The first noel

Well I have managed to drag my hands out of yet another box of chocolates for long enough to type and tell you a little bit about our first Christmas in our new place. After months of preparation, was our first homegrown yule all it was cracked up to be?

So first up the decorations… Disregarding the bags and bags of crappy plastic baubles and tattered tinsel that we seem to have accumulated over the years, we didn’t do a bad job of tarting the house up to resemble something out of the pages of a lifestyle magazine (if you squint your eyes just a little). We don’t want for conifers around the place so giving a good hair cut to one or two of the prettier ones to cover the mantelpieces and windowsills was not a problem. Ditto the ivy. Sadly not the holly so we had to ‘borrow’ (half-inch) some from the nearby woods. We did however spy an actual Christmas tree lurking at the bottom of the garden in a boggy area that we were planning to raze to the ground next year anyway. OK so it maybe wasn’t your classic Norway spruce but it fulfilled the brief of being a pine, roughly the right size and with enough branches to entertain a three year old for a good half an hour of tree decorating (it turns out that it also drops needles at the merest hint of a breath turning the living room floor into a forest-like carpet of spikes – not ideal when your baby has just starting crawling and putting everything in her mouth…). I also like to think that it was more of a Farrow and Ball shade of green – Leprechaun’s Crotch™ or some other such bullshit name.  Having selected our tree, we had wonderful festive visions of all heading out as a family, skipping through the freshly fallen snow, all wrapped up in our hats and gloves and scarves and perhaps humming a Christmas carol or two as we happily felled our little tree. As it happened, there was a howling gale and driving rain as we dragged two very pissed off children down to the bottom of the garden, whereupon their vocabulary was somewhat expanded for the worse as they watched their father wrestle with some viciously spiky branches before we sacked it off and retreated to the house, leaving Daddy to salvage remains of said tree and drag it out of the bog. Not a Christmas carol or flake of snow in sight. To be fair though once in the house and dolled up it looked ‘proper bo’ (although I imagine that any old stick covered in shiny, sparkly things would look pretty good...)

Before...

...after

Secondly on to the all-important Christmas Dinner. After four months of living the life of poultry rock stars (eating and drinking too much, trashing the roof of the hen house and most of the feed bins and making one hell of a racket) it was finally D-Day for our turkeys (or T-Day was we like to call it now). The day dawned like any other for them and they pottered about quite happy and oblivious up until the very end. Apart that is from one of the tom turkeys who put up a bit of a fight and ended up strutting around about the place mid-cull much to my husband’s horror. It was at this point that a large truck drove into the yard attempting to deliver a brand new sofa (turns out that they had the wrong address). They took one look at the dripping, bloodied knife in my husband’s hand and the mud and guts all over him and beat a hasty retreat back up the drive, uttering to his pal “we’ve got the wrong house, let’s get the hell out of here!” A bit more than they bargained for I think. A couple of hours later, birds plucked and dressed he made a start on the gravy. Yes I know. Three days in advance. Some people happily opt for Bisto but not around here. I was sent to gather whatever I could find on the veg patch to enhance the flavour (some weedy leeks and celery) and the stock pot was produced. Into which went necks, offally bits and then the feet, claws and all. Now I’m not sure if you have ever had the pleasure of smelling boiling turkey feet but let me tell you it is not one of life’s sweeter aromas. More of an olfactory nightmare in fact. Put it this way I found myself involuntarily dry retching as I walked into the kitchen to the sight of these clawed feet poking out of top of the pot. A minor domestic ensued during which I declared I would not be going anywhere near the Christmas gravy if the feet were not removed immediately. Upon which they were duly extracted and the gravy went on to become the star of the show. There are limits to an adventurous palate after all.  Gravy made, it was onto the rest of the meal. Our chosen bird (sans feet and innards) broke the scales at 12lb so we’re not actually sure how much it weighed. Suffice to stay we are still overrun with bloody turkey, four days later. It did taste utterly amazing though, and so it should as I had to get up at 5am to put the thing in the oven. As for the accompaniments I’m somewhat ashamed to say that I only managed to contribute the broad beans (albeit award winning ones) to the meal and had to tap my Dad for the sprouts. The potatoes and the carrots *whispers in shame* came from a well-known supermarket chain. As did all the porky bits, so Peppa lives to see another day, and quite possibly another year the way she is rapidly becoming one of the family. She snorts in pure delight every time she sees us and comes bowling through the field looking for a scratch on her belly or behind the ears. A real character you might think, or maybe just a guzzling greedy guts. Perhaps understandably given the fact that she has been getting the pig equivalent of Michelin-starred scraps out of the kitchen all over Christmas. Who wouldn't come running for the last tasty bits of roast potatoes and brandy pudding?

