Catching up.....

It has been a couple of weeks since last I wrote, and I am sorry about that. The thing is that I have going through another patch of 'going round in circles', which is how most of my time here on the farm has been since I arrived. Not to worry, the spin of the circles are now starting to slow down, and there is not so many circles to have to negotiate.

However, yesterday I came to a full stop, having hit the centre spot of the circles, which requires of me that I do nothing at all. Not that I am not happy with this state of being, but myself says to myself 'enough....if you do not have a rest then we are going to make you have one' and so yesterday was one of enforced rest as I became flattened by aches and pains and dreadful dolefulness such that there was not a fraction of a bit of energy with which I could get up and about. So in bed I stayed, sleeping for most of the day, with the electric blanket roasting toasting me to ease the painfulness in my body.

Today I am at least on my feet. But there is a lot of dust in the house which is laying so thickly in the air that we could just as well be in the middle of a desert storm in the Sahara. It will take another batch of heavy cleaning to get that dust up, so yet another circle of work begins, robbing me of time when I could be doing other things, which tends to make me impatient and irritable, which then lends itself to my stress levels, which then makes those spinning circles go faster.

Why do we have a dust storm today? Because the old front door has been removed, the one which had so many gaps and holes in it that it could not be usefully called a front door anymore, so we are putting a new front door in, but first we have to remove the old front step and that is what is causing the dust. Not to worry, at least we shall have front doors which can be locked, that will have no drafts coming through them, and most of all, will stop the rats and mice from coming in via that route ever again.

But I am not feeling down in the dumps, not at all, just a little tired after trying to cope with those spinning circles. My fault really. I try to do too much. But then I am who I am, and I would rather be busy than not. At least the kitchens are now working, which is a blessing. I have almost got them sorted out but still find myself running from one to the other to get things. I have realised that I need two of most things, and that I am gradually doing.

I have just received the cheese cultures from The Cheesemaker.com, (a USA company) so am ready to make cheese, but it will have to be soft cheese only because we still have not had the time to make a cheese storage area for hard cheese. I also purchased some live Kefir grains and these are galloping away, making more of themselves. The cheese cultures are in the freezer for the moment, ready for when Lester takes more milk from Lissie. At the moment he is bringing two/ three litres a day into the kitchen, and leaving the rest of the milk for the calf so she can have a good start in life.

My stash of fabric is growing as I continue to buy in material (mostly from Germany and the UK). I shall be making lots of patchwork soft furnishings when the dust quietens down, and I am soooo looking forward to doing that. My impatience with having to keep cleaning dust up is probably due to the fact that I want to get on with my sewing, and then there is the weaving....I have got no further with buying a loom although I know which one I am going to buy, but I have bought several books on weaving, and continue to spin our wool ready for when the loom is here.

On the veg front....... the hot weather and the work in the house have diverted me away from any momentum with growing veg, so nothing is happening apart from everything which has been planted is romping away now that we are having more rain. Not to worry, the ground floor of the house is going to be finished soon, and then we shall more time to get out into the veg plot.

Meanwhile, all the animals are doing well, but the chickens continue to be a nuisance in the cow pens because they rake up the straw bringing the wet straw to the surface instead of leaving it underneath the dry layer on top. But Lester has kept up the work of cutting the bramble hedge, and is now only a day or two from finishing, so hopefully in a month or two we should have a chicken hut done, then the chickens and geese can be moved out of the courtyard. That will be a good day for all of us, the chickens and geese included.

Well I feel all the better for writing this blog, and I hope you have enjoyed reading it. I am off to put some dark stain on an old pine shelf unit which will then be used in the back kitchen to put things on. I have some skeins of recently spun wool soaking in the sink, so they need to go outside to dry, and I think that I shall just go and have a sit in the sunshine and soak up the rays while I do these jobs.

Bye for now,

Vx