Things to be excited about

So its winter and though really warm here, everything is so wet and muddy it is miserable to do anything outside. However I'm very excited about something only a keen gardener or permie would relate to! I've been hunting down a reliable source of coffee grounds for literally months without success. Local cafes all seen to use pod-style coffee machines, so the coffee grounds end up trapped inside oodles of plastic packaging. There is a not-very-local starbucks that I go in every week when I happen to drive past- I've never once managed to pick up any coffee grounds (and they advertise that they offer used ones for free!).

But, finally... work have replaced some of their awful pod-coffee-machines with big filter machines, and have agreed to clean them out into a bucket so that I can take the used grounds home! So I should have a 20l bucket or so of coffee grounds every week! Should make for awesome compost! And I'm diverting the waste from heading to the incinerator, which is an waste of perfectly good biomass.

Secondly, I've acquired a goumi! I've been looking for one for aaaaages, but never found one in the UK that I could actually purchase and get delivered to me. And I've bought a few packs of seeds but despite different methods of trying to sprout them, I have never managed it. Now two little tiny goumi plants are sitting on my desk, one for the chicken-garden and one for the allotment.

Do you have anything recently?

Mine are pretty smaill, but here goes.

I have a horribly mean rooster that is now resting in the fridge for dinner tomorrow. Now that he is removed, the hens have started laying again (just a few eggs, but welcomed).  Had to wait for husband to take care of since my dislocated rib is in the way right now.  Also happy that my injury is improving.

Experimenting with little trays in the only upstairs window with sun for some winter greens.  Have enough finally to harvest for side dish for dinner.

I like small things😀

Tough this time of year as the money's all gone and it's too cold for my old arthritic knees outside. However, mindlessly surfing the web, I somehow stumbled on the subject of fence and in particular, high-tensile fence. I had actually seen one locally a few years back but didn't know what I was looking at. I just thought they went overboard with goodies and braced corners and skimped on line poles. So once I discovered they were an actual thing, I did a cost estimate for our 3/4 mile perimeter. Came to right around $1500 which is less than half the cost of what I had planned, not to mention 80% less posts in rocky clay will be a huge labor/time saver.

That will make it something I can afford to do in the Spring rather than next fall or winter. I already have used electric poles for corner posts so I can do those at any time and that's half the work. Couple hours a day when it's well above freezing, with my insulated overalls, til the knees hurt. A mere matter of months.

A gal I met this summer emailed me to see if I knew anyone who wanted kitchen scraps from a local outdoor school.  I poked at it a bit and it turned out to be 2 five gallon buckets of organic food scraps weekly and they'll deliver to my garage every week!  All I have to do is clean the buckets when they're empty.  And I really looked the gift horse in the mouth and they said they'd take off the produce stickers

I'm excited we have officially moved in to our new house! Building it took more time and cost more money than we thought, but we now have a nice, warm, well insulated yet airy, little house without mold and rodents! Heating it only takes a fraction of the firewood compared with our old house. And we were able to finance it without getting into more debt. There will be some tough financial times ahead and money grubbing work will be necessary for a while but living without mold-induced symptoms is worth it. We have a cellar full of potatoes and other roots, two freezes full of berries, veggies, mushrooms etc. so we won't starve even if we don't have much money

I am currently excited about:
-Geoff Lawton's online PDC early registration coming out soon
-Trying out an expansion on my current fasting that Joseph Lofthouse suggested for how to handle the holidays.
(I currently eat 9 meals a week, and I am now going to take that down to six meals a week, with now three full days of fasting each week)
-Getting to unwind from classes during the holidays
-Catching up with my sister and her fiance during the holidays
-Finishing my scuba diver certification during the Winter Break

I'm excited that we will be able to get our hot water heater fixed for 'only' $500, instead of the $3,500 for the 8gpm tankless replacement (both are including labor). That means we will not only have hot water (& our subfloor heat), but, we will still be able to have Christmas with the kids, and get my car fixed, before we move to our new home (the one with the soon to be repaired water heater), full time, in February. Relief and excitement, all in one!

Finally getting a new layer of gravel for the road to our house, The first laydown has been pounded into the clay and I'm hoping that this layer will get the road really stabilized before the January snows come along.
We are down to two Guinea hogs, still can't find anyone that wants to get into the hog business but perhaps spring will find folks looking for good breeders, if that doesn't happen they may end up in the freezers.
Wolf's cancer is loosing the battle! She is getting closer to being cancer free, again.
December is starting to look like a good month for us which will be the second good month of the year. Things are looking up.

After all the "interesting" things that have happened this year, I just might be starting the Soil book after Christmas!