A New Year next week.

So. A New Year next week. 2017

I don't do resolutions and all that stuff...if I want to do something I do it and I do it when *I* want, not on a certain date dictated to by the calendar/the media etc....

BUT I have decided to try to be a little more balanced in the way I work during 2017, so as to spread out my work load. Several friends have commented that I seem to do "a lot" and that maybe, sometimes, just sometimes, I overdo it a bit..(Moi? Overdo it? Surely not?)

Well, actually, yes I do. So much of what I do seems like fun, not work, so I don't notice how shattered I am until I have finished. I am not good at doing nothing and never have been!

But, I am aware that as I get older my health gets worse. My immune system is still pretty poor. I still have CFS/ME and although I am so much better than I EVER thought I would be, if I overdo things I suffer the consequences of days and days of fatigue and I seem to catch the weirdest illnesess. The fact that I am a Type "A" hyper achiever doesn't make resting up any easier, either. Lol.

Losing 10 stone in weight and keeping it off has helped me enormously but I still have to be careful I don't overdo things.

So. I have to recognise these facts. I have to make myself pace myself and factor in some rest time during the day, so as to be able to keep on, keeping on. This is worse during the winter months, of course.

So I am going to try (again!) to only do "One Big Chore" (OBC) a day, either outside or inside, depending on the weather. Obviously I have a family, a house and business to run and animals to feed etc and they need doing everyday, but apart from that I will try to do only do one chore which is the sort of thing that takes a couple of hours to do. Things like spring cleaning one room, or washing all the windows, or mucking out the Mega HenPen or digging out a number of compost bins and spreading the compost. BIG CHORES. You know the sort of thing.

Previously I would do One Big Chore (OBC) and then think "oh still time to do ..." and get stuck in to another OBC, and then another one, even though really I needed to go and sit down with a cup of tea for half an hour and rest. I also want, need to make time to do some of the craft things I so love.

I also now find I need to make time to practice meditation at least twice a day to keep me calm and my blood pressure under control, given all the stress going on around here all the time.

Today my OBC was mucking out the Mega Hen Pen hen house and the three Serama hen shouses in the polytunnel. I also cleaned out all the feeders and drinkers and re filled them and re filled the treat balls with lettuce and cabbage leaves.  

And then I had a sit down, and a cup of tea and I wrote this post. And then I did my meditation :) 

See, I CAN "do" resting and pacing, honest! :-))

I hope you have all had a very enjoyable festive season. I have not, due to illness and other stuff. I hope, this way, I can keep as healthy as possible,

A difficult challenge.

If you may recall, back in March I wrote about an interesting new on line project starting in the Guardian  called "Live Better".


Each month, it focuses on a different area of sustainability, this month's challenge on the Live Better Site is  : to recycle and reuse everything you possibly can, instead of throwing it away.I signed up to join in, as I have done with the previous challenges on food waste and energy consuption. In each of the previous challenges I found ways to reduce my food waste or energy consuption even though the changes were minimal.

I actually found it very difficult to take part in this challenge - I am sure we could re use and recycle more than we do, but I am blowed if I can see where to be honest.Which has made me think about how we could reduce our waste still further in the longer term as I hate to be complacent.

That is not a criticism of the challenge btw, I think it is a really good idea and it has certainly given me some food for thought! A  few years back I would have found it easy to reuse and recycle more, but maybe that is the problem? We have already done so much here in our lives on the reduction and recycling front that it gets harder and harder to do even more?

I guess if we bought no packaged, prepared goods at all we would reduce packaging waste - but it is very difficult to do so and  we make sure we buy recyclable packaged goods. I honestly cannot see how we could increase our recycling as we already recycle everything we can. We re use a lot of it, first as well. And as for composting...! Well lets just say nothing goes uncomposted. Except - we could have a composting toilet. Now that's a plan.

Does anyone else find challenges like these hard to do, just because it is the normal, routine way of life for you? I am sure that other challenges would be more difficult for us (cutting out computer use, anyone? Or maybe eating local, with zero imported goods at all such as coffee, chocolate, spices etc?) 

Comments welcome please

Dust, and why it isn't the only problem

Dull and damp and dusty day here - like a lot of the UK we are getting high levels of pollution here - unheard of normally here in lovely rural Herefordshire but at the moment it  is like I used to feel when living in Worcester at the height of a photochemical smog day - my eyes are streaming, my chest is tight and my throat is sore. I used to have to use an inhaler when we lived in Worcester, but since moving to the much cleaner air of Herefordshire I have not needed one - but I wish I still had it today! There is a nasty chemically smell in the air as well.

There has been lots of comment about the Sahara dust being the problem, but actually the UK has been exceeding pollution levels for a long time. In February, the European Commission launched legal proceedings against the UK for failing to reduce levels of NO2 air pollution. The Sahara dust is the "last straw" - we are damaging the air we breathe by our own actions, mostly to do with driving cars.

