I didn’t sleep well as I had two unfinished things on my mind along with another thing playing on my mind last night. To that end once I’d got up and had a shower this morning I decided to head to the village to sort them out. Ady came with me :
The first was whether or not Fliss was taking venison – she had asked for a price for a whole beast to be cut into minced, diced and steaks and we’d quote for it then done it for her. There was considerably less meat than she’d expected and she didn’t really want it. She tried to beat us down in price but as she was already saving over £100 on the retail price and we were making less than £100 on the meat (which just about covers the cost of Ady and Neil’s wages in doing it) we were not able to reduce it further. In the end she has not taken it but it took a lot of humming and hahing before she eventually decided that and took far too much of our morning up. Grr.
The second was a washing machine that Claire had asked me about buying off Richard and Caroline who are leaving. At the time it seemed like a good idea to go halves on a washing machine so I said yes but circumstances have changed for her and actually although we’d not have to pay to use this one I think the saving of buying tokens at £2.50 a time will not account for the hassle of trying to use it so I said we would not use it but I was happy to pay half towards it as I had not let her know in time. She refused to take the money and told me I was being stupid which was good. As in good she reassured me.
That done we came home for lunch.
We have various things on our job list for this week but starting to think about getting ready for winter is top of the list so we decided to make a start on building a firewood stash. Down to the yard to scavange for more galvanised sheets and we found a huge pile we had not spotted before and they were in really good nick. So we took a car roof ful of about 25 and brought them home to unload. That done we went back to the village and filled up 12 bags with logs that Rhys had cut for us and brought them back to the croft. Half is already up next to the static, the other half is on a pallet covered with a tarp to come up. Weather permitting tomorrow’s job is to build a wood store and start splitting and stacking the wood. We reckon that’s about a months supply, we’d like to have about 6 months as despite it only being August it is already cold enough to be thinking about the fire lit so I think we need to assume October through to March will need the fire. It feels good to have made a start.
Back home for cups of tea and some quick bread making for garlic bread to go with dinner, then animal feeding and back to the village to put the car battery on charge and for me to go to my directors meeting. A really positive, constructive meeting for a change which felt like we’d moved forward with things. I had a quick chat afterwards with Sylvia and then got home just before darkness fell walking really fast because I had not brought a torch. I startled two deer just before I got to the croft and that had my heart racing even more!
Home for dinner, chats with Ady and weather forecast watching as we think the Sheerwater may not run tomorrow due to forecast winds.