Mrs Down's Diary Sept 16 2009

Probably, knowing me, never to be seen again until I am looking for something else. I am always retrieving interesting, shriveled and frost bitten bags with mysterious contents from several years back.

This year's vow? To write on the bag/container exactly what it is that I am freezing. I have it off to a fine art with pies. A friend gave me a set of alphabet pastry cutters. Now pies display whether they are plum, apple, mince, chicken etc and John is not left to eat a meat and potato pie for pudding, when he was expecting something fruity instead.

The weight of the plum crop has almost driven me to distraction. Last year we had none. This year a glut. I have given away as much as friends and family will tolerate, and credit some of the pristine state of the plums picked to the success of my amateur wasp traps hung in the plum trees.

These are empty plastic pop bottles, top cut off and inverted into the body of the bottle to create a funnel, tempting mixture of jam and water in the bottom, and all hung in the plum trees branches. Devastating. Heaving with wasps.

Once they crawl down the funnel and into the body of the bottle, they can't get out and drown in the syrupy, wasp corpse strewn mix. I've even hung a few of the traps around the house. Not particularly attractive I grant you, but, no wasps in the house. Yet.

Wasps have even been a big problem down the fields this year. One had been built in the small wood by the cattle corral. We could not understand why we were being buzzed and stung so often when sorting out the lambs or tagging new born calves in the crush.

Eventually we took the time to stand still, without swatting madly, and trace where the wasps were flying from/to. It took more than a few pop bottles to deal with that lot.

Next week a brand new cooker arrives. My mainstay in the kitchen and home, the faithful old Rayburn, has burst her boiler after living in the farmhouse for longer than I have. All my married life.

She was converted form solid fuel to oil after I rebelled against all the fumes and ash as I emptied and riddled to keep the heat up. The new Queen of the kitchen will hopefully run the central heating, heat the water and cook. All at the same time. Or separately.

Even come on and off up top three times a day on a timer. Magic. So, in another week the gap in the kitchen where the Rayburn stood will be retiled and replumbed and, heating engineer permitting, I shall have yet more tops and ovens to boil and bubble away on. I'll just need another freezer to put it all in.