It's been a quiet Christmas round here, quieter than usual. Not all through choice, but I've enjoyed the resting. Miraculously, we managed to clear the dining room of all the building paraphernalia in time to have Christmas Dinner at the table. I can't tell you how thrilled I am. Of course, there's plenty still to do, but it's been two years since we've been able to sit at a table to eat, or had a proper kitchen to cook in, and the novelty won't wear off for a good while. I had a good two days of proper doing nothing, except sitting about with a notebook and pens, plotting and scheming exciting plans for next year. This is one of my favourite activities for over Christmas. We were threatened with snow on Christmas Day evening, and quailed a little at the thought, after the last bout of snow knocked our power out for four days, but fortunately this time things were a little more sedate. Today we've started to try a little activity. Not much. I've done some batch cooking for the freezer. Peter started to sort out our food store cupboard, some of which has been inaccessible for a good while. We'll start to work our way through it in the new year. We've sat out with the chickens, and taken them some treats. They're under another avian flu housing order, so legally confined to their run. Given the weather we've had lately, they wouldn't have been out much anyway. It's almost impossible to get a good picture in there though, especially as they won't stand still. The new ladies do seem to be settling in well, thank goodness, and they are all tolerating each other nicely, and occasionally behaving almost like a coherent little flock. Back inside, I've been painting the bedroom ceiling. I wanted to do this before the carpet was put down, and then before Christmas, and now I'm aiming for before next year. Half of it is done now, and I can reach the other half without standing on a ladder, so that should speed things up a little. I do hate painting ceilings though. I've still got another week off work, and I'm going to put it to good use. The rest of the bedroom ceiling, of course, and that gold wall needs another coat. We're hoping to get the bed in here before the weekend. I've still got Christmas presents to buy (one year I'll actually be organised, but obviously not this year).
Maybe there'll even be time for a sneaky cafe trip. Maybe.
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Things are finally starting to feel slightly festive round here. The kitchen fitters were still here messing about until mid December, and I just couldn't bring myself to contemplate anything Christmassy until after I finished work on the 16th. We did put the tree up, but the lights didn't work, so it sat dark and hulking in the corner for a week, which didn't help the festive feeling. Finally the 16th came, and since then we have been making up for our hermit-like autumn by visiting people and eating. A curry with some neighbours, pizza with friends, another friend here, pizza with a different friend (there's been a lot of pizza...). Very lovely, but it does all mean that I've still not bought all my presents. What I have done though (because it seemed far less taxing for my poor brain, which has not been working at its best recently) is make some dehydrated orange slices, and hang them up in the windows. Most cheerful, although you'll notice I've still not finished. We also decorated gingerbread people with some friends, and it was one of the most fun things I've done in a while. I perfected my technique as I went along. Things are getting rather festive around town too - I'm enjoying the spate of knitted postbox-toppers this year. It's Christmas eve tomorrow. I've not written any cards, let alone posted any. I don't have presents for most people yet. We didn't finish decorating the kitchen (although we do actually have a kitchen, and a dining room table - more on that when I've managed to take a decent photo). We didn't finish decorating the bedroom either, although that's closer, and we'll definitely move the bed in before the new year.
Slowly, though, I'm starting to relax (finally). I've put some decorations on the tree tonight, and tomorrow maybe I'll get round to making some kind of Christmas cake. We'll see. We were all over the place in November. Not geographically - we've barely been anywhere - but mentally and organisationally. As usual though, progress has been made, although not always directly by us. Let's start with what's been causing the most upheaval for the last few months. The building work The builders worked their final day in November, and were replaced by the kitchen fitters. This was quite a momentous occasion, although as I've said before, as nice as they were, I think we were all ready for them to finish (them probably more than us...). I did my best, but didn't quite finish the ceiling before the kitchen went in (I did finish the bit over the kitchen units themselves though). The initial fitting didn't take that long, then some different people came to template for the granite. Slowly I could start to see what it might feel like when it was finished. Progress was being made upstairs too. I'd done more painting, and the builders put the skirting board on (after a brief flurry of us refusing the frankly filthy skirting board they'd bought, and going in search of some new stuff). We chose the new carpet for the bedroom - a difficult decision between multiple very similar shades of beige. Some of my family came over to help me paint for a day, which was most appreciated, and we made excellent progress. The granite was scheduled to arrive on the last day of November, but instead Storm Arwen arrived (more on that below), and I spent an extremely cold day painting some of the kitchen yellow. And that's where we were up to at the end of November - not finished, but definitely getting there! Chickens I've already posted about our sad loss of Rusty chicken near the start of the month. She really was an excellent chicken, and we still miss her very much, as does Bessie, now on her own as the elder of our little flock. A couple of weeks later, we rehomed three new chickens through the British Hen Welfare Trust. These ladies, like Bessie and Rusty, had previously been caged, and were lacking a few feathers. It did feel a bit soon after losing Rusty, especially for Bessie, who seemed