Hedgerow Ways and Fireside Days

Happy New Year

2012-01-02T13:27:00.003Z

As we await our fate, still not knowing anything at all about our tenancies, I am sitting with a fat black cat on my lap, the girls are out riding their hairy grey ponies in sunshine and showers. A cohort of small busy bantams has been moved to the polytunnel on a clearance exercise, and the first seeds (Leaf: Coriander and Spinach) were planted today.

What evr happens will be for the best. 2012 is going to be a good year.

Happy New Year, everyone.

A new year?

2011-12-27T17:31:00.003Z

Right before Christmas, we received a letter from the Crown Estate, or at least their agents, giving notice of the end of our Farm Business Tenancy on the land - a notice to quit. Or not. There is a paragraph which says, it may be up for renegotiation (trans: a rent hike) - it isn't clear to us whether that paragraph is standard or bespoke - in other words, we don't know if they want us off, or just want to take more money off us.
We had a beautiful, quiet Christmas, with much joy and laughter, prayer and gratitude.
Yesterday, we took the dogs and walked up on the high downs, went to visit our rams, and generally wondered ...
We can't know anything more until the proposed meeting on 5th January.
Should we fight for it? We've had it nearly seven years. We have a year's notice. When we look at it, although once it held a lot of promise - I ran the box scheme from there for two years - it is now pretty unkempt and provides some sheep grazing, and a LOT of hay. The hard truth is, we haven't done what we intended to do with it.
A harder still truth is that we have knowingly or not, offended, upset, and generally peed off a lot of people in the last decade, living here or hereabouts.
The psycho nutcase who got Neil chucked out of his last farm job down in the village, and threatened to rip his head off if he showed it around the farm again (because I did not run Brownies the way his wife liked!) is only the part of it. We started life at the school, Neil was a governor. We left the school and homeschooled our children for six years. That went over not so well.
We started life in the village CofE church, again, Neil was a church warden. Then we realised things were wrong, moved churches, found God, and received the greatest gift of all. It did not come with local approval.
The people over the road don't like us. Because our cockerel crows.
The family Neil used to work for who, when he was friends with the psycho nutcase, he was hoodwinked (by the p-n) into leaving without notice - they're not over fond of us.
The guy in the village who made an official complaint because I told his Brownie daughter to 'shut up' (in jest, we say 'shut up' all the time in our house! apparently, she had never, ever been told to 'shut up' in her entire life (which was actually self evident) and it destroyed her self esteem totally) whereas, I had no redress for the fact that she blasphemed almost continually, and I was pretty offended by that.

Is this really the place for us to try (yet again) to launch a community project?! Is this not maybe time to move on?

I have just begun with my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design - and as part of the process, the Learning Pathway, I am going to have to figure out where I am going. Where we are going. Are we staying here? Or moving onto new horizons? What do you reckon?

For those who are standing in the shadows with me.

2011-12-01T07:57:00.002Z

So this is how it goes.
You have a vision. A very real commission in this life.
And you try a little. Just a very little. To make it happen.
Then the problem is, all the people you know don't GET your vision, and in fact, they think other things matter a lot more. You begin to feel you're worth nothing. Because you don't tick their boxes. No well paying job. No this. No that.
So you wander away from the vision and you try to get a this or a that or two, and you get a job ...

... then the job makes you sick. And you are lame, and full of tears.

In the end, you remember. You had a vision.

Today, I am in a quiet, dark but peaceful place. Afraid, I will admit, hiding from the people who see only failure. Wanting so much to step out into the sunlight of my own success. Too scared to do that.

Just needing to take baby, baby steps towards doing just what I am meant to do. Needing to draw the map, sketch in the compass, and take a step or two down the first path. Again.

This place was a gift from God - how we came to be here not much short of a miracle - and now I need to seal the deal - I need to turn it into the precious teaching learning living breathing fabulous resource it can be.

Takes deep breath, makes vast mug of tea, and sets bread to rise. Here we go then.

But...

2011-11-19T00:02:00.002Z

I went out to the new job today, to get the hang of it - it's ok. It's a nice quiet little yard, straightforward work, nice horses.
I am really, truly fortunate. I'm not going to earn as much money ... but we're back to home made sourdough bread, with thick slices of home made garlic and herb raw goats cheese. And I got some knitting done!
And I'm looking forward to Christmas again.

God is good!

2011-11-17T08:01:00.002Z

I have been quiet awhile, while struggling with the learning, qualifying, and beginning of a new job. I hated it with such a passion it made me ill. My head ached, my back hurt, I got rsi in one arm - this is what happens when you sit at a computer for four hours a day doing something you loathe.

On Tuesday, I decided to go and look in the feedstore for ads, and found someone advertising a job I'd applied for before, and not got - feeding, rugging, turning out and mucking out four or five horses five days a week. I gave her a ring and she's offered me the job - tomorrow I'm off to see her and on Monday, I'll start.

The relief is unbelievable. I gave up the hours on the phone immediately. What's better is that it allows me to take the goats back, which means Neil doesn't have to do them before an already too long working day. And I can do the sheep as well.

Never was a person so overjoyed to be stepping out into the heaving rain and cold. And then someone's facebook status this morning assured me there'd be snow by Saturday! Never mind! It could be worse. I could be back on the phones.

If winter comes

2011-10-31T22:46:00.003Z

I was saddened beyond words to say goodbye to sara at farmama . It seems as if bloggers come and go in great waves of loveliness and intentionality, and in the end, lap onto the beach and are gone.
Sometimes, we are just not here because LIFE takes over.
Our world right now is totally different than anything we have ever done before, and I don't quite know how I got here.
Neil drives endless, sorry hours in a taxi. I sit at a desk and take phonecalls.
Outside, the garden fills with weeds, the goats amuse each other and love life but miss their human firends, the ponies stand hairily in the field - ridden at the weekend, but merely cared for in the short days of the week.
The children are at school - a sentence which still does not sit quite right with me - and hard, economic facts of life have at last invaded the idyll which was our God-given gift of a life.
Each day, I try to do one small thing - I even created a blog for it -but even if I get time for the small thing, I don't get time to blog it.
We dream that in the spring, we will try again.
I walk the dog for his diminishing minutes before the work day begins, and I believe that one day, I will be setting out in this rain dashed wind to work once again on the land, among the animals. Many is the morning, the tears dry on my face in the head wind on the way home.
Sometimes I see my playful goats, and their growing babies, but mainly, that is Neil's job, before the taxi shift. Rarely, I see the jacob sheep, and I dream of spinning and knitting their wool less now, as it becomes a distant hope. I can still throw corn to the bantams, and my big daft dog still sits at my feet.
If I feel like a fight, I can find carrots and kale to eat in the garden, and the garage is wealthy with potatoes, and onions and garlic.
On a good day, I believe spring will come.

A small thing every day

2011-10-10T15:42:00.002Z

Here is my new little corner of websville:

My Daily Half Hour of Change

and I'd love for lots of you to join in.

If you're taking tiny steps towards a new you, post a link to your latest mini achievment.

Storms

2011-09-06T09:40:00.001Z

Two weeks from the equinox, and walking the dog down leaf swept sombre lanes, I can barely stand as I turn the corner on the way home from the dairy. I love autumn. It has a therapeutic, healing quality, perhaps drawn from its sense of being the home straight – nature’s last burst of housework before a well earned rest – the washing and airing of summer worn hedgerows.
It seems though, that the world and his weatherman don’t acknowledge this preference. Wet weather is ‘bad’ and dry weather is ‘good’ – regardless of how much we need the rain. Winds and showers ‘clear up’ and ‘should be gone by’. It is expected that we should love summer.
What if we don’t love summer?
Oh, this is interesting too. It is expected, that we should want the same things. We all want a 52” plasma tv, apparently, and designer trainers, and rising house prices.
I don’t want any of those things. Hmmm. I don’t like TV much at all, and I dislike anything that sits as big as an extra person in a room and demands equal or greater attention. I don’t like trainers much and when I wear them, I am unbothered by their brand – except in that I would like them not to have caused suffering to anyone. I can’t afford to buy a house, and although I would like to be able to buy land and build a house, I would then not need it to go up – just stay up.
After the recent riots, it has been affirmed that the problem is, there is a sector of society which feels unable to obtain the same things as everyone else. Obviously, they want the same things, and they need to be helped to get them. They are frustrated by their inability to obtain all those things which we all, obviously want. Exactly the same.
Maybe that’s true. But what about those people who just don’t want the same things, yet are constantly judged, graded, remarked upon and generally patronised as if they do? What if the biggest frustration is not, not having Nike and positive equity, but not flipping well wanting either.
Instead of making it possible for us all to be more alike, maybe we should try harder to allow each other to be different.

How many return trips to the drawing board?

2011-08-27T21:40:00.003Z

I spent spring and summer trying to make the box scheme happen.
To understand what that means, you have to understand that starting the box scheme, did not in the first place involve growing much veg. I entailed signing up members to the scheme, which we would supply this year mainly from a wholesaler, and as we gathered steam, it would be worth planting the crops to supply the scheme next year.
So when I could have been planting and tending, I was handing out leaflets and writing promotional material.
We have had not one single person even make a serious enquiry. Members? Zero.
I have organsed an Introduction to Permaculture in October, and as yet, we have no takers for that, either. And what's more, it may be just as well, as I haven't been keeping up the gardens, and the field's a blooming disaster area. The polytunnel is weed jungle. And what's more, dislike it as I may, it looks as if I may well have to go right back to the telephone sales work. In order to survive.
I do wonder, sometimes, how many trips back around the drawing board it is going to take to get it through my thick head...

Today, we spent too long with accounts and calculators and lists - and discovered that due to some changes coming up - we are going to be £450 a month worse off, until April when that will become £550 - or possibly more.
In our desire to make something big happen, we have forgotten the original game plan - which was self sufficiency first and foremost, and now, when we most need to be able to live on nothing and a bit, we can't, because we're just not set up as we know we could be.

Somehow, in a short space of time, we have to get as much of the garden and other land as we feasibly can, up and running to support us. We're going to have to abandon plans for green businesses and community supported agriculture - unless we move somewhere where people actually give a darn - and just get our heads down and survive.

We've had a great year for kids - 6 females and only 2 males, and they are all adorable - but it looks as if we will have to sell some mummy/baby combos, as that many goats - well, is just too many!

We are this close to losing everything. Which kind of focuses the mind. Most of the sheep will be sold next week. Which will buy us some time.

I wish I'd planted more onions *

Bum.

*not bad for last words. I hope they're not. My last words I mean. At least, not this time.

A Sewing Kit

2011-08-14T15:52:00.002Z

Latest Lidl purchase - a cracking sewing set for £6.99.

Now, if all those bobbins fit my sewing machine, that's a bargain.

If not, it's some pricey sewing thread and pins.

I'll let you know.

We're back

2011-08-07T22:14:00.002Z

from Guide camp, in which 10 girls aged 10 - 13 ran wild in the New Forest and did awesome things, made promises on zip wires and crate stacks, changed, grew and blossomed, were amazing and brilliant and also sometimes just a little bit cross making.
Without my awesome daughter Harrie, I couldn't have coped, she is my tower of strength, not to mention the best camp cook in the world.
Now a deep breath and a prayer that we can get the hay in during the next week, because we need the girls to do the job really, and the following week they are off on church camp.
Three goats have now kidded - four girls and one boy the tally so far - and so, so SO much still to do!
Then there is a brief last gasp of summer, our two favourite horse shows, and then it will be September, and H will take a breath and start her GCSE courses. How can that be my baby?
Boo was twelve on the last day of camp and got balloons delivered to her campsite, and came home to balloons and streamers and chocolate cake!After church today we went and bought her a new crash hat as her old one is a bit squashy, and she had lovely clothes from Granny via Fatface!
Tomorrow it's back to the real world!

Catch up with our antics

2011-07-09T19:35:00.002Z

on www.chestnutsfarm.com

We spent most of the day today at the Devizes Food Festival, and despite an early soaking had a good day, handing out information about our Permaculture project and Veg Box Scheme.

The girls got their photo taken for the local paper, and I had a chat with our local MP about sustainability and Transition Towns.

We're running an Introduction to Permaculture course in October, and all the goats are about to kid.

More in depth thoughts when I've recovered from today!

Back to the plough

2011-06-21T06:55:00.004Z

Shortly after my last post, I gave up training for a job which could have earned us the extra money we so desperately needed. What, am I mad? Yes.Probably.

Four hours a day training meant I hadn't time to keep up the garden, milk the goats, take care of the house or support the children fully. That's reason number three. Neil wasn't at all convinced the whole scheme was a good idea, and wanted me to focus more on getting the family business up and running. Reason two.

Reason one? Praying about it all week, and feeling totally not led and totally in the dark - I was very concerned about the nature of the work. Working inbound calls on home shopping doesn't sound too bad at first - after all, they 're calling you, right? They want to make the purchase.

True. However, the target audience is neither the wealthiest nor yet the most savvy. And the compulsory pushing of extra items drives up the bill quite quickly. And then comes the killer - cut the payments, extend the term, and accept the high interest credit deal. As someone who has suffered, long and hard, and is still suffering, from falling into just such a trap - Oh boy, it didn't feel good. But we have bills to pay, right? And needs must ... I'm not going to finish that sentence, but you know how it ends.

On Thursday, I opened my Bible to the readings on my calendar. And there, in Isaiah 48 only on that day in big sparkly letters standing out from the rest of the page were the words:

GET OUT OF BABYLON.

If you're of the not christian persuasion, you may want to skip this bit, but fellow believers I'm sure you've had the days when a phrase or verse takes on that sparkly neon characterstic, and you sit down rather hard and think. OH.

Just in case I hadn't quite got it, the day's other Rev 18 did a quick rundown for me on the whole Babylon thing.

Woah.

So. After some consultation, on Friday, I stopped. And forfeited a certain amount of money invested, and some time, and the chance of a bonus for completing the course, and a way to make money not from the farm.

Now I'm a bit cast down. After a day or two of euphoria, the reality set in - the only chance I've had in over a decade to add to the family budget, and I've just given up on it. It's the harsh part of living half the life - my children aren't homeschooled any more, and I can't use that as the reason for my being. I have to contribute. Somehow.

The impetus I'd felt to get the gardens under way, and get the grant applications in and the courses organised suddenly deserted me. I spent yesterday cleaning upstairs. When I was tied to a desk for four hours a day, the chance to get into the gardens and work was precious, and I was working on admin late into the night. Take away the restrictions, and suddenly I can't work.

Sometimes that's how it is. But this morning, reading Bethany Vaughan's great post about despair in the garden, I have pulled myself up again. I've been letting the weeds in- not just out there in the veg plot, but in here, around my heart. Rooting them out is hard, back breaking work, but the benefits are great.

The work will be therapeutic. In my heart, I know the real battle is to choose to be content. To look at all the incredible blessings we have, to go out among them, and to choose to accept and glory in them.

Just a now post

2011-06-15T20:08:00.004Z

It's good to be eating from the garden again. Cooking dinner with freshly picked veg - and yes we did rear the pork as well! - is what it's about.
Just trying to keep going at the moment, having started training for at home call centre work, and finding myself short of hours in the day.
But here's the thing, I've been thinking - on my feet - always on my feet - about what to do about blogs, and I've come to a conclusion.
This blog has become depersonalised and less intense, because I'm trying to start a business, and I've tried to avoid writing stuf which will upset or offend anyone. Well, that doesn't work for me on my personal blog.
It has become less about my faith, my relationsipe with God, the raison d'etre behind our whole lifestyle, the core of what we are. Less about how I'm feeling how I'm doing, what's for supper, how'd I save some money, what's the latest in the sewing room, and shall I make more soap - and because of that, I've become less interested and engaged with the whole thing.

So.

I have the farm blog www.chestnutsfarm.com which I am attempting to keep more updated. It really is a farm blog, it just deals with what's going on on the land, and the business side of things.
This blog is going back to being my personal journey - and if you are uncomfortable with that, I'm sorry, and I hope you'll stay, and bear with me, but if you really don't want to know, there is always the farm!

