I have no photographs. I took the shots, got distracted, loaded them, got distracted, thought I had saved the ones I wanted, got distracted, deleted the file and then let the computer run out of gas and then did not restore and there was nothing.. anywhere. Well you see the problem. And my Hawk the Knight was discovered inside the chook house terrorising its inhabitants. Scared the eggs out of them! He is so beautiful but very naughty. I took shots of him flying out and I could pretend they were brilliant because you will never see them – you see – oh dear! they were deleted by mistake , but in actual fact they were all blurred motion and rubbish before I deleted them by mistake. You will have to imagine it. I think he will be back. We may get another crack at the shots.
Anyway to fill in, I will show you the list (so far) of the things I learnt this last year so you can help me remember them all. If I don’t learn stuff then living is a waste of time. And I HATE to waste time.
So here is the beginning of my list..
TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS. If you hear a sound that makes your head move up and across .. follow it. Take note. If you think something is wrong IT IS!
COOKING ON A WOODSTOVE slows you right down. You learn to think ahead, hours ahead actually, so you can start dinner at lunchtime. The tension of preparing a meal melts like the butter in your pan. This is nice.
THE VET is part of your team, not a last resort. (Learnt this one the hard way).
GOING OUTSIDE in subzero temperatures with your contact lenses in your eyes is a very bad idea.
WATCH. WATCH. Spend a portion of every day watching. Quietly. Be still.Keep your head and your body and your hands very still. Only move your eyes. Focus your mind, narrow your vision and examine your environment. For me this means watching the animals at work and at play. Learn their rhythms then learn to watch for changes in that rhythm. Once you have trained yourself to be still, shut your mouth and watch, you learn. Plus birds will fly very close to your face. Sparrows wings on your cheek is a gift.
IF YOU HAVE CURLY HAIR (like me) and you want to set the curls for the day, wet your hair in the shower before chore time, then go outside into sub zero temperatures without a hat. Shake your head often, even when your curls are frozen solid and make a clinking sound. When you go back inside they will slowly thaw and dry into perfect coils – beautifully! There. Who needs a fancy hairdresser and expensive product! Just freeze your hair into submission.
FEEL YOUR BODY. Train your mind to test the muscles, test the gravity of the day (it is not always the same) test the speed of time for that day (that is not always the same either) you will adjust the movements of your body accordingly. Test the ground for slipperiness. Some days you can loaf about and wander through the work, some days you have to go down a gear and work faster! But once again, test the ground for slipperiness!
NOT all milk cows are nice.
SNOW COVERS ICE. The danger is still there even though it cannot be seen. People do not always tell the truth. Not every one is nice. Not everyone does what they say they are going to do. But if you treat them as though they are nice and dependable often they forget to be bad. But a mean looking dog is helpful in any case.
SPEAKING OF DOGS, train your dogs to walk from the back door to the shower every evening before bedtime so when it is muddy they will walk there without any problems and have their feet washed without a fuss. I hate a fussy dog covered in mud, don’t you?
IT IS OK for Old Dogs to just lie about and be Old Dogs.
CHECK THAT THERE IS NOT A KITTEN in the dishwasher before you close the door. Don’t worry I did!
LISTEN TO YOUR PEOPLE. Think about their advice. But in the end the decision is yours so Own it. Then Own the errors. If you cannot own your mistake you can not fix it. Own your mistakes and own the power to put it right. If you cannot put it right. LEARN. God knows I learnt a lot this year.
IF SOMEONE SAYS: I don’t know. They probably don’t. Move on.
IT IS OK TO HAVE YOUR FIRST GLASS OF WINE at 4pm in the winter, but don’t share it with Sheila the pig, she only likes beer, but not out of a can. She hates beer out of a can.
LOOK YOUR ANIMALS STERNLY IN THE FACE and tell them what you are thinking. In the appropriate tone. Often through no fault of their own they will get what you are saying.
TRUST YOURSELF. Honestly. Trust yourself and trust your animals. Often they (and you) can achieve a lot more than you could ever imagine.
I am very sure that is not all I learnt, can you add to it? Today I shall take Camera House for another walkabout. Maybe there will even be sun. So far it is only morning darkness. We had a bit of snow in the night though.
Have a lovely day.
Your friend on the farmy
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
47 responses to “Things I learnt (in the absence of a more inspiring title)”
Freeze your hair into submission – LOL. DH used to do that with his curls in college. I don’t dare do that with mine! Stay warm and safe up there, I hear we are due for some nasty weather soon. Morning miss c…. t
I think you learned a lot….in fact I think you knew most of it before but you’ve only just decided to share it. You couldn’t live like you do without all this self knowledge. Most of it doesn’t affect me as we live do not have animals or proper sub zero temperatures….but the daily watching I like…I think I do it anyway, but I’m going to do it more….not take pictures, but watch. That started my year well.
That is hard too, to watch without looking through a lens.. but it is good to press pause sometimes.. c
No pictures! No Pictures ! but a damn good piece of descriptive writing..who needs pictures when you can use your own imagination…
The idea of freezing your hair made me laugh so much and even brought a smile to the face of hubby..miracles do happen.
I also hope that you learnt that not everything can be done in one day by one person……also that stepping on ice can hurt your back.
have a great 2014 and let us hope that the sun will always shine upon you
oh for some sun! wwe have had too many gray days.. have a lovely day dear miss whip! c
I think you also learned that a broken tail will mend in its own time with care and rest, and not on Celi’s time (hurry up! I need to feed the animals!). You learned that soap making is chemistry, not alchemy. You learned that beauty passes and comes again in another guise. You learned that dogs can mother cats, even when they’re boys. You learned that a lot of people love you and wanted to help you when you needed it. Stay warm, stay safe.
