money for nothing and your chicks for free

We have a chick! A real live chick. The chick would have siblings but for us not obeying John Seymour's golden rule about a laying hen leave her alone. My dh is very glum about his mistake but we have a chick! Happy event! Everyone is pleased, one is better than none. Isaac moved it and it's mama to a little pen and she is super protective of it. He carried it reverently and said in hushed tones of holding the fluffy palmful, it's beyond my wildest dreams! We have real live-stock now, we're getting to be just like Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall! Despite us having bought and kept chooks for the last couple of years, it isn't the same as raising them in his mind. I know what he means. It's a special feeling.

(a none animal home grown)


But I am already considering this special feeling and The Fox. The last nine hens were his supper. Being attached is not a good thing. Too late for this reminder however (or deaf ears all round) as the chick already has the temptingly fatal mistake of being labelled with a name (Charlotte). I see why birds tend to have many offspring. On the plus side, now we know it's something our hens can do we are quite keen for another hen of ours to have a go at laying and hatching out. I am astonished by this chick's existence. I didn't really think our hens could do this. I have never seen things breed before, you know, another life! Created! Right under our noses and we didn't have to *do* anything! Quite marvellous. Ok, humans don't count, or maybe they do; even I (the layer) was astonished by a baby popping out of me after 40 weeks. Even the third time it was mind boggling (even more so).

(almost dinner)


We also have a new map (ok, grades of excitement). And rather than worry the new mother even more than she already has been, we have photos of The World instead. This has been a much wanted item since the World Cup started (it's quite hard to describe where the Ivory Coast is when one has no accurate image of Africa in relation to the UK inside one's head). Now Felix can see where Didier Drogba comes from and Isaac can pinpoint The Netherlands. It has flags around the edges and has been considered by all to be A Good Buy. Despite it's mega proportions; it's now the feature of the sitting room.





Walks in the Black Mountains (a lucky stone throw away from us) and viewing the official Land That Time Forgot. Mini winding roads aside, no finger reaching of human life extend here. Felix got all mystical in the gusty blustery wind and said it (the wind) was the spirit of the mountain and was much taken with being there; collecting snags of sheep's wool and finding just that special stone to bring home. A souvenir! Another one! I said to him almost verging on sarcasm (thinking about the crammed surfaces of his room and his many collections). What's a souvenir? I gave in. It's something you take from somewhere to remind you of the special time you had there. A happy word indeed. Big beaming smile. I can see this boy is going to live a life crammed with souvenirs. I often am swept away by this particular joy too, I'll admit. We have jam jars of pebbles and shells from different beaches lined up to examine and compare (all my doing).





I am a reader. Some people are some are not. I am of the compulsive sort. My dh is the sort who might read a book or two a year. I read a handful a week. I go through phases of non fictional material, sometimes it's food, sometimes it's parenting, sometimes it's those Deepak Chopra style of self improvement books, these along with a constant generous sprinkling of novels for ease, comfort and general well being. I borrowed a book recently from the library that I am enjoying very much - yes I know, it's a renewed thing for me, libraries and I don't get along despite me loving their contents. We usually have a hateful relationship, stemming from my forgetting to return books and having massive fines to pay, or the boys loosing books, or Esmé scribbling in them and then I have to buy them, dog eared and grubby from many previous readers - all for full price! Amazon is much easier (cheaper too and you get to stay at home to boot). Even the Oxfam book shop comes with less fraught transactions. I have a rule, that's myself only, only I can borrow books. Children no. They don't care quite honestly, I have to pry them from the library kids computers. I don't think they notice the books.

