KW-42 Wheat and Potatoes

First frost of the winter, and it was a hard one.

Summer at the barracks is expansive. Big skies, big fields, big people with big ideas. The day is constant, full of things to do and people doing them. I spend more time in the Big House than in the Loft. Days are long and nights are warm, filled with action and thoughts and conversation. It’s a shared experience over five and a half hectares and dozens of rooms.

domestic bliss. I swept the chimneys this week, Mary Poppins. This fire has always been hard to light. It’s super easy now. And it gets a lot hotter. Strange, eh?!

Yesterday, I lit the fire in the kitchen for the first time. It’s like a mini Aga, but a cheap Chinese knock-off mini Aga. And last night, it frosted pretty hard. Now, winters might get a little tough, and I might get a little grumpy when the skies only brighten up for a couple of hours a day, but the feeling of returning to the intimate in the barracks is beautiful, secure and homely.

Still, there is plenty to be getting on with. This last week, I got the last of the potatoes in. There are a lot of them. Every year, there are some which don’t get eaten by the spring, when they start to sprout again. The idea is to eat the ones which store the best last, but also, I meant to grow fewer this year. Well, that didn’t work out. It was an absolutely crazy harvest, and I have more than ever.

I dug and raked the plot completely in 3 days, and found another 20 kilos of spuds which I boiled and fed to the pigs - having the fire running all day, it seems a waste to not permanently have hot water, and something cooking. I would never cook potatoes for pigs on solar, but when I have all this heat anyway, they get lucky.

Then I sowed the wheat. It’s a bit late going in, and what with that frost last night, it might be dead in the ground. We shall see in the next week, hopefully.

The weather station console was in the coldest part of the loft over night, but it still only went down to 12 degrees. At 6.47 this morning, it was -1.8 outside. I’m quite impressed seeing as I need to fix curtains and holes in windows.

I also fixed up the doors the pigs busted last year. I think one of them will hold, the other seems to too far gone, and they will no doubt destroy it. I am planning to move them over to their winter palace this week, possibly even today. I think I have got everything ready, and now it’s just a question of biting the bullet and moving them over. I shall certainly do the last test on the electric fence when I go to feed them in about an hour.

Mostly this week, though, younger child and I made a xylophone for the older child’s child. Or the grandchild as she is also know. Believe it or not, she just had her first birthday. I forgot to ask younger child if I could post a picture of her, as the only photos I have of said musical instrument are as modelled by her. If she says I can post it, I’ll put it on an Instagram story. And you had better go and like it!

Frost: Hard. It was over 20 degrees a week ago!

This week I shall (optimistically):

• Fix all the curtains in the loft. While I am at it, I might well mend some of the new holes that I discovered in the window frames when we had a bit of a storm recently. Do indoorsy stuff generally.

• Harvest all the cabbages. This might involve making some new pirate boxes for them to go in.

• Chop wood. But this hardly needs saying. I really didn’t get much done in the summer.

And in a final word. The world is falling apart. Forget the headlines, go outside and breathe in the air and tell me you can’t feel it. We need to start working harder on being good to each other. So go, and be good.

Much piratey love

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo

Currently Reading:

The Genesis Strategy by Stephen H. Schneider, 1976

I feel sure that I read this book in the late 80s. I’ve been trying to get a copy of it for years, and about a month ago, a used hardback copy (ex library) first edition turned up on Amazon for 15 quid. It’s in perfect condition, and I’m super happy. Clicking on the image above opens an Amazon affiliate link where I would earn 5c if you were to buy it, but I’m not really recommending it. It is definitely worth a read, but only buy it if you are way past Happy Doomer and are now into“historical interest” ambivalence. You read my copy when you come and stay.