I’m so excited to be back in the writing mood as I’m bursting with interesting possibilities for the near and longer term future but have allowed time for thoughtful reflections on time passed.

Many of the blogs I follow concluded with a review of their highlights from [...]]]> Hello from Day 15 of this new year.

I’m so excited to be back in the writing mood as I’m bursting with interesting possibilities for the near and longer term future but have allowed time for thoughtful reflections on time passed.

Many of the blogs I follow concluded with a review of their highlights from 2010. As most of my 2010 was spent away from being an active blog writer (and the last half of 2009 too) it may help me and you to chart a few of the things which occurred during the past 18 months and then I’ll be able to write about the present without feeling I ought to write about events which are long passed in detail.

Here goes…

August 2009
After months of due-diligence including extended visits we proceeded with our plans to join forces with other like minded people, packed up our beautiful 7 bedroomed rented house in Worcestershire and moved down to a newly formed community in north Cornwall. Actually, *I* initially moved down with the three littles to live temporarily in our touring caravan in a  field belonging to the intentional community as the cottage we had hoped to reside in was still being let as a holiday cottage.

Bealers stayed behind as was committed to a piece of work with a client in Malvern. We hilariously moved 4 weeks after I had major abdominal surgery and two weeks before the children started their new school. Our youngest was just 16 months. I omitted to tell Darren about a frightful incident between myself and one of the original founders of the community where I was shouted and screamed at close range. I didn’t tell him about what happened or how I sobbed non stop all night or how only two people came to see if I was OK afterwards.

November 2009
A project to build a straw bale communal office was completed so Bealers was now able to move down as he had a place to work. This brought our family back together after months of him having an exhausting 5hr drive between Malvern and Cornwall every weekend. This also meant that we had all our furniture and tools again. By this time we were living in the small, damp cottage on the farm. It was the largest house but was much smaller than the lovely houses we had rented before. We stored many of our belongings in various barns around the community and tried to integrate into our new neighbourhood.

Christmas 2009
After Christmas lunch we both simultaneously agreed that we were disliking so many aspects of life at the community that we had to tell them and start looking for a new place to live. We confided in our neighbours – the only people at the farm who shared our outlook on life and with whom we had a very natural and mutually helpful relationship with. Many good times had been spent sharing meals and wine, their child and our eldests were close friends since they all met each other, childcare swapping was straightforward and trusting, excursions ‘off site’ to charity shops by both mums were frequent.

On telling these neighbours that we were going to be leaving they immediately said that if we weren’t going to stay then they weren’t either. So, on a blustery cliff top Boxing Day walk (with my bemused mother who was finding her first visit to our new home rather more interesting than she’d expected) we agreed that we would attempt to find two houses to rent next door to one another as we loved being each other’s neighbour. The search was to be focussed on Wales.

January 2010
Every moment of January was spent calling agents and scrutinising property websites. As the weeks dragged by we began to accept that we would not be neighbours for very much longer and may even have to return to our previous home areas so that the children could return to schools they were familiar with.

February 2010
One day in early February Darren and I returned from Wales with our tails between our legs after an exciting but ultimately fruitless dash to see a lovely sounding woodland that had been announced as being for sale the previous lunchtime. By the time we had got there, stomped round, discussed it and called the agent to make an offer we were too late and an offer on the land had already been accepted. We drove back to Cornwall where our amazing next door neighbours had kindly babysat the older children.

While we had been away the rest of the community had been courting a new family who were visiting to see whether they wanted to move to the community and naturally wanted to see the house we would be vacating. The potential new family asked us where we would be moving to (but not why we were thinking of leaving!) and when we explained that we had been looking in Wales for two properties next door to each other the couple said “Oh you might like to consider the place we thought we were going to be moving to if we hadn’t fallen in love with this community so much. In fact we have to make a difficult phone call tonight to the landlords of the place to explain that we won’t be taking their house after all – perhaps we could sweeten the pill by suggesting we may have found replacements…”

They proceeded to describe a 16th century 5 bedroomed Welsh timber framed long house and its nearby barn with seven acres of shared vegetable gardens, pond, small woodland, orchard and all near to a nice sounding, slightly alternative, market town. It sounded ideal and unbelievable that it not only existed but was actually vacant needing two sets of tenants.

