Ice now blankets the farm. I was moaning about the cold last week but the real cold is here now. I take all that other cold moaning back. I now long for it to rise back into the 20’s.
I move carefully about the farm in an undignified shuffle. Some areas are flat and smooth as glass – others are frozen into slippery lumpy pocked terrain waiting for any lack of attention to turn an ankle. It was windy yesterday too – smoothing out the ice even further.
I did not enjoy farming yesterday.
The little black pigs were out for a while and shocked and squealing to find themselves skidding down the ice packed driveway. Literally flying away. Out of control. Off their trotters. Their four legs sliding is all directions. Their bellies hitting the ground and rolling. Boo rushing to help and sliding right past them into the gate. The little pigs zoomed and crashed into each other like a game of curling without the brooms. Their eyes lit with fright before hitting a patch of snow and gaining traction before slowly and carefully picking their way back to the barn.
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The kitchens garden farm weekly newsletter.
I would be grateful for a ❤️ or a Share over on that platform. The algorithm feeds off clicks – a like or a comment will mean that more people will get to see my work over there. The newsletter is doing really well and narrating the books has become a wonderful addition to my stable of paid work. I love to read and I love to read out loud so I am grateful to you to get the word out.
Algorithms are fickle and hard to understand though often deeply disturbing.
We all have a love/hate relationship with algorithms. Though they even rule the news we read. Everything is skewed. The Kindle algorithm is the one that drives me craziest, its filter is awfully precise. I like to read all kinds of books but if I read even one about a magic bookshop, with an adopted book shop owner who did not know she was adopted, who has a cat and a stray dog as big as a donkey and her adopted mother lived through the war by selling trinkets outside the railway station and her hermit auntie that she never knew she had (who turns out to be her birth mother) leaves her a massive haunted mansion in the hills when she dies, and though they have not seen him for twenty years, her brother returns with a promise and a pair of white horses that he leaves in a stable loaned by her neighbor (who he later falls in love with) behind her bookshop, then he will mind the bookshop as she travels (with both horses and the dog) through the mist and rugged roads to the haunted house to discover – something!
If I read a book like that (though I think maybe I should write it) I am offered twenty more with the same characters and variations in landscape.
Kindle!
Wind in the Willows:
Narrating Willows is a bigger challenge than narrating Alice. I rehearse each chapter thoroughly before recording. It is a sumptuous little book. Fecund. Alive. The characters are quite distinct and the descriptions of the countryside are rich and colourful and innocently delightful.
The chapters are a little longer too. Long enough to get really involved in the story. The chapter I just read – Chapter Three – is in the winter. Which I thought was fitting. Mole and Ratty are lost in the Wild Wood. This chapter brings an animals life in the winter into focus beautifully.
Have a listen. Here is the page with all the chapters I have read so far. Three.
You will also find chapter three in with the newsletter. (With the Farmy walkabout. Plus a recipe!).
Good morning! Have a wonderful day.
Maybe these are the last few really cold days – I leave again in just under three weeks and it is hard to get the farm up to date when it is frozen down like this. We are in survival mode and little else.
Bother this weather. 😂
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
42 responses to “off their trotters with horror”
Down here too! Very, very cold! 14* this morning! Though fortunately only 2 days of this cold and we’ll be back up again in the 40s, thank goodness! All are animals remain tucked in, as do we! I am reading a good book though, ‘Cutting for Stone’ by Abraham Verghese. I do recommend it. 🙂
Cutting for stone is an excellent book! Did you drop your recommendation into the Library ( here) – I need to update that page with some of the great books I have read lately, too!
brutal here in michigan and of course my year old furnace is not working today, and they will be here this afternoon. I need your woodburing stove about now
Oh no!! That is dreadful. You are even colder there! And that is exactly why I had them put in a chimney. It worried me – being rural with no electricity at times.
my kind furnace guy just left and heat is restored!
Thanks Gods!!!
Unfortunately, it’s out again and have to wait until tomorrow for a fix. moving to my daughters house temporarily
Oh no!!! How annoying!
tomorrow is my day!
Not as cold as you but still very cold for the UK. drink lots of hot chocolate….
You have had some pretty cold mornings I hear. Hot chocolate sounds very nice! Don’t make yours with real chocolate?
I don’t but I do enjoy it so much… You stay warm…
Loved your “would be” book predetermined by algorithms. You need to get started on that what with all your spare time! I’m trapped inside (for the most part, 2F on it’s way up to 12F and then down to -3F tonight) and just started reading The Source by James Michener. I’m on page 87 with about 1,000 pages yet to go—–not an exaggeration! 1,032 pages altogether! It’s not algorithmic to say the least but fascinating. About an archaeological “dig” in Israel in 1964—– we are down to 1380 B.C.E. so far with LOTS more to dig through.
I remember reading that years ago. I must read it again! Pop that on our library page too Victoria! Isn’t it a comfort having a thousand pages to go!! Maybe I will get a copy for the planes!
It looks freezing! Poor little pigs sliding around on the ice and Boo sleeping on bare boards, while the others lie on a cushion. I bet he volunteered too!
