Uncategorized, Day-to-day lifeNovember 26, 2007 8:58 pm

Week Ending…

Saturday 24th November ‘07

I’ve decided that it’s going to be easier to keep this up-to-date if I load new stuff once a week and write things by hand in a note book during the week as I get more time to write away from the computer.


I’ve been working on a radio project this week so haven’t had much time to do things around the house, it’s gone really cold as well so my fingers keep going white whenever I’m outside for more than a few minutes. Mother says I should eat more ginger.

Where the next veg bed is due to go I haven’t managed to get another bed sorted so yesterday I potted all the left over plants, there’s still five bunches of brassica to go out plus a bucket of spring onions. I’ve been saving all the bunches from the waste veg sacks to help brake up all the brassicas and they seem to be doing well. A while ago I ordered some free strawberry plants from Kitchen Garden Magazine, they’re really nice plants with really good root balls.

T&M sent me a £5 voucher so I’ve put a seed order together; they’ve got some climbing courgette plants, which I’ve ordered.

Lidl have quail meat in as a Christmas special, I don’t think I’ve seen it being sold anywhere before. My eggs are due to hatch at the end of next week, I tried candling (not with a candler) them the other night but the shells are to thick to see anything.

Sunday 25th November ‘07

Dougan and Mooman both went today (for beef.) I’ve been trying to think of something to write about it other than that one little line.


There seems to be a fair amount of wind fallen wood around, I collected a boot full of wood over the past couple of days without even really trying.

Monday 26th November ‘07

My eggs hatch at the end of this week! I had a weird dream the other night, the eggs were hatching but some of them only had their legs out and when the chicks were out from the shells they were falling straight through the mesh onto the heater, which they can’t do, the heater is in the lid of the incubator and the mesh is to small.


Back at work today, yesterday was my last weekend off until Christmas, the first market is Saturday.

I’ve started putting together a meal planner; it’s not as easy as it sounds.

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Day-to-day lifeNovember 13, 2007 7:33 pm

Busy, busy, busy

Quail Eggs

I got my quail eggs this morning, all neatly wrapped in cottonwood in their little egg boxes and not a single one broken. It was lovely opening the box and finding three dozen of them, and I only order two! Thank you www.ladcott.co.uk. The incubator has been on and ready for the last week and if I put them in tomorrow night then they’ll hatch around the first weekend in December.

Last night I moved some of the baby goats out into their own house, it’s needed doing for a long time now they’re all over six months old now, Cerris, Sofia and Lobelia (the jelly bean babies). I left Bog Myrtle in with the big girls, mostly because I wouldn’t have been able to cope with her screaming all night. This evening I milked Annie-Rose (jelly beans mother) but she’s mostly dried up now.

I was on a course Friday and Saturday so this week my days are all over the place. The course was very good though and well worth going on, it was very odd travelling into Gloucester in the mornings. I haven’t been into the centre of Gloucester for ages; it’s so busy and full of people, which is very off putting when you still want to be asleep.

Some of Sunday morning was spent starting to clear the bonfire heap that is in the middle of the vegetable garden, it’s getting there. There is still a big pile of stuff but some of the space has now been re-claimed enough to be able to start digging it over. There’s still four packs of kale to go in which s going to be my job for Thursday (my next day off) and I’ve seen a collection of cauliflower that I really want, a pack of twenty-five in five different colours. So what if everyone keeps telling me that no-one other than me likes cauliflowers.

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Self SufficientNovember 7, 2007 3:24 pm

A place to begin…

Last night I finally got the push I needed to start off, I was on a forum and someone said that they would love to follow something like this, there are already loads of popular TV series, books and magazines about self sufficient so that must mean that other people are interested to. So this is my two pence worth to add to.

My idea is very simple: produce as much food for myself as is possible with what I’ve got, that said I already know that it isn’t as simple a task as it sounds. I also would like to learn how to live as cheaply as possible and make some money from the things I enjoy doing.

What I already have/where I’m at: I already keep goats, two of whom are in milk but I’m not milking them at the moment for no really reason other than the fact that I haven’t sorted myself out into doing this. I have quail; I got some for my last years Christmas present (in April, but I said I wanted to wait to get what I really wanted rather than having something else) from these there is one male left and I brought four more the other day, two females and two males and I brought 24 eggs, 12 of two types, for hatching from ebay last night, they should arrive on Tuesday next week.

I’m a vegetatian, but others in my family eat meat, and I’ve got most of a vegetable garden up and running now but ‘the family’ have just been told that we can use part of a field we keep donkeys on as a vegetable garden as well which is quite a big space. I’m going up there tomorrow to start clearing the ground and covering some of it with manure ready for the summer.

“The Family”: that is me (eldest daughter) my parents, my two younger sisters, a younger brother and my boyfriend. ‘The Family’ also includes a whole host of dogs, cats, ponies, donkeys, cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, rabbits and a guinea pig. I don’t think I’ve left anything out but I might have.

So there are a lot of us, some useful others not so useful.

I plan to be adding more very soon and to start adding some photo’s when I’ve got to grips with how to do things on here.

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