Before...

...after (check out the feet - would you?)

The Grand Finale

And so thirdly and finally to the pressies. I’d love to be able to tell you that for our first Christmas in the place I lovingly hand-crafted pots of homemade jams and chutneys and terrines and wrapped them in tasteful recycled paper adorned with pressed wild flowers. But that would be a Big Fat Lie. Asides from the fact that I haven’t had enough time to blow my own nose over the past 12 months, one of the things we have realised about attempting any remote form of self-sufficiency is that you have to hang on to everything you have got.  You can’t be giving away all your hard won grub, especially when the hardest months of the year are still to come. Plus the fact that not everyone might appreciate your nettle and rhubarb relish with pickled ground ivy quite as much as you do. So I’m afraid most of my gifts this year originated from Ye Olde Amazone dotte comme.  The ones that actually did manage to get here at all (others failing to arrive because of flooded roads and I can only imagine others where the delivery drivers were so alarmed by the scenes of feathery carnage that they were too scared to get out of their vans).  

So that’s Christmas done and dusted for another year. Nearly. We’ve still got New Year to go so the party is not quite over just yet.  For one thing, there’s a box of chocolates sitting here with my name on it that needs finishing before we start to make all of our clean living, self-sufficient New Year's resolutions. Hmmmm, I wonder if I can grow my own cocoa beans...

The twelve days of Christmas

This week’s post is brought to you through the medium of song. Ok, so I know that the 12 days of Christmas is actually intended for the days after the Big Day but I hope you will allow me some poetic licence in posting this on the 12^th December with 12 days still to go. Oh and I’ve provided the York Notes guide to the lyrics below, just to fill you in a bit on what we’ve been up to of late. So here goes…

“On the 1^st (2^nd, 3^rd, etc., etc.) day of Christmas my true love gave to me:

                Twelve slugs a-sliming[1]

                Eleven rats a-robbing[2]

                Ten leeks not growing[3]

                Nine chooks for roasting[4]

                Eight fields a-flooding[5]

                Seven hens not laying[6]

                Six drains a-leaking[7]

                Five crumbling barns[8]

                Four tons of kale[9]

                Three mad turks[10]

                Two porkie pigs[11]

                And a white hen with no tail![12]"

So there you have it. We’re all gearing up nicely for our first Christmas at our new place (read: have not yet done a bloody thing - apart from the meat obviously.... in that respect we are triply covered).  I’m sure I can pull it out of the bag over the next 12 days. And if I can’t there’s always next year. Merry Christmas y’all!

---

[1] This week we have had an inexplicable slug invasion in the house. Not sure whether this is to do with all the rain or our eldest daughter’s penchant for gastropods and bringing them into the back porch to "look after them". Either way we are running a little short on salt. Must add it to the 14^th page of the ever-expanding shopping list for Christmas. So much for self-sufficiency...

[2] Rats still at it. Although they are now having to form an orderly queue behind the turkeys – see [10] below

[3] My leeks still resemble blades of grass. At what point do you throw in the towel and put a raised bed down to a bad job?

[4] It’s been an epic week for chicken. My husband embarked on a marathon execution run on Saturday, dispatching nine of the Ross Cobb chicks. He is like a machine now, 40 minutes per bird and didn’t even stop for lunch. I have never seen breasts so large (oo er missus) but joking apart, one of them easily feeds a family of four. Maybe the rats are not that efficient after all…

Dolly Parton of the poultry world

[5] Desmond has not been as unkind to us as some parts of the country but we still haven’t escaped yet more centimetres of rain. Wellies and full waterproofs still very much the order of the day.