After a few emails and phone calls Bealers and our friend Jude went to meet the landlords and to view the houses and returned saying that the landlords’ set-up 2 miles away was AMAZING in that they have a very productive holding, another beautiful timber framed house and their own emerging community which functioned really well with over one hundred WWOOFers passing through each year. He’d paid the deposit there and then and returned with a little movie of him walking round the house for me to see on his phone.

Our neighbours, naturally didn’t want to commit to saying they would live in the barn without having visited it so a couple of weeks later, armed with garlic and broad beans to plant, we all went to see the place. Our favourite quote of the weekend was from one of us claiming that they’d just heard a really rare sound – the sound of hearty laughter coming from a vegetable patch.

March 2010
On March 22nd both families left Cornwall and arrived at our new micro  intentional community. It was a bonkers week as the barn was unfit for habitation so the main house saw all eight of us bunking down in front of a pathetic fire. I had intended to bring sleeping gear in my car as I knew our removal van was not due until the following day but as the neighbours left the Cornish farm in their self-hire Luton van I asked if they had room for my bags of bedding as had run out of room in my car. A series of rather unfortunate events meant that by the Severn Bridge their van had broken down and we picked up the child and mother in our car. Luckily just as we were rearranging my chattels to accommodate the new passengers (the father was staying with the van to await the AA services) we found room for the bedding. It was farcical and a comedy of many errors (kids being sick over all the bedding, chickens and rabbits in a car but no real homes for any of them on arrival, the AA van broke down and was forced to be towed back down the whole length of Wales only to return and the van be dropped off with the back door of the van stuck severely fast until our new farmer neighbour rescued it with his huge iron bar and some heavy duty hammering, oh and all this happened in heavy horizontal sleety rain) but somehow humours remained really high and we were all so very pleased to be in a new place.

Just a few weeks later we rescued twelve battery hens from the Battery Hen Welfare Trust who have kindly given us on average 10 beautiful yellow-yolked eggs each day.

Bealers and I took a nice office at the local town hall on a street which has a fabulous wholefood restaurant, two butchers, organic and non-organic greengrocers, a bakery, and outdoor pursuits equipment, some smashing charity shops, a healthy load of hardware stores, music shop, a Chinese herbal medicine practitioner, a health food shop, an incredible book shop, an arts and crafts centre, a library, a small cottage hospital, playgrounds, a couple of interesting antiques shops, a local credit union and a resource centre. Oh and it is very very very beautiful

The rest of the year went swiftly and apart from the big move have only made smaller achievements, but nevertheless I have:

• learned how to crochet
• finally learned to use my sewing machine (bought when I was expecting the twins and thought I would need a hobby to stave off boredom – needless to say it hasn’t been out much since their arrival 8 years ago)
• started to make some very interesting and excellent friends in the local community
• started a local Freecycle group as there wasn’t one
• have halfway completed a Permaculture Design Course (a rich source of new interesting friends)
• had a wonderful Clearview woodstove installed which meant we lived through 6 weeks of ice and snow-bound life without putting on the central (wood pellet fuelled) heating system
• attempted to purchase four more woodlands
• partway completed becoming a registered childminder
• made Christmas a homemade one by mainly giving gifts I’d made (food and fabric)
• moved the piano into the hallway and now play on it several times a week

Bealers also continued with his plan to gain more practical skills and passed his exams to get his chainsaw tree felling licence (or ‘ticket’), visited Ben Law to learn how to do roundwood timber framing and had Simon Fairlie teach him how to use a Scythe.

Planning ahead…

Previous posts to this Becoming Domestic blog have been on my transition from City based working mother to rural homemaker.

I am still very much on that journey and will continue to write about domestic life but all of my thoughts are now geared towards the necessary transition (personal and globally) from an resource-rich lifestyle to a simpler more resilient lifestyle where we are less dependent on the state and society’s instant gratification culture and have more time, better health, stronger community, increased practical skills, freer thinking offspring who are as prepared for an uncertain future in a depleted, chaotic world.

