Mark asks…
how to lay a few slabs and build a rill?
The women wants me to build her a rill in the garden (a long, narrow water feature). She wants slate edging stones and i want to know what the best way to lay about 10 narrow slate slabs is. Also Is there a way of cementing them which does not require me hiring a cement mixer? I’ve heard of all this easy cement stuff but don’t know if its any good.
GardenersCardiff answers:
The rill itself will have to be made with cement and blocks covered with heavy-duty plastic sheeting.
When laying the slabs, incorporate a waterproof additive in the cement.
And yes, a cement-mixer will help, but it’s perfectly possible to complete a small project by hand.
Sandra asks…
Is it really cheaper to not shop at the supermarkets and cook from scratch?
My question is more related to the hidden costs. I can go to a supermarket like Morrisons every day on my way home from work, so its not out of the way and I don’t need a massive freezer!
If I buy from a farmers market or local butchers, I can usually only go once a week, maybe once a fortnight due to the fact that you need an entire morning to go to the farmers market, butcher, green grocer etc – so its the time and the travelling from one shop to the next.
So your hidden costs is petrol and freezer running costs. I have a very small freezer – really big enough to store your ice cubes and thats about it. I would have to buy a small freezer to store a fortnights worth of raw stuff or batched cooked meals.
A loaf of bread for example is quoted. Yes you can buy the flour and make it yourself – so much cheaper, but the cost of electricity for your oven is never taken into account as well as the freezer running costs and storage if you want to bake more than one loaf of bread which would make sense so as to make best use of the oven.
Yes, I would like to scrap the supermarkets entirely, but I am annoyed with a lot of articles where people say oh its so much better and cheaper to not use the supermarkets but they don’t take into account details such as the fact that butcher is only open from 7:30am to 5pm. I usually finish work after 5 and I am not an early morning riser. Same problem with a lot of independent shops – they are only open when I am at work, which means I can only go there on a Saturday.
So in essence, is it really cheaper to drive around from butcher to grocer to wherever you go to buy flour for breadmaking etc and obviously does your electricity bill rocket when you start making more proper meals from scratch as a lot of nice meals can really only be done in the oven as the stove is not the best medium for quite a few dishes. And then the running costs for a freezer etc etc.
And time to go to 20 different shops. Also where does one go for non food stuffs like toilet paper. Wilkonson is still a supermarket like tesco, so I just don’t see where to go for a lot of things.
Growing your own food sounds great in theory, but again, if you are single, you work full time, the last thing you want to do is have to do gardening every weekend. Maybe I will grow strawberries and cherries because I like those and they are flipping expensive, but the rest I dunno.
Is there anyone who has actually lived a lifestyle where they no longer shop from the supermarkets in england and found it manageable to do all the shopping at farmers markets, independent stores which are never open when you are not working bar saturday! I would like to know whether you really think its more affordable or is it just some pipe dream for anti supermarket people. I have been to a couple of farmers markets and I cannot say that I have noticed that things are half price!
GardenersCardiff answers:
It is cheaper to cook from scratch because you are buying and cooking in bulk. And, even though it seems daunting, once you get the process underway, you will find that your life is so much easier, even easier than when you were buying take out or eating pre-prepared foods.
What you need to do is set out to regularly cook dishes that can be frozen. For example you cook a huge pot of chili, have one or two fresh meals from it, then freeze the rest in portions. The next week you do spaghetti sauce, and do the same thing. As you do this you keep banking foods in the freezer. And, at whatever stage you want, you can introduce single-meal cooked-from-scratch meals, just to break the monotony. Also, there are dishes that you can freeze that are multi-purpose.
Spaghetti sauce can be used on pasta, potatoes or perogies. It can also be used as more of a base for lasagna or chicken parm. So, of you cook a spaghetti sauce, you will definitely not be bored by it. You can also cook a meat-base dish that can then quickly be made into various dishes — goulash, Beef bourguignon, ,etc.
Try it. Set aside a Saturday or Sunday to shop and cook to prepare a huge amount of a dish you like. Keep two meals worth in the fridge, to use in the coming week, then freeze the rest. Do this the next week, then just let yourself slip slightly back into your old pattern, safe in the knowledge that you have meals in the freezer to fall back on. I am pretty sure you will appreciate those frozen meals, and will make the cook-from-scratch-and-freeze approach at least a small part of your life.
Linda asks…
What was the most surprising time and how did you catch the fish?
Isn’t this a sad time of year? Here in Missouri, the rivers are strong and hard to fish. The stocked lakes have been fished to very low populations. Some people come right after stocking and catch the fish that still are used to fisheries and easy to catch. I don’t think there’s much challenge in that. Mostly I’m just gabbing.
I actually flatten out the barbs on my hooks on stocked lakes. Can just flip caught fish off line that way.
Anybody still troll on small lakes?
I got a nice stripped bass on a small lake in Michigan when my line was all tangled on the oars of the row boat. Made dinner for 6 or 8 of us. We were young and believe it or not, trolling in the boat.
Keep the faith, brothers and sisters.
my son also caught a duck the first time i took him fishing. we were fishing on Encanto lake in Phoenix AZ.. A duck about 20 yards away started squacking , flapping its wings, and splashing. Son kep pulling in line, I gotta fish, I gotta fish. Duck went under, popped up at boat. Real indignant. I unhooked it, it squacked some more, and TOOK off. Thanks for answers so far. Don’t fall in dirty water.
GardenersCardiff answers:
My wife landed this one. I was scraping the farm dam with a 10 ton front end loader. We were in drought and I had it in the dam on the rocky bottom scooping up all the fine sediments and cleaning up the reeds. My wife said “I’ll have a load of that for the garden”…. So I drove a good bucket full of slurry up to the kitchen garden for her and she directed me to where it was needed. She was standing there with her shovel with a mesh fence behind her when all of a sudden she starts screaming and hitting the mud, (mud going everywhere). I got down and she had landed a 4 foot long about 7inch wide eel. The dam is miles from the nearest river.
She thought it was a BIG SNAKE when it came out of the bucket. I had to end up spreading the mud….
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