A sharp autumn frost

We awoke to a crisp, white frost and bright sunshine, easily my favourite weather.
I however awoke to a headcold making me feel miserable and the onset of seasonal depression.
Like many other people, I suffer with seasonal affective disorder, and this year it is extra challenging, because I am inside all day, five days a week, and to be honest it is pretty hard to get outside the other two, when some kind of sketchy housework has been factored in, and the shopping done, and meals cooked.
I have a SAD lamp, bought for me by my wonderful niece/sister (you have to know us to get the ambiguity of our relationship, but I promise you it's not of the genetic kind!) and I used to use it for half an hour each morning as I prepared school lunches and breakfasts. That time seems to have been downsized now, so while on a two day course last week (you don't want to know about the driving home part) I asked our HR director if it was ok to take it into work, and he said yes, definitely.
So tomorrow I think I'll be working bathed in bright light.
Cormac is now clipped and rugged up in his quilted PJs, the nights are dark early, two fires are lit and the bedroom still feels like cold storage by bedtime.
Welcome to autumn

Welcome to the new look Saturday

Well, it was inevitable.
This here belt had to be tightened.
So with a weekend where I'm *not* actually going anywhere but church tomorrow morning, for a change, I had a menu plan, a shopping plan, and a list.
After shooting over to do little horse, as H wasn't back until later in the day, I made a run into town to buy a cheap microwave from Wilko.
We haven't owned such a creature for years, but as a fan of Frugal Queen I'm very aware of the power of ding cuisine on busy work nights.
Next to Lidl to do an ultra planned shop, which came out at £38 - we'll see how well that pans out. I'd 'shopped my pantry' first, so a lot of freezer and store cupboard goodies featured strongly.
I've made enough bread for most of the week and frozen one loaf. I've made a huge fruit cake for lunches, and a batch of bread rolls.
For Sunday's roast I've taken a quarter of a turkey out of the freezer. You read that right. One of our turkeys was left after Christmas and was finished so huge it's been frozen as four quarter joints. This was a leg joint and is defrosting in the slow cooker.
I've cleaned up the Rayburn and tonight it was fired up to dry clothes - there is autumn in the air and although I've not had it swept yet, it feels like the beginning of the long run of winter fires.
After making coleslaw and potato salad to go with schnitzels and green salad for supper ( with good old semolina for pud.) I was about whooped and sat down to a secondhand Midsomer Murders and my knitting before bed!

I feel a bit adrift I must admit, I'm so busy I'm not catching a lot of significant or serious news or commentary and I couldn't tell you where we are with Brexit or the new cabinet. I must make an effor to catch up. I shall briefly stop listening to Dave Ramsey on my commute and listen to Radio 4 instead.

Decisions, Decisions.

I spend a lot of time mumbling things that I'd like to be writing down, and then not writing them.

Then I come to write things down, and I can't think what I mumbled.

Today - well this week - has been too busy. It was up to Cirencester yesterday with H to visit potential University. Today I had two meetings about forthcoming projects on the field - outdoor learning with School and PreSchool in the village.

Tomorrow it's back to work and I don't feel as if my feet have touched the ground.

Autumn is in the air, and so I lit the Rayburn properly for the first time today. It feels nice to have its warm and comforting presence, bumbling away in the background.

as you can see I was quick to pop the kettle on and park the rocker nice and near, so that after lunch I was perfectly positioned to sit down with a cup of coffee, to think through and process all the stuff that's happening, before heading off on the school run.

and this was my gaze down the kitchen as I did so! I must say the light doesn't do justice to what was a sunny, lovely but cool afternoon, and the sense of space and peace I had in that quiet moment, before it all began again.

There is so much to consider at the moment. I'm finding it hard to think about all the choices, decisions, and situations all at once.  I've been offered extra work, which would help with squaring the budget, but mean I had next to no time to work on farm stuff.

We're determined to build the farm, but equally determined to pay off our debts, and get ourselves back in a good position financially. The picture changes from day to day, and then some days I just want to sit and soak it in, and think, you know, life (this life at least) is short, and beautiful. It's too precious to spend in a state of non stop stress. Everything will be OK. At that point, I just want to drop all the jobs and side hustles and desperate attempts to square the circle, and just work the land, peacefully.

The following day, I will be back in the land of the determined, and feel we really do have to put ourselves on a better financial footing.

I'm still trying to keep all three blogs going but This Little War is currently hosted at http://frugalhomefront.blogspot.co.uk/ because I can't get the domain name change to work!

How is Autumn treating you? Are you a work until you drop to get the books balanced type, or do you see life as too precious to spend with your nose to the grindstone all the time?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time for bed!

If winter comes

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.

General Update from the Fireside!

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!

Loving the Autumn Weather

...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!

Autumn is here

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.

A list of my shortcomings, and a special offer.

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!