A Little Splash of Colour

Over in Nut Wood, our little wildlife haven, at first glance it seems messy, almost derelict looking and nothing special.  But to the little creatures that live there it's home and a refuge. 

There are a few rabbits that see it as a sanctuary from the dogs in the morning , as long as Rosy doesn't spot them and they sit still they are safe in there, if they lose their nerve and make a dash across the paddock to the perceived safety of the big woodland it really is a run for their lives.

There are lots of insects that we can see, and no doubt many more that we never lay eyes on, but that go about their business day to day in amongst the wood chippings, trees, boulders, logs and tree stumps.

But I'm most pleased about the greenery that is starting to spring to life in the 'wildflower corner'.  Yes, to most of us they are seen as weeds, but what is a weed if not a wildflower growing in the wrong place .... only these are growing in the right place :-)

A few little Buttercups  ...

... and now at last the Poppies have decided to come to life.

Glorious red poppies ....

... and lovely deep pink poppies.

A splash of colour on a dreary autumnal day.

Have a good weekend.

Sue xx

The Squirrels

The squirrels are abundant on and around our bit of Welsh hillside, well with so much woodland you would expect it wouldn't you.  Unfortunately all ours are grey but if you venture forty minutes up the road and over the bridge onto the Isle of Anglesey they would all be Red, and thankfully thriving.

They spend this time of year planting and replanting their nuts in the ground, then come the colder, hungrier weather they spend all their time trying to remember where they planted their nuts in the ground ... and lots of little holes appear. 

They don't have brilliant memories because every year we find lots of baby trees coming up in the grass, handy for transplanting into the woodland but each one representing a meal missed and a hole dug in the wrong place.

"Stop eyeing up my rhubarb patch ... go back to your nut gathering!!"

I took this delightful photo back in July, when this particular squirrel ... and no doubt at least a dozen of his mates ... visited the Chicken World on the hillside to help himself to layers pellets for breakfast every morning.

These photos were not taken with a zoom lens ...

... I really was this close to the cheeky little monkey squirrel.

Sue xx

The Buoy is Back

A few of you commented on the lush green grass we have here at the moment, both in the paddock and nearer to the house.  The grass near the house is brand new recently sown grass after a lot of levelling and groundworks all done by my Lovely Hubby over the past couple of months.  It used to be absolute hell to mow even with the large petrol mower as there were so many dips and huge stones not far beneath the surface ... and of course half of all mowing here is done uphill !!

Now that it is more level it is easier to mow, although the new grass is growing so fast it needs mowing even more regularly.

Over in the paddock the grass has had time to rest after the sheep left us a couple of weeks ago.  The mix of hot, sunny days and lots of rain over the past two weeks has meant that that too has put on a growth spurt, so in a couple of weeks Lovely Hubby will ride round on his little tractor with the grass cutting deck attached and neaten things up ready for Winter.  One thing sheep do is to graze in their favourite bits over and over and leave tufts where they don't eat.

A sign of the changing season is this ....

... yes the buoy is back!!

The first sign that the ferns and undergrowth on the edge of our woodlands are dying back is seeing the dangling buoy for the first time.

But yes, we are looking green and lush ... if a little shaggy around the edges.

Sue xx

Keeping Warm, Odd Jobs, Simple Foods

This weekend we were both full of colds, so we spent our time having leisurely breakfasts, with lots of hot drinks.

We fetched wood into the house to keep the log burner going.  Using wood from our woodland means that we have a continual source of free fuel, we just have to do a bit more woodland management later on this year.  Now that the building work is completed on the house we will have much more time to gradually work our way through the woods, clearing space around new saplings and making sure that a new generation of trees will be available to keep us in this lovely free fuel.

 Some jobs were done but they were only bits and bobs of things and the everyday chores such as cleaning out the henhouse and filling feeders etc.

But mostly we ate simple foods and curled up in front of the television when we weren't at the cinema.  We went twice this weekend, using our already purchased year long passes means the more we go, the better value they will be.  All in all a very lazy weekend for us ... we should have more of them it did us both the world of good!!

Sue xx

I Love Wood

To almost follow on directly from yesterdays post, this is the reason I love my understairs cupboard ..... it's door.  It is, like most of the other doors here, original to the house and is, in my opinion, simply lovely.  Well I would say that most wood is lovely, but especially old and rustic wood.

I like old, used and weathered things, rusticity, wobbly stools, mismatched kitchens etc. Lovely Hubby likes clean, new things with straight lines, shiny surfaces and uniformity, but, thank goodness on the subject of old wood he mostly likes what I like.

So I love the understairs cupboard door with its gate style catch now that it is all finished.

He even allowed me to keep the gate he made for when we want the dogs kept downstairs untreated and not painted white, as was his first instinct, just because I liked it as it was.  Maybe we could stain this wood now so it will match the door, I will have to think about that one!!

And to the person who said that understairs cupboards made hallways smaller and less elegant, when you see the floor space we have in our hall ... and this is it in total ... I had to stand on the stairs to take this photo and in the living room to take the others, you will realise that not having an understairs cupboard just does NOT work in some houses!!

