As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

flowertotmum

Hi VJ'smum...ok ok here it is..
Choclate Coconut Slabcake..
160g/5and a half 0z margerine
175g/6oz s.r.flour
1 good dessertspoon of cocoa
125g/4oz dessicated coconut
75g/3oz brown sugar
125g/4oz cooking choclate plain or milk depends what you have or like
walnut of butter
Melt the margerine in a big pan,remove from heat once melted.
Sift the flour and cocoa,add that with the sugar and coconut to the margerine and mix well.
Place in a square tin or what ever you want..
Pop in the oven,middle shelf for 20-25 minutes,gas mark 4.this is where i freeze it when its cold obviously.

let it cool and then melt the choclate and butter together in a bowl over a pan of hot water.
Spread it over the cake and leave to cool...
Beware its very moreish and often tends to disappear quickly..

As for the lotties..well we got one last year and another this year..there is no waiting list at the moment..all lotties have been allocated..we only got our second one because no-one else wanted it..so we took it on..its hard work having 2..and you have pay the years rent in advance..i think thats what put folks off..having to find £40 odd pounds is hard for most folks..we have said we will give it up if anyone wants it but so far no-one has asked..
I have pots of veg at home too..my tos are doing ok but not ripening yet..my cucmber is doing well too..unfortunately my apple trees have suffered through lack of water and i only have about 20 growing..where as last yr i had well over 60...nevermind its one of those things..
Isn't it amazing that folks have to queue for food..just like my gran did in the war..so bad really..i truly thank my lucky stars for everything in my life when things could be so much worse.
My house is totally silent..no i haven't tied the tots up and left them somewhere..lol...they are discovering the delights of magic painting books..sat at the dining table all quietly painting...lovely..only £2.00 for 12 including p&p..perfect.
Right off for a coffee..hmm..reminds me to look for a hand grinder for my coffee beans..then i can strike one electrical appliance off my list...ooops no make that 2..i have a bean slicer too...and i am seriously looking at a food mill for blending my soups and purees..as they say every little helps...
love to you all
ftm

Frugalista

Just had all the paperwork through to confirm our purchase of a small piece of land adjacent to our cottage :j:j:j. OH is laughing at me as we live in the middle of nowhere and are surrounded by fields as far as the eye can see - but I'm so excited :D:D.

It's only about ¼ acre and is the triangular piece the farmer can't get his tractor in to plough - but it's now ours . Have been round and surveyed our new "estate" and found a large ruby gooseberry bush tucked inside the hedge - and it's absolutely laden with fruit :T - I feel a crumble coming on :rotfl::rotfl:.

flowertotmum

Frugalista...soo happy for you..enjoy wandering around your grounds..
ftm

maryb

I'm feeling really guilty now because I'm only just about keeping my allotment from getting totally out of hand. It was really neglected when I took it on 3 years ago and the first year we only cleared one bed and covered the rest with black plastic. I did better last year but then in August I had to have an operation on my hand and couldn't do anything for 2 months. (in fact it still hurts if I use that hand for too long) So it got out of hand at the end of the season. Then this year I did my back in big time at the start of the season. After it got better I managed to get my potatoes and beans in but the bed that I planted leeks and carrots in is overgrown and hand weeding makes my back dangerously tweaky so I have to be careful.

I feel like I'm making excuses the whole time and I'm a bit ashamed that I can't get properly on top of it.

DH will, with luck, be around a lot more next year and I think that will make a big difference. There is no doubt it is quite heavy work but he's always been good at the slash and burn type of gardening and he's an engineer by background so VERY into straight lines. I still have hopes of having a textbook plot one day. And, in fact, it's only half a plot so it should be manageable. I just hope the committee don't lose patience with me before then. We do keep the surround strimmed so our weeds don't spread too far. And because of all the digging I did last year we have huge numbers of poppies which the bees just adore.

VJsmum

Thanks FTM - looks yummy

lizzyb1812

Frugalista - a landowner now, eh? My own estate is somewhat smaller than yours but I still feel chuffed whenever I look at it.

I managed to get a HUGE set of curtains for under £8 today :j. Made to measure, lined - thermal I think, definitely thicker than normal. Each curtain cut into 2 will make a set of curtains for each of my bedroom windows. The current bedroom curtains are a plain dark blue and will be used as linings for the front windows downstairs, also blue. I have other dark blue fabric bought yonks ago to use to line the curtains at the back window downstairs and the front door. Plus the work involved will be very little compared to making linings/new curtains from scratch.

Picked a few blackberries today - just enough to have with a couple of breakfasts. I don't think I've ever picked them this early before. My apple tree is loaded this year so it looks like I'll be living off blackberry and apple crumble this winter. :rotfl:

cat_smith

I'll be back with you all on Friday. DH nearly confiscated my notepad yesterday as I was 'making lists'

I hope my veg have survived my holiday. They will certainly need some tlc.

ceridwen

GreyQueen wrote: »

To my personal knowledge there is a person in my city who has 8 adjacent lottie plots, on which he cultivates with a small tractor (they are unfenced) and on which he grows either potatoes or cabbages. When challenged by a succession of allotment officers over the decades, this (now) pensioner insists that all this tonnage is for the exclusive use of himself and his immediate family.

Do we believe this? Not me!