I realised I was avoiding saying things, because I have non christian readers, non English readers, politically different readers, readers even with different attitudes to food and farming - and then I realised I read their blogs, often - and I'm interested, and I love them dearly, and I gain from what I read, and I don't expect to agree with every last view or relate to every belief or idea.

And dull as it may have been, I want to go back to my everyday farming homestead blog, with the soap and the sewing, and the prayers and the principles. My family is battling at the moment, as I know many are - I want to share our journey and look into yours. If they're different, that's fine. Please stay, please bear with me!

I only ask that you are kind, not contentious, if some bits irk you, skip 'em. If it all irks you, I hope you'll check in with the farm blog.

Now, knowing me, I'll not say anything more for a month!

Stranger in a Strange Land

2011-06-05T21:38:00.004Z

I haven't been here for so long, I wanted to stop by and say hello.

It's been a madly busy time for us, and it's not letting up.

Two weeks ago, my beloved little horse, Archie, died of acute colic. It was the most horrid thing, and I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to both my husband and my vet, who dealt with the very worst part, while I wept uncontrollably with my daughters.

Money is tight, and as of Tuesday, I am beginning training to work from home taking call centre calls. I am praying that by the time the training is finished, God will have clearly shown me there is another way for me to contribute to the family income. A massive upsurge in orders for veg boxes would be one favoured way.

We have bantam babies, and pregnant goats.

We had no rain for like, MONTHS. Last night we had a huge (OK, US friends, it was not huge by your standards) thunder storm, and we made up a little of the rain.

I want to change everything, and find that I can change little.

God is in charge, and He knows what's going on. Which is good, because I so don't.

Hey, how are you doing?

2011-05-03T22:49:00.004Z

I have been away awhile.

I needed to decide where I was going, and what was going to be my purpose, here.

Since I've been gone, the lovely Nathanael Rhody has been with us for two weeks, I have signed up for call centre work from home, I have restarted at the fabulous Country Markets (Pewsey, in case you're in the area!), I have started the relaunch of the box scheme.

My fabulous older daughter has completed the Baden Powell Award (the highest award for a Guide) and chosen her GCSEs (9, with a focus on going to Agricultural College, altough if she can set up her own yard without Uni, that is her first preference) and my fabulous younger daughter is practising for her Grade 2 piano and riding that little oik of a pony of hers.

Our lovely church has continued to nurture and support, and we have tried to find the time to be a bit more involved.

We have had no rain. That is something of a problem.

I am going to be concentrating on the farm website for a bit, but I want to keep hedgerows as my whimsical, friendly, livey dreamy place, and I will do some stuff just for this place.

How are you? Love to hear from you.

2011-03-19T00:04:00.004Z

Last weekend, Boo got sick. She got very very sick indeed, and it turns out, though I didn't know this until Tuesday, that she had Norovirus. She is finally on the mend, but still a very fragile, unknown little girl, who can just do a little maths, or walk down to the barn with the dog, before needing to rest.
Our family has an unhappy history of post viral disasters, so this is one little girl who will not be rushing to get back to full performance. It will take as long as it takes.
It's been a time of concern for me, because having been away on the course, it was necessary for me to hit the gardens with a very big bat indeed when I got back, and I haven't been able to. Boo was more important.
I've done some seed sowing and a little planting out, but by and large, I've just worried about it. No one has yet set foot on the field garden, and I can see yet another delay in plan A taking place.
As well, our neighbour once again complained about the cockerel, and we had a woman from the council round for over an hour (this would be the council which can't afford to mend the roads or keep the libraries open) 'discussing' the issue. It seems if matey boy wants to lie in til 10 at the weekend, then that's his right and his privilege, and the bird's volume is the only deciding factor in whether he lives or dies. Sound monitoring equipment (think: roads, libraries) is to be fitted in his house to ascertain whether Professor Bhaer is too loud, or not.

It's been interesting though, because it's forced me to look life in the face, and tell myself the truth about the situation.
We are living through a depression, I do believe it will come to that, we haven't seen the half of it yet, and if peak oil and climate change pull together to fulfill as much of Revelation as they can, we will be mired so deep for so long - should the Lord tarry - that this little spot of bother will seem nothing.
I call myself a farmer out of sheer defiance. We rent land, we grow food, we feed ourselves and sell some surplus. I can call myself nothing or I can call myself a farmer. I choose farmer. At Ragmans, I told someone - you lost your job, and now you grow food for your family, run a community farm, and a transition group - hold your head up! You're not unemployed! You're a farmer. If you can't put it on your passport, at the very least, put it on your facebook profile!

Not long ago, I was married to a shepherd, but he lost his job in the vilest of circumstances, and now he drives a taxi. Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of work, and money to pay the rent.
Life is a struggle.. It is incumbent upon me to run our little farm, feed us all on very little, make do and mend, bring up two children, whose education through our own choice is not free, and keep a brave face on it.

The goats are hopefully all bred, albeit very late in the season, so we pray for a good crop of babies, and maybe one or two sales. There are one or two green things in the garden, and we have not run out of last year's canned things, yet. There is yet some pig and some hogget in the freezer. The winter has been so cold and dry, potatoes left in the ground by mistake and discovered now, are still edible! The mint will soon be up, and tea will be free!

Counting my blessings, one by one. And tonight, I made sourdough bread with spelt flour, and I realised I will never again make bread without having Ciara and Olivia with me in spirit! I undertake to teach people this summer, and to pass on the starter - it's a precious thing to do, and I can't recommend it well enough!

My lenten reading is Scott Savage's 'A Plain Life' - re-reading after a good five years - and memorising the beatitudes with him. My bedside reading is, for the umpteenth time, 'Miss Clare Remembers' - contentment is a boiled egg for breakfast, a good cardigan well pressed, the song of a robin, and the promise of another day.

What I learned at Ragmans - Part One

2011-03-10T07:54:00.008Z

The title has a ring of 'What I Did in My Summer Holidays' - one of those first day back at school essays which my mother swore were just a not very subtle way of checking out your family circumstances, and spying on your parents. My sister once spent an entire summer doing the most exciting, stimulating things she could think of with her youngest daughter, to give her some real fuel for the fire, and come open evening, opened her book to find she had written 'we went down the pub and I played on the swings'. You can lead a horse to water, and all that.

This was no holiday. What I learned on site was one thing, and what I have learned, having sat back and thought about it over not quite a week, is another.

Ragmans Lane Farm is in Gloucestershire - I referred to it as the part of Gloucestershire that should be in Wales and nearly got shot for such a political statement - what I meant by 'should' was not in any sense meant to trigger a border conflict. I didn't mean politically. I meant logically - in other words, it's the far side of the Severn Estuary, where almost everything is Wales, but the Forest of Dean isn't. It's England. Which is OK. Breathe!

The Permaculture Design Certificate course I was attending was tutored by Patrick Whitefield with the assistance of Sarah Pugh. If you're asking, 'what is permaculture?' - well, that's a huge question, and you can find some answers here but the real answer is to go on an Introduction course, and find out for yourself, what permaculture is to you - because it's not a dogma. It's easy to condemn it out of hand as 'not for you' because it can appear to belong to a 'tribe' - a converstion I had with Ciara Cullen all too briefly as we were leaving Ragmans - but it doesn't. The more diverse the people who become engaged with permaculture, the more possible things become. If you think permaculture is not consistent with christianity, you and I will have to agree to differ. Unless perhaps by reading this you can see where I'm coming from?

So rather than the actual course material, I'm thinking about what I learned about myself, I suppose, and what I'm thinking now.

Firstly, living in community. This has been something of an obsession of mine since I spent the briefest time with Marthe Kiley Worthington probably 30 years ago on Mull. Although the experience of actually living in community at Ragmans was halved by the fact that in the end, Patrick asked me to take the caravan as extra accommodation for the first three weeks and my own for the last two, it was still a taste of what it is like to share all your meals, your bathroom, and all the living spaces.

I think, as I have said earlier, that the time has passed for me to do this - my community now, is my family, and living in it is at least as complex as an intentional community. I thought about how, when we are sharing our space with non-family, we consider at great length how we will get along together, how we will make decisions, how we will respect each other's differences, how we will capture a vision, come to concensus, solve disagreements, put plans into action (framework shamelessly nicked from the above-mentioned Sarah Pugh's communications session. Thanks, Sarah!) and yet, in our family home, we fail dismally to think these things through. We simply expect that because we are tied by blood, all will be well. Big food for thought.

I also learned, finally, how to make sourdough bread by the really wet method, with a long lived starter shared by Ciara and skills shared by the lovely Olivia Heal - which in turn I shared with my daughters, of an evening, upon my return. Again, we share skills consciously, and with care, among strangers, but as our children grow older, if we are not careful, we just expect them to absorb what we do, and we lose the pleasure of sharing, as much as they lose the joy of learning, traditionally, from mothers and fathers, the sustaining skills we value so highly.

We visited Royate Hill Community Orchard as well as St Werberghs, Eastside Roots and Easton Community Allotment on a day field trip to Bristol, and it got me to thinking - the city can be a vibrant and wonderful place. Towns can be good. We still live quite an isolated life, in the countryside, which, on balance we prefer. We have considered of late, moving into the small market town where we go to church - because of the ages of the chidlren, and because, you know, sometimes, a change is a challenge, and a challenge wakes you up and gets you going all over again. We've thought about it all quite long and hard, and it seems maybe we won't do that (always worry when I commit such things to black and white ...) but the experience of the hidden green spaces and brilliant community feel of Bristol, made me view the idea quite positively, rather than with fear and dread, as previously.

Well, this has lumbered on long enough, and has earned the extension 'Part One' to its title. I hope there will be a part two - I certainly feel like I learned a lot!

Thursday

2011-02-24T20:03:00.003Z

first week nearly over, and tomorrow, I get to go home for a couple of days.

I'm now concentrating on taking so much in, I find everything else is on auto!

The course appears laid back, seems low key, feels comfortable, and then you look back and you have vertigo, realising how much you have learned, and how much you are changing your view point. I keep sending Neil texts like 'stop, don't dig that ditch, we need a pond'

We've been surveying a site on a sloping, undulating field. It's deceptive, you stand at one point and decide you're looking at a level piece of land, and then you walk to the top, turn round and feel like you 've walked a long way uphill. Looking up, the incline looks gentle, looking back down, it looks intense. It's a perfect allegory for learning about permaculture - the process is gentle, but the view from the top is awesome.

Ciara Cullen who is on the course with us, gave a yoga session this evening, which I found fascinating - and also extremely good for my back! We've also been looking into the ethics, sustainability and practice of using horses on the land, as well as covering energy in building, water on farm and domestic scale, and of course the continuation of the site survey.

I'm still not getting pictures transferred, in fact, I'm not remembering to take any, unless I am in the same group as Camilla, who's from Norway, and remembers to photograph everything!

The experience, on a trial level at least, of living in community continues to be challenging. I think for me, now, the time has gone for total community living, as my family is really the unit I'm happy with, but some kind of opening up during WWOOFing season might be something we would like to do. Of course, it depends on everyone in the family.

For once this update has been typed in relative peace in the bunkhouse, with current wireless connection, so I can click send, and it will be with you. Good night.

Tuesday

2011-02-22T18:28:00.000Z

So much to take in, and so little time to document it!

I did take photos today, but am as yet unable to upload them – will give that a go later.

Yesterday and this morning we covered Permaculture principles, and this afternoon, go onto the practicalities of surveying the land – finding contours with a bunyip, and an A frame.

The range of people here is quite surprising – you expect to find a pretty homogenous group, and I certainly expected to be the outsider, which I am to some extent, but nowhere near so ‘far out’ as I thought I would be.

It’s interesting to work through material which you may have read, and thought you had learned, but actually, when you come to discuss it and do it in a hands on sense, in a group, you find you didn’t actually learn quite what you were supposed to.

Sunday

2011-02-21T17:36:00.000Z

So here I sit, in a caravan, in the Forest of Dean.

It was dark and it was still, I was cold and I was knicky knacky noo. Sorry, that part was just for Jo.

I don’t have wireless connection in the caravan, only in the bunkhouse, so I am writing this in Word and hope to post it sometime tomorrow.

The Permaculture Design Course here at Ragmans, has been a goal of ours/mine for years. One way and another, we’ve never been able to do it, but this year, the doors opened, and I find myself about to embark on a pretty intense learning experience, all the while fretting for my little family – when I booked this there was some confusion, and I had no idea the first week would be the girls’ half term holiday. So they’re at home, holding the fort, tending the polytunnel, and even cooking Neil’s birthday cake for tomorrow (yup! Another oversight!) and generally being heroic. We texted and gmailed this evening. They are so fabulous. So capable. I’m really pretty proud of them.

The first part of the Sustainable Land Use course ran for three weeks previous to the half term break here in Gloucestershire (which was last week) so some of the students know each other well already. There are about four or five of us joining just for the Permaculture module.

We all sat around a huge table, and ate Cari’s excellent vegetable and lentil stew, piles of roast root veg and peppers and cous cous (the course is catered vegetarian for simplicity’s sake) which was extremely filling, and drank Ragmans Lane’s famous apple juice.

There are students here from Poland, Italy, Belgium, Norway and Ireland – as well as from all over the UK. They all seem so lovely – they are all people who want to make changes for the better. It was interesting to see that as a group, although they are not by any means all christian, if any of them is, they ‘say grace’ before their meal –simply giving thanks for the food. Of course, we always give thanks before food at home, but I love that this practice pops up in such a situation – it shows there really is something of God in everyman.

Well, although it is night time as I finish this, it will probably be morning before it makes it onto the blog, unless the wireless network has a sudden moment! But I’ll say goodnight, and crawl into my sleeping bag, in the back of the caravan, and pray that I sleep!

Rain

2011-02-10T16:18:00.002Z

It's raining. That's a classically minimalist statement. True, but far from telling the whole story.

I actually don't mind rain - I suppose I grew up with it! - but when you farm, garden, grow, or graze it seems to be permanently an issue. Either you're praying for it, or wishing it would stop before everything goes very very pear shaped.

Of course, we need rain. Nothing grows without rain. At the end of a long summer, the dusty, brown verges and world weary hedgerows almost cry out for rain. We've had a dryish winter, too - well until all that snow melted and slithered down the glorious Downs and into our field.

At home, the garden benefits from good drainage, the soil, green sand tends to dry out a little quickly, but is otherwise beautiful, and the only places which are really awash are the paths, where our feet and the wheelbarrow have compacted tracks.

I'm thankful for the polytunnel to work in when it really is heaving down - today I finished constructing beds, put up a second 'mini greenhouse' to shelter tender seeds, and loaded up the half a ton of part dried couch grass roots I dug up yesterday.

Then I came in and made bread - piles of rolls for lunches, a loaf for toast, and a huge round cob of onion bread with cheese on top for just generally making everyone feel better.

There are some things you must do when it rains. Baking bread is one of them.

The goats all stay indoors when it rains - they have access to the out of doors, but hate being wet, and crowd together indoors like a bunch of bearded matrons at a quilting bee. The sheep get under the hedge, but run to meet me when I open the gate, carrying their bucket of food.

The chickens cause trouble in the barn. The bantams drip like the wrong choice of hat.

It's still raining. I am aiming for a curl up in front of the woodburner late in the evening, even if it has to be with forms to fill in and bills to pay.

Farm in the rain. Dripping barn roofs, muddy wellingtons, steaming jackets by the Rayburn. What strange little details make up a life.

Herb Garden 101

2011-02-04T21:31:00.010Z

OK, so I've been asked if maybe I'd like to put up some posts about herb gardening.

I will start by saying, I have no qualifications, and there is no reason at all why I should be telling you about growing herbs. Other than that I've grown a few.

I thought I'd go at it one topic at a time, and see how far we get.

