Gathering the Fragments 29/08/2021

The news this week has been all over the place.

One thing that caught my attention, and spurred me into action, was the reports of the truck drivers strike on Friday (24 hours, but rolling ongoing) and the coming border blockades scheduled for Tuesday of this week.

Our pantry is full, but the garden, well it's empty, other than potatoes and strawberries that aren't ready yet. We've pulled the garden apart to renovate the garden beds so nothing is growing at the moment. So I checked the fridge and noted a couple of the fresh veggies we would need and did a quick trip to the supermarket to top up. I'm glad I went when I did, it was busy and the shelves were almost bare.

All our meals have been cooked from the pantry. That's what it is for - to feed us. If you have a stocked pantry, and keep stocking it, but not using it, that's wasted money. Your pantry is meant to be used, so use it!

The weather was a bit hit and miss this week so washing was dried on the clotheshorse on wet days and on the line on dry days.

I had a 3 litre bottle of milk that had to be used up. Someone who shall remain nameless, moved it from the kitchen fridge to the outside fridge and didn't tell me. I looked, saw the gap and bought another bottle of milk, all the while wondering how on earth we could go through so much in just a couple of days. So I made custard and yoghurt to use it up. Then I had to make a sticky date pudding to use up the custard, because well sticky date pudding and custard just seemed right on the night.

I drained off the worm tea and mixed it up to feed the fruit trees.

Baked some cup cakes for snacks/morning/afternoon teas.

Downloaded some free e-books to my Kindle.

Picked oranges to eat and to freeze for baking.

Collected the shower warm-up water and used it in the washing machine.

Started work on the new garden beds. Wayne put them together and we put down a thick layer of cardboard, then a layer of apple tree prunings, then a layer of wood chips from the firewood. Next will be a layer of hay or pea straw (whatever I can get cheapest), a layer of compost and finally a layer of soil. 

What fragments were you able to gather this week to save money, time and energy?