Winter walking

We've been sitting inside for several days now, and whilst I've enjoyed playing with the Christmas presents and eating all the food.

Today I needed to blow off the cobwebs and burn a few calories, and so we went for a walk in the woods next door.

Temperatures have struggled to get above freezing for serval days now, which means we have plenty of ice to play with, and comedy chickens that flap as they slippy slide their way around.  After a quick venture out they tire of the slipping and flapping and go back in their coop where the ground is sturdier and the air is warmer.

These days

Various pictures I found on my phone from the past few days.

A robin that has taken to popping up whenever we feed the chickens.  We throw him a little seed too now.

The Mr starting his latest project, a waterwheel for electricity generation.

This rather sad specimen is our outside tree.  It was a sapling growing under two other bigger trees, and so we decided to let it have it's glory moment with lights and sparkle.

My daughter on her newest herd member.  She's eye catching, and she knows it!

The stove, with bread baking on the top.  It made a respectable baton loaf, but it didn't rise particularly well, but tastes ok.

Living temporarily

Nothing is permanent.

Nothing stays the same.

We all know this, and yet days can pass and they can feel similar, so that you don't notice the changes because they are so small, and then you do notice and perhaps you wished you'd paid more attention. 

This is how I am finding our temporary living.  I hope that we won't be living another year in this little space, but at the same time I don't want to wish it away too fast.

A few big things have happened in here . My youngest lost a baby tooth, we had our first ever game of monopoly where everyone played independently.  We got creative with Christmas decorations, making the most of limited space and decorating vertically and outside more.  

I love that I can stand and cook in the *kitchen and be involved in the conversations in the living space.  I don't always love that I can be in the living space and have a conversation with children who are in their beds and not supposed to be listening.  I know that this will change, and that one day my husband and I will be able to hold private conversations within a building, instead of opting to walk outside in order to not be heard!  This is how most of our Christmas gifting decisions have been made as the walls quite literally have ears.

In a surprising twist, having started this post about how things change, the architect drawings arrived today.  Although we are building our own home, we needed the expertise of an architect to get Planning off our back and our detailed application to be approved.  This seems to be an expense worth paying out for, because the council have left us alone and are satisfied that the architects have it all in hand.

So, with the arrival of the drawings, I am reminded once again that our current living arrangements are not permanent, and that with the arrival of Spring we will see another change, and this makes me happy and keen to embrace what will be an unusual and unforgettable festive season in our wee caravan.

*the kitchen is really nothing more than a corridor joining all the rooms together, but I'm making the space work.  Some days it works better than others.

This picture has nothing to with the post subject, but my dearest drew it on my favourite chipped coffee cup, and it made me smile, not just for the comedy face but for the effort he put in to draw it in secret.  It has washed off now.  Which proves my nothing is permanent statement, so maybe it is related...

(Honestly, these blog posts are really not very well thought out, so please give me some credit for managing to get that creative link in there.)

Winter

The snow arrived last night.  It was the most very delicate smattering.  Enough for fun, not enough to cause major disruption for us.

I know friends on the Western Isles have had a very different experience, and BBC Radio Scotland had a special report about the lightening strikes causing power cuts.  Lightening, high winds and snow?

I think you have to be a special kind of tough/ crazy to live up here.

Slow

Off grid living should be re-named Patient Living, as you spend a great deal of time waiting.  You can be frustrated by this (I regularly am) or you can accept it and develop the fine art of waiting.

Waiting for the hot water to boil on the stove so we can wash, waiting for the batteries to charge up so we can watch an episode of Doctor Who, or just waiting for the weather to improve so you can leave the caravan without getting soaked to the skin and covered in mud.

If you're clever, you can fill these waiting gaps with other actviites.  Whilst you wait for the bath water to warm, you can clean the bathroom walls and floors and light a candle so that the bath feels extra nice.  

If you are waiting for the solar powers to charge up the batteries you can go outside and chop wood, walk a dog or four, draw a nice doctor who inspired picture or haul water if the tank is low.

Impatience is most likely to strike the younger members of our family, but it does strike me from time to time, and so I fill it with a sneaky bit of knitting or crochet, and then the waiting seems more bareable.

Sometimes you get so involved in the waiting that you forget that you're waiting...

When winter comes to visit

A blurry photo taken by me on behalf of my eldest, she really wanted me to capture the colours but we were moving at speed.  Still, I like it, it depicts the cold.

Yesterday we had our first real frost.

I knew it was cold before I even opened my eyes as my face was numb.  I hadn't banked the fire up properly and I think it must have gone out in the early hours, and being a simple metal shell, the static just got icy cold.

It was so still outside.  The grass in the fields was stiff and crunched appealingly under foot.

But at the time I didn't really take very long to appreciate it, because the gas ha stopped working (no cooking) and the flue and burner had got so cold it too was refusing to light without coercion.

We got there in the end, but by the time we were warm and fed, the ice had started to melt.  The kids did get to enjoy it though, and there was the usual excitement that frozen water brings.  

Kindly neighbours stopped in to make sure we were safe, and to discuss why the gas had stopped working.  The Mr came up with a theory involving a frozen valve, and we've taken precautions to stop this happening again by putting some protection where needed.

We've also been thinking about the batteries that are currently off the ground but under the static.  Too many hard frosts will upset them, so thoughts are turning to protecting them from the cold as well.

When we installed the wood burner we gave ourselves a pat on the back.  I was heard to say that an indoor loo and a woodburner were all we needed to face the winter, and I'm starting to realise that this is naive of me.

We are at risk of getting caught out.  Although the image of chopping wood with an axe from the woodland is charming, it takes too long and we are currently very time poor.  So, as an early Christmas present, the Mr has bought himself a chainsaw.  This is hardly the Eco dream, but it will last twenty five years, and will give us time to do other jobs.

And there are plenty of those!

When is an Eco house not an Eco house?

I had big dreams when we got this place.

Actually, I had big dreams before we got this place.  I wanted to live gently on this planet of ours, in a Zero waste, carbon neutral bubble of happiness.  It would be a house made from recycled everything and we would be pioneers in this buynowpaywithtearslater world that we currently live in.

But I am coming round to Kermits way of thinking.  It is most certainly not easy being green.

Put aside that most everyone thinks we are bonkers for giving up a normal life to live in a field, and so therefore greet everything with a certain amount of prejudice/ trepidation, there is also that delightful inner voice to contend with.

Take grey water for instance.  You would think that wanting to dispose of waste water in an environmentally sound manner would be welcomed but the architect we are working with explained to me - very patiently - that, actually, councils like expensive chemical treatment solutions that nearly clean your waste completely and then pump it into a nearby water source.  It was the "chemical" and "nearly" that put me off.  

When I - equally as patiently - explained that we will have an indoor composting loo, I was asked to provide design details.  Apparently saying the shit goes down the back and the pee section is at the front is not good enough.  I need to draw a diagram.  I kid you not. 

Now, I like our architect.  I didn't actually want an architect but the council pushed us and so we had to seek advice.  They are on good terms with the authorities and know their stuff in terms of legalities, so in this respect I feel we are in good hands. They are also experienced in offgrid houses, although I suspect they apply this term to houses supplying their own electrics and water, not to the extremes that we are trying to do.

We spent an evening designing the house we would like.  It isn't a grand design by any stretch, but it is practical, sympathetic with the landscape and ecologically sound, but it might be out of our budget and experience comfort zone.

So we are at a crossroads, where budgets bad ethics meet.

I realise that this is my second moany post in a row, so I better sort myself out.