Water Water Everywhere

Actually we do have water to drink, its everything else that we have a lot of but, none at all to use. We have baby animals but we have used all last years meat from the freezer, the garden is full of wood but we have run out of dry burnable stuff and the garden has some veg planted but none ready to eat. Even our budget is looking 'end of the monthish'.

Of course this time of year was traditionally called the hunger gap in the UK and other temperate climates because of the scarcity of fresh food. For our ancestors  it meant that people really did go hungry  of course that is not true for us, we have supermarkets and aeroplane and lorries and roads and all the things that mean we can eat what we want when we want.

Our choice of lifestyle has placed us back in the situation where seasons and weather and time of year affects us. Because we have made a decision that money cannot buy us the things that we value the most we have chosen to spend less time in the pursuit of it. That decision means that we have to make, and grow things that we would other wise have bought, and the natural cycle of feast and famine kicks in.

This is the time of year when I look to wild food and often weeds make up the shortfall in garden greens, nettles and chickweed are still abundant as is sows thistle and clover, marigolds are everywhere here and the petrels look pretty in salad. Of course I buy stuff, and one day I might have a polly tunnel to help  get us over this time food wise. In the mean time we mix it up I try when I can to extend what I buy by using whats available for free.

Fuel is another dilemma for us, again the life that we have chosen means that we want to cut down on use of technology, fossil fuels, electricity etc but there is a balance to be had and I'm guessing it will take us some time to find what really works for us. We buy in uncut  wood for cooking and heating and supplement it with found wood from roadsides and our garden at the moment, but sometimes it runs out before the cold weather does. There is a limit to the time we have available for cutting.

Trials of motherhood

Ok so far I haven't done too well at keeping this blog up to date, I have had no shortage of ideas simply a shortage of time. A spell of sunny weather provided a chance to get some planting done  in the garden
and our helper Jane has been looking to buy a house here so we have spent some time helping her with that, and of course because nothing happens quickly here so it is an ongoing process. I have no complaints though, poking around old houses is great fun, it is only Spanish bureaucracy that can be a little tedious.

We have also had a bit of a disaster with our duck breeding plans. We had our first brood of baby ducks last summer and the mother was very good at keeping tabs on the babies and protecting them from all comers, all we had to do was provide her with somewhere separate to sleep at night so that the ducklings  didn't get trampled by the bigger ducks.

Muscovy eggs take about 35 days to hatch so when this duck had been sitting for 35 days I was quite excited by the time she had been there for 40 days I had decided that the eggs hadn't been fertile and was waiting for a chance to throw them away, we were pretty busy and I didn't get real get the chance till three days later we came home and found random ducklings all over the garden but no mother. I raced over to try and find the mother and round up the ducklings in itself a fairly impossible task. It turned out that the mother was back in the nest but for some reason hadn't waited for the babies. I managed to rescue 7 and got them back to her, not easy as she attacked me every time I appeared with another one. I was too late for the remaining 3  sadly. It quickly became apparent that she panicked and ran off every time there was a threat leaving the poor duckings trailing behind.  The other ducks started grabbing the scattered duckings and running off with them.  Chasing a duck round the garden with a ducking in its beak is exhausting if amusing for the onlooker. Amazingly the duckings survived the raids but didn't survive being left in the cold and wet when mum disappeared.

The world through bars

 When we got down to four duckings we decided to put her in the spare rabbit cage where she and the babies were safe. Not a permanent solution nor ideal as she needs to show the babies how to get on in the big wide world. Haven't decided on the next step yet. Its all a bit traumatic for for me and has caused more than one duck related nightmare.

Tapas

Better news with the rabbits though, I initially thought that mummy rabbit had only two surviving babies  when we found a dead one in the cage. Its impossible to check properly as rabbits cannot be disturbed when there is a new litter or they kill and eat the babies. When they emerged into the sunshine yesterday there were six fat and healthy babies. Six is still a small litter but it is way better than two.

At times like this I begin to wonder why we describe our lifestyle as simple, surely a quick trip to Sainsburys for a shrink wrapped pack of chicken breasts fits the description better.

Sunshine, beautiful places and cheap houses,

Well at last the sun is shining and Galicia feels Spanish again. We had a chance to visit with friends see the lovely Frages do Eume national park and have a picnic on the beach. We also looked at a couple of houses with our helper, Jane.

