My Off-grid and need to be frugal diary

AnimalTribe · 21 August at 8:53PM

Yesterday DH took the car in for its annual service and MOT. We pay £37 a month on a service plan, so it spreads the cost and covers the service, the MOT and a courtesy car. Living so far away from everything we need a well-maintained, reliable vehicle. Thankfully, it passed the MOT without any issues.

I went for a long walk yesterday and got absolutely soaked. On the plus side I found a bar of chocolate in the cupboard that I’d forgotten about. I gave half to DH and finished my half with a big mug of coffee – that warmed me up.

Today has just been general household tidying and doing some laundry.

AnimalTribe · 23 August at 8:12PM

Tree cutting starts tomorrow. I hope the tree surgeons turn up this time. There are a lot of leylandii to cut down and they estimate it will take 3 days. The trees have been a very effective wind break, but we need to get them cut every couple of years and it is a very expensive job. They also shade a lot of the garden so cutting them down will open up the garden to sunshine. The trees will be replaced by a 6-foot storm fence and hopefully that will provide enough wind protection.

I expect the next three days to be noisy and dusty. The worst part is though that the dogs will bark at the noise. I hope they get used to the noise, as dogs barking for 3 days wouldn’t be fun.

AnimalTribe · 25 August at 6:33PM

Tree felling started in earnest yesterday. The dogs barked for the first ten minutes and then they got used to the noise. However, DH and I were having a problem with the constant machinery whine. There’s only 1 day left, so then we can get back to peace and quiet. The noise is worth it though as getting rid of the leylandii is a one-time thing and we won’t have to pay for them to be cut every other year.

I’ve been on a few walks today to escape the noise and the weather has been perfect. I thought all the swallows had left, but they are still around. It can’t be long now, before they leave. They use the same nest every year and DH has put a wooden support board under it as the nest was looking a bit delicate. I know the pigeons will miss the leylandii, but we have other trees that they will use, and they love nesting in the swathes of ivy covering the house.

AnimalTribe · 27 August at 7:04PM

The trees are all down now and I probably have enough logs for the next decade. The trees will be replaced by fencing and I have hired someone to do the fencing work in October. The solar engineer who installed the system has finally been in contact to try to resolve a problem I’ve been having with the central power controller. The engineer has been talking to DH as he understands the problems better than I do.

Today I’ve been replacing some missing diamante on some jewellery.

As the tree felling and fencing has/will be expensive DH and I have agreed to cut our spending for the rest of 2026 and 2027. We need to build up our savings a bit and there is other work that will need to be done on the house in the future.

The things we agreed to spend on are: minimum groceries, personal care, dog stuff, petrol, items needed to make repairs, small things needed to finish projects, Xmas and birthday cash for the family’s children, compost, books that continue an existing series, and one paid day out a month. We already have loads of cleaning supplies, and we can find lots of free things to do during a month. Of course, we still have to pay Council tax, insurance and internet/phone bills, but if we can stick to our list, we should be able to bump our savings by a fair bit.

AnimalTribe · 30 August at 8:18PM

Yesterday the weather was beautiful so I managed a few walks and to take some photos. The heather is fully purple now and the thistles by the road side are full of down. When I was a kid, I loved fairy stories. They were full of fairies sleeping under thistle down. It’s only in recent years that I learned that thistle down was used by people in the past for bedding. I know that it’s a good fire starter, but I’ve juts learned that it’s a good medium for starting seeds – so I’ll have to give that a try at some point. I also managed to wash some bedding. It’s one of the best things, sleeping on freshly laundered, air-dried bedding. Today it’s a solid wall of rain. This morning there were about 50 partridges in the yard but I only managed to grab a quick photo of some of them before they flew off.

It's been a bad start to money saving as DH decided that he needed a final fling before he knuckled down, and it wasn’t a cheap thing that he bought.