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July in Review

August 13, 2010 in Den, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Nature, Organic Gardening | No comments

What’s this???  Halfway through August and only NOW a review of July???  I know, I know… Better late than never???

What’s fresh?

(Noting what’s fresh & local to know what I can grow & when and a record of fresh pickings from our garden to improve future planting plans, manage gluts better etc)

From the store:

  • Lettuce
  • Sweetcorn (but not as yummy as ours…)
  • Blitva (mangel)
  • Raspberries
  • Blackberries
  • Nectarines
  • Peaches

From the garden:

  • Lettuce
  • Beetroot
  • Onions
  • Rocket
  • Radish
  • Courgettes

  • Carrots
  • Sweetcorn – best crop yet & soooo delicious!)

  • Cucumbers (in the weirdest shapes but all tasty)

  • Runner beans (about a kilo every other day for most of the month!)

  • Tomatoes

Sowing & Planting

(Building a record of what I need to prepare for next in the garden)

Too hot to sow anything much except more basil & coriander…

Baking & Making

(A chance to reflect on the culinary success & failures of the month & share crafty moments)

We’ve been eating a lot of salads and faves at the mo are:

Beetroot Salad Greek Style (cooked & diced beetroot; beetroot leaves wilted in water from cooking the beets; garlic & olive oil)

Cucumber & Dill Salad (thinly sliced cucmbers; cider vinegar with a little sugar dissolved in it; fresh dill)

Rocket & Pecorino (or any hard, strong cheese shaved into the greens with olive oil & seasoning)

Here’s me with a table full of salads, as usual:

And making…? Not much – making our guests happy has been work enough

Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)

Still reading Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed’  – so you know how busy I’ve been.  The fact that I’ve been reading it for 2 months is no reflection on the writing style or content – it’s a great book!

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

In relation to my gut … bloated!  Have been eating way too much bread and know its not good for me.  Back on the salads now & trying to cut out those carbs!

In relation to our business, this month the mood is – happy!!!  We’ve had more bookings than we thought possible (have had paying guests every week since the second week in June and this is set to continue until the end of August).  And more importantly, all our guests have been happy campers – both in the sense of being sound folk with great attitudes and in the sense of leaving us with smiles on their faces and glowing reports in the guest book!

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

Not doing well on breaking into the many ‘unplayed, unrated’ tracks in our expansive collection but enjoying some familiar chilled sounds, especially: Zero 7, Damien Rice, Teitur & Morcheeba.

Also had an 80’s revival period during my party when me & my girlfriends danced to some real ole goodies such as: Jocelyn Brown;  Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang etc…

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

Jo turned 40 a couple of days before me & his girlfriend Zuzana organised a surprise party for him.  An extra bonus was that Carrie was staying with us so could come too.  Carrie & I were introduced a couple of years ago when I did a stint in the UK, working as a consultant and our then boss realised we had Montenegro in common (me living here, her having bought a house here).  She & I hit it off but never really got to spend much time with each other.  We met briefly the following year when she (and her then partner) came to try to move things forward with her house here.  We stayed in touch and helped her with Montenegro paperwork stuff as best we could.  Now, a year and many life changes on, she came to Montenegro as a single woman on a mission to decide whether to renovate the house or sell.  We let her stay in our house (which was a bit of extra cash for us & a peaceful, luxurious retreat for her) and during the week she joined us at the campsite a few times and we got to know each other better.  She is bonkers and a total scream!  We had a lot of fun at the surprise pool party, deciding to jump in rather than be pushed!  Here’s Carrie trying to unstick her soaking wet top from her back (that she told me afterwards was wool – oops!) and me wishing I hadn’t worn such white, see-through-when-wet clothes!…

Here’s me & Zuz, the great party organiser:

And here’s the big guy himself:

We (but especially Carrie) had pink-fizz induced hangovers the morning after the party as we drove over to Zanjice to meet Mil and Miso.  We had introduced Carrie to our friend Mil as a useful Serbian-speaking contact and recommended our builder Miso.  The 2 of them met us over at her house to size up the project.  By the end of her visit Carrie had fallen in love with Monte all over again and we hope that she gets a reasonable quote for the job from Miso so that she can renovate the house (complete with olive mill & press, which if she realises her dream, will be the central feature in an amazing kitchen!).

Turning 40 was much more fun than I thought it would be! My actual birthday was on a Monday – a naff day for a celebration!  I had a lovely day nonetheless.  Here’s my birthday breakfast – with the unique birthday ‘log’ & ‘leaf’ cards from Nik in clear view:

We took off to the beach for the day, leaving the site in Olivier & Tanja’s safe hands (really, how lucky were we to have guests like these!?) and I was treated to a fabulous pedicure on the sand by Amy.  Just to laze around all day with the occasional dip in the crystal clear water was a luxury…

The celebrations of me leaving my flirty 30’s and entering my naughty 40’s happened the following weekend and were made extra special by 6 old friends making the trip from the UK to be with me.  Fran & H are work buddies from my TK Maxx days.  We’ve known each other for about 15 years and they know more embarrassing stories about me that everyone here put together! (Ouch!)

