Time to say goodbye xxx

Our very last night sleeping at Riverside. End of an era… This place has been a HUGE part of my life..of our life… H has grown up here. I have lived as a single woman..paying my way.. working, earning… and home educating…as well as smallholding….I truly got to live the life I enjoy. A simple life.. yet at times a very hard one too..but worth it…We have so many wonderful memories (and photos) of our life here..

So many dreams became reality…The productive gardens we grew… The bounty of food it provided us…. The wildlife that we got to know and love…. Our beloved hedgiehoggies..The otters, kingfishers, badgers and more….

Our animals and their babies have flourished here…..hens and chicks.. goats and kids.. ducks and ducklings… The rescues and rehab critters who spent time with us have been released here…

It has truly been a blessing to be able to reside here and to live so close to nature.. and we appreciated every minute…. every minute…

It may have been a very humble home.. simple. tiny.. and not to everyone’s taste… but we loved it..with all our heart… we never wanted to leave..

but it is time to move on…

Goodbye our beloved Riverside.. Don’t forget us..We will always love you..

Thank you for everything xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Latest arrivals. Two healthy female kids…more to come……kidding season has commenced!

Good news!! Tansy had healthy twin girls last night. We have named them Zinnia and Petunia

Zinnia looks just like her dad x

Petunia is the image of her mum x

Now back to the kidding sheds.. We are doing two hourly checks all through the night atm.. We still have more kids on the way xx

We were later than usual finishing our morning chores today..

The low winter sunshine slowed our pace somewhat and allowed us to meander from coop to coop and stable to stable quite happily… There was no rain or spiteful bone-chilling gales to rush us along today. No hurry to be inside away from the worst of the weather…. We decided to head straight to the ponies to give them their daily quota of sweet-smelling hay . We had to top up water troughs and clear the field of their manure too….. It is very muddy at this time of year and the ponies look pretty grubby in Winter but we refrain from brushing them too much at this time of year. Their thick shaggy winter coats are made to shed the worst of the weather and brushing them too much removes their natural protection from the elements. Whilst ambling along Dragonfly Path on our way to the paddocks (paddocks that are fondly known to us as The Swamps at this time of year ) we passed under a dead, ivy clad, elm tree, with 5 cawing black crows high up in its crown… They fidgeted about ….flitting from branch to branch, but they didn’t fly off … On closer inspection one of the birds appeared to be wearing a pale grey beret, jauntily worn on one side of it’s head…I looked at H, she smiled in recognition….. It was Arguine! The crow that H and I nursed back to health some time ago.. His ‘beret’ was a grey patch of bare featherless skin and a gap where his eye once was… He looked really well. His plumage shiny and glossy and his four companions all seemed to be in good fettle too. He hopped about above us.. We called his name and he looked at us.. tilting his head to one side….. His companions flew over the lane into St Edith’s churchyard … He was last to leave, and when he did he settled on a tall sycamore across the lane, still in sight of us.. We waved goodbye and carried on our way…..He looked over his shoulder at us, turning his good eye in our direction, before flying down into the churchyard to join his less than murderous companions… It is nice to know that he continues to look so well as we head into winter.from Facebook
via IFTTT

