Different Worlds Apart

Our internet connection is working so I need to use this to the fullest LOL

November has been an amazing month, lots of sun shine, lots of mellow golden days and cold clear star-lit nights. And the sunsets ... and sunrises ... gosh it was all so amazing. I just love November, heck I just love autumn and winter. While most folks get winter depression I seem to get winter passion :) I love to sit and relax in the garden surrounded by my dogs and watch the passing of light, the one hour between day and night when everything turns blue and then the sky is ablaze (well, on a clear day). And this particularly soothing golden light through the autumn foliage .. I love it!!!

While I write this the Eastern horizon is very gently turning from black to these amazing touches of magenta and I hope I can catch another wonderful sunrise on camera later on.

Anyway, life has been fabulous, even though it is strenuous and busy and most of the time I only remember which day it is when the garbage folks come (we have three days a week where all sorts of garbage is picked up ... Wednesdays is for bio/green garbage; Thursdays for either plastic/metal or paper and Fridays is for all the rest that doesn't fit the first two and you know what? Our trash can is tiny ... yes, TINY! It is bucket sized, well a big bucket, but still .. bucket sized. It is really amazing how much plastic and metal, but especially plastic stuff we are buying with our food. Plastic packages for sausages, meats, even vegetables and fruits. What happened to the good old newspaper or brown paper wraps?
As we are changing our way of living and especially eating, I have started to take empty tupperware with me when I go grocery shopping. First the supermarkets were a bit put off but as we are buying less and less there (during summer we got all of our fruits and vegetables from the garden and we've never eaten so healthily nor so fresh in all our lives) and go to the extra length to buy ecologically sustainable and free range dairy products and meats now. Yes, it is costlier, but then again we do not eat so much meat anymore anyway, so it doesn't affect our purses too much.
Luckily we have a couple of bio/eco farms around here so I can phone them up, ask what they have some particular offers that week and then I go there with my tupperware. And the butcher can portion all off already so you just need to label your boxes and chuck them into the freezer for further use. It's wonderful.
A couple of women here are already thinking of buying a pig or two next year and feed it for a year before having them slaughtered.I guess we have all seen the River Cottage DVDs one too many times LOL But the RC team would be proud of us. I have already asked the farmer down the road and he would offer us stabling free of charge for half a pig (no matter how many pigs we will eventually get). Another woman has re-activated her goat herd with a male goat and we have been experimenting with making goat's cheese already. Could be that we will have a couple of mini-goat's in the new year as well ... we will see.

Our dogs are striving and are still as cheeky as ever. Our two foster dogs are slowly but gradually, especially Sammy, learning to enjoy their new lives and I'm particularly proud of Lir who gave the impression to never learn how to walk on a leash, as he was so afraid of the harness and the leash itself. But he has now mastered like he had never done anything else in his life. We even can now walk through the village without me having to drag a 30 kg dog along. He even walks without a leash now when we are on the fields and the woods.

It is still very painful and frustrating to watch any progress with Sammy. At least she now walks within two feet of us and doesn't take flight immediately. Still ... she doesn't like to be touched, doesn't like any kind of harness or collar but there is progress. She now knows she is called Sammy or Sam Sam by us. If I call her she slowly approaches and waits what I have in store for her. We feed her by hand and she slowly, very slowly allows us to treat her like one of our dogs. But I don't see her moving into her forever family just yet. She will need at least another year if progress continues to be as it is up till now.

And the rest of the pack are all happy and healthy and fully demand our attention :)
( Chandini, Lulu and Careto )

Our internet connection is working so I need to use this to the fullest LOL

November has been an amazing month, lots of sun shine, lots of mellow golden days and cold clear star-lit nights. And the sunsets ... and sunrises ... gosh it was all so amazing. I just love November, heck I just love autumn and winter. While most folks get winter depression I seem to get winter passion :) I love to sit and relax in the garden surrounded by my dogs and watch the passing of light, the one hour between day and night when everything turns blue and then the sky is ablaze (well, on a clear day). And this particularly soothing golden light through the autumn foliage .. I love it!!!

While I write this the Eastern horizon is very gently turning from black to these amazing touches of magenta and I hope I can catch another wonderful sunrise on camera later on.