a bit bewildered by the arrival of the newcomers. But with the prospect of another avian flu housing order on the horizon, I wanted to make sure the new ladies were settled in, and they were all used to each other, before they were shut in together for months. As it turned out, we were right to do that, as the housing order came into force earlier than last year, but fortunately our two little flocks had merged reasonably happily by then. To start with though, we kept the new ladies in the same run, but in a separated area, so they could all see and hear each other, but not fight. Oddly enough, they showed no interest in fighting anyway. When we first introduced Bessie, Rusty and Beaky to our original chickens, Mildred and Maud, the older ladies made a lot of noise, the new ones jumped the fence and started a squabble, and it took a while to establish a pecking order. When we brought in the young hens last summer, Beaky shouted at the top of her voice for several hours, not remotely impressed by the imposters. This time though, both lots mostly ignored each other. It was quite odd. Bunty did come over for a little look, but mostly the older ladies just stayed away, slightly wary of the newcomers. We named the new girls Poppy, Sunshine and Budgie. Poppy's leg had been damaged in the rehoming process, so after advice from the British Hen Welfare Trust and other chicken rehomers, we put her on 'cage rest' for a few days, to give her chance to eat and drink without being trampled on. She could still see and hear the others, and seemed quite happy to have a bit of space to herself. After a few days of sitting down, we went in one morning to find her stood up, and she's been fine ever since. For some reason she still won't follow the others to bed though - she finds a comfy spot to settle down and we have to lift her into the chicken house. I'm hoping she learns soon. Budgie is a cheerful soul, and seems to have integrated well with the older chickens. Sunshine though, is a bit of a menace. She idly pecks tail feathers of the other new girls as she walks past, and has even attempted to peck Bessie a couple of times. None of the older ones seem willing to fight back, so Sunshine may well rise through the ranks. We'll see. She's not getting away with pecking poor old Bessie though. We had a couple of weeks of keeping them separate, letting the older ones out during the day, and giving the new ones the freedom of the whole run, before some supervised mixing for an hour before bed. It seems to have worked, and now the housing order is in place, they're mostly all muddling through together in the same run, thank goodness. The weather November started off with some nice autumnal weather. And then one day we woke to a rather dramatic scene, and no electricity or heating. All very pretty, but... no electricity, and no heating, and no way of getting the car out to go somewhere warmer. Oh, and no mobile signal, as the mobile network was down as well. First job of course was to check on the chickens, and make sure they were cosy (it was warmer in their house than ours), and add some fortifications from the biting wind. Not pretty, but surprisingly effective. We set off to walk to the nearest farm, to check if their power was out. On the way we met the farmer, who gave us a lift in his snow plough. The snow was deep, with a strange blue light glowing from within, which I'd never seen before, but which apparently happens when it contains a lot of water, so I'm told. It was clearly light enough to be blown around though, as it had formed wild snowdrifts across our drive and the road. The power was off at the farm too, but they had a generator, so we used their phone, charged our mobiles (not that they worked anyway), had a cup of tea, and reported our dangling power line to the electricity company. We came home with a couple of flasks and a hot water bottle. I painted the kitchen, Peter dug some snow, and we attempted to prepare for a cold and dark evening ahead. When it went dark, we set off back to the farm - they'd said we could refill our flasks and hot water bottles - but drifts higher than my waist had blown across the road, and were impossible to walk through. We decided it would be easier to go across the fields, but the drifts were worse, and we ended up crawling to get over walls in places. Utterly ridiculous, and it took us well over an hour to get half a mile. Didn't seem much point turning back though as we didn't have anything else to do anyway. We do have an open fire in my study, which has been used as a dumping ground for weeks now. We cleared it enough to get at the fire and sofa, and huddled in there, using our flasks to make cup a soups, and watching as the thermometer reached the heady heights of 10 degrees Celsius. Small open fires are rubbish. The next morning, the sunrise was beautiful, but we still had no power. Our drive had been ploughed though, as the power company had been to check on the cables, and we managed to get the car to the nearest town for a warm up in a cafe (and enough phone signal to cancel our evening with friends). We spent the evening draining the central heating system so the pipes didn't freeze. The next day the roads were still atrocious, and I wasn't happy driving on them at all, so I cancelled work. Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, we regained power - four days after it went off. We refilled the central heating system, but it wouldn't turn back on, and we had to wait for a plumber until Thursday evening. Overall, it was a bit of a fiasco, but we came through it ok. The study was an utter tip - four nights of huddling round a tiny fire, using a camping stove in the garden to boil water (we found it on the second day so didn't have to rely on the neighbours), meant quite a mess to clear up. So there we are. November felt like quite the emotional rollercoaster for all kinds of reasons, but we at least ended the month closer to a kitchen than we started it. We won't get over Rusty chicken in a hurry, but we're doing our best to keep Bessie, Bonny and Bunty happy while introducing the new ladies to some of the delights of a happy retirement.
Let's see what December brings. I confess I'll be glad to see the back of 2021... |
Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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