Tag: food

In Which Yesterday Was A Lot, And Mumma Knows What She’s About

Yesterday was one of those days that gets quietly written off. Medical things happened — nothing dramatic, just the kind of thing that is efficient and necessary and still somehow uses up every bit of available energy by the time it’s done, leaving you with approximately enough fuel to sit on the couch and watch the fire and call it a victory. Which I did.

Life on the farm, of course, does not pause for energy deficits.

The guinea fowl remain numpties. This is a constant. I have stopped expecting improvement and have found a kind of peace in it. The geese are currently performing their Evil Overlord routine, which involves a great deal of purposeful waddling and meaningful staring and an overall air of barely contained menace. They’re not fooling anyone but they’re very committed to the bit.

And then there are the chickens.

My next door neighbour’s chickens — eight of them — have decided, apparently without consulting anyone, that they live here now. They have moved in with my menagerie and they will not go home and they cannot be reasoned with. My neighbour has assessed the situation, recognised a lost cause, and formally ceded ownership.

I now have eight more chickens.

I am not counting them. I know the number will bother me and I have made the executive decision not to know it. They’re here. There are some of them. That’s as far as I’m going.

In more soothing news: Mumma has moved on from the Pusheen bed, but let no one think for a moment that Mumma has given up on warmth. Mumma has simply upgraded. She has installed herself in the fluffy donut bed, directly beside the wood fire, and she is glowing. Not metaphorically — the firelight is literally on her face and she looks like a Renaissance painting of a cat who has made every correct decision.

The Pusheen sits nearby, empty, watching.

Mumma does not care. Mumma has the fire. 🖤

Rainy Days and The Clan

You’ve heard about the cats. Fifteen of them, because apparently at some point in my life I made a decision and then kept making it. You’ve heard about the chickens too, though they had considerably less to say for themselves today given the state of the weather.

What I haven’t told you much about is the rest of the household. There are, in fact, humans here as well.

The first is my sister Jo. She’s six years younger than me, which she has never once let me forget, and we have been each other’s people for our entire lives. Every single person we know — and I mean every one, without exception — calls us co-dependent, and I’d love to tell you they’re wrong. I can’t quite manage it. What I can tell you is that it’s not the dramatic, dysfunctional kind. It’s more that we’ve spent so long operating as a unit, us against the world in the most cheerful possible way, that we’re genuinely just better together. We fall to pieces a little when we’re apart for too long. Not really fall to pieces. But a bit.

The second human is our cousin, whose house this actually is, and who is therefore tolerating the rest of us with what I can only describe as extraordinary grace.

Together, we are the clan. Cats, chickens, cousin, sister, me.

We live on the edge of the Western Tiers — and one day, I promise, I’ll take you exploring out there with me. They deserve their own post, their own proper introduction. For now, just know that we measure our weather by them. On the good days you can see crisp white snow sitting on the peaks, clean and sharp against whatever the sky is doing. On the medium days they’re still there, softer, grey-green and present. And then there are days like today, when they’ve simply gone. Vanished entirely. Today was a you-can-barely-see-four-houses-across-the-street day, the rain so heavy and so thoroughly annoyed about something that the mountains might as well not exist.

So, the clan was indoors. All of us. The garden will have to wait. The chickens managed, as chickens do, with great indignation and very little dignity.

One of these days I’ll tell you about what we’re actually building here — the plans, the ideas, the things that have us excited about what this place is going to become. Today is not that day. Today was a kettle-on, don’t-look-out-the-window kind of day, and I think that’s allowed sometimes.

Today I Freaked Out (And Then We Fed The Chickens)

Today was a day.

Not a bad day exactly. More of a… loud brain day.

The book is out there. Almost Yours Again is listed on Amazon and people can find it and buy it and READ it, and somewhere in the night that went from exciting to absolutely terrifying without asking my permission. I spent a good portion of today spinning through the full carousel of writer catastrophising. Has it been edited enough? What if I got the story wrong? What if it doesn’t land the way it was supposed to? What if the people who pick it up absolutely hate it and decide to tell me so in great and specific detail?

And here is the thing nobody warns you about when you finally publish a book — you have no idea if you’ve made a terrible mistake until other people tell you. Which means there is a window of time, possibly quite a long one, where you just have to exist with the uncertainty and not spiral directly into the sun.

I am not good at that window.

I should also warn you, since we’re getting to know each other here: I am a crier. Not a dignified single-tear-down-the-cheek crier. I mean full-commitment, big wet ugly tears, sobbing, shuddering, the whole catastrophic production — triggered by the most unpredictable things. A moving book. A kind comment. A particularly good piece of music. An ad about a dog. You’ve been warned. If reader reviews start coming in and any of them are lovely, I will absolutely be a mess about it.

Anyway.

Enough of that. Because here is the thing about living the life I live — the actual physical world has a very effective way of interrupting an anxiety spiral and demanding your attention.

Jo mowed the lawn and did the edges. The place looks a thousand times better. We sorted out the chickens — filled the feed bin, filled all their feeders, made sure everyone was happy. Put the rooves on their new coops. Got the snake wire up around the fancy new nesting boxes, which feels extremely necessary given that we live in Tasmania and I would like the chickens to remain un-harassed, thank you.

And then I half-filled my garlic beds with soil. I’ll finish tomorrow — there’s a lot of garlic to go in and it’s running late. Should have been in in April, but it’ll be close enough. There is something genuinely meditative about garlic beds. No one is reviewing your garlic. The garlic does not care about your publication timeline. The garlic just needs soil and time.

I could learn something from the garlic.

That’s today. Publishing panic, chicken coops, and soil under my fingernails. Not the worst combination, honestly.

Adios muchachos.