soup weather

It’s cold and its soup weather. 
 We are lucky as himself works from home a couple of days a week, and my son and I are here most of the time, and on the days we are all home at lunchtime,  I make a big ol pot of soup.  Today was minestrone, made with our own tomatoes [...]

Read Full Post »

a baker day

Schools don’t call them baker days anymore, but ‘non pupil days’ - and are extra days off on top of holidays ….ok…
I declared a baker day yesterday, so we could go on our lambing course. This is one of the problems with home education is that if you need to do something without your kids, [...]

Read Full Post »

lambing course

tiring day, as today we went on a lambing course, organised by our local smallholders association.  Can’t recommend joining your local group  enough, puts you in touch with people in the same situation as you…  even if, like me.. you are not smallholding full time, and these courses are available too!
Anyway, the course was great [...]

Read Full Post »

ram half way through his holidays

It’s been  nearly three weeks now since we borrowed a ram and introduced him to our girls.
We were very lucky as we had thought that the FMD restrictions had stuffed up our chances of borrowing a ram this year, as we had arranged to have him for 6 weeks prior to him being needed to [...]

Read Full Post »

leave your garden alone for the first year?

this is the common advice when you inherit a garden upon moving house. I don’t entirely agree.
Of course, if you rush in, you don’t know how the garden will develop.  For example we had this tree which we called the badly-pruned-tree (BPT) as it is a sad mis-mesh of branches and suckers, grown irretrievably together [...]

Read Full Post »

previously enjoyed furniture..

sometimes they also call it ‘antique’, hoping that these whimsical titles will make secondhand and well used furniture more appealing. 
 It appeals to me anyway. 
Makes sense all round if you think about it.. you can buy something much cheaper than from a new furniture shop, it makes far more sense from an environmental point of view [...]

Read Full Post »

well we cracked…

… and finally put the central heating on, to come on for short while in the mornings.  Quite pleased actually that we made it this far… November an all.  Of course..we cheated, as we have been lighting the woodburning stove, fed on scrap wood, and we  found the sitting room again after a long summer of [...]

Read Full Post »

musical lurid curtains

In our ongoing plans to make the house warmer… which at the moment is mostly about stopping so much cold coming in and the warmth we do make leaving, himself has, tonight, been playing musical curtains. Lurid ones.
We were very lucky that the previous owner of this house left all her curtains. Luck is a [...]

Read Full Post »