During this coming year Bealers and I hope to…

• help establish a new small rural housing co-op for us to make a permanent home
• remove our two older children from mainstream education and teach them all we can
• have a better attempt at growing vegetables at this altitude (1200ft) where we laughed when our landlady mentioned that the last frost is generally June (stopped laughing when our newly planted beans got killed by an unexpected cold snap during the last days of May!)
• continue to improve practical skills (sewing, spinning, knitting, crocheting and food preservation for me, woodworking, fixing things and sailing for B)
• learn to horse ride
• continue to build relationships in the wider local community
• complete my permaculture design course
• set up a child minding enterprise as contingency to our small family business falling on lean times
• continue to acquire useful manual tools

If she spots a cat outside the window or in a book she strokes [...]]]> My 11 month old baby girl is totally wonderful in so many ways but recently we are all marvelling at how she is able to communicate her thoughts and needs by using some of the signs we have shown her.

If she spots a cat outside the window or in a book she strokes her left hand with her right (and gets very excited too). We say ‘Have you seen a cat?’ and most often she has spotted it way before we would have done. Similarly with horses (her big sister’s toys, a picture in a book or perhaps one of the many that pass the house each day) she makes the horse sign (a clip clop noise and a vague reigns holding sign). She asks for milk when she is thirsty (or tired but that’s a whole seperate post topic) and nods furiously when we say ‘Would you like some milk?’.She also requests to go and look out the front window at the birds (many including pheasants, birds of prey and huge flocks of more common garden birds) by waving and then making the gesture which means ‘bird’ (finger and thumb make a beak open and closing sign). When asked ‘Shall we look for birds in the garden?’ after seeing these actions we again get much leg wiggling and excitable noises. She is a blessed little thing who clearly enjoys chatting.

Now that she has understood that most things have a label and a sign she is able to make despite not having the power of vocal speech she is able to make little sentences (‘Hello eating horse/bird/cat’) and is able to pick up new signs almost daily.

We used sign language with our twins 5 years ago when they were the same age. It was so awesome to have actual conversations with babies who couldn’t yet walk let alone talk and I find it sad that not more parents don’t encourage this very primative form of communication with their little babes.

We have had no training, have not attended any classes (although I am aware that such classes exist), we have simply got two picture board books from the library and have repeated the signs (just five to begin with ‘yes’, ‘milk’, ‘food’, ‘all finished’ and ‘more’) as nauseum until one day she started doing them back to us.

Here are the books. It is so much fun having a baby who instead of crying can politely tug your leg and make the sign for ‘milk’ and tells her Daddy about the interesting animals she has seen during her day when he comes home from work…

‘My First Signs‘ by Annie Kubler

and

‘My First Animal Signs‘ by Anthony Lewis

Having considered a huge range of possible cures for our itchy feet Bealers and I finally found a house we may move to in a few weeks while off work this during this half term holiday (all five of us laid low with stomach bugs and filthy colds).

Possible options have been wide ranging [...]]]>

Having considered a huge range of possible cures for our itchy feet Bealers and I finally found a house we may move to in a few weeks while off work this during this half term holiday (all five of us laid low with stomach bugs and filthy colds).

Possible options have been wide ranging and have included taking the family travelling for six months to a year, living and working in an intentional community (very appealing in many respects), helping my dad complete his renovation of his home in France, buying a reasonably priced plot of agricultural land to start a smallholding on in west Wales or just to move to a new rental house which meets more of our needs than this present one does.

Our minds were kept well and truly open until we heard of a house for rent in a very pretty, very rural location not too far from where we are now but too far for the twins to continue at the school they have attended since we left London two and a half years ago. We had seen the house advertised about six months ago but had ruled out viewing it as it was beyond our rental budget and also seemed too far from ‘everything’.

