A Winter Solstice I will Never Forget. Such Beauty. Oh.. and Christmas too...

These pictures are a mix of Winter Solstice and Christmas day photographs. 

You can click them to make them bigger. 

The winter solstice sunrise.With the Moon setting over the yurt and shelter. I was weighed down with buckets of chicken feed, straw and hay. I froze (literally) to the spot though to witness this breathtaking scene.

After feeding the animals I went for a wander around the land. The snow is cold and hard to walk on but there's no arguing the magical quality of it. This years winter solstice was made extra special with the full moon and snow.

I only found bird tracks in the snow on the banks of the river. I felt electric walking along here.

Amazing ice sculptures on the branches that stretch across the river & the roots that creep out from the bank.

The light and contrast the snow gives to everything is particularly stunning when trees are involved!

The yurt was toasty warm inside.  You can see how well the wool felt lining keeps the heat in by the fact the roof has lots of snow on it.

Our slopey fields come into their own for sledging! I've got to work on not "teeeheeee"- ing all the way down... it's humiliating...

Cooking our christmas dinner in the dutch oven on the open fire. I cooked roasties in the cast iron pot on the chimenea. That didn't work so well! Still had lots of crispy bits, not attached to the pots though! Will definitely need to get our clay oven built as soon as possible!  I'm only happy if I can have roasties & home baked bread!

Stunning view over to South Wales. Just stunning... did I say stunniiiiiiiing...!!??

Winter solstice sunset also blew my tiny mind. I need more descriptive words for "breathtaking"!

Then the Full Moon rose. It was the biggest Moon I've ever seen.The way it caught the snow making the crystals sparkle like diamonds brought tears to my eyes. 

Our roasted chicken. The dutch oven did us proud :)

Hope you all had a beauty filled day!

Much love,

hen

xx

A Snowy morning on Exmoor.. meet the Shetland lambs!

Click on the photies to see them in better quality & a bit bigger

(especially the Shetland sheep pic!! Teehee!)

Shetland Lambs

Here are four of our new Shetland lambs! This is the first photograph where they're not wriggling about. There is 2 moorits, a light one (on the far left) & a dark one (in front, smiling at you!), the others are grey. The one on the far right is a grey katmoget & the one poking her head out is Little blue. Her fleece is a blue grey, extraordinary colour!

They don't have names yet. I really need to get on and pick some for their pedigree certification. Any suggestions welcome!

So, yet again we're under a blanket of snow. It's just beautiful and I love being able to track birds! Trying to work out which tracks fit which birds is really hard but very interesting. Learning about tracking forces you to understand the animal better, really connect, I love it and think it might feature heavily in my life next year!

The poultry are not impressed at all with the snow. At least they're warm now though, the insulation we put into their house has made such a difference. Phew!

Steve, Open Country producer & all round lovely chap

We were interviewed by Radio 4's Open Country the other day.  They wanted to talk about what its like staying in a yurt in this freezing cold weather. 

Richard, Open Country presenter & another lovely chap!

The guys were so lovely and made us feel really comfortable. We ended up hanging out for a good few hours! Goodness knows how long its going to take poor Steve to sift through all our bletherings!  After interviewing us we wandered over to Hidden Valley Pigs farm so they could have a quick chat with Simon and Debbie.  The show goes out just after the 6am news on Jan 15th (on iplayer a few hours after) and its repeated at 3pm on the 20th Jan. Can't wait to hear what it is we said!

hen xx

Tracking Red Deer in the Snow

You can click on the pictures to see them in slightly better quality & bigger size :)

Red Deer track, oak leaf for scale

Two of the six Red Deer beds

Red Deer - Stag poo

Red Deer bed, with poo.

Willow in Red deer bed, modelling for scale

Just a lovely view up on the ridge, where the wild things are... and Willow.

Looking up the old track, full of animal sign!

Fox track

Little bird track between Red Deer tracks

A still place.

Looking up the track to the ancient hedge Beeches

Dead Oak, a feeding station & home to many things

Over grown, banked Beech hedge.

hen xx

Snowy Friday

I got Leo back for attacking Willow with snowballs!

Below is a picture of the Snowdon Horseshoe in North Wales. It was taken a few days ago by my friend. He got stuck at our house on Thursday night because of the weather. I had to share it with you because it is just breathtaking! I used to live in Capel Curig and this was my view as I walked to work everyday in an outdoor shop. Well, when you could see the hills through the clouds!



My friend went back to Snowdonia on Saturday to camp at the bottom of Tryfan for a week and today he climbed Snowdon. Thankfully he texted me to let me know he was down safe just before I got really panicky. He was lucky, 6 others were rescued and one found dead on Snowdon today. I'll be doing a post about mountain safety and camping soon.

Back to the quiet gentleness of the Cotswolds...


We had the most wonderful walks on Thursday and Friday! 7 hours walking in total and it was spectacular!



Oh, but snow is wonderful for the soul.


The Cotswold village we live in is ridiculously charming.


Our garden was fun! The trailer is completely filled with snow!


The church in our village. It contains lots of very interesting gravestones. I deciphered what I though was an ancient gravestone and in fact it said... Entrance to the Crypt! Oh, I so want to explore that!


More pictures of our snowy walk.

Thursday's Snowy Walk

Leo had the day off work on Thursday as we couldn't get the car out the village. I'm not sure Willow was pleased or not! It's worth clicking on the picture above to see it bigger, just to see the peskyness on Leo's face!


Our walk was outstanding. We were the first to break the purity of the snow and it was magical.


The above picture looks like it has been made by a bird of prey landing.  You could see the little track of a mouse or something very small, coming up from the fenceline to the captured snow shadow of the bird of prey. Took us ages to work it out!

So many snowy pictures.


I have hundreds of pictures and will be posting our Friday walk tomorrow - 'oh joy' I hear you cry!


There is a Willow in the picture above somewhere.


The Cotswolds are a quiet and beautiful place. It took me a while to 'get' them. They're very quaint and agricultural. I'm used to mountain scapes. Finally, after 4 years of living here, I think I understand their calm and gentle nature.


I couldn't resist this dogwood, blazing red amongst the monotone of the snow and the oak branches.

I'm convalescing from an operation at the moment. So may not be as active online as normal. I am visiting all my favourite blogs and will be back to normal soon!

hen
xxx