Winters (s)now fun..(see what I did there?)

I have been reading, with a greener than green envy, bike blogs that praise the virtues of riding in the snow.
Lovely blogs like Girls and Bicycles have wonderful pictures of winterised bikes ready to hit the road what ever the weather.

I wondered for a while if it was just another hang up I would have to get over, another "scary monster" in the road of living without a car, but sadly I really don't think it IS the case.

Most of these hardcore carfree blogs are city or town dwellers not middle-of-nowhere rural like me.
Gritters do our road last, clearing the main commuter routes first or often not getting to us at all. If we are lucky a snow plough will wind a path through the white stuff.
The problem though is not the snow (knobbly tires would sort that out) or even the ice, but the traffic.

UK roads, especially rural roads are very narrow, much narrower than US rural roads.
On a good day cars can pass each other and a car will have to creep past anything bigger. Put the snow plough through though and all you are left with is a single track with nowhere to go.
The traffic travels as fast as it always does and all of a sudden a fairly safe run becomes something akin to jumping out of a plane sans chute shouting "BANZAIIIIII!".

The thing about town and city riding is there is nearly always the option to get out of the way of traffic. You can pull into parking spaces, driveways or even the pavement in an emergency, but on the rural road you don't have this safety net. The roads we have to cycle either have hedges or fencing all the way to the road or (even nicer) steep drops to fields below where the road has been dug into hillsides.

So you can imagine, with roads like this, the added "excitement" of ice and snow and 50% less space means that staying home or cranking up the old Land Rover seem very tempting.

How annoying to be stuck indoors when I have a bike and basket and bike trailer waiting for me in the shed.

Any tips?

How Green was your Xmas?

Xmas is done for another year and, as we wait for January to begin, its a good chance to reflect on how green Xmas really was.

Every year we get a little better and every year we think of new ways to make more changes.

This year the whole family got in on the act, throwing away past worries of appearing a skin flint and embracing the giving of presents that where handmade or even second hand.

I gave several second hand books, DVD's and toys that I'd come across in charity shops (or even my own book shelves!) over the last couple of months. My Kids got a handful of "stocking fillers" that came from the 5p box, cars, little action figures, card games.
My mother and sister both received jewelry from a local jewelry maker and I even got round to making some handmade chocolates!

My own family also came up trumps and under the tree for me was a box of homemade chocolates and some homemade bath bombs from my sister, wrapped in brown paper she had hand printed, she really put me to shame with that, the parcels looked beautiful.
One of my presents from my mother was a ball of wool (nylon!)and some knitting needles, and a couple of days after Xmas she showed me how to cast on, knit and cast off. By the time she had left I had knitted a (beard shaped!) dish cloth as practice and am now working on my first scarf! Baby steps I know, but this gift will enable me to make gifts for others, as well as for myself!!

My parents also gave the kids their entire collection of star wars DVD/videos and their Harry Potter collection! How trilled were they!

I make the same promise every year but NEXT year I want to aim to hand make or buy second hand the majority of peoples Xmas gifts. I can't tell you how much more special my sisters bath bombs are and how excited I was to see them, store brought ones would have barely warranted a glance before being put in a cupboard in the bathroom.

I hereby resolve to start preparing for next Xmas now! To knit gifts and learn new skills, to box chocolates when I make them so they get to the recipient before my mouth!

Present wise I think we really had a getting back to basics gift giving which surprised us all with how very much more we seemed to get for much less money and resources.

What did Santa bring you?

Merry Xyulesolmas everyone!

I hate the Americanism (sorry American people!) "Holidays". If you have something specific to celebrate this time of year be proud to say what it is!!
I'm not a Christian so I rarely say Christmas, preferring instead to use the more secular Xmas (something my staunch Salvation Army Grandparents hated with a very un-Christian like passion).

So here it is though...whatever you like to call the winter celebration.

Today was Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and in celebration of that we did what we have done nearly every year, we put up our tree.