I know Kate, celi time has a fast froward button that i press a bit too often.. you would hate going to the supermarket with me i ZOOM down the aisles, almost jogging, c
Wonderful blog. Wonderful advice.
Hopefully you’ve learned to heed the weather forecast and if a storm’s coming, secure all movable objects and do NOT venture outside in a hurricane. Either that or get some lead boots so that you can’t be blown off your feet!
Happy New Year,
Christine
Licky i was not wearing lead boots when i electrocuted myself .. and this is why we are not doing a retrospective! c
Gosh I hate the accidental deleting of photographs, but I love your blog! You are great company in the morning!
Watching is probably the best thing you can do in animal husbandry. When I 1st moved to the country I moved to an old farm house far from the nearest neghbour and on the prettiest land. There was serious competition for the place, as well as being beautiful it was only $50 a week, the catch, you had to look after a herd of beef cows. I got picked because I “looked honest” and the farmer had a run of bad luck with less than honest people. But I know nothing about cows I said. Doesn’t matter he said, watch and learn, if you watch them well enough you will know when something is wrong, the rest you can learn along the way. This was such good advice, when a cow went missing I would not worry if I knew she was close to calving, she would turn up again with the herd a few days later showing off the bub. I could normally work out where she was as there would often be a younger female cow, sometimes her daughter, watching over the birthing den. Other times I would go all out to find a cow that had gone missing for no reason and when I did find trouble the farmer or the vet were always on the phone to help talk me through the problem. I birthed live and dead calves and put back prolapses and dragged out calves that had fallen into gullies and regularly walked a couple of miles down the road to bring back our Hereford bull when he went walkabout. Stuff I never imagined I would or could do. Watch and learn such good advice.
Other good advice, don’t take on a near as dammit tornado and think you will come out ahead!
Goodness, what an amazing period in your life that us have been.. but such good advice.. works for us all! c
Don’t forget, you learned that you could write thousands of words in a day, and 50,000+ in a month!
And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to the tiniest chuckle when saw that you learned the vet is a part of the team rather than a last resort, and yet you don’t believe that doctors (human vets) should ever be consulted. Obviously, not for every little thing…but I hope you remember that you are an animal too…and there are occasions where seeing your vet is appropriate. (I certainly don’t love to go a doctor’s office either, but I’m married to one (who I love and who I know works very hard to help his patients) so I had to put a small plug in. LOL!)
Yep! And the heat lamps! But hey! We all sometimes have to rearrange what we think! Desperation calls for desperate measures!!! And frigid weather and pneumonia are a couple of those times! And a good vet is worth his weight in gold! LOL I learn so much from all of you and steal everyone’s good ideas!!!! Yes! An information thief is among you!!!! 😀
Ah Melissa, you do make perfect sense.. pity I am such a belligerent wee thing. But one step into a doctors office would open a right can of worms, i just cannot bear the drama again/.. I am my own experiment.. if I break my arm or get pneumonia myself,I shall come and visit your husband.. though miserably I think you are too far away. Just for me though, if anyone else were sick i would cart them off to the doc pronto, just like the animals.. a case of do as I say don’t do as I do.. I do see the irony!! and good for you for having a chuckle! c
Good Morning Celi! And Good Morning Fellowship! Good Tidings!!!
I loved your post today!!!! I love your photos too, but today? I didn’t even miss them, no worries. Just today though!!! LOL
These are all the things I love about you Celi!!! Where we live…outside of the internet….we don’t really talk very much during our days…we just go about what we do and it is very silent but for the wind whispering or screaming “Hurry hurry hurrry” or animals greeting you and you greeting them while filling water buckets or bowls and food pans or clearing or laying new straw. Lots of time to ponder and solve the issues of the world with no one to argue back ‘cept the sounds of birds wings on the way to the feeders….and in the back of your mind hoping nothing grabbed your squirrel and he has safely returned to eat all the goodies you have put out for him!
So much at stake and everyone relying on instinct. I too walk gingerly out the door. One broken tail bone was enough for me too!!!!! Ow!!!
I too, am an information hound so learning something new always thrills me…I gather it , file it away in my brain to pull out when needed or even just to share! I find it all very exciting!!! 😀
My hair tends to be wavy and curly…LOL I will try your hair curling method! 🙂 If it works for you? Well…I sure will give it a go!!!!
All a great read and I enjoyed it tremendously!!! Yep! All of it!!! 😉
Love you! (((hugs))) Sincerely, Chatterbox!
p.s. Picking up puppy tomorrow!!!!! Her name is Summer!!!!
One more thing….if you want to know what kind of winter is ahead up here in ND? Check out what your squirrels are wearing this season!!! My squirrel has the most beautiful fur coat this winter! Thick and luxurious!!! When they show off this heavy new coat you know they are prepared for a very cold cold cold time ahead!!!! 🙂
What a wonderful list of things learnt!!! You are a very wise woman, Ce, and we are all lucky to be able to share your wisdom!!!! Happy Day to you.
Hum – the word of the year is “TRUST”
“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” – Shakespeare
It takes some living to understand that statement doesn’t it. Happy Day!
To thine own self be true…. mmm… c
What a beautiful post to come back to C! Hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year.
🙂 Mandy xo
I love what you learnt. Now, what was so very distracting?