More about… snow

I having just gone back through my posts to see when the snow first started, the 17th of December. By Sunday we will have had a whole month of this. Rain is forecast for Saturday so hopefully it will not go that far but there is more snow forecast for the middle of next week. And when all this snow melts there are flood warnings…

This morning we were talking to the couple who run the feed merchant and they are well and truly feed up with the weather, they have even decided to reduce their own stock later in the year because of it.

I heard on the news the other day that they have snow fall somewhere in Spain for the first time in fifty years.

Life is on hold until the weather clears, but it is still carrying on. Still, this cold spell with have a great impact on the garden pests that need a cold spell to kill them off, and the midges that carry Blue Tongue will also be killed off.

Hoo hum…

Home cooking

Well, the rain that has been forecast for the last few days arrived today but we haven’t done too badly as the last three days were it has been meant to be rain we have just had showers, and showers that it is easy to ignore and carry on working through.

I’ve managed to spend a fair amount of time at the allotment, and also taking down the kids house in readiness for putting up the new goat housing. This morning wasn’t bad either, the rain held off while we moved some ewes and lambs.I moved the three chicks that have been living inside (not in the brooder for a while but still in the house) to a new house and clear the goat pen a little. It is still getting very water logged whenever with get rain and doesn’t drain by itself, a problem that might hopefully be sorted with the new house but I think will need to be worked on for a while yet. The goat housing and pen are at the bottom of the garden and so the pen ends up with all the rain from the rest of the garden running into it, I did plant some willow the other side of the pen this spring in the hope that they would suck up some of the extra water but they have not taken. I will try again later this year.

The highlight of the weekend has been the start of ‘real’ harvesting from the allotment. Tonights dinner was mostly home grown and was cooked on the Rayburn which has also been heating some water for us.

We had savoury pancakes with a kale* and courgette* gravy filling and a cheese sauce and garlic* kale* (a recipe adapted from Colour It Green). I think the only vegetable in the whole meal that wasn’t home grown was the onions, and the ones on the allotment are coming along nicely!

*home grown

Full moon and rising waters

I don’t think anyone could have missed the news that the moon was visible at it’s biggest for 15 years on Friday night, I really wanted to go and take some photo’s of it as well but it has gone from being very cold and clear to being cold, cloudy and raining from Friday evening. It rained ALL night on Friday, so there was not chance of getting any photos of it.

However I could see the effects that it had had on Saturday morning, there was water every where, even the little stream at the bottom of our road was threatening to bust its banks. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about moon planting recently and one of the explanations I’ve heard as to whyit works is that planting when the moon has pulled the water up from the soil means tat seeds germinate faster, I think there is a lot more to it though.

I’d arranged to go out on Saturday, and so just happened to drive right through the area (I very rearly do this) and it was like it everywhere, even water courses that I would hardly call streams were running fast with white foam appearing anywhere that the water met a stone or a tree that normally stands happily on it’s woodland floor.

Brighton

Me and Rhys went down to Brighton on Friday. Rhys was playing a Halloween show so I went as well. We’re there for less than 24 hours but it was still nice to get away. It was the first time I saw the sea this year, I like the sea better in winter. There’s something comforting and peaceful about feeling the wind and the rain while watching waves and seagulls on an empty beach.

 I also like visiting bigger green grocers in cities; they have such magical looking fruit and veg, some of which I can’t even guess what it is or how it would be used.

 

Well, winter is finally here

Outside it is snowing, huge flacks but it’s been raining all afternoon so the ground is, touch wood, to wet for it to settle.

October has flown by; I’ve spent most of it working. I work right though from the 13^th until the 22^nd, two days off and now I’m back at work. Officially I’m on holiday, but only from one job this week. Next week though…

Everything is mostly indoors now, on the 12^th I almost completely cleared up the vegetable garden. Planted out the kale and spring cabbage plants, pulled up all the nettles, potted up all the strawberry plants. The garden looks bare now, the purple sprouting plants are coming back well have being completely massacred by caterpillars. The sprouts are coming back as well, but the ‘sprouts’ aren’t forming as sprouts but leafy bubs. I thought that some of the red cabbages had survived the caterpillars but the remaining cabbages are rotting away at the stream and falling over.

We also mated Keris, Kniteshade is such a good boy. He could easily flatten any and all of us if he wanted to but he just does as he’s asked. Mother has taken him out for a few walks with the other goats and he’s been really good then as well.

Indoors I’ve been pickling lots of quail eggs, they are all indoors for the winter now and still laying at least one egg a day each. Working on pegloom-carrier-bag mats for the next LETS meeting.

Tonight mother took me out to buy my 21 birthday present, I didn’t know what I wanted when it was my birthday. I now have two drop spindles and a big bag of ‘rolls’ to play with. A while ago I was thinking about self-sufficiently and clothes, it’s just not practical to try to make all of your own clothes while working, tending to animals, processing food, etc. there just isn’t enough hours in the day but something on a small scale is doable. So I’m learning to make socks, right from spinning the wool to knitting them. That’s my plan any way, and that’s what I’m working on re-learning to knit and now spin. 

When the sun is shining…

I’m working.