So I'm going to make a start with what kind of herb garden do you want?

There are probably a million computations, but I reckon there are four basic reasons for having a herb garden, and four types of herb garden, and then you can combine bits to get where you want to be.

The types I'm going with are

Culinary
Medicinal
Natural Dyes
Contemplative

Assuming you have a fairly adaptable site - you start from here. In fairness, I've got to say that culinary herbs, or at least some of them, tend to be mediterranean, and therefore need some sun and some good drainage, so if you're in deep shade and there's nothing you can do about that, you may need to think round your situation.

Culinary Herb Garden

Well, here's the simplest one.

Culinary herbs are, as I say, more often from the Mediterranean, and want some sun, and richer soil than most herbs. So a line of pots on your window sill is not as daft as it might seem.

Do you cook, and if so, do you want to use fresh cut herbs from your garden? Will you make herb vinegars, or oils? Which herbs do you like? That might seem a dim question but honestly, some of them are pretty strong flavoured, and people either love them or loathe them. Dill, or fennel, for example.

Some culinary herbs: Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, obviously. Basil, oregano, marjoram, dill, fennel, coriander (called cilantro when it's leaves) bay leaves, chives, and garlic chives ... it goes on and on. There are a lot of culinary herbs.

Medicinal Herbs

Now, the first thing about medicinal herbs is all the warning stuff. You're not supposed to use this stuff if you're sick. You're supposed to consult your GP. I very often go with the herbs, but then, that's me.

So if you're wanting a medicinal herb garden, you are going to need to be careful about labelling, and make sure you learn as much as you can about every herb, and be sure you know you've got the right thing!

You also want to be growing them as naturally 'wild-like' as possible, and of course to be sure they're not getting polluted in any way.

Aloe Vera's a great medicinal herb to grow on your windowsill, but if you're looking to plant up a full on garden, you'll be thinking about: fever-few, chamomile, mint, comfrey, valerian, st john's wort, dandelion, garlic ... ooh, you could go wild out there!

Natural Dyes

I've grown some dye plants, but never enough, and it's something I really want to expand into. Dying wool, or other natural fibres, with your own plant material is fantastically absorbing (ha!) and although a lot of the plants tend to grow wild, they probably won't conveniently grow wild where and when you want them - so why not plant a dyers' garden?

You'll be looking at: Chamomile, coreopsis, weld, tansy, dyers' greenweed, madder, woad ... don't they all sound fantastically ancient? These are wild flowers, plants that grow largely on poor ground, so don't go beefing up your soil yet.

Contemplative

I'm counting in this one, all kinds of herb gardens for contemplation, meditation - all things metaphysical in fact -and leaving the interpretation up to you.
Scented herbs like lavender will probably feature, and you may choose other herbs that mean something to you.

Aloe, Coriander, Cumin, Mint, Garlic, Hyssop, Mustard, Rose, Rue, and Wormwood, for example, are all found in the Bible.

So that's a bit about choosing what kind of herb garden you want. You're probably going to want to mix it up a bit - but know what you want out of your herb garden before you even measure up.

If I can stick with it, we'll look at site, soil and planning sometime soon.

Where in this wide world ...

2011-02-02T07:48:00.003Z

photo: DHB Photography

The pony known on here as Smartie - not his real name, due to his difficult past.

He changed her life. My confused complicated little girl, found her life because of him. He taught them both to ride, with his wicked sense of humour and his ancient wisdom.

He's been retired for just over a year, has COPD (kind of like asthma in horses) and is blind in one eye. Over the last few days, it has been becoming apparent that the sight is going in the other eye, and he is beginning to feel nervous about things - he's also bumping into his wall and his waterbucket - unless we can help him to adapt, it can't be long now.

Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride,
Friendship without envy,
Or beauty without vanity?
Here, where grace is served with muscle
And strength by gentleness confined
He serves without servility; he has fought without enmity.
There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent.
There is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.
England's past has been borne on his back.
All our history is in his industry.
We are his heirs, he our inheritance.
~Ronald Duncan, "The Horse," 1954

Made a Start

2011-01-29T23:36:00.005Z

It's not February yet, but I've made a start on my attempt at uber frugality.

My bread usually comes up at 35p a loaf - or 25p if the flour's on special at Lidl - but it's white, remorselessly, tastily, but not very healthily white. Bread flour at Lidl was 60p - after a brief spell on special at 50p (during which we bought a lot!) to confuse us, it's just gone up to 69p. A 1.5kg bag makes 3 loaves.

Today I bought some wholemeal - I really think it might be worth reordering from Shipton Mill - at £1.59 and tonights loaves were a 50/50 mix. So I reckon they come out at 50p -55p each. Extravagance!

However, I did have a brain wave. I generally make three loaves at a time - a bit wasteful unless there's freezer space. The main waste however, comes when I have to slice the bread for daily sandwiches. I'm rubbish at slicing bread, and I waste too much, as well as making lumpy sandwiches.

So tonight, I've made two loaves, and 12 rolls, which is sufficient for three lunches (girls one each, Neil two) and there is no WAY one of my loaves, sliced in wobbly wedges, would have done three lots of lunches.

Simple, but I think it will make a real difference.

So, who's up for a challenge?

2011-01-29T14:07:00.002Z

OK, I am way out of the loop, the last to know about anything.

Only just found the fabulous Shirley Goode via Frugal Queen's blog - and have already waded in to join the February challenge.

What a lot of good, solid information there is on there!

I'm back for another read to and to get some recipes tonight. It would be fun if lots of us were joining in.

Haven't done a MeMe for ages ...

2011-01-29T01:21:00.003Z

Taken from here

I Am...........struggling - but prevailing.

I Want........a little house of my own.

I Should........go to bed earlier. Really.

I Wish..........that I could have had five more children. At least.

I Hate.........washing up. No, I do. Really.

I Fear.........God. That is only the beginning of wisdom.

I Hear.......the silence of late at night - husband out working.

I Search.......for all the answers.

I Wonder..........how to put it all right.

I Regret.........selling Dragon Cottage.

I Love...........my family, my dog, my goats ...

I Always.........believe the mail will bring good news.

I Usually.........find junk mail and bills!!!

I Am Not............a number. I am a free (wo)man.

I Dance.........like an elephant with gout.

I Sing............ but only at church.

I Never.......go in lifts.

I Rarely......have a plan.

I Cry.........when I remember Sam - our working sheepdog who died just over a year ago.

I Am Not Always.........entirely coherent.

I Lose........blooming everything.

I'm Confused........yes, that's true.

I Need........the outdoors.

I Have............the most beautiful daughters in the world.

One Good Idea.

2011-01-28T22:09:00.009Z

If you're very, very short of money, and you have any garden available to you, which you can in any way utilise - give this a thought.

A packet of Suttons or T&M or similar seeds costs around about a couple of quid. There are some cracking varieties available, and some tempting descriptions to ponder, as well as beautiful pictures, a fabulous catalogue, and Alan Titchmarsh or his like (is there such a thing?) grinning at you from the depths.

This lot cost under ten pounds.

I bought Lidls seeds for my Dig For Victory garden last year and the yields were fine. Some of them were exceptional. Yes, I'd love to meander back through the hallowed halls of the Real Seed Company or even my old faithful, Edwin Tucker - but beggars, it seems to me, can't be choosers and we are in a corner here.

29p, one of those smaller packs at the front costs. If you grew a dozen of those lovely lettuces, or a pound of those tomatoes, you'd be quids in. No, it's not ground breaking horticulture. Yes, I'd love to stick to heritage varieties (the germination rate and yield of which have often been woeful, to be honest) but you know what, I can't afford to.

It's seeds week in Lidls. If you have a patch of bare earth, or a patch which could be bare earth, do yourself a favour and spend ... maybe even 87p:

to supply yourself with good, solid, staple food - vitamins, minerals and real flavour for a fraction of the cost in the shops. And it's going to go up more, believe me.

And yes there are one or two flowers in there - I treated myself. I do however eat sunflower seeds and calendula flowers!

Now, moving on, I have finally finished batch one of the marmalade, six pounds of pure tangy bittersweet joy.

And what's interesting is - either of those would qualify for a 'Choosing Contentment' slot - simple things that can fill your life with joy. Homemade marmalade - minimal cost, maximum flavour. Cheap seeds, that nevertheless hold God's promise, and really can feed a family. All that's required? Sun, rain, earth and hard work.

As the very wonderful Jonathan Brain would say (you'll have to shout to get the feel): WOW! HOW AMAZING IS THAT?

2011-01-28T10:46:00.006Z

The little things that we can choose to allow to make our lives special.

Freecycle {smile}

If you decide to join in, please post a comment and link back!

This Moment

2011-01-28T10:38:00.003Z

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.

Joining in with Soulemama for the first time.

Into the teeth of the wind.

2011-01-27T22:07:00.008Z

One of my aims for the year, is to use what I have. It's part frugality, and part shedding of un-needed stuff.
I've always wanted to grow herbs, and this is one of my big things this year, but I had an entire Ziploc bag full of seed packets - some of them a decade old! - and each year I've thought, they may be too old to germinate ... oh wait. They may not.

So today I sowed thirty herbs -each of them in a small square 7cm pot - thus chancing only a handful of compost, one small pot, and a few minutes of time for each herb. They will grow, or they won't. I've got 15 hardy perennials in a tray in the polytunnel, roughly speaking all these need some cold and will pop up when they're ready. I've also got 15 mainly annuals who might need a bit more warmth, and are probably really waiting for spring, on the kitchen window sill.

In the garden, despite a bitter cold wind, I decided to tackle the black plastic - roughly half of my open ground has had silage plastic over it this winter, and now needs to be open to the frost and the cold for a bit, before I want to use it. The other half has had plenty of frost and snow, and is growing a coat of weeds, so it needs the black plastic, to kill off the weeds and warm it up for planting.

A half hour onslaught on the woody nightshade, now dead and needing to be pulled up and burned before it starts up again, provided some healthy exercise and actually warmed me up a bit! Still a lot to do out there, and tomorrow which is usually one of my house and paperwork days, may have to turn into a work day.

This evening -marmalade preparation really had to begin! Got them juiced and the peel shredded ready to go tomorrow.

Tired but pleased at progress. Just now need to get this sorted so that I'm done before 10pm ! This is winter. I should be knitting by the fire by then!

Quiet

2011-01-25T23:06:00.002Z

It's finally quiet. Been some day.

My puppy (no actually, he's a big boy dog!) went to the vets to be castrated. That was something of a drama. The vets have got a bee in their bonnet about him, I think because they mistakenly had him sussed as a Lab x Staffie (he's not he's a Beagador, labxbeagle) so they were not prepared to sedate him themselves, and wouldn't remove him from his cage themselves when he came round. It's been a bit traumatic, and he's a lot upset. Finally he's sleeping peacefully in the kitchen, by the fire, whimpering sadly in his sleep now and again.

Car broke, children had dental appointments, we had to fetch a ram ... in the truck, with the children, on the way to the dentist, because petrol is such a price, and he was in the same direction as the school ...you know, run of the mill country day.

Now the children are in bed, Neil is out driving a taxi, I am curled up on my new (to me - from Freecycle) enormous sofa, in a nest of afghans, books, laptop, notepads and dreams. The bread which I set to rise and then forgot to bake has duly been baked, while I had a bath, so the house smells of hot crusty bread, and is quiet.

It is still only January, but as we hope to really get the farm moving this year - after a long and kind of cloudy departure from our true course - we need to be working flat out. Especially as I am away soon to do my Permaculture Design Course.

For years we have wanted to do the Sustainable Land Use Course with Patrick - I wouldn't want to do a PDC with anyone else, he's my total Permaculture Hero! - and this year by hook crook and hard work, we've made it possible, I can hardly believe it. We took our caravan up to Ragmans at the weekend, as it's being used as extra accommodation during the first three weeks of the course, before I grab it for myself for the last two weeks. It was so great to look around the place, the bunkhouse and communal eating area only nudge my community minded little soul a little further toward the truth.

If I could live in a chapter of the Bible it would be Acts 2.

⁴³ Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

I'm excited about this year, it's going to be amazing. I want to know so much - I am knee deep in books, the current one being 'The Untold Story of Milk' - and plans. Plans to go to market, plans to be out in the community, to stop hiding behind the internet, and get out there.

I want to get a spinning wheel, and spin some of that glorious Jacob wool for myself, I want to make more yoghurt and kefir, and cheese from our lovely goatsmilk, I want to eat more vegetables and less meat - we are now committed to not eat meat we have not met - and to live at peace.

Quiet. Good productive time. Puppy has stopped whimpering in his sleep. The rain is tapping on the window. Time for bed.

sigh ...

2011-01-22T11:53:00.000Z

Where were the words I meant to say?

2011-01-22T00:16:00.000Z

Something of Spring

2011-01-21T22:52:00.009Z

has been in the air, though it is only January.

for the first time in months, there was this, for a start.

and the view in the lane has been like this - look, no snow!

There is green goodness in the garden - this is Black Tuscan Kale, which thankfully we all love and revere - because we have a lot of it!

The smallest shoots of spring goodness are growing in my tunnel in a tunnel.

and in the kitchen, goodness from the fruits of autumn. Oh, how I love these squashes.

and the daily goodness of milk - we just have one goat in milk at the moment - our dear old Scallywag - and this is our daily quart of milk - along with the pile of books which seem to follow me everywhere, as I seek information and inspiration!

So many good things.

The fact that I am fairly sure the soap I made last night has gone horribly wrong almost seems unimportant! Almost.

Tales from the Green Valley

2011-01-18T17:25:00.005Z

Just talking about this with someone, and wondered if anyone else enjoyed it? I'd not seen it in the original, and after my friend Ali raved about it, I watched the whole thing on a daily rerun on 'Yesterday' with Boo when H was away at camp last year.

So fabulous. Love Victorian and Edwardian Farms, but this one was the best!

ooh!

2011-01-18T09:04:00.002Z

I've had an idea.

Just driving home from taking girls to school - I don't do that very often, any more. (When Neil lost his shepherding job last autumn, we were 'blessed' by his being offered a taxi franchise - yes, I don't mean to be sarky, it really is a blessing. Of sorts. Anyway, what is a real blessing is he manages to incorporate the morning school run into his work day.)

Along the way, there are 'points' of inspiration for me - a farm in a valley with a sad tale to tell - a stone square house crying out for a family from Jane Austen - and a little van with 'Annie's Catering' on it - don't ask me why, but strange things make me connect with destiny !

And this morning ... I had an idea. A sort of businessy, stream of income idea.

It's a secret though, I need to go chat to a special online friend about it, and do some more thinking.

Then I'll tell you!

The day of small things

2011-01-15T23:37:00.009Z

"For by what a man is overcome, by that he is enslaved" - 2 Peter 2:19

So, positive thinking. It's a good thing, yes? Well.Yes. Unless ...

I'm beginning to think that positive thinking, like alcohol and money, can be good for you , or bad for you, depending on your personality type.

I've spent many years trying very hard to do the whole positive thinking thing. I was trained at the best Customer Contact company in the world. The words 'Be * Do * Have' were engraved on my heart.

It's stopped me.

I've made everything complicated. I've not done the simple things, because of course, I must do the big thing. I've taken on big courses - which now I have to do - to aim for big things. Because I've been trained to believe I can be the best, the biggest, the star - I've rejected being OK, and happy with it.
When you're trained to think like that, it can get to the stage where you sabotage the small things, because they are not the big things. You don't allow God to take hold of the seed and make it grow. You kill the seed, just for not being the tree.

So this is my year of small things. I simply want to grasp each small moment, cherish each small prize.

