Wind

I don’t really know why I wrote Wind in the heading as there is none this morning. In fact, living in the depths of the Mill 12 hours a day I cannot even really comment on whether we have had a lot of wind lately. I no longer see the weather coming. I am not in it.

Did you know wind is more about sucking than blowing. The air is drawn down from high pressure to low pressure. I think I have that right. I read this somewhere years ago. In fact we may have talked about it years ago. I guess we see this principle in action when you open the front door and the change in pressure slams the back door.

Here is a nice piece of text from Wikipedia:

Wind is air in motion. It is produced by the uneven heating of the earth’s surface by the sun. Since the earth’s surface is made of various land and water formations, it absorbs the sun’s radiation unevenly. Two factors are necessary to specify wind: speed and direction.

I like that sentence – wind is air in motion.

I had to buy a new phone (an outrageous expense) – which meant downloading all my apps again: we were setting the new phone up in the shop and their systems all went down and the download went a bit wonky. Not that I care! Anyway starting again has been good I left behind the detritus. But the new app for WordPress looks different! I am slow to make my post this morning. But like they say – a change is as good as a holiday. And God knows we could all do with a holiday!

Every night after work I pick up the pig scraps from the restaurant we call Beans. I have the back seat of my car full of clean buckets and swap them out for the full ones. Yesterday there were trays and trays of strawberries. Old blind WaiWai has a nose for strawberries. He slowly and silently followed me between the car and the tree until I had the strawberries unloaded. By the time I had everything unloaded and sorted into his bowl it was quite dark. But he still waited for his strawberries which he ate with delicate little bites and snuffles before sloping like a ragged shadow back to the barn. He is quite silent, that pig – unless he gets a fright then he huffs.

Tima is allowed to run loose on the weekends when I am home. Not that she does any running. But she cannot come out of her large enclosure when I am not here. She is too naughty for John to manage.

This weekend I hope the men will run a long electric fence out into the wheat field. We have so much feed this winter – but I still want to take advantage of this big field of clover. It is really good for the recovery of a field to have animals on it. As they graze they pull at the roots of some plants creating air pockets and drainage and turn the grass into manure to enrich the souls as they pass. I honestly wish all this farm was grass and trees and I would let my herd graze large areas – migrating about at will. I love weeds and overgrown areas and jungles. But we are in the business of organic cropping now. I hope I live long enough to fund a little New Zealand farm for my children and create our own little wilderness there.

Are you baking? What are you making? Godzilla is out on the bench warming up for the weekend bread. I still want to make some bran muffins but I cannot find Mum’s recipe. I have collected bran from the pizza flour milling. It is half Turkey Red and half Glenn and has a lot of sifted flour in it. We don’t sell it but we should, because it is baking magic. I want to make the bran muffins with it.

Tima has come up to the porch for her morning nap. She takes over TonTon’s bed which upsets him greatly. But the pig is bigger than the dog so the pig wins.

Do you have a good simple bran muffin recipe? I want to put lots of dried fruit in them too. I am hungry for a muffin.

Time to get going.

Talk soon

Celi