Raindrops and Lichen

It’s over a year since my last blog post.  Here’s a little update on a major transition. The house progressed fast through the summer with electrics taking shape, walls being painted, stairs going in, floors going down, tiles going up and the kitchen going in. The builders cleared out, leaving us with a vast empty building to… Continue reading Transition

You probably want to know what’s happening in the house, its been a while hasn’t it?   I’ll have to do it in bits.  The builders are working at an incredible pace and its hard to keep up.  I think these pictures will bring you from the sandblasting day in the autumn up to mid… Continue reading March House Update!

Storm Eric arrived with a vengeance.  It really needed a name like Titan, or Zeus – somehow the name Eric seemed too gentle for this one. The rain was relentless but that’s ok, we are watertight.  It was the wind!  Such huge gusts! The well-respected, accurate (and often lifesaving) Shipping Forecast (for inshore waters in this… Continue reading Snow 2019

A couple of weeks ago I ran a one-way taxi service for my friends’ handsome black pigs.   It was interesting to go back to the little abattoir again, I’ve not been since we took our last lot of pigs in some 4 years ago.  It’s a small-scale family run abattoir and much smaller than the… Continue reading December

I had forgotten, during the long, hot, balmy summer we’ve had, just how loud and wild the storms are when you are under canvas.  It’s 2am and Storm Callum is passing over us, giving everything a good battering.  I had forgotten too, how I cannot sleep when it is this wild.  The rest of the… Continue reading Autumn, with knobs on.

I know, it’s been so long and I can almost hear you all thinking “what’s going on with the sheep?”  So, especially for you lovely sheepy people, here’s a little update. You may remember back in February my favourite ewe, Trouble, managed to produce triplets.  It’s definitely a design flaw that sheep can produce more… Continue reading Lamb update!

In fact, it’s been up for a couple of months now.  I have been very remiss in keeping you all up to date with developments here. Midsummer madness has been in full swing with the accompanying (seemingly required) state of keeping far too many plates spinning all at the same time because not one single plate… Continue reading The frame is up!

  The trouble with living in a yurt in the lengthening days with three children is that it doesn’t get dark.  Bedtime has become a complete shambles with torturous mucking about and other shenanigans. After several weeks of all of them being up way too late and unable to get up for school without endless hassling… Continue reading Yurt life in Spring

The roof is off! Our old house is a mere shell. There is so little of it left I find myself wondering how it would still need two walls to be removed for it to be a VAT zero-rated project. The builder sent me some photos he’s taken while they’ve been working on the house.… Continue reading Sunshine!

In the midst of all this building work, we’ve been snowed in. Not once, but twice. I always knew that despite it not having snowed since 2009, the winter we lived in the yurt would bring snow. However, even in my Brownie Guide ‘be prepared’ state last Autumn, I didn’t imagine we’d be snowed in… Continue reading Snow