A super duper busy morning, but I am back on top form

….no earache..no dizziness..no dodgy throat… I am fine n dandy.. Hurrah!.. Animals here were all fed and sorted extra early, as we had to be at our paddocks to open the gates for the tractor to bring the rest of my winter hay this morning… Still no tricycle as the pedal has yet to be fixed….. so we walked there in the drizzle and mud…… H spotted a heron fly over us as we walked up Dragonfly Path. It’s long neck tucked back neatly, its long spaghetti legs trailing behind…. It landed in the field next to ours but slightly too far away to see clearly…My specs are broken so I struggle to see anything in the distance without them !.. A chattering cluster of gossiping long-tailed tits fluttered from hedge to hedge, tree to tree, along the way …..and then disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared….. We arrived at the paddocks with time to spare, so we busied ourselves opening gates, dropping a row of electric fencing and tying back the gate on the big field shelter, to allow Tom to drive straight over and drop our bales as close to the opening as possible…..He dropped the bales in the gateway and a small amount of manual manoeuvring, swivelling and rolling, soon had the bales safely undercover. So we now have 3 huge round bales of hay and two of straw tucked away in the top field shelter, to keep the girls fed and warm through the upcoming colder months.. and I have the promise of another 20 small bales at a bargain price to be delivered next week. Result!… I am home, muddy….but feeling much happier now that I am prepared and stocked up for any bad weather that we may get in the next couple of months,…. I have just cooked brekky/ lunch for H and I, and am now sitting down with a hot cuppa by the fire, whilst H starts work on her computer and the dogs snooze by the stove…and it isn’t even midday yet! xx

 

 

from Facebook
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Goat’s milk soap!

Yule is fast approaching and so I have been busy trying to make some frugal festive gifts for some of my friends and family. This year I made some pure unbleached natural cotton washcloths/ flannels (separate blog post to follow some time soon about making those) and some lavender scented goat’s milk and olive oil soap, and of course I used the raw, natural, creamy milk from my own goats to do so.

As you know I currently own a tiny herd of just 4 dairy goats. Boer and Toggenburg crosses, with some Saanen thrown into the mix for good measure. They have provided our home with plenty of milk for cheese making, ice cream making, drinking and for use in fermented products like kefir.  It is lovely stuff! Facebook video of me milking Tansy

Tansy, our matriarch goat, milked through two seasons happily, hardly lowering her yield at all despite not kidding this year. My other milker, Marigold, reduced her yield over time and dried up slowly and naturally by the end of her second milking season. Tansy has now been put back in kid, along with Marigold, Anemone and Heather.

We had a rather gorgeous British Alpine boy pay us a visit, a bit earlier this year and so (fingers crossed) the resulting kids will be a real mix of breeds and will hopefully have that all important hybrid vigour.  If all four of my girls give birth to twins then my herd may grow considerably overnight.  From four to twelve! Exciting times!

The female kids will be kept here to grow on and will be added to the Riverside herd, and any males will be castrated and raised for the freezer. All kids are reared on their mothers and weaned naturally. I simply share the milk produced ,by separating the kids for a few hours overnight, whilst the mums get some sleep, then I milk the mothers  very early, first thing in the morning (but I don’t strip them out completely) and I then let the kids back in with their mums by 8 am to finish emptying their udders… and the milkers simply produce a bit more milk for me as time goes on.  Demand increases production naturally. It is a nice stress free system.

We shall have to wait and see how many kids we get this time. Singletons would be just fine!  Triplets could be ..erm….interesting! Twins are the most common, so we shall probably have at least one set of those…. Two of the girls are due to kid at the end of Feb and two are due end of March. So watch this space!

Anyway back to the soap making.
I store my excess milk in my freezer, in bags and plastic milk bottles, and so even after the girls had dried up, I still had home produced raw milk available to use.

This is the soap making method I followed for my soap bars > ( click here to see video link)  but remember that I substituted the distilled water for some very cold and icy defrosted goat’s milk. The milk being so cold helps prevent the caustic soda from boiling up too much, when you add it to your liquid, (goat’s milk in my case, but distilled water in the video). You must always add the lye to your liquid (carefully) and not the other way around.  It can react quite explosively if done the other way around, bubbling up and splashing the caustic lye all over the place. So take note and always use lye with caution and add the lye to the liquid.. carefully!

I also used a hand whisk rather than a blender to get it to trace stage, as I don’t own a blender. But feel free to use either. Both work!  As you can see below.. it reached trace just fine by hand and was thick and glossy when poured into the lined tray.

So my ingredients were just > lye (caustic soda), organic olive oil, raw goat’s milk and organic lavender essential oil.

That’s it!