Anyway, life has been fabulous, even though it is strenuous and busy and most of the time I only remember which day it is when the garbage folks come (we have three days a week where all sorts of garbage is picked up ... Wednesdays is for bio/green garbage; Thursdays for either plastic/metal or paper and Fridays is for all the rest that doesn't fit the first two and you know what? Our trash can is tiny ... yes, TINY! It is bucket sized, well a big bucket, but still .. bucket sized. It is really amazing how much plastic and metal, but especially plastic stuff we are buying with our food. Plastic packages for sausages, meats, even vegetables and fruits. What happened to the good old newspaper or brown paper wraps?
As we are changing our way of living and especially eating, I have started to take empty tupperware with me when I go grocery shopping. First the supermarkets were a bit put off but as we are buying less and less there (during summer we got all of our fruits and vegetables from the garden and we've never eaten so healthily nor so fresh in all our lives) and go to the extra length to buy ecologically sustainable and free range dairy products and meats now. Yes, it is costlier, but then again we do not eat so much meat anymore anyway, so it doesn't affect our purses too much.
Luckily we have a couple of bio/eco farms around here so I can phone them up, ask what they have some particular offers that week and then I go there with my tupperware. And the butcher can portion all off already so you just need to label your boxes and chuck them into the freezer for further use. It's wonderful.
A couple of women here are already thinking of buying a pig or two next year and feed it for a year before having them slaughtered.I guess we have all seen the River Cottage DVDs one too many times LOL But the RC team would be proud of us. I have already asked the farmer down the road and he would offer us stabling free of charge for half a pig (no matter how many pigs we will eventually get). Another woman has re-activated her goat herd with a male goat and we have been experimenting with making goat's cheese already. Could be that we will have a couple of mini-goat's in the new year as well ... we will see.

Our dogs are striving and are still as cheeky as ever. Our two foster dogs are slowly but gradually, especially Sammy, learning to enjoy their new lives and I'm particularly proud of Lir who gave the impression to never learn how to walk on a leash, as he was so afraid of the harness and the leash itself. But he has now mastered like he had never done anything else in his life. We even can now walk through the village without me having to drag a 30 kg dog along. He even walks without a leash now when we are on the fields and the woods.

It is still very painful and frustrating to watch any progress with Sammy. At least she now walks within two feet of us and doesn't take flight immediately. Still ... she doesn't like to be touched, doesn't like any kind of harness or collar but there is progress. She now knows she is called Sammy or Sam Sam by us. If I call her she slowly approaches and waits what I have in store for her. We feed her by hand and she slowly, very slowly allows us to treat her like one of our dogs. But I don't see her moving into her forever family just yet. She will need at least another year if progress continues to be as it is up till now.

And the rest of the pack are all happy and healthy and fully demand our attention :)
( Chandini, Lulu and Careto )

... sort off ... somehow ...

Life has been hectic and stressful around here ... we have been busy harvesting and making ready for winter. Living in a little village seems to be the epitome of peace and quiet while in reality it is far from it. There are private parties, community parties, community bazaars, more parties and bake offs and what not. I haven't been so busy in all my life LOL
Autumn has been wonderful, lots of blue skies, sunny days and November even holds the record of first November in 100 years with less than a cup of rain falling. A tea cup mind you.
Anyway, while we had some splendid weather, we had also a lot of festivals and fetes and merriment was all around. And now we have December already and the first advent has passed and gone and the second Advent Sunday is just around the corner and I still have just one wreaths and one garland of Christmas decorations out. I need more time ... like 48 hours in just one day lol. I hope to get the rest of the Christmas decorations done by tomorrow and then I can start appreciating and enjoying this time of year IF ... yeah if our internet connection gets its act together and WORK for a change.

So to the birthday kids and all the others I have missed ... Happy belated birthday and Happy belated Turkey Day :) I hope life will get back to normal after the holidays :)

Nothing is better than standing in the garden, all around you is a crisp frosty day with a brilliant blue sky and you are eating raspberries warmed from the sun fresh from a shrub.

Nothing is better than standing in the garden, all around you is a crisp frosty day with a brilliant blue sky and you are eating raspberries warmed from the sun fresh from a shrub.

Yesterday one of the original chickens we bought with the house last year died during the night. When we brought the chickens in for the night, they were alright but during the night one of them (one of the black ones) was eggbound (in German Legenot where birds want to lay an egg and push and push but as they are too old to still produce an egg they push out their cloaca :s It's messy, enough said).
She is now at rest with the rest of our pets on our little cemetary.
Sammy is shier than ever. We needed to give her some medicine and she was so afraid and angsty that now she is actually crying when we come near her. *sigh* I don't know what to do .. we need to give her the medicine as she still has open patches on her back. And she still needs a good claw clip but that is out of the question so far, she doesn't want to get touched .. let alone being captured and held. I doubt she will ever be a normal family dog. which is really sad. So now we are back to square one and I have to find a way where I can touch her without her taking flight.
Lir on the other hand is getting more and more comfortable with us every day. He is a big clown with a boyish attitude and you can actually feel that he loves his home and us. It will be so heart breaking when he finds his forever home. But then again ... so far only two ppl were interested in him but when they heard he was only using three legs, they didn't want him anymore. Jeesh, he is not disabled. His right hind leg is just shorter, but he uses it for getting up and down the stairs and all.
With the days now getting much colder, we are still trying to find our indoors pace compared to our outdoor pace of the summer. While the door to our court yard and garden was open 24/7 now it is closed as we try to keep the warmth in and the cold outside.
All have adjusted so far though it gets increasingly more difficult to persuade Careto and the two little girls to go outside LOL They are sooo typically Southern dogs, as soon as it gets cold, they rather stay indoors in the warmth. Lir on the other hand with his big fur loves the cold. He even lays down on the cold flagstones while I work in the yard (while my Southern terrors sit on the coconut mats in front of the door and look as if they are dying of frost bite LOL

