We have collected about 60 kilos of apples between us. T's daughter has supplied a load from her garden, my hairdresser in the village stripped her trees for us, in exchange for some home made chutney and I collected a pile on my cycling trips.
So we were all ready to go. The sherry barrel we got for a tenner off ebay was brought out as our fermenting cask
The pulper was set up in the cratch
and we had started getting the apples out ready for pulping
All was going well, when P discovered that the pulper wasn't working. It seems the person who had hired it before us had burnt out the motor and not said anything. It seemed like everything had conspired against us and we weren't meant to make our cider today. We hope to arrange another session for mid week, by which time the pulper should be repaired hopefully. I'm working for the next two days and we have a lot of apples rapidly going bad, so it really needs to be Wednesday or not at all!
P is very long suffering with me and T (the owner of J the whippet). She and I have become good friends as we both arrived on the marina about the same time and found that we were kindred spirits, with all sorts of ideas on how to 'live the good life'. P says he goes pale when he sees us in deep conversation as he never knows what mad scheme we are going to come up with next. So far, we have got our names on the list for an allotment in the village and are currently researching chickens with a view to hiring some land over the road and getting some rescue battery hens. He sighed heavily when he saw us stockpiling apples and looking on ebay for equipment etc. but he always comes round and gets into the spirit of things and he was as disappointed as T and I when the machine wouldn't work.
Although my blogs seem to mention the demon drink a lot, I do try to control the amount I drink! However it's good to remember the words of William Blake in this context 'The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom'.
So onto plan C for the day. I am going to cook us a really special meal tonight. Cooking is one of my hobbies which I couldn't indulge in my old existence because I didn't have time - I was working 6 days a week often up to 8.30 pm, so eating was purely functional and usually food was prepared by P. Now I am in my element, I work two long days a week and one short one and do all the cooking.
Thanks to our fantastic boat builder we have a superb kitchen, (or should I say galley?)
We may have sacrificed more space than usual, but it is the most important room for me and it is a joy to cook in, plenty of cupboards and surfaces to work on and really well designed for moving freely around.The only anxiety I have now is whether the gas bottle is going to run out half way through cooking a meal. We have no way of judging how full it is apart from lifting it up to see how heavy it is, (very low tech). Also we brought the boat in backwards yesterday so that we could have a change of scene, (bedroom facing the towpath instead of sitting room) and our gas locker is at the front beyond the end of the jetty so it is pretty much inaccessible. Still we should be fairly safe as we have only used 2 bottles so far, in the space of a year at a total cost of £50 !!
That reminds me of a satisfying encounter I had in Sainsburys last year. You know those people who accost you in the aisles as you are trying to do your shopping and promise that they can save you hundreds on your energy bills? Well this lad just would not leave me alone one day. I kept telling him he couldn't save me any money and when he asked me how much I paid last year and I told him what we had been paying in our house, I saw this smug grin spread across his face as he declared he could definitely save me a considerable sum! He then asked me who my gas provider was and when I explained it came out of a bottle in the bow deck of my boat I actually felt quite sorry for him, because he looked so crestfallen!!
Our last electricity bill from our 'hook up' was £34.10 for the quarter and apart from the diesel which runs our central heating system and of course the engine and a small amount of coal to supplement the wood in the wood burner, we spend a fraction of what we spent when living in a house. it's very satifying as it's so ecologically friendly as well.
For those who may be thinking of moving to a boat, I will post more financial information on future blogs.
Bye for now
:)
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