Something to Read and Something to Watch

Now and then I am going to share links to some of the Facebook and YouTubers that I follow or know.  If you have suggestions that you think I would like to discover please feel very free to leave them in the comments below.

Let's all … while we have this time to be able to … scroll, watch and listen and find some new people with similar interests to us from all over the UK or the world.  

And while we're there lets delete, unfollow or simply stop looking at all those things that pull us in and drag us down and depress us.  Personally I'm starting with all the YouTubers who whilst talking about sustainability and simplifying their lives then bombard us with their latest acquisitions, sponsorship deals and things that you simply have to have.

Something to read and watch.

A brilliant person to follow on Facebook and/or YouTube is Plant Based Gabriel … well I mean just look at his beautiful little daughter.  There are lots of recipes, some foodie based gardening hints and tips … and lots of lovely photos of little Bridgette.

Plant Based Gabriel on YouTube

Plant Based Gabriel on Facebook

Something to make you smile.

Swans and Dolphins return the Venice Canals.

And Mavis says ... Hope you have a lovely day  💖

Sue xx

Retreating to Sanity

Images today from Google Images

It's time for us all to step back from the madness and remember who we are

We are the folk that can cope, that can sit back on our heels and relax those tensed up shoulders.  We can take a breath and let it out, another and then another and then open our eyes and our hearts to the realisation that we will get through this.  We will come out the other side, wiser, calmer and hopefully healthy.  

We will learn about who our true friends are, who cares for us and how much nature can help to settle our minds, rest our hearts and fill our lungs with fresh air.

We can fling open the windows of our homes and let the freshest air there has been for years flood in and fill our rooms with a vitality that might have been missing all Winter.

We can self isolate in a happy way.  Cleaning, gardening, reading, watching television and then watching, reading about or listening to just enough of the news to keep us informed but not to rear up once again those feelings of panic and worry.

We are so fortunate.

We have fresh water, roofs over our heads, the love of friends and family, and even if you are alone in the real world reading this proves you are very much part of the wonderful world of blogland.  Readers and followers are friends and blogging family, and each of us bloggers in our own unique way will be here whenever we can to make you smile, to help you laugh, to make you think and at the very least … and this is me folks … to give you some drivel to read.

Stay safe.

Stay well.

And know that you are welcome here whenever you want.  

Here at the Van the kettle is always on, and my words will stay and I will try each and every day to give you a little bit more drivel to read. 

Oh and don't forget to wash those bloody hands  😉

Sue xx

You Can Do This!!

'  Your grandparents were called to war … you're being asked to sit on the couch and watch the television.  You can do this!!  '

These words are from a very popular meme doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment in one guise or another.  It's very true.  All the whinging about isolation is unbelievable, if we're sensible we CAN do this..

The panic buying is also unbelievable, although I do admit to dashing on to Pets at Home for two of our usual bags of dog food after seeing the pet food aisle completely decimated in our local Tesco.  Ginger will be fine he has his usual tuna stash and a big bag of dried Whiskas.

One thing coming out of this Covid-19 madness is a wonderful sense of community.  Whenever there is any sort of catastrophe look for the helpers … they are always there.  Local shops offering home delivery for anyone that is self isolating or already poorly.  Supermarkets opening early with an hour clear for the over 70s to shop first thing while the stores are clean and freshly restocked … I do hope the bus drivers are ignoring the bus-pass time limitations and letting folk on free of charge.

It's weird and not so wonderful out there at the moment, but if the best we can do for ourselves and our communities is to stay at home at watch television, read books, do DIY and clean our homes then lets all do just that and stay safe.

Oh ,  one little drawback for us is that we have no television at the moment due to a fault with our Freesat connection.  We think a squirrel has chewed through our wire … well our dish is at the top of a tree so I'm surprised it's not happened before now …  so we are currently working our way through my massive DVD collection.  

I KNEW it would come in handy one day!!

