February Freedom

I'm not even going to say anything.
I always love it when people pop up and say, 'I'm so sorry I haven't posted in a while.'
I'm pretty sure no one was waiting.
Had the lovely H home for the briefest of visits this weekend. So lovely to see her, and hear all her news.
Boo, meanwhile, who nominally lives with us, works so many hours I barely see her.
This weekend we vaccinated the sheep and goats. We've moved the sheep around so the girls are all on our field and the boys are at the field in the next village. So a bit of driving around with a satchel full of sharps, but all done.
Then H came home, and we had a late night chat, and then Sunday morning church, big  roast, sleepy afternoon, and then she went home.

Thus begins a whole week of 'work' in which I have to make inroads into the veg garden, and try to sort out the house and bits of the general garden. Two cubic metres of recycled compost due for the veg garden have been delayed until Thursday, so Monday is starting slow and I really must be careful not to waste the week.

Updates to follow, I hope!

Autumn and Fledglings

Approaching the Autumn Equinox, and I have a bizarre week ahead.

On Wednesday Boo departs for Uni, and I will go with her and DH - I have to see her safely in - and then he will drive me most of the way across the country to Managers' Conference, where I will stay until Friday.

Two utterly traumatic events on one day. When I come back, it will be to an empty nest. Next expected visit of chick will be two weeks hence, when H will be back to work for the weekend, but that is not going to last long this term, I fear.

We've built a new log shed, but as yet I am afraid it lies empty.  We have logs in plenty, seasoning in the field, but they need transporting, splitting and stacking.

It's getting colder and it's important to us to have enough wood - we don't have central heating, and coal is expensive.  With just the two of us this winter, at least until the girls come back at Christmas, we'll be cooking on the Rayburn, and sitting in the kitchen, as we did briefly last year, and making the most of one lot of wood a night.

The Rayburn also heats the bathwater, so we keep the Big Kettle on her in the evening, for washing up or any other hot water needs, so that the tank remains toasty for a bath. The electric immersion heater, which heats the water in summer, will go off until Christmas.

This has been a costly and frenetic season. Time to slow down and take hold.

The last days ...

Over the  next three weeks, both our girls will be away to Uni.

While H is going back for her second year, last year she was home most weekends, this year, she won't be.  Boo, meanwhile, is leaving for the first time, and will probably not be back until Christmas.

To offset Empty Nest Meltdown, I've set myself a few challenges.

I pinched the idea for my first challenge from the awesome Mel 's  'Analogue Days'.

'Real Time'

This one is about the time we spend once they are gone - challenging us to learn to create more of our own entertainment and spend less screen time - TVs, computers, phones - and more time on traditional crafts and pursuits.

As one of the designs for my Diploma, I decided to look at how much we could replace in our lives by the hand made, homegrown, home reared,  done ourselves. Of course there is food and clothing, but there is also down time, entertainment, life stuff.

Instead of glumly watching TV or tattering away on our laptops, we aim to learn to play a musical instrument (which neither of us does) and involve ourselves in developing a craft apiece - although I really do want to learn to spin properly, I think I've opted for dressmaking first - I can throw together a garment, but I'd like to have some real skills - to be able to make things that don't look homemade.

This together with  my other challenge, an audio diary called

'The Frugal Commuter'

Should keep me busy.  This one is something I've recently started doing somewhat haphazardly, but aim to get more organised.
I talk to my voice recorder on my way to work! As it is, I'm inclined to ramble, but my aim is to stay on topic and talk about what steps we've taken towards repaying debt and building a fund towards one day owning land of our own.
Thus far the quality is quite appalling, and I'm wondering if you can actually get a cheap mike which would cancel out the road and engine noise - in which case at some point in the dim and distant future, I might be able to share it here, or even create a podcast!

Everything I do at the moment is haphazard. When they are little, and they interrupt your chain of thought, walk in on every attempt to write, sit down in the middle of your de-cluttering, talk through anything you are listening to or watching - you say 'I need to establish some boundaries. I have to have time for myself, or I shall never get anything done. We need to set aside time for me to do this'.

