It feels like it's been raining forever, and apparently I'm not imagining things as it's been the wettest February in the UK since records began, and the fifth wettest month overall. I feel like I've spent most of the month inside, trying to stay dry. Still, there have been one or two non-soggy days, and a couple of outdoor things have been started. Tackling the quagmire On one of the few dry days I decided to tackle the quagmire that appears outside our front gate when the rainwater washes down the driveway and creates a giant puddle, which we then reverse the cars into, creating a muddy, soupy mess, which expands until we have to put wellies on just to get to the car. It's interesting, this puddle, because it sits and settles and eventually the grass grows over the mud. All that grass you can see in the picture, both inside the gates and outside, is growing on just a couple of inches of mud - underneath is all tarmac. I suspect if we left it long enough (and didn't drive over it), the grass would keep expanding until it reached the top of the drive. There would be some advantages to that I suppose, but I'd rather not wade through mud when I'm trying to get to work at 6am. So I needed a solution. My solution wasn't complicated, or pretty, and probably won't be long term, but it's solved the immediate problem without creating a new problem (and it was done in a very short break in the rain). The chickens helped. The water now runs through my new little channel, away from the house and into the field. Not perfect, not elegant, but good enough for now (which is my general aim in life). Compost bins We must have had another dry day at some point as I made a start on the new compost bin, which I mentioned back in January. So far all I've done is retrieve wood from the pile of old floorboards removed during the building work, and lay them out in order to make sure I have enough. I've measured where I want the compost bins to go, and now need to do a bit of sawing and screw everything together. It's not raining today so perhaps that's a job for this afternoon. Plastering Some things have been happening inside too - not much, I should add, but I have made a start on plastering the new bedroom. Not a very good start, I admit. Either I let the PVA glue dry too much, or the plaster has gone off, and quite a lot of it didn't stick to the wall and had to be scraped off. What a fiasco. Still, it feels good to have made a start, and by the end of March I'm hoping this room will be beautifully plastered and ready to move in (ha, fat chance). Growing Not much is growing in the garden yet. Snowdrops, and I glimpsed the first crocuses the other day too. I did spend an hour clearing old ferns from the bed in the garden, so that looks a little tidier (although it would be even better if I'd not left the offcuts lying where I cut them - but in my defence it had started raining again). The rhubarb has sprouted though and is coming on nicely. Rhubarb crumble before March is out I reckon. Things I didn't do I made the mistake of looking back at January's post to see whether I'd made any progress on what I'd started then. I've started the compost bin, but other than that... no. No walling (far too rainy and windy for that), no progress on the fence, and we've not even taken that giant pile of rubbish to the tip (although we have added to it). The snow hasn't helped - it's not been constant, but every few days there's a flurry being whipped up by the wind, making me not want to set foot out of the door, let alone spend an hour lugging stones round in a field. Even the chickens aren't impressed. Oh well. The nights are getting noticeably lighter now, and that always makes me feel more energetic. I'm off work at the minute (we're on strike, again) so theoretically I should have plenty of time to be getting on with all these things. But somehow there's always someone to visit, or something else to do (that involves staying warm and dry).
But I'm going to declare a few things (which I reserve the right not to achieve). By the end of March I would like to have
Let's see how far I get...
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Sometime last week (or was it the week before?) we woke to snow. Not very much snow, but snow nevertheless. The chickens at first weren't impressed, then they were curious, and then in no time at all they were strutting round like it had been snowing all their lives. Incidentally, this picture of Rusty reminded me of a similar picture of our dear departed Hermione, taken in the snow this time last year, just before her and Luna's untimely demise, which means we must have had these new ladies for almost a year now. Speaking of chickens, Beaky isn't very well at the minute. She's been a little off colour for a few days, and has been living inside with us again, having an Epsom salts bath every morning. Some days she seems better, some worse, so she's off to the vets again in the morning for a quick check over. Poor little thing. Anyway, I was talking about the snow. It was very scenic, but not very heavy, and it didn't stick around very long either - the perfect sort of snow for wandering in, admiring, but not getting stuck in on the way to work. Most convenient. I wasn't the only one who'd been out and about in the snow. It was gone after a couple of days, and since then it's felt like we've had incessant howling wind and rain, sometimes even inside the house.
