Selfsufficientish.com

Well we've just harvested our entire crop of apples - after cutting out a few chewed bits we've got 4.4kg. They're all shapes and sizes so we're going to make a gallon of scrumpy.

We may have to buy some apple juice to top it up to a gallon.

It's good to support local small businesses where possible. Keeps people in jobs and the local economies healthy. I learned all about "local multiplier effect" when I went on a course about Social Enterprises.

Absolutely. Plus our council has given us one of the small wheelie bins for plastics and tins, but then they decided we should put cardboard in the same bin - they must think these bins are the Tardis!

Abslutely fine. They're now competeing with a spider plant, thatwhich managed to root itself in the same pot, and holding their own nicely. I harvest once a year, change the compost and leave a few bits in. They just keep coming back and rather attractive plants, to boot. We don't get a huge crop bu...

I wonder if water boiled in a £500 kettle tastes better.

We've had that conversation, ina and she is, slowly turning to natural fibres. That doesn't alter the problem of having bushels (I'm sure that's how you must measure large quanitities) of the nasty stuff.

Offloading it to the charity shop seems to be cheating somehow.

I can see why. 1/2 kg from a patch that size isn't really worth it - unless you can eat any of the rest of the plant, I suppose. Are those leaves useable?

Apparently in the US boiled peanuts in their shells are a delicacy - I'm not sure if you eat the shell or just suck the peanuts out.

You have sun? (Interesting experiment BTW. How much ground did they take up?)

My OH bought me one of the top of the range blenders for my birthday last year. I was over the moon - it has a really powerful motor and does damn near everything (except grate cheese of course :roll: ). But I was really upset on opening the box to discover it has a plastic jug! Very substantial, hi...

Unbelievable.

I've got no idea but I fear it might be quite a sharp learning curve for him. Although I do have a weeble (I knew them as a "Kelly won't lie down" but I'm sure that's probably considered offensive these days) doorstop, which he made at school so it's not a completely unknown skill, just very rusty. ...

I seriously doubt anyone would want to collect from up here. Unless they had a few to collect anyway. Still, it might be worth looking into.

Even worse is the "think I've thrown that out" syndrome. I have a cheap food processor which is not very powerful and so not up to many tasks, but the thing will not die and I won't replace it until it does. I thought my chance had come when I wanted to grate a large amount of cheese (smaller amount...

That looks interesting. Might be worth a talk with locals - our nearest collection point is Inverness!