Being Bored

For many years I have always joked that I would like time to be bored, well now I have and I'm bored being bored. Now we are living in just two rooms and with no garden to tend the days go very slowly, not having a proper kitchen any more does not help, I am used to baking every day, either cakes or bread, now all we have is a gas hob, so not even the pleasure of the Sunday roast.
Some people consider cooking a chore preferring to use tinned or frozen food that requires nothing more than heating up, now that must be boring.
We are still making our own yoghurt which is something, and although the weather is now getting quite warm we are cooking a lot of stews, we don't need an oven for that.
Thankfully we have quite a few friends that we can visit, without them it would not be worth while getting up in the morning. We could go out in the car and do some exploring but that means consuming fuel which we always try to conserve. I just have to bear in mind that it's only for another ten weeks or so and that we are going away for nearly three of them.

April Roses

Following what has been the mildest winter we have known in Spain we now seem to be having a very early summer. There are roses out in the garden and yesterday on our way back from friends we spotted the first bluebells, this is a month earlier than normal. Once again the fruit trees have been full of blossom so it promises to be a bumper harvest for the second year running, it seems strange that I will not be bottling all this wonderful bounty this year, I always find it so satisfying seeing a pantry full of bottled fruit, knowing exactly what has gone into the jars and knowing that no chemicals have been used at all.
Last week we discovered that you can still get good service in the 21st century. We had to cancel the insurance on our old Vitara as she had met her maker, no, nothing to do with us, anyway we cancelled the insurance and surprise, the no claims bonus will be ready for us in a couple of weeks. We then took back a cordless drill which I had bought at Christmas, somehow in our absence the charger had been damaged, we thought the shop would order a new charger for us, but no, they replaced the whole package, drill, the works with no questions asked. It's just a shame that this happens to be the store that we have stopped using due to the loud music, maybe we should give it another try and just use earplugs.

Purple toothwort

During our three weeks away from Spain we had a few days with relations in the West Country, although my husband is from this area we managed to visit several places that he had never been to including Morwelham Quay in Devon, this had been the most important copper mine in the UK up to the mid 1800's, it is now a living museum and attracts many school parties, the children all dress up in the cloths of the period, and all the staff are also in Victorian dress, it seems a wonderful way to teach children and they all seemed to be enjoying it.
Morwelham Quay was also the setting for the recently aired series 'The Edwardian Farm' in which a group of agricultural archeological historians lived and worked for twelve months recreating life as it was at the turn of the 20th century for a farming and mining community.
On our trip there we stopped of to investigate a lovely river flowing through a small wood in the Taymar valley, it was here that we discovered a plant unknown to either of us although we are avid ditch watchers and plant spotters. Once again we had discovered a plant very rarely seen, Lathraea Clandestina, it is a very pretty plant and highly perfumed it is also a parasitic plant, but does seem to have a number of hosts.
It is very strange still living in what until a month ago was our house, looking at the garden knowing that by now the potatoes would have been planted along with many of our root crops, we are however going back over to Ireland the beginning of May so we should have time to get our new garden started, we are planing to get potatoes, leeks, peas and beans planted as well as carrots and swede, we hope we will be able to find cabbage plants on sale and get them in as well. They should survive not being attended until our final move around the middle of July, after all it is supposed to rain in Ireland, although during our two weeks there in March we had just two damp days.

On the move

After seven years in Spain we are returning to Ireland, we always thought we would and had in fact planed to put our house on the market next year, however, through chance, a helper who knew people who were wanting to move to Galicia things have moved forward somewhat. Having had no plans for a move this year, our pets, nine cats and three dogs did not have their pet passports so we have had to start from scratch,they will be able to move the middle of July, in the meantime we just have to be patient waiting for the day that we can go. On the whole we have enjoyed our stay in Spain but it is an alien country, the language has always been a problem, first Catalan and now Gallego and the way of life is very different from either the UK or Ireland'
So, what will we be doing in the future? Well being selfsufficient is our way of life so nothing will change there, renovation? Never again, it is quicker and cheaper to build from scratch. We have learnt a few things living in Spain, never take water or electricity for granted, and you can never have enough insulation.
So what are we moving to? A typical Irish country cottage with two acres of land, we have learnt here that it is quite possible to grow all you need on very little land, one acre will be used for planting a woodland for coppicing, the other acre will be for the veg, fruit,poultry and rabbits.The cottage is in an area that we knew as it was on our delivery round and we have friends and an organic net work to work with close by.
In the meantime we will try to help the new owners of this house with the animals and give them guidance on growing their own food, and hope that they learn to enjoy it as we have.

Earth Stars

Spring is definitely here, the daffodils are now in bloom and the Mimosa is looking beautiful, the storks are very busy in and around their nests. This week we found our fist ever Earth Stars,on our land as well, these are a rare fungi and in fact had been though to be extinct in the UK, but then in 2006 they were discovered again. As you can see from the video, they are very interesting fungi and quite early.
Our geese are now laying very well and there are three nests of eggs, I wonder how many will hatch, providing the dogs dont start raiding the nests, which they are very prone to do.
There are big changes afoot for our selves, more news on that later in the week.

Spring is coming

There are definite signs that spring is not far away, last week we saw the first storks , we will look forward to watching them building new nests and repairing the old nests, then seeing the heads of the young appearing and then their first flights.
We had the first goose egg of the season laid today, hopefully they will lay a nice clutch and sit them, then we will have goose to eat again.
Nature is such a lovely thing to watch, we are looking forward to hearing our pool frogs calling to each other, hoping that we have the same ones as last year which we could easily identify, they got quite used to us and showed no fear, we were allowed to get close to take photos of them.
We have also seen the first primroses and our hazel is full of catkins, hopefully we will get the nuts this year instead of the squirrels.
Our willow is also bursting with it's buds and the Camellias are blooming again.
I love spring, it is my favourite season, as is summer, with all the fruit, and then of course Autumn, with the mushrooms, so maybe it is just winter that is not my favourite season. But even winter has it's compensations, lovely wood fires, and the smell of the crispness of a frost on the air.

Traceability

For quite a while the buzz word with major supermarkets has been traceability, as anyone who read our blog will know, we buy very little from this type of store and try to source locally or at least buy stuff that is produced in the country we live in. Today I wanted to buy some prawns, the only so called 'fresh ones' I could find were from Saudi Arabia, the label stated that they were a farmed product, however what was missing from the label was a farm reference number or even a lot number. I walked away and decided I would look at the frozen sea food section, there it was even worse, although there were plenty of different types of prawns on display only one section had country of origin been displayed, the others just said prawns, not even what class they were.I'm sure that things are no different in other countries, and that supermarkets only insist on traceability on the soft touches, i.e.the local farmer selling fresh food. If it comes from one of the big distributors it seems that this traceability goes out of the window. So yet another good reason not to shop in supermarkets.