A PUMPKIN

I just, finally earned a £5/$8 voucher for buying petrol at Morrison ‘s supermarket.  It has taken a year to earn enough points.  I don’t often shop at Morrison’s, except for petrol (gas if you are American) but every so often they have a good value bargain, like the 5p\8c sausages I got late one night…

I decided to spend the voucher immediately and to get some things we would use anyway such as eggs and bananas, which are much the same price in all of our local supermarkets.  I also decided, in true frugal tradition that I would get a small treat with part of the voucher.  It is always a good idea to treat yourself when you earn something extra, as it makes it seem worthwhile.

It being Halloween in a few days’ time, there were lots of pumpkins.  Now in my childhood here in Scotland you hollowed out a large turnip or swede, not a pumpkin to make a Halloween lantern.  We were tough it those days no doubt, but I have to say that hollowing out a pumpkin does not result in a bent spoon and stigmata on the palms of the hands in quite the same way that hollowing out a turnip does.   

My vote therefore goes to the pumpkin every time though I am sure it has more air miles here in Scotland.  We can grow them, it is just that there are not many commercial pumpkin growers here…

The advantage of it being Halloween was that the pumpkins were being sold at £2/$3.00 per pumpkin rather than by weight, so a small one was just as expensive as a large one.  I therefore netted a large mis-shapen one for my £2, and got a great deal of pumpkin for my trouble. 

This is a great indulgence, as not having children in the house, I usually buy pumpkin on the 1^st or 2^nd of November when it can be had very cheap indeed or even picked up in the street a little charred but otherwise none the worse for wear - and I do hate waste as you have probably gathered. 

We celebrate Valentine’s Day on the 15^th of February for the same reason – Last yearI got an enormous bunch of red roses for 50p/80c on the 15th of February in Tesco and was only sorry I didn’t need 50 bunches and a load of pot plants because they were all there for the taking.  Oysters are also worth looking out for on the 15th of Feb.

Anyway, on the way home from the pumpkin trip I just happened to call in at a local shop.  

 I netted 2 cartons of Convent Garden fresh pumpkin and bean soup for 25p/40c each, reduced from £2.25/$3.50 each.  It was to be used that day, so I brought it home and boiled it up vigorously before putting it in the fridge.  We ate it for our dinner last night with a bit of chicken chopped up in it.  The total cost of the dinner was about 40p/60c each and very tasty it was too. 

The chicken had been a bargain earlier in the week.  It had so far done 3 meals and we still had some left.  
(See below!)

Meanwhile, back to the pumpkin.  It is a variety called Crown Prince and a beautiful grey-blue colour, rather like a duck egg. 

I have a great pumpkin recipe, the original version of which comes from the ‘Boxing Clever Cook Book’ by Jacqui Jones and Joan Wilmot.   

They are involved in a CSA scheme, or Community Supported Agriculture.  CSA involves a group of people who pay a ‘share’ to a grower in advance and are promised a share of the produce when it is ready.  People usually help out at the farm or nursery for a day or so, making it a social thing too.  

 The book is about how to use all the vegetables that CSA members get, especially when there is a glut of something (usually cabbage no doubt).  It is therefore a great book for vegetable gardeners, those of us who bulk buys when things are cheap, or for anyone who has too much cabbage.  

I took the parsnips out of the recipe because they are not popular with our kids and added a few other things, including gravy, so here is my version of it.

Cut the top off the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds.  Prick the skin in several places, sprinkle it with salt and olive oil and put some garlic inside it. 

Put the pumpkin and the lid in a baking dish and bake until just tender but still holding its shape.  Or prick it all over, put it on a plate and microwave on medium for as long as it takes.  

(NB if you are going to chop up a  pumpkin for a different recipe, microwave it for a bit first and it will be much easier.)

Meanwhile, cook some potatoes, carrots and swede – or whatever other root vegetabes you have and mash them up with some olive oil and chopped chives.  Cook a handful of brown rice separately and mix it into the mash if desired. Mix in other left overs as you desire eg baked beans, peas, chopped meat or cheese.

