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Wales, United Kingdom
Documenting one couple's attempts to live a more self-sufficient life.

Saturday 31 December 2011

A year in pictures

Inspired by The Inelegant Gardener, here's my year in pictures (though I'm not disciplined enough to restrict myself to one picture per month, so this might take a while to load).

January

I made marmalade


and learned to knit

February

I planned the garden


and was delighted by early signs of spring colour


I picked wild food


and did lots of digging


I got the hang of knooking (with dirty fingers)


and saw burnt gorse seen on a coastal walk

March

More digging


Experiments with home made soap (very successful)
and laundry gloop (less so)


Attempting to tap a birch tree for sap


A wonky baby blanket


Many seedlings


Starting to make a camera bag.
Um... must get back to that project at some point

April

I made baked beans


and picked many dandelions, most of which subsequently went mouldy


Things grew, slowly


and the cherry blossom was very pretty.

May

The first major work of the heating project:
Opening up the fireplace and laying a hearth.


Mushrooms - probably morels - in the store room


I found sorrel, but not wild garlic


I collected oak leaves to make wine and cordial


did battle with monster slugs


made wild green pies


and showed you around the village

June

I made elderflower champagne


and brown bread ice cream


The blackcurrant harvest began


I learnt to make socks!
(People have found this blog with an image search for Mature women wearing socks. Do you find that a bit disturbing?)


I cleared space for my tomatoes in the conservatory


I took a class in spinning


and knitted the wool with broom handles

July

I made blackcurrant ice cream


and insect repellant (from a plant that I thought was wormwood,
but turns out to be southernwood)


and soap (from lard rendered from bacon rinds)


and cakes, with more blackcurrants.


The potatoes got blight


but nonetheless yielded a good harvest (this is just a small part of the total crop)


The store room shelves collapsed


and I started harvesting the peas.

August

Slugs ate my cabbages


as well as pumpkins, carrots, and even onions.


My dad came to stay and we converted my sewing machine
to run on treadle power


I made baguettes


started harvesting runner beans


and saw a fabulous caterpillar on the crocosmia.

September

I made a party dress with my treadle powered sewing machine


picked bilberries


and field mushrooms.


I made chips


and fruit leather


and admired the sunrise.

October

I made sponge pudding


and considered the merits of different types of light bulbs.

In fact, I was very busy laying new floors during October, which is why not many blog posts were written.

November

I attempted to declutter


and wrote about the planning stage of the heating project.

December
Some of this month's blogging was catch-up on the heating project.

We replaced most of the floors in the house with underfloor heating panels


removed (suspected) asbestos tiles from the garage ceiling


and had the rest of the heating system installed professionally.


I made sloe wine


and croissants


which we enjoyed in front of our newly-installed stove on Christmas morning
(the croissants, that is. The wine was for later)


and the gardening year has already started, far too soon, as my seeds got wet and needed urgent attention.

8 comments:

  1. Wow! The mature women wearing socks thing is indeed disturbing!

    I'm so totally impressed by all of your accomplishments (I still want to try making soap if I can get past my fear of lye). I'm also struck by what how gardening is so different in different places, especially the timing of things. Makes me think that I can never move or else I'd have to re-learn everything from scratch!

    Here's wishing you a very happy 2012!

    xoxoxo,
    Cat

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  2. Hi Rachel, sorry it's been a while since I came to visit your blog.

    This is a lovely montage of photos. I'm very glad most of all to see your new stove and heating system installed - you were working hard at that!

    You mentioned me in your declutter post and mostly I made good on the decision to organise things. The other thing is to find a way to use everything at least once, or throw it out.

    Funnily enough the same day I threw an old tape roll out I saw a blog using one to make a charming ornament. My mind went: See, I told you so. Haha.

    I'm a starting my blog again today and this post is an inspiration to have just as much to show for the coming year.

    As for the socks, I found them by looking for "Knooking" and am still making knooks, now using scraps from a Woodworking company, that's oddly enough in walking distance of my house. It's much harder than bamboo, but of course, I forgot to ask if it's mahogany or not. Hee hee. I'll keep you posted.

    However, I'll go for now. Hope you have good Holidays and are having fun or at least taking a rest, for this 1st day of the New Year.

    Cheers and hugs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Cat (that's so much better than ECL as a nickname),

    I tempted to ask you about the differences in gardening where you are, but I'll resist because I'd just get confused if you told me. So far I know that you don't have slugs, but you do have apocalyptic hailstorms. It makes the Welsh weather (a mixture of mist, drizzle and rain without let-up for at least the last two weeks) seem positively benign.

    Hi Dana,

    Don't worry, you didn't miss much! Mostly I've been failing to write about the rest of the heating project. I took a break from both working on it and writing about it over the Christmas period, which is kind of over now, so I should be getting back to that soon...

    Oh yes, that "Told you so" moment after you've thrown something out - I know it well!

    I look forward to reading about your new knooks, and whatever else you fancy writing about, on your blog :-)

    Happy New Year to both of you :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's such a nice way of looking back - you did such a huge amount (and a lot of it was really hard). I feel quite inspired!

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  5. What a productive and fabulous year. So impressive! Also? Totally freaked out by the mature women sock thing. People are so strange.

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  6. It does look quite a lot when you put a whole year's worth of things in one place, doesn't it? I'm not sure any of my things were quite as hard as your many black crocheted squares sewn together in the winter gloom, Susie ;-)

    Thanks for your nice comments, all :-)

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  7. It's been ages since I commented, but just wanted to say wow! It certainly is impressive what you've managed to achieve in the past year. Well done you ( and the OH!) oh and I have treadle machine envy btw!

    Lorna x

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