Chickweed Salve

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First, gather your chickweed.

Chop it roughly into a jar



then add just a ziz of apple cider vinegar. My home made version is on the dark side, but smells good.


Let sleeping dogs lie. Add oil to cover. (Make tea.)


Place on a sunny window sill


This will steep for two weeks or so, shaken daily, before being made into a salve for sore and itchy skin.


Chickweed

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and later, what I did with it!

On Contemplating Loss

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I am worn, and weary, for another night’s poor sleep.
The goats bring a light to my eye with their antics, their cheek and chancing. The hiss of spectacle-misting warmth into the chill pail, and the have a go, get an extra scoop shenanigans of every morning.
Taffy is first on the trailer. Taffy is always first. If we walked in and yelled ‘vaccinations, big needle, painful stab in the butt, who’s first?’ Taffy would head the queue. She’s so afraid of missing something, she’ll always take the risk.
The others slope off under the walnuts, and wait ‘til bossy pants emerges, dribbling molassed grain and looking smug. Then Lacey.
Lacey’s bum does in fact look big in this… trailer. We turn her round in the narrow gap and she settles to be milked. She is not in a hurry, she loves human company. She tells tales and sings songs. And she is Poppy’s oldest daughter. And I love her.
Linen Matilda next. They all have middle names (Taffeta Tallulah, Lacey Mae, Linnie Matilda, Aida Jane) and of them all, Linnie Matilda most often earns hers. Gentle to the point of heartbreak, all heart and soul, with tender feet and eyes like tomorrow, Linnie bumbles through her food and waits. If it’s windy outside, she’ll wait ever. She likes the warm and dry and quiet.
Alpine memories stir. I almost yodel for Aida, Ai …. Da….Aida-oh-ha-da.
And she runs like a faun through the grasses, happy to be last, happy to get the last lick of the bucket, happy to be just a little tricky to milk, due to having been designed for either earth shatteringly huge twins or a milking machine. Aida Jane, my Aida. Poppy’s other girl.

How will I ever say good bye? Who to? How will I ever part from them? How will they not be family, under the green canopy, where their (great) grandmother died in her sleep, one sunny day  beneath the walnuts?

Forgive me, if I sometimes talk in shadows. Their amber eyes haunt my seldom sleep. I cannot bear their loss.

Dig This

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Well, I made a start.

I started with digging. Digging, in case you don't know, is profoundly unfashionable. No dig is where it's at. And raised beds - or permanent at the very second best - no allotment stylee digging please, we are permaculture.

Guess what? It doesn't work on my plot.  One of the truisms of permaculture is that the edge is productive, and the edges of all those beds? Are productive. Of endless, endless grass. Because we are surrounded by cow pasture. Well managed, organic, cow pasture.



So this little war time garden is going back to digging.

In other news, I am close to signing up once more  with my phone job, because we do need to bust the debt, and fund the dream.

Fired by sudden confidence, although it means my doing more than I am doing, in less time, I somehow believe this is actually the true meaning of less is more, and it will work.

We'll see.


So just a possibility

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I may regroup on an old idea.

A few years ago,  I grew a garden based on the Wartime 'Dig for Victory' plan, and used some very basic cheap seeds.

I'd kind of like to do that again, only better. I'm thinking of redesigning my old wartime style blog and making it a diary of this enterprise.

I'd be following the Dig for Victory leaflets, and also the books by C. H. Middleton, produced during the war.

I'd be using the cheapest seeds you can get, from Lidl - or maybe searching out the closest varieties to the originals?

I'd be coming down from my 'organic' high horse. I wouldn't be using anything truly toxic (some of the wartime pesticides were pretty out there) but also, I wouldn't be purely organic. I'd be using the artificials as recommended by C. H. when necessary.

If I'm going to do it, now would be the time. C. H. Middleton begins in September, with preparing the garden for a bumper wartime harvest.

Decisions, decisions.


No-Hopers, Jokers and Rogues

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We are the no hopers, the jokers and rogues.  I love this song, and it just about sums up some of our choices, and our life.

If I had to pick a moment that, had it been released at the time, this song would have played in my head, it would have been on the day in 1998 when I got out of the car in the co-op car park in Pewsey with my my 18 month old babe, and my heart sang, 'We're starting again!'

It hasn't always been a walk in the park, but it's been the right choice. Raising a glass to my fabulous husband, and my awesome and beautiful daughters, mad Nan the collie, dopey Morse the beagador, Cormac the Irish rogue, Diva the welsh joker, the goats who are no hopers, the sheep who keep us sane.

Have a little faith in the dream maker in the sky
There's glory in believing him
and it's all in the beholder's eye.
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