An ordinary life

Schmack! These photos may look kind of familiar, they
were taken last week when the snow was on the ground and
the sun in the sky. This week, it's back to dismal and Ian
hasn't taken any new pictures! Can you imagine that!

Yes! We have finally moved out of the caravan and back to our apartment in the village. So instead of having to drag myself out of bed as soon as Ian is up, I get a cup of tea in bed. Ian is an earlier riser than I am and so in the caravan we pretty much get up when he does. There is not much choice really when there isn't enough space and we haven't an awning for him to go to. The bed has to be packed away so he can have his breakfast. Only in the middle of summer, on a warm day will he sneak out without waking me. I'd still rather have a cabin out on our land though.

Vanessa looks more and more like her mum

But maybe not from this angle. This is Veronica, Vanessa's
mum

The downside is that I have had to get the apartment sorted finally, so we can move about. The dump room was just that and so I had pulled all the stuff that was lying around on the floor out of there so that I could sort it out. And there it stayed for months. I hadn't had the time to deal with it. In fact we had been in the apartment for nearly a week before I got around to it, as I still had too much to do. Another downside is having to light the fire every day. In the caravan it is possible to switch the heater on without even getting up. Having said that, I don't light the fire until the temperature is below 16C, which is usually sometime in the afternoon, now that the place has warmed through.

I like the textures of the tree, moss and snow in this shot

I don't know what Herkules is laughing at, but looks like
something was amusing him or he was singing a solo

One of the jobs we had to do before moving in though was to shift wood from the land and stack it in the basement. Ian had loaded up the horse box and there it stayed until we had a freeze so that we could get the horse box off the land. We moved about 3 months worth of wood that day and we were rather tired. I stayed at the apartment and lit the fire, made something to eat for our tea and then crashed. At least with the fire on I could have a bath. Not something I do regularly these days, but I needed to soak my muscles after filling up boxes of wood and helping Ian carry it down the stairs to the basement.

Chanel, the loving mother, but not the brightest spark. This
could be her, "if you come near, I shall spit at you" pose

The girls looking very grubby against the white snow

My ordinary life this week, though was writing and writing and writing. In fact my supervisor complained with a smiley face at the end of his email that I was too productive. At least I have now finished writing the first draft of my PhD thesis, a paper that should have been submitted December 1st and updated a protocol that needed finishing off for submitting this week. By Friday afternoon I had done all I could and I actually took the weekend off. I don't always get weekends off as I've been trying to finish off my thesis and also I take off random days in the week, depending on whether a job needs doing or the weather means I can get on with an outside job. This week I just worked late to make up for the day off with moving wood.

Someone's taking an interest in the girls

Brencis doing a bit of alpaca pruning here.

Brencis finally got his Vitamin D injection this week. He is an absolute pain to work with, although a joy when we have visitors as he always comes to see people. We did have some help as our wonderful neighbours came down. It only took about 5 minutes to do with the extra help and a great deal less stressful than trying to do it ourselves. Our cat, Sofie, also thinks they are wonderful as she keeps disappearing up to their cow barn.

Sofie soaking up some sunshine

Valeria soaking up a bit of sunshine. Good job, there was
precious little of it this week

So my first day off in ages was doing the tidying up. As I mentioned we can now move around in our sitting room. The remaining piles of stuff to move are, at least, more manageable and I shall sort those out later on this week. All the food, bowls, and pans that were out on our land have also now been stacked away, which was easier said than done as it meant rearranging cupboards. I have also spent time reacquainting myself with what we have and where everything is. "Oh yes! I'd forgotten about that!" and "Oh! That's where it is!" is heard fairly regularly.

Our snow covered car. Now it is back to just red and brown.
It's supposed to be just red but not with the dirt roads which
are slecky (I think that is a Geordie word for slippy,
muddy conditions) due to the melted snow. 

These are the bales ,what's left of them. While I was working
on one bale a little mouse popped out from its tunnel. It
obviously did not approve of the changes I was making to its
accommodation

Sunday I went back out to the land. We had a bin collection and I wanted to get all the plastic off some rotten bales of hay into the bin. They were intended for growing squashes on but the conditions weren't right for them. They
will make good compost now. It makes us realise why we do not cover our bales with the stuff, there is so much of it. Ours are either kept under tarps or under cover in a building. We had that much of plastic off 13 large bales that some of it will have to wait for the next bin collection. It is a good job we don't throw much out most of the time. I have just signed a contract to only have our waste collected every three months and even with this extra plastic, that will be enough. Unfortunately, it is too dirty and degraded to recycle.

The little pond is full of blocks of ice where Ian has hacked
away so he can get some water out. This week the well though
is within 16cm of the top. That's a lot of water pressure

Ian has been working on next year's wood supply. This week
he's been busy getting the chicken ark repaired so we can
get the chickens that are still outside into the greenhouse. I
think they will appreciate that. There are days they don't even
venture out of the ark and then there are days they stop out
in some of the most stupid of weather and get too cold. Not
exactly renowned for their intelligence.

Besides doing that mucky job, I also planted garlic and sowed some seeds. I've been going to plant garlic for ages and just not got around to it. Apparently it is fine as long as it is before the shortest day of the year. Just in time then. I also had to wait for most of the snow to melt because I had to see where the beds were. We work with permanent beds and I had covered them with old hay. It was a fairly easy job to move it to one side and the ground was still soft. I dug out the weeds that were there, not that there were many and sowed the garlic bulblets and planted up some larger bulbs. I had let them go to seed this year to increase the genetic diversity.

Freddie's colour stands out nicely against the snow

George, just pondering life. He's a bright lad. He takes after
his mum in many ways, both good and bad. They are both
intelligent ones, but they also both eat through the fence and
have snapped fence posts in the process

I also experimented with sowing rocket, mizuna, chinese cabbage, onion and parsnip seeds. I've experimented with parsnip before and found I had far more success by planting the seed in autumn than I did by planting them in spring. They tended to get away before the weeds that way, rather than struggling to compete with the weeds when sown later. They are such slow germinators that the weeds have sprouted and away before parsnips even begin to show through. I've lightly covered them back up with the straw to stop them being washed away and give a bit of cover over the winter. We'll see what happens with that! I'm hoping this will also counteract any problems of spring droughts.

Mari, George's mum

Little Ilvija has started eating the grain and now eaten out of
Ian's hand. A step forward for training. Not sure what her
spitty mother will make of that though 

So today back to the ordinary life. Cup of tea in bed, read a little and get up after Ian has left to go to the land to see to the animals. Then it's back to writing and tidying up some things that need doing for work.