November, 2001

We are both great at ideas. We can sit and discuss and explore for hours, doing sometimes comes a little harder, but our plan to get up and DO something each morning is proving most rewarding. The cows, whilst still out in the fields as I write this, now have a clean barn and yard to come into and we have reworked the water pipe system to hopefully avoid frozen pipes this winter.

We now have a reasonable sized veggie patch, laid over with plastic sheeting to stop the weeds, which we hope will be an abundant producer of good things to eat next year - and we hope to have some overflow to share. Another few days of shifting manure from the muck heap should see that project complete for this year.

Mark has been a busy horse person. He has been organising Craig Stevens clinics in the UK and spent a week out in Sweden in the middle of the month doing some seat training with him. The results were amazing and he looks much more connected on a horse now. He is hoping to offer seat training to UK horse people soon... watch this space... or email him!

The last of our original cows went to the butcher and Lorraine took a stall at the local Farmer's Market. The beef was eagerly snapped up by locals, with phone calls still coming in after the event, and following that success, we've got another stall booked at the Farmer's Market in Devizes. There is still plenty in our freezer, so if you want some, we will be able to accommodate you for a little while yet, but it is wonderful to know that we have a market locally.

We are collecting old but working fridges to keep our beef fresh rather than putting it straight in the freezer. If you know anyone planning a kitchen refit in the New Year, please don't let them throw their old fridge away. We don't mind what it looks like as long as it works!

The frost finally obliged and hardened off the Sloes, although we've heard from a friend in Sweden who says they pick them and then put them in the freezer overnight, so maybe we didn't need to wait that long after all! Anyway, our November Helping Hands weekend was great fun. A very small number of trusty faithfuls gathered together to collect Sloes and make Sloe Gin (see our photo page!). We did some other stuff, but that pales into insignificance. Apparently the gin is best left for at least 3 months, preferably a year, a test of self-discipline if ever there was. There are two bottles currently residing on the shelf in our kitchen turning a lovely deep pink colour.

The sun is still shining and the land is significantly drier than it was this time last year, so we have high hopes of less mud, wellie losing and tractor sinking than we had on our arrival last year. Time will tell.