Yes, you guessed, more book pictures.

No snow here yet but quite a bit colder, I watched the 1'Oclock news with all the pictures of disruption in the North of England and younger part of me would love some here and the older half of me say's No - too much bother.

We got the big chicken shed cleaned out today, one trailer load into the compost bins and another trailer load spread around the fruit trees. Fresh chicken muck is too hot to use in most places but round well established trees it should be OK. The blackbirds will have a whale of a time sorting through it and the rain will wash all the goodness onto the tree roots.

Later this morning Col took our son to Ipswich to pick up his car that was supposed to have been sorted out, but M later phoned to say that he had lost power, with loads of smoke, he pulled over turned off the engine, re-started and got home with no more problems. This is what the garage should have cured.

I suddenly thought "Tennis"! and managed to catch the final 2 sets of Andy Murray's semi-final in Australia, and he's looking back in form, winning through to be in the final Sunday - on BBC1 just after 8am they said. Must remember.

Now some of my favourite bookshelves - does everyone have favourite bookshelves or is it just me?

I only have 2 books about goats now but it was having a collection of 10 goat keeping books that got us into buying and selling secondhand books at country shows. Something we did very successfully for several years, until it became too difficult and expensive to source country/livestock/smallholding books from charity shops and the price to have a stand everywhere rocketed so that we were forced to give up. I'm not sure why I still have all these livestock  keeping books - nostalgia for the years we kept animals I guess. The majority of these are secondhand except for the lovely collection of Self sufficiency books that came from The Book People. They still have them - 12 books for £9.99 - bargain.

Lots of lovely, favourite books on this shelf above
Why, you might well ask, have I got 2 copies of Hovel in the Hills by Elizabeth West? Well, one is very very old, ex library and the other is a more recent re-print in which she has an update about what happened after the books. Beside them are her other books about her time in the hills - Garden in the Hills and Kitchen in the Hills. Below are more special books about smallholding and growing.
The two with Homesteading in the title are from the States, but they were both found at a car boot sale in Suffolk just after we moved here, when there were still USAF bases close by. I always wonder if the Air force family who sold them ever managed to have a homestead when they were posted back home.

More country books above. In the centre is a book called Living the Good Life by Linda Cockburn. I think she has a blog about there Australian garden somewhere.



Below are more on the same theme. The Family Smallholding by Katie Thear is interesting. She and her husband David started a magazine called Practical Self Sufficiency from a shed on their smallholding in Essex. They had open days and Col and I went to one in 1979, it was so popular the roads got jammed and they couldn't do anymore. This was just after John Seymour wrote his self sufficiency books and the idea of doing your own thing was at it's peak. The Magazine kept going for several years, changing the title until the Thears sold out and it became Country Smallholding. They also had a book publishing company called Broad Leys Publishing and not long ago Home Farmer Magazine bought out all the titles that Broad Leys had, and are editing,updating and reprinting. ( Two of the titles are on the top shelf)
Hugh FWs River Cottage Cookbook was a bargain - an ex library book - because it's falling to pieces - for £1!

All the big self-sufficiency books are on the bottom shelf, I honestly have no idea how I came to own so many beautiful books. None of these are going anywhere except with me when we downsize!!

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Sue