After what has felt like an age of rain and mud we finally saw a break in the weather over the weekend and Monday dawned bright, dry and beautifully warm. The perfect day to go foraging! One of our homeschool friends had arranged a wonderful outing to meet Amber Westfall, a foraging expert and enthusiast. We met at a local community garden (I love those places!) but it was the bounty of the hedgerows that we were exploring rather than…
I can be found over at Playful Learning today continuing my series on helping children manage stress. This time I’m talking about a great but simple technique to help your child calm down and find peace when under pressure. Please do pop over and let me know what you think!
I often wonder what the boys will make of their childhood when they look back as adults. Their experiences are so different from those I grew up with, I can’t imagine how it will colour their view of the world. I sometimes worry that they are missing out on playing with neighbourhood kids, the normal experiences of walking to school or roller skating on the pavement outside that I took for granted. What is normal to them, climbing hay bales…
There is something about these little boy pigs that we have right now that reminds me of, well, little boys. A bit naughty, definitely unruly, impatient for dinner and capable of moments of exceptional cuteness that make any naughtiness seem a distant memory. I’m loving their little pink noses, there silly white feet and their abundant curiosity at everything. The pigs I mean, though I suppose the same applies to the boys! This weekend (in the middle of an impending…
Oh they grow up so fast these days don’t they? One moment they are teeny little bundles, so sweet and unknowing, then next moment they are living in a specially made shed in their own bit of the field. I’m talking, of course, about chicks. This year we’ve been able to get our birds out onto pasture earlier than ever as we now have a specially fenced ‘chick zone’ that is protected and set up just for them. When chickens…
It’s Monday already and I’m not entirely sure how the weekend went by in such a blur. But go by it did, in fact it whizzed by. It was a busy one, filled with celebrating (it was a certain chaps mumblemumble birthday) and learning, working and planning, reorganising and just plain cleaning up. In preparation for the new bees coming (hopefully in the next week) we spent Friday night cleaning out the beehive boxes ready for the new occupants. We…
On Saturday we set off into the wide blue sky to purchase three little piggles that will be living with us for the next few months. We had seen pictures but really nothing can prepare you for the cuteness of a naughty, snuffly, black and white piggle. As you may have noticed these are not exactly the same breed of pigs we had last year. Last year we went with Large Black pigs from a local farming friend, but he…
Planting tomato seeds… building forts… attending cookery school with Daddy (and making dinner to boot!) getting chickens (big and small) onto the green pasture that is leaping out of the earth all around us… looking up at the sky and seeing what we can spot… taking an evening stroll down by the pond… What better way to end a day than that?
When Stephen and I were shaping our first ever grown up garden we really didn’t know what we were doing. We bought a load of plants and then sort of stood there looking at them. When we started potting them up I started telling Stephen he was doing it wrong, indignant he replied “I thought you didn’t know what you were doing!” and neither had I. But when we began the work I suddenly knew what to do, years of…