First (only?) snowfall

Thumbs up for the first snowfall. Yayyy!

 

And given the low temperatures I was feeling bad for the chickens so I kept cooking up warm treats for them. Porridge or scrambled eggs with veggie scraps mixed in. I love mixing up meals for chickens- a bit of 3 year old fun.

Our heating also decided to break on Friday when the temperature outside was a lovely -16C during the day. Coincidence only- it was an internal part on the boiler and wasn't due to the low temperatures- unlike two sets of friends whose pipes froze and started spitting the toilet contents back out the way they had gone in. Poor things.

So we played outside in the snow and then wrapped up warmly, shut doors and curtains to keep the warmth in and then swapped beds to sleep one big person with one little person. The landlord tried and failed to fix the heating so we got up in the morning to a freezing house. One's of life's simple little adventures :)

Brendan "writing messages" on the radiator as we wait to pay before leaving. 

Pain au chocolate as big as my head? No problem.

We headed to our favourite breakfast place, arriving as it opened to find that it hadn't heated up yet, so we kept our warm clothes on while eating eggs, toast and croissants and drinking hot chocolate, coffee and hot ginger apple juice. Brendan pinched a pile of little notelets from the waiter and spent time writing messages and drawing wee pictures, when he wasn't running around the cafe with his brother, that is.

The day was then bright and sunny and photos from a walkabout deserve a blog post of their own:) Oh, and the heating was fixed that afternoon so we didn't lose any fingers or toes, which pleased Brendan given his fear of frostbite. I'd like to say it is an irrational fear but unfortunately I'm to blame... Last week we found ourselves looking at gruesome photos online of frost bitten fingers and toes. This is just one example of my increased use of scare tactics to encourage obedience, in this case keeping gloves on when it's -10C outside! Not proud of this but occasionally these things just come out of my mouth before I can stop them :)  When Brendan started the car last week I said some scary things about car crashes. We won't be looking for pictures or you tube clips of those, that's for sure.

Having trouble with the new blogger update and can't work out how to get the photos where I want them- so this will do for now. Lovely snowy photos coming next.

Winter Solstice

We started off the shortest day by having breakfast by candlelight and in silence (well, as silent as you can with a 3 and a 4 year old!) After a while we started talking in whispers about the day ahead and then talked again about the sun and the earth, life and the seasons. Brendan is genuinely interested, as long as I don't go on and on about it!

Later we had supper in the dark too and then a special fire in the garden with a candle lit path.The boys ran up and down the path for a while, jumped on the trampoline a bit and then Brendan stood up on our big log by the fire to look out for foxes. He had packed a fox-watching bag especially for the event. I know there was a torch, a pen and a notebook in it but I'm not sure what else. Probably his little encyclopedia of the earth. Ever since he found out that foxes kill chickens he gets very concerned if we are late closing up their house and is waiting patiently to see a fox in real life.
After a while we used magazines as a fan to blow out each candle as we walked away from the fire and back into our lovely warm house. I imagine that each year as the boys grow we will add to this particular special day.

These photos make it look very calm and pleasant, and it was eventually, but it started off with everyone being flustered and frustrated because I took so long lighting the candles and they didn't know what they were waiting for so didn't have any patience. There were also arguments about clothing and footwear, but once we got outside all was well. Except for me trying to convince the boys NOT to blow out the candles straight away. Hopefully next year it will feel more relaxed :)

Here's the beautiful pink sunset the day before the shortest day.

garden goings on

Here's a quick garden update before we head off on our trip to Italy. I think I've already mentioned that we lost all our tomatoes to late blight and Steve especially was very disappointed. But there have been some great successes too.
The first pumpkin we picked with 4 year old Grace's hand in for scale. Also a butternut squash there. I've since learned that I should leave the butternut squashes on a but longer, bit this one still tasted great.

The pumpkin patch is a tangle of vines and leaves and nettles. We have to dress up for battle before venturing into it, but still always manage to get a few nettle stings. There are some huge pumpkins in there and I'm still coming across round courgettes that have grown a bit to big for anything other than soup, like this one below.



I think the two yellow courgette plants have been my ultimate favourite this year. They have been very productive, are easy to look after and they taste yummy.

The potatoes and onions were a little on the small side so we'll work on that next year.

Garden Update

Yesterday was a 'significant' afternoon for us. It was the first time we had used several different vegetables from the garden to make our supper and not just one or two types of vegetables as a side dish or ingredients.

So here was the menu... Siobhan and the boys picked 5 ears of corn which we ate off the cob and were delicious. Tadhg sneakily picked some green tomatoes when he was supposed to be watering so I found a recipe for fried green tomatoes. Siobhan harvested our first kohlrabi and whipped up a white sauce. And the main dish was vegetable rissoles made with onions and courgette with a little carrot and potato from the cupboard. There might be potatoes soon but the carrots are still no bigger than a crayon.

Here's a picture from last week. Finally, all our effort is starting to pay off.


A few of Siobhan's notes from the garden...

-grow courgette (zucchini) again, it's wonderful and they taste great raw in salads.
-find out how to grow salad leaves without a bitter taste.
-the rooster is crowing in the mornings, he'd better not get too much louder or he might make it back onto the dispatch list.
-find summer squash recipe ideas- there is a distinct glut in the kitchen supplies here.
-and start giving them away
-get more jars, there are going to be seriously huge numbers of tomatoes soon (we have about 25 plants)
-buy bottled water (arghhh) or try sterilizing jars in the oven- the amount of calcium in the water is beyond belief (not that we mind, we drink it, but it sticks to the jars and looks horrid)
-next time pay attention to avoid planting bush beans for a tipi, you can't just will them to grow upwards.
-don't discard squash plants with broken stems- I discarded one when transplanting but experimented with a second and just stuck the two ends together and planted it deep- it's now the strongest and most productive of the lot!

