Storm Desmond is upon us, and the wind is fairly howling around the house, but for the first time, it is howling outside and not inside. I am delighted to announce that the floor repair worked a treat, and the filled-in floor in the classroom is warm and draught free.  It is hard to tear myself away from the display showing the wind turbine output – despite the ferocious gusts, there is a certain morbid curiousity in seeing what it can output without some terrible mechanical failure occuring.

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After another dark week, the batteries are most decidedly full, and the dump load is warming the front room with the surplus. I couldn’t resist fiddling with the settings however, so it isn’t staying on for very long, and until the wind abates, there’s not a lot to be done.  Making changes means briefly switching off the inverters, during which time the wind turbine would run unloaded, which is a very, very bad thing. I say this from bitter, and frankly terrifying experience.

Despite the horrible weather, it is strangely warm, and this season’s attempt to ensure a steady supply of veg from the garden has been rather more successful than the last. Hunt the potato has become a sport, as the potato bed seems always to have just a few more lurking at ever increasing depths. Broccoli, kale, jerusalem artichokes (eat with caution, we ate them with wild abandon last time and the effects lasted days), turnips (still got to work out how to eat a lot of them), and sprouts are all in abundance, and inside the tunnels, young crops are coming on well.

Three weeks from midwinter, and we are keeping an eye on the contents of the freezer, and the precious supply of chickens is holding up well. We really view meat as a treat, and each chook is cooked with a certain reverence. Meanwhile another six unwitting cockerels are gaining weight as they roam the premises, and a friend’s free range pigs are reportedly in the process of being butchered, so it looks like Christmas dinner will be pork this year.