You may wonder where I've been and why I'm back

or you may not have noticed me gone. Either way, here I am and having a reorganise around my blogs and coming here to have a ramble out aloud to anyone who's listening.
We've had a woeful lot of trouble just lately with a neighbour, who has sent a solicitors letter, ranting on about our keeping cockerels and sheep and goats in our 'front garden'. We don't have a front garden but do have an orchard at the side of the house, wherein we do raise chicks, and the weekend after they make themselves known as boys and begin to doodle do, we cart them off to a field two miles away to be reared for meat.
There are a dozen cockerels locally and at dawn you can hear the lot, but our neighbour, who awakens cockerels himself going off to London at 5.30 in the morning week days, likes to sleep until noon at the weekend and the cockerels are supposed to realise this. We did have a dear little bantam cockerel, he was called Professor Bhaer, since all the banty girls were named from 'Little Women', but when the neighbour complained three years ago to the council, the Professor had to go.
We had Scallywag in the orchard once for about three days when she was poorly, and the last orphan lamb we had in there for a few weeks was Charlotte - named for Charlotte du Jardin on the day she won Olympic Gold on Valegro in London, so that was more than two years ago.
Then he complains that the children ride in the field behind his house. As they do. It is let to us to keep horses and ride in. He claims that H 'stares into his property'. The dear girl has no reason on God's good earth to stare into his tedious little house, and is away with the faeries and her little horse when she is out there. She is quiet and well mannered and schools her little Connemara quietly and sedately once or twice a week. She is wholly entitled to do so, and we shan't stop her.
His lawyer threatens an injunction if we do not stop in 14 days. The Tenant Farmers Association has told him we won't, and our landlord has told him we have no need to, but my days are a bother and I don't sleep,I am worried by the whole thing and would like it to go away, truth be told.
We don't like all the things he does. We like to keep the Sabbath and anyway we just enjoy one quiet day. Between church services and a Sunday Roast, I like to sit in the garden in summer in the peace and quiet, with a book. He on the other had does all his outdoor DIY that day, and has mowers and strimmers and chainsaws going all afternoon. I don't like it but I can't stop him! It's a 'free country' - but he doesn't seem to think it is for us.

I'm working two days a week doing admin in a christian care home, it's a nice job and I enjoy it, but it takes me away from home which is a mixed blessing.

I've thrown in the towel on the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design, at least for now, and am loving turning my garden back to an old fashioned English plot, I'll go back to the Dig For Victory plan I think. A year ago I gave up on my home front blog as everyone seemed to think the recession was done with, but in truth austerity has got worse for us, and I'm in the throes of reawakening it. I've got some issues with the domain name at the moment, but it should soon be up and running. I'm so looking forward to a big practical hands on garden again, and we do plan to have a surplus to sell if it's possible.

Today I intended to do some kitchen clean up and work in the morning, get outside for an hour, and then sew this afternoon. Some chance! I was still in the kitchen when four o'clock came round and I was off to fetch H. I made bread, racked off the last of the elderflower wine, made elderberry wine (excessively messily, as I kept forgetting things and having to shunt pints of hot elderberry liquor back and forth with a jug) I made blackberry vinegar, which we use for coughs and colds in the winter, and apple cider vinegar,drained off from all the apple cores and peelings from my morning porridge.

I also bottled (possibly the last) tomatoes from the polytunnel. I think what's left will be chutney. All in all it was productive, but messy and I was still trying to clear up well on into the afternoon.

I've had a fairly organised week - it was sausages and onion gravy for supper tonight, and I'd prepared and chilled/frozen fresh veg earlier in the week - swede and broccoli. I've suddenly decided I'd like to be organised  and disciplined. Sadly, my childhood lacked self discipline and my young adulthood was positively anarchic. My middle age has hardly been better, and sadly I've managed to raise two rather freestyle teenagers. So I'm up against it now I want structure by the bucket-load and a quiet life.

So for now, I'm going to attempt to run three blogs at once! This one as a personal diary, my frugal contemporary home-front blog 'This Little War' - where inspired by Frugal Farmer's Year of Depression Era Living I am quite tempted to challenge my family to live for a year on a Wartime Budget - rations included, and the ever present farm blog. Just a bit of a challenge!

Time for bed!