Stuff the pumpkin with this mixture and bake until it is hot and tender.  

Mix some gravy by your usual method, or dissolve some miso, Marmite, Bovril or a stock cube in a mug of hot water, with some chopped parsley and chives in it if you have some.  Pour this over the potato mixture in the pumpkin before serving.  Serve with grated cheese on top or with a side serving of home-made tomato sauce. 

For a Halloween dinner it can be brought to the table with a candle stuck in the top of it, and you can hollow out a face before stuffing the pumpkin.

 The recipe can be used with any squash, pumpkin, courgette or marrow and the ingredients adapted to suit what you have in the fridge.

This pumpkin was destined to become other things though, because a whole stuffed pumpkin is a lot for the two of us. 
So half of it became pumpkin, pak choi and left over chicken curry and  pumkin soup.

The other half was cubed and frozen. NB you can freeze most vegetables for a month or so without having to blanche them, (ie scald in hot water for 2-3 minutes to destroy the enzymes).  for longer storage you will need to.  You can easily tell if frozen vegetables have started to deteriorate as they go tough and lose their structure.

Another option for home freezing is to cheat and part-cook the pumpkin (or other vegetables) in the microwave in a covered dish with a little water until hot.  Or just cook it and freeze ready to use.

High acid things like apples and rhubarb can be stored without blanching anyway and will keep for a long time. 
Having cooked the pumpkin then, the seeds were saved.  I looked in my gardening catalogue and seeds for this particular pumkin were £2.76 for ten.  I had about a hundred.  So I saved 20 or so for myself and a friend to plant next year, by rinsing them and putting them on paper towel to dry for 2-3 weeks.

I rinsed the rest and then baked them in the oven to eat.   Don't try this at home I have just had to change this entry - I think being able to bake and eat the pumpkin seeds is a bit like the poodle in the microwave adult fairy story, or the recipe for meadowsweet wine. (The Poodle didn't happen, the meadowsweet wine doesn't work).  I have cookery books that tell you the pumpkin seeds work - and for that matter that the meadowsweet wine does.  My pumpkin seeds stayed firmly stuck to the husk, half on each side when I split them open and were just not worth the bother.

So here is the story about the wine, just to make up for it.  I used to be a keen home wine maker and made many kinds of wine.  it was popular in the 1990's and seems to be making something of a comeback. 
I have just sold my wine making equipment on Cheapcycle (a free site to sell things) and could have sold it 6 times over.  I tried a couple of years ago and no one wanted it.

In the times when I was a keen winemaker,( I may blog about this soon so keep watching) a friend who was equally keen (if not more so) and myself experimented with many different kinds.  Several books had a recipe for wine made from a hedgerow flower called meadowsweet.
It smells divine when you first make the wine, which is a lovely golden shade.  Then it goes dark brown and tastes vile.  We covered it in paper and used dark demi johns and it made no difference.  I thought it was me and my friend thought it was her until we compared notes and found we had both tried everything!  Sometimes one could even suspect that people put recipes in books or, er on blogs without trying them out properly...

PS If you want the Poodle story I'm sure someone will tell you, or try the Internet, but then you probably know it anyway, I think everyone does!
PPS here's a link to the article I just did for Permaculture Magazine about growing winter veg. Pick those pumpkins though, they're not frost proof! 

The true cost of decorating.

While we were away on holiday a month or so ago, I watched a 'house makeover' programme on TV.

I was intrigued to hear the makever guru describe how the new dining room table and chairs she was advising people to purchase was an 'investment piece'.  it cost £2,000/$3,000 and was white.  The chairs were covered in white leather, which, we were assured, would wipe clean.
Now this house belonged to a young couple with small children, and their kitchen was too small for a table, so presumably their kids will be eating at the white dining room table and the parents will now be getting tense about them dropping food on the new and expensive dining room carpet.

I remember how my kids used to sit at the table and play.  They used felt tip pens, paints, water and so on and it was great for them to be able to do that without worrying about our table, which was permanently covered in a heavy pvc coated table cloth.  So with a cloth on top of it, an expensive table would have looked just the same as a cheap one, and we bought a second hand good solid Ercol dining room table set for £35 from a local charity (thrift) shop.

