smallholderwannabe

This blog is mainly a rambling kind of diary of the transition from smallholderwannabe to smallholder.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Happy Christmas! and Happy New Year too!

I was beginning to think that this last half term was never going to end. And despite having been on holiday for a week and a half, I am still sleeping in until almost 9am in the mornings. It is going to come as a bit of a shock when the alarm wakes me up to go to work on Monday morning.

It has been a good holiday. We've spent 3 days eating and talking with family and friends and we enjoyed that. We've spent lots of time reading and sleeping and "chilling" as my son calls it. AND we've spent some time sorting stuff out. We put 8 sacks of rubbish out for the binmen this morning and have taken 2 full boot loads of stuff to the charity shop. Normally we don't even fill half a binsack each week. I'm feeling very virtuous about it all but the truth is that we have just about touched the tip of the iceberg. And when we have been through things to sort them, the remaining things don't seem to fit back into the space they came out of, so I can hardly see the benefits of all that stressful (I remember the kids playing with/wearing/using that; but it might come in useful; but I saved that for patchwork etc) clearing out. And one of these days when I'm not working full time - then I WILL get back to patchwork and all the crafting I love.

It is really cold tonight. I've given the rabbit so much straw that he hardly fits into his sleeping area. He is only a small rabbit and I wanted to give him as much insulation as I could. Two of the hens are off-colour and the others are not allowing them down to eat and drink. So I am keeping them in a separate run during the day and putting them in with the others after dark to keep warm. I reckon that if they have anything serious then the others will already have caught it so there is no harm them being in the same house at night. And at least the two have access to food and water during the day - and they have definitely not lost their appetites, which I take to be a good sign. After a few days I'm hoping they will be ok and I'll be able to leave them with the others in the day as well. The other four hens are laying an average of 3 eggs a day now since Christmas. Before the end of term I kept having to apologise to most of my friends and send them away eggless. So now I am stockpiling eggs because I am not seeing the friends from work. I shall have to freeze a few eggs for us to eat next month. The bantams have started laying an egg every day (that is, one egg between the four of them not one each : ) ). However, one of the little blighters thinks it is nice to have a fresh laid egg as a little snack, so I've only got my hands on 2 of their eggs. Grrr.

I'm going to add keeping up my blog to my short list of New Year Resolutions. I need to keep the list short or there is no chance of anything happening past returning to work. So I am going to write something in the first week of each month. There may well be other posts but that will be my minimum. I should be able to keep to that, shouldn't I?