I lived a "Victorian Farm" life!

Victorian Farm was GOOD, again, this week !

I can remember stuff like that in the laundry in our house in 1969 ( not 1979 as I put in a comment to Greentwinsmummy)! My family moved to a very rural smallholding in 1969, no mains water, electric, oil or gas...oil lamps, candles, wood range for cooking, a well for all water, chamberpots inside and a pit privy at the bottom of the garden which was moved once a year to an new location, with copper and dolly and mangle for washing, and a tin bath which we all shared once a week...and a kitchen garden, a larder, a cold shelf ( no fridge!) and killing and gutting game, chickens etc....My poor mum! spent 2 years living much like they are living in the VF programme....,

she even made beer in the copper wash kettle! (real Lark Rise to Candleford stuff, and my Mum actually lived in that area in the 1920's! - I was born in 1962 when she was in her late 40's btw.....) and we had Bees.

and no elec for the first 6 months we lived there... so tilley lamps and candles for lighting and an iron heated on the range, just like in TVF

I helped with all this and can remember the effort involved even now, 40 years on..( (I was 7 at the time)and helped Mum with the washing and the cooking and the getting water etc....

I remember washing sheets as an absolute MISERY in the winter..trying to get them dry was terrible...and the house wreathed in stream...and the pages of my book getting damp ( it was the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as I recall!)

BUT it was also magical and the first winter we were there, it was the BEST Christmas I can ever remember....which is why I can STILL remember it so vividly I guess :-)

Hard to imagine now, living like that, within a middle aged person's lifetime (me)...but we did...until 1971 when we finally got the new kitchen and bedrooms and bathroom built, then it was radiators and electric cookers and 'fridges etc..although my Mum always said nothing she cooked ever tasted quite as good, compared with what she had done on that old range.....

I also had horses and we had chickens and pigs and sheep...and I used one of those LETHAL chaff cutters to make food for them..coo child protection laws would have a field day over that now! Whirling, unprotected blades being operated by an 8 year old! The Mangel Worzel cutter was almost as dangerous....

Actually, it WAS ALL dangerous...not all the old stuff is good......

But I do look back on it with immense pleasure, not least because I KNOW I could do it all again ITSHTF...and if TEOTWAWKI actually happened...(!)

Guess who has downloaded the The Year of the Farm, farming bible they keep refering to ?

Why I am suddenly even more worried about Climate Change

Read this article, digest, be VERY concerned....,

and then wonder why the "Plane Stupid" protesters are being so pilloried in the Press for trying to highlight the damaging effects of aviation??

I personally would heap them with plaudits and flowers and laurel wreathes as speakers of truth, prepared to take non violent direct action for their views..

where would we be now without Suffragettes doing the same a hundred years ago?

( for the record, my Great Aunt and my Aunt were Suffragettes!)

And how much more of this type of factual scientific reporting will it take to make us all stop over consuming and start to reduce our personal Carbon Dioxide emissions?

The view from my window

This is the view from the Study window, looking North

Looking West


Looking west at dusk.

I am SO lucky to live here! I sit in the study and work at my computer, Compostman has a desk next to me and we work on our respective stuff in companionable silence. AND we can look out over the gloriousness of the Herefordshire landscape.

This weekend we have seen some astonishing sunsets, truly spectacular. I honestly do not think I have seen such pink skies for many years, not since Mt Pinatubo volcano errupted, a long time ago.

I DO worry, though, that there are so many con trails in the dusk sky. All those aeroplanes contributing to Global Warming. :-((

New phone

I went into Hereford on Saturday..I was meant to be being "Compostwoman" on the recycling bus in High Town BUT I got delayed by a tractor and trailer losing its load on my lane so was too late....

apart from the other stuff I needed to do, I also went into my mobile phone provider shop, to look at phones. There was much merriment on the part of the assistants (!) in the shop when they realised I had STILL got the phone I bought from them 6 years ago.................and it still worked!

I bought a newer phone because my old handset is getting a bit unreliable and I NEED a phone I can rely on, working, when I am doing Forest School stuff in the woods with children..otherwise I would NOT have bothered to change my phone!

I settled for a £29 model, it is a rugged, water resistant model, it has a camera AND it makes calls (!) and I have given my old phone to Compostman ( who had never yet had one.....)

the sales person was obviously disappointed I didn't want the "bells and whistles " phones BUT I made it clear I ONLY wanted something to make calls on, rather than something I would carry around welded to my ...................(!)

I have a good camera, an MP3 player.....Why TF would I want to pay extra to have these incorporated ( at a lower spec ) into my phone, is beyond me...............