In what sense, exactly is a dining room table an 'investment'?  An investment is something that increases the value of your money and can be sold (quickly and easily - ie when you need the money) for more than it cost.  A Chippendale  chair may be an investment, but not one you would make unless you already had money in easily-accessed tax free, safe savings.  But a white table will get stained.  And the chairs may be wipe clean but the leather will soon look used and the white will rub off in places.  The minute it leaves the shop the value becomes less than half of what you paid for it - and how on earth would you sell it anyway?  No investment this, then.

An investment has to be a realisable asset.  For most of us, even our house is not an investment.  
We need to live in it and cannot therefore easily sell it if we need some money, even if it has gone up in value.  It costs money for maintenance and to pay the mortgage, especially if we spend money on things that give no return like furniture, and is therefore actually a liability in financial terms.  It becomes an asset only if it can earn us money is some way. 
That could mean taking in a lodger so at least some of the costs are off-set.  It may mean using it to earn money such as by working from home as a child minder or moving your office to the house and therefore saving on rent for business premises if you are self-employed. It may even mean selling it, buying a cheaper one and investing the money.

We recently got a grant and interest free loan to install solar panels.  These give an electricity generating feed-in tariff in many European countries, so we get paid to generate electricity.  We used Renewable Resources and were very happy with them. give this blog a mention if you get in touch!  www.rr-ltd.com
The panels should be paid for by this tariff in ten years (using calculations of the average amount we should expect to generate).  The tariff is guaranteed for 25 years and is index linked.  Those are the magic words.  Anything that is index linked keeps up with inflation of course and that is very important.  For us it means the tariff will go up every year when there is any inflation, which will quite possibly make the payback time shorter.

So how else can you make your house an asset?
By spending money in a way that helps it to earn its keep.  That doesn't usually mean an expensive kitchen, bathroom or conservatory which are depreciating and unrealisable assets.
It does mean doing the sums regarding any money you spend on it.  For example, if you add insulation or double glazing what is the pay back time? If the payback time is long, are there other benefits, such as wanting to go out less or just getting a lot of pleasure from it?

We recently installed a wood burning stove.  It cost us quite a lot of money but is worth every penny.  We are spending more time at home, and both ourselves and our friends enjoy spending time here more. 
We are enjoying getting our exercise collecting and chopping free wood.
We had had a stove at our last house so knew we would enjoy wood gathering, and I have always preferred to get exercise in ways that are useful.
Once we have done something that saves us money and adds to the quality of life at the same time, I love to find yet more ways that it can save us money.  So the wood stove has a kettle on it right now, boiling water for tea.  The kettle cost me 50p/80c at a car boot sale.  It also has a saucepan on it cooking potatoes for tomorrow's dinner.  We have managed so far to resist spending money on trailers, wood sheds, chain saws and other things that tempt new wood stove owners!

So I am sitting here toasting nicely whilst not spending a penny keeping warm and cooking a meal at no extra cost.  In other words, our money is earning its keep.
Our stove cost about the same as the white dining table and chairs in that make over programme by the way.

FOOD STOCKPILE UP DATE

In February I wrote about my food stockpile. The pile had a theme – all those so called health foods that you hear about. I say ‘so called’ because they don’t make you any healthier lurking in the cupboard, and in fact make your wallet a lot less healthier.

Blueberries are a great example.

Yes they are healthy but not so great when they have travelled half way round the world and are 3 weeks old by the time we eat them out of their plastic punnet for £2.99 a go.

And ironically, here in Scotland you can grow blackcurrants very easily for nothing. You simply get a bit of branch off someone else who has blackcurrants and stick it in the ground. Hey presto, only a year later you will have your first abundant crop. They have just as many anti oxidants in them and are good in porridge, wine, jam, juice and so on.

