Preparedness for when

Morning all, back to the pickling today, will be chop, chop, chopping veg for picalilli, lovely lady across the road has promised more pears for chutney so I shall definately take her up on that offer and we went yesterday to the farm shop and I now have lots of pickling onions to deal with but they are going to have to wait until my snizzles go completely as I can't be doing with 'onion eyes' while I'm still hacking away with a tickly cough! Never mind, they'll be fine waiting. Someone here lit a woodburner last night, I kept going out into the garden just to sniff the smell, I love it so much, I'm really, really sad I know!!! Dull and chilly here today so will be keeping moving as much as I can to keep warm, we've started to clear the veg plots in the garden, isn't it odd how much smaller your stately plot looks when the vegetation has gone from it and all you can see is turned soil? We will be picking what is left on the big apple tree this morning, early I know but I'm sure someone is helping themselves regularly from it. I know it's not windfalls as I collect those every day and there haven't been too many this year and I also know they're not rolling down the drive on to the road, as there are very few squashed ones visible. I think it's a sign of the times and we'll be lucky to keep all the lottie produce this year too, there's been some pilfering already but ours is well away from the entrance and other plots have much more appealing things than ours for the taking. All in all the store room is looking healthy and much of it is home done which is extremely satisfying, I've kept it up over the summer and replaced anything we've used so I'm feeling up to date with it all. I had a little tidy of the shelves yesterday and found I've 10 packs of Mr Mash i.e 40 x 4 portion packets, I don't think we'll starve this winter!!! Have a good day all, Cheers Lyn xxx.