I drive so I am also responsible BUT I do limit the miles I do and, even living in a very rural setting we do less than 4000 miles between us - and that is ALL miles; business miles as well as domestic trips. It is still 4000 odd miles too many, but it is not much for a two car family who live where there are no longer very many buses at all. I wonder how many other people in a similar position do so little mileage?

Rant over.

It started raining late afternoon today, but not hard enough to wash the air clean.

I collected new varifocals yesterday (from Ledbury and combining the trip to do lots of other shopping!) and am finding them a trial.

The bad news is I am tryng to prick out seedlings and keep on missing them

The good news is that they are much better for close up work - I took in my crochet and a book to show the optician what my problem was with the old prescription and he has come up with a good solution

so now I just need to get used to the new lenses. If I could change just one thing about myself it would not be to be thinner (nice though that would be) but to have perfect vision. I have been using eye correction since I was 10 and I don't like it.

At least the new glasses have anti rain coating, so I can see in the wet, now! Although not if the rain drops are also dusty...! I do not want to scratch the (very expensive) many coatings on them...

off to sew the last batch of tomatos seeeds, some (very late) celeriac as I only have had 20 plants germinate and want more, and some more leeks. I suspect the sowing may be a bit random due to the new glasses! 

And then to settle down and watch the new Big Bang Theory :) And eat some more fresh PSB :)

Have a good evening xxx

What would I do with £50 to spend on a night in?

This set me thinking. What would I do with £50 to spend on a night in?  Well for a start we just do not go out very often here at Compost Mansions, anyway. With no close relatives to help with babysitting there wasn't really much scope for going out when Compostgirl was younger and now she is older we still don't go out. This is because usually by the time we have finished all the chores, put away the hens, fed the other animals and I have watered the plants and we have locked up the sheds and polytunel and garage, it is quite late, certainly too late to start primping and preening and getting ready to go out. We are also too tired, to be honest!

Personally I never really did the "going out" clubbing and suchlike even when I was younger, I used to go to pubs and gigs with friends or to the cinema now and then and when Compostman and I got together we used to go to jazz clubs quite a bit, before we moved to Compost Mansions and started a family. We used to mainly "go out" for weekends away with our racing car, competing all over the UK in Hill climbs and Sprints :-)

So, what would be an ideal "night in" for us, here, now?

I think it would have to be a night in, in the winter. The onset of darkness means we have to stop work outside so we finish the outside jobs by 6pm. It also means the wood burner will be alight and the house will be warm and cosy. The evening would probably be just us three but I could certainly extend it to embrace some friends coming over as well.

Ideally I would like a peaceful evening, with all of us happy and contented with the day and how it went, and none of us feeling sad or upset or unwell. I think a nice bottle of red wine for we adults to drink (Compostgirl could have a small taste, but she would have a soft drink of her choice as well), some tasty steaks to eat with home grown potatoes and vegetables, a decent bit of Stilton and biscuits to follow as afters (Compostgirl would prefer a chocolate based pudding so we shall provide that as well) and then a settle down, with cats on laps, to watch a DVD of a film we have not seen when it was first came out at the cinema (because we never get to go to see films when they first come out!)

So far as a family we have enjoyed some good films on our new ish TV, so maybe we would chose to watch something like "Life of Pi"  or "Brave" which have had good reviews as family viewing. Or maybe "The Hunger Games" as I like the book trilogy and Compostgirl is about to read the first one. We would also have some snack type food, crisps or a chocolate (or several!)  at some point.

Later on after Compostgirl has gone to bed the two of us might watch something we have recorded with a bit more of an adult content - "Broadchurch" maybe. We have lots of stuff to watch but finding the time to do so is the issue for us! Or I might do some crochet or patchwork and Compostman might read. 

An ideal night in would then end with us just going to bed and going to sleep. It would not end with cats bringing small dead mammals and disemboweling them all over the sitting room floor, or worse still bringing in small LIVE mammals and letting them go in the house so we spend the hour after our bedtime moving all the furniture to find the aforementioned small mammal, before it crawls off and dies under a bookshelf and we don't find it until the smell of decay becomes noticeable ( oh yes, this happens here. A lot.)

So, that is my ideal night in. It's really quite modest, I guess but it is filled with home and family and cats and love :-)  And if I had any money left over from that £50? I would buy some items with the money and give them to the local foodbank, so other people could benefit as well.

In fact if I was given the £50 I might just donate it all to a charity anyway because, to be honest, I don't really need it. I have a family I love, food enough, loving ( if strange and wayward) pets, a comfortable home and a (mostly) entertaining and enjoyable lifestyle. I could wish to have better health but apart from that, no, I don't really think I would change much at all :-)

What would be your ideal night in? What would you chose to do?

Blinded by the light - on being woken up earlier than I would like, and how to stop it.