I’ve known Gav & Rick even longer – we met at Loughborough University which is pretty much 2 whole decades in my past now…  The boys hung around for a couple of days after the party which was ACE and gave us time to indulge in our favourite things: drinking & playing Bridge:

Dear girlfriend Ditsch (pictured here at the 40th party, on the right) I have known for 25 years and love her even more as the years roll by.  Vince her lovely hubby who has become our friend too, can just be made out behind me in this photo …

The preamble to the big party was an amazing day out on a flotilla of beautiful boats.  Steve had asked all our sailing buddies to help ferry folk out to our favourite beach in Zanjice.  They were all so generous and gave me & my friends an incredible day to remember.  Steve had organised everything for a bbq on the beach and we spent a wonderful day, eating, drinking and cooling off in the water – in between hopping from one gorgeous boat to another!

Skipperesses Katie & Laura are pictured here – Katie & Tim sailed the Monty B and hoisted a special birthday flag for me; Lauar & Tony whizzed me, Fran & H out to the beach on their new racy yacht and my friends were fascinated by the way the couple deftly ‘tacked’ baby Amber!

Dave & Fiona’s rib was the speedy water taxi ferrying people to & fro (Dave’s here on the far left) and Paul’s amazing luxury yacht took us home in style that evening (Paul is on the far right here)

It was fitting that my Goddess Daughter, Grace,  should be there to share the fun.  She was a sweetie all day!

Here’s the view of the boats from the beach, with the little motor boat The Bounty too:

The big party was on Saturday night and was largely due to the efforts of the inimitable Danny Parish who helped decorate the campsite, organised the most beautiful & delicious (not to mention HUGE) cake and provided delicious salads.  Here she is, with Fran beaming at her:

Old friend Dave Bennett had ‘photoshopped’ a fantastic picture of Steve with a comb-over for his 50th, so Steve emailed him for revenge!  Steve calls me his wonder woman (I’ll leave you to figure out why!) and Dave provided a fab pic of Wonder Woman’s body with my face on it which Steve made into a T-Shirt for me with the caption: “Wonder Woman never ages… she just gets badly drawn”.  Here I am proudly (!) wearing it, along with the gorgeous blue necklace & bracelet that Maja bought me before she buggered off to the UK and missed the party!

And here’s a photo of THAT cake – see, I wasn’t kidding…

It’s funny how things turn out.  I ceded control to Steve for the celebrations (much to everyone’s amusement, I think!) and the night turned out to be perfect.  Sure, there were dear friends & family missing – there always are… you just can’t get everyone you love in one place these days.  But I had such a fabulous time with the special folk who were there.  I danced & danced; got drunk but not rudely so; sang ‘old skool’ tunes at the top of my voice; laughed & laughed and treasured every moment.  The weather was amazing – there was a huge downpour just before I arrived (I was banned from the site during the preparations) and was initially worried when it was still raining a little at the start of the evening but it cleared up and the storm moved off to the left and provided the most amazing lightning storm for us to gawp at!  It was like nature had laid on fireworks for me!  The moon was bright, the air was fresh (which was great because we were dancing so much we needed the coolness) and the company was wonderful.  Here’s what one friend wrote about that night:

“At your magnificant party i drank like a fish and danced like a shaman, and only had to stop (not because of my bruised feet) but because i was laughing too much – Joy is a funny thing. Thankyou again for so unconditionally offering me such a release – you are both such remarkable, beautiful and excellant people”

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

Steve’s laundry sink has become our new favourite thing in the campsite kitchen (pictures to follow soon, I promise!) but the hassle he had trying to get the plastic trim to edge the tiles & the right coloured grout was frustrating (for him) and funny (for us!).  He started off at one tiling shop on the edge of town.  Nobody there.  He waited & mooched around for a bit.  20 mins later – still nobody.  If he had spotted any mint green tile edging or grout anywhere in the warehouse at this point he would have grabbed it and just left some cash but none to be seen.  So he had to brave the town centre and the nightmare that was a dug-up one way system.  Battling his way to the store he was told – no.  No chance.  What about Azzurro?, he asked (another store on the way into town that he had chosen to drive past because the car park was full).  No. No chance.  Any other suggestions, apart from No?  asks he, bravely.  He gets sent off to a shop right the other side of Herceg Novi – a full 20 mins out of his way…  The woman there looked at the colour he was trying to match and said, accusingly, “But this is an awful colour!  Why did you choose this?”  Not only was she not helpful, she just tried to get Steve to buy any other colour under the sun except the one he wanted, regardless of the actual colour of the tiles!

Exhausted from the verbal bashing he got there and leaving with a grey grout that he didn’t even want (but anything to shut the madwoman up at this point!) he drove, dejected back through town.  He had so hoped to get the materials to finish the job that day…

Driving past Azzurro this time, he noticed the car park was empty.  He decide to try it anyway.  “Yes, sir, certainly sir.  Here’s the grout you need”.  But no trim.  Growling at the (now redundant) grey grout he drove back to the campsite and decided to pop in to the very first store he had visited some 2 hours previous.  This time there was actually a real person there and the right colour trim was whipped out in no time!

