KW-05 Ninety percent finished, fifty percent done

on pigs and beauty.

Last week’s adventures with pigs are, we hope, mostly over. I’ll tell the full story some other time, but towards the end of of their week of extraordinarily unpleasant escapades, they were basically either eating (normal) asleep (also normal), or running around unrestricted (stressful).

Here they are. I don’t know if you can see, but their tracks inside the fence are actually a good way back from it. They know that there is electricity on it without having to test it, and that’s enough to keep them safe. Thank Zod.

It’s not like they even enjoy being out. They don’t. They run away, get lost and stressed, and are super happy to be back in their warm house with their warm food. And then they forget, escape, and get lost again.

I am lucky enough to have some more than wonderful people who seem to pop up whenever the need is greater than these shoulders can feel like they can bear, and thank you to them for everything they did.

Net result - the pigs have a new fence and the pirate isn’t permanently bungeeing towards stress-related cardiac arrest. As the mood swam darkly along the Marianas Trench of happiness and contentment last week, I was contemplating all manner of ends to the porcine situation, and as the energy almost entirely ran out, I was somewhat more than grateful for the interjection of some money towards the fence, and labour to get it up, because no matter how much I was finished with their fucking piggy antics, I knew I wasn’t done with them. Not yet.

No matter how beautiful it gets here, it’s impossible to photograph. Or rather, I don’t have the skills or the camera to do it justice. Take my word for it. It’s both stunningly cold and staggeringly beautiful of an evening,

In weather news, we’ve not been above zero for a while, descending to minus twelve or sixteen in the night. All of the water in the air has been frozen out and every day the snow gets more compacted and icy, and slender, threadlike icicles grow from every surface like translucent anemones. In the evening, the skies clear into blues and purples and golden yellow so deep they almost turn brown.

It’s often easier to be impressed with the beauty of foreign words than with the ones in your own native tongue. Your mother’s language which you have used to construct your thoughts with since birth can frequently be too familiar, too easy.

In German, an iconic vista of creation, a glimpse into the power and great beauty of the natural world does not take your breath away, it robs it. Atemraubend. There is a violence to the word that better describes the asphyxiating punch which the extraordinary power of the natural world delivers. Your breath has been mugged away at knifepoint, it’s not simply been taken away, presumably to be handed back later.

The evening skies, the scintillating prisms of ice, the cold, all so impossible to capture on film and share with you, this week have been Atemraubend.

Surprise! The new panels of the study were never going to be just a new panel wall. This is by far the best place to read in the loft. And now, it is comfortable and draught free as well. Just the detailing to go now. Which as everyone knows, means it’s 90% finished, so just over half way there.

This coming week, I will be mostly in the wood shop. I have some exciting plans for clearing it up and bringing a sense of organisation to the chaos. But I’m not sure I have enough wood to do it.

Because pigs, I didn’t get to do the Obstbaumschnitt - the winter pruning of the fruit trees, so I shall endeavour to make headway with that this week.

Thank-you to you all for reading this thing. I wouldn’t be doing it without you. Please, if you like it, consider sharing it. I don’t know if I’m going in the wrong direction with how I am writing it, or if winter is just plain boring, but last week, shares hit the big Zero for the first time.

Anyway, until next week, be lovely and I hope February starts well for you!

Much piratey love

Your

Pirate Ben

xoxo