I have four ideas for 2011 - and they are :

work - don't talk and plan things, don't draw any more diagrams, get out there, and work on things.
sew - get back to proper dressmaking
decorate - make the house OK - comes from a time when I did this and felt good.
complete - tie up the loose ends. Tidy things up.

but my over riding thing for this year is - use what you have, do what you can, don't be belittled by big dreams. It's a year of small things, and definite small steps.

work - rather than planning great things, rebuilding the box scheme from scratch - my small step is to grow what we need, and sell surplus via the Country Market.
sew -rather than always trying to do something original, cleverly crafted, and ending up stuck - my small step is to do something I can do - plain straightforward dressmaking, as I was taught in school. With a pattern. And fabric, bought for the job.
decorate - rather than dreaming over total overhauls here and there, concentrate on the small patch ups that are needed. I can make curtains, by the way, rather well. Haven't made a single pair for this house, yet.
complete - there are so many loose ends and odd things in my life I can't tie up. Symbolically, I'd like to tie up some of those I can. A dozen or more part completed craft projects are blocking creative flow ... so it's can them or complete them. I've started on one already.

2011 - My year of small things

New post up at tlw

2011-01-12T17:10:00.003Z

A new post at thislittlewar.com

featuring thoughts gleaned from three soulful bloggers - and my own attempt to make sense of New Year.

Because I found my camera lead in the nick of time.

2010-12-31T23:48:00.002Z

Pig

2010-12-11T21:47:00.003Z

Oh my goodness, time to breathe would be nice. Oh, and the ability.
I have my winter chest infection settling in nicely, a stinking cold, right as the girls' term draws to a close and all the stuff happens - including H going into meltdown about the injustice of it all - and then the pigs got butchered.
I have dry cured about 5 kilos of streaky bacon, well actually H did most of that, yesterday, put an enormous ham into a wet cure (this is the first time I've done any of this, I'm doing it all in hope and prayer!) and then today made an ENORMOUS pork pie.
I have taken some photos and tomorrow I promise I will look for my camera lead.
We've moved some goats around - Paisley and Poplin are being dried off and must be covered soon, we're struggling to find a stud goat this year - and Linen and Lace are moving down to Mill Farm to be with their mummies, re-establish their family links, and scoot around outside a lot. It's a great place to be as they have a huge open yard, so they can be outside when ever they like but are not in mud and mire. Then there are open fronted barns, so they can also be inside when ever they like.
Scallywag has moved back up to the barn, where we will feed her up, which she will love, and she will milk through, if her record is anything to go by. She is too old to kid again, and we don't want to put that stress on her, a nice easy season of just eating and giving milk, going out in the head high weed paddock, and keeping ponies company, will suit her.
Three days more of school, and then we will get ready for Christmas - we haven't done the whole November thing, not even made our cards yet!

Think Goat

2010-12-09T13:38:00.003Z

Just thinking I may start a new project in the New Year, looking at the goats, all through the year.
Probably do it on the farm blog and try to keep lots of pictures and a kind of diary (that would be a dairy diary?) coming through the year (bit of a challenge for Mrs Inconsistent here)

What do you think?

Write,Pray, Blog...

2010-11-27T10:29:00.010Z

So there's an interesting post about Writing it Down by Jenna at Cold Antler. And a pondering on 'right place right time' by the lovely Farmama

And this made me think of a post I wrote donkeys years ago on an old blog which is now down. And in the same breath, about a post on this very blog, right at the beginning, before I had even taken down the old one.

There is undoubtedly power in visualisation, commitment, and authenticity, whether you call it prayer, or not. I would add to Jenna's exhortation to 'write it down', two further pieces of advice.

One is, be careful what you write down (pray for, blog about) and the second, when it comes, don't fight it!

Here is the link to the early post on this blog.

And here is the long ago post which was part 2 of 3:

Monday, December 18, 2006

When We Were Still Far Off .....

The second part of my glimmer of the day, is an old story, anyone who knows me will have heard it a dozen times.

Now, I grew up in a nominally christian, CofE household. First, I have to explain to the largely American readership here, that being CofE (Church of England) household is something it's pretty tricky to relate to, when you live in a country which has always separated church and state. For 400 years, the Church of England and England have been one and the same thing, and 'CofE' is the default religion - that really is true, if you are born in England, you are 'CofE' unless you opt out. Now some families are more observant of this than others, and mine was fairly observant.

I strayed away from all that for a good few years, and the sin and depravity I sunk into, I do not really want to dwell upon, because astoundingly, I am forgiven. But oh, I was a long way off.

Now I believe that God watches over his elect, how ever far off they are, and calls them gently, steering and protecting them until they come to Him.

And some12 or 13 years ago now, I was working in a stable in Berkshire - it was a temp job, I was as it turned out, at the end of my globe trotting, and in the throes of coming home - and it was nearly Christmas. I was pretty lonely. I had been travelling for years, and I was rootless and sad, and the people I was working with in this temp job were not too pleasant. I was a bit of a mess, I drank too much, and ate too little, slept to little and spent all my money on useless things .... but I was 'OK'!

Well, one day, I had a day off and I decided to go Christmas shopping to Oxford. It was a longish bus ride, but I didn't have anything else to do, so off I went. I spent a long, cold afternoon shopping. I was lonely and sad, and although I would be spending Christmas at my sister's house - that was a place with a lot of bad, sour, memories for me. I was starting a new job in the New Year - but I didn't yet know that it would be my last job with horses, the one where I met my lovely husband, and began slowly but surely to move in the direction of my Lord and Saviour .... that was all in the future.

The light was fading, it was grey day, a day of cold, dank, freezing fog - the bus journey was a bit alarming in poor light, on bad roads, and about half way home, we passed a village green, and back beyond the green, there was a line of cottages.

They weren't spectacular, or unusual, nor even picturesque. Just a line of one time farm labourers cottages, mid nineteenth century, not old, or thatched, or specially pretty. But they caught my eye, and from one of the middle ones, emanated light, and warmth, and some sense of activity and security.

Now I can't remember if I prayed - I could have done, it was a routine way of expressing a wish to get my own way! - or if I was in one of my more new age phases, and I visualised, or affirmed (?!) - but if I prayed, what I would have said was, God, please, I want to be on the inside! I'm so tired of being out here alone. I want to be in there. Just like that. With lights on, and baths running, homework being done, food cooking, people living and loving .... let me be on the inside.

As I said, my next job took me to meet my husband, and in the ten years we've been married, we have had ups and downs, some mighty downs, so much so that our financial troubles led us to a point we thought we'd never recover - and we've moved house a dozen times. It's important to acknowledge that despite our slow, inevitable journey toward God, we were terribly, awfully dysfunctional, and the consequences for our children could have been dire.

About three and a half years ago, we moved into this rented house, on a farm, and here we seem to have settled - over five years ago, I gave my life to Jesus, and just over two years ago, in an answer to prayer, my husband was also wonderfully converted - and although we seem always to be plotting our next move, we are learning to wait on the Lord.

There's just one thing that isn't so great about our house, and though I can live with it, it does annoy my poor dh, and that's the proximity of the main road which runs behind our house. Although we are on country lanes, we have a big road a field away behind us, which hums with traffic night and day.

We'd been here over a year, before it clicked. We're on a bus route. Travelling on a grey day, from Swindon, you would look down across the field, and see, a line of cottages, nestled in a dip. And on such a cold winter evening, in ours, you would see light, and warmth, bustle and love.

Thank you, Lord, for bringing me home.

We have since moved to another rented farm house, and the story continues, of course. - J

Did you know?

2010-11-23T13:06:00.002Z

You can feed your pigs some milk from your goats, PROVIDED it doesn't go through your kitchen. If it goes through your kitchen, WE HAVE A SITUATION.

When was it they said they were going to do away with half the public sector? Are they taking nominations?

It's a new day

2010-11-21T23:08:00.005Z

In my heart, there is a place, and I am trying to create it, out here on the ground God has lent us.
This place is a place which feeds and nurtures us, and helps us to live a life where we can do the things we need to do, learning, teaching, riding horses, growing food, sharing expertise, learning crafts, sharing crafts. It's a place which enables us to give our children the chances they need - we are both the offspring of unqualified working class parents, and we both took our chances and ended up pretty much unqualified ourselves. Our children have to have the chance to follow their dreams, and to have options. It's ok to choose an alternative course, if it is indeed, an alternative. In other words, you did actually have the option to succeed in conventional terms.
Despite all that's going on, I still want to reach out and stretch that place, so we're rejoing WWOOF as hosts, and hope to welcome lots of WWOOFers to share our journey, which will test me, as I try to prepare some communal meals, and open up to the idea of community, at least on a small scale.
I've got to make and sell more, and I so want to go back to the idea of running courses and workshops - soap making, chicken keeping that sort of thing. Anyone interested?
And, all being well, and provided I'm keeping up with my OU course - I am seriously honestly going to go on the most brilliant permaculture course in the universe, in February. I can hardly contain my excitement. So after that, I can share some permaculture ideas.
It's going to be Ok. It's going to be good. It's going to be the dawn of a new day.
And Paula, look out, you're the guinea pig!!!

Press On

2010-11-21T22:13:00.002Z

Do you know, the message this morning was about living in the present, a lesson I'd do well to learn, and as part of it, we covered a fair few occurences in the Bible of the phrase ... 'press on'
Which is very relevant to right now, and also made me smile, and my friend Ali will know why!

We've gone around this a dozen ways, and there is just the one conclusion - we have to just get on with it. Neil works an obscene amount of hours taxi driving, and I need to run a smallholding, and I need to make a go of it - make a bit of cash if at all possible, save us every penny I can, keep on going. When he's not working, we've got to make adjustments to the way we do things which will enable me to achieve more.

I have to find a new level.

I also have to find my camera lead, I'm getting very cross about not being able to post photos.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

(Phil 3:13-14)

General Update from the Fireside!

2010-11-18T21:48:00.003Z

I've been feeling lousy, had a head ache for six days, yesterday keeled over at 7pm and couldn't really wake up again - well, I sort of emerged to watch 'The Edwardian Farm' but wasn't even with it enough to be really cross at yet another comedy goat milking montage. Really. Find someone who can milk a goat properly, and get them to teach you, and the hideous Giles and Sue while they're about it. Goats should suffer no more for cheap TV. I might start a facebook campaign. (Actually that was just aimed at Jo and was a bit of a joke, so don't go looking for it!)
I'm now full of GSE and Vitamin C and seem to be fighting it a bit better. I'm starting a bit of a list here - I've got sloes still on the hedgerow, and I've already made one lot of sloe wine, so I might do sloe jelly if I get a minute. I still haven't made my Christmas Cake, or puddings, and I haven't really begun on any gifts.
My polytunnel is not clear and my garden is a total mess. OK, so all I need now is some 48 hour days. What I've got is the amazing disappearing day. 30 days til solstice, so actually 60 days until we're back at this point only with days lengthening.
There's a ditch needs digging on The Land, and there's about a million other things on the list too.
I blogged on This Little War today about renewed warnings concerning Peak Oil, and the predicted hike in global food prices. Now is not the time to slack. We've had a few set backs, these last few weeks, but hey, that's what happens to Pioneers. It's currently more important than ever to Do the Next Thing.
And if I could just find my camera lead, I'd show as well as tell!

So I'm into my second half century

2010-11-09T18:42:00.005Z

and beginning to take stock, here.

There is so much I would like to change, and yet I am so inextricably tied to others, that it is no longer simple.

I have a sense of needing to get beyond. I feel limited by what everyone imagines me to be, imagines my family to be, imagines community to be, imagines christianity to be. By and large, it is all a complex fallacy.

I long to be able to get beyond it all. And yet in some sense, I know that to do that, I have to breathe, stay calm, and concentrate on the minute detail.

We went out for lunch, and I got some lovely presents, including a book about year round growing in the polytunnel, which is absolutely brilliant. Oh and Nella Lasts 50s from Ali, which is pure treasure.

Beautiul flowers, and lots of fuss from the girls. A typically foul November day, in which we got to battle the wind and icy rain.

This evening, Neil had to go back out to work, and I have curled by the fire, reading my polytunnel book, browsing around websites, reading up on communities, and trying to decide if I can find a middle way - a way to be family, and therefore separate, but also open, and therefore community.

I worry that my daughters don't get to travel, and travel broadened my mind so much, and is so vital ... but am thinking with restarting our WWOOF programme, maybe we can bring the world to them?

Ah, the ramblings of an old woman by her fire of an evening.

It might be hard

2010-10-18T22:44:00.002Z

to watch your man work this hard, this many hours.
It might be tough, to deny your children things, in the interests of keeping the important things. Like horses, and dreams.
It might be cold, and there may be too few daylight hours, to tend to all that need tending.
But it will be OK. My market garden will flourish, right by the school, in the centre of the village, and because of that, some children, somewhere, will eat fresh vegetables instead of utter rubbish.
I will eventually find the time to license my goats milk soap recipe, and people will be able to buy the pure luxury I take for granted.
I know this, because tonight, a kid I have worked with since she was not much more than a baby, looked me in the eye and said, I've almost done it. I've nearly finished my BP Challenge. This girl has every disadvantage known to man. I can't tell you the details. She is up against the biggest pile of you-know-what in the world. But she has nearly done it. She has nearly gained the highest award a Guide can win. She will prevail. She will break out of here. And if she can do it - my big hearted, neglected, abused, damaged little girl - I can darn well do it.
Watch us go.

Tagged by Cottage Smallholder!

2010-10-16T20:53:00.005Z

Tagged by Fiona at The Cottage Smallholder.

The rules are that you answer the eight questions posed to you and then you send your own eight questions to eight other bloggers of your choice.

Here are Fiona's questions to me:

What have you learnt from blogging?
That life is actually fascinating in all its minutest detail, and there is always something to write about.

What was your proudest moment and why?
I have two of them, and they're ongoing. Both my daughters.

What is the naughtiest thing that you have ever done?
There is no possible way I am going to tell you that here!

Who or what populates your nightmares?
Confusion.

Do you have “me time”. If so what do you do and why?
No, not really, although a hot bath and a good book always appeal.

The one food or ingredient that you fret about running out and why?
Flour/home made bread. None of us likes bought bread.

The best book that you have read in the last five years and why?
The Christmas Mouse by Miss Read because Mrs Berry is my hero and sums up contentment OR The Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne, because it's what christianity is really about.

If you could erase a person/experience/mistake from your life who/what would it be and why?
How long have you got? I possibly would not belt my four front teeth out aged twelve, jumping a horse without a martingale. Maybe :D

So here are my eight questions:

Why do you blog?
What was your proudest moment and why?
What is the silliest thing that you have ever done?
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up, and why?
Now what do you want to be when you grow up?
If I started my perfect community, living on the land, why should I include you in it?
The best book that you have read in the last five years and why?
What is the great truth in your life?

And my eight bloggers are ...

Rachel at The Far Side of The World
Jo at Pioneer World cos she's gone quiet!
Lynn at Raising Little Shoots because she's come back
Catherine at Kids and Capers - cos she's gone quiet , too.
Affi'enia at Blue Frog Sticks
Ellen at The Bluestocking Belle because I want to hear more from her
Cat at Scita > Scienda if she can sink to our level for a minute
Jane at Prairie Days - when she gets back!

Please leave me a comment if you're going to take part!

PS If I didn't tag you but you fancy taking part, please go ahead, and leave me a comment anyway!

Loving the Autumn Weather

2010-10-16T14:18:00.002Z

...even when I'm just dashing by, on the cusp of the morning's farm jobs, and the afternoon's household tasks. It's just a joy, this crisp, sunny woodsmoky autumn Saturday afternoon weather. It makes everything more fun to do!
I have a major photo problem at the moment - my camera's not working and I can't seem to download pictures from my phone. I'm working on that, as I have some good moments to share!

Join in ... Choosing Contentment

2010-10-14T20:19:00.004Z

OK so I thought every week or so, I would post a photo in some way representing my choice to be content (lets see how long it lasts!)
My first picture is the button above - it's a primrose I planted in a my favourite mug - when it (sob) broke. So choosing to be content with a pretty new flower pot, then!
Please join in!

Post a Comment
Grab the button above (please link it back to this post)
Once a week (or so, you know, it's a relaxed feature!) post a picture or small thought reminding yourself and all of us to choose to be content.

