Life on the Hill – Newsletter #8 – October 2019

Life on the Hill – Newsletter #8 – October 2019

Hello from Life On The Hill!
We have had a busy summer since our last newsletter in the spring. A host of interesting and interested visitors have passed through the DugOut.
Thanks are due to Wendy and Pete who stayed in the DugOut, were befriended by Midnight the cat and provided us with most of the photographs in this newsletter. We are not good at taking pictures. We never have the camera on us at the right time and other people’s photos are just so much better than anything we manage. So, Thank you Wendy and Pete!

We have a deadline!! Granny is coming to live on the Hill with us and Ed and Rob are busy getting her little house ready for moving into in December. In the picture you can see the roof boards going on. Rob has started the lovely stone wall which encloses a little garden bed and sitting out area. Daisy the dog has taken ownership of the new wall, it gives her a good vantage point from which to check out the comings and goings.
Granny’s house is single storey with a grass roof, similar to the DugOut. We have however used different materials namely; wood fibre insulation which is a joy to use, recycled glass aggregate under the limecrete floor and we are lime plastering straight onto a ‘smart’ ply.
It will look typical of life on the hill from the outside. The inside is to Granny’s taste and will be snug and cosy and just across the yard from the big house.
The next newsletter will have pictures of a (hopefully) completed Granny abode.

The animals are well and productive. The photo shows Minstrel the horse sharing her hay with one of the goats, Lisa. This is a new friendship, come about because of Minstrel being in the goat field to clean up the grazing and these two unlikely characters have hit it off.
We have a young billy goat visiting at the moment, so all being well there will be goat kids in the early spring. Goat kids are adorable. We will be needing goat friendly visitors to take some good photos for the spring newsletter!

As the season changes we are busy gathering fruits to make into preserves to take us through the winter.
Apples are picked and made into apple rings, or cooked and frozen to reappear as crumbles and pies. The goats and pigs get their fair share of peelings and windfalls.
Blackberries are picked constantly, eaten ‘on the hoof’, jammed or popped in the freezer to be eaten in the wintertime. Our damson crop was disappointing this year, so it was lovely to receive two big bags of this wonderful fruit from a friend, which has been made into jam. Haws from the many hawthorn bushes, elderberries, blackberries and bullace together make a hedgerow jelly jam.
The picture above is me picking rosehips which grow prolifically in the woods, hedgerows and beside the DugOut. These make a wonderful syrup, rich in vitamin C, A, D and E, to fend off winter colds. Hedgerow pickings are quite magical, all there for the taking and providing us with winter fare.