Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Four_Seasons

Hope the drain issue isn't a major problem, fingers and toes crossed for you x

scandimore

Fingers crossed for a positive drain outcome! 

Suffolk_lass

Having finally caught up again (I blinked, and 40 more posts in your diary!) a couple of bits from me.

I have just made marmalade. I pre-cooked then froze some seville oranges last year but only started the last jar just before Christmas, and so your mention of making marmalade reminded me to get them out and use them. I recommend it, if you have room (as you know, I do...)

Re drains. We have an adopted mains system that used to be private. It is one of only 2 in the Country and based on an Italian vacuum pump system (think periodic sucking of waste). Anyway, it serves some of the higher Village-next-door and most of the houses in this one. At the low end of our Village they periodically get the symptoms you describe with toilet water and out comes the sludge-gulper (yes, real name) to erm, clear the impediment to flow.  One of my neighbours down there has engineered an early warning system in his house that sets off a flashing red light in their hall if the situation reaches a certain pre-critical point and they phone Anglian Water as an emergency. Their next door neighbour had a terrible backflow once and they all agreed it could not be repeated. The people at AW who understand the system are all in their sixties now, and over the last few years, no preventive maintenance had been done. Well early in January they came with their traffic lights and worked their way down the road to every cover, removing and sucking (gulping) every intersection. All rather reassuring as the new houses in the next Village have all been connected without anyone in the Anglian sales team having any idea of the knock on impact on the capacity or reliability of the system. Deep and unfettered joy here, as you can imagine!

I've just incorporated the last jar of whole bottled tomatoes into a casserole here so I'm back to my passata (whizzed) jars here. Still got over 40. Someone asked about culinary varieties of tomatoes to grow. Last year I grew Black Russian beefsteak (also excellent culinary if there are lots) for salads and sandwiches, Sungold F1 hybrid (small orange cherry) and Black opal (larger cherry) for snacking and cooking, and St Pierre (French field grown, rather orange, a good cropper), Cuore di Bue (Italian field grown) and Costaluta Fiorentina (ridged culinary), all in our greenhouse - I will no longer bother with Costaluta Fiorentina as it is too prone to mildew and blossom end rot and for me, the Cuore Di Bue don't grow big enough to compare with those in the markets in Italy. It's probably because I grow too many in my greenhouse!

foxgloves

Thanks everyone for your good wishes re the scary drains problem - an update on that in a minute (oooh, the glamour of my life.....)
@Suffolk_lass - What a good idea to freeze prepared seville oranges to enable marmalade making at other times of year, if you have room in the freezer - I rarely do, but I have made a mental note of this for possible future use in case I am ever the owner of an additional freezer (nowhere to put one in our current house).
The saga about your village drainage sounds a nightmare. It reminded me of my Mum (who grew up in a Suffolk village) telling me about the truck which arrived on certain days of the month to clear out the sewage tank, which in their case was shared with a short row of neighbouring houses, as there were no mains sewers (Mum was born in the 30s) She said that they always knew it was doing the rounds because of the smell & the locals called it 'The Lavender Bag'.
Oh & thanks for the reminder about the query about tomato varieties. I am not as adventurous as I'd like to be because we can be quite badly affected by blight in our area. It is so disappointing to see one's hard work & carefully cultivated plants go down with that wretched disease, so my choices have been very much tuned to blight resistant varieties. I grew 'Ferline' for years, as even if a lot of blight was about, the fruits would all be ripe & picked before the leaves started showing the first signs. I always used to say they were the 'last ones standing'. They are no longer available, despite being a decent tomato, as I think it's considered that there are newer varieties with greater blight resistance. So I swapped to 'Oh happy day' for most of our crop, as they are a blight resistant one. Last year, I also grew 'Shirley', 'Roma' & 'Crimson Crush'. I don't grow cherry tomatoes any more as Mr F doesn't eat them (for no reason I can discern). This year, I am growing 'Roma, 'Oh Happy Day' & a new variety (can't remember the name) which the seed company sent me to try for free. I used to like growing a couple of 'Tigerella' plants in the past, as they look so attractive & tigery, but found they went down like nine-pins during a couple of bad blight years, so haven't tried them since.
F

foxgloves

Afternoon Campers,
Busy morning, as the drain service van arrived early - I think once he'd got through the awful traffic around our town & our nightmare village outskirts roundabout, we were his first call.
Anyway, small money saving positives first:
*Not much of this week's laundry required ironing, so not too much electricity used there.
*Made dough for tonight's pizza & a batch of rolls.
*Jammed the 2nd batch of marmalade & labelled. 18 jars in total, which sounds a lot for 2 people, but I give it as gifts quite often - B-in-L & a good friend of ours love it, plus it is nice with a pretty fabric top & a ribbon to take as a gift to friends when visiting. 
*Darned a sock  - Ash to blame. Nice pair of hand knitted socks which Mr F was wearing the other day when Ash ambushed him from behind the linen cupboard door curtain. Anyway, I've managed to save it before any more of it unravelled.
*Did next week's meal plans. Mr F requested spag bol for Sunday lunch, which I thought was an odd choice for him, but he really likes the batch cooked slow cooker recipe I started making last year from one of the SC books I bought. I'm fine with that, as it makes 6 portions (in fact the recipe makes 12, but I can't fit all that in my crock-pot) & having to get it on early will mean we can still go out somewhere if the weather is nice.
*Did a couple of surveys. Another slow day, but I am committing to checking every day anyway.
*Rounded up a stray carrot & leek which won't get used, prepped & froze, as I'm sure they'll find their way into an Epic Man Stew at some point.
Still to do: Top the pizza base & squelch down to the greenhouse (rain all afternoon) to cut some rocket & also write the grocery shopping list, as we might do an online order tonight to make use of an offer Mr F has been sent.

