On a wintry Tuesday

 


It's Tuesday and I haven't left our farm since last Friday. It's been too cold and really, there's nothing out there in the big wide world that I need.

I guess winter is the season we have been preparing for during all the others: we have a freezer stacked to the top with containers, our pantry is groaning under the weight of filled Fowlers jars and there are piles of kindling and firewood ready to burn to heat our house, dry our clothes and cook our food.

It's Tuesday and for the first time in days it's not rainy or windy or both. Today feels like one of those days where winter stops for a second and catches it's breath. It is still freezing cold but it is calm and it's still. We'll rug up to go out to feed the animals and collect the eggs, but then instead of rushing back inside to shelter, we might venture further.

We might check on the crops growing in the market garden, make plans to mulch the garlic, weed the beetroot, spray the orchard, whipper snipper between the trees, bring in another load of wood, move the chickens, pick the rhubarb and start pruning the apples.

The winter jobs might be fewer but the days are shorter and mostly nastier, so we'll study the weather forecast and work when we can.

It's Tuesday and although it's only the second day of the school holidays, I think I might get the girls all rugged up in their winter woollies and make them come outside with me too. They've been crafting up  a storm all morning but I know that a few big gulps of fresh winter air will do them so much good.

We'll run down the hill, watch the water streaming past us, listen to our boots squeak in the wet grass and chat to all the animals. It'll be so cold that our eyes and noses will sting but we'll feel alive in the iciness and it will make us run faster and scream out and sing.





It's Tuesday, the first day of July and the second month of winter.

I am not a winter person. Not at all. But I am a person who loves coming back inside after being out. I love getting the fire cranking, putting the kettle on the hot-plate, stripping off my wet weather gear, making a soup and settling in with some knitting. That I can do. That part I am good at.

Happy Tuesday lovely friends out there, what have you got planned for the day?

xxxx