wind in the Ash Tree".  All on Amazon at just a penny a pop if you haven't discovered her yet.  Her writing is delightful.  She really made me want to move to Wales - more than Elizabeth West did.

I forgot to mention (so have just popped back to do so) the novels of Lillian Beckwith, which were set on a Hebridean island, where she (an incomer) became a crofter.  Wonderful characters, and a gentle humour, and a life so different from any I could imagine.  I think the first one was "The Hills Is Lonely", and then there were (in no particular order) "A Rope in Case", "The Loud Halo", "The Sea for Breakfast", "Lightly Poached" and "Beautiful Just." Just checked on Amazon, and there are a couple more: "A Breath of Autumn" and "Breuach Blend", neither of which I remember reading.  Ooh, and there are more, "The Spuddy",  "About my Father's Business" and "An Island Apart".  Such comforting reading, and a way of life which probably hasn't changed a great deal in the more remote Scottish islands.  This only came to me because I wrote "beautiful just" in my Facebook comment, and suddenly thought where it came from.

Below: Raubritter in my garden.  Isn't she beautiful?

Of course, anyone who can remember the 1970s will remember The Good Life, which further fuelled my fire, and in 1998 Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "River Cottage" converted many more people to growing their own, and lifting the veil off home-butchery and charcuterie, and the wheel still turns.

Over the last 40 years I have collected books about baking, bread making, and preserves, and still have a terrible weakness for new ones along these lines, although I know I probably have all those recipes already in other binding!

I think my real inspiration comes from my maternal grandmother who made all her own cakes, preserves, wines, clothes and had an allotment to grow her own fruit and vegetables.  Go gran!!  I think I am "a chip off the old block" as folk used to say.

What was your inspiration in life?

She's staying!

I have owned this cast iron sculpture for over a year now.  I just love her - so beautifully executed, anatomically correct and real quality. If you look at her from behind, she has her off hind forward and the hip is lower on that side (as it would be in life) and she still has the lax foaling muscles either side of her tail.  Whoever drew and moulded this was a true craftsman with a real knowledge of horses.   It is Russian, and the original cast was made just prior to the Russian Revolution (1916 I think).   Mine dates from 1967 though, so obviously they found the moulds in a broom cupboard or something and decided to start making them again.   A few made their way to Britain, but only a few - my research shows they don't turn up in auction very often.  I didn't pay a great deal for her in auction, and she is worth a good deal more and I did toy with the idea of selling her for a while - that was the practical side of me.  Then the more esoteric side of me said s*d that, she's too lovely to sell, so she's staying.  Our new Gothic table in the hall seemed the perfect place for her.

On Monday, when I was feeling so rough, the Food Dehydrator I had ordered arrived.  It stayed in its box until Tuesday as I just didn't even feel motivated enough to open the box!  On Tuesday it got outside of its brown cardboard box and I looked briefly at the instruction "manual" which came with it, printed SO small that I had to read it in a good light and with a magnifier for some parts!  Why not just use an extra page of paper and print it a little larger - I still have VERY  good eyesight, and can still read the bottom line at the optician's, but this was ridiculously small.  It didn't tell you much anyway, so just as well I had bought the Dehydrating Bible previously . . .

Anyway, I got up early yesterday morning and cut up most of a £1 tray of cooking apples that I had bought, along with a bag of bananas, into 1/4" slices, which were then immersed in lemon juice and water for a while before draining and putting on the shelves to dry.  I have to say, it took longer than the book predicted, and despite the lemon everything turned brown, but they taste delicious, and as a first try and dehydrating I was pleased with myself.  It's a learning curve, like anything.

I was getting low on home made cider vinegar (which I use for cleaning), and so I used all the apple skins to make another batch (which will go in the airing cupboard for 3 weeks or so).  I will make Cider Vinegar for consumption when I have the apples from our own trees here.  I know they are organic and unsprayed.

When we got back from town yesterday, we were delighted to find that the paddock had been cut . . .  So were the cats!  When we came to bed it was still light, and the paddock had several cats in hunting mode - we had to smile at Ghengis hunting a vole, and in his turn, being stalked by our other tabby, Theo, who likes to try and put Ghengis in his place!!  This morning there were two Blackbirds, 2 Chaffinches, 3 Magpies and a few sparrows out there.