We get our tree from friends who have acres of baby pine trees and have invited us for the last two years to help ourselves.
I find cutting our own tree odd in the sense that when you are outside they all look like teeny tiny scraps that will look like the ugly tree none of the other trees wanted to play with but when you get it home you realise that its grown 5 inches and bushed out like a fluffed up hen.
Sure its not the fullest or the softest (the piercing "Ow!"'s that came as the kids decked our trees sharp branches seem to be another Basford tradition) but it seems more down to earth, more level headed than a genetically modified "ideal" tree or worse the plastic perfection of the false one!

Anyway, next year we plan to buy some baby trees of our own and add a little neutral carbon to our festivities.

The tree wasn't the only exciting thing to happen today. This afternoon our new puppy came home!!

Merle (which means blackbird)is a tiny fluff of Yorkshire terrier and seems perfectly happy to come live with us, has fallen in love with Jenny the vegan collie (who is trying to stay aloof but stuck her nose through the pen bars every time he squeaked)tried to make friends with Biko the cat (who hissed then went to lie by the fire and pretend nothing had changed). He had an alert hour and some dinner then went "plop", all tuckered out, fast asleep, been a long day for a 'lil pup.
Like a new mum I am left wondering if I should wake him soon for some more play so he doesn't wake at 2am crying.

Anyway, Xmasy wishes aside here's a preview of what the (almost) car-less family will have to offer in 2010!

Gardening
With more emphasis on what we eat and a lot more planning than in previous years we hope to bring you more insight into our self-sufficiency(ish) lifestyle.

Home
As we are finishing some home improvement and starting some new eco-home plans this coming year we will have lots to share, starting with how we fit a family of 5 in what is basically a 1 bed house.

EnvironmentWe have been talking about it forever but we hope 2010 will be the year that we do something with our land. A radical re-think of how we keep our horses and a plan to plant coppicing woods and "old" woodland on our acreage means lots of plans, debates and pictures on how we get on.

Cycling
Now that we are set up with a trailer the bikes should be back out in force once the ice lets up for a few days.

There will, of course, be much more than this but these are some of the main points I want to cover in detail over the next 12 months.
The (almost) car-less family is very excited about 2010 and what it will bring and hope all our regular readers (and new ones of course!) will come along for the ride with us!

Thanks for stick by the last 5 months!





Love, Kelly, Kim, Ollie, Owen and Alfie xxx

Power Off weekend diary.

Well, last night at 11pm we turned the power back on.
All of a sudden it seemed very stark and noisy.
Amazing how you get used to candle light and the sound of silence as the fridge sits mute in the corner.

On the whole we had a great time. It was, as I thought, a time for reflection and a time to remember how to use that amazing of organs, the brain and its capacity for imagination.


Our table centre.


FRIDAY
As though the house felt it needed to purge before we turned the power off it decided to give us a mini disaster.
The ball cock in the hot water tank did its yearly shrivel up and die routine, so that a whole tank of hot water gushed out of the overflow and into the garden. The trouble is our tank gets too hot and the ball cock can't cope and implodes. So with much swearing Kim climbed the ladder into the attic and fixed it with the spare (of which we keep a few).
Disaster averted!
Had we not had a spare this would have put a huge dampener on the weekend. The water would have had to have been turned off, along with the fire!

SATURDAY
Having breakfast by candle light was an interesting enough diversion for the kids so that for a whole hour they forgot about the fact that the DVD's would not be playing nor the computer switched on.
Kim got up early to light the fire so that the kettle was singing for breakfast and the room was warm and cosy.
We were out for the morning with the Bennachie Access Team on a PR exercise so were not back in the house before lunch.
Lunch was soup (from the freezer the night before)and some fried garlic bread all made on the log burner.
As we also had the electric off outside an effort had to be made to get the horses done in the daylight, so by 4pm the big horses were out in the big field and the ponies were in the steading eating evening hay. All that had to be done in the dark was to give the ponies their late night hay and Kim used the wind up torch for this.
Dinner was a half cheat. cooking by candle light.