One Green Thing

(One more step along our green journey)

Struggled to think of something for this month but then realised that our re-use of water is probably worth a mention… We are so conscious about the water we use and every bowl of water used to wash dishes (that isn’t too soapy or filled with meat scraps) is used to irrigate our flowers and grass.

Weather Report

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

July brought summer to us with a vengence.  It went from being sunny & comfortably warm to being hot, hot, hot!  We’ve had the odd crazy storm and downpour of rain but far from complaining that summer proper isn’t here yet, we’re loving the respite from the beating sun and thankful for every day the gardens get watered by nature and not us!

June in Review

July 3, 2010 in Den, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 1 comment

What’s fresh?

(Noting what’s fresh & local to know what I can grow & when and a record of fresh pickings from our garden to improve future planting plans, manage gluts better etc)

From the store:

  • Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • New potatoes
  • Spring onions
  • Strawberries
  • Peaches

From the garden:

  • Lettuce
  • Radish

  • Rocket
  • Runner beans

  • Peas

  • Courgettes

Sowing & Planting

(Building a record of what I need to prepare for next in the garden)

Planted squashes gifted by friends – I germinated them and we split the loot!

I am delighted to report that we have a marrow plant!!!   I have been lamenting my short-sightedness in not saving seeds from this wonderfully versatile veg and all the while, a plant was growing, from seed in the compost!

Planted out my lavender plants that I had grown from seed.  I’ve got 3 healthy plants that have gone into the borders of the flower garden.

Planted 2 tiny persimmon trees, grown from seed:

Baking & Making

(A chance to reflect on the culinary success & failures of the month & share crafty moments)

Picked some of the beautiful courgette flowers and dipped them in a light beer batter.  Gently fried them for a couple of minutes… divine!

Painted glass jars for candle holders and made a wind chime from holey stones collected on Zanjice beach:


Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)

It’s a measure of how busy we are that I have no time for reading!  Still reading Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed’ and really enjoying it.

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

This month the mood is – optimistic!!!  Bookings starting to slowly roll in; first guest loved it so much he came back!; 2 other visits already in June (one American soon-to-be professor and a French guy)…  Keeping everything crossed and smiling through!

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

Have listened to lots of music, loving the sound system at the campsite… but unfortunately because the laptop is down in the basement whilst we are listening to music up in the building, I’ve no idea of the names of artists and tracks half the time!

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

Enjoyed the company of an old friend.  It was wonderful having Kirst here & was so sad to say goodbye…

Here we are at our friend Therese’s villa:

where we laid in the sun and had a dip in the pool:

This is what I loved the most – laughing my head off with a special, beautiful buddy:


We had a very special evening on the campsite with friends Katie & Tim.  There was a massive storm close but high enough up and far enough away so that we heard no thunder, only witnessed the incredible lightning.  We sat outside in the early hours watching the sky light up right above our heads in forks and flashes that had us gasping with wonder.  And in between the illumination, we were humbled and awed by the masses of stars that crowded into every gap in the clouds…

We hosted our second proper party on the eve of Summer Solstice.  Thankfully the numbers were smaller, as we had to dive for cover from the rain early on and it got pretty crowded in the building for a while but the storm held off and the evening warmed up and we all had fun.  The Full Monte Feast was a big hit and the Sangria was delicious and didn’t give us a hangover, which was a bonus!  We had a great fire going and a hardcore of us sat around it until the early hours but only 3 of us actually managed to stay up to greet the dawn.

And of course, there’s been the footie…  We couldn’t escape the World Cup because Bob was such a massive fan and when England pplayed Algeria, we invited Bob and all the boys round to watch it on our big screen:

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

Bob would walk down the hill to the nearest petrol station to watch the football and the friendly folk there looked after him.  When we went to pick him up after the Spain-Portugal match on his last night and have a farewell drink with him, the lovley guy behind the bar got out his bottle of delicious Russian vodka and shared it around…  It was obviously a very special bottle and the liquor was so smooth – I’m sure if I were him I’d be trying to save it and savour it, not share it around with random english folk!  So kind!!!

One Green Thing

(One more step along our green journey)

Steve painstakingly dismantled an old wardrobe, salvaged from Maja’s grandmother’s house, and used the wood to make an amazing cabinet that surrounds our 2 gas fridges and cupboard space and has sturdy lockable doors to make closing up the site easy and effective:


Weather Report

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

June has remained changeable.  We have had more rain than usual; some terrific storms; cloudy, overcast but warm days and some scorching hot, gorgeous summer-like days.  Will summer proper ever come?

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Green Time

June 14, 2010 in Environmentally Friendly, Frugal Living | 1 comment

It’s probably not a good time to be blogging about being Green.  The England goalie’s blunder in the US game has got the world cringeing.  But, anyway…

When we lived in the UK, the ‘green’ stuff was always more expensive.  Organic produce had a premium attached and the eco cleaning products always cost more.  To be honest, we didn’t buy it – we couldn’t afford it.

