Winter reflections on life and all that jazz.

Well the snow is going.
For the while at least.
In a usual year we have a bit of snow late November/ early December and then a large fall around February time, so it will be interesting to see what happens between now and Spring.

Although to be fair today was almost spring like.
Enough snow has melted to be able to do some work on the veggie garden, and I spent an hour forking over and adding much to the bed that the garlic is going in (late but..well). When the sun came out I actually had to take my fleece off!
Be moaning about heatstroke soon ;)

Anyway, today we took the kids out to the Bennachie Centre on the other side of the mountain.
Now to be honest we have all gone a little stir crazy the last month, what with being snowed in and all, and as the weather had broken and the temp was up we decided to go for it.
The child grill, I mean DOG grill of course..essential bit of kit ;)

Am I the only one who's kids moan and whinge about going for a walk but when you make them they have the best time?

They love this place because of the free visitor centre, a huge open plan modern wooden cabin with lots of tree and animal related information, interactive touchscreens, webcam hides the works.



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The walk as always was great, and the higher up the mountain we got the more snow was still about!
We stuck to one of the lower trails as it was late in the afternoon by the time we got there but the kids went free running through the woods at the side of the trail, jumping over ditches and logs and generally running off 4 weeks of house arrest





We talked about our car-less plans while out.
Obviously we had driven for this trip, the ice still thick in places, the daylight fading, the kids...well, being kids.
The plan had been to try and live car-less over the winter with a long term view of going completely car-less had we got on ok.
I think on reflection this is an un-realistic plan.
Don't get me wrong, our commitment to cycling and public transport remain, but the factors that rally against us, the isolated location, the lack of affordable public transport, the yucky winter weather (and lack of infrastructure for clearing roads etc) all conspire against winter car-less-ness.

There are also the kids to take into account.
If it was just me and Kim many things would be simpler. For example we have a wedding to go to in the spring. For two adults it would be easy and cheap to bus down south. With the kids though? For one thing it is a horrible HORRIBLE journey (14 hrs, late night wait in Glasgow bus station, no security and lots of drunks. toilet too unspeakable to think of ..and that's is it all goes well!), but the big issue is not our lack of "adventurous spirit" but pure finances. Seriously, it is cheaper for us to hire a car for a WEEK than it is to take 5 people on a bus.
There is something fundamentally wrong with that I think.
This same problem crops up locally as well.
Two train tickets to Aberdeen is do-able, five is beyond our means.

Bottom line is we can't keep the kids cooped up all winter only going from home to school and back again.

Our revised plan is this.
Our commitment to cycling spring through Autumn (and on suitable winter days also) is still strong. There are lots of places available in the locality to visit and we plan to do the lot this year.
The landrover stays. In the depths of winter when snow and ice are on the ground and daylight appears around 9.30 am and goes away just after lunch, we need a life line to the "outside world".
We already spent more time on bikes since we started than in the landrover so we still have credit as it were.
A once a week trip to a nice walk with some chips for dinner on the way home are surely not too much for kids to ask?

So its all good.
Our plans evolve and bend and change as needed.
After all, who wants to be so pure that your kids grow up to be raging consumers and petrol heads because they never got to do anything when they where growing up.
If it was just me and Kim we could hibernate for the winter, watch DVD's listen to the radio, chat, read.
But we have to remember that we share our house with three other people, lively curious, insatiable children who will not rest for winter and are not easily fobbed off with another game of snap.

Roll on spring :)

Not QUITE at the stage of cannibalism, but.....

The weather goes on (and on, and on, and on.....) but in a masochistic way I'm kind of glad.
I'm a big fan of the "no coincidence" rule (there may actually be a rule but I kind of made this up myself.). When I dithered about going vegan I got asthma and was led down that road for health. When we spent years debating about going car-less our car made the decision and blew up. So when we get snowed in (well almost. We make sure someone always stays home in case the snow gets worse so the animals are taken care of!)it gives plenty of time to reflect on what we could do better.

Since the power off weekend we have spent a lot of time thinking about power consumption and how to do without such everyday items as the fridge and freezer. We didn't miss it at all during the weekend and certainly in this weather there is no need for either.
For Xmas my parents brought me the book Root Cellaring which explains the principles of storing food through the winter without the aid of fridge, freezer or having to jar/can/bottle everything.


An important thing I learned from the book was that you DON'T have to have a cellar!! A revelation to me! Although a cellar with correct humidity is an ideal, it shows you that it is perfectly acceptable to make varied storage in your own house and in sheds.

The one thing we have learned these few weeks is that we really should be more prepared. I no longer feel silly for thinking we should have a basic winter larder for emergencies. Even if its just a hundred tins of baked beans and some pasta!

In planning the veggie garden this year I am placing an emphasis of crops that store well, can be preserved (ie jam and pickle) and also be earthed up and left in the ground (like parsnips and swede).I also want to try and have SOMETHING always growing in the garden, so the little hot bed will be planted with early salad in February and be covered and insulated to grow spinach over winter.

Is this not the BEST root cellar EVER!



The biggest worry we have and is feeding the horses.
The snow is too deep and hard for them to dig for grass and so for the last 2 and 1/2weeks they have been fed their entire rations, which means a big bale of hay which would last us up to a month is now being eaten in less than a week!
The main problem we have here is storage. Without a barn we can only keep in 2 bales at a time which means we are always on tender hooks worrying about if we can't get any hay because of weather or even worse, people not having any to sell.
Next year we will get our field cut and keep half of it. IN the past we have no bothered because of the storage issue, but now we plan to build a shelter, even if its just a roof on legs with some tarp, at least we won't have to worry.

Well UK people, hope your getting through the winter OK...and the rest of the world? You either don't have the weather or are used to it right?

Now, excuse me while I test the kids for tenderness ;)

Snow pictures.

Well, we are in the grip of the worst winter weather for 30 years here in the UK. We are pretty much snowed in and the Met office predicts no let up for at least TWO WEEKS!
Luckily we have enough rice, pasta, chickpeas and tinned tomato's to last us a while.
Think of us ;)

The perfect depth to hide small children. Note Alfies ice "Harry Potter" wand lol.




Bennachie in the snow.




Me looking into Ollies Igloo!




Ollie in his Igloo, built with the aid of the turtle shell lid off the old sandpit!




The view from the computer..Brrrrr!




The chickens took a vote and asked to go back to a life in the battery cage!

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?