You are advised to wear some rubber gloves and protective goggles when you are  making soap and it is a good idea to keep some vinegar nearby to neutralise any spills that get on your skin, as the lye is a strong alkaline and can burn your skin quite badly. The vinegar will help neutralise the alkaline and reduce any burning if you should happen to spill any on yourself.

(Keep pets and small children out of the room whilst soap making) .

But PLEASE don’t be afraid of it. My twelve year old daughter can safely make soap and we have incorporated  saponification into one of her science ‘lessons’ with great results. Here are a couple of links to saponification chemisty lessons/ resources for any other home educators out there .

Lesson Link 1 Lesson Link 2

And for all those of you still wondering if I have found a new home for us all yet..Sadly no I haven’t..I am still looking, so if you hear of anywhere in East Lincolnshire UK to rent ( as close as possible to Alford) then please let me know. Must be animal friendly and preferably have a very large garden in order for me to grow lots of fruit/vegetables and keep my poultry …..and/or have land to rent nearby.
Thank you. Blessed be xx

Feel free to make a small donation towards my internet connection costs and the running of Riverside Homestead. Any amount, no matter how small, really helps and is truly appreciated. Thank you!

The big let down. All packed with nowhere to go…..

Finally!…….I have been contacted by the owners of the tiny cottage that I was hoping to move into in a few weeks time.The owners initially contacted me via my online advert on 31st March. Unfortunately they have, at this late date, decided to withdraw the property from the rental market. After months of hoop jumping, including sending in several references, having an impromptu, uninvited visit from the father here one Saturday and a further planned visit from both parents on a Sunday, where I was questioned about my income, employment and transport options…and where I gave a tour of my current property and served tea,  with a smile! … it seems that they have only just decided to tell me that they are now unable to let the property due to the amount of work it needs doing to it. Nice timing!

In preparation to move I packed up the contents of a lifetime/lifestyle.. Emptied all the stables/ goat sheds/ poultry houses etc..and ran down my hay stores.. I didn’t get any of my kitchen garden sowed AT ALL this Spring……nothing!…  

So all this work has been done only to be left  in the lurch at the final hurdle…..More than anything I am disappointed at the absolute lack of consideration for my daughter and I…and the dreadful lack of communication and common courtesy they have showed us . I have sent several texts in the past two weeks trying to confirm dates etc….which have been totally ignored. 

This isn’t a game for us.. It is not a hobby or a fun pastime..it is our life…We grow our food!…..We had livestock to move.. A kitchen garden to transfer  (fruit trees/ bushes and perennial vegetables) and a season of growing our food to catch up on…..

I had already given  preliminary notice in to the owners of my rented  grazing land  and was awaiting a final moving date to enable me to hand in my notice to my cottage landlord.. My daughter is devastated..so much turmoil ……We are now living in a cottage full of boxes. So we are now looking for a home once again..

Please take the time to share the advert below.Thank you kindly in advance. 

Wanted: Rural cottage and land  East Lincolnshire UK.

 

 

Permaculture preparations. Trying to focus on a future away from Riverside.

Although I am yet to secure a new property, I have in fact found one (or should that be, one found me?) that kinda fits the bill, albeit it with a fair few shortfalls compared to my beloved Riverside. It is very run down. Unloved. The garden is awful.. uneven…..just mud and weeds…no proper fencing.. no set layout or flow to it….( but nothing I cannot rectify) and it has just one medium sized outbuilding, that (atm) is not included with the cottage tenancy!….so that is a major sticking point…… The cottage is small. Tiny in fact. It has a rather nasty dated varnished cubicle sized kitchen..no room for a table or fridge or washing machine….or any of those normal kitchen-y things lol…… and  it has a tiny lounge.. That’s it!