When they are two days/two weeks away from leaving, you set aside the laptop, turn off the radio, say to hell with the clutter, and you take every last moment on offer. It can all wait. I'd gladly never write another word, or live surrounded by endless clutter, and even terminate Radio 4, for just another year with them safe at home.

New World Order

So yesterday, we took H to Hartpury near Gloucester, and she began her new life as a university student.
I was less of a wreck than I might have been, as she'll be back on Wednesday for a driving lesson, and up and down frequently to ride her little horse.
Meanwhile, guess who is looking after said little horse?
I left for work today at 7.30 am and didn't get back til exactly 12 hours later, having tended to his lordship mid way on both journeys.
I enjoy this visit into my past life, but it's pretty tiring, on top of my quite newly acquired full time job.
Boo is now deep into personal statement, written work, and history assessment tests. It all feels very different.
I'm giving myself a little time, but I have to reorder things around here to make time for all the productive house and home tasks I love, and rely on to save me money.
Time to garden, sew, knit, and cook must be carved out somewhere.
The finances are pretty rocky after an unusual and hard to track few weeks - we have to get back on top of things!
I'm also now keener than ever to get on track for Christmas - having my precious girl (and next year maybe girls) back home for my favourite season just got even more special.
All this means the time and money commitment for Slimming World has gone out of the window. I must try to keep up to speed on my own.

The girl at Uni - farewell sister selfie

For the joy of it

It is clear there will be challenges. Well let's be honest, there already are.  H was up at the crack of something horrible to go for a second interview with Lidl, which it appears is the blue ribband of part time jobs. She did some shelf stacking, they asked her if lifting five trays of yoghurt was too much for her (at her current job, she hefts about 25kg sacks of animal feed!)  and she was duly interviewed. She forgot to ask what happens next so we now await ... something.

Boo was catching up on mocks, which she missed as result of gadding about  doing study days in Oxford, and as the sun was shining and my week has been minced stuffed and baked twice over, and this was quite possibly my only day to get  anything done, I planted stuff and cleared out the greenhouse.

I'm actually excited about the chance to get right back to roots. We've been trying so desperately to turn everything we do into a business for so long, I've forgotten what it's like to do the things I used to do for joy, for joy.

I know it's going to be hard. We're looking into selling all the goats, pretty much all the sheep, the pony. Gulp. But. We'll have Boo's sheep to care for. They are sweet, and slightly bonkers, and purebred and few in number. When H goes off to Uni for at least four days a week, I'll have her little horse to care for, and he's pure gold.

On Friday, for the first time in - ever? - I sat down to watch episode one in a season of Gardener's World (I do love me a bit of Monty and Nigel) and thought about my garden, and growing veg just for my  family.

Today, I planted a square bed of red onions. Just one pack, from the feedstore where H works. It was brilliant. They are our onions. The garden at the field that was once our CSA garden will lie idle this year. If we're lucky, we might add some compost, even build the odd bed, for future use, but by and large it will do nothing, unless perchance it becomes a pig pen. That's not out of the question.

The garden beside our house - roughly the size of an allotment, and pretty much our own, personal, in splendid isolation. allotment garden - will be home to our vegetables. The flowers I'd already started as a potential business, will now become beds and borders and hopefully armfulls of cut flowers for our own pure joy.

That is, if I get this job!

Possibly because of the sunshine, there was a little bit of heart singing today.

Old Friends

It's been a monster week, with no time to work in the garden, and it shows. There are weeds and snails everywhere.
Tomorrow, God willing, I will be out there making a difference.
Today, I was at work.
Then when I got home from work, having barely greeted H and Boo, there was a resounding knock on the door.
When I went to open it, I was delighted to find John and Hester, from the chapel we used to attend some years ago. To our shame, we left a little quietly, we didn't really know how to do it, and so we skulked off and probably hurt them terribly. We've never known quite how to go back, but they are such darlings, they were passing and obviously the Lord suggested quietly to them that they pop in and say hello.
It was so lovely to see them again, the girls came down to say hello and their eyes widened as they have obviously grown up a lot since they last saw them.
We had a cuppa and chatted for half and hour, and I feel truly blessed that these lovely people took the time to stop and say hello! We must catch up with them again soon.
That's the end of Half Term as we used to call it, and fully 50% of us are suffering sore throats and colds, which is not so good, at this time of year.
Next week, back to exams, and the month of the crazy timetable.