Sue xx

Loos, Throws and Chickens

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, as well as being totally out of the mindset for blogging, I have been busy preparing for the sale of the house.

Over the past few days I've whizzed through the house like a whirlwind doing a thorough deep clean of everything, putting anything not in daily use into cupboards, the car boot sale box or the bin and I've also been trawling through the computer for photographs to put into a folder we are putting together for prospective buyers, so they can see the changes we have implemented since we took on this little patch of hillside that we currently call home.

Our nearest neighbour has been told of our hopefully imminent departure, but apart from family and all my lovely blog readers our decision to leave the place we have called home for the last 6.5 years has been a closely guarded secret.  Of course come next week when the For Sale board goes up this will no longer be the case and no doubt we will be the talk of the hillside and beyond.

My view from the breakfast bar (my 'office space') as I type this is this  ↑

It's very bare and not like my usual worktop view at all.  There are usually the clean dog bowls ready to be filled for the next meal, dispensers of foil and clingfilm and the odd jug or two waiting to be put away.  

I like it in some ways, it's calming on the eyes, but it's not a working kitchen is it!!

In the living room ... while the photographer for the estate agents snaps away with his camera ... the usual throws are off the sofas and the dogs are wandering around wondering where to sit.  Ginger has just casually strolled out through his catflap as if to say 'that's it I've had enough' and for the next hour there is no normality.

But we'll soon be back to an almost normal, of course we have to remain ultra minimal and relatively  clean and tidy while there are viewings going on, but the photos are the most important part to get right.

Outside we are relatively tidy, as tidy as a smallholding gets.  Leaves have been swept up, corners tidied and even the plant in the loo decided to flower for us ... so we left it there!

I've just been back on the computer and dug out a few sunnier shots for the photographer to add to his collection, because with it being March and us just edging into Spring here in North Wales there is not a lot of fresh greenery about, and the chickens have decided to hunker down out of the cold breeze so they were nowhere to be seen.

Hopefully the photographs, both mine and the professional photographers will be enough to spark some interest and we will be off on new adventures in the not too distant future.

Sue xx

A Change of Colour

 

Isn't it funny how without you even realising it a colour 'infects' your life!

I've always been a 'green girl', you all know that, in the house, in my clothes and obviously in the garden, loving most shades of green which quite naturally goes wonderfully with my green eyes.  But for the past few months surrepticiously a new colour has been appearing more and more on my day to day radar.

It started at Christmas time when I received as a gift from my younger son and his girlfriend, the above box with toiletries and a gorgeous scarf inside.  The scarf is mostly navy with touches of pink, lavender, mustard and white and it matches my day to day jacket, my warm dog walking coat and lots of my jumpers and t-shirts.

Mustard it would seem has been growing on me.

In Sainsbury's the other week picking up some milk for my Mum I spied these Converse style sneakers in a glorious shade of mustard and although they had none in my size ... just lots of size 4's, God sometimes I wish I had delicate little feet like that,  but I guess I would just topple over with such a small standing platform!!

Anyhoo ... I did buy one of the navy and white stripe t-shirts, and that fitted and looked wonderful.

  So ... when I got home I decided to put in an online order for a pair of the sneakers and two more of the t-shirts.  I do like to wear a 'uniform' of sorts in my day to day life to make getting dressed a little bit easier and quicker, occasionally a priority when you have two older dogs ... when you gotta go you've gotta go and all that!!

They arrived and yes … I still love the sneakers, in fact I love them so much for a split second, minute, perhaps even hour, I toyed with the idea of ordering some more.  Commonsense prevailed and I didn't, as I also have a white pair, a maroon pair and a navy pair all bought last year from various shops in the end of Summer sales.

My feet are going to be very happy this Spring, Summer and Autumn  😁

One thing I didn't think of in ordering the t-shirts online is that you get sent the hangers as well.  I usually pollitely refuse them in shops, hoping they will be recycled, gosh I do hope they are.  But now I have these.  I might put them in a box for someone to help themselves to at the next car boot sale we do, I'm selling the clothes rail so I might as well.