Life has slowed down, most vegetable beds are bare now and ready for winter but my aubergines are still striving. This is the second time we experience harvest season now here in our little abode and I have to say it is even more fun than last year. We still have lots and lots of apples but with giving away a lot of them this year (opening up our garden for the public) we haven't had the sinking feeling of drowning in apples. We made apple juice (which has already been drunk!!!) and baked and cooked and it all has been fun.

However, I still have the feeling as if I'm mere dabbling in the way of homesteading. Probably because when I read blogs whose owners have been harvesting like mad and conserving full time this season I feel so incompetent. LOL IOh well, next year .. next year with the fence now sturdily in place and no way that the marauding chickens can eat up my budding cucumbers and courgettes etc. we will have a smashing good time. Over the winter I want to fix the greenhouse as well. Ever since Careto has ripped it apart I need to sew it again and hopefully it will be fixed easily.

I also want to do some sewing and crafting again ... there is a new quilt in the works as well as a crafting project for the bedroom (which still isn't painted btw) and I need to put up the finishing touches in the sewing room. *sigh* So much to do and so little time but with this coming winter hopefully being a cold long one again with lots of snow I hope to fin the time to finish up all my projects :)

Life has slowed down, most vegetable beds are bare now and ready for winter but my aubergines are still striving. This is the second time we experience harvest season now here in our little abode and I have to say it is even more fun than last year. We still have lots and lots of apples but with giving away a lot of them this year (opening up our garden for the public) we haven't had the sinking feeling of drowning in apples. We made apple juice (which has already been drunk!!!) and baked and cooked and it all has been fun.

However, I still have the feeling as if I'm mere dabbling in the way of homesteading. Probably because when I read blogs whose owners have been harvesting like mad and conserving full time this season I feel so incompetent. LOL IOh well, next year .. next year with the fence now sturdily in place and no way that the marauding chickens can eat up my budding cucumbers and courgettes etc. we will have a smashing good time. Over the winter I want to fix the greenhouse as well. Ever since Careto has ripped it apart I need to sew it again and hopefully it will be fixed easily.

I also want to do some sewing and crafting again ... there is a new quilt in the works as well as a crafting project for the bedroom (which still isn't painted btw) and I need to put up the finishing touches in the sewing room. *sigh* So much to do and so little time but with this coming winter hopefully being a cold long one again with lots of snow I hope to fin the time to finish up all my projects :)

Though we had a not so nice summer, the end of September/beginning of October was warm and sunny ... everyone flocked to the garden ... and I mean everyone :)



( more under the cut )

The following entry was supposed to be posted on September 1st ... so much has been happening I hadn't have the time to sit in front of the computer :s
Is it already a year since we moved into our little paradise in the country?
In the past 12 months I have made memories and experiences that have been both exhilarating and annoying, truly wonderful and deeply hurtful. But we persevere. We all do and with each little life that comes and goes, we strive on.
This slowness, this de-accelaration, it works for us. Especially for me as I have never been happier than on our little smallhold here.
September ... a year from now I wonder what will have happe4ned. Will I be busy doing all the things that I had already scheduled for this year and didn't get around doing because of the continued attack of the vicious chickens? Will my garden strive and be full of plentiful harvest or will it wither like it did this year because of the chickens?
The past year has offered many great experiences. We have become richer and wiser, but also a bit more lonely (in the winter) and much more secluded. Friends come and go, my great grandfather used to say, good friends stay. Well, I haven't had any good friends, or so it seems. During winter most of my so-called friends turned away because of little petty schemes from someone I had never thought would be so ruthless. But where doors close, windows open and since spring, as with the first blossoms on our apple trees, friendship has sprung and abounded. This village and it villagers are not so strange, so utterly different anymore. I know a lot of ppl now, and friendship slowly blossoming.
Over the past few weeks, ever since our anniversary of the move from D to B occurred, I've been thinking about all the things I've been and should have been grateful about. The garden ... our delicious potatoes even though they are quite small, the courgettes and tomatoes fresh from the garden. Did you know that lettuce freshly picked and eaten is actually SWEET????
Nothing to compare with the lettuce you get from the supermarket. The vitamins turn bitter once lettuce is picked. The wonder of eating freshly picked strawberries and tomatoes still warm from the sun is something I wish a lot more ppl can experience. Of course, it's more work. You need to find the time to tend, to grow, to weed.