It feels like every time there has been even just one day of reasonable weather, and I don’t even mean sunny weather, I’ve been in the middle of working flat out for one reason or another. This weekend is was because the museum that I work for was taking part in Heritage Open Days, up and down the country buildings or sites with ‘heritage’ interest were open for free to encouraged people to visit. Of course unless you are a museum in Wales (and Scotland ?? ) or are run by a council and are luckily enough to have all your running costs paid for, if you’re not taking money on the gate for visitors you have to some how make some money to cover running costs.

This time it was a ‘Forest Fair’, we had duck races round the mill pond, face painting, milk a cow, hoop-a-frog, etc. and the weather was good, not sunny all the time but it wasn’t overcast or about to rain and at some points the sun was even out. Which made the event even better, but I did keep thinking about all the out door things I could have been doing at home.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I really enjoy my job, I get on with the people I work with and the site is beautiful but now that the nights are getting darker again then days off are becoming more precious, and days off when it’s not pouring with rain even more so. A weekend of dry weather could have made a big difference too, at the moment we are re-doing the gate pen so as it drains better.

Last weekend it poured down, and when it wasn’t pouring down it was building up to the next down pour, but still me, Rhys and middle-sister were out there.

A few more sets of water-proofs are on my list of things to get when I next get paid.

There is also a large corner of the veg garden that needs the nettles pull, a bonfire and a few tip runs with the rubbish from it, it’s half a dry days work. And then there’s the private tree that needs cutting out, and the strawberries to re-pot… and I want to sow a few more buckets of carrots to grow in the poly-tunnel… and so on.

It wasn’t all bad though. One of the days another LETS member came in and I’ve got an order for some more paper pots for the next meeting, which is a nice ‘watching-TV-in-the-evening’ job, and I do like working. I can’t imagine not going out to work at least part-time, I just wish that I could enjoy the work and have more time for the outdoor things at home. With the same (or more!!) pay.

Cheese, gardening and days off

Ok, this weekend are my first two days off the past two weeks, and I’m really glad of them. There is only so much you can get done in the evenings once you get in for work, just making sure I’m got enough clean work clothes (work and ‘animal’ clothes are something you have to have here) when it’s raining on and off all the time is almost a full time job. We don’t have a tumble dryer.

Any way. Milk is the other big job at the moment. Milking is taking about 45 min – 1 hour, youngest-sister and Mother are doing that, and then collecting the cream, bottling milk and then sorting that days milk is also taking up the best part of an hour. And now we’ve Had to start making cheese, it was starting to make itself really. Before we’ve only really made soft ‘cream’ cheese but this weekend I got the cheese press out and had a got at using that, and it makes REAL cheese! It even looks like real cheese, very posh real cheese in fact.

So Saturday was spent making cheese and cleaning the kitchen and then we had lasagne, with loads of veg either from the local farm shop or from the garden (the nettles came from the garden) homemade pasta, I was layering the pasta on as Rhys rolled it, with homemade cheese in the sauce and on top. It tasted really good.

It was a really nice relaxing day.

Sunday I spent mostly in the garden, when it wasn’t raining, weeding and I harvested the garlic and put the bean plants out. The sprouts and purple sprouting have caterpillars so I’ve feed as many of them as possible to the chickens, and a white butterfly I caught which the chick went mad for.

Early morning and audio loading

I got up before most people this morning and wondered round the garden looking at plants and harvesting some strawberries, it was really nice and peaceful. Then I came in and made some butter out of the last of the single cream.

It’s been raining for most of the day ever since.

I had planned to load the interviews Rhys did at Drybrook open gardens, but even though wordpress has a button for loading audio onto a post it doesn’t support any audio file types I know of. So that idea’s is on hold

A rambling update

Life if very much about being outside at the moment, as might have been guessed from my lack of posts lately.

 

Even when it’s raining it still nice outdoors.

 

There was a big event at work over the Bank Holiday, when it chucked it down of course, and then I started my new job which is working out really well & at home things feel like they are getting done. In a very un-organised way, must start making lists again, last weekend I spent most of a day on the veg garden, which has exploded mostly with weeds in the last couple of weeks. Last year I tried growing potatoes for Christmas, it was a challenge on a forum I belong too, but when nothing happened I thought the potatoes must have rotted, Wrong! It’s just the poatoes from this year that don’t seem to have come up. I managed to plant out the rest of the Garlic I started off in paper pots and have been sitting in trays in the garden. They’ve done really well though.

 

I’ve mostly cleared the base of the old chicken shed & the meat chicks have moved onto that off the veg garden and some of the quail have moved from the house outside as well.

 

I’ve planted loads more seeds& bought plants from the carboot & some from Lidl that were reduced.

 

We’ve got two broodies that I’m trying to find eggs for, I want to breed some Silver Dorkings to go with the hen we have but there are a few other breeds ‘the family’ would like as well, middle-sister has some hen & call duck eggs in the incubator. One of her oldest cockerels died so she’s trying to hatch some of his off-spring before it’s to late. It would seem that I wasn’t the only person locally to have a rubbish hatch at the start of May, so it must have been that weather.

 

Muma has a pair of geese, nasty, sharp, hissy things, that were being given away in the local paper. So the meat-eaters of the family are having goose (not these two, our own hatched ones) for Christmas dinner this year. Last year they had the same, just bought in.

 

Rescue ewe, now called Iris, & lambs are doing well. My ‘spoilt AN’s’ have reached over the wall & eaten the hair along her back (they don’t much like sheep.)

 

My weekend starts again tomorrow.