Unrelated photo, but I thought they were both so cute - Loretta always looking for food and EmmyLou with the tell-tale signs of having been at the lick bucket.
As we turn onto the A811 —the main artery between the small rural communities that surround us and Stirling —the sun is glaring in our eyes. This time of year, it hangs low over the hills making a small from sunrise in the Southeast and sunset in the Southwest. Its rays stay almost horizontal all day long, glaring straight into our eyes, made even brighter by the reflection on the wet pavement.
Kevin drives as I’m still clutching my morning coffee mug. I hold it out in front of me with practice so that it moves with the beast of our ancient chore car, minimising spills. It’s a minivan, by the way, bought before we knew that it would not only carry countless loads of children, but also goat kids, furniture, feed, piglets, pandemic flour, two sheep and dogs. It’s growing moss on the wing mirrors, dented where I once had to drive it into a London multi story car park and no amount of detailing will remove the mixed corn that exploded in the boot and made its way into every nook and cranny.
We are off to town for our normal Saturday morning circuit - feed store, dump, DIY store, groceries. These errands are some of the few times Kevin and I get to chat. At home, we divide and conquer, trying to get as much done as possible — I am feeding the endless hungry humans while Kevin is outside working on whatever the most urgent task may be. But this morning we are locked in the car chatting about those same todo lists, things we need to do in town or when we get home, we discuss our waning chicken flock and whether we’d be replacing them or if we’ll stick with ducks.
After two stops, I am fed up, but in truth I love these days. We always laugh and often bicker. We irritate each other to no end, but there is gratitude in it as well. For years, our weekends were filled with farm tours and workshops. Our time together was non-existent - ships passing while he ran a tour and I cooked. Farm projects never finished and it felt like all we could do is scrape back the top layer of chaos on the house before we collapsed in exhaustion.
Stopping events was a hard decision when we made it last year, but the space it made has been a revelation.
We get home and begin the work of the afternoon. Kevin is trimming the long-neglected hedge between the veg field and the poly tunnel to let in more light to the latter. I have lunch to make and garbage to collect for another run to the skip later in the week as I begin the task of getting the greenhouse back in operation for the season. The kids putter in and around where I’m working, asking for snacks or telling me some antic a cat has just done.
When dinner is ready we all sit down together.
In any great imagining of what a good day would be, I don’t think I ever would’ve written days like this. I’m certain that the best days I imagine would’ve been bigger, brighter, and much sexier. But here we are, quiet and well and together and better than I could’ve written it.
This week:
I listened to the best thing I have listened to (probably since her book Braiding Sweetgrass) is this essay from Robin Wall Kimmerer. It is about recreating an economy of cooperation.
One of the added bonuses of this weekend’s hedge trimming has been that Kevin has lots of lovely wood to get back into spoon carving. I also have plans to use some of the bigger pieces for mushroom logs.
Though we aren’t in full flockdown due to bird flu in Scotland, we have moved the ducks and geese to the polytunnel. They are doing the work of clearing it of weed seeds and fertilising it for the spring. I did have to sacrifice a row of overwintered Kale, but I think it will be worth it. Plus it is so nice not to have them underfoot!
In anticipation of this weekend’s Land Worker’s Alliance Winter Gathering, I have done some seed sorting for the seed exchange. I don’t know if I said that Loretta ate all of the magnum bonum pea seed (my favourite) that I’d saved, but I still have lots of sunflower seeds to package up.
I finally rendered our beeswax. It was all the pretty grim stuff from the last few years, so I didn’t get a lot, but it will enough to make some firestarters and a bit of balm for my chapped lips.
I am also working on getting the greenhouse back into operation. We aren’t keeping chickens any more, so I have high hopes for using it as a propagation house once Spring arrives and . Our neighbour was telling us how it used to be used to grow amazing tomatoes, so obviously I will be trying that as well.
I read out bits to my husband and we laughed out loud - relating to so much - even down in subtropical NSW. Thank you.