Both of the houses we went to see were in little mountain villages with stunning views and both were for restoration the first though is the one with the story attached. We had to walk through the village on foot as we were unsure about getting the car down to the house. So of course by the time we arrived every one in the village knew we were there. We were shown to the house that was 'on the internet' and told by the villages in no uncertain terms that it was overpriced at 9000 euro's the house next door we were told, though smaller was only 2500 immediately the owner was phoned and an appointment made for us to see inside a few days later. The owner turned out to be one of those terrifying Galician women that remind me so much much of the strong Yorkshire women of my beloved home county. We barely escaped with our lives, so determined she was to sell. The house as it turned out was not what Jane needed being a tad small with the optional garden just up the lane and not attached.( It would make a perfect holiday cottage though once restored) We were told of several other houses in the area for sale but declined to look for fear of agreeing to something by mistake. As usual on these occasions I wished we had money to spare as I am pretty sure that prices like these cannot last forever, still we have a house and far too much to do to take on another however cheap.

I leave you with a couple of pictures taken on our trip to the National Park and recommend that you visit if ever you get the chance.

The garden

For me, a fair-weather gardener if ever there was one, we are are at the start of the gardening season. With the exception of a few trees planted midwinter the garden has been left to its own devices through the winter. I come with with a few excuses such as water logged ground but since every year is the same I have to conclude that for me gardening is a summer activity.

Today it  didn't rain  hurray!!!! so I got the chance to sort out my greenhouse . My green house is tiny and more that a little ramshackle and as such has been the subject of ridicule on more than one occasion. I stand resilient to attack because it has served me well, nurturing seeds in the spring and growing winter salad (when I brave the cold and wet to plant them).

 In the autumn I flung a couple of half packs of leftover seeds onto the seed bed by the green house and was rather gratified to find that they are growing , Ok so there is more weed than seed at the moment  but you can just about see the baby lettuce if you look hard.

I love that we get to eat something from the garden everyday, even in winter, and a little bit of spring sunshine makes me think of the coming years good things.

Bad weather- Good fun

The problem, and occasionally the the joy, of living in a temperate climate is that we have long periods of unremittingly dismal weather. When we are on our own I don't find this a massive problem, it gives me topic of conversion that I can indulge in with my neighbours ( Galicians talk about the weather almost as often as we brits do) and I can happily stay indoors with some sewing or knitting and maybe a book. I feel sorry for helpers though as most work is outside, there is not much sightseeing to be done and the house, part finished and with no central heating is only warm in small patches.


Our holiday weekend was pretty much a wash out, but due to the Spanish capacity for having a good time whatever the  external circumstances, very enjoyable. Today being the day before the start of lent, (Shrove tuesday in the UK)  is Carnival here an altogether more crazy time where pub-crawls in fancy dress dominate the calendar.

There is always galician traditional music

The weekend saw the annual carnival event in a nearby town namely a bone  fair. here's how it goes, A couple of large tents are erected in the centre of town one attached to a stage for bands.

Why worry about the rain just put up a large tent

During the morning and afternoon the tents are a market place where one can buy a whole range of goods including the aforementioned bones and various pig pig parts.

 At lunch time all the restaurants offer a set menu, pig bone soup followed by pig ribs with potatoes followed by pancakes. In the evening there is music and a pig bone BBQ in the tents with of course a supply of local wine.

The weather forecast says we are due some fine weather soon, I hope so because I need to work in the garden. having home grown veg through the summer is now essential to our budget.

Tourists and helpexers

We had planned a bit of a holiday weekend this weekend, Steve had to go into Lugo so Jane our current helper and I were going to go with him and play tourist. Lugo for those who don't know is a lovely city with Roman walls and a pretty old town complete with some upmarket shops and plenty of bars and cafes. Plenty to keep us girls happy for a few hours anyway. We did go to Lugo, but the rain was so bad that we abandoned the touristy bit and just did the monthly supermarket shop, and buying loo rolls really don't have the same sort of appeal at all.

Because I have no photo's or stories about said trip,it being a washout an all, I thought that I would just give helpex a quick mention. Helpex, wwoof  and workaway (I am am sure that that their are others)  are schemes, where you can offer accommodation to people in exchange for work. We are hosts with helpex and as such have, visitors now and then, who do a variety of jobs both in the house and garden. It has proved to be great fun, we get to meet all sorts of people and show them our local  bit of galicia and get some work done at the same time. In exchange they get a cheap holiday. They have been all ages and some are traveling for year or two, some are simply on holiday. We don't have people with us all the time but quite a few come for repeat visits, all seem to enjoy the change of pace.

I would recommend helpx as a way of travelling especially if you want to take a few months to see some new places. But I would also recommend being a host especially if you have a big garden, or are working on the house and enjoy meeting new people. Find the website here