Now we can’t afford NOT to be green.  Growing our own veg instead of buying it; saving 100’s of euros on cleaning products by making them myself; making meals from scratch and turning the tide against consumerism by reusing and recycling all we can, has saved us a pretty penny.  Adding that cost back into our budget now would be unthinkable.

However, Mr Green is a Time Thief.  It’s the hours that it takes and the preparation required to save the pennies, that is astonishing.  If you want tomatoes in late Summer, you have to sow the seed in Spring.  If you want your hubby to help clean the house you have to have suitable products ready to use – if he doesn’t find a Mr Muscle equivalent he’ll go and buy some toxins.  If you want free seeds next year you have to remember to save them from this year’s plants and take the time to clean, dry, store & label them. If you want jams and pickles for a year you have to process it all – for hours. Veg peelings don’t turn to rich compost overnight…

Now I know why we didn’t lead a greener lifestyle in our previous incarnation – we simply didn’t have the time.  I relish the fact that now we do have time and don’t take anything for granted.

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On creating something from nothing…

May 4, 2010 in Frugal Living, Making & Baking | 2 comments

Apart from basic ingredients such as flour & sugar, our cupboards are barely stocked.  I sometimes wonder if this is a anti-reaction to growing up with a Mum whose kitchen units were crammed with ’stuff’.  You could barely open a cupboard in our kitchen without tins and packets tumbling out.  They were bought because they were cheap or on special offer or just in case a whole army of people turned up unexepectedly or in the event there was a General Strike…  Inevitably things hung around so long their ‘best buy’ date came & went; packets split & spoilt; and many things bought on a whim were never used because we had no idea how to incorporate them into our diet!

It’s a false economy – all that food just sitting around, 100’s of pounds/ euros worth of ’stuff’.  These days I relish the challenge of using everything up before buying more.

When we get back from grafting on the land, we are starving.  We need something tasty – fast! Last night the contents of our fridge contained:

  • half a carton of tomato passata
  • a quarter of an onion
  • a clove of garlic
  • a lump of cheese
  • half a tin of sweetcorn
  • some odd bits of sandwich meat (some slices of salami and a knob of smoked sausage).

The fresh veg was all gone – no spuds, no salad stuff, just some frozen peas…

Had I pushed this frugal living too far???  Nope… I made a pizza!

The scraps of onion & garlic were fried, passata added and reduced.  I used the fabulous Leith’s Vegetarian Bible recipe for pizza dough (flour, pinch of salt, teaspoon of yeast, tablespoon of oil & warm water) and made a deliciously light dough.  The tomato mixture was spread on and tastefully (in both the aesthetic and gustatory sense) enhanced with a handful of fresh mint & parsley.  On with the meat & cheese and in the oven for 15 minutes.  Whilst that was cooking I boiled some rice & the frozen peas and when they were done I added the half tin of sweetcorn and served the pizza with a simple rice dish.

Steve’s verdict: “Bloody gorgeous!”.  As usual, I wish I’d taken a photo of it…

BIG LIST update

April 15, 2010 in Frugal Living, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build | 1 comment

Back in November last year we compiled a BIG LIST of all the high level tasks and I outlined them in this post, promising to update our progress every month…  Mmm, I’ve been a bit rubbish, haven’t I???

Well, nearly 6 month later, here’s an update on progress and the latest news of what’s on the BIG LIST now…

  • drainage

Ur, well, the first item on the list & that’s where it all started to go wrong!  The drainage ditch turned into our Elephant Task and no matter how much we broke it into bits, we got so tired of chewing those chunks!  But the drainage on the main campsite is now DONE.  We still get soggy patches where underground springs mysteriously appear when the water table rises, but things are better.  It’s still a quagmire when it really buckets down but that’s mostly because of all the distrurbed earth which Nature needs to knit together again. 

  • installing our rainwater collection systems

This is a tricky one.  Water is so precious, of course we should be saving every drop.  But unless we can salvage a couple of big water butts from somewhere, we simply cannot afford to invest in the materials needed to install the system properly.  Our first check list for whether we do a task or not is: how much will it cost?

Thankfully, the water tank we filled up at the start of last summer is still half full!  So having enough water for everything is NOT an issue, in fact we are desperately trying to empty the tank so we can fill it fresh from the spring before it dries up.

  • finishing our greywater irrigation system

We started with grand plans for this project but the cost of fancy joints and weird plumbing bits was crazy so we are going to make do with bits of hose and ’stuff’.

