Yesterday morning we collected firewood. We’d gotten behind in our firewood and instead of collecting every day and bringing it in to dry out infront of todays fire ready for tomorrow we’ve been mostly burning wood that is still too damp. This means the fire is hard to get going, cokes up the flue and doesn’t chuck out as much heat as it could. We really need to have a day or two just collecting wood and then we’d be ahead, but I suspect that won’t happen this season. I can dream that we’ll be on top of it for next winter though… 😉
While collecting wood Ady and I had an interesting conversation while looking down on the croft and the static about what we;d have done differently and what we’re proud of. We’re not out the other side of this winter yet and in many ways it has been far more testing than we’d expected but in others it has felt just fine. We;re all clinging on to the idea of a house for next winter though…
We had lunch and then got roast dinner prepared and in the oven at a very low heat before heading down to visit Fliss and Sandy for more house build talk. Sandy is doing loads on it for us and appears to be really enjoying it. He will be the chief joiner on the project so will get some paid work out of it and being so involved certainly seems to be keeping him straight and sober or at least helping so I don’t feel too bad. We looked at various designs, did some amending layouts and Sandy emailed a couple of firms to ask for more details and get quotes.
We popped in to Vikki’s to feed Lisa cat and then home for dinner, breadmaking and watching Uncle Buck from Lovefilm.
Today was sorting out the horsebox day. Despite everyone else seeming to have snow we have only had the briefest flurry here and nothing on low ground has settled. Infact although we had snow on the croft for about 10 minutes it didn’t even fall down in the village. The peaks have a nice dusting though. I took everything out of the horse box and Ady did lots of rubbish burning, we re-organised the food stored in there and chased out the nasty rat who seemed to have decided he lived there 🙁 Another job well done and ticked off our list making us feel very efficient so far this year 🙂
We came in for lunch and I made pizza dough before heading down for an afternoon of event planning and general chit chat with Fliss. I also looked at some more house stuff with Sandy and then the others came down to pick me up having been wood collecting for some of the afternoon. Ady and I had baths at Vikki’s for the last day of cat feeding duty (the deal had been to have baths whenever we wanted but having already bathed lots last week on the mainland I only had two and Ady only had one in the end) then we came home for dinner.
It’s pretty cold here but has been dry and very pretty with sunny days and starry nights. Cold is good, it hardens up the ground and makes everything twinkly! This evening I’ve been ploughing through more admin job list stuff, replying to emails and looking at the Rum website to see what changes need making. We have some income generating ideas to talk over with Fliss and Sandy tomorrow and I’ve been trying to do a very basic website for Croft 3 too. Definitely need that cloning machine!