At the moment we are sleeping in a bedroom which has one large window, facing East.  I recently noticed that I am being woken up, earlier than I want, by the early morning sun streaming in and hitting me in the face. We have lined curtains, but obviously not lined with thick enough material to block out sunlight.
 

Thinking about "covers for windows" and how well they work has become a higher priority for me because the Pink Bedroom, which Compostman is currently refurbishing, has not one but two large windows, one facing North and the other facing, yes you guessed it, East. So when we move into this room (soon!) we will have the same issue with early morning sunlight in our faces and an additional window letting in light. We can't turn our bed around, so we don't look at a window, as the shape of the room precludes that.
 
We always planned to move into this room when it was completed (only waited 16 years!) As we are now fast approaching the "choosing paint and fabric" stage of the works I need to find a solution to the problem now.

What I have done in other upstairs rooms is use blinds; to me they seem to block light without shutting it out altogether. Thinking about it, we actually have blinds in all the upstairs bedrooms except ours and the Pink Bedroom. Compostgirl has blinds and curtains in her (South facing) room and all the South and West facing windows downstairs have blinds. It is only the sitting room and dining room which have curtains.

So, problem solved - I will be getting some blinds for our new bedroom  - so the question is, what sort and what size? We want to measure and fit them ourselves rather than have someone do it for us, so after a quick Google search for bedroom blinds, I had a look at  Web-Blinds and found lots of helpful advice.  I had no idea there were so many different sorts of blind!

The Web-Blinds site also has lots of useful information on how to measure for a blind and a wide selection of different patterns and colourways. I also found easy to understand fitting instructions for all the different types of blind :-) And if you would rather someone measured and fitted them for you there is a link to their sister company, Hillarys.

In the other rooms I have simple roller blinds but I think for our bedroom I would like Roman blinds - although I am very tempted to get some roller blinds made using one of my own images (they call it a Digital blind on the Web-Blinds website)

Maybe something like this, from when I went to Garden Organic last year?

The bee garden at Ryton.

or this?

Marigold Hen

I think Compostman would prefer this, though!

The JCB

Hmm. Maybe just a nice, lightly floral pattern, instead?






Disclaimer - I am looking around for ideas to decorate the newly refurbished Pink Bedroom (may need a new name as it may not be pink much longer)  This post features a paid link to a company I would be happy to order from, in the future. As always, the words I write are my own and are my honest opinions.

A day of not mentioning the "V" word and random musings on bananas

Bananas to you all. Lots of bananas. Our local Co op had loads of them reduced a few   6 days ago (GREEN ONES! So why oh why reduced? ) So I bought 6 bags of them, well actually I could have bought another 5 bags but that seemed a bit greedy.

Since then I have been waiting for a sunny day so I could use the free electricity the pv's would generate, to dehydrate them in the Excalibur ( that's the make of the dehydrator btw, not some fanciful equipment naming whim of mine - I don't name inanimate objects. well not very often, anyway.) And today was gloriously sunny!

 I ended up cutting up 22 bananas - I bought 6 bags originally and we have eaten some of them fresh.

After prepping 5 trays, like the above one, and putting them in the dehydrator I went outside into the glorious sunshine with a mug of tea. I let out the hens, talked to the guinea pigs and had a wander around the garden with Cassi cat, in the sunshine. Well a squelch around, at least.

I had thought about doing some veg bed weeding or maybe flower bed clearing, as the bulbs are beginning to poke through the soil so I need to get the dense thatch of last years growth off the surface before the raking damages the new shoots.

But as I wandered around I realised that I could hear a lot of squelching and when I looked around I could see muddy, ooozy footprints on the grass behind me. Not the sort of ground conditions for walking on, repeatedly, with wheelbarrows.

I could also (sigh) see lots of hens wherever I went. It is lovely that the ex battery girls love me so much that they want to be near me all the time - but do they really need to try to sit on my feet as I am walking along? I really think not.

So I decided to come inside and wrestle with invoices, unwilling Blogger and PayPal, instead. Which was fun (not) and with which I am still struggling.

The house now smells extremely bananary... I am reminded of a time when, driving back from Scotland with the trailer after we had competed at a Hillclimb at Doune, we overtook a lorry which proudly proclaimed on the sides that the firm were the "largest independent banana ripeners in the UK"   I  often wondered what their premises would smell like - I guess like Compost Mansions does today!

And the title? Well, to each their own and if you have had a lovely day getting and sending cards, flowers, chocolates etc - good luck to you and we have had occasionally done so in the past but surprise surprise actually no, we don't go in for all that.  I don't want or get given any over priced, flown from overseas, chemically grown and sprayed flowers from Compostman, or chocolate or whatever else. We show and tell each other how we feel day in day out, not leave it for one commercially driven day of the year.

After being together for 28 years of marriage and 33 years since we first became friends, I guess Compostman and I must be doing something right!