I guess I AM a Luddite, after all..!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some thoughts on modern life.

Reading a post on another blog and catching a news item on the radio just now has set me thinking....always a bad thing!

It made me muse about the way most people choose to live their lives..well I *assume* it is a choice.....(!)

They work long hours, to pay credit card bills they have run up for "stuff" then watch TV programmes on how to "de clutter" their lives of all the "stuff" they have recently bought ...they have no time to cook so they have to buy ready made meals or fast food or takeaways ..they get ill through stress or overwork...they have no time to go for a walk so pay money to use fossil fuels to power gym equipment to take exercise.....they have NO TIME to just BE....

They throw away stuff because they don't know how to fix things and lots of people throw away things JUST BECAUSE they are a few months old or are not "the latest model" what ever that is?


Parents are encouraged to go back to work when children are very young ( whether they want to or not) and then have to pay most ( or all) of their salary to someone else, to care for their children... :-o Do people really WANT to live like that? I don't...

Even when Compostman and I were both in full time work and lived in a small town house, we were not like that! ... OK we spent a lot of time and a lot of our surplus cash playing with an old racing car (which we restored and maintained ourselves I hasten to add!) BUT, we cooked real meals from real food, we grew some of our veg, we recycled and repaired stuff, we were active in our community and in various environmental groups, we made our own amusements ( walking, gardening, reading, music etc ) we holidayed in the UK ( apart from a couple of work trips in the space of 10 years...to the US of A ...where we stayed when the job was done and made a big holiday out of the need to fly there for work!) and were modest in our lifestyles, only spending money we had saved up if we wanted to buy something big.

And after we moved to Compost Mansions and we had Compostgirl, I stayed at home with her until she started school. I wouldn't even have dreamt of restarting my working life until she had started at school! I did this because I and Compostman both viewed it as important for US to bring up OUR OWN CHILD and we both felt that it was the most important thing we could do in the WORLD.

It meant we had less money, yes, than if I had gone back to work BUT we also had a beautiful daughter who was raised by her parents, not some other person who we had paid to do our job for us.

It may sound like I am critical of others in this post...I am NOT! Honest! I do understand that everybody has different needs and circumstances! I am not knocking what other folk have to do with their lives or children BUT I AM wondering why we, as a society , seem to undervalue so much the traditional ideas of making a home, growing our own food and raising a family SO MUCH nowadays. And why so many people seem to worship at the altar of "stuff" and "celebrity" so much as well.....

So I don't know...do people like living the "rat race" way, eating fast food, watching reality TV, working all hours in the week, shopping all weekend etc......or is it just that they know no different, or can't afford to do things differently or ( maybe) can't bring themselves to dare to think that they COULD live a different way?

What do YOU think?

Rant over. ;-)

"You don't work...you can't be tired!"

You know, it struck me ( not for the first time!) how odd some folk's attitudes are. I know we live in a fabulous place and have a lot of land, however it IS a fair bit of work to look after. Compostman and I grow most of our own foodstuff, tend to various animals, renovate and look after the house, make preserves, compost, manage a woodland for wildlife and for our wood supply and generally we are quite self sufficient in making stuff and mending stuff etc. My days are really very full..especially when I factor in that I am often forced to rest or can't do stuff due to CFS/ME..which means I HAVE to rest and recuperate when I am exhausted or ill.......And I certainly don't seem to have much "spare time" to just sit and twiddle my thumbs! (not that I WOULD, but you know what I mean :-) and neither does Compostman!)

Compostman is busy fixing up our house and grounds, doing jobs which many people would have to employ a builder or carpenter etc to do...as well as gardening, felling trees, digging, shredding, etc etc.

We both do various voluntering activities and I work as an Environmental Educator occasionally, as well as doing my Master Composter volunteering and various college courses. and for our recreation we do stuff with computers, but usually ( as you may have observed!) late at night.

Unlike people who work 9-5 type jobs, our weekends are, if anything, even busier than our weekdays...as we have family type things to do as well!

BUT because I don't work in a "conventional " way ie for an employer 9-5, 5 days a week....I get various comments along the lines of "it must be nice to have lots of leisure time" or if I say about having been busy or feeling rather tired I get "but you don't work, you can't be busy/tired! " I can only assume that people think my life is like one long holiday from full time work. Except it IS NOT..this IS my work........doing what I do...

Hmmm wonder who they think does all the stuff at our place? Do they think we have an army of gardeners :-?

Ah well, to each their own I suppose and I would rather have *my* life than be working all hours to make money to buy food because I can't find the time to make food, because I work all the hours...etc etc ...I think THAT is called "the rat race" ....and I don't like rats ;-)