Finding Enough

Unlike the the Scottish Highlands, snow is not actually that common in our SW corner of Scotland, thanks to the jet stream. While most of Scotland was blanketed for a couple of weeks, we only had snow for one morning. It was very pretty while it lasted. As the snow melted away, a huge number of snow drops have started to appear all over the place in our new garden and woodland. I have included a few photos at the end of the post.

Having spent Christmas and New Year in the Mediterranean, we got back home on 2nd January. It seemed we timed it well, as the rain stopped the day after we got home and it stayed mainly dry for a couple of weeks. It definitely wasn’t warm, but there were lots of outdoor jobs to do, so we had plenty of manual labour to keep us warm.

As well as making good headway clearing the remains of the tree which fell across our track before Christmas, there were also a lot of fallen branches to manage in our small woodland. We want the woodland to be a lightly curated wilderness, so we are creating paths around it, so most of the woodland floor remains undisturbed. We are creating wood piles with fallen wood as well as creating firewood for next winter. If you were reading last spring, you will know I am very fond of wild garlic as a cooking ingredient. There was no sign of any in the woodland when we viewed the property last June. I managed to find someone selling bulbs from their garden near Helensborough online. I ordered enough to plant up a couple of drifts, so hopefully in the spring I will be able to harvest a little, whilst allowing it to establish itself over the next couple of years.

This month, we also pruned the fruit trees around the place. I think they are mostly apples, but there is a small one which could be a plum. They were very congested and full of moss, so we opened the crowns up to let a bit more air circulate. The damp and humid climate here, means there will always been moss and lichen, and it is an important part of the ecosystem which supports all the wildlife which we love, but ideally, we would like some un-diseased fruit too.

As well as the house, and a small stone barn / studio, we have a ruined barn with a concrete floor, which completes the traditional Scottish steading (U shaped arrangement of outbuildings). It has no roof, but still has most of it’s walls. The previous owner put a shed in it at one end, presumably because of the ready made concrete base. The ruin is full of stone, large piles of rotting roof timbers and brambles. We would love to restore it and put a roof on it, not least because it would provide a long south facing roof to site a solar array. While we have so much to do on the main house, this will have to wait for now. We’ll see how much cash we have left when the house is sorted. In the mean time, we have made a start on clearing it, as it would make a nice space to sit outside in the summer. This will be a project which we will do a little at a time, as there’s a lot of debris in there and the granite is very heavy! Much of the timber is so rotten and wet that it falls apart like soggy cardboard when you try to pick it up.

One project we did finish and that has made a massive difference on a daily basis, is building a shoe storage bench in the porch. The previous owners left a good amount of OSB behind, so we put it to good use to house our various shoes and wellies in an organised fashion. The next job is to fit a tube heater in the gap behind it, to gently dry out wet shoes and coats, as there is currently no heating (or power) in there.

Were our investments working as hard in January as we were? Well, no, not really. Once again the Freedom fund value was pretty static.

Financial Update:

• Freedom fund value – £1,208,520 (up £1.5K on last month)
• Expenditure – £2,532 (or a 2.5% withdrawal rate)
• Earned income – £360

I think that our spending this month is probably not far from our new normal. After much procrastinating, we finally splashed out on a new mattress (£870), but we had no big utility or vehicle expenses, . The heating oil we bought at the end of November looks set to last us until the end of February, which isn’t as bad as I had feared, but then we were away for 2 weeks over Christmas. This will probably be the big expense in February. We bought a small chainsaw and related PPE this month as well, but there weren’t any other large spends. Groceries were up in January, but I think this has more to do with the timing of weekly shops than a trend to spend more.

The £360 income was my last coaching and mentoring invoice payment finally landing in my account at the start of the year.

Non-Financial Goals:

Forage something every month – There is not much about in January, but there are velvet shank mushrooms. This was my first forage of fungi other than field mushrooms, inspired by ‘Galloway Wild Foods’ (who I follow on social media). At this time of year, there are very few fungi fruiting, so there are very few confusion species, which gives me confidence as a beginner. I read about velvet shank mushrooms as being essentially the same species as Japanese enoki mushrooms. When grown commercially, they are forced in the dark to become pale and long and thin. When left to grow naturally they are a yellowy orange colour and grow in clumps on old wood. I was very fortunate to find these growing in our own small woodland. I picked only a very few to start with, to make sure I liked them and they didn’t disagree with me in any way. They are delicious! I just fried them in a little butter. I have since found a few small ones growing on cut logs, so have made a log pile to try to encourage them to spread next year.

Wild swim at least once a month in as many different places as possible – This is definitely a case of needing a goal to be motivated! If it hadn’t been for the thought of writing this update, I don’t think I would have made the effort this month. As it was, I did have an update to write, so I did get a swim in at the end of the month. We made an afternoon of it and checked out a new loch for the first time. The wind was a bit stronger than ideal, making the surface of the water a bit choppier than I would have liked and colder when I got out, but we were the only people for miles around. There is a shallow gravel ‘beach’ allowing you to get in gradually before it drops away steeply at about waist deep – perfect for cold water swimming. Quite often inland lochs involve wading through silt to get in, which I would rather avoid if I can, so this is a good location.

Document our house renovation progress in an illustrated journal – As we didn’t make any progress with the major house renovation jobs this month, there is not much to add here. I have started a file and written an introduction covering the story so far. We are heading down south next week to help my parents move from Norfolk to Wiltshire to be close to my brother and his family, so there probably won’t be a huge amount of progress on this front in February either.

As well as toiling at home, we made plenty of time to get out exploring in January. Highlights included a visit to a stone circle not far away, a waterfall in Galloway forest Park and a tour of the last distillery in SW Scotland (also apparently the oldest privately owned one in Scotland). That and loads of snowdrops!