Thank you for all your comments on my last post.  I know that I work very hard, and always have.  My late m-in-law was a very jealous woman, who found it hard to share her sons with the women they loved, so never lost an opportunity to put us down.  Gosh - some of her comments were vitriolic in the extreme, although the most hurtful was when we visited her with our eldest daughter, when she was about 6 weeks old.  My husband K went out in the kitchen, and m-in-law pounced, "Oh," she said, "I wonder how many slitty-eyed little K's  there are out in Singapore?"  (He had been there in the Army).  I never EVER forgave her for that comment.  Mean-spirited just wasn't in it.

"You don't know the meaning of hard work". . . .

The heading today is what my late m-in-law once said to me.  All I can say is she was TOTALLY wrong.  Particularly if she had ever seen the amount of work I put into trying to get this house clean and tidy before she came to stay - no mean feat when we first moved here as we lived in a building site on and off for years.  When I had horses when we first moved here, I was still mucking out 5 horses when I was 8 months pregnant.  (It made for a very swift labour as I was very fit).

I was laid up yesterday with some sort of 24 hour bug which made me incredibly tired (I had to go back to bed at lunchtime and fell into a very deep sleep for over an hour) and reduced my legs to chewed string,  They just refused to hold me up.  I had lots to do but knew I couldn't do any of it.

Still, today I have gone flat out from the word go.  I have:

1.  Stripped and changed the bed (with OH).
2.  Got the stones out of and cooked up 8 lbs plums for the freezer.
3.  Picked two jugs full of gooseberries (all the garden produced this year as we have young bushes) and topped and tailed and stewed up one lot.
4.  Washed and polished the metal top of our Hergom stove, and polished all the brass bar around the top of it.  My OH did the brasswork on the front, and I vacuumed all the cobwebs and dust from the inner bits of it.
5.  Polished two old copper possers which were filthy with neglect (red face here).
6.  Polished the brass lid of our big cast iron kettle and both huge Victorian copper cooking pans which decorate the top of the Hergom and we dry socks on (!)
7.  Polished the two small old Victorian copper frying pans which also live near the Hergom.
8.  Cleaned the sink.
9.  Vacuumed the top hall, the bottom hall, the kitchen, the sitting room, the office and a bedroom (thoroughly).
10.  Mopped the main hall floor, and then down the stairs and all along by the pantry.
11.  Emptied 37 bottles of ancient and now undrinkable home brewed wine, and put all the bottles out for recycling.
12.  Took 3 boxes of charity shop stuff in the car along with the other recycling.
13.  Dusted the sitting room.
14.  Put vast quantities of "stuff" away, either in the stables or in the Junk Room or up in my sewing room.
15.  Finally cleared the kitchen table of detritis.
16.  Got the chap out to give us a quote for clearing and cleaning guttering and windows.  It won't be cheap, but the top blocked guttering is beyond our reach by ladder (safely anyway, we have done it very "unsafely" in the past and don't wish to repeat it).
17.  Watered all my undercover plants.

That all took about 8 or 9 hours . . .  Oh, I also cooked tea!

So, I have just about caught up with the jobs I should have done yesterday when I was busy being poorly.  Onwards and upwards tomorrow, as we have guests on Friday and I want it ALL done by then.  Attic tomorrow, and down in mum's . . .

Oh, and m-in-law - if you are looking down on me from Heaven - see, I really DO know the meaning of hard work.

