Storms, Festivities and Gratitude

February 7, 2025

Our cat, Cow, snuggling up to read

Gratitude is wonderful, so we’ll start with that. We have just had our third winter in the hut, which is difficult to believe. I have been reflecting a lot on how much we have done in that time, moving into our third year of off the grid living, and really at what feels like end stage organizing. Of course we need top ups, especially in and around Christmas, but long gone are the trips to Ikea and charity shops looking for the perfect sofa bed, or wishing we could replace the cute but ineffective shelving with plain, useful cupboards. As far as gratitude goes, this year I am truly most thankful for our wood burning stove. Our first winter here, we had no heating except for a Mr Heater Buddy (little buddy), and we would wake in the night with dew on our faces as a result.

We had one very small solar panel, and virtually no furniture, and we ran one big extension lead outside through the window to the generator, so when we tried to use the electric heater that came with the hut, much of it escaped through the window anyway, and we couldn’t run it for very long either. Ever since we got the wood burning stove put in, the hut has become the coziest place in existence. We use it for everything - boiling a small kettle, simmer pots, roasting sweet potatoes and the laziest porridge I’ve ever made. We have the Ekol Apple Pie, because it was one of the smallest we could find, and we realised that as it was installed almost two years ago, we are due a floo cleaning. I have no experience with any other wood burning stove, but for our 20x10 foot shepherds hut, we have been able to get it up to and over 30 degrees celsius. I am sure it would go hotter but db runs hot, and can’t cope with much more than 22 hahaha.

Onto the storm. Last month we had an enormous storm, with crazy gusts. I was very worried about not only our animals, but also the surrounding wildlife. Our cats (Cow and Chicken) couldn’t believe their luck as they were allowed to stay in the night before the storm was due to hit, and were fairly well behaved, snuggling up with us all night. Cow is a very sensitive boy, and when the bigger gusts hit, he came and lay on my chest. We had virtually no damage - our mini greenhouses went for a fly, the tarp came off our shed roof, and our water butt is somewhere in a hedge, but during a less intense storm a year ago, our entire shed roof ripped off and we lost a solar panel, so we felt very lucky this year and had learned to take our panels in the night before.

Many folks sent us kind messages, asking if we were doing okay in our wee hut, but if we are honest we seemed to do better than the average household in our area. There were hundreds of thousands of homes without power, and a number of those homes still haven’t had power restored. It’s a lot easier to cope without grid electricity when you don’t have any in the first place, and I feel a lot of sympathy for folks who are still having trouble due to the effects of the storm. It was a big one, and I fear a nearby future where these huge storms become the norm due to our rapidly changing climate.

From early December, we have been visited by a number of bullfinches. It started with one, when I was making a coffee and half looking out the window one dark sleepy morning, and thought ‘That’s a funny looking robin’. Well after a proper look, it was of course no robin at all but a bullfinch, a male one. By the next morning, we had two! Following this logic, I assumed I would see three the next day, four the following etc. I was very excited because this is what it’s all about, right? Living with nature instead of having to drive six miles to avoid seeing any buildings.

Bullfinches are amber on the conservation list and short of dressing up like a female bullfinch and shouting ‘yoohoo!’, I wasn’t totally sure what to do for these gents. I ended up making a feeder from an orange half and some mealworms, and spotted a female a week later. We haven’t seen any of them since the storm. I hope they are okay.

As for festivities, the majority of this country celebrates Christmas regardless of their religious denomination, so we were quite busy with family. We were gifted a beautiful baby pear tree as part of a secret santa exchange! Due to being busy we didn’t get it planted outside, forgetting about it until it started sprouting lush green leaves! So for now it’s just hanging out in the hut, enjoying the heat. We will plant it outside with the rest of the trees when the temperature increases and we have no more worries of frost. This has made me consider starting a plant log, as we now have quite a lot in such a small space, and often get questions about them from guests.

(aj)