One word? When seven would do…

Alarm call was a slight shock to the system this morning, but soon recovered from with a glance out the window at a beautiful sunny January morning with the Tor backlit by the sunrise and new adventures to be chased :).

It’s only in driving away from Sussex yesterday and waking up this morning with such a sense of happiness and relief that I realise quite how rubbish we’d all been feeling about doing nothing all these weeks. Staying with friends and Christmas camp were all fab and very lovely diversions but it felt really good to put workboots on this morning and be outside working again today.

We dealt with the chickens first thing – their ark needed moving, one shutting off ready for some new chickens arriving next week and we learnt where all the food etc. is kept as we’ll take over looking after them while we’re here. Jill acquired a couple of drakes before Christmas who have been closed in to an ark since they arrived here so we let them out and they loved free ranging and were easy enough to put away again this evening. Shame they are both male but they are very pretty.

Davies and Scarlett took off with Maggie for a walk and after they’d been gone about 90 minutes I asked Ady if we should be worried. We decided they would be fine and within about five minutes we heard their voices coming down the next field, 10 minutes later they appeared having walked all the way up the Tor, met a couple at the top and stayed chatting to them for ages about being Home Educated, WWOOFing, travelling last year, Rum and various other things. It turned our the couple are also guests here and had said they would buy them a cake each in the town on their way back to the cottages.

The woman, Janice came to introduce herself to me when they got back to check the cake giving was okay with me and to compliment me on my fantastic children 🙂 She has grandchildren of a similar age and said she was so struck by Davies and Scarlett’s confidence, conversation and spirit of adventure and freedom. She loved what we have been doing and thought Rum sounded excellent. She said they were an brilliant advertisment for happy, free children and that they are lovely :). Always nice to hear :). Good to see the kids back in their environment again, outside, rosy cheeked and with muddy boots on!

Ady spent some time with Johnny walking around getting a list of things that might need doing. I did a bit of inventory stuff in a couple of the cottages after we went to pour a glass of wine for Jill last night and realised we only had one wine glass in our cottage! We got to have a look around the two cottages we’d not seen inside properly before because Shirley was living in one and Jude (previous owner who stayed here for months after the completion of the sale) was in the other. I stuck a load of laundry in too which always pleases me 😉

Ady and I moved two chicken houses from one end of the land to the other. One was not too heavy and we used a wheelbarrow to move it, the other was crazily heavy and once we’d managed to get it across a very marshy bit of ground in a very Frank Spencer-esque style we utterly failed to get it to stay on a wheelbarrow! Despite going backwards and forwards getting a pump to pump the flat tyre on the barrow up and the whole thing taking longer to set up than it would have done to carry it across and stop every few paces. Eventually Jill and Tasha (working here doing tiling) helped us and we carted it across fairly easily. It is to be the very temporary shelter for two piglets coming here from Paddington Farm next door either tomorrow or Friday until they grow out of it and a proper pig ark arrives (one has been sourced but it is a flooded field apparently). I cleaned that out as it had been used by chickens already.

And then we had lunch ;).

There is now a farm shop here on site selling organic, local (where possible) whole food stuff so most of our catering will be done from that, so we picked up some cheese – a local blue and some cheddar with apple cider actually from Cheddar. Very nice :).

After lunch the kids went off down to the river to build dens. If I’d been slightly worried about them (and I admit it, I had) these last few weeks, all of my worries vanished today and I remembered again why we do stuff the way we do. Phew 🙂

Ady and I worked with Leah, who also lives here in a caravan, mostly working with the horses but also various stuff around the place, WWOOFing stylee. We emptied out a leaking pond to see if it was fixable – it isn’t. So the plan is to fill it in and create an interesting bed in that. We then sorted some of a woodpile which we created back last year when we were here and is now nicely seasoned and needs moving. We got out various fence posts and banged them in to create a pig pen around the house on an area that has been brambles for years but we started clearing when we were last here and now needs the roots turning over before becomming another veg patch. The obvious best tool for that job is always pigs :).

Johnny and Leah came too and between the four of us we soon had an 8 post, three rounds of electric fence, two of non-electric fence pen all wired up and working, complete with gate. Johnny is a more money than sense type who loves gadgets and the right tool for the job, Leah grew up on farms and is far more likely to bodge stuff. Ady and I have encountered both extremes in the last year and concede that some tools and gizmos make for a better and easier job but some just cost money that didn’t need to be spent. We all four learnt stuff off each other and it was a very jolly team effort with mucho banter and laughter :). Bring on the pigs!

That pretty much took us to it being dark and the end of the working day. We put the chickens and ducks away and came back to the cottage for cups of tea. Then Ady went off to the supermarket and Davies, Scarlett and I went swimming. The pool is kept several degrees colder than it used to be – the thermometer was at 26 degrees tonight which felt very cool. I was sort of looking forward to the previous feeling of being in a large bath and struggled to swim energetically enough to warm up but I did a good few lengths and some racing with the kids before getting out for a nice long hot shower while they finished swimming and playing.

We got dried and dressed and then the kids watched a DVD while I brushed Tarly’s hair which was very tangled due to some rather over zealous shampooing on her part (and no doubt brambles and running around today too). Ady returned and cooked toad in the hole with the very lovely local sausages and eggs from here.

It ended up being a very late dinner (well 830pm, not really late by our reputed standards I guess!) and despite the early start the kids were still chatting at 1130pm, I’m hoping the early starts will catch up with them eventually. A full day outside working finished with swimming this evening has certainly caught up with me. And so to bed.