[6] We now have nine hens left and are getting a paltry offering of two eggs a day. Fair enough, four hens are designed to grace the dining table rather than the laying box, but for the remaining three who are still freeloading, they need to have a long hard think about their new year’s resolution or the stock pot will be calling.

[7] Perhaps a little unfair. The drains are actually working fine but there has been so much rain that the overflow has been perhaps inevitable. (Never in my life thought I would spend so much time thinking, talking or writing about drains. What have I become?!)

[8] No change there then. Yet. Although we have now cleared them all out and are gearing them up for their next incarnation. Watch this space.

[9] That and the sodding chard is all we have left to eat from the veg patch now. Oh and one solitary cabbage which we are saving for a sunny day (we can but dream).

[10] Not a great time of year to be a turkey but ours are certainly making the most of being on death row. Their days are spent charging around the pen like pterodactyls on speed making the most extraordinary noises and doing crazy (borderline rude) things with their wattles (they can become red and erect - no idea what the evolutionary design behind that is, go figure!). There is also definitely something of the Mick Jagger about them as they fluff up their feathers and strut about. Pleasingly they are now too fat to fit through the door of the hen house (a good sign). A slightly more tragic sign of their current weight was Snowy the Black Rock hen who was literally flattened and killed this week when one of the monstrous beasts accidentally sat on her. We were not too distraught given that she has not laid a single bloody egg in over ten months now. She was on borrowed time anyway…

Gimme Shelter (especially now I no longer fit through the hen house door)

[11] Strictly speaking we now only actually have one alive pig (sorry to break the news to you like this) but who am I to let a little fact like that stand in the way of a good lyrical line...?

[12] Not quite sure what is going on with this particular chicken but there aint any feather action going on at the rear end there at all. Most bizarre.

Missing something?

The Great Escape

Ever since we arrived here over ten months ago, one of the things which has really niggled at me is the fact that you can’t escape the place on foot without negotiating a complicated obstacle course of barbed wire fences, fast-flowing streams, steep-sided ditches and a series of five bar gates. All very well if you are in training for the next Tough Mudder competition, less than ideal if you have an increasingly heavy baby strapped to your front with a hyperactive three year old hanging onto one hand and an over-enthusiastic Springador bouncing around at the end of the lead in the other. So by way of an early Christmas present, my wonderful husband set about constructing a beautiful set of stiles across each of the fences leading from the house to the road and a mightily impressive bridge to take us all safely across the ever-rising stream/white water rapids and out on to the hill.

Thomas Telford eat your heart out!

After much measuring and scribbling and scratching of heads the wood was ordered and delivered, a bewildering array of power tools and cutting devices (I do often wonder on occasions like these how many are actually essential and how many are actually just for fun) were loaded into the back of the Landrover and off we trundled down to the front field to embark upon the project. I think it would be fair to say that my husband’s ‘attention to detail’ (borderline obsessiveness??) reached a whole new level on this project with every single piece of wood lined up to the millimetre with a set square and a spirit level before being screwed into place.  Despite the driving wind and rain and working in two foot of thick, squelchy mud (a killer workout for the thighs if ever there was one) it was all going swimmingly well. Right up until the point that is when we attempted to pack up shop for the day and leave the field. You know the tagline that Landrover are fond of peddling out in all those glossy Sunday supplements, the one where they tell you that a Landrover can go anywhere? Well, turns out they were wrong. Clearly they have never attempted to drive one across a boggy field in the middle of Wales in the middle of winter. In all my years working in the City, there was often mention to the fact that colleagues felt “stuck in a rut” with their project or their career. Well now I have a whole new understanding of that particular expression. Watching the tyres on the poor Landy (my husband’s absolute pride and joy – I often wonder whether he actually loves it more than me) getting deeper and deeper into the ruts in the field it became increasingly apparent that it was going nowhere, despite attempts to push it, get carpet under the wheels and rock it back and forwards. Unfortunately for our pride, this whole fiasco took place close to the side of the road where a steady stream of local farmers and neighbours were passing and quite obviously slowing down for a nosy and a giggle. I could just imagine the look on their faces as they thought, “Look at those stupid bastards at it again, will they ever learn?!” So as night fell, it was with heavy heart that my husband bid goodnight to his chariot of mud and we retreated inside. The following morning I came downstairs to find my husband frantically Googling and YouTubing the instructions on how to engage the 4X4 function on our tractor (another classic for our farming neighbours) before he headed out to rescue his truck. A complicated series of knots and ropes later and the Landrover was finally pulled free from the mud, a lucky escape given that a day later the whole field flooded yet again.