For I have learned ...

2010-10-14T17:59:00.004Z

Well, after a week of upheaval, prayer and struggle, it seems that Neil will be driving a taxi (US: Cab, I believe) at least for the winter months. It's not what we'd hoped for, but it's a job, and it means we can pay the rent and eat.
After the first company offered him the job, he went to see the company he works for now, who offered to do him a better deal, so in short, he will be buying into a franchise on a weekly basis, and once costs are paid, will then keep the takings - meaning that he has more incentive to work hard, and should be able to increase his earnings.
Times are brutally hard - for those not in this country, suffice it to say that our previous government left us broke, and with a global recession as well - it is going to get harder and tougher for all of us, the employment figures worsen daily, and we couldn't afford to pass up this offer of a means of making a living.
I will have to run what is left of the farm myself, and hopefully, God willing, will attempt to make some small amount of money out of egg sales, goats milk products, and so on. I also plan on getting the garden more up together (where have I heard that before) and am determined to feed us as much as possible through this hard time. My ultimate aim is to have surplus enough to restart that market garden idea - but this time I'll wait until we have more than enough for ourselves before I plan big!
Anyway, this all led me to thinking, that really, contentment is a choice. These days are not going to be what we'd hoped, if we keep our dream alive, it will be underweight and fighting for life, and every day may well be a battle. However, we're alive, we're thus far all well, we have a beautiful place to live, the potential of which has been wickedly wasted by us over the years, an which may now come into its own.
Like my hero, Mrs Berry, I can choose to be content with my lot. Of course, there is disappointment, and of course there is envy - I am currently surrounded by people due to give birth or just having given birth, and my greatest regret is not having been able to have a larger family - but I can and I must get up every day, give thanks for what we have, put on a smile and choose contentment.
Hmmm. Might just start a wee blog project with this one ....

Piece Together Peace

2010-10-11T12:21:00.004Z

Better late than never, my piece together peace commitment for October is just to be outdoors more, to work more in my garden. It brings peace to my soul, and therefore to my relationships with others, and gives me more time to talk to and more importantly listen to, God.

May You Live in Interesting Times

2010-10-07T21:55:00.005Z

Oh boy, our lives are complicated.

We have to ask, have we gone wrong somewhere - and we have to consider all the things we are doing, and how we may be out of God's will.

Today, I caught sight of a taxi job in the local paper, and Neil phoned up about it. We're still waiting to hear, but it's a chance of a full time job, barely above minimum wage, but regular (oh, I'm almost excited about the notion of having a regular income to set against regular outgoings) - and I would have to run the farm sinlge handed - I can do that, if I have to.

What is really testing us is whether we have made a mistake in sending the girls to school - it's a very small fee, more of a co-operative funding arrangement, and they've been incredible lenient to us in our hardship - but is this time of trouble to do with being out of God's will? Where do we stand on school?

Academically, they are gaining with French and Spanish, losing with History and Geography (ow, Mummy's and Daddy's pet subjects respectively), breaking even in most other subects (though H is getting away from me in maths, so that is probably a gain) and then gaining from those things we couldn't provide - PE, Drama, Choir - in this country, there IS no christian home ed community locally. Not for us. That's where we went wrong before. Isolation is not nice, and both of them love all that 'group' stuff.

We do feel we are losing them to some extent to our family vision - but on the other hand, they are learning to develop their own vision - which of these should prevail? The travel element is nearly killing me, and of course, it costs a lot of money. Which at the moment, we don't have.

They are in school all day, and doing homework all night. They almost never ride. It is hard to teach them to keep home, to take part in our business, to do the chores they're committed too. Something will need to give. I've been aware for some time that we're trying to live two lives. And they don't fit.

If Neil gets the taxi job, we may have to take them out of school for at least a term, if not two, while we catch up with the backlog, and stop spending all that money on diesel for a while. Perhaps that will make us all think.

Tonight, Cormac got colic - he's been really poorly, and another huge vet bill looms on the horizon. I am sitting on the sofa at nearly midnight, waiting to check on him, before going to bed for six hours of not much rest. Vet again tomorrow.Late on into the process, I decided that no one was going to school tomorrow. We're too tired. Harrie is too harrowed. We'll catch up on homework, all being well with the boy.

There is a shred of optimism. If we can get this job, just for a few months, while we build our business. If I can run the farm, and make a little extra and ... if we can ... keep up with school? Go back to homeschool? If we can get our feet back on dry land?

We value your prayers, and all your support.

FlyLady says, chuck out all your magazines.

2010-10-04T10:26:00.002Z

Ruthlessly. It's the habit of the month.

However.

I have just discovered, that in the absence of funds to buy this October's edition, LAST October's copy, rescued from the downstairs loo, is almost as satisfying. I can probably find 2008's, if I try.

Ha!

Day in the life

2010-10-02T20:22:00.006Z

A few weeks ago, we got a bit of a shock. Neil is self employed, but for two years, he has had one major client, who has bought up most of his time, and there was no reason to suppose that would change.
At the beginning of September, this man's younger son went to senior school - an expensive private school which, rather than requiring of his mother a long haul school run as had his prep school, provided a bus, which picked him up, along with his older brother, and thus has freed up Mama - as she put it after the event - to go back to working with the sheep.
Without warning, our income disappeared. The usual Sunday evening phonecall, which would have confirmed three to four days of well paid work, asked to book him only for the week of half term - to cover for their holiday.
Insult to injury. They obviously knew that was what they would do. They were so selfish, that just in case - just in case - Neil should prove so dishonourable as to take a hike when they mentioned their plans, despite the fact that he has never never let them down and has been nothing but open and honest - just in case, they decided to let another family suffer terribly, and give us not one minute's notice.
Since then, we have been selling what we can, surviving on nothing, and making hard decisions about our lives. And to stop us from starving completely, Neil has been out taxi driving. Last night until 3am and then today again from 7am.
So the girls and I had a day of doing .. well everything, and it was always going to be a busy day, anyway!
While they got up and fed chickens, I quickly put the sloes picked yesterday to soak - for sloe wine, which I think I am right in saying, is not so much a table wine, as a remedy, one of the many traditionally made from hedgerow fruits - the girls picked blackberries today, so the blackberry vinegar (our cough remedy) will be brewing soon.

Next, Boo and I set off to the landlord's travelling chickens - this is a job we have as a trade, it lowers our rent - and Neil does it normally, but we had planned that it would be 'my' job, so I am just getting used to it - today was the first time I'd done it without Neil's help.
After the chickens come the goats - I milk in this awful position because my back refuses to use the stool - it's on my list to build a milking stand, to put this situation to rights. Sadly my list is very long. H took this photo and I have to say I am more than a little concerned about the perfect tonal resonance between my hair and that goat's bottom!

We came home and loaded tack up, and for the first time in far too long, went out for a ride, all three of us together. Not far, it has to be said, since poor old Arch has been lounging round in his dressing gown for weeks and is all blubber and puff. But at least we got out.

Home again to clear up, make lunch, put together supper, chiefly from the contents of the garden with a little help from Lidl. Using up apples, so an apple and sultana crumble added to the bounty.
After supper, the girls and I pitched into some tomato bottling Yes, this is bottling, not canning, oh my American chums, straight out of the Rayburn Cookbook, as more than likely carried out by our own dear Miss Marple. Whole, unskinned tomatoes, placed in the oven for an hour and half, before topping up and sealing.
I must admit, I did actually revert to some techniques from the Ball Blue Book - for example I did add lemon juice, as I understand that modern tomato varieties are sweeter than old fashioned varieties - and therefore may just miss out on being acidic enough for non pressure canning.

And so finally to bed. Been a long day. Still many garden and kitchen jobs waiting to be done. But we made a start!

How I hate favouritism

2010-09-23T21:26:00.002Z

Boo went up to seniors this year - she's in year 7 and there are only four of them in her little school, two boys and two girls.
Unfortunately the other girl is fully installed as a golden girl who can do no wrong.
She is continually pointed out as being 'good at math' when she has seven corrections in her work to Boo's ... er... zero. Oh well, says Miss, they're only little corrections.
She got an A1 for a Science paper for which Boo got B2 (the workings of the science teacher's marking scheme are impenetrable) - yet there is no discernable difference in their work.

How to go about it? We are committed to school now, and the girls love it. I don't want to become a whinger (I am going to whinge about H's history AGAIN so really will have played my whingeing card) BUT I don't want my daughter to feel second best for five years because of complex family loyalties and prejudices within such a small community.

Although, lets face it, when she comes out of here, given she wants to do veterinary medicine and hopes to go to Cambridge to do so - she will have to face up to a fair pile of discrimination, and she will have to overcome it.

I think it's gonna be a case of some extra attitude training...

Through the Looking Glass

2010-09-16T22:34:00.004Z

You get it. You have a moment of brilliant clarity. You know what you must do. But you can't. Yet.

This happens to me all the time. Today I went to the doctor. The main issue having been dealt with, she cunningly cut to the chase - my slightly obsessive fear of cancer.

My father died of cancer, my mother died of cancer. Last year, my brother died. Of cancer. I am a bit obsessed. I admit it.

Now, today was the day a doctor told me, good food, more exercise, less stress ... and actually applauded our raw milk. Good grief. She recommended that I buy a book - an anti cancer book - and I came home, and looked at it online and realised, it was not a book I needed. It was in fact, a simplified, general public sort of a book, on a subject about which I have read at heavyweight, insider level and into which I have waded in real life ... but somehow ... I lost it.

The real deal is 'Nourishing Traditions' and I immediately knew. I had it. I needed to reclaim the joy we had in that most radical of expressions of freedom - the growing, rearing, fermenting, preparing, loving of your own food.

How is it we have these insights, as part of our own intentional journey, and then - well - lose them?

So I come home, filled with joy, passion and a reclaimed understanding of my mission. Only to realise that we have the family visiting this weekend, as well as a horse show to go to, and what I actually have to do, for the moment, is turn out the vast quantities of food I've planned for the weekend, yes planned, mind you - at my lowest ebb of intentionality - not even going to list it all - I have however just peeled, parboiled and frozen in bags, 80 potato pieces which over the course of the weekend will be mashed, boiled, roasted - and I have puddings (spelt, yes, and honey, but even so ...) and peanut butter cookies stacked high. Oh dear.

Now, this is always happening to me. I know what I must do. But there's a stack of committments between me and ... it.

About to go into a tailspin of self pity, I realised, hey. We eat at least two or three meals a week produced entirely by US. (That's us, with God's grace) The meat, the eggs, the milk, the vegetables, the bread (OK, not growing the grain yet) We grew it all. I lost it a bit. But it's not the end of the world. I still have children who prefer not to eat shop bought bread at all, and eat raw vegetables for fun.

And my goat herd is about to be registered and named (watch this space) and I am going to get fresh, local vegetables into the hot little mits of local children if it kills me. So it's not all bad!

Autumn is here

2010-09-11T21:21:00.003Z

and it is my favourite season.
Today though, was not in the top league at all, two of us down with colds, and far, far much to do - including the carpet cleaning company who boasted a special offer for their basic service, and obviously wanted to quote for the fuller deal.
The basic was £8.99. The real deal was £550.
Sadly, our carpets got the glorified (read: noisy) Hoover for £8.99. Won't fall for that again.
Bone tiredness, a sore throat and a head ache prevented me from doing more than hauling furniture and feeding the family.
After supper, however, H and I got our second wind. Some friends have gone away and asked the girls to water and pick tomatoes in their greenhouse, and make use of same. With our polytunnel ones as well, for once we truly have a surplus, and H and I canned 8pts in their own juice - now I know to my hard core canning American friends - yes Jane and Deanna, I do mean you - 8 pints is barely worth heating up the canner for, but hey, we seldom run to a real surplus and it was exciting for us to actually fill the thing up!
Now, canned tomatoes are not exactly expensive, and I am reminded of Herrick Kimball, who says that while 'moderns' can't help but 'do the math' and point out it would be easier and cheaper to buy (in his case, frozen strawberries, in mine, canned tomatoes) in the supermarket, agrarians :
' ..see the value in the doing of planting, rending, harvesting, processing, and putting up our own food. We see value in knowing where our food comes from. We see value in the assurance that this food is pure and safe. We see value in the incredibly superior flavor of homegrown and fresh picked food. We see value in being able to take care of our own food needs and not being dependent on the industrial providers, even if it is just in part. This is freedom. This is part of what makes The Good Life good.'

Freedom is important because the rules can change at any time. When I first started making our bread by hand, plenty of people told me I was barking, since bread was CHEAP. Well it's not cheap now, and even at a pound a loaf, it's next door to inedible, so thank you, but I'm rather glad that making two loaves every three days or so is now second nature, and both daughters are equally capable of doing the job if I am busy.

It's been kind of dark, of late. I won't pretend we are without our problems. But Ibelieve in the agrarian life. I believe it's worth fighting for.

Blog Hopping and Lovin' It!

2010-09-09T16:36:00.004Z

Fabulous Farmama

Plain and Joyful Living - and a chance to join in Hand Made Holiday 2010

*edited to add: Jo C - if you don't love these, I'll eat my farm hat!

I'd like to thank all the small people ...

2010-09-03T08:43:00.004Z

Awards, you either love 'em or you hate 'em.

As I seldom actually GET awards, I am still quite keen on them, and I am particularly chuffed with this one, because it's made me come out from behind the sofa and try to sort out the mess that is my blogging life.

I still find This Little War and Chestnuts hard work, it does not as yet come naturally to me to dot over there and talk about stuff. Whereas Hedgerow Days has always come naturally. I wonder if it's the platform - I don't particularly like Blogger, but it is easy and I have lots of friends and followers on here who don't seem to like WordPress nearly so much.

Sigh.

Anyway, Elaine at Our Day honoured me with this award, and I'd like to say thank you to her and pass it along.

The rules say I have to tell you seven things about myself and here they are:

I have a potentially life threatening Jelly Baby addiction. It has got to stop.
I am naturally an owl - being married to a farming person, I have to fight this the whole time and try really hard to go to bed at a decent hour, as I have to get up at an indecent one.
I am still battling on with the challenge of relaunching my growing/veg box business. I want to bring good things into peoples lives
I love Christmas. Many christians aren't so keen on it, seeing it as commercialised, or pagan, or 'OTT' - but hey, I fail to see how you can make too much of a song and dance about God becoming man.
I adore Nella Last's books - and all things 1940s. I'm a bit of a WW2 anorak, and my family occasionally find themselves on rations.
I love Waitrose but I loathe Blooming Hestonthall! My heart belongs to Jamie, so I shop in Sainsburys. My husband says I illustrate perfectly the power of the celebrity endorsement! (also, I can't afford Waitrose!)
I always wanted to be Olivia Walton, but I married late and only had the two children - I'm counting on one of them having a large family, at a young age!

and now to pass it along ...

First off Jo, at Pioneer Country because she's just changed her blog name, and I call that versatile, don't you?

Deanna, oh my friend of long time, Deanna at Our Plain and Simple Life - don't know about versatile, but you can always rely on Deanna to say JUST what she thinks!

And my dear Ellen at Bluestocking Belle to welcome her home to Georgia after her summer in Maine, and give her something to blog about!

Visit the farm

2010-08-28T23:22:00.002Z

I also have a farm blog at www.chestnutsfarm.com.

It's pretty much under construction, and it's different in that it's aimed at people who interact with us locally, not just online, but I'd love you to drop by and say hello - and if you feel like it, post a link to your own blog - we could do with the traffic!

Girls are deep into preparation for a show on Monday (bank holiday) and I am tangling with two business plans - mine to reinvent my box scheme as a market garden, and Neil's to run a farm contracting business with a difference. I am also hoping to revive my dreams of workshops and courses.

Anyone interested in soapmaking or Christmas crafts?!

Howl.