Since first advertising the house the owners have emigrated and have now dropped the rent so we drove out to see it as on paper it seemed to have a good number of rooms, a large garden and orchard, countryside views, is near to a very small rural school (just 40 pupils on role) but yet near enough to Bealers offices to be a possibility.

We knew fairly soon during the viewing that although it wouldn’t be a financial downshift (more a financial sideshift as the rent will be slightly more but the house is doubleglazed and has a woodburner and its own woodland area so hopefully heating oil costs will be lower), it could be another move towards a much more simple lifestyle away from the relentless pressure to shop and consume.

The house and school are both surrounded by fields, rivers and woods. We saw more than ten pheasants on our drive from the main road to the house, a buzzard flying overhead and horses, cows and sheep in the distance. As a long term aim we both still hold a desire to become more self-sufficient in a more remote location but by renting this house first we are able to see whether we do actually like living so far from a town environment.

One thing which initially concerned me is how much I might miss the facilities of the small town I use everyday after dropping the children off to school – the butchers, the bakers, the Co-op, the charity shops, the bank, the chemist. In the potential new village there is just a (lovely) little shop, post office, one pub, the village hall, the church and school. After a few days of pondering I remembered how I once realised that it is easy to live in the countryside and enjoys all of its benefits but one has the ability to visit the nearby town whenever one wants to but harder to do it the other way round (to live in a town but to truly appreciate the benefits of rural life whenever one fancies it). I’m more than happy to try it out for a year or so. Especially because the house itself has a few extra rooms so we can have a dedicated guest room and baby bedroom.

If the headteacher of the possible new school says that she has two places for the kids then we are likely to move house in the first week of December. I found a fantastic website today with loads of checklists and advice for people moving house called www.helpiammoving.com I particularly liked the ‘How to move with children’ section and will borrow a few of the books they recommend on the subject to read to E & M. We’ll start the long job of packing, getting rid of stuff we don’t need as soon as I’ve spoke to the headteacher to confirm the school has places tomorrow but luckily the decluttering task will be lessened by the fact that we moved not so long ago and I have been slowly getting rid of surplus books, clothes, toys, ornaments whenever possible.

I’m also going to follow our friend L’s expertise and make sure that on the day of the move itself the kids are looked after by someone they know while we scurry around and get the children’s new bedrooms looking wonderful and inviting at the very least.

Initially I thought that the best time to change schools would be after the Christmas break as they wouldn’t want to miss all the lovely activities in the run up to the holidays at their current school. Then I realised that actually it might be best to start at the new school when it is all carol singing, pantomime trips, Christmas fayres and parties. When the new term starts in January it won’t be a horrid bleak unfamiliar environment it will be saying hello to friends they started to make in the fun time prior to the Christmas break.

I heard a couple of really sad and scary tales recently of young children (friends’ of friends) having to have rotten milk teeth removed (one child was having to have twenty removed the other needed five taking out). I couldn’t believe it and wondered whether it was parental ignorance [...]]]>

Brushing two new little teeth

I heard a couple of really sad and scary tales recently of young children (friends’ of friends) having to have rotten milk teeth removed (one child was having to have twenty removed the other needed five taking out). I couldn’t believe it and wondered whether it was parental ignorance rather than negligence to blame.

Loads of kids at the school my children attend seem to be taken regularly to the bakery or the sweet shop after school for a snack (we head home for bananas, milk and peanut butter on toast). Some kids have squash in their water bottles instead of water (a drink they are meant to have with them in the classroom) to slurp on throughout the day. We frequently get given gifts of sweets when a classmate has had a birthday or has been on holiday. My generation of parents seem to be losing the knowledge that lots of sugar = bad teeth.

I was not given many sweets as a child due to the fact that both my parents spent their childhood muching on boiled sweets, gobstoppers and toffee. They now have a mouth full of filings and crowns and have to endure frequent agony at the dentists. We had a box of Quality Street at Christmas and also Turkish Delight. I used to get a small amount of pocket money and used to spend some of it on sweets at the local shop. They were not banned just not around as a matter of course. We never had fizzy drinks in the house but were allowed as occasional treats.

