We came back to our website over Christmas. I hadn’t realised it had been quite so long since we had blogged. Are we still growing our own or was it just a fad? We are still growing our own, we eat out of our garden every day of the year and most, not yet all meals. Sometimes this is the majority of the meal other times it is a small part, but it is work in progress. Over the coming days and weeks I hope to be able to fill you in on what we have been doing, what worked for us and what didn’t.
The biggest change, which joins us all together wherever we are in the world in SARS-COV-2, more commonly known as Coronavirus or the illness COVID 19. We have all been touched by this virus and the disease it causes, some of us by the way our lives have changed and some of us by the devastation it has caused our families and communities. In all of us it has caused anxiety and fear, and with this it has become clear how much we need out outdoor spaces. Even though it is deep winter here in Scotland being outside some part of every day helps keeps things in some perspective and makes life a little easier.

Bees are busy storing honey for the winter, but some of these bees are hovering waiting for a chance to get into the hive and rob honey instead of foraging. So I have shrunk the entry holes down to melt them easier to defend, thus limiting the opportunities for other bees to rob honey.

A morning cup of coffee before the work and heat of the day.

Beautiful Harris Tweed from our holiday ready to be made into cushion covers.

We have been busy over the last few weeks collecting in our soft fruit harvest. We have nearly 20 kg of blackcurrants, which we use as part of breakfasts, raspberries and the photo is of some gooseberries I came across while picking the raspberries. There are also some hazel nuts which I use in our home made granola.

In the last 3 months there has been a lot of thinking and numbers being looked at.

It turns out the cost of new build, for my parents, at present is high compared to house prices so a build for my parents is off. This left us with the quandary of the pellet boiler. We emptied the hopper and cleaned it out. It was then filled with dry bagged pellets - no small task - but it was working fine,heating the house fully, until we turned the heating off. By then hopefully we will know whether we are eligible for the renewable heat incentive. So the decision has been put off till the autumn!

You will remember the hassle with the hot water tank. Well by the law of unintended consequences the Immersun which diverts unused solar electricity to the immersion had to be changed from feeding 2 x 3kW immersions to 1 x 3kW immersion. This lead to an overheating of the neutral cable in the first 3kW switch and nearly a fire. Fire avoided and new switch with reprogramming and all is well.

However, now April and May are here we are eating much more out of the garden. Wild Garlic is good, as are the nettles. We still have Kale and cabbage outside and pak choi and mustard inside. With all that is going on I have cheated this year and bought my tomato plants at a local plant sale. Everything else is in or just about to go in.

I have also been looking at widening our perennial foods as these seem more resilient and reliable. With this I am looking at natives thus nettles and wild garlic above, fruit - at the moment rhubarb.

Well Christmas is well over and long gone. The new hot water tank is installed on it's new floor and is doing what it should be.

However, we have been struggling with heating the house. This is despite the relatively mild winter. I have cleaned out the pellet boiler till is shone, well almost, but still no good. Our pellets, despite being in a dry store are not flowing properly and are needing raked several times daily to stop the boiler going running out and going cold. After much fiddling and tweaking by both us and our heating engineer it seems the bottom line is the boiler is under powered for our house - despite being a 30kW boiler and the house and pipes being insulated to within an inch of it's life. We do suspect the pellets may have absorbed atmospheric moisture despite being in a dry store but that is going to happen in Scotland. When we discussed this with the family, my son did the financial calculations and was clear we should go for a gas boiler. My teenage daughter, who is often less forthcoming, became quite animated about the fact that her bedroom had been cold each winter since the pellet boiler had been put in. This left us in a horrible predicament, we like the idea of the lower carbon footprint of pellets and the comparative security of having your heating stored for the winter but equally a cold house is no good and the cost of replacement prohibitive.

As often happens though events overtook us. My parents are in their 80s and still fit and well. However, there are times that they would benefit from a bit more support than we can currently give. They live about a mile away but in bad weather that can be a long mile, or in the middle of the night. We have spoken back and forward about building an annex, this has now developed into a more structured plan and if it goes ahead the space the pellet boiler and store take up will need to be sacrificed.

We are lucky, we received a prize of 3 kWp solar panels and the FiT from this pays the interest free loan for the boiler and pellet store. In effect we are not loosing our money so soon and we always new it was a risk. I am glad we can document it for others.

The other big event has been our house being thermally imaged and pressure tested. I haven't had time to digest all the images in detail but the big picture is our loft and floor are well insulated, our cavity wall insulation is poor and we have a pressure test result ( how drafty the house is) that is 6kPa, similar to a new build house though we did find some gaping holes that we have now filled.

And finally, our living room floor as many of you know needs lifted and relaid. We looked into getting underfloor heating put in, the cost? between £4,800 and £6,000. So we decided we would need to save an awful lot of fuel to justify that so we will be putting the radiators back!

