News From the Hill

Archive for the ‘Good Living’ Category

Recently I misplaced the card reader that I use to download the photos from my phone and last night it turned up again so I have a few photos to share. There was a lot of rain in Leitrim over the last five or six weeks and I have the proof…

Carrick on Shannon quietly reflecting

The Park Gates

For the second half The Swans take the south goal

Over the last few weeks I have been slowly doing the almost yearly job of moving compost from one bin to the next. Our compost gets turned twice before it is considered ready for use. We have five compost bins and of course there is a system for how we utilise them. We use a sawdust bucket system for our toilet, we’ve been using this system for ten years now and it works really well for us. We make our own sawdust using our power planer, it costs us nothing to make as we have the timber on our land and we have all the electricity we need for using power tools.

We put both cooked and uncooked kitchen waste into buckets until we have two or three buckets filled, then every time we need to empty the compost toilet bucket we also empty the kitchen-waste buckets, covering everything with a layer of cut grass and rushes. We use one compost bin until it is full, the bins are roughly 4foot square. When the bin is nearly full I start the process of moving the compost in the other bins.

Compost Tetris, Garden Fun

Imagine that all the bins are full and that the bins are A, B, C, D and E in that order and they are all built in one row. Bin A is nearly full so I begin by emptying bin C and putting the soil around trees, creating a new fruit bush bed or topping up a fruit bed. I keep some of the soil to close the bin which is almost full. I then shovel the contents of bin D into bin C and then I shovel the contents of bin E into the now empty bin D. Now we are ready to finish filling bin A and when it is full I close it up by covering it in grass and then topping with soil. Bin E is now ready for use.

It takes roughly nine months to fill a bin, sometimes longer depending on settlement in the bin. So every year I get to play Compost Tetris.

We always keep a pile of cut grass beside the compost bins which sometimes needs replenishing. Sometimes this requires cutting grass and rushes however today I was able to move some which had been cut over a year and half ago - quite a workout!

When I was resting between runs with the wheelbarrow I was struck with the beauty of the sunlight glinting in raindrops hanging from the bare whitethorn  (hawthorn) branches in a nearby hedge. Such beauty is never far away here and I am always grateful to receive it.

I subscribe to the mailing list from the FIndhorn community because sometimes what I receive is simply lovely, as it is today -

Be very, very simple, very un-complex, very natural, like very small happy children, undisturbed by what happened yesterday or what may happen tomorrow, but living and enjoying the ever present Now to the very full. Never try to possess anything, never try to hold on to anything, because when you do, you cannot be simple and childlike, for you are full of fear, you are afraid of losing that which you are trying to cling on to. When you can open your hearts and share all the good and perfect gifts, which I pour down upon you, holding on to nothing, then you know the true meaning of the freedom of the Spirit and you really are free. When all is out in the open and you have nothing to hide, what a glorious feeling it is.

One of the co-founders of the Findhorn Community, Eileen Caddy, received guidance from the “still voice within” and shared it with others in the community for more than 40 years. Today they continue this tradition by printing her guidance in the community’s weekly newsletter and by sharing it with the wider world through a mailing list.

If you feel inspired just go along to their site and sign up for the newsletter, you will get a little good news in you inbox every now and then.

Living on the hill we don’t get trick or treaters wandering past our door on Halloween night so I very much enjoyed this little story sent to me by a friend who is living in Toronto, Canada -

We had one gang of trick-or-treaters tonight, a bunch of girls (I think), aged about eleven or twelve. They were costumed very impressively as a scarier version of Kiss, with the full-blown face makeup, very well done. No instruments or giant platform boots, but the face makeup must have taken ages to apply.

There was a fifth one bringing up the rear, dressed in a startlingly incongruous manner. She looked like a mummified hag draped in seaweed. I said, “Wow – you don’t look like part of the band!”

She said, “No, I’m the groupie…”

Hilarious!!! Extra candy for her!