If It's Not One Thing...

On a walk up to Waun Oer

I'm a bit late sitting down to write this, on Monday evening. It's 9:30pm and I was hoping to get started by 8:30. The joys of staying in an off-grid caravan can be tempered by those little mishaps that seem to crop up far too frequently.

For instance I was just chomping into a post-prandial banana when an almighty crash made me jump. I thought at first it was something in the awning but eventually realised that it came from the shower cubicle - no longer used for keeping clean, but for keeping my harvested vegetables safe from mice. The weight of trays of courgettes and cucumbers resting on the washbasin had caused its hinges to give way, sending the trays floorwards.

Strange clouds

Having tidied up that mini-disaster and reconnected the basin, I began to tackle the piles of washing up, Chopin tinkling out from my mobile phone through the wireless speaker. (Clearly no electric dishwasher here - not enough power in the caravan battery and no space anyway!) The tap immediately began to run dry and I could hear a whirring outside the caravan - the water barrel was empty. This happens every two or three days. I switched off the power to the water-pump as it can be damaged by running in air.

Putting on a headtorch as it was almost dark by now and changing into my outdoor trousers (anything worn outside gets muddy), I headed to the polytunnel, pulled the hosepipe out and brought one end over to the caravan, with the other end connected to the stream-fed tap. Taking the pump out of the barrel and resting a little sieve over the hole as a filter, I position the spurting pipe through the back of a plastic chair to fix it in place, the arc of water landing neatly in the sieve and filling the barrel below.

As it takes several minutes to fill I took the opportunity to check for slugs on the chard and spinach leaves outside which have become quite holey recently - I caught a couple red-handed . Back at the pump I also found five of the critters crawling on my caravan so I popped them in a jam jar to dispose of in the morning.

10kg of runner beans from one long pick!

The barrel was full now so I popped the pump in and reconnected it to the caravan's inlet. Back inside I flicked the switch and could hear the pump whirr as it pushed water into the pipes to provide pressure to the taps. Finally I could start the washing up!

So, having done all that, wiped the kitchen surfaces and sat down with my laptop (running on its battery), I'd better begin my blogpost. Hmm, what shall I write about?

The first achocha harvest!

Cooking up the achocha for tea