Anyway this is the book I am enjoying right now: The Idle Parent, Tom Hodgkinson. I tend to buy parenting books that come with big praise or are non mainstream, anything from John Holt and Continuum Concept to Steiner or Rousseau or Montessori. But this I like very much despite having no recommendation to go on. In fact it may well be my favourite parenting book. It's not just a big read of witty comments (although there are some) it's chock quotes from famous educators (literary and otherwise) and personal stories and experiences (I like the honesty, he threw some muddy wellies in a temper and they hit his kid's face, these confessions cheer me up no end and I feel like a much better parent than usual, even if it's simply because I have never thrown muddy wellies at one of my children, yet). Everything I like in a parenting book is sandwiched in this one, plus the main theme: that doing less for children, parenting less, makes children more self sufficient and resilient and full filled. Doing less is always essentially doing more (rather like jewellery or gourmet food) This isn't neglect, but perhaps it treads the line between carefree and careless very elegantly. And with fun. There's so much that I think essential: kids being able to use fire, knowing how, not being scared shitless by it by adults and never even being allowed to light a candle (then hiding as young teens perhaps and doing silly things). Bring the 'dangerous' into full light and explore it. Pretty sound stuff. Authority and autonomous direction is a balance too. A communal living experience but with an element of hierarchy - why pretend it's not there? We do hold many strings as adults, we are bigger, more physically powerful, we have the wallets - kids know this, they are not stupid. Autonomy is often just a pretense, or fits in when we want it to. Rather they know where they are and we are. Sometimes I snap and suddenly it is BEDTIME! No autonomy about it. Other times I am kinder and the moving upstairs is gradual and expected. But whatever, this book is a nice confirmation of the ways in which we can try to bring autonomy in, empowering and helping to create self fulfillment and resilience and creativity, but also realising fo sanity's sake that one is quite entitled to say no (in that yes I certainly will play trains with you, later, way - or hey play yourself and make tracks around my feet as I cook I'll be the giant.... etc, very little input yet quite fun in the right frame of mind). Little input is the key. Having lots of children slackens the parental burden (a paradox perhaps but true), if you don't actually have lots, invite lots over as often as possible, let them go off in the garden as a tribe and let the adults sit back and have a drink is the idle message.



The author is quite against kids being primed by the self sacrificing capitalist work ethic (hard gruelling life today for a better distant future) or the notion that we parent through fear of what our children might not one day become (less play, more 'educating'). That often we teach quite unintentionally by our everyday actions that work, our work is a chore, is tedious, is to be endured until leisure time or entertainment can happen. In a reflection of the Continuum Concept I was reminded that in some places there is no word in the language for 'work', life is all one and no experience is regarded with disdain or pleasure, it can all be created equal and enjoyable in the mind. The discriminating mind is the cause of much suffering and should not be taught to the young child who has no discrimination, who just is. Which is also a very Tao. Buddhist approach to life. Everything wheels in and slots nicely together for where I am right now in family life with this little book. A nice reminder to me not to create the distinctions I am apt to do between the hateful chores and happier entertainment. Good stuff.





First broccoli. First I have ever grown. Felix claims not to like broccoli. I steamed this for about two minutes and it was so good it needed nothing, no oil, no seasoning, nothing. I was moaning in raptures over it. Sainsbury's organic broccoli is a whole other vegetable to this stuff. Felix tried it. And liked it. I am floored. Home grown REALLY does taste so frickin different. It actually *has* taste, all of it's own. Snap peas become almost a desert. It's mind expanding. I am coveting a bigger plot, I know. Greedy. There is a field behind our house with a shed. It's used for growing hay, I see the occasional cow there in winter, a beauty of a meadow, surrounded by trees, maybe two acres? I have it chopped up in my mind's eye. Half for goats and the other piece sliced in two, veg and more chickens - to rotate as and when. Field's for rent are utterly dirt cheap I was astonished to find. But the outlay for fencing for the goats would be at least £500. Then we need to buy the animals too. Stumped. Still, I can dream and plan and my dh too, he's the money maker so we are plotting and dreaming as a pair. It'd be grand though, we'd just have to step over the garden fence and be right there. Isaac has his head buried in The New Complete Book of Self sufficiency (right now!). He's bitten. The chick, and his beloved Hugh. I am too, I'll admit.

She's already half animal, half wild, she'd be at home in a pig pen. Straw under straw over.



Soothing mint tea. Thumbs up all round.





When the youngest person in the house drives everyone mad, screams too much so that you mind chuck her into the stream and hope she floats away (quietly), what best to do but love her all over again and sew in her honour. Now she keeps seeing it where I have hooked it to the wall and screaming 'E'may's hand!' with gusto. She totally doesn't get indoor and outdoor voices. The boys did (and do) she doesn't (care). This means she is outside as much as is decently possible.