Sue xx

The Buoy is Back

The buoy is back .... the buoy that can be seen dangling from the tree in our woodland that is.

The previous owners of this house had two youngish boys and I guess either they or their Dad put this up for swinging on.  As it is on a tree that is so tall and with such a steep drop in front of it we have no way of getting it down, save shooting through the rope to release it.  But I don't think either of us would actually ever do this as it's something of a local landmark.

When anyone local asks us where we live we used to say the house with the trailers parked in the field, then we sold the trailers.  Now we tend to say the house with the polytunnels and they know immediately which house we are, but there a few folk that simply know us as 'the house with the buoy hanging in the woods',

That'll do nicely, we don't mind at all ... but it only works through the late Autumn and Winter months when it's visible from the road, come Spring when the leaves reappear on the trees and the huge bank of ferns comes back to life the buoy disappears from view, and then once again we are the house with the polytunnels  :-)

Sue xx  

Keeping the Home Fires Burning

Keeping the home fire burning, or the log burner in our case, is one of the most important things we do.  It's the heart of the home every evening throughout Winter, and even occasionally on a chilly Summer's night.

Chopping, stacking and fetching wood is an ongoing thing, and seeing the wood store full of logs ready to use is one of the most satisfying things of all.  It nestles between the man shed and the chicken shed, sheltered from the worst of the weather but open to the elements at the front and slightly at the back.  Good airflow is vital to let your wood continue seasoning.

Of course we cheated a bit this Winter, our own chopped wood ran out fairly quickly and although we could have gone and chopped some more, it was damp and not seasoned enough to give us a good heat when burnt ..... so we bought three large builders bags full of chopped, seasoned hard wood to see us through this Winter and to give us chance to get ahead with chopping our own ready for burning next year.

Whether it will last as long as the cold weather I don't know ... but we are hopeful.

One of my first 'house' jobs of the day, after seeing to dogs, chickens and that all important first coffee of the day, is to lay the fire ready for the evening to come.  Sometimes I have to wait until mid morning as if I'm not careful the ashes and embers from the previous evenings fire will still have enough warmth in them to catch light to the bottom layer of paper and fire up my newly laid fire much too soon.

We have perfected the art of this log burner now, each one varies slightly and our last one was much smaller.  It's vitally important that you leave enough ash in the ash tray underneath so that the airflow around the burner is just right.  Emptying it out every day may seem nice and tidy ... and the right thing to do, but right depth to that layer of ash makes the fire burner hotter quicker.  We've found that emptying it approximately every three days is about right for this one.  

We are careful on the day we do take out the tray outside not to disturb the previous nights ash lying above.   We tip the contents either into the compost bin or onto the chickens dust bath under the henhouse, and when we bring the empty tray back in and slide it into position only then do we sweep the previous nights ash down into it, giving us a least a bit of a head start to the level of ash we need for optimum burning.

We seem to be getting it right ...... Rosy definitely approves :-)

Sue xx

The Reality of Keeping Warm

Minimal living is virtually impossible when you need to gather all the wood you possibly can to keep yourself and your house warm.  

When I see the pictures of lovely country fireplaces with a teeny tiny log basket, a handful of kindling artistically arranged and no stack of newspaper lying to hand to start the fire off, I always get the impression it's a set up .... or at the very least the central heating is working it's magic in the background.  Not of course that there's any harm in that, but it's not the reality of getting your warmth from wood.

The reality of keeping warm with only wood, whether it be foraged wood or wood bought in, is usually something like we have here.  It's no pretty picture however carefully we stack it around the wood burner .... but it is the reality.

Our wood comes mainly from our own woodland, we have around 2.5 acres stretching out behind the house and the paddock right up to the top of the hill.  It will, once we have worked our way through it coppicing and managing it properly, be enough to keep us warm through out the Winters to come. 

This year while we are in the midst of building works and setting things up we are making good use of stacks of wooden window frames that the house's previous owner left behind.  They have dried out nicely over the year we have been here and Lovely Hubby set to last week while I was away, sawing them into lengths that will fit into our wood burner.

Setting the fire is something I try to do in the morning, knowing that it is ready to put a match to when the temperature drops to make lighting it necessary or when we get back from somewhere chilled and damp, makes me feel better.  My first port of call during the day is always an extra jumper topped with my fleecy body-warmer, and then in the evening the blinds go down and then the curtains are pulled across, giving us an additional couple of barriers after the double glazing to trap the warmth of the house.

It all adds up to cosying the place up for the long evenings we now have.

Ready for action tonight.

And to finish off this post here are the final shots after yesterdays post about sorting out the kitchen.  All neatly arranged and fitting in snugly.

Something was bugging me when I looked at the first picture, so the offending items have been removed.  (Go on .... play Spot the Difference.)

I'm a minimalist at heart .... although you wouldn't guess it would you!!

