Yes, promises promises in my last email to send more posts and here I am six months later! it's a bit cold and overcast today with intermitent drizzles. Rich and Astrid went to the farm anyway. I thought I might spend my time more wisely at home. Well I've not done anything you'd call productive and most people would say I relaxed except I am now cross with myself for not being more constructive, basically wasted my time, until now, and Rich and Astrid have literally just come in, so gaan die wereld. Anyway before i force my family to do something together I must get a few photo's off to you.
Our four biggest pumpkins. I gave some away. I have been told that they can keep a long time, not sure how long. The biggest I cut up in January, still have some left. I'm trying to empty our big freezer so I can defrost it so i must make the last of the pumpkin pie to things up. I'll probably take one for everyone at work on Night duty later this week as Astrid has decded she doesn't like anything to do with pumpkins (unless well disguised in a soup) and a pie takes a few days for Rich and I to finish.
Reading through the last post I said I'd send a photo of my finished stained glass. This is basically it but you can't really see the crystals or the little mirrors. What does ideas do you get from the piece?
This picture does not give a true reflection of how many stones i quarried in the process of trying to hunt for potatoes. Without exagerating I'm sure I got at least three times more stones than potatoes. Mind you I did ask for it. It was hard enough trying to find spots to plant the potatoes in the first place. I went ahead anyway saying to myself that at least the soil would have less stones next time round. It got to the stage that when I was unearthing the potatoes I got so used to taking out stones and still bits of rubbish that when I found a potatoe I got a bit of a surprise as I'd as good as forgotten what I was digging for! True.
In November we had a weekend when we asked Astrids' class and parents to come and help plant hedging trees and raise £1 toward the classes class 8 trip. We had two class families come, one on each day, as well as some friends whose daughter used to be in Astrids' class. So in two days about 70 trees were planted. The following weekend Astrid, Rich and i planted the rest, Astrid earned some pocket money.
We were going to have another such day in Feb but Astrids' class teacher wanted it during the week so the children would be involved. It was going to be a way of illustrating the impact of hedge planting in medieval times as that was when people moved from having common land to privately own land. Anyway our first date was cancelled due to too much illness in the class and the second date was never made. In the meantime the trees had been heeled in but there was less rain thatn I thought there had been. The chap who sold me the trees said the roots needed to be kept moist to stop rodents eating them, a problem I had last year which I told him about this year. Anyway I failed again and most of the larch trees had no roots, a lot of wild pear and beech roots were also eaten. I planted them anyway as, even if they don't survive, at least the holes have been dug and replacement will be easier. Nearly the whole of the western border is planted up now, some gaps still but they'll be filled this November.
We started the winter with six hives and ended with five but Rich is now not sure what is happening with two others. Each time he goes he lifts the hives a bit to see how heavy they are. The one we have definitely lost was the heaviest but became progressively lighter. We feel that it would be a lot easier to look after the bees and the place if we could live there but we are not sure yet if the governments planning laws have changed in any way to make it easier or more difficult.
Last year Rich finally put the effort in to get his motorbike UK licence. He bought this BMW as an investment but also we are technically down to one car now. Barry, a friend of Richards' is letting us use his car while he is away in SA for about a year, coming back in July. With the freeze on our salaries and the increase in school fees as well as the increase in the cost of living and other expenses with the farm we won't be buying another car unless absolutely necessary and then of course only if we feel we can afford it. This brings me to another change. Due to all these expenses i increased my hours at work from October and am now working in the emergency theatres and doing a week of nights every fourth week. My sleeping patterns are already going wonky and sometimes it's hard to keep my head straight. Anyway if we can organise to live at the farm and rent out this house i might be able to give up the nights otherwise I'll have to wait until Astrid has finished school, hopefully not longer.
This was Rich and i last weekend before we got some rain. It felt like the beginning of another mini drought like we had last year so here we were again filling this old paddling pool of Astrids's from the spring and driving it over to the other side of the property to water the hedge trees, over 200 of them, plus other trees and shrubs we'd planted in addition to the hedge. Thanks for the rain.
This was the veg patch as Rich and I left it yesterday in preparation for potato planting in two weekends time.
Here Rich is starting on our major project for this year, a compost toilet. Yesterday he dug two of the four holes needed to hold the poles onto which the pikanin kaya (not sure of spelling) will sit.
This photo is of the bottom south westerly corner of our property, you can see the fence post.
Last weekend Rich and I went for a walk outside the farm. Thought i'd show you these two photo's of the bottom of our property from the public footpath. The above photo shows how steep it is.
These two photo's are of a pear tree we planted in November. As you can see it is in bloom. I have decided that the top, flat part of the property is going to be the area devoted mainly to beauty. This is not only for beauties sake or that people from the road will be able to see it but I hope one day to maybe rent it out for functions with a marquee so I must think of what would be good in other people photographs. Not easy for me.
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