Sunday Sunday

It is quiet.

The little farm house was once a barn to the big house on the main road. Then it became a house in 1837 with 2 barns attached.

Then it became 3 houses (about nine years ago).

The farm house, which is the one we live in, is a lumpy, bumpy house. The walls are at all angles and the floor is up and down. If you are 5'9" tall, you are in danger of concussion on the beams and doors. We are both below that height so survive a tour of the house unscathed.

It isn't a warm house as it stands end on to the prevailing wind and there is no shelter from it's force. This snow has come from the south and east so the bitter wind is hitting the 2 barn houses first.

But we have oil fired central heating that quickly warms us up and the log burning stove in the living room is effective and cheaper to run, and of course, more sustainable. We burnt scrap from around the farm to begin with, old fence posts and rotting pallets but having drained our unhealthy resource of wood, we now have a new free supply via a farmer friend who takes a tree surgeon's off-cuts.

There was an Aga. It was small and took coal but as we both go out to work, we didn't use it. Last summer it went and everyone shouted at us...don't do it! But the lovely big, range type electric cooker fits in our massive meat joints and still looks the part.

We had the outside of the house rendered during the summer, new front doors fitted to cut down the wind chill through the old ones and the bedroom plastered. It still looks run down but everyone assures me it is "farmhousey" and if it will never be immaculate, I don't have to worry about trying to keep it that way.

More time for farming.