On hearing the sad tales of children with rotting teeth I wondered what I could do better to ensure my kids learn how to take care of their teeth and to make sure I am doing the right thing.

Improvements to be made:

• Dilute fruit juice (recommended dilution is 1:10 according to dentist literature)
• Stop buying squash
• Help with brushing their teeth morning and night – I do a ‘Mummy brush’ after they have attempted to brush their own teeth
• Ask grandparents to no longer buy sweets as a treat
• Suggest kids don’t spend their pocket money on sweets but take them to a charity shop for little toys, a book shop or a toy shop (or eBay as they love browsing the toys on there!)
• Remind them ‘Oooh we’ll have to give your teeth an extra good brush after that’ if they have been eating sweets at a party to help them remember the connection between sugar and bad teeth
• Book 6 monthly dental check ups for all the family
• Use old fashioned disclosing tablets occasionally to show them where they need to do better brushing (they think these are brilliant as they temporarily turn their mouths bright bright blue)
• Set a good example (only scoff chocolate when they are in bed!) and don’t have sugar on cereal, in coffee etc.
• Remember that dried fruits such as raisins, apricots, banana chips are also high in sugar and they are sticky so the residue can remain on the teeth.

As we were fortunate enough to be given LOADS of second hand washable nappies I am really enjoying not having to use disposable nappies which I’m glad about as disposables cost a fortune (about £10 for a week’s worth of botty changes) and they also are super stinky in the household [...]]]>

As we were fortunate enough to be given LOADS of second hand washable nappies I am really enjoying not having to use disposable nappies which I’m glad about as disposables cost a fortune (about £10 for a week’s worth of botty changes) and they also are super stinky in the household refuse bin (even when bagged in a nappy sack). The washable nappies are collected throughout the day in a lidded pail with a mesh drawstring bag as a liner and few drops of tea tree oil to keep fresh and they are washed with a load of laundry at 40 degrees each evening or every other evening if I’m feeling slack (we have so many I don’t ever run out of nappies).

Before our baby arrived three months ago I wasn’t aware that people who use washable nappies also tend to use washable wipes and I had stocked up on a box of ‘environmentally friendly’ disposable wipes. These went fairly quickly and it was just by chance that I came across a woman on eBay selling brand new washable wipes made from fleece in a huge range of cheery patterns. I bought one pack of 10 from her (£1.50) then another and now we just use lovely pure warm water to clean the baby. The fleecey squares are kept in a little basket near to the babe’s changing station.

They are so soft and really big that the task of cleaning a really nasty nappy is far less trouble with these cloths than with any thin shop-bought tissuey wet wipe which must be full of chemicals. They get popped into the nappy pail along with the nappy and being fleece they don’t colour run in the wash.

I always have a few in my baby’s changing bag and get lovely comments about how pretty, soft, thick and useful they are. When the bub starts to eat solid food I’m sure I will get through plenty as little face cloths. I shudder to think how much I spent on disposable nappies + wipes with the twins before they were toilet trained it must have been close to £2,000 during the two years of their lives.

The Willow Den in the background will get much leafier this summer

Last March we bought the willow withies to make a willow den for the children as our garden has no shade after midday during the summer months. Withies can be bought from November-March in the UK when the wood is [...]]]>

The Willow Den in the background will get much leafier this summer

Last March we bought the willow withies to make a willow den for the children as our garden has no shade after midday during the summer months. Withies can be bought from November-March in the UK when the wood is dormant.

We followed the instructions found in a great book called ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?: Great Gardening for Green-Fingered Kids’ and within a few weeks of planting at the beginning of April, the willow had taken root and formed a superb play den in the corner of the garden.

Now it is a year on and I’ve been asked to show a picture of just how leafy it is. We’re not sure whether the maintenance of tying in the bows at the top of the dome will be an annual job. It may be that using the recommended rafia twine was a bad idea for long term growth as it just rotted during the winter and the vigorously growing willow burst its joins. Bealers is going to use more sturdy non-biodegradable ties when he has the time to bend the open roof branches over again.

Not a very good picture as the plum tree growing behind makes it look very tall!