From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

maddiemay

The mention of British farming earlier reminded me that you had wondered if "This Farming Life" was a repeat, no, it is a new series 3/12 tonight - amazing commited and hardworking people, lots of mutigerational team work, optimistic in spite of everything thrown at them. (I am from farming/rural stock with family in associated industries.)

Greying_Pilgrim

Oh that's good maddiemay - there are alot of these types of docs that the BBC produce that are little gems in their own right. Maybe another nursery visited a farm, on a previous series/same type of prog, as even DH said "haven't we seen this" - which for someone that would happily watch the testcard for hours on end……… 🤣

Yeah, the farmers in our fam chose hill sheep and my dad was a dairy farm labourer. Hard work and zero security.

Greying X

maddiemay

Oh dear GP I am properly going nuts here. The series is screened on Thursdays, repeated Sunday, so your OH may have "seen something" previously. 1st showing of episode 3 on Thursday 19th, The one today might intrigue younger Greying as they move sheep to an oft island by boat. Def new series tho'.

MMx

Watty1

What channel is This Farming Life on please? (google of no help!)

Greying_Pilgrim

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81923972#Comment_81923972

No, you're not. The episode - whether it was this programme or something similar about farming or rural life - that we saw was some time ago……. say 2025 - or even 2024. We would have seen clippets of Thursday night's programme, so it was the first showing of that (new) episode. It must have been a different programme/farm - it just seemed familiar is all. I don't remember the guy talking about the wind speed, nor the young couple lambing the twins, where one lamb didn't make it, so we must have seen something else 😁

Edit - according to the beebeecee website, there have been 8 series of "This Farming Life" - we must have seen a previous series, or even a repeat of a previous series - it was some time ago.

Lawks, I wouldn't want to corral sheep onto a boat, tricky things apt to run/jump into the unknown at the best of times. We have seen cattle being corraled onto a boat - but it was in Alaska - and it was on TV not in real-time.

School took the kids on a farm visit. Wasn't a great experience by all accounts, as the farm sold their livestock as chops, roasts and sausages…… and the kids didn't realise where all that comes from 🫤 And weren't terribly enamoured with seeing excerpts from the process 🫤 A difficult call - LG is squeamish, but I think it's important that kids know what's involved in getting food onto a plate.

Greying X

maddiemay

@Watty1 Sorry only just found your post, BBC 2.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

I didn't realise that Fam. Greying ended up doing quite a big 'Spring Clean' yesterday. I didn't set out to do it as such, but DH and I disagree how to do cleaning. I loathe housework with a passion, whereas DH will do it, but he does it his way - which is a quick swish and swipe and call 'er done. Whereas if I'm bothering doing it, I remove cushions, damp wipe dust off first, hoover the skirting boards, move furniture, dust underneath etc. It takes forever, which is why I dislike doing it - especially when there is 'stuff' covering every surface 🙄 So yesterday we had a big push to 'put it away, don't just move it to the side' and I came behind wiping and hoovering thoroughly. It took ages, but the rooms do look better. Just less cluttered for one thing. I hadn't thought about it being a Spring Clean until Cheery mentioned spring cleaning over on her thread 😁 But I couldn't have done it with mucho help from DH and LG who both really pitched in and helped.

It was later in the afternoon than I had anticipated by the time the last duster was put down and the hoover emptied, so I didn't make pizza for tea. We ended up with a wrap boofay, and yoghurt and banana for pud. Although DH was in charge of the banana chopping - and the bananas were from the green box - so you can imagine how much was eaten versus binned 🙄 I did manage to use some of the green box lettuce and some of the cherry plum tomatoes for tea, so that was good 😁

I have a couple of items that got a 'refresh' wash after yesterday's clearing, so need to pop them out on the line, just in case they can dry naturally - even if only for a while. I'm sure we've rain forecast today 🤔

Ta for popping in. Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

I have added £6 to my bulk fund total, as I forgot that DH & LG went to MrT yesterday, and I caved in to FOMO and had them get us a 2 kg bag of lentils, and one of chickpeas 😞 There was no point in getting more, as there is not room in the cupboard.

Greying X

rtandon27

@Greying_Pilgrim - as you eat both lentils and chickpeas regularly, I'm sure it was an intelligent buy rather than an impulse purchase! Out of curiosity, how long does it take family Greying to get through a 2kg bag? Are you set for say the next 3 months, 6 month, even a year?

A storage idea for you - if you have any of those 1L zip bags - I used this when our rice stores were overflowing - decanting into several of the bags and storing flat in a stack on one shelf of the cupboard - keeps air out & allows for tetris with other goods if needed.

Greying_Pilgrim

rt you are so kind 🥰I understand your idea - we're stacked to the gunnels with 'brick' packs already though. decanting doesn't really make a difference - when I'm 'using' a pack, especially of lentils, I decant them into a ,,,, well, I would call it a kilner jar, but I think that's wrong - one of the glass jars with a metal clip top 🤔 That stores just shy of 1KG of lentils, which is easier to access. I would say 2kg lasts us between a month and 6 weeks - possibly longer in the summer? Chickpeas, definitely longer, and I currently have 4kgs of dried chickpeas in stock. Given I sometimes buy tinned chickpeas, I expect these to last for 12 months. I wish I could get access to better priced black eye peas - I used some (cooked and frozen) in the minestrone yesterday - boy they were good 😍

So thank you to anyone who's popped onto this thread at anytime and mentioned 'pensions'. I know we've been talking about DH, mostly, but because of the whole 'could we bridge or not' conversations, I've been looking into my paperwork, and I've found an anomaly. I've set off query emails, and hopefully it will be easy to sort out - but probably easier to sort out whilst I'm still vaguely compis mentis, and alive and kicking to sort it out in person - and when everything is ok, rather than at a time when I'm scratting down the back of the sofa looking for tuppence for the leccy meter.

I'm hopeful that the washing is pretty dry, we've had a goodly breeze - but the conditions are definitely changing, so I think I'll go and grab the things off the line just now. No sense in getting this far and then them getting soaked in a cloudburst.

Greying X