So bah humbug to all that :-) But as I say, if it is what you enjoy then I hope you have a lovely evening with your beloved :-) And many more of them in the future :-)


Thank you for reading  xxx

Looking back over this blog, after nearly 1000 posts

I have been feeling rather under the weather the last few days and have spent a fair bit of time sitting at the computer keyboard ( as it is in a room next to the bathroom...enough detail there I think!)

So of the things I have been doing is reading back over this blog and all the things I have posted about on here. As I am nearly at 1000 posts ( a bit of a landmark, there I feel)it felt like a good idea to see what I have been saying.

What a lot of words and photos! I am amazed at how much I have written, to be honest:-) I am also amazed at so many comments and especially followers, who have stayed with me over the last nearly 6 years I have been writing here.

I am aware that I used to post more about what we did in the garden and what the hens got up to etc, but I feel there comes a point in a long running blog, which follows the cycle of the seasons and which carries on year on year, that I start to repeat myself - so lots of stuff now just does not get mentioned.

One thing I did do for a while was the idea of Five good things - every day finding five good things about the day and posting about it. But I stopped, largely because last year to be honest I just didn't want to do that sort of post - indeed I had to try very hard to post at all, for many reasons, on many occasions. But looking back on my posts from 2010 and earlier, I can see finding five good things had a helpful purpose of making me see that life is not as gloomy as it sometimes feels. I actually have lots of blessing ( family, animals, love, food, a roof, etc) even when life is a bit of a struggle.

Something else I used to do, but seem to have dropped, is a monthly round up of what has happened. Again, I think that was helpful.

Also missing as stand alone posts are the Chickenailia posts - I do still post ( a lot!) about the hens, but often now the stuff about them is mixed in with the other stuff. So I think a monthly Chickenailia post would be a good idea, also.

Apart from those points, I really enjoyed reading back over my blog - looking at all the stuff we have done and remembering fun things. Some things I had forgotten we did and some things need doing again. I am so glad I started blogging!

And I think the trying to find good things in each day is something I will re instate - anything which makes life seem brighter has to help! Ditto the monthly review and Chickenailia posts even if I don't, this time,  list the eggs laid and the weight of each item harvested from the garden :-)

Thank you for reading, as always and if you have any observations or things you would like me to write about in future, please do comment!

Slowly getting back into our routine

Yesterday Compostman and I went to Ledbury - he had a physio appointment and I had stuff to take to the Red Cross charity shop to donate - I came away with two craft books as well for the princely sum of £3.

I also got a 15 mm crochet hook, as I am in the process of turning a lot of old cotton T shirts into yarn to crochet a rug and needed a larger hook to do so. I have spent the last four weeks doing a lot more knitting, crochet and other fabric related crafts and have enjoyed this, although I didn't like the fact that I had *no choice* but to practice them. I have improved a lot, though!

We had an £8 off £80 spend voucher for the Co-Op, which expired today so after a bit of discussion we decided we would spend some extra money to save some. I had done our normal household shop last week in the Co Op - and got 10 % off that time - so really did not need much everyday household stuff - but we decided to spend on stockpile items to get the maximum discount this time. We bought extra stuff - packs of tins of cat meat ( to be stockpiled in the garage)  - some alcohol (to be stored away for Yule and for gifts) and reduced free range pork joints (which when cut up to make lovely chops which went straight into the freezer). This plus some normal household sundries came to £82, so I was pleased to get 10% discount on stuff we would have bought at some point soon.

With the colder weather coming up I like to have at least four weeks worth of food, loo rolls, etc for us, the cats, the guinea pigs and the hens. We have previously been frozen in here for nearly 2 weeks   so I am not taking any chances! And oh how useful it has been recently ( with us being virtually housebound)  to have a good stockpile of provisions!

We then went for a treat - an early (noon)  lunch at a local pub in Much Marcle - they do very good lunches sourced from local ingredients and they do a lunchtime deal which is really good value. We have not been out together for a very long time so we really enjoyed our treat.

We came home and as it was warm and sunny we decided to do some work outside on various gentle tasks - both of us found we were as weak as kittens after less than an hour of very light work - it is amazing how rapidly one can lose fitness from an illness or injury!

But at least we got some wood moved into the log store and some compost moved into a raised bed and I managed to clean out a whole hen house by myself ( for the first time in 5 weeks!)

When Compostgirl came home on the bus from school at 4 pm that was the signal to retire to make tea, light the woodburner, sit down and have a chat and a rest.

Compostgirl and I enjoyed watching "Wizzards vs Aliens" on CBBC - a Dr Who ish programme from Russell T Davies and co. And after food and homework for her we watched "The Simpsons" on C4 plus 1 (as usual) - something our family have enjoyed together for several years.

Compostman and I later ate some homemade soup and bread for supper (as we had eaten a main meal at lunchtime) and watched "Only Connect" on BBC 4 - a quiz show we love and  which I would like to appear on.

Slowly we seem to be getting back into our normal routine of work in the day and family life in the evening. Which feels good. Fingers crossed we can keep up the progress!

