Life in the Woods & The Morning Routine
Recently I set up a poll on Instagram stories asking what people would like to see more of on my feed as well as here; more nature posts or more about us around our home.
The result was pretty much 50/50, I did however pick up a lot of DMs from people with suggestions of what they would be interested in seeing (still replying to the DMs at the moment!). A few suggested more posts about the daily routine here, so I thought I would share a little insight into what I get up to!
As you know I like to keep things authentic by sharing the ups and downs of life here in the woods. I never really thought that people would be interested in my incredibly mundane daily routine here, however on receiving those DMs, I had a think about it and realised that it is actually a wonderful opportunity to share with you what goes into our life here.
To some, our life may look ‘easy going’ and simple, however there are also a lot of fairly grotty jobs to keep on top of!
In the Woods
Living in the woods is (for us) absolutely idyllic, there is nowhere else we would rather be, but it doesn’t matter what season it is there is always work to be done outside.
During Spring and Summer these jobs seem less of a chore because of the warmer weather, however once Autumn and especially Winter set in, getting outdoors to do the daily jobs isn’t quite so appealing!
This time of year there is a huge amount to tidy up in the vegetable garden as I shared in my last post On a mild Autumn Morning, however these are jobs that can be pretty much blitzed once a season with a small amount of maintenance every few weeks to keep on top of things.
The bigger jobs in terms of woodland management (keeping on top of the chestnut coppice and any fallen trees etc) is very much left to my husband, as I don’t think letting me loose with a chainsaw would be a terribly good idea!
There is a lot of work required in the woods at the moment, some high winds a few months back saw a few big limbs out an oak, as well as a couple of chestnut stools coming down, so these jobs we will be working on over the coming weekends; lots of sawing and plenty of bonfires in the woods for clearing the brush.
At the moment there are quite a few jobs that need doing daily and these are what I get on with most mornings after school drop-off; raking fallen leaves, walking the dogs and mucking out the chickens, as well as all the other small household jobs like tidying away the morning breakfast, making beds etc etc.
As the Seasons change, so do the jobs…
As you can imagine living in the middle of the woods, it looks incredible when the leaves appear in Spring; Summer the thick canopy of leaves glisten under the sun. Autumn the colours look unreal, however come November, when the leaves start to fall, the garden we have created here, as well as the paths I have made in the woods are absolutely littered with leaves and it isn’t long until the leaves that were golden and crunchy underfoot are wet and sludgy.
The woodland play area we made for our daughter becomes pretty rotten once the leaves are down as they become a solid mass, resulting in her wooden stepping stones becoming very slippery, so this needs to be kept on top of daily as well as clearing leaves off the garden so that the leaves don’t kill off the grass we lovingly laid over the course of a back breaking weekend a few years ago.
Looking after Chickens
My least favourite job of all however, is the daily chicken muck this time of year. Chicken keeping (as most who follow me over on Instagram know) is great, I love chatting away to them, each has their own quirk and personality, not to mention the delicious eggs they produce, however keeping any animal obviously involves feeding and of course ‘mucking out’ and in the Autumn and Winter month’s it doesn’t matter how much wood chip is down or how clean it is kept, the chicken run and coop gets pretty foul.
Due to the fox who prowls every night we don’t leave the girls out overnight, they pretty much roam the woods most days, but as light fades, they head back into their run where they are fenced in overnight. Once I have collected the eggs first thing in the morning after drop off and the dog walk, I clean out the chicken coop as well as any muck in the run itself.
Once this job is done, they are let out to explore the surrounding woodland; I often sit out and watch them for a while, before heading in to do all the other jobs that need doing. Once all chores are done, I set to work on The Woodland Wife admin and content creation.
So that is pretty much my morning gone by this point each day! A huge chunk of my daily life is spent doing the jobs that no-one else in the family wants to do!
Much like the clearing I did in the vegetable garden a few weeks back, these jobs do give me some time to myself to get things straight in my head for the day ahead, however the one thing I do miss in the mornings, especially this time of year is my little girl…
This is the first year I have done these jobs alone, as I used to have my little sidekick running around playing with the chickens, popping the sawdust into the coop, collecting wood chip etc… we would spend hours doing these little jobs, so I miss her company now she is at school.
That is basically my morning routine, I will share a few more things I get up to around the place over the coming weeks, as I say, there is a lot of woodland management that we need to get on top of, but with my husband running his own business, this is work that is on hold until the weekends…
If there is anything you would like to know about life in the woods, what it is like actually living in the woods, as well as more on woodland management, do please get in touch and I will share more on the topics you would like to hear about.
For those of you who got in touch with suggestions of posts, thank you, and to those who aren’t interested in what I get up to in the mornings, thanks for popping over to have a read!
As ever, I welcome suggestions, questions and any feedback you may have in the comments below.
Jx
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Please Note: I have not been paid for this post or the products mentioned. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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