Who has ever managed to grow enough blueberries to make wine, jam and juice and still have enough left to put on their porridge? We grow both, and the birds either don’t bother with the blackcurrants or there are so many that we don’t notice the difference. (NB the trick with blackcurrants is to prune back to the ground everything that has fruited right after you pick the fruit. It leaves hardly anything, but don‘t let that worry you. I treasure my handful of blueberries per bush, whilst struggling to pick about 20 kilos of blackcurrants off our 6 bushes...

Simply add some black currants to your porridge from the freezer. Put the £2-£3 you would have spent on the blueberries each week in a pot and treat yourself to a weekend away instead at the end of the year. And watch out for the marketing hype with any food, with the likely associated price hike.

some of our blackcurrant crop...

Anyway, back to the food stockpile.

I have had some successes using things up. The mung bean stew has been great. I have only four tubs left, and have been getting a tub or even half a tub out of the freezer and adding different flavourings, tins of tomatoes, curry powder, vegetables etc to give us a range of almost free meals. I have even tried it out on a number of visitors with very positive results, and even requests for the recipe.

NB I did, honestly, tell them the story of the wee black things (see Feb 10 blog entry!) and offer a menu choice. Not one person was bothered, and it led to some interesting conversations about food waste.

The Cajun powder goes well with the mung bean stew and it, too is diminished.

The dried onions, glutinous rice and dried shitake mushrooms have all gone.

The brown chick peas have almost gone. I thought they had gone but hubby re-organised the freezer after the door got left open and frosted it up. Behold! Another bag of pre-cooked brown chick peas. He thoughtfully thawed them out and they will no doubt go in the bin once no one eats them and they go off in the fridge.

I like the ordinary ones but not these. A friend suggested sprouting them, and guess what – they are yummy sprouted. So the dried ones have all been sprouted and eaten, and the ones from the freezer went to said friend who likes them fine.

I am ashamed to say that almost all of the rest is still there. I have remembered to take the glucosamine a few times, but not enough to use up a whole one. I am quite stuck with the pollen granules, red quinoa, almond butter and the miso. I ought to use them up but keep not doing so. I hereby resolve to do one thing a week to use something up…

I HAVE FOUND ANOTHER STOCK PILE!This one is art materials for children. I used to do one to one art work with kids who had problems and have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of poster paint, bubbles (about a litre of it but you dilute it with 80% water - HELP) PVA glue (500mls) and several of those glue sticks.

I have a grandchild who is working hard at using all this stuff up but reckon it could take her the rest of her life to get through all that paint despite her best efforts.

There is a wonderful book called ‘Material World A Global Family Portrait’, by P Menzel. He went to different parts of the world and got people to put all their belongings outside their home. These were catalogued and photographed and the photos are in the book. The book also details the food the family eats. It was striking how many of the families only get to eat once a day, or who just eat beans and rice all the time whatever time of day it is and are grateful to be able to eat at all.

The American family’s stuff took up half a block. There was a family in Ethiopia who had only the clothes they stood up in, some cooking pots and a pair of wellingtons.

That is why I cannot bear to just throw away all this food and stuff that I should never have bought and may still be able to use up.

Actual stuff such as furniture, books and clothes is much easier to let go of. The money is gone, and it is better to send it to the charity shop or sell it so that someone else can get the use of it.

But you cannot do that with old food, part used poster paints and glue sticks.

So my resolution is to not let these things into my life without careful consideration. That is where the problem lies. 
But how to remember when I am at the shops and I want something???

Make do and Mend

Handy hints re:
• Making ink from soot, barley bannocks and a washing up bowl ‘shower’ should you ever need them!

Here’s thought:

The real value of things has been lost because they are so cheap here in the West and we think it will be that way forever. The things of true value such as food, water, shelter and community are often cheap in money terms until they become scarce and then we realise you can't eat money. 

These essential resources are likely to get more expensive as they become scarcer, which is already happening in many parts of the world. Historically we don’t notice something is running out until it is gone.

So the fact that many parts of the world (including the western world, such as Arizona) are running out of drinking water does not stop us (or even them) from using it to fill swimming pools and water lawns.

