Category: caravan

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Snow and seedlings

We’ve had a second bout of very cold weather over the last week, with a good few inches of snowfall, and blizzard conditions.

Friends living in a caravan a few miles away whilst they self-build their house have found their water tank and pipes frozen over these last few days.

Between the snow flurries

It takes me right back to our caravan days in the last really cold snap a few years ago with husband heading out into the snow in his dressing gown and wellies, clutching my hairdryer to try and thaw out our frozen water pipes. Unsuccessfully.

It makes me doubly grateful that we are warm and dry in the house in comfort now. In the evenings we fire up the woodburner and enjoy the sound of it crackling away cosily in the corner.

Some of my seeds have started to germinate. The cucumbers raced up, and we have a few chillies, lettuce, tomatoes and beans starting to show.

I think that they’re all a bit perplexed at the moment though. Bright sunshine through those big windows, lots of solar gain and warmth, but snow flurries just a few feet away!

Confused cucumber seedlings

Winter still has us in its grip. Cottage pies, warming breakfasts and slower days.

Cottage pies

It has to be done. We don’t take any of this for granted.

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The last few weeks

Despite not having a joiner to finish the skirting boards, which are unceremoniously piled up in the living room, or the door linings and architraves, or a plasterer to finish the stairwell, we’re still making progress.

Chaos, building supplies, painted walls!

Good friends have helped with coats of paint in the bedroom, the upstairs bathroom, landing, dining room and kitchen. Andy is so much better at painting than I am, and so much more efficient, that a weeks work has resulted in a huge difference. It’s all starting to look dangerously white..

I’m hoping against hope that there will be enough rooms ready for us to move in over the next month. We’ve had surprisingly mild weather for the time of year, but it can’t last. We had snow on the hills at this point two years ago when we first moved here, so it may be delayed, but it’s surely coming.

Kitchen being painted

Husband has been fitting lights and sockets in the house and will move onto the bathrooms next. If we can get basic facilities up and running we can move in and enjoy the warmth. It’s already a comfortable and constant temperature compared to the caravan.

First wall light in

As we continue the build and start making plans for our first family Christmas for the last few years, I’m aware of how much we still have to do to finish it, but moving in feels very close now.

Whilst all this happens, life also goes on. The deer fencing for the vegetable and orchard area of the croft has arrived. I’m not quite sure when it will get installed, but it will at some point. We have a friends birthday coming up and I’ve baked her a pear, brandy and orange pie.

Because why not.

Pear pie

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The Truffle Diaries – incarceration

Dear Diary,

This is day two of my incarceration in this place. My people have left the hapless hound and I in the care of these people for two weeks.

Us in the Time Before

This place that I am imprisoned in lacks basic comforts, despite us being used to caravan space whilst our people build their own home, and I am sorely tried by the lack of high roosting places from which to pounce.

All available high shelf space seems to be full of books, scrabble boards and other such fripperies, all of which are in my way.

The female moved her teapot and seed box reluctantly yesterday to free up a degree of shelf space for me, and I shall of course now never use it.

I have gone through my stand-offish phase and I am pleased to report that the temporary carers are starting to soften up nicely. A few days of lurking under the bed and perching on the edge of the duvet ready to take flight at the slightest movement from them have them nicely under control.

I am not asleep but perched, ready to pounce

Phase two of my plan is now underway. The female seemed helplessly pleased to see me join them for breakfast today, and let me lick a smear of butter off her toast plate, so it will be but days until I have them exactly where I want them.

Not on the bed with Mr Crabby

The hapless hound just frolics with them and offers them his love and his disgusting Mr Crabby toy without thought. The fool. He does not make them work for it.

I shall post when I can. I hope that they will not find these scratchings for some time.

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Small, disorganised and evil

We have reached peak storage capacity here in the caravan after two years of occupation. We are officially full.

The tiny kitchen has very limited cupboardage and what there is is highly inaccessible. Things get stuffed into every available crevice, causing carnage whilst cooking and frustration in searching for ingredients that I’m sure that I have, but can’t find.

The tiny kitchen in the caravan

As the day started with torrential rain and it was definitely one for indoor entertainment I took a deep breath and decided to make a start on sorting out the cupboards.

It won’t be long until we move things into the kitchen and pantry in the house and I figured that a bit of work now wouldn’t be time wasted.

It’s the small cupboard that holds what I call “miscellaneous cooking stuff”. Basically an overspill of everything else. Tubs of spices, bags of sea salt, containers of currants, pine nuts and ground almonds. That sort of miscellaneous. It’s small, disorganised and evil. Impossible to extract anything without a landslide.

