I am pretty sure I have told you before that our house sits at the end of a 1.5mile track. We are the only ones who live this far down, with our nearest neighbours just over a mile back towards the main road. 99% of the time, this isolation is so welcome. There is nothing quite like heading up the track after travelling for work and knowing that I won't see anyone but my family until I make my way back down the road. And then there is that other 1% of the time - when the milk runs out or someone is sick and the outside world can't come fast enough...
Or when it snows. In our 4 years in this house, we have only been properly snowed in once before this year. It was for about 24 hours and the snow melted quickly and we were released. For 6 days last week, the Beast from the East kept us firmly indoors and cut off from civilisation. Our road made impassable by about a quarter mile of drifting snow. Fortunately, I shop like the apocalypse is coming and with a dairy goat and the fact we make our own bread, supply wise we were ok. It was more the constant presence of my family that had me clawing at the door and imagining a Shining type situation. Fortunately, we were released from our snow bound prison before I started writing Red Rum on anything.
However, a week on life has mostly returned to normal. The storm began and ended in time with both of our goats kidding. Freya, our Toggenburg had two bouncing (and I mean BOUNCING) kids and, sadly, Dasher, our Saanen, lost her singleton buckling to dystocia (getting stuck). We've had to watch D like a hawk, so rather than heralding the snow melt with getting stuck into garden tasks like planting seeds, we've spent most of the last week walking back and forth to the barn.
In between those moments, we have been dreaming about the seasons ahead. We've had a number of really successful fermentation and sourdough workshops and have planned a series of foraging and feasting days as I simply can't wait to get back into my normal routine of walking the dog, basket in hand, looking for that night's dinner and I thought it would be fun to take 10 or so people with me!!