Are you sitting comfortably?

When my brother and I were young (and foolish) we decided one day to gather up all the fat chestnuts in our garden and sell them from a makeshift market stall outside our house. We had at least half a dozen mature sweet chestnut trees in our garden so there was plenty to gather up. Bear in mind that we didn't get a lot of passing traffic (our road was a dead end) and we were both painfully shy when it came to strangers. Mum wasn't keen on the idea but reluctantly agreed thinking the project wouldn't last five minutes. She was right, but not in the way she (or we) expected.

We reckoned on being out there for quite a while so after weighing up portions and bagging them up we set up our table and a lunch box containing various refreshments and snacks for ourselves. Every aspect was thought out including our prices (we knew what was being charged elsewhere and undercut it by a little). Five minutes into our venture a car drew up and a man got out. R mumbled something like, 'oh heck' and I tried my best salesperson smile. Even more terrifying was cutting a deal for him to buy the entire stock! I said if he bought everything I would give him 10% off and he laughed heartily and accepted. No doubt he ran a shop somewhere.

M is under strict doctors orders to walk more for his sore hip. This is music to my ears because it's always nice to have company on a walk. Today we didn't venture too far but came across a very small sweet chestnut tree. I couldn't believe the squirrels hadn't got there first. We scooped up the entire windfall. I've since googled recipes and there's more you can do with chestnuts than I realised. I think we will probably just roast these though.

We also picked what we thought might be a crab apple, and may go back for more now that we have a recipe for crab apple jelly. No sense in wasting free food!