Parenting Sweet Spot

I'm never going to be great at homeschooling. I'm used to spending my days on my own these days rather than having someone (or three people) constantly asking me questions or saying me my name as they think it's gone too quiet....

But I have landed on a good idea, after lunch we have a half quiet reading time now the girls can read in their heads. The boy can either play or I'll read to him one of his animal reference books, but it's been a great bit of our day.

 Here I'm reading an old book "The Wheel Wrights Shop", my eldest is reading about different breeds of chickens and my middlest is reading Secret Seven. 

Bliss! 

Lockdown Walks Again!

So as a nation we find ourselves in lockdown again. My plans for work in the workshop or for anyone else have been shelved while I take over childcare and "home-schooling" again. 

This has also put a stop to my regular exercise routine where I run 5km every other day, which I've been doing from September - I figure now is the most important time to keep yourself in shape really. 

So I've been taking the kids for a long walk each afternoon this week (and will while the weather holds) and exploring the footpaths around here again. 

 The children are just as keen as me to get out there and leave the smallholding - think we'll all start to go a bit mad eventually otherwise! And every time it reminds us of what a beautiful place we live. 

Who else is adding walks to their regular daily routine?

Working With Neighbours - Fixing the Drive

Just before Christmas my neighbour (and good friend) rang me up to say about a soft spot on our shared drive. He suggested that we sort it out, saves getting anyone in and saves a load of money. There's 4 pipes down there so it was a role of the dice as to who it was. 

He got a few fittings in but we decided to leave it until after the Christmas holidays were over so if we needed anything specialist we could buy it easily. We set a date for the 4th of January to get it sorted. 

Folding Duck House

With the avian flu poultry lockdown my ducks proved tricky to keep happy in confined spaces. Used to having the whole smallholding I decided the kindest thing would be to house them in the polytunnel. This gives them plenty of space and with the old sheep footbath as their pond. 

But keeping them in there doesn't protect them at night. And a recent fox attack of a friends ducks hammers this home as he lost all but one of his ducks (which now lives with ours for the time being). 

So time to build them a coop. 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! 

I will do my usual set of round up blog post for 2020 and plans for 2021 soon, as I find it good to take stock of everything and set some goals! 

 Here's to 2021! Let's hope things run a bit more smoothly!