I appear to have stalled on the garden front. A combination of changing my work situation right when I should have been harvesting, and inexperience meaning I planted everything at once so I ended up with more Kohl-Rabi than anyone will ever need, and left half a dozen things too long so they got caught by the frost and pulped, meant that  despite a good start, we didn’t finish so well this year. We’ll probably have a lot more on the compost bin than in the carefully stored jam jars.

And the brambles made a comeback.

We live and learn, and hopefully I’ll still remember all of this by next spring.

A major problem is that we live across the village from the garden, and there’s still no shelter apart from our rather ramshackle shed which is breeding leaks. It’s hard to get the boys enthusiastic to go to the garden if they have to run about in the mud all the time just to keep warm. It’s also a pain that when it turns cold or starts raining/snowing/blizzarding, I’ll have to drop everything and ride home in foul weather.

What we need is a decent garden house so we can spend a day at the garden whatever the weather is doing. A privvy would be good as well.

Which means I need to think about what, for me is a pretty daunting construction project. But if we’re going to get any further in sustainable living, I’ve got to face up to this sooner or later, and as I progress on the carpentry course I’ll be running out of excuses not to have a go.

First step is to go and find out what we are actually allowed to build here, which means going to yet another office…

Feel free to give me a kick up the blog if I keep procrastinating on this one.