by Granny Spear | Jul 17, 2014
We had an awful lot of trees to choose from to burn in the range, and some were far better than others. Well seasoned hardwood was by far the best. We stored it in a huge shed, more like a small barn really. There were a few holes in it, but that didn’t matter,...
by Granny Spear | Jul 10, 2014
A modern version of gran’s set up I think I have said before that Knowle Cottage had huge grrrtt (great) big thick walls. Well, in the winter that was good news because it keeped (kept) the heat in. In the summer, especially if there was no breeze passing...
by Granny Spear | Jul 1, 2014
Back in the day there ware none of the composts and fertilizers around that you can buy nowadays. Mostly animal manure was used to fertilize the garden but sometimes it was too fresh, it hadn’t been stored long enough and that’s no good as it can burn the...
by Granny Spear | Jun 26, 2014
Back in the day sugar was quite expensive considering the little money we had coming in. Most of our sweetness came from honey, which with the amount of locals who kept bees was not difficult to get hold of. We would often swap something from the garden, or maybe a...
by Granny Spear | Jun 13, 2014
When you live in the country flies are ever present. Living without a fridge means that even though they can’t get to the food in the safe they can smell it, and that means they come inside the house and buzz around annoying everyone. Let me tell you about food...
by Granny Spear | Jun 13, 2014
There were two types of iron years ago, the solid metal ones, flat irons which was what I had, and box iron, a similar thing, but the top of the iron where the handle is, lifted up letting you put hot embers inside to save keep reheating it. Well my mother had one of...
by Granny Spear | Jun 6, 2014
When my mother opened the door on the morning of June 6th 1944 there was a pile of tin cans on the step, and the path, dozens and dozens of them. I looked out of the fields that surrounded Knowle Cottage seeing them empty. It was the first time in an age that they...
by Granny Spear | Jun 3, 2014
I remember the winter of 1947, it was cold, very cold, but it was the floods that gave us trouble. When the thaw came it was sudden, almost overnight and with the ground still rock solid the water had nowhere to go. The entire ground floor of Knowle was flooded, the...
by Granny Spear | May 23, 2014
As I’ve said before the garden at Knowle cottage was big, but not huge. It took some creative planting to make sure we produced enough to feed the family. My Ern was a master at getting the most out of the garden. He rotated the crops every year, he would draw a...
by Granny Spear | May 22, 2014
Mondays was washing day. It was a big job and organisation was the only way to get everything done and still have time for everything else. I had two large laundry coppers, like large round copper half barrels. Under one was a fire box, the other had no way of heating...
by Granny Spear | May 16, 2014
When we were growing our own food space was very important. We had a good sized garden, but not massive, and compost heaps take up a lot of room. We disposed of human waste from the outhouse into pits, which we covered with soil. By the time we had filled pits right...
by Granny Spear | May 13, 2014
Bread formed a large part of our diet in the old days, and it was always available, more so in winter when food was scarcer and bellies needed to be filled. I made all our bread, and made the yeast starters that gave it a lovely rise. Making the starter was easy. My...
