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.

If you're a Miss Read fan

Our Miss Read blog A Village Blog is now open for business!

Are we there yet?

Dorothy has been talking here about the use and abuse of advent. I'm seriously thinking of joining her next year in her 'keep Christmas at Christmas' approach!
Trouble is, we have rellies coming today who expect all the trimmings, a bag full of gifts to take away, and so on and so forth.
I'm very much reminded of the beginning of my very favourite book, The Christmas Mouse (which must reread again, for the umpteenth time) - when on Christmas Eve the two little girls are buttoned up in their mackintoshes and taken into town on the bus, to go Christmas shopping. This brings back a lot of memories - we used to do all our shopping in the last few days before Christmas - maybe a special present, hand made or carefully squirreled away - took forethought, but by and large, it was very last minute, and well before dot com had any meaning !
Far too late to worry about it this year, but giving it some serious thought for next!
The weather is dire, freezing rain on freezing roads, so though nana and grandad are here with the hope of watching H competing tomorrow, I can see us abandoning the journey. You'd think, having lived here all my life, I'd stop being surprised by our weather. You'd be wrong!

Why I love Miss Read

I love the work of Dora Saint, aka Miss Read - who wrote gentle novels of English villages, reminiscent of my childhood. Life in those villages from the post war period up to perhaps the end of the sixties was not easy, it was not soft, and the rustic haze which has been cast over it by many is not deepened by Miss Read - of course the covers of the books present delightful, chocolate box scenes, but between the covers, the poverty and daily grind find a place as well, the cruelty of the life of a child in a large, ill managed, poor family, the grease and alcohol induced ulcers of a miserable, mean spirited old man, the thankless task of trying to heat a dingy, characterless rectory ..... all of these are there, alongside the glorious downland walks, the old roses and Mrs Sinkins pinks, the tabby cats and harvest festivals.
At the moment, she is a bit of a touchstone for me. For the last few years, we have been lost in New World life ideas - all a part of our christian journey, and none of them regretted, many of those ideas have been assimilated into daily life - but the time has come to ground ourselves, to accept our own inheritance. It is no easier to capture the essence of this time and the sense of those villages than it is to recapture the spirit of the pioneers, beloved of my US counterparts! But the thing is, it is our heritage, our memory, or will'o'the'wisp to capture, not someone else's.
I am not stupid enough to believe we can live in the past (quite, though I often wish we could!) but I know I want my children to have some of the same memories I hold dear, even if they have changed. So with a heave of self into reality, they are now in Pony Club, and attend rallies that are oh so different from the ones I went to, but nevertheless, they shine with the same enthusiasm as I did, they hug their ponies the same way, they talk a convincingly accurate amount of equine nonsens!
The immages of farm and country around them should be of our farms, and our country. They do love the food that has found its way to our table over the years, the cornbread and shoofly pie, but now it's time for scones and fruit cake. It's great that because of Laura Ingalls they know so much about the Western Expansion, but it's time for Agincourt .....
So for me, more than ever at the moment, Miss Read is kind of a poster girl! She's there to remind me that Thrush Green and Fairacre are not on the map, they are in the heart, and I would like for them to be in my children's hearts, too.