Bring back the snow I say. Over the last few years I've been doing an 'in the garden' post every month or two, trying to keep track of progress and seasonal changes. You can see some from the last couple of years here, and from the last few years in our old garden here. Now we have more space, I want those posts to reflect the fact that our outdoor activities often take us beyond the garden, and I'd also like to bring in discussions of what we're doing inside the house too. January has been rather bleak. The weather has been grim, and both of us have been ill at various times, so we've not made as much progress as I'd like. Still, some things have got done. Field walls We are deep into dry stone wall territory here. I have a love/hate relationship with walls. I love the way they look, and the idea of them. But ours are old, and they fall down, and I don't find it that easy to rebuild them. However, I'll mostly be repairing them myself, so I'll probably get better over time. This gap appeared last summer, and I started dismantling it properly at new year. There was one day in the middle of January where the sunshine coincided with a weekend and I spent a happy couple of hours shifting stones and looking at the view. You can see my new space-age knee pads in the photograph - I can't be doing with soggy and sore knees and these are far more convenient than shifting a kneeling pad every five minutes. This sort of work, while being difficult and taking forever, does remind me why we moved out here. I've nearly (but not quite) finished dismantling the wall far enough that there's a solid bit to rebuild on. I want to finish it before the cows come back in May, which feels like a long time away, but I know it will come round quickly. Pondering compost I built our existing compost bin from old pallets and breeze blocks when we moved in. It's served us well, but it's rather inconveniently sited in a field rather than in the garden, and now it's somewhat collapsed, it seems like a good time to relocate. I shifted all the mostly-rotted compost over onto the edible windbreak to use as mulch, and started pulling bits of wood out of the pile of old floorboards to build a new one. I've identified where it's going, and broadly what it's going to look like, and when we get another day of fine weather, I'm going to start building it. Fencing in the vegetable garden I didn't grow much food last year, partly through idleness, but also because everything I did plant was either eaten or dug up by a succession of chickens, hares and sheep. This year I've decided to fence around an area of the garden to (hopefully) keep them all out. I think it might also make the garden seem more enclosed and manageable, more like a little allotment than a vast expanse of wind-blown grass. You can't quite see in this picture, but I've started to put pegs in to map out where I want the fence posts to go. We've got some fence posts, and I'll be filling in between them with chicken wire. Fingers crossed that will be enough. Collecting rubbish Rather a lot of what we've done this month has involved collecting rubbish and piling it up around the garden. I've noticed that piles of 'stuff' seem to be a staple feature of gardens out here, and I can very much see how it happens. This pile is ostensibly waiting to go to the tip. It's been waiting for several weeks already, and I confess it's a bit of an eyesore, both for us (it's right next to where we park) and for people walking on the footpath down our drive. We'd been waiting until it dried out a bit to put it in the car, but might just have to get on with it as I'm sick of looking at it now. Fluffing up the chicken run One regular part of our outdoor activities is cleaning out the chicken run. We pick the droppings out of the house each day, and once a week or so we clean out the hen house and put in fresh bedding. Every few weeks we rake the old bedding from the floor of the run and replace it. For the past few months we've been replacing it with hay. The advice about using hay for chickens is mixed. There's a general consensus against using it for bedding in the hen house - it's dusty and can harbour mould, and so can cause respiratory problems. But in the outside area of the run, where there is plenty of ventilation? Some people still advise against it, for the above reasons, and also because they have a tendency to eat it, and eating too much of it can cause problems in the chickens' crops. I don't know what the answer is, but we do have rather a lot of our own hay, and nothing else to do with it, so for now we throw a few handfuls in there every few weeks for them to root about in. They love it, and it stops the ground getting quite so muddy for a while. The last time I put some in there, I lay down on it myself, and was surprised how warm and comfortable it was. I reckon I could sleep a night in the chicken run if I had to (providing the hay was fresh, of course). So there we are - a round up of homestead-ish activities in January. Looking back it seems like quite a bit, but everything I've written about here was done over one weekend in the middle of the month when it stopped raining for a few short hours.