Downstairs there is a basic bathroom tacked on the side and there are three teeny basic bedrooms upstairs, which altogether do not add up to the space in the two bedrooms we have here…….and here is not big!!! It has a walk in pantry in the hall and an under-stairs larder in the kitchen entrance. But that’s the sum of it.. It is very small indeed…But I can work magic with it if given the chance..I want to take it back to  how it should look..a traditional Victorian  farm workers cottage.. strip paintwork..  paint walls.. clean quarry tiles… make it tasteful and classic and quaint!..and most of all LOVED!! XXX

However I now realise that I shall have to sell a lot of my furniture and do a fair bit of juggling to get essential items like my Victorian iron bed and at least one  of my comfy sofas inside this new tiny living space…that is IF we end up there????… Nothing is set in stone yet…… and my new potential landlords/ ladies ( It is a family thing) have yet to get back to me in reply to a question I have asked regarding sole use of the garden  plot/outbuilding… I have two more places to look at, if a couple of things concerning this tiny potential home cannot be resolved..  *sigh

As most of my readers know, about 6 yrs ago  I came to Riverside when it too was unloved and in need of some tlc.  The garden was full of nettles, brambles, creeping buttercups, poorly/diseased trees,  hogweed and docks, the pond leaked badly and there were piles of old building materials, a rusty trampoline frame and broken sheds scattered about the place. But I could see the beauty….

Slowly, but with determination and lots of hard work, H and I have created a peaceful permaculture sanctuary here. We have lived so very happily here.. it is private and peaceful…and within months  of moving in an abundance of wildlife soon became residents or visitors here too.

We grow / have grown a huge amount of food here: Veg, Fruit, Herbs etc.. We planted willow along boundaries as goat forage ..installed a bee hive in the side garden……. and planted nut and fruit trees wherever we could……as well as soft fruit of all kinds….We keep our tiny dairy herd of goats here on the plot and raise poultry for eggs and meat… We have installed water butts..compost bins and dozens of nest boxes about the place,  as homes for  insects, birds and bats…  We have repaired the jetty over the river after floods washed part of it away last winter and we have sat there on that little jetty watching the brown trout, water voles, dragonflies and damselflies every summer since we moved in.  We love it here..  I am sure a part of us will remain here when we leave ❤ xxx

We have a  rather motley collection of outbuildings both here at Riverside and on the land we rent for the ponies. These buildings include goat sheds, feed stores, an aviary for quail, wood sheds, tool sheds, greenhouse, a large store on the side of the cottage, a milking shed, mudroom for wellies,  plus a lean to room to hold incubators and heat lamps….. plus we have the two field shelters at our paddocks and a tack-room/feed-room too.  We shall need at least SOME kind of  storage-space/outbuilding at any future property we move to.  That has become very clear as we try so very hard to whittle down our belongings and tools to the bare minimum. I think it is hard for people to truly understand why we need space to store stuff. Self sufficiency/ smallholding require lots of  tools/ equipment . They are the tools of our lifestyle..x.

So at the moment H and I are in limbo..STILL not knowing what is happening about the cottage we viewed, despite doing EVERYTHING  we have been asked  to do….. We sent in excellent  references.. I have had phone calls and texts with various family members… I was happy to view it whilst it was in a bad way…. .. and  then I  had an  impromptu visit from the farm owner….and a planned visit from him and his wife here at Riverside the following day, where I answered all the questions asked of me…. We don’t know what else we can do?….. So we are left  waiting for people to get back to us……..STILL no moving date or confirmation over the use of the outbuilding on the site….No idea of  the actual rent ( despite asking for a figure and being reassured it will be below what I pay here) … and the constant not knowing is EXHAUSTING, unsettling and demoralising….and I am losing the will to continue with it tbh

We are now surrounded by boxes here at Riverside….. Packing inside the cottage has proceeded in readiness for all the other work we will need to do to move the outdoor stuff/ plants/ tools and livestock.. eventually!..I am trying to be organised… and   I am trying very hard to focus on a new start somewhere else…. I am just hoping we don’t have to unpack it all again in two or three months time and start looking all over again… I need some certainty so I can hand in my notice here….. and get  ready to move…..I need to be fair to my current landlord too and let him know my plans…. but  I can’t do anything til I know more myself..The joy of being a tenant smallholder.. *sigh….. xxx

Please feel free to make a donation..Paypal button below… Any donations usually go towards the cost of running this blog  (internet costs) but any future donations are being used to fund animal housing at my new home..  The goats  will need a new stable/shelter so any donations, no matter how small,  will be greatly appreciated x

Thank you kindly, from all of us at Riverside  xxxx

I *may* have a new home

So much has happened in the months that have passed since my last proper blog post.  I do sincerely apologise for the huge gap in my blogging but in all honestly ‘life’ simply took over.