Right......the plumbing problem. Jason arrived bright & early & got straight to work. He asked me for a list of symptoms & concurred that all of them pointed to a blocked drain....& it was very blocked. He spent a while pressure jetting it, then asked me to turn on the bathroom sink & bath taps & to flush the loo so he could check everything was flowing properly. There's good news & bad news.........but I am very much of the same mind as @badmemory on this, re ignorance NOT being bliss, especially if like me, one is that lethal combination of insomniac & catastrophiser. I would ALWAYS rather have facts, which allow for planning. So on the good side, the cost for a thorough pressure jet unblocking was £95 +VAT. One the bad side, he said that while this could just be a case of the drains not having been rodded for 20 years (the last time we had any problems) & being well ready for a clean-out, he wasn't able to see into the pipework to see if there are any defects which have caused the back-up. He took photos of the sparkling clean drainage chamber, & said he will upload them with our customer details. He has guaranteed the work he's done today, but says that if the problem occurs again, this will indicate that there is a defect further down (possibly roots) so we can get back in touch with them & the next stage will be to send a little CCTV camera down there to have a look & then to discuss the pictures & solutions. He has definitely done this as I was able to read the notes on the invoice when it arrived. The cost of the CCTV investigation has also been supplied, so while I am very much hoping this won't be needed & everything just needed one hell of a massive clear-out, I feel better knowing how much it will cost.
I also asked Jason how they would remove roots if this did turn out to be the cause & he said there is a gizmo (my word as I can't remember the name of the thing he said) which they can send down & it mashes roots up. 
So that was the physical drains side of things. 
On the money side....well, you might recall that our key financial goal this year is significantly to rebuild our Savings Pots? Our resolve on that goal has now strengthened. Our House & Garden Pot had dropped very low & was to be our priority Pot. It has now become an ultra priority as following the drain bill, it contains the princely sum of £1.96 !! And I had to sub it from January's buffer zone too! You can see why I'm getting on these surveys. I don't want to sound as thought I' pleading poverty. This is not the case. We are careful these days with our money, but are fortunate no longer to have a mortgage & to have savings. Saving, however, is still a relatively new concept to us, & I was lying awake from 3.16 this morning catastrophising all the structural things which could 'go wrong' with our house, which would wipe out every penny of what we have saved. I know there's a saying that things are 'aways darkest before dawn', but I think the fact this was going round & round in my head like an evil brain worm shows how important having the financial security of some savings is to me. Once I was up & about, I had at least partially managed to replace these thoughts with 'I don't want to use our emergency fund but should a horrible structural sewer issue be found, at least we do have one'. Of course, back in the day, we never did, & pre-Mr F, if I did ever come into a little money, my emergencies were always things like seeing must-have boots in the sales, an offer at the white-coated cosmetics counter, more charming baskets I couldn't live without, vintage bibs & bobs at antique fairs, all those kind of dire emergencies....)
Ah well, that's a long post & quite enough from me.
Take care m'dears,
F xx

slm6002

Should the drains be cleared every so often, or is it only if a problem occurs?  Sorry been in my home for 18 odd years and wondering if I have missed something.  We do have a slight issue so I may have to look into this but now wondering if I should have pre-empted the situation.

EssexHebridean

Glad as I am to hear that the drainage issue is - at least for now - fixed, I completely sympathise with your anxiety around "what could go wrong" - I think I'm feeling it more at the moment with us being about to step into the abyss on another mortgage as well - although I've done all the maths, several times, we have been approved for an amount of a fraction of what we could have borrowed, and all my calculations still allow for a healthy amount of savings to be put aside each month, still there is that note of caution around "what if it all goes wrong!"

Even once we use a chunk of savings as the cash part of the deposit on the new house, we WILL still have a healthy-enough accessible EF - I've made sure of/insisted on that, and that is indeed why we have an EF of course. But still - that thing of desperately not wanting to use it for ANYTHING prevails. I've reached the conclusion that it is in fact the very reason why "the likes of us" (in which I include you!) will probably be OK in the long term...that we are so reluctant to dip into those funds set aside for an emergency, even when there IS an emergency! 

We've learned the lessons, and been through the process - we treated the mortgage exactly as we would have done any other debt - and that's what makes the difference in the long term, so have faith! 

For people asking about marmalade recipes by the way - the one we've always used in recent years is https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/preserves/traditional-seville-orange-marmalade - although without the buttering the pan bit. We use a wooden reamer to juice and also remove as much of the pith as possible from the skins before shredding as we've found that gives a more reliable set. 

Humdinger1

Yes; I often find myself muttering 'But is this really an emergency'.  Scar tissue has its uses I think xxx

Baileys_Babe

I have found myself waking in the middle of the night catastrophising about the house in the last few months. I am not aware of anything that should have triggered this. We have an emergency fund for this very scenario so why is my brain robbing me of sleep?

badmemory

Baileys_Babe said:

I have found myself waking in the middle of the night catastrophising about the house in the last few months. I am not aware of anything that should have triggered this. We have an emergency fund for this very scenario so why is my brain robbing me of sleep?

I would say that your unconscious mind has seen something that your brain hasn't yet identified.  It can't be too major or you would have realised by now.  All I need now is for someone to explain to me why I started dreaming about my first husband last week when he has been dead 50 years.