It’s been a stressful time on the greywater front.  We were keen to cover the ugly pipes and protect them, but were concerned about piling mud on them and screwing up the levels.  These pipes have been lovingly positioned and levelled to have a 2% drop all the way along – not too much or the water will rush through the system and not be properly filtered, nor too slight a gradient or the water will not run fast enough and stagnate.  After enclosing them with earth we waited for it to settle and then had to tweak the system a little, straightening the pipes and inserting stones as rests in places.  The system still works; the water flows through well.  The problem now is with the last bath.  We noticed a slight leak when doing the landscaping around the end of the system.  It was too wet to use Plumber’s Mait or other good stuff so Steve cemented over the entire piece where the pipe exits the last bath through a rubber bung.  Our mistake was then carrying on regardless, in denial that the fix may not have worked…

It still leaks, really badly.  And now there’s a frigging stone wall enclosing it and a load of dirt!  The only hope is to dig the bath out and attack the problem from the inside.  Watch this space to see if this works or if we have to dismantle the entire stone wall:

  • levelling ground to create flat terraces for outside eating areas, a  Boules pitch and lots more tent pitches

We’ve levelled a lot of ground dealing with the spoil from the drainage ditch.  The area we played Boules on last year will be less lumpy & bumpy & sloped than before, if not pristine!  Ideally, we’d like to build a proper pitch – a frame filled with sand maybe – but not exactly a priority for this year.

We’ve cleared the ugly pallet fence between the raised beds and the stream so there is a bigger space there for tents and Steve has great plans to use the last of our sleepers and level earth on the very lower terrace.  But even if this doesn’t get done, with a little stumping, strimming, raking and mowing we can accomodate up to 30 people quite easily.  More level ground would enable us to space the tent pitches out much more, but even so tents will still be less cheek by jowl than many campsites!

  • making a rough, covered outside kitchen near to the eating area and BBQ

No progress made on this at all but we have all the raw materials: sink (reclaimed from the side of the road); pallets to make rough decking; an old table for a work surface – and it will be one of those projects that just gets done because it HAS to (hopefully in time for the Full Moon Party!).

  • repairing the critical collapsed terrace walls with planted tyre walls

Mmmm.  We have tyres.  We have tidied up the area around.  That’s as far as we’ve got and in truth we may not get an entire wall done this season.  After all the inside jobs have been done, it’s next on the list…

  • tile the last shower & the urinals

We can’t put the tiling off any longer!  We need to get the building functioning again.  Everything was moved down to the basement or back to Topla and the shower block has been left empty and abandoned.  We need to be living up there as soon as possible so that means finishing the last shower, tiling the laundry sink, installing the urinals and tiling around them and half tiling the loos so they are easy to clean.  We also need to fix the position of the cooker so we can tile around it for ease of cleaning and that means fixing the position of gas fridges & more cupboards in the kitchen.  Then we can lime wash all remaining bare plaster, move all the furniture and stuff in… and enjoy!

A new addition to the BIG LIST, all wrapped up in being able to move on site soon is:

  • clean, mouse-proof and limewash the basement

We need a proper usable space to set up an office, store clothes and things, have a cold store for food stuffs etc and the basement is it.  We need to tell the resident mouse (there’s only ONE mouse, right Kirst?!) to move on and get it cleared, cleaned, painted and organised!

  • paint the outside of the buildings

This is one of the tasks on the list for our work day on 8th May.  I painted a patch on the back of the workshop in limewash last year and it still looks great, even after all the ravages of winter.  A bag of lime is pennies (in comparison to the price of paint here) and will make loads of wash, a real cheap option for us and less harmful to the environment.  Having a sparkling white building will make an enormous difference – and help us sell the site in photos better!

  • plant the flower & veg beds

Made reasonable progress on this task.  There’s still lots to do and there’s a bunch of plants queuing up to put their roots down but there’s no chance of doing much more until the rain stops.  We desperately need some hot dry weather to follow the deluge of the last few days.  We haven’t been on site for the past 3 days due to the appalling weather and I dread to think what’s going on up there….

Since we are determined this year to keep greedy cows and intruders out, there’s a new task on this list:

  • secure the boundary

In practice this means: running barbed wire along the edges of the boundary where a cow can possibly invade and electrifying the main fence to deter the village kids and travellers who got on site, poked around and stole stuff last year.  If the barbed wire doesn’t get them, the x 1000 volts will!

Another key task is:

  • build a generator shed

We need a proper weather-proof, sound-proof, easy access structure to contain our trusty genny.

We have been gifted some great wooden stairs from Keith & Maja so now we need to treat them with wood preservative and install them firmly but that takes care of:

  • create safe, stable access at each end of each terrace

We now need to start making some rope hand rails or some such stuff to help support people safely down them!

Finally (well, never ‘finally’ because the list never ends but…) now we’ve dismantled the old compost heap we need to:

  • build a new compost

Gulp!  Still a bunch of stuff to do.  Thank God there’s no guests arriving until end of May!  And we are feeling a little less over-whelmed since we’ve had news that a potential volunteer, Jaime, will be joining us in May for 1 or 2 weeks; a volunteer from Spain, Pedro, is looking to join us in June and will possibly stay for a couple of months if we all get along well and last, BUT NOT LEAST, Nik, dear Mr Nik, without whom it all wouldn’t have been possible last year, is coming back this summer.  Hurrah for willing helpers!  Anyone else fancy it?