I made a tofu Thai curry on the log burner (lots of cashew nuts!)and Kim went to the chip shop and brought us all chips to go with it ;)
After Dinner we set to teaching the kids card games, something we've never done before, but we now have snap masters and blackjack apprentices! Kids drawing by candle.

Usually the kids have a story tape on the stereo when they go to bed, but instead I suggested they play a story game and for about half an hour they bandied a made up story from one to the other, all three of them making a contribution and laughing at the silly scenarios they deampt up.
Me and Kim read the newspapers by candle light and drank hot chocolate and chatted for a while and then at around 10pm went outside to see if we could see any meteors which where meant to be spectacular over this weekend.
We saw a few but apparently the best ones where just before dawn. Even reading was possible!

SUNDAY
Sunday was a little harder. Owen in particular whined for a while about not being able to watch a film, and mooched around the kitchen all morning.
Oliver and Alfie played outside but Owen was BORED!
He perked up again when Ollie came back inside and played some snap with him though.
Ollie went to a friends house for the rest of the morning and I took the littlies for a walk with the dog. A huge puddle in the stubble field we walk in had frozen solid so they spent a happy half hour playing ice skating!
Lunch was oatcakes and fruit (apples, melon and grapes)with home made hummus. Usually I blitz the chickpeas with a hand blender so it was interesting to make it the traditional way..well maybe not traditional, I used a potato masher!
Came out just fine though and got me to thinking that a potato ricer would do a better job.
That afternoon Kim took Ollie off on a mountain bike ride and the littlies played with the train track (a toy that has been gathering dust for a few months) while I tried to make sure that all the school clothes were dry and ready for Monday.
I did hand wash a basin of socks and hung them on a rail over the log burner to dry. Fine for small stuff but don't much fancy hand wringing out jeans!
All afternoon (since just before lunch) our dinner of veg and bean stew had been bubbling away on the logburner and an hour before dinner I made some yummy herby dumplings and popped them on top!
Sunday night is a bath night, so the littlies had their first candle lit bath. An interesting side effect of this was that unlike the usual shouting and splash fest that is bathtime for Owen and Alfie, they instead lounged int he bath like Turkish lords, relaxing in the soft light. Even the mankiest bathroom looks like a spa in candle light!

After their bath they snuggled up on their Daddies lap while I read the first couple of chapters from the Terry Pratchet book The Hogfather.
A great extra was a more relaxed evening, much calmer and quick to go to sleep AND sleeping for better and longer!
Ollie played a few more hands of blackjack which really made him use his maths skills, so we plan to do much more of that.
He had said to Kim, while out on the bike ride, that he wished we could do Power Off EVERY weekend!

All in all it was fun and informative. I think Sunday nights could become "Power Off" nights so the kids could really wind down and rest well before school on Monday and maybe we could have a PowerOff weekend once a month (maybe leaving the fridge and freezer on)and candles are going to become a part of our regular life.

So, we didn't miss the fridge, but then the porch was so cold there was no need for a fridge. A long term plan could involve building a cold room on the north side of the house to use, especially in the summer months, then there would be no need for a fridge at all.
The freezer had little in it anyway. The only thing I wanted to keep frozen was a pack of diced rabbit I brought for my parents to have at Xmas. I packed iceblocks around it, wrapped them in bubble wrap, two jiffy bags and then two layers of tin foil. It stayed frozen!! So I don't need to buy anymore!
I want to experiment more with preserving food in jars rather than freezing it, we very rarely use the freezer for anything other than the odd tub of non-dairy ice cream or some frozen peas so its worth looking into alternatives.
As well, we want to look into making a "summer home" down the end of our big field, a small cabin or yurt or even a couple of caravans! Somewhere we could "live" in the summer holidays and at weekends so that we were'nt using the electric in the house.

The only dissapointment was the solar light. I don't think it ever recived enough light to charge it as it really wasnt day light till gone 9am and by lunch time it was getting dimpsy again, but we'll hold onto it and see what happens in the summer!

We had a great time, hope you did too! And I hope next time you all join in!