My poor, poor rose, and running just to stand still

I shall have to make the most of my beautiful Paul's Himalayan Musk this year as where it grows over the farmyard wall,  it has been sprayed with weedkiller (I am assuming Roundup as that is what they use on the farm) and since this is a systemic poison, it may kill the entire rose - although it is of huge age and spread.  I have in the past offered to cut this rose back, but Next Door said no, it was OK.  The first I knew of it being sprayed was when I noticed it turning black for several feet of growth.  Horrified, I went out with my OH and secateurs and we cut it back right beyond the dead growth, me praying that this was enough to stop it being entirely poisoned.  Only time will tell.  I suspect this happened when we were at Malvern last Sunday, so weren't about to see it done.  Next Door has an Estonian couple who do the milking for him - the husband is a drunkard and has recently lost his licence for finally bouncing his car off one tree too many . . .  how he can be dead drunk at breakfast time is beyond me unless it is the effect of the boozing from the previous night, or his 4 a.m.  breakfast is an alcoholic  tipple . . .  Anyway, I am sure he was going round killing off the nettles and the Foxgloves (that broke my heart last year when he sprayed them all along the 4 lane cow highway) and had some poison left over so thought he would spray my rose with it - not realizing that it would kill the entire plant.  So I shan't blame Next Door per se, but he doesn't give a damn what he does - if it suits him, he does it so the mindset is there all the same.  In other words, he might not have told drunken Estonian to do it but he wouldn't have stopped him either.  Anyway, I haven't seen Next Door to ask him and I bet he beats a quick exit when he sees me coming . . .

Quite what I will do if it DOES die I'm not sure as it will look one hell of a mess of dead branches the entire width of the garden and I will have to cut it all down and then SOMEONE will have to fork out for hideous larch-lap fencing to give us privacy again.  A really good selling point - not . . .

Anyway, to cheer myself up I bought myself a big hanging basket of my favourite Fuschia "Blackie" at the car boot sale this morning.  £10 well spent I think.

And I also got a pretty deep burgundy Penstemon "Blackcurrant Ice" and a similarly-coloured trailing geranium.

Meanwhile I am trying to get a company out to do two gutterings for us (inside and out), and clean some high-up windows, and I had asked Next Door to cut the paddock for us (in return for free grazing for his cattle back in May), but he doesn't like to put himself out so will only do it when it suits him - he told me someone had dropped the topper and damaged it . . .

I have been clearing out the Junk Room this weekend - it took 6 hours to take stuff across to the end stable, 85 paces each way so I must have burned some calories doing that!  In the process I came across this lovely old pokerwork cupboard which we bought from some friends of ours last year at the Fleamarket.  I thought it may as well be hung as gather cobwebs in the Junk Room, so here it is with its china on display.  I have been painting this wall today, only to find that although it is a pale yellow, it is too yellow to match what is on the wall, so I will have to buy more pale custard yellow paint (if I can match it) and re-do all today's work. I have two holes to put Polyfilla in too, which I should have done before this got hung today, but tomorrow is another day.

I have been hard at work with vacuum and duster, doing a deep clean in our bedroom and middle hall, polishing chairs and coffers as I go and have just added a lovely Regency Pembroke table to my tally as that is going into the Unit tomorrow.  We have enjoyed it for quite a few years now but have another to replace it so it needs to find a new home.

Right, if I am to watch any tv at all tonight, I had better do it now - I've not seen the news or anything yet today.

Where has this week gone?

I have been working flat out, though we did have yesterday morning off to meet up with a friend down in Narberth.  We had a cup of pretend Earl Grey tea and a wander round the antiques place there, and then I came back and concentrated on front of house - once it stopped raining - and cleared the gutter, and then scrubbed the outside, and all the paintwork.  Have some touching up of paint to do in the porch today, and if I can find the exterior paint, doing the stone windowledges to make them more presentable.

I managed 3 barrowloads of detritis from the stoney side of the garden, which was so overgrown I expected Tarzan to appear any minute!

Earlier in the week I began the mammoth task of polishing a lovely old beaten copper gallon measure which we had bought at the weekend.  It was dark with dirt and verdigris and took about 3 hours polishing to restore it.  My right hand is still complaining!

Part of the way through - how it looked before I started on that side.  Boy did it take some shifting. TBH, I like it a lot and may just keep this and put my huge Victorian copper pans up for sale instead, but for the moment it will have an airing in the Unit and we will see if I am meant to keep it.

Right, this won't do.  I have SO MUCH work here and I have lingered on the computer for far too long already, and I haven't even got the excuse of eating my breakfast, as I've now done that!

Nearly forgot - this heavy vintage enamelled pan came home with me from Malvern.  It cost me £6 and is actually a deeper jade green than this, but the flash isn't very accurate for colours.  It will be used and enjoyed, but is currently on top of the fridge-freezer with a similarly coloured bread bin which has seen better days but still can at least be decorative.