Timber frame roof

Well, we're back to roofing again.  It all seems quite familiar now having done the whole of the house roof, the lean-to store at the end of the house, the stone extension and now this one.  Still takes a bit of getting your head around and the first bit takes ages, but worth spending some time on because that lays out the whole roof and a mistake here can cause problems all the way along.  Working out where the first batten should go took us about 2 hours (well actually it took us about 5 minutes with an additional 1 hour 55 mins trying to convince ourselves that we'd got it right first time!).  Once that was on though we whizzed along and finished the whole lot in no time.

The slates arrived today and it was the same story - it took us the rest of the afternoon to lay the few shown in the picture and get the lead soakers right (pieces of lead that lay on each slate and go up the little bit of wall to the next roof and stop water getting in the joint).  Now we've done that though we should be able to just get on tomorrow.  The lad who delivered the slates is also a slater and he was actually quite impressed with the other extension roof and told us we'd done a really good job - that was just so nice to hear (especially from an expert!).

Yesterday, because we'd done so well getting all the battens on the roof on Saturday, we gave ourselves the day off and spent it shovelling horse poo!!  Very relaxing.  A neighbour runs a livery stable and has horse muck coming our of his ears (not literally!) and has said we can take as much as we want.  So we went and collected three trailer loads and piled it on top of the heap of soil we were given a while ago, covered it all with plastic and a tarpaulin and will leave it all to steep for a few months before we spread it all out over the clay and stones we call soil at the moment.  So, the whole place smells of horses at the moment!  After that, we went to the garden centre and bought some plants for in and around the retaining wall and then planted them when we got home.  At the moment it looks lovely mainly because the nettles and other weeds haven't had time to take over yet!

Two of the chickens have been a bit off colour for the last few days - don't know why, probably something they ate.  So we have been feeding them a bit of live yoghurt which (just like Yakult) has the friendly bacteria which seems to sort them out.  Sid wouldn't eat hers though and so we hade to resort to the syringe (no needle, don't worry) so we could squirt it down her throat - easier said than done and it takes two of us and we all (chicken included) get in a bit of a mess.  Have you ever tried prising a chicken's beak open with one hand, yoghurt dribbling down the other hand and trying to fend of another other chicken who does like yogurt? Anyway, it seems to do the trick and they're looking better.  Keep you posted.