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Flowers & frugal serendipity

March 3, 2010 in Frugal Living, Organic Gardening | 4 comments

I’ve finished digging the new flower bed.  Here it is edged with stones, incorporating the orange tree (covered for wind protection) and the pear…

We have been collecting seeds from flowers for years – foxgloves from a English country garden, nigella from everywhere because its so easy and a few unusual flowers we couldn’t identify.  We have no idea of the viability of many of these seeds and even some of the packet seeds are out of date so it was time to chuck everything in and see what comes up.  This is also untried territory and when digging it over I found that even within a small area the soil quality varied enormously.  I had, almost absent-mindedly, chucked some soggy leaves and rotted donkey poo onto bits of the garden when I began tackling it back in November and was amazed to see how this had improved patches of the soil even in such a short time.  Other areas were much less fertile and more sandy.  And in parts the soil was reasonable but weed-ridden and/ or rocky.

My biggest mistake in the past has been not documenting what I’ve sown & where.  So I sat on a rock, admiring my handiwork & drew a plan of the new flower garden.  I identified hazards, noted soil quality and thought about what flowers would flourish under the trees in partial shade (foxgloves and campions), which would happily bask in the full-sun (Californian poppies) and the heights of different flowers.  We have 3 ‘unknowns’ – we have no clue what they are, how tall they grow, what conditions they like, how deep they should be sowed so it’s ‘pot luck’ folks!

Whilst the flower garden was a satisfying project (and gave me a free CV workout in the process – always a bonus!) it depressed me that the garden proper, our precious raised beds were in a worse state than this patch of ground.

They had suffered during the ditch-digging drama.  Most of them were ‘infected’ with clay to some degree or another.  And all of them (bar the onion bed, already planted) need topping up with soil.  As we tighten our belts for our toughest summer ever, we have had to question every expense.  We had to face facts – it was crazy to spend money on topsoil that we would not recoup.  How much produce could we generate this summer (Ninja Cow permitting) and therefore how much could we invest?

When we visited the garden centre today, there were bags of compost for only 4 euros.  We debated and finally splashed out on 3.  We knew this would barely touch the beds but wondered about having one or 2 beds in good condition and writing off the rest – marigolds seemed to thrive there last year, we could fill in with those… We were still having this debate when we drew up outside the lock-up we ‘mind’ in Sutorina and noticed the delicious leaf mould, a year’s accumulation all soggy and rotted down, piled up under the trees.  We just so happened to have bin bags & old compost bags in the van and a shovel.  7 big bagfuls of yummy hummus later we drove to the campsite and began to work on rejuvenating the garden.

The good news is that with our own compost and the leaf mould, we only used 2 of the shop bought stuff and the beds are looking groovy.  So for 8 euros, we might just be able to grow again.  The remainder will be used as potting compost for all the seeds we are due to plant when we return from the UK.  I’m taking copious notes this year of what we manage to produce and the value to us in euros.

And another happy coincidence…  We’re getting ready to move the compost heap and take down the ugly pallett structure to reclaim some flat land for 2-3 tents.  This means we’re letting what we have got rot down and not adding fresh stuff until it’s properly re-positioned.  Meanwhile the compost heap in Topla is coming along nicely so we’re adding our peelings etc to that.  Trudging across the garden with my kitchen slops has reminded me how badly it needs weeding so I decided to give the garden some attention yesterday when Steve was still feeling too cold-ridden to work.  In the process I found a big bunch of coriander flourishing in the cactus bed!  Indian food coming right up!

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A Window of Opportunity

February 26, 2010 in Frugal Living, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build | 4 comments

Yesterday was a big day.

It stopped raining.

Yes, really, the sun came out and when we visited the campsite it wasn’t  all under an inch of water as it has been.  The amount of water throwing itself from the clouds, flinging its arms around everything and creeping in through the walls and windows beggars belief…

It’s been so frustrating, not being able to finish what we’ve started with the ditch and mud moving project.  It’s been too wet to move up there.  We couldn’t take another chunk out of our elephant because it was slippery when wet…

So – a chance to be on site without ‘mud shoes’ on (the comically large growths that accumulate around our actual shoes as we try to walk around the site!).  Time to make a window.

About 6 months ago, when considering the kitchen area in the campsite building and wishing we could have a little more protection from the weather, I had a green idea.  The open spaces in the kitchen are a bonus in the summer when the breeze wanders around, breathing respite from the harsh heat – so we need ‘pop in, pop out’ windows.  Holding up a 5-litre plastic water bottle and noticing that it’s bottom resembled a cool glass brick, I wondered aloud if we could put these empties to good use in a wooden framed demountable screen, that you could kinda see through…

The appeal to friends to save their big water bottles went out and many people, but especially Danny – thank you honey! – saved us roomfuls of the damn things.  To be honest, I’ve become a bit anxious about the whole project.  Everytime Steve curses the bottles that sit at the table with us in Topla and trip us up in the basement at the campsite, I think “I hope it works after all this”.

Having dismantled the tent up top last week, we were able to liberate the 3 long planks of wood that had been propped on bricks in the field tent & acted as our work surface.  We had wood, we had bottles, we had a dry day.  Time to make a prototype of the window and prove the idea of making a wooden frame and stuffing it with rows of plastic bottles would work.

