Have You Stocked Up

Its been a funny year with the weather, I blame that Greater Thunderbox or whatever her name is, you know the one, the girl with a face like a smacked ar*e who is always snarling and moaning about climate change and running around the world on £15M catamarans or the devil incarnate, aeroplanes, and shows herself to be nothing more than a thick and stupid hypocrite who needs her schooling more than most.

Timber has never been a problem as we have plenty of it and we grow new trees from fallen or harvested trees seeds from our own trees and plane several trees to replace existing fallen trees along with thinning out to allow sunlight through the canopy and allow naturally fallen seeds to grow into trees, naturally. This timber is harvested and much of it is cut into boards or square posts and the trimmings and sawdust are burned in many of the properties in the village along with other woods substances such as willow trimmed from trees and hedging which is cut and and put through a shredder and stored in recycled 1 tonne builders bags, or large containers in neighbours wood stores and is ready for use in weeks.

We have had a lot of paper waste which is shredded and added to sawdust from out cutting of timber and this is mixed at 2 parts shredded paper to 2 parts sawdust, and 1 part horse or cow muck to which rainwater is added and left for a couple of weeks to break down the fibres and this is held in a large tank fitted with a motor and large cutter to chop up the ingredients and mix them, this mixture is poured into moulds and a small hydraulic ram compresses it to compress the mixture into round pucks with a central hole to aid burning. These are stored and dried out in readiness for winter burning and currently we have around 50 tonnes of these in readiness for winter and along with the wood it means nobody will be putting on their gas heating in the village as their log burners will heat their homes.

Its been a bad year for crops apparently, but we have bumper crops of many things and rhubarb, blackberries, and apples have been plentiful and this year we have collected and pressed enough apples for 5000 litres of apple juice and around 3000 litres of this has been turned into cider, this will be ready for Christmas and it will be a very merry one for the cider drinkers, which is virtually the entire village.

Most of us have had bumper greenhouse crops and the weather allowed an early start for these crops and many of us still have greenhouse crops growing, but the winter crops are still growing and plentiful and everyone in the village will have their christmas dinner supplied from the gardens. Many of the harvested crops are stored either by freezing or bottling and most of us have made up stew packs in readiness for winter, and much of the beetroot is stored in buckets of dry sand and is in excellent condition. Many crops have been dried and herbs have been crushed or turned into sauces such as mint sauce and bottled with enough for everyone for the next year plus.

I've had a good year also. Bearing in mind I only have a rear garden 20ft x 60ft My chest freezer will by the end of the week be full to the brim. despite giving a lot of produce away.
As I now have problems bending ,I have covered the whole garden in a thick membrain .This eliminates
digging ,hoeing & weeding.Everything is grown in containers .Troughs ,buckets & pots .The whole garden
is packed with them to such an extent that I had to move some chillies onto the front lawn.
With all that the garden is providing I find that £ 30.00 spent in Aldi lasts at least 2-3 weeks only topped
up by a few things from a local health food shop.
Its amazing just how much can be produced in a small garden with a small amount of effort.

ive turned all my green tomatoes into chutney , lovely stuff! We have several large jars full and many small jars for gifts, it will last for a year or two stored but i doubt it will last that long before its eaten !

I know where to go if I ever run out of food gents!

Glad to hear your work has paid off Dave, and even with your issues you use your ingenuity to overcome these issues and turn issues into mere irritations, why not produce a couple of articles on container growing for those with a small space or health issues, I feel sure it would be well received by many members.

Lopsum, I never get many green tomatoes as most of mine turn red, having free heating in the poly tunnels helps prolong the growing season for tomatoes, but they merely slow down near the end of the season.

Mr Blue, why not try growing your own!!! this gives you total control over what you eat and more importantly, what goes into it and what goes into you; Dave grows solely in containers and produces masses of his own foods and you could do the same.