There's been no DIY progress from me this month. Peter has acquired tools for kitchen renovations, and has fitted blinds in the living room and the bathroom, which have made such a difference to the feel of the place, especially after dark. We didn't have any curtains, and while there's not much chance of anyone looking in out here, once the sun set the windows became inky-black voids which didn't help with a feeling of cosiness. I'm hoping February will bring some nicer weather. I'd like to get the new compost bin built, and the vegetable garden fence, and to make significant progress on my field wall. But if all else fails, I can always start plastering... I so much like tracking my days. Looking back at the small everyday happenings is one of my favourite things about blogging, and now I've been doing it for eleven years I do like to marvel at how much life has changed. Earlier this week I said I was going to track my days for a couple of weeks, to see whether I really was running around fitting an extraordinary amount of stuff in or whether, as I suspect, I'm pretty idle and just talk a lot about the occasional interesting things I do. So here goes... Monday 20th Woke up early so curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea and watched an episode of Call the Midwife while the sun rose before I let the chickens out. Started work at 9.30, and had some disappointing work-related news in an email, so we consoled ourselves (well, me) with a cafe trip (with cake, despite it still being before 10.30). Worked at home for the rest of the day, hoovered for the second time in a day (very unusual, but the floor was filthy again), did a mountain of washing up and prepared lunch and clothes for Tuesday, then some financial jiggery-pokery in the evening (checking the budget, switching savings accounts, that type of thing) before another episode of Call the Midwife. Bed about 11pm. Tuesday 21st Alarm went off at 5.30, and I went straight outside in my dressing gown to open the chicken house. The stars were bright and there was a thin crescent moon and I stood for a while just looking at the sky. Got engrossed in writing a blog post, and ended up leaving late for work, meaning I didn't get a parking space, and after driving round for ages had to park further away and walk back. It took me almost two hours to get from house to office (it normally takes one) and I arrived flustered and grumpy. Nipped outside at lunchtime and it almost felt like spring in the sheltered sunshine. Home by 5.30 but tired, so had a lazy evening, half a pizza for tea, then a nice long bath with a book. Wednesday 22nd Worked at home. Breakfast in the cafe, then a sneaky nip into town for a quick wander around the charity shops. Finished work at 7pm, then had a most exciting evening as Peter had fixed up the new induction hob so we were able to use a pan for the first time since September! I had a celebratory stir fry. Spent an hour or so playing with the overlocker, putting quick seams on some old pieces of cotton and towel for use as cleaning cloths. Went out to shut the chicken house door and found Rusty huddled in the dark at the back of the run on her own - she'd laid a lash egg and had obviously felt unwell, and their eyesight is notoriously bad in the dark. I helped her into the hen house and when I checked half an hour later she was snuggled up with the others. Thursday 23rd Another day of working at home. I nipped out to let the chickens out at 8am and was met with the most glorious view of the sun rising over a mist filled valley. I quickly got dressed and ran down the field, and spent a little while taking photos as the mist slowly lifted to reveal ghostly trees and fields. Spotted the snowdrops starting to peek through the leaves. The rest of the day was filled with a tedious work task that just went on and on (and on). Finished working about 7 again and spent the rest of the evening pottering around putting things away and packing for the weekend. Friday 24th Left for work at 6am, and had a farcical day of sorting things out which ended up with someone (not me) getting stuck in a lift. Arrived home at 5.20, and left again at 5.30 to drive to Birmingham to stay with friends. A lovely evening at a charity quiz event they'd organised, then drinking and nattering until 2am. Saturday 25th As is usual when staying at other people's houses, I was up several hours before everyone else. I made tea and sat at the kitchen table writing a letter to an old school friend until the others appeared at 11am. We went for an amble around the local park to their favourite cafe. I do so love being introduced to other people's favourite cafes, and I think if I lived where they live, this would quickly become my favourite cafe too. After a gentle game of scrabble we had a long and tedious drive home through roadworks and past accidents and I cursed myself for not checking the route before I set the satnav. By the time we got home the fog was so thick I missed the turning to our own road. A quick check on the chickens and one episode of Call the Midwife was all I was fit for, and it was swiftly followed by a much-needed early night. Sunday 26th Up before the alarm again at 7am, and again I curled up with tea and Call the Midwife while the sun rose (or tried to) before letting the chickens out. I'm almost at the end of series 8 now and I don't know what I'll do when it runs out. We went to our second favourite cafe for breakfast. A friend popped by, and we arranged to meet for lunch next week. After a quick (and soggy) pop round the charity shops in a local market town, I've spent the last couple of hours wrangling with chickens, writing this blog post, and doing the Big Garden Birdwatch (tally so far - two blackbirds, one dunnock, and a robin). In half an hour I'm off to a wind orchestra rehearsal, the first since before Christmas (and the first time I've picked up my flute since then too). After that, tea, sorting out clothes, lunch and bag for work tomorrow, and a bath, and that might be the end of the weekend. So there we have it - an ordinary week in an ordinary life. Five days of work, three of those at home. A bit of sewing, a tiny bit of flute playing, one letter written and a trip to see friends at the weekend, but no plastering, no gardening, no running, no knitting, no visitors, no wall-building, no DIY.