It is just hard for us to believe it until it's too late. And elected governments run for a term of about 4 years. What vested interest do they have in unpopular policies to conserve resources?  It just means they don’t get re-elected.

Our value base has changed a lot over the last 40 years or so without us noticing. Things have come to seem like the Only Hygienic Way for instance, when we managed perfectly well before.

Many people now think it is unhygienic to shower less than once a day or not flush the toilet every time we use it.
Remember If it's brown flush it down, if it's yellow let it mellow? 
NB if you have a toddler who plays with the toilet don't try to save on water this way!  If your dog drinks the toilet water you may also want to think here - or shut the lid!

 I have been following Mark Boyle’s blog on http://www.justfortheloveofit.org/ (he has just published a great book, the Moneyless Man).

He is quite a bit younger than me and I was struck by the things even he doesn’t know that his granny would have.
He also managed to do lots that I would never do of course. For example I am grateful to Mark for providing proper instructions on how to build a rocket stove.

Lots of people around the world rely on rocket stoves, made from old tin cans, to do their cooking on. They are efficient and use very little fuel. But many of us here would be appalled at the thought of having to use one.
Even if we in the UK (and I am sure many other Western countries) are on the dole (unemployment benefit) with hardly any money most of us would rather get into debt to pay the electricity bill than cook in the garden on a rocket stove in the better weather. Yeah I said most of us. I’m afraid this is where my family snigger and think to themselves ‘Not our Janet she would be out there under a borrowed Gazebo in the rain, actually’ and my Dad says ‘most people aren’t like you’ but actually he’s just the same. Well I would be out there in the rain under a gazebo  if it meant I had enough money and did not get into debt.

Here’s an example of what Mark Boyle doesn’t know that his granny could have told him.  (Sorry mark!!)
The thing about solar showers is that the water is gone before you get the soap off. Any good Girl Guide knows the best camping shower is a bowl of water.
Use a soap and flannel to soap yourself. Then stand in the basin and use a jug to pour  the water over yourself and wash the soap off. The basin catches the water of course so you can keep re-using it.  Or just use the flannel to wash off the soap.   And lean over the bowl to rinse your hair before you use the soap.

World Vision actually gives families plastic bowls for the purpose. They are like an over-sized washing up bowl and large enough for an average person to sit or kneel down in which is even better.

Mark spent ages making ink from mushrooms.

In ‘The Garden Cottage Diaries, my year in the eighteenth century’ historian Fiona Houston describes how we used to make ink from soot here in Scotland. Much easier and available in abundance if living a subsistence lifestyle. Apparently it also lasts well on the page.

I think fiona just mixed soot with water  but I have loaned the book to a friend! Soot lasts hundreds of years as ink and does not damage paper as it is basically carbon.


Mark  agonises over whether to make bread, which he is fond of.

But it is a major hassle to make, due to the necessity for also making an outside cob oven and having to make sourdough as a starter.

In eighteenth century Britain they got around this by making flat bread, using whatever grains they had. It was unleavened and cooked on a flat iron griddle on top of the fire. They also made barley bannocks, delicious eaten hot . Barley was cheaper than wheat and was easier to grow in Scotland. http://bakingforbritain.blogspot.com/ has a bannock recipe.

 
Fiona Houston also has an authentic Scottish recipe for Bannocks and flatbread in her book.  She is a food historian and her recipes are very good. 

All this 'making do' led me to think about mending clothes. I tend to think it is a waste of time and I would be better doing something else, so the mending just sits there. Ultimately it means throwing the clothes in the bin though (or use them for rags/make a quilt - but how many of us bother?) Yet another example of how we undervalue what we have because it is cheap in money terms to buy.

So today I mended a tear in a skirt and remembered how good I am at it. I showed it to my daughter and it took us while to find the mend. I mended the strap on a bra and sewed a button on a cardigan. I tried to mend the sleeve on another cardigan only to find the whole sleeve had worn thin .
How great is that – I actually managed to wear something out! That cardigan was a favourite. It is cashmere and cost only £10 in a Tesco sale. I have had my money’s worth out of it.