Over the last two years things have got buried, packets opened and not properly resealed, and I had no idea what lurked beneath the first two rows of stuff.

In I went.

There were mysteries in there, dear reader.

Three tubs of custard powder, all opened and about a third empty. The remnants of winter trifles, I could only imagine.

Several bags of sea salt. I vaguely remember buying lots for pickling and clearly not using as much as I thought I’d need.

More pink peppercorns than I could feasibly use in a lifetime.

A tub of smoked paprika that I’d lost a year ago.

A bag of currants so old that it had shrivelled into something that looked like mice droppings. Hmm.

Tidiness!

I’m feeling triumphant, even if it is only one small cupboard. A good use of an hour of my time.

I need a labelling machine.

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Autumn fare

This will be our third autumn in the caravan, although we should be in the house at last before winter sets in and so it will be our last.

The tiny caravan kitchen space and mini oven have certainly been a challenge, but it’s amazing what you can do with a bit of ingenuity and a single cake and roasting tin. If I’d thought we’d be here so long I would have packed more.

As the season turns and the evenings get colder, my thoughts for food turn to more autumnal fare. Sausages, roasted squash, chestnuts, warming soups.. and wherever possible recipes adapted to work in a small space with the minimum of fuss and need for utensils.

One of my favourite ways to cook at this time of the year is a tray bake. Last nights supper was sausage, butternut squash and apple roasted up with onions and garlic and finished with honey and mustard for the last ten minutes in the oven.

If I’d picked blackberries I would have added those in too. Next time.

A supper like this is a meal in itself, both warming and filling, not expensive to produce, and most importantly, leaving very little washing up.

Birthday cake for a friend

September is also the month in which many local friends have their birthdays (as well as my own), so for the last year my one square cake tin will get pressed into action.

Next year my baking tins will be unpacked and I will have a proper oven, and I’ll hardly know myself! But for now my offerings are slightly lopsided, as the caravan is not entirely level, and always the same shape.

I hope that they’re well received regardless, baked as they are with love.

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Rain, sewing, recovery

The wet non-summer continues with rain and chilly temperatures closer to autumn.

A gap between the rain showers

We’ve had rain just about every day for months now, and I can’t help watching the blazing summer and terrible droughts and water shortages across the rest of the UK and Europe in despair. Whilst we’re drowning. There has to be a better way to share this. Somehow.

Incoming

Whilst I recover from my operation I’ve been reading books, pottering in the polycrub (which at least provides shelter from the rain) and sewing.

Rainy days

I had a sashiko panel and some threads tucked away in my sewing bag from when we first moved here, so I’ve spent many happy, peaceful hours sewing away.

Sashiko panel

Sashiko is just a running stitch, so it’s repetitive and soothing to do. I’ve finished the main panel now, but need to sew a border and frame to complete it, and to do that I’ll need until we’re in the house and the boxes are unpacked. I’ve got material and a sewing machine in storage that will finish this nicely. This was a progress photo from last week. For now I’ll just pack it away.

Nearly done

The floorboard laying will finish upstairs in the house today, and husband is installing the back-boxes for the sockets in the kitchen this week, so although there’s not much to see, progress still continues. We’re getting there!

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Taking it easy

Taking it easy isn’t easy for someone like me. I get bored quickly, and convince myself that as long as I do things slowly or gently that they’re no effort. How wrong I’ve been.

Harvested onions

Junior Gardener has returned to Manchester now, so I’m on my own. Husband is busy with the house build and I don’t like to bother him with small things that distract him from his main priority, finishing the house!

I was told not to, but I pulled the flowering onions from the croft beds a few days ago. There were only a few dozen of them, and they came out of the soil easily. I didn’t feel that I had strained myself or exerted any real effort. I carried them through to the polycrub to dry and thought no more of it. I felt a bit tired afterwards, but that was it.

However, I was wrong. It did cause problems, and I’m now sitting with my legs up wishing that I wasn’t so stupid. I’m only two weeks into my recuperation, and the effort was too much too soon for my still traumatised body. Stupid, stupid.

I’ve learned my lesson, and won’t be doing any more gardening for a while yet.

I only hope that I haven’t caused complications with my recovery. What I should do is use the wonderful aromatherapy gift that a good friend sent to try and calm my thoughts and stop building “to-do lists” in my mind, and instead focus on relaxing and healing. She knows me better than I know myself.

I will also have to content myself with nothing more than gentle walks and wearing outrageous leggings for amusement. It’s about the level of what’s possible for me right now, and what passes for entertainment in these parts.