All these strawberries are not from our garden, surprisingly enough, but from a local farm. We made two batches of jam and frooze the remainding strawberries. After processing/canning, we made 15 jars.

First stop on a European adventure

Good friends but not enough time. But we'll take what we can get! Lindsey and Matt are in Europe for a few weeks and we were their first stop. It was lovely having them here-we were so busy just being and chatting together that we took very few photos.
The kids having porridge in the morning.


We went to Parc Paradisio one day. We didn't do anything touristy and maybe we should have, but I think it was a nice slow intro to their European adventure, that I hope set them up for the next couple of weeks of travel and hotel living.

And here are a few photos taken by Brendan.




Lindsey is starting midwifery school in September. We snatched a few hours here and there to share our thoughts about birth and midwifery. I'm a tiny bit jealous but can't wait to hear how it's going when she starts. She is going to be the most wonderful, calm and caring midwife and I love thinking about all the lucky women who are going to have Lindsey around to help them have empowering, gentle births.

Here come the veggies

We had a quick look around the veggie patch after work today and the plants are starting to fruit. It's nice to know that we'll get something after all the hard work. Although we have a few small issues to sort out like a rogue mole, soil nutrients, mulch and weeding... we're getting there. Here are some pictures of the inbound produce (cucumbers, radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, courgette, maize, squash and beans).

A week outside

Sorry for another post about the garden, but that is pretty much what our life is all about these days. We wouldn't want it any other way at the moment!

We went for it! We cleared a small area of the nettle field to make our own little productive vegetable field. Our neighbours on both sides have each unofficially extended their gardens to use about another five metres or so of this field. Maurice, who grows pumpkins and has a beautiful big bramble bush out there, says that the farmer who owns it hasn't been in it in the ten years since they built their house next door. There is, of course, a slight chance that a tractor will roll in one day and we'll lose all our veggies but we're happy to take that risk for now.

We rented a rotor tiller and got stuck in removing the layers of nettle stems and roots and turning the earth. We also had to remove a nasty patch of stinky yucky stuff where the last tenants (and Steve more recently) had dumped the grass clippings and never turned them. Euch. Steve also came across a small wasp nest and promptly burnt it. He was lucky I was inside at the time or I might have wanted to try to move it. Maybe not a good idea, I don't know.
Friday evening and most of Saturday were spent out there. It was hard work but well worth it and it felt great! We've ended up with a beautiful patch of gorgeous crumbly earth.

watching Daddy

Early morning- Tadhg has his pjs on back to front to stop him taking them off. Slightly awkward stage just now- he doesn't want a nappy on but loves to find interesting places to pee, such as in his toy vehicles, on the sofa, on mummy's legs and feet from a standing position on a kitchen chair, right inside the back door for the next person in to slide in etc

lovely soil

Sunday morning meant a trip to the flower market for some lovely seedlings to put in here. We still aren't too late for seeds so some easy seeds were planted too. Here's Steve's view from his seat this afternoon. Planting was obviously my job!

I've been more aware recently of something. I think I wrote a while ago about the waldorf/steiner outdoor preschools where the whole idea is for adults to be engaged in meaningful work while the children just play around about and watch or join in to "help" when they feel like it. I've also read The Continuum Concept again recently and love that it validates so much of our parenting that comes naturally to us anyway. But, even without the reading, I catch myself stopping now and then and noticing that we are having a perfect day. I just stand and savour it for a minute. I realise that the reason this or that particular afternoon or day is going so well is that I've hardly interfered with the boys at all. As long as we've all had enough sleep and enough water to drink, then, if I just get on with something productive, the boys can go hours without a squabble or any need for me to interfere. I love it. The minute they sense that we are watching or listening then things go pear shaped and they start doing very annoying things like whining (arrghhhhhhhh), pinching and pushing each other, snatching stuff or, Brendan's latest, telling on each other. I could do without all of that!

A salad made from some of our own greens and radishes. Can't wait for cucumbers and tomatoes too.

And below are two photos of the boys, just because. These were taken at Paradisio last week.

Enough for now. More of the same coming up this week. I'm sure there will be more "after" shots of our "field" and the chickens have moved outside permanently now too. Must report on that!

A Saturday in May

We had a lovely weekend with NO PLANS WHATSOEVER. We rode our bikes,


played in puddles,

smiled for the camera,

listened to music,

built a chicken fence,

built a hundred puzzles, (well, at least ten)

and threw stones down a drain and then listened to see if anyone was stuck down there and needed rescued.

All in all a great weekend. We also reorganized kitchen cupboards, cleared some more of the weed field to make a pumpkin patch, fertilized the plants, tried out a water slide on the lawn, went to the park, added a rope swing to the treehouse, went for a walk in a WW1 cemetery nearby and Steve and the boys are off to pick up the caravan which has been sitting in a corner of a car park on the base all winter and is need of some care and attention before we use it sometime soon. There's talk of a canoe trip in the next few weeks.

And lastly, here's a photo taken at Paradisio Park the other day. This was just after Tadhg had thrown one of our good water bottles into the water in the tropical bird house and we had to find someone to come and scale the fence, scramble through the trees, climb down a rock wall, balance on some stepping stones and fish the bottle out for us. The boys loved that, of course. I will not be surprised if the same thing happens again next time!