Sue xx

Old Photos and a Sales Pitch

I'm currently back home in Wales and while the rain pours down outside and the job I was doing (mending the Net Tunnel) has come to an abrupt end, I thought I would do a quick and very random blog post.

I have been busy over the last few weeks collating a set of photos ready for new prospective buyers to look through, which in a huge way go towards explaining the value of this property.  It's not just rising house prices that have pushed the asking price up of our property, (although that has helped immensely)  but also the massive amount of investment we have put in to make this go from a leaking house with a woodland and a field, to a house with the full infrastructure to be a virtually self-contained smallholding.  

There is a working Veggie Patch with raised beds, including established Rhubarb and Asparagus beds and a wildlife attracting mini flower garden in the middle.  Two chicken enclosures complete with henhouses suitable for up to 24 birds each.  One of which is in a young orchard of productive fruit trees, with three each of Apple, Damson, Plum and Cherry and four of Pear. And the other henouse nestling beneath Plum trees and ancient Apple trees of both cooking and eating varieties.

There is a wildlife friendly wood of Nut trees including Walnut, Sweet Chestnut and Almond, currently awash with fresh yellow daffodils.

There are forty five solar panels on the roof of a four car garage space, which power the house during the day and top up a fully functioning battery back-up system for night time use.  As well as selling surplus back to the National Grid.  The batteries are contained in a room inside a fully fitted out woodworking workshop ... which also houses a very handy chest freezer for surplus vegetables.  

There is an underground tank, part of a 8000 litre rainwater harvesting system with an electric pump to bring it up to the outdoor tap, this is also equipped with a working soakaway system, so no run off leaves the premises.

Below the Veggie Patch there are two 25ft x 12ft Net and Polytunnels fitted out with raised beds and work benches and proven to withstand even the mightiest of gales and bad weather. 

The old oil tank hidden behind the trellising is gone and in it's place behind the house is new modern double walled tank.   Sadly our animal trailer is long gone.                     

This area still looks just the same, although today unfortunately, it's nowhere near as sunny and the ancient apple tree has been pruned to give it a fresh lease of life by a team of professional gardeners who came in a couple of weeks ago and blitzed the place for us.

All this is only just touching on the work we have done and that some of you followed along with over the years on my old blog Our New Life in the Country,  even typing about it makes me realise that with our current work commitments and the urge to simplify our lives neither of us has the energy or the long term stamina to do this wonderful place justice.

It really is time to move on.

So if you're in the market for a fully functioning small holding we will be on the market in the next couple of weeks.  I will share the estate agents details with you once we have them ... and once the weather picks up enough for the photographer to come and do his bit because now we look nothing like these old photos.

We look glorious when it's sunny ... and even almost as good in the rain but cameras and rain don't mix unfortunately!!

This wasn't supposed to be a sales pitch but it's turned into one ... sorry!!

Sue xx

Panic Buying

Whatcha doing Mum?

Image - Byron Searle

Oh … just wondering if I should be out panic buying.

It's seems like it's everywhere on social media at the moment, tales of stripped bare shelves in shops and supermarkets, people panic buying toilet rolls, tinned and packet foods, people wearing masks on public transport and shopping with scarves pulled over faces.  It does makes you wonder what is sensible and what is actually necessary.

Personally I feel a steady approach is the best way forward, listen to and read the NHS guidelines, follow the local news and stay calm.  

The only thing is ... guess what we have just one pack of at home ... yep, you guessed it toilet rolls!!

Image - BBC News

I'm almost too embarrassed to go out and buy a pack, I should have left half of that 'Who Gives a Crap' box at home ... ooops 🤣

I'll take the pooches for a walk instead, they are looking at me as if they want one.

Sue xx