Samhain

Lots more cleaning, tidying up and sorting out of stuff today. Have had a good ponder about where I want to be and what I want to do with the next year as well.

Was going to have a Samhain  bonfire outside tonight, but it came on to rain really hard, so have lit the woodburner instead :-)

I have burned some old documents (to symbolise the end of another year) and also the hop garland from my Green Man sculpture - and tomorrow he will get a new garland, probably of rushes or willow, to celebrate.

 

Sahmain/Halloween blessings to you all:-)

A dose of reality for a New Year and the idea of One Big Chore a day

So. A New Year. 2011.

I don't do resolutions and all that stuff...if I want to do something I do it and I do it when *I* want, not on a certain date dictated to by the calendar/the media etc....

BUT this year I have decided to try to be a little more balanced in the way I work during 2011, so as to spread out my work load. Several friends have commented that I seem to do "a lot" and that maybe , sometimes, just sometimes, I overdo it a bit..(Moi? Overdo it? Surely not?)

Well, actually, yes I do. So much of what I do seems like fun, not work, so I don't notice how shattered I am until I have finished. I am not good at doing nothing and never have been!

But, I am aware that as I get older my health gets worse. My immune system is still pretty poor. I still have CFS/ME and although I am so much better than I EVER thought I would be, if I overdo things I suffer the consequences of days and days of fatigue and I seem to catch the weirdest illnesess...like the viral labyrinthitis. The fact that I am a Type "A" hyperachiever doesn't make resting up any easier, either. Lol.

So. I have to recognise these facts. I have to start pacing myself and factoring in some rest time during the day, so as to be able to keep on, keeping on.

So I am going to try to only do "One Big Chore" (OBC) a day, either outside or inside, depending on the weather. Obviously I have a family, a house and business to run and animals to feed etc and they need doing everyday, but apart from that I will try to do only do one chore which is the sort of thing that takes a couple of hours to do. Things like spring cleaning one room, or washing all the windows, or mucking out the MegaHenPen or digging out a number of compost bins and spreading the compost. BIG CHORES. You know the sort of thing.

Previously I would do One Big Chore (OBC)and then think "ooo still time to do ..." and get stuck in to another OBC, even though really I needed to go and sit down with a cup of tea for half an hour and rest. I also want, need to make time to do some of the craft things I so love.


Today my OBC was mucking out the Mega Hen Pen, composting all the stuff and refilling up the floor with bark. I also put down a couple more pallet patios for the feathery ladies and generally cleaned and primped the hen run. I had help from Compostgirl and later on Compostman , so it only took 3 hours rather than the usual 5.

And then I had a sit down, and a cup of tea and I wrote this post.

See, I CAN "do" resting and pacing, honest! :-))

I hope you had a very good 1st Jan

Spring colours!

As a result of some requests (you know who you are!)

some spring flower pictures from our garden.

Enjoy!

Seeds

It must be spring! Despite the snow and floods I am sorting seeds and planting stuff!

I have been spending the last few days sorting out my veg and flower seeds into planting order and thinking about a planting plan for both our garden and the raised beds at Compostgirl's school. I need to think about the school garden as well because I teach organic gardening to the children there.

I received my seed order last week, from the always excellent The Organic Gardening Catalogue and as an added bonus I am an HDRA member so I get 10% off my orders.

I not only buy the seeds we need for the coming year but also order in the seeds needed for the children at school to grow seeds this year. That way they save on the postage and, as I draw up the outline planting plan for the school garden, it makes sense for me to order in the seeds.

This year I seemed to have a good few less items in my order than in previous years! I realised as I browsed through the catalogue that I have already bought most of the non seed items I need in the past( oops blush), so am just buying seeds and sets and potatoes....but I still seemed to have less seeds than normal; here is about a quarter of my order of seed packets.




However, I then remembered just WHY I didn't need to order many seeds this year....as before Christmas, when I was checking through my existing stash of seeds, so as to only order what I needed as replacements or new seeds, I found I already still had all THESE....



oops! I think I have a seed habit....

So....I am now the proud possessor of 185 packets of veg seeds, with only a few duplicates.... but in my defence I do actually grow virtually all of them, honest!



I grow lots of different sorts of tomatoes for instance, I grow about 50 plants in the polytunnel every year and have at least 8 different varieties. Shirley, Big Boy, Aunty Madge, Yellow Perfection, Golden Sunrise, Black Russian, Black, Gardeners Delight, Spanish Big Globe, Beefsteak, Red Cherry, Moneymaker etc. Some are for eating in salads, some are good for stuffing, some have nice thin skins so are easy to dry, some have thicker skins so are good to sell; ALL are delicious......




The same applies to Aubergines, Peppers, Courgettes and Squashes; I grow at least 3 or 4 different varieties of each, as they all have different keeping and eating characteristics.

