Each year the chapel gives and the village school forces us to buy for the kids, sunflower seeds in some sort of contest. I am sure it is rigged as our plants always go West. This year one of four such plants has survived but is a midget. On the other hand, I planted my own seeds, nurtured them in the office and transplanted them to the back garden in the summer.
My latest blood test results are in and things continue to go the right way but I shall be a lifetime burden on the NHS because I was fat. RFK is right: obesity will destroy the West and we must stop pretending otherwise.
The white flowers on bindweed are stunning but the plant is a pest. I do not know about where you are but in these parts it has been a bumper year for bindweed. It is everywhere. I try to control it, pulling it down as it strangles what I have planted and tossing it on a growing bonfire for November. But it is a losing battle.
With fresh raspberries and blackberries and strawberries frozen earlier in the summer, I was able to serve up a birthday treat summer pudding for Joshua. I have enough of all three in the freezer to do the same for Jaya on her birthday in November. The blackberry season is almost over but i hope to take the kids for one last big forage to add to our stores. I pick and free more raspberries almost every other day, the harvest has been enormous.
When you lose a lot of weight some folks say ”well done” but others are nervous. ls it is a sign that you are sick. I started the year at c17 stone, I ended August at 13 stone 4 pounds and it was deliberate. No booze, no biscuits: in fact my diet had become almost entirely rabbit food and fish. In an attempt to tackle cholesterol I was taking my coffee black and cheese, hitherto a great love, was out.
The preparations for an 1880/81 North Dakota style “long cold winter” continue. My wood shed may be bulging but what happens if President Putin cuts off the UK’s gas supply just as a blizzard sweeps up the River Dee making a journey across the farm yard to my wood stack both hazardous and chilling?
A very kind attendee at Sharestock sent me a thank you present of a hamper packed with wonderful Scottish food and a bottle of French wine for the Mrs. As Joshua helped unpack it yesterday his face lit up, “you can’t have that, diabetes,you can’t have that, more for me”..So the whole family is delighted. But the most delighted is pictured below.
The sister of the Mrs was around so as soon as the kids were in bed she was off to the Hare. Left home alone, I had a chance to catch up in the Kitchen. Joshua’s birthday looms and like that of his mother, it will be a four day affair with events each day to celebrate. So there is cooking for that to do plus the storing of other produce for the Autumn.
My hero, Charles Ingalls, would have been proud of me as I defied almost non stop rain to start harvesting. I also brought in stacks of wood for the stove in the living room as it really is getting cold and the gas heating seems to be on the blink, yet again.
Set in the winter of 1880 to 1881, The Long Winter is a fairly grim book in the Little House on the Prairie series. It really did seem at one point as if the folks huddled in the North Dakotan town of De Smet might not make it. But they did, and sixty years later, Laura Ingalls wrote down what she remembered of a time when she was just fourteen. But the Indian…
You may remember that I have been somewhat obsessed and have covered water level at Lake Vyrnwy, here in North Wales, many times since it became a posterboy for the global warming cultists back in 2022 .
A day ahead of the Harris vs Donald Trump debate I look at the state of the US elections and the increasingly desperate war in Ukraine where Russia is clearly winning, another potential headache for the Biden Harris team
We were all told it was the warmest spring on record. I exhausted my supplies of wood, keeping my family warm by the stove into April. Readers across the UK tell a similar tale. As George Orwell put it in 1984 “ The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” In this case the “party” is the Met Office and the media and political class GroupThink with, natch, the BBC at the forefront. So after that “warmest spring” what was forecast to happen next?
rite another batch of dried fruit is soaking in black tea to make the next two cakes. But after a 24hor soak, yesterday’s batch was added to flour, brown sugar, a bit of mixed spice and an egg, mixed thoroughly and baked in the Aga. Hey presto, the fist two cakes for tea at Sharestock on Saturday are now ready and being stored, as they should be, to mature a little.
Joshua starts at the school that made Matt Hancock the man he is today on Thursday. Jaya starts part time at the village primary today. And thus last night both dressed up in their new uniforms as you can see below.