2010-06-22T21:36:00.003Z

If I have a besetting sin, it is anger. I am too often angry. Today, my anger and hurt is eating at my throat, I am fighting back tears. It is all pointless.
I have too much to do, and my day is garroted twice by an hour long drive. The gap in the middle doesn't WORK.
Neil continuously and pointlessly asks 'but what DID you do' and I DON'T KNOW.
I picked up barrow after barrow of pony pooh from the field, I made phone calls, I lost pieces of paper in the huge mess, I unearthed some soap making equipment in the garage and found it all mouldy and useless and threw it away, I spared a precious half hour to plant up a little flower border by my greenhouse, I planted some chillies in pots.
The puppy, who is no nearer coming when called, responding to his name, or stopping chewing everything I own, destroyed the flower bed, upended the chillies and ate the pots.
I have four ponies for two children and I can't afford to send back the two I can't afford to keep. One can't lead one out and the other can't lead one in so a good half my life seems to be spent plowing backward and forward across a field with a bad tempered pony. I have sore feet. All the time. They hurt when I walk. Every time I walk.
I wash up and wash up and wash up. All my life seems to be spent washing up. I hate it, so I do it badly and slowly.
I am angry at the grass, because it is long, and I hate untidy gardens and all I want to do is cut it. But Neil spent the only money I have actually had in the last decade, from my veg box grant, on a lawnmower I CAN'T START. So I have to ask. And Neil is working 25 hour days. So I can ask all I like.
I have pictures that need putting up. But our walls are rendered in concrete and you physically cannot knock in a picture hook. You need to drill and raw plug. And we don't have a drill I'm allowed to use.
I am utterly, totally powerless over my circumstances. Now the more sanctified among you may consider this a good thing, and yes, I know, we are all powerless and in our weakness is His strength , but I challenge you to feel that way when your family is drowning, you are hemorrhaging money on bunches of dumb stuff you simply cannot afford, your husband is working stupid hours and earning a pittance, and you, you can do precisely NOTHING.
And just for good measure, the sorry excuse for a vegetable garden I have managed to get around to planting has cows lining up to invade it again, and frankly it won't take it. If they get in tonight, it's over for this year, and my one pathetic, useless contribution to the budget is down the pan.

I don't know why I get so angry, I think it's frustration, at all the bright hope and big ideas, slowly mouldering away as I get old and grumpy and one by one they just get left to wither. I have a lot to be thankful for. I have two beautiful, healthy children, I live in a place everyone else thinks is amazing and I think is tolerable. I have air and space, and at the moment, sunshine. But I am powerless. Utterly, utterly powerless. And I can't bear it.

And the two things I hate most in life are driving and washing up.

I'm sure that wasn't very edifying. But it had to be said. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

The world is a whirl

2010-06-21T22:38:00.003Z

of a fabulous service at our 'new' church, which was full of joy and open ness and children (well it was a dedication) and food and just well worship really.
It's a struggle to leave behind the constraints, the critical spirit, the fear and the worry, and just believe, but we're getting there. We really are.
And the longest day is always a great day for us. I mean, we have pagan friends who head for Stonehenge, but it's not that kind of a great day.
When I'm in the middle of winter, I find the winter solstice is the whole crux of the year. We are tired, we are cold, we are battle weary, but the turn of the year always lifts our spirits, and enables us to go on.
I long for summer, as the hart pants for water and all that. And then it comes, and on this day, we find ourselves, exhausted, worn out by the endless available hours during which we, of course, availably work.
So this day marks for me another turning point. One where we head back into sane working hours, and time to dream believe and pray, time to reap and gather and hold. It's a long way off yet, but I can feel it in the air. Praise Him for His endless mercies, autumn and log fires will come!

Skulking back to this little corner

2010-06-12T17:34:00.002Z

to feel sad. Hard times once again mean dh is working nights as well as days.
Lovely sunny evening, children at a critical time, especially H who is revising for exams. The show must go on. No family bbq for us, this evening, though.
Went for an interview for a job in the week - well, it wasn't really an interview, more a cattle market - gave the employer chance to get a look at and about 3 minutes to chat with about 60 applicants. Never easy in charity shop clothes and eight year old shoes.
I am battling, to be honest, with just the teeniest bit of resentment. Though I do know that all my mistakes are my own, and no one elses. Just some of the recent ones are really bugging me.
That's all :D

God, Me and Planet Earth

2010-05-22T22:53:00.001Z

at This Little War

Good Sunday

2010-05-02T22:04:00.001Z

Short post about our Sunday here.

Best Laid Plans

2010-04-25T22:14:00.002Z

We kind of hoped to go to our old church to day to say goodbye - it was going to be hard, but it was our beloved fellow deacon in the morning and the London City Mission, who we support, in the evening.
However, at 10 o'clock my older daughter came through the door with her hands over her face and blood pouring everywhere, having been kicked by a horse.
My initial reaction was sheer terror, but having established that her eyes and teeth were OK, the old routine soon sprang into action, and she was cleaned up, arnicad and had a cold compress on the bruising within seconds. The wound was still bleeding freely though and it was gaping as it was on her cheekbone.
Assuring her that I would have left her to it if she had been a rugby playing boy who might one day be proud of the scar, I put her in the car and drove her to the MIU half an hour away to have it looked at, glued and taped, to minimise any future scarring.
Our wonderful, wonderful National Health Service came up trumps once again, we were seen in minutes, a friendly, competent nurse checked her thoroughly, smiled and joked, and did such a fantastic job on her face, I know it will all be gone in a year or so.
All this happens because we pay for our health service through our taxes. No one asks you who you are or what you can afford. They just smile, and get on with the job. God bless the NHS.

How might it be

2010-04-17T21:17:00.002Z

Every day, I drive past a site, about a mile or so from here, which has been a derelict, ex-military, acre or so, for years.
Now, they have planning permission to build houses, and there is talk that this will include affordable housing for local people. Probably the word 'young' will fall in there, and leave us out, but you can hope.
Before we moved here, I wanted to hang on for this development, build our farm on our rented field, and just keep our heads down where we were.Neil wanted to come here, because here is nicer. I wanted to stay there, because ...here is nicer, and charms us away from building our little dream on our field.
But I am becoming obsessed. I watch the site. I toil over our credit rating (which cannot be mended for at least two years, I fear) I make lists and budgets ... how might it be?
Can we possibly, ever, live in a tiny house in a road, surrounded on all sides by other people? This house is large and airy, surrounded by its own garden, private and blissful, and full of light .
If we were able to get such a house, how would it feel?
The opposite of everything we want and dream about?
But it would be close, really close, maybe half a mile? from our field. And it would be ours.
What a strange obsession it is becoming. How might it be to live in two worlds at once?!

Strange days

2010-04-16T21:35:00.003Z

Arch has been poorly - walking up and down the lane with him, my heart breaking because the diagnosis is : best if he goes home to Wales, now - it's been odd. He's been at his most beautiful. I love my horse, so I'd better let him go.

Finally, a gap in lambing allowed us to go out for a meal as a family, something we haven't done for months, and it was pure bliss.

Sitting in a warm, firelit village pub, with time to talk, and time to dream - I have one daughter who wants to go to the Royal Ag College at Ciren to do Equine Business Studies, and one who wants to do Veterinary Science, preferably at Bristol or Cambridge. So no holds barred. To sit talking and dreaming, to hear H talking about her job (she's holiday relief at a very smart local livery yard) and keeping things sweet with her 'owners' (her pony is on loan) and Boo calculating just how many exams she's going to have to pass ...

I hope it all comes true for them. Looks like I'd better work harder.

In praise of simple things

2010-04-11T22:04:00.002Z

for churches, small and comforting, yet large enough to hide a small, three lady family within warm wings, and minister thereto with words of inspiration from the Acts
for chickens, tactically moved to grass invaded driveways, whereon their brittle beaks remove unwanted greenery and rediscover stones
for ponies, basking in unfamilar sunlight, and shedding swathes of warm grey hair like winter underwear discarded on the bathroom floor
and goats whom sunlight coaxes into giving yet more gloriously warm, sustaining milk.
for girls who grow so strong, and smart, and funny, and yet who long to just fulfill their calling on this earth, and pray that some of it will be outdoors, but dutifuly compare waist and hip, and wonder if their bearing will support a woman
for piles of sewing waiting for their muse
for lambs in dapple sunlight, on the field's edge
for salad grown with care and served with love
and sunlight's drying, nurturing, revitalising breath
for smooth eggs, brown and blue and cream and numerous in spring's long days,

for all these simple things, thanks be to God,
for all these hints at pure simplicity we yet shall know.

Praise Him.

Blessed! A day all together

2010-04-04T18:16:00.002Z

We didn't wake up until seven! Glory what a treat - a two and a half hour lie in for Neil, an hour and a half for the rest of us. Chores were accomplished slowly and we still had time to visit a local church for Easter service - it was the same one we visited some weeks back. It's a good church - but for us, it is a crossroads, and this is the road *more* travelled. It remains to be seen whether we shall have the courage or calling to travel the greener path, or whether this well trodden one, easier going for our children's unsure feet, will prove to be the right way. Only time and prayer will tell.
It's been a slow day of day dreaming and watching The Waltons! We are all so tired at this point in lambing, that all ideas of feisty outdoor feasts or rambling amid the downs are out of the question. A quiet roast lunch and time together to chill and chatter are just what the doctor ordered.
Trouble is, the spring tasks are piling up, and I need to spend hours in the garden at just the time the girls are off school, and want to spend hours with the horses.
I have also taken over milking the goats once again, and need to make cheese, more yoghurt, and a good bit more soap with the surplus - though I am freezing some for sale as dog milk - and what's more I have a lot of sewing awaiting my attention.
I love spring. I love all the demands it makes upon us. It's tiring, but soon will come the days when it is sheer joy to go to bed when it is still light, with the curtains and windows open next to the bloom of lilac, sleep the sleep of the exhausted and awake with the sky already light again, and ready to begin all over.
I love the re-evaluation. Traditionally, I make post-resurrection resolutions, rather than new year ones, because this is my new year, with a cry of 'Hallelujah! He is Risen!' and the early dawn of a spring day, I feel ready to begin again, ready for re birth and transformation.

This year I really want to be where I am - for years I have suffered from changefulness, the inability to follow any one path. I am stricken by a kind of multiple personality, wasting my days deciding the tone, the shade, the influence under which I will ... plant the peas. Shall they be Amish, plain peas, or Victory peas, shall they be happy, settled English garden peas a la Miss Read? Are they peas for my family or peas for the market, peas for canning at leisure, or freezing in a hurry? Peas of a solid village kind or of a dreamy commune kind, shall they go into a box scheme, a social enterprise, a world changing, diggers and dreamers kind of pea shall they be? Or should they be Little House on the Prairie peas, to be gathered in aprons and dried for the winter ...

... the while, you understand, I have not planted any peas. I have only theorised about the planting of peas. And the next day, I shall begin upon lettuces ... shall they be heritage varieties, planted companionably with their own slug deterrents, in recycled raised beds ... or standard lettuces, regimented allotment style in a 1940s march toward the serried ranks of leeks ?

So for this year, one transformation.

No transformations.

Good Friday

2010-04-02T21:11:00.003Z

A long and hard but satisfying day - an early start to do horses and then, having the girls off school to help out, we decided to transition to my doing the milking again, which I have not done for some time.
Despite the mud and the driving rain, with H's help I managed to negotiate the gates and pens, and milked the three girls, I was so pleased and happy to be back with them, it really is a joy to milk them and be around them, I have missed them so much.
The days go so quickly - H and I desperately wanted to get enough done so that we could do some sewing, but chore followed chore - we had forgotten to stock up on chicken feed before the holiday weekend so had to go and buy alternative supplies. I needed to make bread and hotcross buns, Boo made tiffin for daddy's lunchbox. Dinner had to be cooked - traditional Good Friday fish - chore time rolled around again.
We did not get to our sewing, which saddened me greatly as H really really wants me to sew up a dress for her which I cut out a while ago.
It has been a lovely day though, the three of us worked side by side happily and got so much done. They are a blessing my lovely girls.
Neil not back til nearly nine, having left at 5 am - this is a punishing time for him, but an important part of our annual income.
We stopped for a devotional time, and read the crucifixion account in Matthew, we meditated on the centurion who guarded the cross - he thought he was just overseeing the putting to death of a terrorist, only when the sky turned dark and the veil was rent did he realise - we talked about how loaded was that phrase ( which for many of us was marked out in childhood by John Wayne, in The Greatest Story EverTold) 'He truly was the Son of God'.
What did that realisation mean to him? It hardly bears thinking about.

When it rains, sometimes I get it.

2010-03-22T22:03:00.002Z

The sheer, pure joy of being here. Doing stuff.
Friday, I think it was, the chooks fed and cleaned out, and I decided to do the first great water change of spring in the plastic pond, which led to joyous displays of diving and tomfoolery by Laurie, the grubby drake. Newly white and preened, he is almost his old self - though the quack has not returned.
Be-wellied and bewildered as I was, the job in hand was refilling the horses' water trough, and climbing fences, hauling hoses, spraying out the trough with a none-too-well-placed thumb, and thus spraying myself, the rain began to fall, and as often happens when it rains, I loved the moment.
To be this blessed, to be this free, and still to find time to worry and complain, is a travesty really. It does have to stop.
Even the wet and windy Saturday ride when Boo hit the deck in the mud and cried, had a perfect, line drawn, Pullein-Thompson or 'Jill' quality to it - Caney would have done us proud, as we hacked grumpily home into the teeth of the wind, wet and in at least one case, muddy, bickering as unpleasantly as the best of them.
Planting is the very heart of me, and as long as, at this time of year, I have the time to grow and tend, to watch and learn, to brush the leaves of tomato plants, making them as strong as a passing breeze would have done, then I am well.
And as Neil is lambing 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, I am back among my goats, and who knows what mischief that might bring about .....

Long, long post as light dawns

2010-02-28T22:13:00.003Z

A lot has happened in the last year or so, and not all of it can be blogged here. Chiefly, my children are in school, and life has changed around that immeasurably – I spend a lot of time driving them, and Neil spends a good deal more time earning money to pay for them.
That’s a massive oversimplification, but that’s what’s happened. We didn’t know if they would cope, academically and socially, and they have done both. Socially, they are surprisingly at ease, and academically, they are easily up to standard.
There were several reasons why this happened, and as I have said, I can’t go into all of them here, but by and large, it was my fault. I had two areas where I was not doing well – one was practical, the other personal/emotional – possibly a health issue.
Practically, I was not coping, my time was not organised, the house and garden were falling into disarray, I don’t want to rehearse here all my failings, this is not meant to be some kind of confessional, but suffice it to say, that home was not exactly where the heart was.
The other area – the personal one – is stuff I’m not going to go into here. Lets just say, I have a lot of issues. I even have a bunch of issues I didn’t even know I had until a few weeks ago. There is a lot to deal with.
The girls have been in their Christian school now for half a year – that’s one and a half terms in old money – and they are loving it. Just as I start to feel , what have I done? Why on earth are they in school?
I certainly felt a great empathy with Marisa when I chanced upon her blog last night. For a number of reasons.
The reality is, I have always gone off at a moment’s notice. Before now, if I’d thought, ‘oh, I want them to come home’ I’d have worked on my husband for a day or two, he would have come around to my point of view, and then the week after, we’d have given notice to the school. Not any more. My selfish, one person actions , have done enough damage, and now I have two young ladies with thoughts of their own to consider.
So. I have a new vision (or, as my niece, Jo would say a 2YP – two year plan) and this time, I do believe I have found the threads God intends to weave into my life, and if I can only stick with it, I may finally make the beautiful tapestry I know He has for me.
It’s like this. I miss my simple life, my homesteading, homeschooling (sorry , British pals to whom ‘home education’ matters so much, the phrase ‘homeschooling’ has personal meaning for me, and in this context, I must keep it. In ‘public’ I try hard to use the preferred term) and the close to God’s Word, deep in Creation, literal life I led.
At the same time, good stewardship requires us to look at how we are living – renting this property is not a wise fiscal decision, though given our past history, we don’t have a lot of choice right now. But we may do in a couple of years’ time.
I need to accept that I can’t just snatch and grab. If I want the girls to come home, they’re going to have to want it too. And most of the clearing up that needs doing to make that a possible scenario, is My Work. Two years is when it all seems to happen. So I have some targets, and I am right at the foot of the mountain.
• Home has to become the place we all want to be.
• That means my practical issues need to be resolved, organisation and harmony need to reign. Home needs to be the shelter, not the storm.
• It gives me two years to get my business (my veg box scheme) back on track. It doesn’t need to be a corporate whammy, just a little home business to help out a little. While I have the time, I need to use it wisely.
• I don’t do group therapy, but some of my personal issues need to be not issues. Whatever that takes, be it prayer, counselling, self discipline and/or a visit to the doctor, this box must be ticked.
• The while, I need to pray my girls will choose home, and try hard to make it the best choice. If they don’t, I must accept the alternative.
• We need to consider that in that time, our past abysmal financial record should be cleared, and there are also possibilities of affordable housing locally.
• That means our dream of a farm must be built on the land we now rent independently. This is a bloom where you are planted issue.
• Those last two are a whole nother post.
Finally, there is one other element present, which has been nudging at our hearts for some years, and which may become part of the plan. That counts as another thing about which I can’t blog yet.
I’m being put to the test by the fact that lambing is about to begin, and Neil contract lambs for someone else first, and is already into 70hour 7 day weeks in preparation. For the first time, I will have no willing little right hand girls to help take up the slack. I’m on my own.

goings on in the garden

2010-02-17T22:39:00.001Z

recorded today at this little war.

