A Month.

I’ve just looked at the last blog and realised it’s just over a month since I last wrote. I tend to do things like that in general, go for it big time and then leave it for a while. Seems to be a trait of mine. So there were quite a few and then not much. But hello! and welcome again.

Quite a bit has happened in some ways over the past month. Not so much in our family, but around and about, with people we know, with friends. Things in their lives. Like I’ve said before, I don’t tend to write about people, not in a recognisable way, unless I have their express permission. But it is fair to say that God works in us and through us and also just sovereignly in people’s lives. He is amazing. He listens to prayers and He sustains us and brings people to Him. Sorry to be cryptic, there’s a lot I’d really love to write about, but I need to think about it and how to put it and whether I do actually want to share it. So onwards!

Since Christmas, we’ve had rain piling down, then it froze and snowed, which was brilliant, I love snow.

It’s gone again now and is just boggy and wet again. It is Ireland though, so to be expected. The photo below was a couple of days ago. All snow gone. Still beautiful though.

In smallholding news, I ordered some chicken hatching eggs and put them in the incubator about ten days ago. Unfortunately, it isn’t looking that hopeful at the moment, for a hatch. I’ve already had to discard five eggs (out of twelve) as they had no development at all and the others aren’t that clear to see (when candling, which is putting a bright light against the egg and seeing what’s inside), I’ve ordered something called an ovascope, in the name of home education (not so I can have a fancy gadget at all, haha), and I’ll hopefully get to have a better look through that. I put 6 of our duck eggs in a different incubator, but it turns out they aren’t actually fertile, so I’ve discarded those too. It is a little early in the year to be honest, I was just a bit impatient to get going! Even if this hatch rate is not good, we will be trying again later in the year. Probably in a month or so. I’d actually like to try hatching muscovy ducks rather than Khaki Campbell, so I might try and search some out in the next month or so.

Chris has been waiting for some parts for his bike again, so we’ve been at home again, but it’s probably for the best that he’s had the car, because of the weather. It’s been nice actually, to relax after Christmas and New Year and ease gradually into the year. We’ve started back up with the home education in the last week or two, and are finding our way again with that. The subject of Egypt is currently on the menu amongst other things, and on a different subject, the book ‘now we are six’ by AA Milne has just arrived today. I’ve never actually read it before and I’ve started reading it and it is lovely. The boys think it is funny as well, which actually is a massive surprise to me. I thought they’d be sighing and making faces when I was reading, but they weren’t! They do want to listen to the audio version though, so I might oblige with that. I’ve also bought a Kindergarten type curriculum by a company called Masterbooks, which I’m following loosely, and I’ve found it’s actually been really good so far and it’s very adaptable to use with our older boy J in some ways as well.

I can’t wait to get out in that garden and start on it, I’ve got a load of seeds in our new seed tin that my sister in law got us for Christmas.

I need to do a bit of planning. I’ve got a couple of different things this year, such as cape gooseberry and quinoa seeds, as well as the usual suspects. I have no idea whether they will work here, or whether I can find the room for everything. But I figure I’m going to try! The garden needs weeding really, really badly, but it’s still massively squishy, so I’ll leave it a bit longer, but I’m itching to get at it now. Have a little more get up and go than I remember having last year. Which is great!

I’ll leave it there for now, there is actually loads I could talk about, but it would probably fill pages and for a blog, that probably isn’t a good idea! So if anyone would like to me write about anything in particular or expand on any areas to do with our lives, any part of them really, or where we live, or our journey, or faith or anything. Feel free to comment.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!

Cathy.