Another bizzy weekend (by sarah)

Saturday saw a Snell wedding - I forgot the camera but will hopefully get some pics later on and do a proper writ up 🙂

Today we went to the Scout open day in the village - I think me and Al may have just 'involved' ourselves in something else!

Havested some elder berries, more haws,parsnip - though they are getting a little woody now and some blckberries 🙂

Oh and I have decided that some journalists should be tortured to death for ruining peoples lives - I've been a bit laxs with my blog reading recently - I will attempt to link to what I'm talking about later.

The Stupidity of Recycling (by sarah)

I have decided that recycling is bad - yes you heared me bad!

Its so waistefull it really is - lets see we have put resourcess and money and power into making a container say a glass jar - it gets used once and then mashed into little pieces - using more energy and resources, melted - more energy and moulded back into - oh a glass jar - what a pointless effort.

Glass is autoclavable you can steam/boil sterolize it, it can be made squeeky clean - so surely it should be highly reusable? Well milkmen have been doing this for a long time now with no ill affects. When I was in Kenya you where charged for the glass bottle your coke-a-cola etc... was bought in and got refunded that money on its safe return to a shop - any shop. People here have said they remember being paid for empties - it would make so much sense really it would.

Re-use instead of recycle!

This is why I loath anything but broken glass having to go to the bottle bank but there is only so much jam and wine one bod can make! Still I suppose more will be used when we have bees 🙂

If anyone knows of somewhere that does reuse this sort of stuff could they let me know?

Ok so recycling isnt bad - it is in fact good but it would be even better if it was only used on things that are no longer usable in this reincarnation - no I know the economical costs are probably the driving factor here but surely that cant keep up? Is it really easier and cheaper to melt everything down than to steralise it and reuse - I know they'd be different sizes and the such like so there would be some sorting - but for home jam making and preserves that would be fine (as just one idea of the top of my head) - I see the shops selling empty jars and bottles for this - and I bet they are 'new' jars as well - its so wasteful - so ludicrus (sorry spelling out of the window today).

On the plus side - the Green shop we go to allows you to bring your own containers for refilling 🙂 does anyone know if the body shop still does this? I heared that they stopped when they were sold.

I wonder how many bars, resturants and clubs recycle? You'd have thought that they would considering the amount of bottles and cans they get through but I know that all the ones I've asked have said no!

Ok so I've been ranting about re-using stuff - here is how I practice some of what I preach : 1) I make jams, chutneys, pickels and (hopefully if it works first batch on my own) wine which uses quiet alot of my jars and things - I also tend to try and make my own suaces reducing the number of jars I have in the first place but that isnt practicle for everyone (most people).

2) I keep the punettes fruit comes in from the supeermarket and then when out costing the hedgrows etc... use them for that or when we go to pick your own.

3) I use the fabric softner bottles to keep the worm juice in (hoping that we will shortly be migrating this sort of thing over to eco stuff).

4) Refill herb jars rather than just buying new herb jars.

5)Use old Milo tins for storing my tea bags and old baby milk tins for other kitchen sundries/seeds/lego/beads the list is endless.

6) Ice cream tubs and calwslar containers I use as tupper ware and freeze suops and the such like in.

7) Yogurt pots make great little plant pots my nan did this for most of her life - though as I now make most of our yogurt we dont have many of these.

8) Use reusable bags for sopping - this is great at the moment cos we get club card points and stuff too and the councel here gave us some free coconut husk bags as well 🙂

9) I used terry nappies until Jean was 8 months when her size and wrigglyness made them inpracticle - however in despair at our over spilling bins every monday I have found a lady who tracks down baby stuff for you and she has specially ordered some reusable nappies that work like the desposables - ie velcro! Me and Al are quiet excited about these as we have been looking for them since before JEan was born and this lady said she was suprised that non of the mother cares in the area or any of the other big chains round here sold them - this unfortunatly means they are a bit pricey but if they last to be used four times each they will have paid for them selves!