I wonder what next week will bring? Well. Here we are at the start of 2020! Let's begin with a look back at 2019 shall we? It's felt rather less eventful than 2018 (thank goodness). After looking back on a rather busy 2018, I started the year thinking about living seasonally, and then was promptly thrown into living seasonally when the snow arrived. I declared an intention to start walking more, which I've sometimes kept up with, sometimes not. February started with a chicken tragedy, when a stoat found its way into the hen house and killed Hermione and Luna. We buried them under the fruit trees, and Mildred and Maud, physically fine but intensely traumatised, came to live in our house for a few weeks (rather disrupting the beginning of my work sabbatical). They slowly recovered while we made reinforcements to their run, and at the end of February we collected three new ladies, freed from battery cages, to add to our little flock. In March, I pondered January and February in the garden, went for a run around a local reservoir, and waffled on about the chickens (there was a lot of that in 2019). In April I finally finished knitting a cardi for a friend's daughter (it was very late, and rather small), and continued taking my morning constitutional walks around the local lanes. In May I talked about chickens (again), and did an unusual amount of travelling (to Copenhagen, Glasgow, and Hebden Bridge). I finished the month with a look at May in the garden. I didn't say much in June, but spent quite a bit of time chasing sheep out of our fields (something I've just had to do again today, unfortunately). In July, work got unexpectedly busy, and I neglected the garden, but did find time for a series of mini adventures. In August it rained quite a lot, but the sun shone too. I pondered June and July in the garden, when we tidied up quite a bit, and a tiny hare took up residence. I walked six miles to meet a friend in a cafe, and took a trip to Calke Abbey. In September, I talked about our hay making! Most exciting. I also reflected on how rainy August had been and how soggy the garden was. I did a bit of sunbathing with the chickens. In October we finally had the builders in, and there was lots of upheaval as they replaced the kitchen ceiling. The chickens weren't impressed at being confined (but would have tripped up a builder or got stuck in a cement mixer if let out). I reflected on September and October in the garden, and how much I'd neglected it. We did still manage to grow our first apples though! By November, the builders had left, and we were slightly overwhelmed by what we still had to do. I went on a beekeeping course (which was interesting, but convinced me I was not going to keep bees any time soon), and I went on and on about how rainy the autumn was. In December, Beaky the chicken was ill, and had to be admitted to our in-house chicken hospital wing for a week and a half (which gave us a nice excuse not to do any DIY). I'm delighted that she made a full recovery. I finished the year enthusing about my love of cafes.
So there we are - another year gone by. I feel like 2019 has been rather sedate in comparison to 2018, but in reality it's been our first full year in our new house, so there's still been lots of settling in to do, and we've had major building work done after all. I've had some unexpectedly busy times at work too, a little out of the normal routine, which have taken a lot of time and head space but which should (fingers crossed) make things more interesting soon enough. If you asked me my favourite season I'd usually tell you it was autumn. Not this year though. This year autumn is filled with torrential rain and mud. My favourite wellies sprung a leak, and I've done an experimental repair with Sugru. You can see where it's a more shiny yellow across the front. So far they're holding up well. I've been trying to throw myself into the season, and a couple of weeks ago a friend and I visited a little local autumnal event, which was most jolly. We have had the occasional glimpse of sunshine between downpours. But the sun never seems to last long before it starts raining again. Yesterday I'd arranged to meet a friend in a local cafe, and I was determined to walk there. I've been spending so much time either indoors or driving that I felt the need to move. There was a brief break in the showers, and I togged up as much as I could and set off. Hmm, that's a small river running through one of our fields. I did get a bit wet, but the overriding feeling was one of greyness. I took these pictures at lunchtime, and look how dark it is! There was water everywhere, of course, and I was glad my wellies were holding up. The sun did come out eventually (for about five minutes), and we had lunch in the cafe and then a jolly afternoon putting the world to rights over a nice cup of tea. Maybe autumn's not so bad after all.