December is always a busy month. For us it is filled with school shows, brass band concerts, Christmas Fairs and scout activites. This year to add to the mayhem we have had a sinking hot water tank, exploding boiler and sick chooks:(

The sinking hot water tank was first noticed when our plumber and his mate came to do the annual service. Yes our hot water tank needs serviced to maintain it's warranty. As the plumber was doing his checks his mate was standing behind him and noticed the tank was leaning over, against the wall of the cupboard it is housed in. For all the times I have cursed our black brick internal walls I am eternally grateful for them now. They are the only thing stopping the tank tumbling. If you remember way back in January 2011 we had a burst pipe from the tank which made an incredible mess.

Our tank manufacturer, Ariston, sent out an engineer who confirmed the above and I am now waiting on a replacement cylinder to arrive, well worth the annual servicing fee.

The boiler has been playing up. Well not the boiler the pellets that feed the boiler. With all our insulation we are using less pellets than we initially expected. This means pellets are in the pellet store for about a year, which in the wet scottish climate is too long. Yes the store is water tight but the air is humid/damp and pellets quickly absorb any moisture. The result is they don't really flow so the auger takes up pellets around it's entrance to put in the boiler but not many fall back to replace them. This means we are raking the pellets twice daily, and if we are a bit slow the boiler turns off due to lack of fuel. This happened over the weekend, my husband went and raked the pellets and ran the auger to re fill it. This unfortunately over filled the burning grill with pellets so when the lit they went boom! No damage done to him or the boiler but he was a bit shaken, no surprise.

And finally chooks. The old girls are still not laying despite finishing their moult. The new ex barn ones are laying an odd one. One of our older chooks developed a runny bottom one morning, she looked fine so I decided to monitor her. That evening she didn't return to the hen house, we scoured the garden to no avail. The following day I found her dead. Not sure what it was but so far the remaining four look fine, fingers crossed. Meantime one of our new ex barn girls has developed a prolapse which despite being put back twice daily won't stay in place. She is still eating and drinking but looking a bit sorry for herself so I'm not sure if she is going to make it:(

Otherwise I think we are ready for Christmas and all it leaves me to do is wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope you will join us in our journey into 2014.

I am glad to say movember is over. The guys did really well and raised over £1000. This week the front door step has been being raised to make it easier for

My parents and others to get in. However, when I came on Friday I thought the builders had blown the electrics in the garage. We switched everything on then flicked to RCB it blew again. The igniter on the boiler had blown, so I change sit. It did remind me that pellet boilers take more looking after then other boilers.

My husband has decided to grow a moustache for Movember. We initially discussed this several months ago and I agreed. Now the background to this is I like clean shaven faces not moustaches or beards so I new it would be a challenge. So far it has. I can't wait for the end of the month.
Movember does an important job by raising awareness of men's health especially prostatic & testicular cancers and mental health. So please support us by clicking the link below to donate: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/6768737 Thank you.

Life has returned to a more normal pattern. The cat's abscess discharged all over her coat, but worth it as her behaviour improved no end and the antibiotics are easier to give. Son is off the settee and back to school so the house is quiet.
I was going to say we lost two chickens at the weekend, we didn't loose them they died. The two light Sussex. Post mortems showed they had egg peritonitis and inflamed oviducts. They had not been laying for a while, one had been laying the odd shell less egg. We had kept them as we felt that it was unreasonable to kill them just because they weren't laying. I think we may see things differently in future as they could well have been in pain for a while but not showing it as they are prey animals.
The cause of egg peritonitis is not always clear. In our case I suspect the trigger was Infective Bronchitis which one of our chickens died of in the summer. I believe it is very infective, and if one in your flock has it they all do. None of the others in our flock showed any symptoms.
Infective Bronchitis affects the respiratory tract (airways) but as the oviduct has a similar membrane structure it can also be affected and the only sign is altered egg laying pattern. I think all of ours probably were affected as the egg count has been down all summer. I had put it down to the heat.
Not surprisingly the loss of two out of 7 of the flock has caused significant changes in groupings and sleeping arrangements. It is starting to settle out now, and has left us with a free hen house. So I have ordered 4 ex battery egg laying chickens to see try. They are coming mid November.

I didn't think I had much to write about this week. But the last few days have changed that. I have finished the last bit of accessible underfloor insulation, and with it have thrown away the hat, overalls, shoes etc that I had used. As could have been predicted it was a tight space where my size 5 1/2 feet got stuck! The advantages of being small.

This was followed by a family trip to the local theatre to see a duet singing Mowtown and watching our daughter's streetdance crew perform. A really good night. Local theatre is eco friendly but importantly a good night out, thanks Mowtown Divas.

One of our cats, the spikey one, has an abscess on her flank which I had planned to see the vet about tomorrow. However, this morning it was slightly larger and she was more grumpy than usual. It made me think that she had become septic. She both hissed and spat at me as I walked past and then bit me! As my son was on the settee rotten with laryngitis only one adult take her to the vet today. The cat gets on better with men so my husband got the short straw. My daughter went too. She was beside her self when she came back, the cat had bolted on being taken out of the cat carrier at the vets and ended up behind the printer. This resulted in the computer having to be taken out to retrieve her. It then required two grown men and a pair of armoured gloves to examine her, attempt to relieve the abcess and give her, her antibiotics! We have to give her antibiotics twice a day for 5 days oh joy. I hope our computer survives:)