She, was born of earth, fire and water .....

2010-02-12T21:41:00.011Z

What a weird 24 hours.

A lot of very strange things are happening to me.
They're not things I can talk about here, they are personal, family, in deep kind of things.
Transition, transformation ... something ... elemental. And life changing.

There is a theme, and that theme is to do with being ... duped. Taking the line of least resistance, and as a result, living continually in other people's realities. Accepting their version of events, and their backdrop, their score, as the inevitable starting point for my movie. Because to argue, to stand up and change the set, the chords or the storyboard is ... well ... hassle. And may bring conflict.

I've hidden deep, deep hurt, in the ease of accepting a version of events where there was someone on my side, even though there was someone not at all on my side. And now, as clear as day, I can see, that there never was anyone on my side at all! They were both pitched against me. Just only one of them had the dubious courage to let it show. Though not to explain it.

Events are re written, or I change - on the way between Guides and Pony Club, school and church, field and home, I change, to fit the requirements of other people's soap operas, other peoples lives, because it's easier. And I happily delude myself that it's all OK, that the synopsis they're offering me will fit the bill, I can work with that.

Well I can't. And I won't.

So I'm going back, where my green grass roots are growing. And also forward. Into the unknown.Cool.

Thanks, Loretta.

It's a long road back

2010-02-08T00:11:00.006Z

Today, we took a day off from church. Last week, we went to the next nearest town, and attended a small independent evangelical church, it was a good place to be, it might be our new home. But we needed not to go anywhere this week. We need time to heal as a family. Because Neil works 6 or more long days a week, and we are always flat out, with community commitments as well as our own small farm to run, we find we seldom have days to just be. To just be a family, to take time, to live in creation. To worship with all five senses.
So today, we rode horses together, ate together, talked together, worshipped together (at home, by a roaring log fire, reading from God's word, and stories of heroes of the faith, singing, praying, being together) and we went and meandered around a garden centre, and drank tea, and drove around the villages where we first came to when we moved down here, and where Boo was born, and where H was a baby, and we aroused precious and somewhat enlightening memories.
Meanwhile, I was shadowed all day by a passage from Jenna's blog at Cold Antler Farm.

To be in her beautiful farmhouse drinking coffee near her woodstove while her new Lab chewed on a rope toy on the floor-felt wonderful. As we sipped our coffee and went through some fiber books I brought over, I couldn't help but look around her 160+ year old home. Mel was living my dream. A loving family, her own farm, a good dog, and a barn and truck outside the door. I used to look up to famous graphic designers and Iditarod mushers as my role models. Now I look up to people like Mel. Everyday people who made their lives what they wanted. People who raise children, go to work, and come home to make sure the pipes don't freeze. Fame or fortune doesn't prove self worth to me like it once did. There is nothing more extraordinary than what happens every day when people choose to be kind. Amen.

I almost hesitate to offer you a link to Jenna's blog, since the debate over her asking her readers to help her out has presented me with one of the most interesting moral conundrums I've come across in years. Is it a barefaced cheek for a single, healthy, employed person to come cap in hand to people she's never met, asking for help to buy a house, or is it a heart warming expression of our inner Amish - a virtual barn raising, a beautiful expression of community, albeit ethereal?

That aside, I realised, I am living the life, I am in 'Mel' s shoes, I have the farmhouse, the children, the Rayburn, the Beagador, the ponies, the soft meadows, the sheep, goats and hens, I am blessed beyond all possible measure. I remembered those days, when we first came down here from the world of home ownership, Neil's long hours in a high pressure sales job, my big girl, still toddling, my baby, unborn .... we arrived, we unpacked and before we knew it, Pewsey carnival was on, we walked down to the carnival field, feeling like Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, newly arrived in a wonderful, welcoming, crazy, pastoral, country life - heady and sweet - and a year later, my three year old won 'thelwell lookalike' on her pony, and my life was complete.

What that was, that blissful, simple, connected life, was an awesome, sparkling, gift from God. And who or what has robbed us of that gift? Churches. Pharisees. People who speak for God, and yet, they do not know Him. False prophets. It's a long way back. But we're ready.

relief

2010-02-06T14:28:00.002Z

finally, my eyes stopped running.
After three days, I caved and took one teaspoonful of Boo's Piriton, and it's provided the relief I need to just get a few things done.
As I speak, the prickling is starting up again, and I have just taken another teaspoonful, in the hope of getting something, anything done this afternoon.

There is a lot of stuff going on around here which is not actually too great -apart from anything else, a friend went over to the barn to pick up a fleece, and found one of our ewes dead - no idea what and why - and Smartie's cough just is not getting any better, it looks like retirement for him, but where and how are anyone's guess. Ah the joys of livestock.

I can't see to type cos my eyes are streaming

2010-02-04T19:56:00.002Z

Yet another cold. Normally, we don't get colds and things. Raw milk, outdoor life and low stress living tend to be your best defence.
But with the girls being at school, and me spending far too much time driving them to and fro, I think my defences are down. I had a foul cold followed by really really foul flu, possibly but not definitely swine, before Christmas, and now here I am again, with a fluorescent nose, and a tissue wedged behind my glasses. So stylish.
We have a few pony placing problems around here, and we went over to our field today to contemplate moving someone - oh my goodness, it's underwater, the whole thing is flooded and spongy. I'm sure it never was this bad when we first were there - but cultivation methods all around us have changed, and we seem to be getting everyone's run off.
It's not great, since now the girls are settled and I am trying to get my head around what to do next, I was planning to reopen the garden down there, and move some goats over, and get my community farm back up and running. But I'm going to be needing the community to be Atlantis at this rate.

Taking the Plunge

2010-01-22T23:42:00.002Z

I have just started my new blog This Little War and am delighted to invite you all to come and have a look, and tell me what you think.
I will be staying on here at HWFD because it's my personal place, where I meet with friends, and talk through all the muddle. TLW is a more public place, where I hope to build a more professional presence online.
Tell me what you think.

Strange Carry On

2010-01-21T22:40:00.003Z

Today, I applied for a job. No really. I have been either self employed or keeping home for the last 15 years at least, but for a couple of spells of part time teaching (riding).
I'm not sure where I'm going with it - I don't really even expect to get an interview - but I was getting grizzly about how (seemingly) easily a couple of friends had been shortlisted for, and obtained, respectively, new jobs which seemed just perfect for them. I looked in the local paper just to prove to myself that never in a million years would there be a job I could apply for - I need flexible hours, I have school runs to do, I have school holidays to contend with, and a puppy to cart round with me - and there it was. A job which just might fit the bill, requiring some skills I learned long ago, and perhaps even some age and experience. So I was excited, and I applied for it. We'll see.
In the meantime, in talking it over with the family, I was so animated, so convinced that we'd all just have to wake up and smell the coffee and put a bit more va-voom into life, get the chores done, and crack on with saving up for our dream home/farm/life. We came here for a reason. God intended for us to build on what we have here, and job or no job (and no job = no money) we can do it, not in our own strength, but in His.
So today, when the girs were at school and the envelope posted, it struck me that even if I don't get the job, or so much as an interview, that still stands.
I feel like we waste a lot of time. Down time when we just feel tired and pessimistic. Instead of using every minute to further our cause. So it's down to menu plans, frugal tricks and tips, budgeting, and making every penny count, and remaining cheerful and fired up.
What are your top energy tips? I need loads more. I know my sugar cravings cause me problems, and I know I stay up too late.

What other energising tips do you have for me?

In other news, as our church seems to have hit a major bump in the road - and may possibly, just possibly cease to exist quite soon, we are still looking to move. While we are intrigued by the possibility of the anabaptist assembly which meets at West Drayton, the reality is more likely to be, that we accept the 40 minute drive we've been fighting these 8 years, and head for the nearest 'big' (by our standards) evangelical church, which probably means Chippenham.

Those of you who are christians, how far do you consider is feasible to travel to church?

Christmas has come and gone

2010-01-07T15:52:00.004Z

the decorated corners have been dusted and the greenery burned gratefully,

the gingerbread house admired and applauded, though not exactly eaten, by those of us with multiple fillings.

The radiant sunrise inhales through bare, stoical boughs,

and snow is here.

and the veg garden, though in need of much work, likes beneath its wintry cover

there is still much to be done

but nevertheless, we

... we are going toboganning...

Pale Blue Sky

2010-01-02T16:06:00.003Z

The sky is pale blue. It is just gone 4pm, it is so cold, that as we rode along the roads (inadvisable in the extreme, I was talked into it, and Archie, who is no relation whatsoever to Christopher Dean, had a terrifying time of it) I noticed every ditch, filled with solid, glittering, Snow Queen worthy, Ice. But the joy of it is, the sky is pale blue, it is not dark.
When the days start to stretch out, the precious seconds are so much more important than the extravagance of the lengthening evenings after the equinox. It isn't dark! My little bantams are still scratching around in frozen straw! The sky is pale blue!

And I must introduce you to our newest team member. I will tell you his story another day, but for now, in a really Christmassy sort of way, he just arrived:

This is Morse. The sky is pale blue, and Morse is here. Life is funny, isn't it?

Ice Storm

2009-12-23T21:16:00.003Z

Well, today we awoke to a totally frozen world. A hard hoar frost had glittered everything white, like an over zealous child making Christmas cards ... even the game netting over the chicken pen was white. The ground was solid, and yet another slow, hypnotic plod over the tundra ensued as we turned the ponies out - every other day is their lot at the moment - and fingers froze and Archie slipped. Again.
Rain was forecast for the afternoon, and the children anticipated the great thaw with great hope of riding. It never came. The rain came, but it was disguised as ice. Hammering down in great swathes.
Unfortunately my hard working husband was out on the top of an exposed Wiltshire hillside, moving sheep. I've never seen him or his dog come in colder or wetter. Neil having been dispatched to the bath with a mug of steaming tea with cooking brandy in it, Boo had to rub Fly dry with a towel, she also got a cup of tea (no brandy) and her dinner to warm her. Poor girl is exhausted.
I was glad that amid the baking, I had decided on stew and dumplings for dinner.
We had sent lambs off last week, and our regular butcher was unable to take them so close to Christmas, so we fell back on our second string, which will not be happening again. The meat was well butchered enough, but he made the biggest pigs breakfast of packing it all and we are still trying to sort it out now. My mince and stewing meat was in great 8lb bags, which the girls and I had to patiently sort, weigh, rebag and freeze today. The sight of the prime cuts of hogget was what put a good stew into my mind, and it simmered happily in the Rayburn with a heap of veg and a generous slug of gluhwein.
Mint dumplings were added when the lid came off, and though I say it as shouldn't, it was a delight.
We also achieved the sausage rolls, mince pies, and the girls made a gingerbread house.
Oh and we did the Ice Station Zebra thing again fetching horses in.
So now I'm ready for knitting by the fire, and a dvd of 'All Creatures Great and Small' and everything else can wait!

The day starts slowly without you.

2009-12-17T14:31:00.002Z

You do not bark to wake us up, desperate to go out into the garden. The tears have dried on my face, where I woke in the night, and thought you were too far away, out there in the cold, as if someone had pulled a thread in my heart.
No one wants to get up. It is so dark, so still, so cold. Fly curls tight in the corner of her bed. When we finally come down, she comes uncharacteristically into the kitchen, to look for you. She flops resignedly back down by the back door. Maybe you are outside?
The door to the utility room opens too easily. Your bed is still unslept in, as it always was, but now it is not because you have chosen, instead, to wedge the door shut. You are gone. You do not nose your bowl clankingly against the washing machine to point out that you have run out of water. The chicken feed sack stands unmolested.
I will never again hear your gentle, irregular bark. Your silken teardrop ears will never arch above your hopeful eyes as you present us with the merest twig in the hope of a game. When summer comes, as it must, the lawnmower will start, but you will not bark and spin in anticipation of the chase. You will not jump the puddle at the bottom of the drive, or roll on your back on the deliciously wet grass of a spring dawn.
The children whose prams you guarded are grown. So there are no more baby yoghurt pots into which to wedge your silly nose. You were here before them, a cornerstone, part of the foundation of a family. I cannot bear that you are gone. I know that before dawn, when the wind howls, I will hear your bark in my dreams, I will smile as if you were still here, and then. Then I will wake up.
There will never be another dog like you. You were a once in a lifetime kind of dog.

Rest In Peace

2009-12-16T19:31:00.003Z

Sam

April 10th, 1994 - December 16th, 2009

Now forever watching over his sheep, sleeping beneath a tree, in the field where they graze.

Sam came from a Rescue Centre in Wisbech. He had been kept, as a puppy, in a one bed flat, where he was left alone all day. He was taken out for a walk, once a week. (Presumably, like the Old Queen's Bath, whether he needed it or not) Unsurprisingly, he chewed the furniture, and at 10 months, he was in a wire cage in a rescue centre, with a deep mark on his nose, where he pressed against the cage, waiting for us to come, because he knew we would.

He came to us when we still lived in a caravan on a friend's farm. He came with us when we moved, he was with us when we finally got a LandRover, and seem to understand the status in conferred upon him, a working dog. He was with us when we got our first sheep, and he worked them like an old pro. He learned to work cattle. He loved to chase mice in the vegetable garden. He ran for miles, he earned his keep, as well as our gratitude, our respect, and our love.

He retired last winter, and sat by the Rayburn, shambling out for short walks with Boo. He got arthritis, and moving became harder and more painful. Still he would follow Neil wherever he asked him to go. Long ago, he lost the sight in one eye, (herding a strimmer) and eventually, the sight in the other eye began to fail. He still enjoyed life.

Last week, his back legs began to let him down. He stopped eating, and eventually, today, he didn't want to drink. He became confused. Neil took him to the vet tonight, and he passed peacefully away, beside his boss, where he belonged.

In the dark, and the fog, and the freezing rain, he was carried back to his sheep, to the little apple orchard, where the new lambs go in spring, and buried beneath the trees.

We miss you, Sam. Thank you. Thank you for everything.

Burying a dog

There are various places in which a dog may be buried.
I am thinking now of a Setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as I am aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought.
This Setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam.
And at its proper season, the cherry tree strews petals on the green lawn of his grave.
Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub is an excellent place to bury a dog.
Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavoursome bone, or lifted his head to challenge some strange intruder.
These are good places in life or in death.

