Free Food: October 2020 and the start of a new challenge at Frugaldom. This autumn, I am attempting to create a forest food garden on the edge of our 'Legacy Woodland' tree planting project, which borders marshland and is flanked by a small river. The plan is to do this at zero cost so it provides us with free food in the future.

MUDDY WELLIES WEEKENDS! Escape to the country this Autumn and take advantage of one of our great FRUGAL BREAKS. Official 'Friends of Frugaldom' members can benefit from additional discounts.

In December, the bottom of the garden flooded, so we finally had to move the chickens to new quarters further up the garden. In February, the old chicken run was converted into a wildlife garden. In March, we finally got around to setting up the trail cam in the hope of filming some of the local wildlife - now we have badgers!

A few days of glorious weather has put some sun on ponies' backs, helped with tree planting, dried out the ground a bit and even seems to have encouraged the wildlife. But beer-making? What's that all about, I hear you ask?

Fine and sunny weather over the weekend allowed us all out to the field to play at den-building with the grand children. Work is always more of a game when it's fun and having the under 12's in charge of proceedings makes it interesting, to say the least!

The new apple orchard has now been planted - 25 Galloway Pippins and 2 of them sponsored already! The latest tags have been fitted to the fence posts around the corral and today, Leap Day 29th February, we caught up with Michael, Angus and Bob as they made their way along the country lanes in the direction of Frugaldom.

The world, according to Frugaldom, is a complete package. We have all we need to create all that we want and if we break it, we have the wherewithal to fix it. Nothing is fake, everything is real - just take the time to look into this amazing frugal bubble that is our world. It's like the life of pie!

15 Years down the road and round the bend but not quite over the hill... Our satirical 'Woman Zone' columns first appeared in print in 1999. Those responsible for the rants, raves and ramblings included Shona Prophett, the Bishop, Rosemary, Eddie Elwood, Jordan, Millie May, Agnes and Senga... names that many of you may recognise and characters some of you met.

Phase 3 of our planting began this month with the arrival of our next tree pack from the Woodland Trust, after being awarded a place in their World War 1 Centenary Woodland project last year.

May has been a busy money-saving month of mayhem, so far, but we have managed to complete the barn painting and have another corral, or small paddock, fenced, planted the last of this year's trees, sown seeds and I set up a makeshift wild bird feeding station outside the caravan, where the resident woodpecker is now visiting several times each day. That's my frugal entertainment. Life on site in a mobile home is great!