I have two new Squash to try this year; Chicago Warted Hubbard from the Heritage Seed Library and Potimarron both of which look very interesting! I always grow Turks Turban, Tom Fox and Lady Godiva.



Leeks, mmm yum! We grow lots of different varieties (Colossal, Pandora, Alora, Atlanta,Carentan, Bandit, Monstruoso de Carentan, Siegfried) so we can eat leeks from November to April if we wish. We like leeks here and usually plant about 200 plus of them.

Carrots, well they do well in the summer and early autumn but we tend to find storing them in the ground is less successful so we grow carrots and lift them to store in September. We have Carrot Fly around here so I grow Resistafly and Flyaway which do very well, as well as Nantes and Rainbow Mix as summer carrots. Rainbow Mix freeze very well and they make a nice change from ordinary orange carrots.

Potatoes...hmmm this year we have virtually given up on Maincrop potatoes and are growing lots of first and second earlies, but of varieties which we know will be good keepers and eat well, and will replace the varieties we usually grow as maincrop potatoes.



It is getting harder to grow potatoes here now, as the weather is getting more and more favourable for blight ( both early and late) to take hold. We are also in an area where more and more potatoes are being grown commercially, so we are surrounded by a sea of potatoes, and if they get blight, we are done for, even if ours didn't have blight to start with.....

We are going to grow Orla, Charlotte, Nicola, Remarka, Arran Victory and Coleen this year, plus a few Pink Fir Apple. Lots of blight resisters!

I tend to go for several different sorts of Onion and Shallot sets too, so if something bad happens to one variety I will (hopefully) still get a crop. I tend to grow Longor and Red Sun shallots and Sturon, Red Baron and Jet Set onions. We usually plant about 200 Onion sets.

I am going to try Turnips and Celeriac again this year, in 2007 they were really good but in 2008 they were a waste of space.

Kale is also on this year's list, I like Kale and Compostman is OK about it so I shall grow a few plants and see what happens. I have some seeds of Asparagus Kale from the Heritage Seed Library , as well as some Pentland Brig seeds from the Organic Gardening Catalogue, so we shall see what happens!



On the whole we find brassicas difficult to grow here, not because of club root though, oh no...because of the wildlife! Invariably it all gets eaten by pigeons or squirrels no matter how many plants I grow and how much we protect them! BUT I am going to try again with some Sprouts (Igor), and see if I can't get at least a few for Christmas dinner!

The beans we grow from self saved seed, originally from the Garden Organic Heritage Seed Library Climbing French Bean Purple Giant and Canadian. We don't grow Runner beans anymore since getting these!

We grow a few rows of broad beans which I start in pots in the polytunnel and then plant out, but we are not over fond of them so only a few rows.

We have no joy with peas at all here due to mice year in year out, but I do have some Purple Podded mangetout from the Heritage Seed Library to try this year! Also this year I am going to try a few new sorts (Bridgewater, Blue Coco) of Climbing French beans from the Heritage Seed Library list.

Gosh, what else do we grow? We grow lots of Sweetcorn, Parsnips, (more about those in a later post) Garlic (lots and LOTS of Garlic), Perpetual Beet (green and rainbow)

And lots and lots and lots of different salad leaves, mainly "cut and come again" varieties such as "Red and Green salad bowl" "Asparagus Lettuce" from the Heritage Seed Library, Spring onions, Radish, Rocket, Mizuma, Mustard leaves and lots of leafy herbs (Coriander, lots of different Basils, Parsley, Chives and Garlic Chives) which we like in salads as well as use as herbs. The herb beds already have the usual perennial herbs (Rosemary, Sage, Lovage, Anjelica, Fennel, Oregano, Marjoram, tarragon, Thyme etc)

I also tend to raise a lot of extra tomato, pepper, aubergine,courgette, bean, leek etc plants which are either used to "fill in" any gaps in the school beds or our beds at home OR are sold at the School gate to raise funds for the School garden.

And in the polytunnel as well as everything else I grow Melons and Cucumbers, we never buy a cucumber from about the middle of May until October.

This year I am going to try a few new things, like growing some spuds as an experiment in a "potato bag" to see how well it works. I have grown in buckets and tubs before but have been asked to try this out.

I also have some new seeds to grow, which I have not tried here before, so will see how things go.

Although looking at the ground at the moment I can't help feeling I need to build VERY HIGH raised beds to do any gardening AT ALL

or maybe even an Ark? ;-)

January musings

So..end of the first month of 2009!

I have decided to instigate a monthly round up of what has gone on, a "good things" and ( maybe) "not so good things" which have happened here

So the good things

Well I bet you can all guess what no 1 will be !

1.
I FINISHED my Forest School Leader portfolio! and handed it in ON TIME!
I am so relieved, I cannot begin to express how happy I am to have completed it after 9 months of jolly hard work.

I enjoyed it, especially the actual sessions with the children and I love research and learning so it was good to do BUT I had a few health issues along the way which made it harder to complete than I would have liked.

