Wednesday 18 June 2008

Prepping, rat sh*t and forgotten treasures.....




.............all of us are ill here, alla t teh same time, first time ever. nasty bad cold, but we each ahve it in varying degrees, Bean and I for the second time. Oh off work for two days, virtually unheard of, but he's gone back today, against my advice. He wanted to keep on the go yesterday, so we emptied out my shed, with a view to storage for prepping - when the stuff was out, the shed swept and the useful stuff for keeping put back in, I could see exactly what I had, and we have quite a bit of storage room in there for foodstuffs and equipment. If push comes to shove, more stuff could go, or move to other storage, so quite bouyed up by that. We had rats in there last year, and in behind some of the bits and pieces was a real mess, but it's all swept up now and tidied. I no longer store animal feed in there, so at the moment, there is nothing to attract them. We are on the lookout for metal storage boxes and bins for our prepping supplies now. Managed to unearth lots of bits and treasures I had forgotten - there is one piece plus the bottom board missing from the fruit press - need to get that addressed before the autumn; nice container for heating decent amounts of water in, with a tap on the bottom, plus a good-sized metal water container with a spout in; 3 crates of beer bottles - need cleaning and the seals checked out, then will be filled with beer; a good solid old wooden chest that has been to India and back by ship before WW2, belonging to my father's family; cleaned up my push mower for imminent use after I sharpen the blades; also, some less useful but nice things for the garden, including a couple of handblown glass hanging holders for candles.
Spent Monday morning in the kitchen - strawberry jam, 2 cheese and onion quiches, started a new cheese, made apricot ice cream from an Elizabeth David recipe in one of my new books, bottled some wine, got the elderflower into demi-johns. I need to get the elderflower champagne labelled and out in the store room - we have a bit more room as we drank two bottles each of last years during our endeavours yesterday with the shed; it was still in excellent condition after just over a year, and very refreshing on a hot day.

Not sure what I'm up to today, as I still feel a bit rough, but on the mend.

4 comments:

Leanne said...

Sarah, whats the second picture please?
leanne x

MrsL said...

Sorry, that crept in; have moved it now and put into a separate post.

kathyann said...

Hope you're all feeling better,I don't know how you had the energy to get all that done ,I'm worn out just reading about it!!
Love from Kathy and the girls

MrsL said...

Still not 100%, Kathy, thanks, but getting there. OH off work again for the rest of the week, on my advice; rest of us more or less on the mend. That should be it until teh winter colds now, I hope.