Flowery hedgehog leggings

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Home and healing

I’m home now in the caravan, and starting the process of healing.

There’s immeasurable comfort in being at home in your own environment when you’re ill. The warmth and familiar feel of your own bed. The support of your loved ones around you. The now familiar views across the croft to the sea and over to the mountains of Knoydart.

The croft

Husband is heroically administering my daily stomach injections. I tried, but simply couldn’t bring myself to self inject – all respect to those that can and have to do this every day. The injections are blood thinners which have to be administered for a week following the operation whilst I’m not as mobile as I would normally be.

Evil injections

I potter about happily as often as I can to keep everything moving between periods of rest, legs up on the bed. I’m not allowed any strenuous activity or lifting whilst my body repairs itself .

I learned the hard way that post operative fatigue is a real thing early on in this process. Stupidly, a few days after getting home I decided that I could sit on a chair and just gently hold a garden hose to water the polycrub plants. It weighed almost nothing, and I wasn’t standing up.

After a few minutes the strain of holding up even something that light started to tell. I rapidly retired back to bed. Since then I’ve been much more sensible and husband takes the strain.

Each day I feel a little more like myself. I’m healing well even though it’s still early days.

Flowers from friends

Friends, family and neighbours have been wonderful, sending messages of comfort and cards, flowers, food and treats. Good friends made dinner for us one evening and drove it over to us. I’m feeling quite overwhelmed at all the kindness.

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Stormy days

Rain is lashing down in torrents from a leaden grey sky as I write. There’s ice in it too, and a stiff north westerly wind to drive it home.

From the caravan

The badly fitting, single glazed windows of the caravan don’t seem to provide much protection against this weather as I peer out into the gloom. I’m well wrapped up with three layers, including thermals, and I’m still chilly.

We’ve had an incredible run of storms so far this year, one right upon the coat tails of the previous one. Storms Corrie, Dudley, Eunice and Franklin have rolled over the island in the last six weeks in rapid succession, bringing 80 mph winds, hail and snow with little respite in between.

We’ve had very disturbed sleep this past month as the worst of the winds seem to come after dark. When they start, the caravan rocks and shudders as if it’s alive, straining against the lorry straps that lash it down like a wounded animal.

The noise of the hailstorms is deafening. It’s impossible to sleep through. It’s as if someone is emptying buckets of marbles into a tin bath on your head. Even burrowing further under the warmth of the duvet doesn’t dull the noise.

Image Francis Yeats

I bake. I make bread and cakes to warm and sustain us. I make soups and stews and sweet, eggy puddings and crumbles.

Brioche buns. Just because.

I venture out in the small, quiet pockets of calm between the storms and wonder at the crofts capacity to hold water. Everything is sodden, soaked.

I wear many layers. Recently I’ve taken to wearing my fingerless gloves in the caravan during the day to keep my hands warm. Tea has become an important, warming ritual in the afternoons, hands wrapped around the comforting heat of the mug.

Spring is coming, I tell myself. It’s coming.

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Sushi & storms

February is well into its stride, and despite relatively mild temperatures, the storms just keep coming. We’ve got gale warnings again for next week, and most evenings the caravan is rocking away like a bucking bronco here on the side of our windswept croft.

We’ve learned never to overfill mugs of tea and to hold onto things as we move from room to room. Craziness!

Using my lovely Christmas gifted Borja Moronto jugs for soy sauce

So what’s a girl to do whilst the weather is stopping her getting out on the croft? She makes sushi. Of course she does.

Sushi rolls awaiting slicing

I haven’t made sushi at home for many years. We used to eat it a lot in London where Japanese food outlets were good and readily available.

Not feeling confident that I could get sushi grade fresh fish I decided to err on the side of caution and use cooked or smoked fish instead of raw. In this case tuna mayo, smoked salmon, cooked prawns and smoked mackerel, all from my normal supermarket shop. I managed to get wasabi, nori and even cooked crispy onions for coating some of the rolls.

Crispy onions – I could eat these by the spoonful

The biggest challenge in the tiny caravan kitchen was making room to assemble the rolls. It took a bit of shuffling and manoeuvring, and was a much fiddlier process than in a spacious kitchen with lots of worktop space.

I won’t go into detail here, but let’s just say that any flat surface was fair game (toaster, I thank you) and that it was inelegant in the extreme.

But amazingly they worked. And they tasted great.

Next time I may try making vegetarian sushi. I could imagine that using roasted butternut squash, avocado, cucumber, sweet potato and peppers would work just as well as these fish based fillings.

Never let fear of failure or lack of space stop you trying something new. You can usually always find a way.