This is the view from inside the building and this is what it looks like from the terrace below:

What do you think???

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Greener & Leaner – A Plan…

February 2, 2010 in Den, Environmentally Friendly, Frugal Living, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 4 comments

Maybe that should be Plan A?  I’m sure there’ll be several tweaks to my good intentions along the way…

Over the holiday period (yes folks, pretty much the whole of January is a holiday here in Monte!) I’ve been reading books & blogs about all things green and feeling inspired, overwhelmed, excited, depressed, frustrated, hopeful & hopeless, all on a regular basis.  Torn. Generally.  Wrestling with my hopes & dreams – trying to  focus on things in the  ‘possible, simple & cheap’ pile rather than the ‘wildest dreams but not a hope in hell right now’ pile.

I would love to have the time, patience & 50 squids to make my own Stilton like Gavin but I don’t.  Or keep chooks like Rhonda but until we can safely secure our boundary and be living on the land pretty much full time, forget it.  I would love to have the greenhouses that El does so we can grow many more things all year round but no spare cash for that yet.  One day we’ll keep bees, like Jenna but not yet…

This is a great book that inpired me hugely:

But we have to face facts.  Right now, living where we do, with the limited local language skills we have, with the limited space we have to grown our own & no funds to invest in self sufficiency stuff – our ability to eat only seasonal food is, well, limited…

So here’s the stuff we can do – our simple plan for the foreseeable future:

  1. Install a rainwater collection system on the land, to collect water from the roof of the workshop and the main building.  With this ‘free’ water we will quench the thirst of the flower beds & gardens that are too high up to be irrigated by the siphon from the stream or the greywater system.
  2. Grow more vegetables & herbs. Last year, we read our packets of seeds carefully and planted things so many cms apart whilst our neighbours packed plants into every corner, cheek by jowl.  They won.  However, we suspect  non-organic intervention aided their big yields so we’ll be cramming more in but not as much as the locals in order to stay true to our 100% organic principles.  We’ll also be utilising the area we call ‘the orchard’ to grow more and doing some bucket gardening.
  3. Preserve more food. This year the only vegetables we preserved from our own garden were green tomatoes (in chutney) and pumpkin (in soup).  I intend to freeze more herbs, especially coriander and hope that the extra planting gives us gluts of stuff that we can learn how to freeze, pickle & can.  I think our basement on the campsite will make a good cold store so I’m going to try to buy more stuff whilst in season (like apples) and then store them to have some months later (hopefully).
  4. Eat less meat. Now that I’ve mastered the art of giving Steve vegetarian meals without him saying “Very nice, but where’s the meat?” I intend to slip in 1 or 2 every week (Sssh, don’t tell!).  This will save us some pennies and help keep weight & cholesterol under control.
  5. Find out more about the provenance of the meat we do eat. I have begun asking local friends for recommendations – who do they know who has a farm with dead animals to spare etc?  It will be tough because most people only have enough livestock to support their own families but even if we can get the occasional meat direct from a local farmstead, it will be a step in the right direction.
  6. Mend & make do more often. I was about to throw away a handbag last week.  I was reluctant – it is a roomy ole’ carrier and it has special sentimental value – but people were tutting and looking at me disapprovingly as bits of the handle disintergrated over everything.  Then I realised the only problem with the bag is the handle.  I am taking it to my very clever crafty friend this week and asking her to make me a new handle.
  7. Make more things. Ilona is an inspiration – the stuff she makes out of gubbins that folk normally chuck away is incredible.  I would love to have time to be more creative just for the hell of it but to be honest that’s a luxury.  However, when we really need something we have started to ask ourselves – ‘how can we make that?’
  8. Share the green love. Gently educating people around us has produced suprising results but we can do more.  I have learned that most people do bad stuff (by ‘bad’ I mean harmful to the planet; wasteful etc) out of ignorance – they don’t know any different & neither did we a few short years ago… A friend around here has become interested in our eco missions since she started collecting plastic bottles for our plastic bottle screen.  She doesn’t live frugally because she doesn’t have to but when I went shopping with her recently I challenged her about the money she spent on tomatoes.  “They’ll tast nasty” I said, “No matter how much you pay”.  Tomatoes here in season are TO DIE FOR – just the most tasty, delicious fruit.  I could literally live on them alone, drizzled with a little local olive oil & sprinkled with salt.  So, have them in season and avoid tasteless imposters at all other times.  I was right – they tasted nasty.  And so began the gentle conversation about where food comes from & why local & seasonal is best…
  9. Be conscious. Consciously think & do… Do I need to buy …?  Can I make a replacement for…? Do I have to throw this away?  Can I reuse…? What happens if I do…?  What happens if I don’t do…?  Is there a greener way?  Is there a cheaper/ more effective way?

