I seem to have been absent without leave.

We have been so busy - a pipe split under the units in the kitchen last Friday and flooded us out, which meant we lost an entire day of work, which meant we could not go to the Grace Baptist Mission weekend, which we had wanted to :0( However we did get the day's work caught up, and the garden is, if not exactly in order, then not as far behind as it was!

We are eating our first broad beans, lots of salad, spinach and my first courgette is 3" long and will be edible by next week I should say! One tomato plant is streets ahead of all the others and laden with fruit. The rest are laden with flowers, so promising things happening in the polytunnel. I also have two baby peppers and a few baby cucumbers !

We have been up at 5.30 every day this week to ride before school, we have had some wonderful early morning hacks around the countryside, and it is such a blessing to feel that the horses are exercised, the barn chores are done, and we can get on with our day!

Made the first soft cheese with our new kit. It is SCRUMMY. I'll try to take photos if it survives long enough!

The economic news continues to go from bad to worse, and we are grateful for our situation, which allows us to provide so well for ourselves. I am still not sure whether this is a 'storm in teacup' or if it is the real thing - part of me would relish the challenge, but I know that hard times are hard on all, and not always in the ways we expect. If diesel goes much higher, we will have to think twice about travelling anywhere at all, never mind jollying off to pony club with a horse trailer!  Our electricity payment has been put up, and I thought we were nowhere near using that much, and would get a rebate!  Food bills continue to rocket. Will it blow over? We were initally told we were in a far stronger position than the US, and although there would be a dip, it would even out quickly. Yet the unemployment rate is rising, house reposessions are escalating, and we are told inflation is something like 2%, yet a standard bag of cheap pasta has gone up 40% in the last year!!!

Oh well, people will always need food, right? Better pitch in and try to make sure we grow a surplus!

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Posted by Anonymous

Hi Jackie,
So sorry to hear about you kitchen being flooded, but glad everything seems back to normal now. I guess that would be one of the drawbacks to those quaint older cottages that I love so much. Your garden sounds like it is coming along nicely. Wonderful slide photos - I pray that that you will have an abundant harvest. Our garden is coming along - not nearly as far as yours - but now we are having bug/bettle problem that has eatten most of our brocolli & culiflower. Today I will send the chickens after the pests and see if that helps. Early morning rides sound lovely indeed! And the homemade cheese - yummy. The kit must have worked out just fine.
Yes, the US economy sounds much like yours. Petro is now near $4/gallon - higher in some areas, so we try to make trips worth it; $100 doesn't buy very many grocerys any more; electricity is high - makes me want to live off-grid, but then I couldn't blog. lol I don't foresee it getting any better - it's good we have our gardens. Have a nice day dear! It's always good to hear from you.
Blessings,
PlainJane

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