A dear relative’s health issues became a priority for my family. My beloved Uncle (who has been more like a grandfather to me over the years) has been diagnosed with Vascular Dementia and it has been quite a lot for my family to come to terms with. Sadly it is progressing at quite a pace and we are losing the man we once knew. But no matter how much his memory fails him, we still all love him dearly and we make sure he feels and knows that daily. We are united as a team/ family and are sharing in his care. My parents have been truly amazing!  xxx

A long on /off relationship finally broke down and  so I ended up single once more and that also took it’s toll on me emotionally and of course the constant search for a new home took up a huge amount of my time/ energy and it  interrupted my sleep and my day-to-day functioning
(During all of this I also had an odd online stalker/ harassment issue, which was luckily dealt with promptly by the police….. but was unsettling none the less……. especially for my daughter)

………and of course I was still home educating my daughter, working to pay bills and running this place on my own..hence  the severe lack of blogging…..Oops!

I have been  gardening with far less motivation than is normal for me. I simply couldn’t and cannot  focus on growing as much food as I usually do (seeing as I thought I wouldn’t be here to harvest a lot of it) and I couldn’t put my goats in kid last Autumn either, as I was in limbo about when they would be moving to a new place ( If I could even find any land!) and I truly didn’t want to stress them and move them when they were heavily pregnant. So all that went on hold too 😦

There was so much turmoil and a foreboding unsettling uncertainty with my housing issue and to a degree it still continues…and in all honesty I am tired of it now.

However, some positive news,  I was approached a week or so ago by a lady who had seen my advert on the Preloved website.  It was an advert about me looking for a new home and it looks increasingly promising that she may indeed have something suitable. Fingers crossed!!!
I have sent in references as requested but am just awaiting my landlord’s one to be written > *sigh < despite several reminders to get it to me asap ….He is reluctant to see me leave here before he sells up, so he is dragging his heels a bit with the reference, which is rather upsetting not to mention frustrating, as I have been a very good tenant over the last 6 yrs….. and his go slow attitude could mean we lose this new tenancy offer!

Anyway….I am keeping everything crossed that all goes well eventually, as the new place is, rather wonderfully, a longterm tenancy!!…. whoop!!! ….. and it is  only 4 miles from here, which means H and I will have a sense of permanency and belonging and we can really get into growing more fruit and perennials, all the while knowing that we will be around to see them mature and bear fruit. It also means I can invest more into the permaculture way of life both financially with things like a polytunnel / plants and with energy/ ideas etc!

On a personal front I have a rather wonderful new man in my life (yes it surprised me too!) We both  wish to keep things very private but I am no longer a single woman and am rather liking that fact!

Well enough for now.. more updates soon .. I promise.

A normal quiet night at home by the fire xxx

 

I will leave you with a recent photo or two.

Tansy

 Much love and bright blessings from all at Riverside xxxx

 

 

 

Gallery..a few pics from the plot xxx

Gallery.

On the move……( I am still looking for a new home)

My new driving pair, Crystal and Bunny, on the move to their winter grazing.
I am still looking for a basic rental property, so that I can continue with my very simple country life,growing my own food, milking my goats and raising my livestock.
Please get in contact if you know of anywhere in East Lincs UK that has a small basic cottage ( unmodernised is good!) and a plot of land suitable for these two and my dairy goats and poultry .
I have excellent references.
Thank you… x