It is a rare for us to wear clothes out . Or anything else for that matter. We get fed up with it and want new stuff. Or we buy the new stuff and it doesn’t all fit in the cupboard so then we get rid of the old stuff. And yet so many people in the world do not have enough.

One result of all this has been the growth of companies who do kerbside collections for our unwanted clothes and bric a brac. These are shipped out to other countries and sold to people who don’t have easy access to such things. Seems like a tidy solution but it has apparently led to the collapse of the textile industry in some countries, causing people to lose their jobs and the country to lose its self sufficiency in textile production.

So really the solution is to stop buying so much and wear out what we have.

What I have would probably last me the rest of my life though and I am bored with it already.

I am great at using what I have and not buying more until I go to the shops.

I am now trying not to buy anything brand new without first thinking whether I really need it and whether it could be got second hand. It has reduced our purchases and helped the finances into the bargain but is it still hard.
Sometimes you just want stuff because it seems like everyone else buys it. Buying knitting yarn and fibre for spinning seems to be my blind spot and I have so far not counted it as buying something new! I do have a lot already though – not counting the fibre and yarn that I sell as part of my business, this is just my personal stuff.

Mending the clothes made it feel like I had something new, because the things had been un-wearable for so long whilst waiting to be fixed. So it not only saved the cost of the item I repaired it saved the cost of a new one too.

And it was more satisfying to prevent these things from being thrown away than it would have been to go shopping.

I was going to bin the truly worn out cardigan. Then I realised I have been combing the charity shops for knitwear to make into felted knitting in the washing machine! So my cardigan is soon to be re-born as a felted knitted bag with beads on it. And if it doesn’t work, nothing is lost.

In the meantime I have had fun making a felted tea cosy from washing machine felt. (sadly not re-cycled, this was made from scratch.) I needed one and managed to design my own, with various buttons and handle holes in it. This means it fits two sizes of tea pot and the cafetiere. And making it kept me away from the shops…

.

IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN?

IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN?


It is often said that if you have lost your way in life and don’t know what to do about it, look at what you loved to do as a child, and start there. As a child I loved to make things, especially food and textiles, to garden and ride my bike. It has not changed.

My part time business is textile based, and for most of my adult life I have had an argument going on inside my head about whether I should earn a more meagre living as a textile artist or a better off one doing something a lot heavier. Whenever I become too focused on the money instead of the love of the craft, it seems to let me know in some way and back I come to what I love.



If you follow your heart, your brain will tell you to be practical and remind you that there are bills to pay.

But continue to push yourself and to do things that challenge your integrity and your well-being could be at risk. It is quite simply bad for our health. And what if you didn’t make it to retirement, because the job you pushed yourself to keep doing had made you sick?



Simplicity offers a way out:

Eliminate the surplus spending that does not add to your quality of life. Save up a nest egg instead and then you can take a year off, take a risk, or use the money to do what you really want.



A job that is not in line with your integrity tends to lead to higher spending anyway, in the form of expensive holidays, treats to compensate for having to work and through having to pay for things that there is no time left do, such as cutting the grass and housework.



Now ask yourself these questions:

• What would make you really sad if you never got to do it?

• If you just went and did it, what is the worst thing that could happen?

• If that worst thing did happen, could you live with, or deal with the consequences?



My Dad was 80 in February this year. These are his questions, and my sister mentioned them when she gave a talk at his birthday party. I reckon they may have something to do with why he is still fit, active and happy at the age of 80.



Few of the things that keep us fit, active and happy actually cost a lot of money. STRESS may even cause more harm to our bodies than many of the more concrete health concerns we read about such as food additives etc.

Does it really make sense to work full time in a stressful job that you don’t love in order to pay for supermarket organic veg that has travelled half way round the world?

It may be better to work part time, have a simpler lifestyle, relax a lot more and eat local non organic veg...

Even better, grow some veg and don’t worry about the rest.

I just got hold of a ‘free’ green guide to my area. It is actually advertising for local ‘green’ businesses, which pay to be in there, and get priority for an article if they advertise. There is nothing wrong with that of course and I used to advertise in it myself.