I know that not everyone can do alot of this stuff for practical reasons ie time but the councils could be making more of an effort with the recycling - what seems to be happening at the moment is that there is a lot of apparent recycling without alot of thought behind it but thats just my opinion - here is pretty good aand getting better but still alot of room for improovement like the stupidness over plastics - they say only plastic bottles with no reguards to the plastic types so lots of things that are recyclable get ignore 🙁 and therefore thrown away (we have unfortunatly already recieved a letter from the recycling people due to confussion on our part on how it worked here which is completely different from Essex - these letters would probably scare little old ladies away from recycling all together 🙁 )

Cleaning Agents in the Rain (by sarah)

Jean's highchair has non-removable straps which had abviously started their live as white but where a darkish brown instead. I had tried to clean them with just a wipe down but this failed, I put ace one them - this removed maybe 2 % of the staining. Then I moved on to carpet cleaners and then things like vanish oxi which I mixed into a paste applied and left for ages. Then to the shower for a thouror rinsing (we didnt want any nasty chemicals on Jean). This last one removed about 50% of the brown colouring but the straps still looked discoloured.

It had taken months to get this far as I have to weight until Fridays when Jeans in nursery and I have nothing else todo. To my dispair the straps still looked festy even though I know they probably weren't - we decided to give up.

Then the highchair got left outside after the party and it rained and rained and rained - when we bought it in again to our suprise the straps were gleaming white! There is still some brown staining around the seams and stitching but thats it! Of course as soon as Jean eats a bannana they will revert I'm sure 🙂

The thing is this is a bit scary cos I ran loads of water over the straps in the shower and it didnt remove the stain so surely its not just the movement of the water on the straps? Ok so rain water is a lot finer than the shower so maybe it pemeated the material better? But still it would suggest to me that some thing in the rain was acting as a cleaning or bleaching agent - I am left wondering about acid rain - carbonic acid, sulphuric acid? Hmmmmm.....

Stupid Balls of Fluff! (by sarah)

The kittens have been being stupidly cute again - we tend to chuck them out of the bedroom at night as they pounce on you as anyone who's stayed here knows! Well we turfed one last night and thought the other was down stairs - however I proceeded to have a strange dream that the baby had crawled out of her cot and into our bed for a snuggle.

In a half dream state at some point in the night I reached out to stroke her hair and lo! A warm furry bundle was snuggled up next to me 🙂 So then being the heartless person I am I got Al to turf it out of the bedroom.

The other thing they keep doing is sitting on the window sill and watching the birds on the bird table - in fact there was just a huge thunk as Hydrogen tried to catch one though a closed window! Minni has also been caught watching the birds her tail flicking backwards and forwards - a stupid kitten thought this was a toy this morning and pounced and then was shocked and upset when minni chased her out of the house 🙂 We love having cats!

Today I went whoring (by sarah)

Ok well actually I went hawing but I couldnt resist the pun!

I went for a walk this afternoon with the idea of picking elder berries but found there to be very few elders all of which where behind barbed wire even if they where heavily laden :/ There were however loads and loads of blackthorns heavey with sloes which after picking five I realised were not quiet ripe!

I then looked around and realised that the hawthorns where groaning under the weight of their little red berries - well they are one of the most prevalent hegderow plants - I started picking the little beuts! Got nearly a whole basket too 🙂

Some trees haws were not quiet ripe so there will be plenty for me to pick all the way through the autum I feel - there are so many of the berries that I didnt even have to think about how much to leave for the animals! I gave up on trees when I got bored rather than when I couldnt reach any more berries 🙂

What am I going to do with them all I hear you cry!

Well I am going to dry as many as I can for use in a berry tea - a tea that is supposed to be good for those with high blood pressure and/or heart problems - I'm going to get mum and dad to check with their drs if its ok for them and add it to the dandilion tea I force feed mum.

There has been much merryment here whilst me and Al have been 'doing' the haws i.e. pulling the storks off of them - but well this is us and our wrapped and twisted minds so innuendo here we come!!! I also said quiet innocently that I couldnt do all these haws tonight! 🙂

Al is currently hawing away!

Of course any left over haws will be frozen for incoporation into hedgerow jam and/or haw jelly. Mmmm I'm sure that you can make a coffee substituet too but now cant find the recipe :/