Snow, Slush, Sevilles and Skirts

Either  my to do lists are too long or my achievements are too short.

I intended today to make marmalade and a skirt. However, when it came to it, I actually completed a grant application. Well, when I say completed .... it's nearly there.

My great bowl of Seville oranges sits unmolested, and my length of lightweight denim and adaptable-to-all-body-shapes pattern is equally uncut. 

I had promised to take H out to a client evening run by our equine vets, with five excellent speakers and very yummy food, at a superb eco-conference centre on an organic farm which is local if you're marketing but not so much when you're driving across the top of the Marlborough Downs with snow hurling itself at you blindingly.

We did make it there and back and thanks are due to Lambourne Equine Vets for a very informative and entertaining evening. 

It is now impossibly late, and all my best laid plans of early nights and self care have gone slithering down the road with the melting slush. Tomorrow is another day.

Monday Round Up

Today I'm doing a fair old bit of running around. It's a two school run day, as H now has half days in the lead up to her A Levels. She's got her UCAS form in and received one offer, from her first choice Uni, so she's as happy as a person studying for A levels can be.

Boo finishes at the normal time or later - later today as she has extra classes, due to course work being due in for her GCSEs.  I can't recommend having children who are two years apart, at this stage in the game.

After animals - ducks had a good clean out and a change of pond water today - I got stuck in to eBay - I've signed up with D$D and am also listing my own 'stuff' on there to try to capitalise a bit.  My list for today was long and included sewing and all sorts of other extravagant hopes, but so far, animals, duck cleaning, ebay listing, child driving, and coffee slurping have filled all the available time thus far.

It is bitterly cold but on the frugal plus side, N got offered a load of logs free if he went today to fetch, which of course he did. They'll need splitting but even so, you can't turn down free heat.

The downside of that is that he will be at work painting and decorating probably until 9pm which is jolly late and I do worry about him sometimes.

I've resolved to take care of me a bit, for the next few weeks, as I usually crash and burn and develop some kind of a health crisis in February, so I'm aiming to drink lots of water, get plenty of sleep, take my vitamins and cut myself some slack, with the aim of avoiding same!

Well, here's the dead hedge, bumbling along, turning itself quietly into a wildlife habitat.

It is hard to think about leaving here, but we do think about how we really must try to bust a gut to buy some place.

We're applying for shared ownership properties in town - we'd keep our rented land, and keep our life, but start with the Big Girl Knickers and buy the roof over our head - and although this time around it seems unlikely, it's giving us a feel for what we need to do.

I've been looking at budget planners, and following Frugal Queen's new webinar series. The problem for us seems to be the complicated nature of our outgoings. There are a hundred columns on my spreadsheet. So I'm going to address that somehow, because we need to pay down debt and get ourselves into our own home some how.

Meanwhile I've been selling at the local Country Market. If you're not familiar with Country Markets please look up your local one and take a look. Really wonderful locally grown, baked and crafted goods are on sale at fabulous prices, plus friendly faces and (I can only speak for Pewsey) fabulous coffee.

We take along wonderful small culinary herb plants for a pound a pot, as well as some bigger and more exciting herbs, some baked goods including our signature Homity Pies, and I plan to start to take along some crafted items too.

Diploma work has ground to a halt. I just don't seem to have the hours in the day.  However it is half term, and it's a great joy that H is out working with her dad - who is now back into the family business of painting and decorating - as well as studying hard for her exams.

Boo is also studying, learning clarinet and gearing up for the new sheepdog trial season.

Well, that was a bit of a random round up.  Focus on the finances coming up!

We're back

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!