Yesterday morning was dealing with the aftermath of high winds during the night. We’d lost our washing line – totally our own fault for not bringing in some laundry which had gotten wet and therefore heavy in the rain and then whipped about in the wind so much that the fence post had snapped that was supporting the washing line. It is properly windy here when it’s windy, no messing about! Having previously only ever lived somewhere very non windy (1987 aside of course) this still take me by surprise. I recall leaving a (full) 4 pint milk carton outside the front door of the static and it getting blown away, that would never happen in Sussex!
Ady dealt with that while I emptied the poo loo (we have a luggable loo in the bathroom inside now for after dark / nasty weather outside times so that we don’t have to venture outside and it then gets tipped into the compost loo the following day. I bought a load of firewood in and then went down to plant the fruit trees in the fruit cage which is now full. It was very windy so hard as everything kept getting whipped away but I did it all and wrote the placement of everything down so I now have a map of what is planted there.
Back in for lunch, bread and pizza dough making and decorating the sweets I’d made. The logburner fan is working so well that there was nowhere in the static cool enough to put them for the chocolate to set properly! I had a phone chat with my Dad which was lovely.
We’re waiting on the next series of Will and Grace so went back to Friends which we’d abandoned but has now grown on the kids a little.
Today was work for me in the morning. I had a busy couple of hours and it went quickly – some good chats with Mel, Stuart, Sean the Rat, and then Ali and Lesley. I do like my couple of hours work on a Saturday morning :). Ady and the kids went to meet the boat and then came round to meet me in various groupings – Davies and Ben, Scarlett and Eilidh and then Ady and the car with a trailer full of stuff. I’d jokingly sent What You Want To Do Dave a wish list of baths and a washing machine! when he asked if I wanted him to put out a request on his local freecycle list for anything as they were bringing a trailer up. And off the boat came the trailer – which is also for us and will make getting logs, animal feed and friends luggage SO much easier, complete with two baths – one tin for us to do the pig processing, one plastic complete with taps and waste for us at some point – it’s currently in the polytunnel but if the nissen hut all comes good it will have a home before too long, a fire and back boiler which could meet the same fate and a washing machine. We’re hoping to build a wee shed from galvanised sheeting, hook it up to our spare genny, plumb it in to the river water and out into a ditch and away we go!
Ady and I brought it all up to the croft and unloaded the trailer. One bath is now by the pigs, one in the polytunnel, the fire is on a pallet and there is just the washing machine to get up the hill tomorrow. While we were doing that Dave and Naomi arrived so we spent a couple of hours drinking tea and chatting with them. I was supposed to be getting on with stuff for tomorrow but failed so had a fairly long evening making dinner, bread dough, cake, mince pies and packing up the chocolates. My mincepies are not very nice as I have been adding fruit to the mincemeat over the last few weeks but forgotten to add sugar so they are on the bitter side. I have dredged them very much with icing sugar which will help and they are being served with brandy sauce but if I get up early enough I may make some more in the morning between baking rolls, prepping soup and decorating the cake.
Dinner was late as a result and I am knackered now so off to bed, tomorrow is due to be another long and busy day.