Yet, it is a small matter, for if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps.
On a hill where the wind is unrebuked, and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppy hood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture lane where most exhilarating cattle grazed, is all one to the dog, and all one to you.
And nothing is gained, nothing is lost if memory lives.
But, there is one place to bury a dog.

If you bury him in this spot, he will come to you when you call - come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again.
And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel, they shall not growl at him nor resent his coming, for he belongs there. People may laugh at you who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall...who hear no whimper, people who never really had a dog.
Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth the knowing.

The one best place to bury a dog is in the heart of his master.

What are you doing, up so late?

2009-11-28T01:19:00.003Z

My mother's been gone 25 years - a quarter of a century - it doesn't seem possible, but this year, I realised, I've lived longer without her, than I did with. I don't miss her every single day any more - but I miss her a lot. I have Boo, who is a lot like her, but that doesn't alter the fact that I have lived all my grown up, married, child raising years, without my mama. And my dad, come to that.

And yet. I still hear her voice (and her voice went before she did) - especially when I'm up at 1.20am. Just what am I doing, up so late?

Well, since Neil is still out working, I've been doing some Christmas preparations, and doing a little sewing.

Putting together the 'top' of a stocking - I really love the ideas of personalised stockings, hanging on the chimney breast, so I've started using scraps to make something for each of the girls. What do you think?

It's such fun to make things from scraps lying around - and to personalise them a little bit.

It couldn't be easier - I'm thinking I might put together a little tutorial, but I'm not sure anyone would need one!

The Rain Stopped

2009-11-26T20:58:00.003Z

I think it may be a temporary state of affairs, but today , the sun shone, and a slight chill touched the air - it was almost like a normal autumn!
It was a good day to let Smartie and Cormi stay out all day - and that meant not only did I get some bread made, I also managed to clear another bed in my little polytunnel, and add copious quantities of manure to the section. In my dreams, my polytunnel produces year round - last year I wasn't organised enough to fill it with winter goodies, and more to the point, I was too dim to realise that of course, even if they are not planted up, polytunnels require water in winter - so come spring, it was like the Gobi Desert in there.
This year, thus far I have plenty of lettuce and some rocket, and I am getting on top of the beds, clearing and adding manure as I go, and the ancient lawn sprinkler Neil found in the shed, is turned on for a few minutes, every other day or so, which keeps the soil nice and moist.
Made bread, and yoghurt - not one of my skills, but since I gave in and bought a little electric yoghurt making gizmo, it comes out perfect every time - and fetched Buttons and Arch in so that P (the littlest livery) could ride.
I've listed the seeds needed for the Dig for Victory garden, and am now just trying to decide - should I do as I threatened, and plant the whole thing from the cheapest available Lidls seed - certainly, I think in wartime, we would have used what ever was available, and unless we had been enthusiastic gardeners and plant breeders before the onset of hostilities, I don't think we'd have been fussing too much about varieties, and all that fancy stuff! Food on the table, that was the plan.
Until I started dabbling in the Dig for Victory leaflets, I had never grown savoys

but this beauty now awaits in the veg garden - they are cold hardy and should be a real winter standby, though they did not survive sitting under 6" of snow last year. They're delicious, and their dark green colour tells us they are rich in nutrients:

Cabbage is a good source of vitamin C, one of the most important antioxidants. It is packed full of lots of other nutrients too, including vitamin A (which supports eyes and skin), vitamin B1 (energy release), vitamin B6 (nervous function), folate (heart health and foetal development) and iron (oxygen transport round the body).

Like all other types of cabbage and also broccoli, Savoy cabbage contains a cancer-fighting phytochemical called sulforaphane, which is also an antioxidant and natural detoxifier. Research shows that sulforaphane may help to prevent breast, prostate and colon cancer. One study followed up over 100,000 people over six years, and found that those eating the most vegetables had a 25 per cent lower risk of colorectal cancers. Those who ate the most cruciferous vegetables, e.g. Savoy cabbage, had nearly a 50 per cent lower risk of those cancers.

Cabbage also contains a group of phytochemicals, called glucosinolates, which the body changes into cancer-fighting substances called isothiocyanates. Research suggests that these could be helpful for protecting the bladder, stomach and lungs against cancer development.

From the I'm in season Site

Little Experiment - Please Help!

2009-11-25T10:02:00.003Z

So I've been driving networking working arranging hosting administrating all sorts of lovelies this week. For Guides and Pony Club. Yes, you're right. Those are both volunteer jobs. Not going to put a crust on anyone's table.
So I'm needing a business boost, and I'm asking all my friends if they will help by:

Visiting my website
If you feel able to purchase some lovely high quality books for Christmas presents, go ahead and do so!
Post a link to my website on your facebook status, tweet it, or pop it on your blog.
Ask all *your* friends to consider buying some books, and pass on the link.

Yes, it is just for me. But it's the first time this week I've had time to do a single thing for me. So I'm relying on my friends to help me make up for lost time!

Thanks guys, don't hesitate to ask if I can do the same for you some day soon.

A list of my shortcomings, and a special offer.

2009-11-24T16:08:00.006Z

Well, not so good at this diarising thing, obviously.

The weather is wild and wet and windy and most of my time seems to be spent hauling horses around into a headwind. It's tiring and sends me slightly do-lally. Quiet please at the back, no heckling if you don't mind.

Last night at Guides, we were fortunate enough to have the very wonderful Lucinda Fredericks come to talk to the girls. She was very inspiring, and told them all to know what they wanted, focus, work hard and aim for the top! Quite a few of them were a bit awestruck, and a lot of autographs were signed.

Unfortunately, all this toil and mixing with the stars is hampering my mission to plan my Dig for Victory garden for next year before Christmas - I was hoping to have my seed list up here by now.

I also have lots of Make Do and Mend posts on the back burner, but at this rate, they will boil quietly dry and have to be rehydrated before they get to you.

I have just taken time to upload a fabulous special offer onto my Usborne site so I thought now would be a good time to remind you to go and do some Christmas shopping!

Today I would just like

2009-11-14T11:25:00.004Z

for some of my sidebar friends to meet.

'PlainJane' - who lost her beloved Peanut a few months ago and my dear friend Ellen, whose beautiful Lily passed away on Thursday.

Hugs to you both. Dogs are so loved, so integral to our families. How hard it is to part.

If you are feeling strong enough, maybe share with another sidebar friend, the beautiful poem which was posted when the guys at La Ferme de Sorrou lost their beautiful Border Collie, Max.

Ellen, if you still feel weepy, maybe leave it for another day.

So Yesterday

2009-11-13T14:13:00.003Z

is gone already! While I was being it, I had all kinds of wonderful prose to share with you, about the hammering, blinding rain, the traffic lights and gridlock outside the school, the long drive home, and the joys of a Pony Club Parents' Evening.
But now, I can barely remember a thing, but that my friend Ali and I reminded ourselves that in this season of our lives, it's about the children, and I reminded myself, that every year I want to have a magical and hospitable Christmas, and every year I don't, because I don't prepare!

So I'd better start on today, which once again dawned extremely wet, and was a challenge, pony wise. Mac and Smartie have been out for a couple of hours, Archie and Buttons stayed in - tomorrow they forecast gale force winds, so if I have to leave them in tomorrow, I had to get the Ballistic Brothers out for some time today!

Hannah came around for coffee, and to have a mini Usborne meeting, we reorganised our schedules and tried desperately to figure out how not to cover the same ground. Then Cynthia and P came to spend time with Buttons - it was just too wet to ride, so they groomed, and I taught them how to clean tack, and they took their tack home with saddle soap on their shopping list, and a song in their hearts! (P is the little girl who now 'loans' Buttons as her very own. He is impressed!)

And now I am about to go and pick up children from school, and feed the family. Husband is out driving taxis tonight, and I have to get H and friend into Trowbridge to the theatre for a Pantomime (aren't they usually AFTER Christmas?!) - thankfully the friend's mum is picking up!

And I am going to attempt to clear out the understairs area to make an office. Or, if it is cold damp and horrible, I am going to watch 'The Pursuit of Happyness' (yes it has a Y) which is an assignment from my Homemade Business course, and write Christmas Cards!

Dear Diary ....

2009-11-12T13:07:00.002Z

I am pondering on the tagline of my blog ... 'the well thumbed diary of a quiet english village family'.

And that was what I intended it to be - there are lots of philsophising, thought provoking, issue discuss ing blogs I really like, and I'd even quite like to have one of them as well - but this particular blog was meant to be an account, a day by day, blow by blow, remembering of stuff, for my benefit, really, more than anyone else's.

I started it in secret, two years ago when we first thought the unthinkable - that we might send the girls to school! - and I started to break away from a - I hesitate to use the word cult, but it's tough thinking of a different one! - which I had become part of via the internet - that of the New Christian (neo-con?) conservative (largely American) housewife.

Let me say that there is nothing wrong in being any of those things - but there is a distinct grouping online, and it is huge, and strong, where you can be led from idol to idol, with a verse from scripture at every stop along the way, and never know how far off track you are.

Anyway, it was important to me that it was English, that it was the village life I really know, and that it made no pretence to be a mid west homestead tale, and that it was a diary.

I am an admirer of diarists, in particular as you know, Nella Last. If you read her wonderful war and post war diaries, you certainly will get a lot of opinion, and philosophising - nothing wrong with that - but it appears after the mention of the dusting and what was for lunch, what she did at Center or Canteen, and the latest news from friends and family on foreign and home fronts.

So I am restarting (I hope) with a bit of a mission to record what's going on first, and what I think about it only afterwards!

Unhelpful Attitude

2009-11-08T11:51:00.002Z

How do you lose an unhelpful attitude?

I know I suffer from a kind of prideful vulnerability to hurt, and try and pray as I might, I can't seem to lose it.

Yesterday, I went to a Guide Training. On Friday we had rehearsed for Remembrance Day, on Saturday we had a Training Day, on Sunday, Remembrance Day (for which I miss attending my own church) and tomorrow it is Guides.

It is also my 50th birthday, which will actually go unmarked, because I am busy doing things for other people.

On the way home from the training, one of the other leaders chose to share with me that one of the Brownie parents had, upon hearing my name, opined 'Can't stand the woman'

Every bone in my body longs to pack up my uniform, and the eight years of giving of my own time and energies to people who are so downright lazy they won't even help out once a term, and walk quietly and sedately away, and let them get on with it.

Now I know this is an unhelpful attitude. But I can't shift it.

Not long ago, one of the Guides had left, and another said to my daughter 'She left because she didn't like your mum.' This made my daughter cry.

Perhaps I am just not cut out for it, and ought to leave, and go and do something else. If I am not liked, would that count as throwing my toys out of my pram, or just a public service?

Bonfire!

2009-11-05T22:38:00.002Z

Tonight the girls had a friend around for a bonfire tea (sausages, baked potatoes and baked beans, followed by baked apples and cream) and a few sparklers round the bonfire, it was lovely to do something to mark this special English festival - next year maybe we'll make a party of it!
Things are tough around here at the moment, and we are pretty close to deciding to get rid of all the goats, many of the chickens, and a lot of the sheep. The exhausting schedule, and the financial drain, are doing for us here.
When we began, we had a lot of high ideals, a lot of beliefs, which, maybe in another time and another place, were valid, real things, but in this time and this place, are delusions.
Maybe it's the tough financial climate, maybe it's the children growing up, or the move to school, but suddenly, it feels like all we've done is create a millstone for our necks.
I know I'm struggling now, as I approach a particularly big birthday, and I feel as if it's all over bar the shouting, and yet my precious days are being absorbed with endless pointless chores and trivia. The golden hours I want to capture forever, are nothing but driving, washing up, and endlessly moving junk around from one place to another!
I wonder if this time we really will let it all go, or if this time next year, I will still be slogging through the mud, wondering why?

The Bluestocking

2009-11-02T22:53:00.003Z

This was a comment on my friend Ellen's blog, The Bluestocking Belle (check by sidebar) but grew so long, I kind of wanted it on my own blog too!

I first encountered this delicious term, aged I should think about 6. My parents were very careful never to argue 'devant les enfants' giving us a somewhat unhealthy formative view of relationships, in which strained silences and gritted teeth featured prominently.
However, on one memorable occasion, my fathers sang froid was heated a little by mother's continually comparing me to my loathed cousin, 'Judith Darby' and finding me wanting.
Judith Darby was not in fact my cousin, but the daughter of family friends, Edna, who was thin lipped and withering, and Eric, who was disabled and wore a leg iron, and with whom my mother undoubtedly flirted.
She was called 'Judith Darby' because my sister is called Judith, not that anyone ever called her that except my mother, she is universally known as Jude, but anyway, it was to distinguish her from the lesser mortal who was my sister.
Judith Darby, if my mother was to be believed, learned Greek, played the piano wonderfully, was going to go to university, and had, furthermore, made an entire ZOO from origami.
My own efforts, on the other hand were slow and displeasing. Maybe Judith Darby's acidic mother helped her with her blasted origami rather than criticising her all the time, who knows, but my tongue pinchingly best effort at making a paper Nativity (no one had taught me origami, and I was only six, remember) ended up in a telling off for making a mess.
'Why, oh why' uttered my mother, through a martyr's teeth 'can you not be more like Judith Darby?'

In one of his many appearances as my knight in shining armour, my father, breaking all the rules for once, changed sides.

'Why on earth would you want to be like her?' he twinkled at me, roguishly, and then, to seal the pact, he raised his voice, to reach as far as the flounced into kitchen and boomed 'Judith Darby? Judith Darby is... is a BLUE STOCKING'

And that settled it.

***************************************************

I also wanted to point out though, that the lovely Ellen, self confessed bluestocking, is not in the least Darbyesque, and to the best of my knowledge, does not excel in Greek or Origami, though I could be wrong.

And that my next encounter with the word, involved Vera Brittain, of blessed memory, so of course, despite my father's relishing of the term, it cannot be a bad thing to be!

Such a long time

2009-11-01T22:23:00.002Z

since I posted!
Hmmm. Life. Lots of possibilities, which aren't really possibilities, have been and gone, and it goes on, and in the end, you slowly start to realise that this is it.
It has a sadness, and a mellow peacefulness, all rolled up into one.
Half term has been frustrating, we didn't really know how to 'do' it - we'll know better next time! - and yet it's been restorative for us all, to some extent.
The divine Pandora has taken our tiny pony on a share agreement, and comes to ride him two or three times a week. This little gem of a girl, with bucket loads of instinct and natural ability, has been coming for about three weeks, and has taken to it like a duck to water, her tiny, gymnast's body turns and speaks to the pony, her hands are like velvet, her balance near perfect. Another star is born.
Meanwhile, the very very beloved Smartie is suffering more and more with his COPD, and Boo has not been able to ride much. Our beloved boy owes us nothing, and as long as we can afford to feed ourselves, we will keep him, he'll never go back to rescue. He has taught both our precious daughters to ride effortlessly, in a way that my years of training did not provide!
H's new boy, Cormac, is just style personified. No really good photos as yet, but what a pony! We are so blessed, to have been LENT this absolute superstar.
Of course, we can't actually afford to DO anything with them right now! Autumn is a hard time for us, and Neil is driving Taxis into the night as well as shepherding, while I work with my Usborne books business, and try to be Mrs Frugal McDougall (c) and hold it all down.
School. School is great, Boo played in a soccer tournament. They lost, but they loved it. H has become Mrs Academia, and is loving the high stress, high achieving culture. Last seen researching a paper on the history of the Aramaic language. Don't ask.
And that, for now, is my update.
Back to school tomorrow.

Oh!

2009-09-26T07:23:00.003Z

You know, that little 'oh' which escapes your lips when you peek into the window of the really lovely interiors store but you can't go in, cos you can't afford a tea towel?

The little 'oh' for the vision in perfect cotswold stone as you round a bend in a sunny village, to be greeted by the front cover of a Joanna Trollope paperback?

That little 'oh'.

Here