2.
The Hens! They continue to delight and amuse....and the Dorking 6 look to be as amusing as the rest of the girls!

3. Our wood and garden. It is the start of planting and digging and flowering and growing and budding and greening....and I love love LOVE it! February is such a good time of year! and I realise how lucky and blessed I am to live where I do, with a wonderful garden and woodland to tend and nurture.

4.
Compostman and Compostgirl!

5.
I have various plans in progress, some involve using our own woodland for education and also some other work opportunities, I won't say any more just yet BUT I am hopeful that this year will be financially a bit more fruitful than 2008 (when I spent a LOT of money on my FS training which was another reason why I was SO determined to finish the portfolio!) I now have more time to commit to actually getting out there sourcing some much needed paying work to earn some money, rather than spending vast amounts of time and money doing the training!

I can't honestly think of any really "not so good" things"...small niggles, health issues and minor irritations but they all blow away when I go and walk down the wood and hear the birds singing and see the Hare who lives in our woodland turn and look at me.....

or take my early morning mug of tea out to the chickens to let them out and listen to them grumble and scratch around and jostle for position at the feeders.

or watch the mad cats run around the garden and pell mell up a tree, all three of them nose to tail.

Life is very good and I am very contented with my life at the moment!

I hope you all had a good January

Here is to a good February.

I lived a "Victorian Farm" life!

Victorian Farm was GOOD, again, this week !

I can remember stuff like that in the laundry in our house in 1969 ( not 1979 as I put in a comment to Greentwinsmummy)! My family moved to a very rural smallholding in 1969, no mains water, electric, oil or gas...oil lamps, candles, wood range for cooking, a well for all water, chamberpots inside and a pit privy at the bottom of the garden which was moved once a year to an new location, with copper and dolly and mangle for washing, and a tin bath which we all shared once a week...and a kitchen garden, a larder, a cold shelf ( no fridge!) and killing and gutting game, chickens etc....My poor mum! spent 2 years living much like they are living in the VF programme....,

she even made beer in the copper wash kettle! (real Lark Rise to Candleford stuff, and my Mum actually lived in that area in the 1920's! - I was born in 1962 when she was in her late 40's btw.....) and we had Bees.

and no elec for the first 6 months we lived there... so tilley lamps and candles for lighting and an iron heated on the range, just like in TVF

I helped with all this and can remember the effort involved even now, 40 years on..( (I was 7 at the time)and helped Mum with the washing and the cooking and the getting water etc....

I remember washing sheets as an absolute MISERY in the winter..trying to get them dry was terrible...and the house wreathed in stream...and the pages of my book getting damp ( it was the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as I recall!)

BUT it was also magical and the first winter we were there, it was the BEST Christmas I can ever remember....which is why I can STILL remember it so vividly I guess :-)

Hard to imagine now, living like that, within a middle aged person's lifetime (me)...but we did...until 1971 when we finally got the new kitchen and bedrooms and bathroom built, then it was radiators and electric cookers and 'fridges etc..although my Mum always said nothing she cooked ever tasted quite as good, compared with what she had done on that old range.....

I also had horses and we had chickens and pigs and sheep...and I used one of those LETHAL chaff cutters to make food for them..coo child protection laws would have a field day over that now! Whirling, unprotected blades being operated by an 8 year old! The Mangel Worzel cutter was almost as dangerous....

Actually, it WAS ALL dangerous...not all the old stuff is good......

But I do look back on it with immense pleasure, not least because I KNOW I could do it all again ITSHTF...and if TEOTWAWKI actually happened...(!)

Guess who has downloaded the The Year of the Farm, farming bible they keep refering to ?

SGF post Introducing Compostwoman

I have just put up my first post on the Simple Green Frugal blog. I would be very pleased if you went and had a look at my post and more importantly looked at the whole blog as it is wonderful! :-))

You also get to find out a bit more about me, if you go and look ;-)

Thank you!

love, Compostwoman

Our cats

With the cold weather we are currently having here the cats have all been indoors much more than usual.


Compostgirl and Tom Kitten having a cuddle. Tom sleeps on her bed at night. Sidney and Tabitha sleep on ours, and take up an amazing amount of space.


Kitty Cat in his comfy cushion next to the Aga. He is a very old and poorly puss now, so we have moved his cushion as close to the Aga as possible. He sometimes permits Sidney to share it with him but never Tom or Tabitha.



Sidney curled up in a comfy place. He IS a lovely puss and very talkative when outside in the garden! He keeps up a non stop chat of meeps and wows and mews.



Tabitha Twitchett on her favourite chair!



Tom Kitten, when he isn't sleeping on Compostgirl, he sleeps here!

Notice how Tom and Tabitha have silk cushions behind them. I keep on taking them away but they mysteriously return again....

Chickenailia!

I have a very moulting hen, her name is Ginger....poor thing! She is VERY grumpy and VERY bad tempered with all the others.


