Last Monday, we moved from our old terraced house in the city to a farmhouse on eleven acres of land in the middle of nowhere. It's not really the middle of nowhere, of course. There is a small hamlet half a mile away, and a village with a shop, cafes and pubs just two miles down the road. But compared to our old life, this feels like the middle of nowhere. It didn't help that on Tuesday, it started snowing, and we haven't been able to get the car out since. We've walked to the shop once, but have otherwise stayed inside. It's been quite a culture shock. We're excited about our new life, although we don't quite know what it will look like yet. In the city, I sewed and knitted, baked and preserved, and grew food and flowers in our tiny little garden. Here I will do the same things, but more of them, and new things too. I still work full time in the city so there will be quite a bit of driving back and forth. I've kept a blog for many years, and love the way it makes me notice more. If you want to read more about how we got here (it was quite a lengthy process) you can do that on my previous blog. I could have carried on writing there, of course, but this feels like such a momentous life change that it called for a new online space too. The weather this week has been extreme. More snow than we've seen in a long time, and howling winds for several days in a row, have transformed our new front garden into a sea of icy peaks. It's useful to see the pattern of the wind here, although I'm fearing for the safety of my apple tree, buried under that large crest of snow, and more used to life in a sheltered city street. We're slowly getting to know this house, and our neighbours. The farmer has been down our drive several times with a snow plough, and someone from a nearby house gave us a lift home after we walked to the shops the other day. He introduced us to our nearest neighbour, who is nearly 90 and lives alone. There seems to be a few people looking out for him, and I imagine we will too as time goes on. The wildlife is different here too. On our second day, we spotted a hare outside our front gate, and there have been three different sets of footprints in the snow outside our window. Do some of them belong to the hare? Some seem too big (a fox, maybe), and some too small.
I have many plans for growing and making, but it's difficult to imagine planting anything when the ground is white and the snowdrifts higher than me. The temperature has risen today though and the snow is starting to melt from the trees, so I'm hopeful we'll be able to leave again soon and start thinking about the spring.
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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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February 2024
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