And did you spot a little tail in the first picture ... and then a bottom in the second one.  Suky refused point blank to move while I took the pictures, although she did get fed up with me asking her to, hence the dropped tail :-)

Sue xx

No Chickens?

Looking at this picture you'd think we had no chickens, indeed some days I do a double take as I look over to Chicken World and don't see a single chicken.  

They aren't daft my girls,  they are spending the majority of their time in the small wooded area behind Chicken World that actually belongs to our neighbour.  Here they can shelter from the worst of the weather and when it gets even wetter or wilder they make for the hen-house, some of them inside and some of them underneath.

Far cosier than being out and about in the wind and rain we have been having recently.

And with being cosy in mind, we are spending this week filling the log store and stacking piles of cut and split logs behind the wood burner in the living room.  The now dark and long nights, which see the chickens locked up for the night by 5.30pm, means that there is nothing better than curling up with the lamps lit and the log burner blasting out heat as we catch up with our television viewing and book reading.

Sue xx

Planting Onions and Tidying in the Woodland

 

It's been a productive but very tiring weekend, but somehow you don't' mind feeling so wiped out when you can see the results of your labours. 

 

  Friday saw Lovely Hubby carrying lots of the cut oak branches and big logs up the hillside to a new log storage area he had prepared.  That sounded proper 'posh', in fact it's just a level area topped with a couple of pallets, but it does the job and levelling any bit of our hillside takes a lot of effort.

 

 

While he was lifting and shifting I had the easier job of planting out all the onion sets that we bought last week when we got the Garlic.  It turned out we had 119 Red Onions and 52 White Onions to go in.  Not too bad for a total outlay of £6, which makes them under 4p an onion.  I do hope they grow well, I swore a couple of years ago not to plant onions again as it seemed hard work for what is basically a cheap vegetable to buy from the supermarket, but we want to be self sufficient in as many things as possible and the taste of home grown far out ways anything you can buy, so I am having another bash at them.  If they grow well I will save some seed and do it all myself completely from scratch.

 

(To give you an idea of scale this bed is around 25' long by about 4' wide.)

 

So now I have all my over-wintering crops in for this year, Onions, Leeks, Garlic and Curly Kale, it feels so good to have some veggies in the beds on the hillside at last.  The last uncovered bed will be sown with some green manure as will the two at the top currently home to the Courgettes, and I'll fill up the bed half planted with Curly Kale with some green manure too, just to keep the weeds at bay.

 

Saturday saw us attacking the bottom of the woodland, we wanted to clear a good path to the old Oak stump, the brambles had really taken over and claimed it all for them selves.  So we both snipped away with secateurs freeing the young trees from their covering of nasty prickly brambles and Lovely Hubby set too every so often with the rake, piling it all up and taking at all away for burning to our 'fire circle' on the hillside behind Chicken World.  As there were still berries on a lot of the branches we haven't set fire to it yet, we have left it piled up as a food resource for the wildlife for a couple of weeks.  (And yes we will check for hedgehogs etc before we set it all ablaze.)

 

I took a photo half an hour after we had started just to show progress.  So this is almost Before (it was much much worse) ...

 

... and this is After.

 

A very prickly half days work, but so worth it.  We can now see Lovely Hubby's stack of logs and tree slices ....

 

... and the old Oak stump is there in all it's glory, now visible from the side as well as from the bottom of the hill.  We aren't 'prettifying' the hillside too much just reclaiming a little bit of it nearest to the house for our own use.  Mainly for practical purposes, log stores, being able to harvest the blackberries in a more controlled, safer way, and keeping access to the stump which will become a focal point on the hill above the garage and workshop etc.

 

We plan eventually to top it with some Welsh slate and use it as a table, with benches set behind it so we, our guests and visitors will be able to admire the fantastic view.

Of course the dogs loved us working in the woodland and spent a good couple of hours vanishing into the undergrowth, which meant lots of stopping for us to untangle Mavis who has to be on a long lead all the time.  Charley behaved herself wonderfully and kept reappearing in the most unexpected places, it helps you get in so many interesting places when you're this small.  :-)

 

Sue xx

Serious Shredder Envy

A huge pile of chippings has appeared in our roadway ready to be barrowed up the hill to top the membrane we are laying on the pathways between the raised beds.

 

And it didn't cost us a penny!!

 

 

It's all thanks to these guys, the tree surgeons that have been given the job of trimming all the overhanging trees and branches around the electricity cables on the hillsides around here.  When they came to let us know what work they would be doing I was quick to ask that all chopped wood be left behind for burning and then Lovely Hubby asked them what they did with the chippings. 

 

They were very quick to offer them all to us if we needed them, so up to now we have had six deliveries at the end of their working days.  They were really pleased to be able to tip them all and head off home with an empty truck ready for their next days work, and we were really pleased as it means that all the chippings on our land have pretty much come from our land and the surrounding hills and woods.

 

And I have serious shredder envy ..... ours takes one or two branches at a time theirs took dozens and tidied up the place in no time at all.

 

Sue xx