#weeklywednesdaysnapshot

Since I last did a snapshot (I still need to upload a couple I actually managed to write as well) we’ve had 2 birthdays, 3 viruses, and a burnout relapse so rather than this quarter being a chance to recover and reset it’s become a bit of a survival period instead. There have been some lovely times but it has honestly all got a bit much for me and I definitely feel rather more sinky than swimmy at the moment, and trying hard to hang on to the energy required to not just disappear.

I went and stood at the end of the path in the fog today, gazing at where I hope our goats will come to greet me one day, and tried to dream. Charley and I have been looking at animal breeds and decided if we could we’d have both boer and nigora goats, saddleback pigs, and muscovy ducks. I guess I need to crack on and contact the Ministry really and see if maybe we could have two pairs of goats, of different breeds like, rather than the “only one pair plus kids” stated on our land agreement!

There’s still beauty everywhere. I went out with the intention of trying to capture the colours in the trees, and found myself in one of the worked patches of woodland. Smudge followed me to the edge and would come no further – neither cat seems especially happy about it when we wander off into the trees! It’s delightfully hushed except for birds tapping in there.

On our winter to-do list are things like: buy a van (seriously why is it so difficult to get dealers to talk to us?!), buy a freezer (need a van first, to get it home), hire a digger to get some groundwork done before the ground gets too hard to work, find and talk to architects about house renovation plans, and figure out where to buy stock fencing from around here. None of which seems to be my department, and as Steve is seriously overloaded at work he doesn’t really have time for it either.

I did a MASSIVE (for me) thing the other weekend though and went to one of the outdoor markets to talk to the goat farmers there – and managed to overcome everything to ask him *in danish* if I could come and do an internship type thing with them to learn about goat care! Just need to follow it up with an email now, but that weekend near finished me off so it’s not happened yet. This weekend coming is Mortensaften here in Denmark. We looked up the origins of the day and somewhere along the way it became the traditional day for farm labourers to go out and find their next jobs for the coming seasons so maybe by the weekend I’ll have my head together enough (and my email composed and happy with it) to finally hit that “send” button! And then I’d just have to realistically figure out logistics of getting to Sondrup/Hundslund from here….

In other news, the tomatoes have been moved to the frost-free porch in the hopes they’ll keep on keeping on for just long enough to give us some tomatoes worth eating (not even enough green ones worth chutnifying – I started growing these far far too late in the year),

There’s one meal’s worth of carrots still in the ground and I’ve been reminded that I should get some parsnip seeds for next year!

Grylls regularly proves he can climb – and thankfully also proves he can get down again without simply falling.

Aaaand the tent blew down finally in one of the recent storms. The only damage is the porch ripped off but that’s nothing a bit of sewing can’t fix, once it’s all dried out and cleaned up a bit – currently drying out in the attic!

The kids are AMAZING. Erika is obsessed with drawing faces (which have now progressed to having arms and legs but no bodies yet)

Ben is now TEN years old and we’ve survived ten years of us being parents/him being parented 😱

I completed another orbit too and celebrated by making apple crumble cheesecake with Charley’s help in our pyjamas because why not! Also the kids all made cards for me which made me cry happy tears 😍

So there’s lots to be thankful for, and lots of beauty to appreciate. I’d be massively grateful if the stressy bits could get themselves sorted out now!