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Wales, United Kingdom
Documenting one couple's attempts to live a more self-sufficient life.

Tuesday 28 October 2014

It's that time of year again

With the rapidly shortening days around the equinox, my SAD hit me again. At least this year I noticed it quickly, instead of spending a month wondering what was wrong with me. On top of this, for the last week or so the weather has been miserable. The clouds surround us, blocking out the sunlight and filling the air with moisture. Everything is dark, cold and damp. This doesn't help. So, um, sorry for the recent lack of blog posts.

It hasn't all been bad. This morning we had a few hours of sunlight, which lifted my mood enough to put these together:


Flyers for our next (and last) gig

On Friday a friend of mine posted some pictures of mushrooms on facebook, wondering what they were, and sent me a private message with their location, in case I was interested. I couldn't be sure from the photos, but they did look like ceps, so I went to see, and...


Cep, with cat for scale

... they're huge! That's not a trick with perspective, that mushroom really was that big. Unfortunately, it was also rather full of maggots, but they weren't all. My drying rack is now full of sliced mushroom - if only the humidity was a little less than 100%

I made some progress with the solar panels, then stopped when it got difficult. I'll tell you about that when I get back to it. Right now, the need to creosote woodwork does not sit well with the presence of mushrooms trying to dry in the same space.

I have harvested the sugar beet - a smallish barrow load (I haven't weighed them yet). This doesn't feel terribly positive right now, because the next task is to clean them.


Filthy sugar beet. They're not all this big.

One positive side of all this damp weather is that when the clouds do break, we often get very nice rainbows.