Here’s some things I won’t be buying anymore:

  1. Household cleaning products. I am already using essential oils like tea tree, clove & rosemary to clean most things but I am about to purchase the few ingredients I need (baking soda, white vinegar, soda water) to make my own all purpose cleaner, glass cleaner & scourer.
  2. Jam. Well, ok, I will still buy it if I see it on special offer because I only managed to make marmalade so far this year but as soon as the first round of sweet fruits appear I will be jamming like Bob Marley and in the meantime we will be working our way through the jars of orange & grapefruit marmalade.
  3. Cling film. I am reusing plastic bags to cover things I would normally use the plastic film for.  Would like to ditch aluminium foil too but can’t find a suitable substitute for covering roasts in the oven.  Any ideas anyone?
  4. Dish cloths & cleaning cloths. I’m recycling old clothes, towels etc into useful rags.
  5. Paneer. Not that you can buy the indian cheese here anyway but I use a local substitute for my Spiced Paneer recipe when I cook up my Indian feasts.  No more however – I have just read how easy it is to make and am going to grow my own!

All out of inspiration now and bones are aching for bed (yes, we did get back to work today folks! Ouch.) So I’ll call it a day and update you on the things I’ve forgotten or as new ideas emerge.

ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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The Crying Game

February 1, 2010 in Frugal Living, Making & Baking, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 1 comment

We have now been home for 6 days and so far have only spent a couple of hours on the campsite working… We are getting distracted by a million other things – blogs, friends, fixing  computers… Steve has been staying up half the night fiddling with networks, websites, photos & other such tekkie stuff.  He crawls to bed between 3 – 4 am and then is reluctant to rise much before 10.00 am.  It all has to stop – we have a BIG LIST, as big as a big thing on a big day and nowt’s getting done.  Tomorrow is D-Day – rain or shine, we are up early and at work by 9.00 am.

Today we very nearly made it to the land but just as we were preparing to leave, the heavens opened.  It was the excuse Steve needed to stay put.  To be fair he was on a mission to fix Katie’s laptop & he’s done a brilliant job, earning us a day out on Monty B as a reward.  So I decided to use my day wisely and headed to the kitchen to make soup.

Every soup starts with onions.  And tears.

I am trying to eat what’s in season and avoid all imported products.  In practise, this means getting the cheapest products in the store as anything that’s exotic and/ or travelled a long way to be there is usually markedly more pricey.  The good, cheap vegetables at the moment are: the roots (carrots, parsnips, turnips), spuds, onions & white cabagge.  So that’s the fresh veg I had to work with.

I’m also trying to use up ingredients in my stockpile.  I have tons of coriander seeds, so I ground some and used it in the first soup: Carrot & Coriander.

According to my new frugal principles, I am trying to use food sparingly and wisely.  I have some cooked, smoked ham which is delicious but quite fatty.  I trimmed the fat off some slices of ham and used it to flavour the base of my next soup: Peppery Potato & Ham.  There is a tiny bit of ham in the soup but the fat imparted such a meaty, smoky flavour that I didn’t need much.  Don’t worry folks – our cholesterol levels are safe, I removed the fat once the stock had taken up its taste.  Regular old ground black pepper is an unsung hero in the cooking charts -  in my opinion, it really helps to enhance the taste of spuds.

Back to my stockpile & to the jars of Indian spices I have lurking there…  The aromatic tastes won’t be worth a sniff if I don’t use them soon, so… Indian Spiced Vegetable Soup it is!  Here’s a shot of the 3 different soups – clockwise from left: the Spiced Veg & Peppery Potato in plastic pots ready to be frozen & in front the Carrot & Coriander which I manage to take a picture of in between sups!

I decided to break my own rules next & follow a recipe!  Another ingredient I have lots of that needs using up before it gets too old is English Mustard Powder and I found a great recipe for a Mustardy Lentil Pottage in Leith’s Vegetarian Bible.  I tried to take a photo of this hearty beauty but honestly it just looked like a bowl of sick!  Tasted delicious though.

I am so glad I picked up the recipe book because I found a French Onion Soup recipe that looked too good to pass up.  Who knew that in order to properly caramelize onions you have to cook them for 30 minutes!!?!  I am such an impatient cook that I would never be bothered to do this ordinarily.  Now I know that this is half an hour well spent & will be cooking my onions slowly & patiently more often in the future…

Of course, the obvious accompaniment to soup is… bread.  I have a gluten intolerance so try to minimise the bread I eat and only ever buy the local cornbread, which is mostly made with cornflour & has a lot less gluten than normal bread.  To my delight I found soya flour & rice flour in my local supermarket (both gluten free) and have been waiting for a chance to try making some bread.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find a recipe using only the ingredients I had – most recipes used a mix of brown rice flour, potato flour & soya flour & had stuff like Xanthum Gum or summat.  I pushed on, regardless, finding a recipe that I could follow-ish.  Looks ok but still pretty soggy in the middle – a bad combo of the wrong ingredients and my strange ‘dot dash’ oven…  It’ll be fine toasted though.

I have made 18 portions of soup today & used up a ton of empty marg & mayo pots from my stash of reuseable plastic stuff putting them in containers & freezing them.  That’s 9 lunches on the land taken care of.  We just grab a pot from the freezer when we set off in the morning and heat it up on the stove at the campsite when we’re hungry.  One step closer to being ready to do some work…

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