A few weeks ago I went on a short beekeeping course. We never had a specific plan to keep bees, but I've been mildly interested, and an hour-long course just a few miles from home seemed the ideal place to learn more. There were about twelve of us, and the beekeepers decked us out in these ludicrous outfits, for which I was of course very grateful. These bees are kept in a small wooded area, quite rural, but near some houses. There are several people who tend bees here and they run regular open days. We were shown the hives, and the bees, and told all kinds of things, and I confess most of it went in one ear and out of the other as I was so busy concentrating on not panicking about the number of bees flying right around my face. Of course they couldn't get at me, but it doesn't feel like that when they're an inch from your nose. Anyway, I think I remained outwardly calm, but I can't now tell you what all the bits of the hive are called, or what the different types of bees do. What I can tell you is that we won't be keeping bees any time soon. I loved the enthusiasm of the beekeepers, but it's not a cheap hobby, especially not when you first start out, and it's pretty time consuming.
I had wondered whether we might offer some of our space to a local beekeeper to keep their hives, but it seems that our high, exposed land would make it quite difficult to keep bees alive over the winter, and I don't want thousands of bee deaths on my hands. So no bees for us, for now at least. We'll see how we feel a few years down the line, maybe when we've planted more trees and have more shelter. Maybe. The poor garden has been sadly neglected this year. I may have had visions of some kind of Victorian cottage garden, but I certainly didn't have a team of professional gardeners, and so my vision has (so far, at least) failed to become reality. Back at the start of September things still felt fairly orderly. I had beds laid out, apples growing, and we had even strimmed the grass. I'd planted sunflowers, and while yes, I'd had to plonk them in any old place rather than finding somewhere ideal, some of them had grown - not very tall, but they were looking rather cheering. Back then (and it does feel like forever ago), it was still warm enough to sit outside with a cuppa and do a spot of plotting and scheming. The signs of autumn were there though, and as we moved into October we harvested our first ever apple and the weather got slightly more inhospitable. The garden has been quite disrupted these past couple of weeks as we've had to create a temporary enclosure to separate the builders from the chickens. They're not impressed (the chickens, that is - I'm pretty sure the builders appreciated not being followed round by the a hoard of pestering birds), but they do seem to forgive quite quickly (especially when faced with treats). Now we're near the end of October, and it feels like it's been raining for weeks, although my photographs do give me a slight glimpse of sunshine here and there. Our drive has turned into a bit of a river, with a new (and inconvenient) water feature developing just outside the garden gate. The clocks went back last night, so our chicken routine has to change slightly. I'd been letting them out later and later each morning and yesterday it was around 8am and they still seemed quite sleepy. This morning with the changing clocks, I went out at 7.15 (which would have been 8.15 yesterday) and they seemed quite content still having a bit of a lie in. The sun was shining (for once) and if I'd been dressed, or had a pair of wellies that didn't have a hole in (must do something about that) I might have paddled up the lane for a bit of a morning wander. As it was, I pottered round the garden in my dressing gown (one of the many advantages of living in the middle of nowhere, although I do sometimes forget that there's a public footpath running past our house). Maybe autumn's not so bad after all.
The sun shone over the August bank holiday and we made hay. Not really because we needed hay, but more because we have a hay field, and a scythe, and it seemed like a good thing to have a go at. It took us all weekend, scything in the evening when the chickens were in bed (not ideal for scything, but definitely ideal for chickens, who want to stick their beaks in everything that's going on), and turning the cut grass several times each day to dry. We made bales in the wheelie bin, something I spotted someone else doing online just as I was wondering what on earth I was going to do with all that hay. It's surprisingly easy - peg four lengths of twine to the sides of your wheelie bin, down and back up, then pack the whole thing full of hay, stand on it to compress it, tie up the string - and that's it!
We only made seven bales - quite enough for us - and now the cows have been let into the field and are happily munching the rest of the grass. When I lived in the city, I walked all the time - to work, to the shops, to see friends. Now I live out in the wilds, none of those things are within easy walking distance (well, I could walk to the local shop, but it's a round trip of an hour and a half). As a result, I barely walk at all in day to day life without making a special effort. I'm off work for a fortnight now, and decided it was about time I made that special effort. I arranged to meet a friend (Sarah from Country Realist blog) in a cafe near her house, and set out to walk the six miles to get there. I did this same journey in reverse, back in March I think, getting a lift over to meet my friend at her house and then walking home, so the paths felt vaguely familiar which was nice. It rained on me at the start, but the sun soon came out again and after the first hour I was in a sleeveless top and regretting wearing two pairs of socks. My route took me quite high up, and for a lot of the way I could see for miles. The wild flowers aren't as plentiful as they were a few weeks ago but there were still plenty about. I arrived five minutes late, which on a walk of almost two and a half hours isn't bad timing at all.
Cake always tastes much better when you've earned it, doesn't it? |
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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