I often ponder how much better our internet connections help keep us in touch with the natural world compared to our subsistence farmer ancestors.

😂

Then in early February it starts again. The snowdrops burst into flower and the daffodils are growing furiously. It's time to get the spuds in. Our ancestors celebrated Imbolc to mark the start of Spring.

This is all a response to the natural world.

Nollaig/Saturnalia is something people invented to get us through the darkest week of the year, when there's bugger all to do on the farm. We get the kids a new toy to occupy themselves and the grown-ups get pissed.

January is still dark & cold but the farms are kept busy with lambing.

It doesn't. It just feels like it because there's no Christmas to get us through it.

It works out that winter this year would run from 06/11/25 - 02/02/26.

Now why is that date ringing a bell..

This is the hill I'll die on.

The moment of the solstice is very obviously the exact MIDDLE of the winter.

"Dear Colonials, the expression is "I could NOT care less"

Signed, angry Brit!"

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Are they worth the effort?

We do still have this door to nowhere. And not unrelated to that, earlier this week we had some good news.

To be continued...

We got our TV mounted and our dining room table returned from storage. And we closed and plastered up another doorway. We still don't have things like skirting board and there's more painting to be done, but 6 months later this place is a lot more practical and comfortable.

At this stage we could get some paint on the walls and some inexpensive laminate flooring down. And we could finally get some of our stuff back out of storage. We had been using an old fridge so we didn't have to worry if it got damaged, so we were able to swap that for the one we had in storage.

On Aug 29th the kitchen went back in. This is a temporary arrangement. We hope to get a couple of years out of it, but there was no point spending thousands on a new kitchen. The chances of it being damaged are extremely high given how the next year is expected to go.

Through this we survived thanks to a microwave, a portable 2 ring hob, an air fryer, takeaways and the kindness of family.and friends.

Thank you to anyone who fed us during August.

The floor boards made an excellent fire one Friday night.

That was to be our 1st major setback. The chipboard floor below the tiles was in an awful state. Pretty soon there were 2 foot shaped holes through what was left of it in the section where we had lifted tiles. It all had to go. The kitchen units came out, more plastering, and a new floor went down.

The hardwood floor from the dining room then got taken up, possibly to go back down again somewhere at a later stage. The ceiling got pulled down, reboarded, and plastered. And we started to lift the kitchen floor tiles.