Latest guest visit: David Ayre

Last weekend, my friend Dave came out to visit PaulssonPaleo. I have known Dave for 20 years, so was really keen to show him our place and to quiz him on farming. Dave comes from a farm in Devon in the south-west of England where his parents look after 400 or so sheep.

The weather was pretty rubbish the weekend Dave came, but that didn't stop us getting outside and doing some manual labour (something all our guests are keen to do!). The temperature has risen a little lately, so the snow had disappeared and allowed us to progress with getting the land ready for spring. We are further testing out hugel culture (see blog post 'Everyday is a School Day' - 5th October) so have decided to use our paddock to build a series of hugel beds. It has the perfect orientation and is sheltered from the strong winds, so could be a good area to grow produce. Firstly, we dug out the base of the hugel bed to about a spade depth and then started to collect and drag fallen tree debris to the paddock. Some of the logs we found were pretty big, so it turned out to be a great work out.

Dave was also keen to get in a bit of running as he is training for his first marathon in April, so on the Saturday I took him for a gentle trail run up and around our nearby lake, Simlången, this included the notorious 'Murder Hill'. On the Sunday, Dave nervously agreed to join me for my weekly club run which, this week, turned out to be a hilly 22km road run. So, we amassed a pretty good 36km of running in 2 days, good training for the Brighton Marathon and a bit different from pounding the streets of Basingstoke!

Hanging Tough

Dave also topped the leader board for our 'Hang Tough' competition. He stayed on the rings for 2 minutes and 8 seconds. Thankfully, he did this before he polished off 2 Semlor at a cafe in Halmstad before his flight back to the UK!

'2 Semlor Dave'

Every Day is a School Day

Every day is a school day is a favourite expression of a friend of mine. This last weekend was a case in point.

Our Norwegian friends Sofie and Andreas (paleoterapeuten) are not only keen paleo converts and functional movers, they are also into hunting and growing their own food.

Grateful host and tired guests...

While digging our new vegetable beds, they mentioned that they've used "hugel beds" in their community garden. Hugel stands for hügel, meaning hill in German. You essentially pile up a load of dead wood and cover it with earth, giving your plants a dependable source of moisture and nutrients. We suddenly saw rotting wood with different eyes, ha ha! Lucky for us, we are surrounded by rotten wood.

Although we haven't implemented hugel culture fully (our beds aren't 6 feet high...), we do hope that the incorporation of loads of dead wood will serve our vegetables well in this windy climate and poor soil.

Chick with a death wish

The Mills Visit

Off foraging…yay! (image: N.D.Mills)

We had Family Mills pay us a visit in the middle of their Swedish Summer Road Trip from Gothenburg to Mora. It was great to see them all again, especially as Tora had a couple of friends, Freya and Hugo, to mess around with for a couple of days.

Grilling meat.

The weather was fantastic and we were outside everyday, walking, foraging, swimming, and BBQ'ing - all in all a great couple of days. Whilst we grilled meat on the fire pit, we finally made good use of the rustic log table we made with Liz and Laurence (guests in June!). It was great and blends in perfectly with the natural surroundings.

The Table.

Birthday Week

I turned 40 last week (cue: "oh my gawd, you don't look a year older than 39!"). 

As I have thankfully already ticked "major life crisis leading to drastic lifestyle change" off my to do list, I figured I have cause for celebration. For at least a few weeks. If not for the rest of my 41st year. Or the next decade or so? Let's not be stingy here. And all I want for my birthday decade is to welcome as many of my friends as possible to our new place. 

London lovelies Liz & Laurence hopped on a plane to start off the celebrations in Copenhagen. 

Pre-dinner welfie: please note the very paleo pork scratching in the front

I am lucky to have extremely thoughtful friends, who went out of their way to book the meatiest restaurant around (Nose2Tail), with OFFAL on the menu. Except they called it innards. Cute. 

We rolled out of there. And went straight to bed, funnily enough. That is what middle age does to you.  

Lamb leg to the left, lamb liver to the right

The rest of the weekend was spent at PaulssonPaleo HQ, working off all that Danish meat (organic, mind you!). L & L were really excited to pitch in, so we went straight to work:

L & L finishing off the sixth vegetable bed at lightning speed

A spot of barefoot stream clearing to keep your core strong

Our new rustic side table for the bbq spot!

We fed our guests a bit too, promise

I just hope we didn't break them... We may have to work on the "reigning in" of ambitious city folks. 

Welcome Sheep

On Monday, we welcomed our first four-legged guests to Kannesten. A friendly neighbour is lending us seven rams for a few weeks in order to eat some of our now very plentiful grass. We are treating it as 'try before you buy' and we were all smitten as soon as they moved in. It is a great feeling seeing the sheep munch in our field. It is as if they simply belong there and the field didn't have a purpose before they arrived. Very deep, I know.

We are now more convinced than ever before that we need some sheep for our land. There are so many benefits:

1. They eat the grass and shrubs in the field. As a result we don't need to spend hours with the scythe. There are more than enough areas where we can do our core exercises with the scythe.
2. They poop, i.e. they fertilise the fields. We may even collect some to feed our vegetables, which feed us. I love the biodynamic thing!
3. They make you happy by just looking at them. Hours can be spent watching them graze.
4. They have lambs, which are even cuter.
5. Their meat is tasty. 
6. The wool is beautiful.

I can't wait until we have some of our own! Meanwhile, I will enjoy looking at the seven handsome rams.

First Guests at Paulsson Paleo HQ

We recently had our first guests staying at Paulsson Paleo HQ; my parents made their first visit and stayed over the Easter break. It was very exciting for me, as I wanted to show them what we had been up to and for them to experience our new and very different lives. 

As you would expect at the beginning of April, the weather was a bit mixed, we pretty much had everything and sometimes all in one day. This did not stop us from getting tasks done and we were grateful for the two extra pairs of hands. The week mainly consisted of digging, turning over the vegetable beds, clearing branches, burning branches, erecting a safety net for the chickens and a lot of trail walking. Pretty hectic and tiring, but satisfying. 

On Påskafton we had our first campfire, burning some of the branches we had cleared and grilling sausages on sticks, very tasty and the break was very welcome. The grill area is turning into one of our favourite spots, surrounded by forest, sheltered from the wind and a sun trap. We will be eating down there quite often this summer.

Mum and Dad giving a helping hand during the Easter Week

It wasn't all work and Mum and Dad managed to get out and explore some of the beautiful trails that surround us, taking in the lakes Brearedssjön and Simlången and seeing Danska Fall. I think they had an enjoyable week, we certainly did and we hope that they will be the first of many guests coming to stay at Paulsson Paleo HQ.