I also have some chicks who are growing out of the "teenage" plumage and getting grown up feathers...this is the droppings tray from the Eglu, can you see all the feathers?






The Sweetie Six all have names, now!

I put in a mail order of various chicken related stuff and so I finally have some different coloured leg rings - our local store only had packs of single colours and I didn't want 20 red or 20 yellow rings! but Flytes of Fancy stock a multi pack of different colours!

So..the Dorking girls are now Ruby (red leg ring), Violet (purple leg ring) Buffy(yellow leg ring) and Willow formerly-known-as-The-Smallest-Chick (pink leg ring) and yes Compostman and I DO like BtVS.... ;-))

( whispers *I* don't actually need the coloured leg rings to tell them apart, but Compostman and Compostgirl do, so .....)

The Cockerels are now Long John Silver Dorking and Rocky who has a green leg ring. I want Rocky to be called Captain Flint, but am being outvoted I fear... Here is Capt'n Flint....




I caught them being jungle fowl in a conifer today!









We are still in the process of sorting out and tidying up all the stuff in the Lean To. I have been sorting and tidying the chicken related stuff and using an old shelf unit we threw out of the house (many years ago) as a store for wild bird food and chicken related stuff. The chicken feed lives in a separate storage box from the wild bird feed btw! I am slightly worried at how much chicken related "stuff" I have accumulated, but I *DO* use it all, honest!

Let's face it, I am mad about my chickens! Besotted, utterly besotted....

Yule decorating and musings.

Here are some of the decorations I have made to celebrate Yule and the 12 days of Christmas.

Here is my beloved Green Man. He lives in our dining room and is crowned with whatever is appropriate for the festival. He DID have a chaplet of home grown hops for the last month or two , but he now is resplendent with a twined Ivy wreath!


These are from a conifer in the garden, I have been cutting back the very bottom branches and used the greenery to make these decorative bunches. With some ivy and (reused) ribbon and trimmings from presents I have been given they look rather swish I think.


Well actually *I* think they look splendid! They are hanging either side of the wood burner and the scent they are giving off into the sitting room is AMAZING!





I am lucky enough to have an almost limitless supply of ivy, various conifers, pine cones, holly, weeping birch and willow for wreath base weavings etc etc , in fact I have already supplied 40 odd children with the raw materials to make wreaths like this at our December Eco club meeting.

This wreath is a base of weeping silver birch, twined with ivy and with grrenery tied in at various places with ( more ) reused or recycled bits of ribbon, fabric etc.


Life has been a bit grim here for the last few months, illness, various difficulties and a punishing amount of "stuff" which must be done has left us all feeling rather less than festive at this moment in time.

To be honest, I have only just put up the cards we have received and I have only sent 10 cards (to close family and friends) instead of the more usual 30 or more.

Part of this cut back in cards was a conscious decision to reduce the "stuff" we consumed during the festive season, as even though all our cards are made from 100% recycled card and support charities we believe in, they STILL use resources in their manufacture and in their delivery.

So, I have made more use of e cards this year AND also just not sent cards at all, preferring to email, write or telephone the people instead.


However, during the making of my simple, green, decorations I finally managed to get into the festive spirit. I have also been putting together a hamper for a good friend who has recently moved house, just some small home made gifts but again, it has got me more connected with the real meaning of this time of year.

So with real feeling I can say to all of you out there in Blogland....

SEASON'S GREETINGS!!

and a VERY happy 2009!

Gifts!

These are the gifts I was busy wrapping yesterday when the little robin flew in to the kitchen.

Some eggs, fresh yesterday and today, with a label telling our friend who laid what egg....that always brings a smile! Some home made jam and Chutney, tastes of summer in the depths of winter!

My Damson Vodka, made in Autumn 2007, the damsons left to steep for a year and them bottled. Very precious and VERY tasty! And Blackcurrent Vodka, a little younger but oh so intensely coloured! I was trying to capture the intense, purple-red colour this liquid has....



and then all wrapped up and ready to go!

Recycled card labels, recycled ribbon and raffia to tie them on and saved paper to wrap them in.

Gifts from the heart, the best sort of gift I hope!

All done with love to give to friends to share of the best we can make.

I LOVE Freecycle!

I went this week and got several lovely things from fellow Freecyclers.

A guitar and two lovely wooden bar stools!

The Guitar was advertised as a child's one but it isn't , it is a full sized acoustic one, WITH a case, and in good condition, so I am very happy ! I have a guitar again! I gave the nice man a jar of chutney as a "thank you" I like to try to offer a small something in return.

The stools were from a lovely couple on the Leominster side of Hereford, who I gave a bottle of our Apple juice to as a gift and we had a lovely natter about this and that, chutney and hens and cider and stuff...

Here is one of the stools. The very nice man sanded them both down for me so I just need to varnish or oil them again.

I DO love rescuing stuff from landfill and I love chatting to like minded people.

Like fellow Frecyclers!