Autumn Update

Apologies to the thousands of loyal readers ;-). This year seems to have been a bit of a stretch so far and ths Autumn is no different. Having moved into the the new Fat Cat’s Patch HQ in December 2021 we seem to have been on the go ever since. Our recent work including replacing the oil fired boiler, after a mere 6 weeks without hot water. We are currently in the midst of a full house re-wire. No stress their then. Because no Autumn is complete without 4 weeks of disruption and repeatedly moving boxes of belonging you don’t need or want from one room to another. Then back again!

In the garden EmmCee has gone all Hannibal Lector or some other metaphor. And has been chopping back years of overgrowth from teh borders. The ducks are still as disagreeable as ever and productivity has dropped to Longbridge in the mid 70’s levels. The chickens remain chicken-y and whilst egg production has slowed a little they still show the dusck a clean pair of heels,

The Autumn higlight so far though is Jupiter. I finally worked out what that bright light in the sky was I gave up on my death cult and got out the telescope. It’s only a cheap little thing EmmCee picked up in a charity shop but with little fiddling we got a decent view of Jupiter and more astonishingly could see 4 moons. The Monsters loved this and it was a little bit of a family first.

As I’ve probably promised before I’m going to try and be a little bit more diligent in my posting. We have a few projects in plan Stir Sunday being foremost amongst them but a variety of others too.

Enjoy your Autumn.

Or read more good stuff here.

Living La Vida Lockdown – Autumn Update

A few boxes of apples that need teh good sorting from the bad

Well autumn is well and truly here. For my legions of oversees admirers autumn is the British word for what the Americans call Fall. Astronomical autumn falls 21st September to 21st December in line with the equinoxes. However those crazy meteorologists say 1st September to 1st December.

In the last few weeks I’ve been doing a few outdoors jobs like mowing and strimming the garden before winter. I’ve done some more work on the tree house. We collected some apples from the smaller 4 apple trees. I also got the chainsaw out and cut and split some wood for the wood store.

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Homemade bacon

A piece of dry cure bacon that has been cut in half.

Over the years I have tried many different types of self-sufficiency crafts, whether this be home brewing, beekeeping, grow your own or butchery. I have done a bit of curing now and then too, my homemade chorizo didn’t give me botulism. The proscutio was edible, the salt beef was rather good but the pastrami still needs a bit of work. My least successful attempts have been at homemade bacon, although in my defence they were my earliest.

So in the spirit of practice makes perfect I had another go.

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The Great Storm of 2019 – We Will Rebuild

So the great storm has passed and another damn fence panel has fallen over. Added to which one of our bee hives was blown over. Cue many annoyed bees. EmmCee has righted the hive, she’s so brave. And my workbank has increased from put up one fence panel to put up two fence panels and a post. Plus fix any other dodgy posts. Still we will not give in. We will rebuild 😀

Hello world from Fat Cat’s Patch

So here it is our first post from the new website. It’s been a long time in coming I think I first bought the domain name two years ago and got the hosting package 2 months ago.

I hope anyone who finds this finds it a fun an interesting site and as a complete novice web site builder and distinctly average self promoter feel free to offer feedback.

The eponymous Fat cat is above named in honour of our sadly departed Mitzy who was the original fat cat.

There will be more to follow in short order I hope and the website design and branding will soon develop.

Lots of love GymCee and EmmCee