Monday, January 6, 2020

New year and 2019 in pictures and a silly movie

“To a bright New Year and a fond farewell to the old; to the things that are yet to come, and to the memories that we hold.” “May you have a prosperous New Year.” “Wishing you a happy, healthy New Year.” “May the new year bless you with health, wealth and happiness.”

12th night gone by, it´s the end of the Christmas season. All decoration is taken away and the house is cleaned up. We had a delightful time, got many Christmascards and some surprising gifts. 

A whole new year lies ahead of us, many new ideas to try and continuing on our path to self-sufficiency. 

We are halfway through the winter now and the loft is still full of hay, the pantry filled with many cans of canned food, and in the root storage is also enough left. Maybe it´s not as diverse as we should like, because of some crop failures of last year, but we can eat our stomachs full of delicious meals.  I like to search through wartime ration meal recipes from the UK. They use often the vegetables I have available, like potatoes, carrots, onions, and are healthy and very filling. Although eggs were on ration at that time, no egg ration for us. With only 4 laying hens, almost every day 1 egg and sometimes 2! It´s the first year that we have eggs in the winter. Very useful if you like vanilla pudding... ;) 

These photos are my 2019 in a glance 

 January, just finished my new woolen winter coat in time before the cold arrived


Baking small homegrown cornbread on the stove


 In April it was lovely weather for a bicycle tour with a picnic


In May we started on renovating the south wall from our house and had lots of rhubarb and eggs


 It´s on the 6th of June! A national holiday!

Because we are renovating our house we had, unfortunately, no time to dance with our folk dance society on this big day. But because we love to dance, we made our own dance party in the backyard.





Reading a book in our garden, the old rose variety smells lovely 


In June, haying, haying and more haying



First time for our little pony to draw the haywagon


In September we celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary 


and the year ends with the same it started, snow! 

x

Chips and shavings

Chop! Chop! The chips are flying around. He gives his axe another sway. The early morning air fills with the aromatic scent of pinewood and ...