However I am struck by how many different ways there are to spend money in order to deal with a malaise which is largely lifestyle based, or to do with stress and general discontent with our lot. Almost the whole magazine if filled with articles and advertisements about complementary health clinics, stress and relaxation treatments.

You need to work more in order to pay for all those treatments or therapies, but maybe working less and spending less could lead to the problem going away of its own accord?

Even if you do something you love, you still need time just to hang out and do nothing much.

Colin Bevan in his recent book ‘No Impact Man’ quotes Kurt Vonnegut: ‘The purpose of life is to futz around’. Yeah…

On foraging

I wrote the initial foraging article, 'On Foraging For Gloves' for the Financial Interity website and it can be viewed there. 

Here is a sequel. 

As you will have guessed by now, I hate waste. 

It is not about the money - you can buy many things so cheaply now that it is often hardly worth buying second hand or repairing things from a financial point of view.   Bear that in mind when you get scared about inflation - many things are cheaper now than they were 20 years ago, unless you really need the newest model.
It is worth it from the point of view of not wasting the resources of our planet, and from the point of view of our own integrity however.  It makes you feel a lot better if you know you are doing what is right.
 
Yet in the great abundance we have here,  it seems to take so much energy to re-use and value everything, and we already have so much that if we didn't waste anything, I feel I would never need to buy things again.  Some of them would probably outlive me.  
Face it - how long does it take to wear out a good coat, or a bicycle, or a sideboard, wardrobe, pair of wellingtons... for most adults these things last a very long time. 
We get rid of them because we are tired of them, or want another colour, or someone just bought us a new one for Christmas. 

I read somewhere (I think it was in the book 'Affluenza'  - see link) that in the 1950's some great marketing conference looked at what they could get us to buy now that we had everything we needed.  They set an aim of making shopping a leisure activity.  People said it couldn't be done...

What has set me off this time is seeing a bag of perfectly good stuff spilling out of a bin bag where it had been dumped in a lane.  First hubby came home with a pair of crutches (yes really!) out of the bag.  They were in perfect condition and have now been re-homed at the physiotherapy department of a local hospital where they should have been returned in the first place. 

So I had to go and have a look too and came home with a child's car booster seat - slightly muddy but otherwise fine.  There is nothing that can really go wrong with a booster seat so it is perfectly safe and now also nice and clean.  We will keep it for our grandchild.

That made me think about waste, as I had been about to go shopping (!) to buy a new jumper and a cardigan.  I resolved to go round all the charity shops and came home with a 100% cotton heavy cardigan originally from Next , which  looks brand new, and a silk and cotton jumper.  Both are lovely.  I also found a floaty layered skirt which will look nice with boots.  Total cost £12 approx.
I wanted a new brown eyeshadow because THE OTHER ONE HAD RUN OUT.  How great is that, I actually managed to finish something before I bought a new one.  So long as you don't count the other five eyeshadows that I don't really use...

I went into the local branch of a well-known chain of chemist's shops and the assistant helped me to find one which was exactly what I wanted for £16 ($23) - ouch. 
Luckily I overheard another assistant mention an alternative brand and spotted one for £5 ($7).  It was not quite the right colour, and somehow I felt pressure to buy the first one.  However, there was 3 times as much eyeshadow in the cheaper one, and I bought it.  Presumably, being larger,  it will last me the rest of my life...
When I got to the checkout, I realised I had enough points on my discount card to get it for nothing.  It had taken me about 3 years to save up the points and I almost forgot to ask - great.

I stopped to do the re-cycling on the way home, and spotted a bin bag dumped by the clothes re-cycling bin.  It was too big to go through the slot in the bin and the contents would be spoiled in the rain.  I had a quick look and there was some good stuff in there, so I put it in the car and brought it home.

My haul has netted me 5 pairs of jeans, 5 t-shirts, some pyjamas, and a couple of other things.  The rest will be taken back to be re-cycled, and I will make a donation to charity for the clothes I am keeping. 

It is better than them being ruined in the weather, and if I make a donation then it is a win-win.  Not sure what the ethics of that is,  but if feels okay.