I hate the way that websites try to predict what I want to buy or read – they are always wrong. Amazon is probably the worst and they own Kindle!
Yes! In a month my Amazon prime runs out then I will uncouple from Amazon and kindle. Not sure how that will work with my little ebooks though?
I never had Amazon Prime or any of their other pay for it things. I have and use a Kindle however. I get free or low cost ebooks. (freebooksy.com, bookbub.com, bargainbooksy.com, earlybirdbooks@openroadmedia.com). I’m sure there are other sites too, but these are the ones I use. Most of the books are from $0.99 to $3.99. It’s very rare for me to pay “full price” for an ebook, I only do that for a real printed physical book and not many of those. There’s a list on Amazon itself of free and low cost ebooks but I don’t use it much. With those sites you can choose the genres you’re interested in. I have such wide and eccentric tastes that the recommendations are never even close.
I NEVER pay for a book that I can’t physically own. So I borrow them from prime. But – the good news is there is a library in the town I will be staying in – in Australia. So I look forward to borrowing from there in the future!
There’s also the Gutenburg project which has books available, you can borrow books from the Internet Archive and there are other places online that offer free ebooks or e.books that can be borrowed
Snap! I read my audiobooks from the Glutenburg Project! It is an excellent resource for the classics.
There are lists of free ebooks, movies, college courses and lots of other stuff at openculture.com
Thank you! Awesome.
Cecilia Gunther THE KITCHEN’S GARDEN THE SUSTAINABLE HOME Storyteller | ENVIRONMENTAL Content Developer | Maximising Minimalism The Kitchens Garden Newsletter https://ceciliaatthekitchensgarden.substack.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=299i3z
Farm Blog – kitchensgarden.com https://thekitchensgarden.com/ Linkedin – cecilia gunther https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilia-gunther-34444b31/
I don’t like the judgment of apps or websites that reward or punish. I always try to hit like to acknowledge to the author that I was there, even when I don’t have a comment. I don’t like knowing that the authors who write amazing words are penalized.
what do you mean – penalized? Anything on the internet is driven by traffic. And the LIKE is the best way to encourage traffic. Which is why we all hit like if we love it
I am so ready for spring—and I too like the fireplace now
Most of the ice and snow here melted yesterday and the day before, but I’m not going out in that bitter cold for anything less than a real emergency, which id fortunately unlikely. It’d be lovely to be near that wood stove on a day like today, I’d probably be baking cookies or pumpkin bread or something like that. Stay warm.
Write the book about the magic bookshop and another about the slippy slidey little black pigs.
All these little books to write!! I have quite the list! Australia will be my country for writing!
It is stupid cold here too. What with my heated gloves, scarf, jacket, etc. I’ve told my neighbors if they see a pillar of fire over here it’ll be all my lithium ion batteries going up in flames! I have to keep a strict charging schedule. I hear you on the kindle algorithms but what I really dislike is their description of books they offer. It’s usually all the awards they’ve gotten or may get, I wish they’d just tell me what the freakin’ book is about! That said I do like my kindle, with the arthritis in my hands and wrists not getting any better I find it much easier to hold a e reader rather than a book. I, too, am thoroughly appreciating my woodstove.
Kindles are easier for travel too – though I use my phone as a kindle. One day I will get a real kindle. I like those original little ones. It is the cold that is not helping our arthritis. I have one thumb that aches all the time and genuinely hurts when I write my lists by hand! (They are long lists!).
I have a pair of fingerless compression gloves that I wear over night. They do help some. I joke that I may have to change all my doorknobs to levers but it may not be a joke!
It may not be a joke!
That was so exciting and so well read! I can’t wait for the next one. congratulations, you’ve really got the voices so well. Thank you
You are most welcome Juliet!!
I can’t help but picture that event in my mind. I know the piggies were horrified. But, I would dearly have loved to see a video of that. I want a pet pig. When I say I do, hubby says bacon, bacon, bacon. And, he knows I won’t eat it.
This breed would be perfect for a pet pig. They are so easy to train. And so small! And live on table scraps.
I can almost feel the burn of feet coming back to life when you come in from the cold. Do you keep a basket of socks near the stove to put on your cold feet when you come in, like I used to? That final sunset photo is the Toccata and Fugue to my synaesthesia brain, just lush and gorgeous. I have a very old Kindle (it actually has a keypad) which I keep permanently offline unless I’m actually downloading something. It does help prevent all the ‘helpful’ suggestions.
that old kindle sounds just great! The change in kindle technology is interesting to me – I see a lot of them as I travel squinting at my phone!’
It also has a leather cover with a built-in light that runs off the Kindle’s own power; saves on using the overhead light in planes.
Very nice!
I came across this post by default and was struck by how sensitively and descriptively the blog conveys the feeling of being in the midst of a ‘book’, in real time. The photographic images immerse the viewer in the ambience of the journey. Ice blankets, rolling and tumbling animals supporting each other, content to curl up together in the cosiest of environments, near the wood burner, removed from winter’s glaciers and darting, chilling winds.
What a lovely synopsis – I wish I could invite my pigs in by the wood stove! Just imagine!