Belief and love

I forked the onions this morning. The bulbs look way too big but the one I picked last week shrank as it dried – and besides, what’s the worst that can happen? We have almost 150 onions in and I forked less than a third, the ones that went in at the right time. I have my suspicions that the rest won’t do as well. My parsnips have all germinated well, as did the beetroot, but the carrots failed. I’ll have another go using some peat to keep the seeds moist – it’s so easy for them to dry out and die otherwise. The big question after growing all this food is whether we can store it. Not much point having a big surplus of onions if you have to eat them all within a few months. We’re not the best at saving our surplus but it follows on logically from growing lots so hopefully we’ll be led along as our garden pumps out its produce.


I’ve been up the mountain a bit lately helping Mountain Ryan saw up some logs for a new shed he’s building. He has access to a Lucas Mill so we set it up and have spent a bit of time fine-tuning it all. I’ve been in two minds about whether it’s worth the effort but I think I’m coming around. On the downside is that it takes a while to set it up, and for the hours invested the returns aren’t great; but on the upside is that it has a very low carbon footprint, it is another self-sufficiency skill to have, and if you get to the point where you know what you’re doing it does start to become more economic. And how cool is it to use timber that you’ve milled sustainably off your own block? Ideally it would sit in a shed, all set up and ready to go, or perhaps you could aim to have a week or two of milling each year and go hard and build up a supply of timbers to use throughout the year on the latest project.


Ryan has been thinning the trees to the north of his house for more solar access so he has a supply of nice big logs which he has dragged up to the mill using his beast of an old army truck, a Ford Blitz, kept afloat from sinking into a puddle of rust and neglect by Ryan’s belief and love - “I DO believe in the Blitz, I DO believe in the Blitz.”