PS re the Amazon link.  I am not an affiliate for Amazon and do not make any money out of you using that link.  I am neither for or against any particular book seller.
 If there is a better way for you to get the book, please feel free.  I just couldn't get the picture of the book to come up without the link. 
I borrowed my copy of Affluenza from a friend.  I have got many books by special request from my local library.  (see previous blog entry about books and libraries).

listening to owls

LISTENING TO OWLS


We were away on holiday last week. NOT AGAIN I hear you cry.

We go away for lots of short breaks and weekends within the United Kingdom where we live, and I often combine weekends away with teaching my spinning and weaving workshops.

I love the idea of work being blended in with the rest of life, rather than being something that ends at 5pm when the rest of your life (therefore) begins.

In order for this to be successful, the work has to be enjoyable and there must not be too much of it. I have read books about work becoming part of life that are basically about working all the time – ie taking your laptop on the beach etc and simply working there, whilst everyone else is having fun.

You are still working whether you are on the beach or not and if you are doing that it probably just means you are a workaholic.

What I am talking about here though, is working part time and in a non-structured, flexible way.

That may sound impossible but  not only is it possible, we have done it for years.

It takes a bit of thought, planning and well, work to actually achieve this however. 
It means working out how to maximise your income whilst at the same time minimising expenditure, without cutting out anything that adds to your quality of life.
Then you can work part time. There will be more about how to do that in future blogs. You could also visit http://www.financialintegrity.org/  to learn more about the Your Money Or Your Life nine step programme on how to get ahead with money.  This is a charitable organisation which aims to help people,  not someone who  makes money out of it.

Well anyway, there we were, visiting my sister at a Camphill community called Botton village http://www.camphill.org/ in a beautiful Yorkshire Dale, miles up a single track road with no mobile phone reception (Yippee).

And I was woken up by the hooting of owls. I cannot resist getting up when I hear Things In The Night.

Owl no 1 was in a tree right outside the window, outlined against the dawn sky. I heard owl no 2 answer and they chatted for a while until they had located one another, then off they went. I stayed and watched the sun come up – wonderful.

At home, we have a little owl that comes and sits on the telegraph pole in our back garden. So now I am grateful for the telegraph pole, which I must admit until then was an irritation. Apparently little owls eat a lot of worms, beetles and that sort of thing. Hopefully I can tempt it to the odd slug too…

That figures, (them eating worms I mean) because the first time I heard it  was when we got to grips with our fledgling vegetable garden a few years ago and got a load of manure. Our worm population doubled practically overnight, and our little owl population went up by 100% (ie from zero to one!).

At the time I just thought ‘what the heck is all that din?’ rather than oh great – a little owl. It was easy to figure out what it was though, even in the dark, because in silhouette they look rather like Garfield and are smaller than the average owl. Even I could spot it in the bird book.

On one of my night-time slug forays, armed with a pair of scissors,  ( yes I know, yuck but at the time I was bagging 70 slugs a night)  I heard a strange rustling noise next to a patch of garden where I had spread some manure.
The torch showed about a dozen worms literally munching on the bits of straw etc  in the manure.
I didn’t even know they did that, but what an amazing sight. They have huge mouths that just open up out of nowhere. And they really do make quite a noise.

I heard on the radio that the wild life in your garden is likely to be your wildlife and not even shared with the garden next door.  Ie it only exists because of what your garden is like. Gardens are mini habitats in their own right.

In our garden, there many different kinds of bumble bees, solitary bees and mason bees, including some little black ones  which I think are quite rare.  When I heard about it being 'our' wildlife it made sense, because when we first moved here, all we had was a square of scrubby grass and there were no bees - and no frogs, lizards, stoats or little owls either.

Those creatures are there because of plants we have, like the cotoneaster, which flowers for a long time. I was going to dig it up until I realised how many bees were on it. And they are probably nesting somewhere in the garden. It is a good idea to find out where and make sure you don’t destroy their habitat by mistake.

That is the great thing about simplicity – having time to watch the worms, and the energy to get up and listen to the owls.