Also, to my personal knowledge, another individual has formed a mini-farm on another site by having several adjacent plots in his own name, his brother's name and putting their respective wives' names down as co-workers on other adjacent plotholders plots so that, when these people give them up, the wives have rights to suceed to the tenancies. And they do, but you never see them cultivating. What you do see early on weekends is the mastermind of this de facto smallholding loading his van with plants (typically herbs and flowering plants) and taking them off to bootfairs and coming back empty.

Another old boy I know grows flowers exclusively and commercially on his lottie. He has done so for decades.

Growing crops for sale is expressly forbidden in this city's allotment tenancy agreement, btw.

These are just the ones I do know about personally and I expect there are a lot more even in this city which I don't know about.

So, there are abuses going on, and I think it would be worth any allotment officer keeping a close eye on the multi-plotters to check that they are not seriously taking the p*ss. However, my personal bugbear is, and always has been, the plotholder who tenants but doesn't use their plot.

Flitted into my lottie briefly on the way to the shop and found yet more seedling grass coming up where it has dropped from the 3 foot tall meadow next door whose occupier has not been seen for 12 months and has not done a stroke. Grrrr!!! She's a nice enough woman but she's creating a lot of extra work for me and depriving someone else of a chance to garden.

I'm not unsympathetic to the genuine 2nd plotholders who really do put in work on their plots and really are using all the food grown on them/extracting "maximum food value" from the plots and giving away the surplus. I do understand where they are coming from - whilst still disagreeing with the principle of people having more than one plot, whilst many people are desperate for their one basic plot in the first place.

Some of our own personal outlook will be formed by the area we live in - and, in my area, its a built-up urban area and is still growing at a rate of knots. Many people want to be here. We have a higher than average proportion of "greenies" in our area. Its an expensive area AND low-wage (ie worst of all possible worlds...:(). I was shocked recently to see that our housing costs are so expensive that they match outer London housing costs - but our salaries/wages are nothing like London level:(. We have to pay through the nose to live in this area - and I, personally, continue to do so because its my own home area and that means I'm entitled to in my book and I have steadfastly refused to be forced out by our low incomes/high costs. I can see that there are many other "locals" in a similar position - and we DO struggle to stay in our own area here. So - I guess you can understand where I'm coming from when I feel so strongly that we need to share our resources around between ourselves fairly.

I hadnt realised that some allotment sites have such blatant abuse going on - ie people running allotments as commercial business sites:eek::mad::eek::mad:. Thank you for that thought - and I shall certainly put in some comments to see if anyone around here is being so "abusive" of the system. Allotments are for PERSONAL household use only and for food purposes... and not for some "greedy blighter" to use as a business site. I can feel a lot of "checking" coming on to see whether we are suffering this form of abuse in this neck of the woods....hmmmm....guess that means I'm about to visit my first carboot sale for quite some years again soon does it??? Just as well I'm pretty good at starting up a conversation with most people - and then reading their body language.....:cool:...ohgawd..and I thought I didnt have many tasks "on the agenda" at present...:(:mad::(:mad:

The only bright spot on this is that I'm "politically minded" enough that I can see the possibilities for "leverage" in other directions with our local Council if they allow mega plot holding to continue.....

...now you'll all have to excuse me whilst I go off and do a bit of "foot stamping" at an ever greater level of disillusionment with Human Nature. Once upon a time I was an idealist....follows this up by reminding self that if I hadnt once been such an idealist then I would have achieved a lot less than I did in my youth (aged braincells try....and usually fail...to remember what I used to think/feel like in said youth.....LOL).

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NOTE TO SELF: following on from a conversation with someone else today re their comment "I hate my job - but what else will I do when I retire?" and feeling astonished by their comment....must remember to feel grateful that that particular thought simply wouldnt even cross my mind...and I must appreciate that the mindset I know is "LOVELY...celebrate..voluntary work and evening classes and University of the Third Age and Good Causes....YAY!!!!! Wonderful...." and appreciate that many people do seem to be totally lost without a job to go to (even if they dont like it...huh????!!!!), compared to my taking it for granted that there is a long list of "Things to Do - that I will much prefer doing" that I have...

Rowan9

frugalista - really chuffed for you with your land!!
Hope all have had a good day. Enjoyed reading up on your veggie growing and baking.
W

HariboJunkie

Frugalista :j:beer::D;):cool::rotfl::T:A:kisses::xmassign::snow_laug:santa2::dance:_party_:wave::hello: Fab news about your land. xxx

FTM. Thanks for the recipe and well done you on using your allotmeents so well.

Maryb you have nothing to feel guilty about. xxx

I can't comment on the allotment issue from personal experience. We don't have any in our area and there is no council owned land available for them. I think the nearest ones are 90 miles away :cool:. Landshare doesn't work here either and I'm not convinced that it's not just a publicity making machine for HFW anyway. My MIL owns about 6 acres now (she keeps adding more) and if we lived a bit closer I'd land grab some of that for veggies

I'm happy enough growing what I can in my garden and we're lucky enough to be able to forage so much in the area. We spotted a new chantarelle patch last night, picked loads of wild raspberries and nettles and are heading out tommorrow for some more wild mussels. There is an endless supply of them round here (as well as scallops, oysters , crabs and razorclams. In the autumn the mushrooms are amazing here and we will forage wild apples, blayberries, brambles, elderberries, sloes, damsons and hazelnuts. One of the many joys of living in a seriously underpopulated land.

Am delighted by the few days of sun we're having as it's bringing on the tomatoes and all my windowboxes. Simple pleasures.