Weekend ahead!

Our wood pile is shrinking fast. It seemed like only last week that we ordered, received, and then shifted 2 cbm of firewood out of our driveway and down the garden. It's not even October yet and we haven't really started firing up the stove for all-day burning, but we've already used up probably a quarter to a third of our hardwood. You'll need about 7 cbm of hardwood for a whole heating season, Mum told me, so we'd better get more in soon.

That's why we're particularly looking forward to starting our coppicing this weekend. There's a mean old tree down the woods, emailed our group leader, we need to tackle it. It's got our names on it, I emailed her back.

The other project this weekend will be apples: let's hope we can scrounge some surplus off people in exchange for homebrews, raspberry jam and my new creation -- onion, bacon and mushroom quiche.

Neuroticat is being very vocal in the early mornings, mainly to announce to a sleeping house that she's back from her exciting business in the garden, but she's ever so grateful now that Mr Tubby has vacated her territory. She absolutely loves the new living room rug and has taken to watching Stove TV when it's on.

Time for a second cup of coffee before work. I can hear the haw wine parping away loudly in the kitchen next door -- it's a sound that takes some getting used to, the carbon dioxide that the yeasty mush generates in the closed bucket and that then bubbles through the airlock like a wet fart. OH declared the other day that he was in good company: one of our foraging heroes, forget his name now, older bloke off River Cottage, John Something, had apparently been told off by his wife for leaving all these plastic buckets with fruit mush in various stages of fermentation standing around in the kitchen, for people to trip over.

I think I'll continue naming objects -- closet animist that I am. Our scarecrow got a name, Harvey, our skull got one, Boris, even the massive early 20th century Gothic dresser looming over our dining table has one, Lurch. The new stove now needs a name, and the fermentation bucket, I've decided, needs one as well. Will post our deliberations.