Stuck in a rut.... turns out you can't actually take a Landrover anywhere

Tractor to the rescue (please ignore the bird in this photo)

Speaking of escapes, we also managed to leave the house after dark this week for the ubiquitous Date Night, our first since January (I know, that’s what having kids does for romance!). All dolled up, animals fed and watered and children all cooperatively asleep on time for once, we headed off to our nearest pub, or ‘tafarn’ as they are affectionately known in Welsh. A wet and windy Thursday night in the middle of November in a tiny Welsh village with a population of c. 100 people, you could be forgiven for expecting to have a calm, peaceful evening with nothing but each other’s eyes to gaze fondly into whilst listening to the crackle of an open fire and perhaps the soothing dulcet tones of a male voice choir in the background. I suppose I should have known something was up when we struggled to find a spot in the car park before having to negotiate a bevy of heavily inebriated chaps attempting to leave the establishment in a fleet of taxis. As we opened the door we were greeted by a sea of Welsh farmers and their families at the wake of the much-loved and respected local gentleman. The expression ‘utter carnage’ does not adequately describe the scene as we stood six deep at the bar for over half an hour waiting for a long awaited pint. It was actually worse than a Friday night on Clapham High Street. Finally with our drinks in hand and an agreement made with the barman to bring us whatever food they had left in the kitchen (supplies of almost every alcoholic and soft drink and food item having been depleted after the afternoon’s hard mourning), we got to know pretty much every person in the pub and successfully managed not to actually have to utter a single word to each other all night. Shots of Jägermeister were ordered and downed, weird and wonderful local specialties sampled (a particular highlight being Guinness with a good slug of wild cherry cider in it – known simply as “John’s pint”) and at one point later in the evening I found myself standing at the top of a ladder precariously admiring one of my new friends’ roofing skills. Later still I became engaged in a conversation about robotic milking with a local dairy farmer and actually found myself deeply humbled by the technology and IT prowess of this fellow who was world leading in his field, having had dignitaries from China visiting his pioneering farm that very week. Having worked in IT consulting for so many years in the South East I had mistakenly thought that there would be no call for advanced computer systems, data analytics and digital technology, let alone global business trips in deepest, darkest North Wales – yet another example of how wrong many of my preconceptions about moving here have been.

The next morning, slightly the worse for wear and a wee bit sore from all the strenuous bridge construction, yet another of our preconceptions was shattered. Our neighbours, curious about the fury of activity taking place in the corner of our field, came for a wander to see what we were up to. Having spent many years locked in a bitter dispute with the estate landowner where we used to live in Hampshire over a tiny parcel of land where we used to grow our spuds, we were fully expecting some sort of discussion about where boundaries began and ended and who had responsibility for maintaining this and that. It turns out nothing was further from their mind and they looked quite bemused that we should even mention anything of the sort. It turns out that around here people are not quite so precious about their land and common sense is king when it comes to dealing with the folks next door. Amen to that. And so we spent the rest of the morning skipping about on our new bridge, playing Pooh sticks and jumping off the steps, happy in the knowledge that we can go off for a wander more easily now whenever we want to, although if my daughter has her way I’m not sure we’ll ever get much further than the bridge!

And off we go! (maybe)