Marmalade shelves

Yeah, the marmalade shelves are up and full of marmalade, jam, chutney and various alcoholic concotions.  Better not eat any now or there'll be gaps!

No sign of the mouse yet.

Two walls insulated in the padded cell.

Beer half-drunk and meat and potato pie bubbling in the woodburner oven - life's good!

Evil vacuums, poorly computers and forgetful chickens

One of our woodpeckers seen through the
kitchen window.  It's a bit fuzzy because of
the zoom - sorry! 

As usual, the time has flown since I last wrote.  We've had major computer trouble.  It's not been right for a while, but has gradually got worse and worse and when the anti-virus software stopped working, we thought it was time to do something about it.  So, the laptop has been to hospital for a while and had a hard-drive transplant (££££££) and has gradually been recovering at home - by that I mean we've been re-loading things and altering the settings back to how they were, oh, it's such a boring job, but I think we're just about there and up and running again.

I bet you think we'd have the windows in by now don't you?  WRONG!  All the frames are finished and painted and have hinges, locks and bolts attached.  Bob went to collect the glass on Wednesday and we were all set to fit the first one before I went to work on Thursday and the other two on Friday.  But when we unloaded the glass from the car, we realised that they'd put the wrong colour spacer bars in.  These are the metal bits between the pieces of glass and generally you get them to match the frame colour as best you can, so these should have been black . . . . silver!  Aaarghhh!!  How frustrating.  We get our glass from the funeral directors in town - a good old fashioned place in the old tradition where the local carpenter made coffins too, so they make windows and do funerals.  Anyway, they were really good and could see that they'd made a mistake and so have ordered new glass which should arrive on Monday.  They also said we could take the old stuff back and they'd skip it or we could dispose of it ourselves  . . . . . mmm?!  We decided we'd 'dispose' of it - Bob can have nice big toughened, double-glazed windows in his workshop (so, it's not all bad).

The delay meant that Bob was able to help my friend from work to make a door frame for her house.  She is also renovating a cottage and so she brought the timber round and used Bob's machines and expertise and is now ready to fit her first door frame.  Her house wasn't as bad as this one to start, but she hasn't been doing it full-time and so is not so far on.  They have a ladder instead of stairs too!  But they don't have hot water, in fact when she came round she had to bring a 2ltr bottle to fill with water because their pipes were frozen.  They also don't have much heat and she had to get two more cats to snuggle up to for warmth!

We had a demonstration of pork butchery at last month's meeting of the smallholders group.  It was actually really interesting - a local butcher brought along half a pig and chopped it up in front of our very eyes while chatting about sausage making (we're definitely going to have a go at that as soon as we can get hog casings for the skins).  I made the second lot of marmalade and that also turned out well, so Bob is in the middle of making a set of marmalade shelves for the utility room - we also have jam and chutney to go on them, so they're not exclusive.

Oh, nearly forgot to update you on Elvis's funny little egg.  Well, you know in the past the chickens have forgotten to put a shell on their egg . . . . this time Elvis forgot to put a yolk in the egg.  So, instead of a perfect but tiny egg, it was just white - OK for a little meringue I suppose, but not much else.  She must have heard us laughing at it, because she hasn't bothered since - oops!  They were all a bit miserable this afternoon in the bitter cold with slushy freezing rain and snow, so they hunkered down in the workshop with Bob among the shavings - well, obviously, Bob wasn't in the shavings with them!  We have been treating them to a bowl of hot porridge with raisins for breakfast and they just love it.  Robin the honorary chicken is desparate to get in there with them, but is just not quite brave enough.  I did try putting a dollop on the ground a little way away for it, but the chickens made a beeline for it before returning to the bowl.  The chickens now recognise Phil and Ann when they walk past and go running down to the path to greet them - could be something to do with the fact that Phil sometimes has some corn in his pocket I guess!  The other day Phil got the corn out of his pocket and Bonny jumped up onto his arm to get there first - we have performing chickens!

You'll never believe it, but we have actually been thinking about the stairs, not only thinking, but we have actually bought the wood to make them!  How weird will that be?  Dead posh eh?  We decided on Ash because it has nice grain and we already have quite a bit of oak.  There'll be quite a lot of fiddling around to get the bearers on the walls in the right place and then a lot of shaping and smoothing of the steps (actually know in technical jargon as 'goings' for the bits you step on and 'risers' for the upright bits).  So Bob can get on with that while I'm at work and then we'll have a mad panic when it comes to fitting them because there'll be a point where we can't get up the stairs but won't be able to use the ladder.  I suppose we could always stay in the spare room!  That won't be for a while yet though.  When I'm off for a week we are hoping to get the ceilings done in the 'lounge' and the padded cell, so that's insulation and plasterboard.  That'll definitely be a two-man job because one of us has to hold the stuff up while to other attaches it.  Not really looking forward to the padded cell as it's a really high ceiling so we'll have to use the scaffold tower and there'll be a lot of passing boards up and down and moving the tower around, so lots of logistics to think about.

We have a new member of our household.  He's called Henry and is a cheeky little chap with a smiley red face.  He's really helpful though and happily helps with the cleaning unlike his predecessor the evil Count Vax.  When the stately Lord Dyson (a faithful companion of many years) finally decided that he was too old to be cleaning up building dust and that with his creaking joints and split hoses it was time to retire, Count Vax weedled his way into our lives with promises of superior cleaning abilities.  After just a couple of workouts though his evil ways began.  He'd refuse to work after just one room and whine that his filters needed cleaning and once that was done he'd wait until your back was turned and then spew clouds of dust all over the place.  Once he excelled himself and actually set off the smoke detector!  He was evil in vacuum-form!  And so he had to go and has been locked in the top barn pending a stoppy letter to his manufacturer.  And so now we have adopted the cheap and cheerful Henry and he is a pleasure to have around - I even find myself talking to him as we clean!

The view from the kitchen door last Sunday morning just as I was going to work - spectacular!

Elvis is laying again!

Can you believe it?!  Elvis has laid two eggs in the last few days - just amazing when you remember that we didn't think she'd make it to New Year!  Mind you, you really do have to laugh at today's effort.  You know I've said that sometimes one of the chickens lays half an egg by forgetting to put a shell on it?  Well Elvis's egg today was just half-size - it's tiny and looks so funny.  I was up at the top hanging the washing out when Bob first went into the chicken run and he came out to ask if I'd already been in there because he thought I was playing a joke on him. . . . . . just look at this . . . .

. . . . the other egg is her one from two days ago.

As predicted, I didn't have three days off last week and had to go in on one of my days off and this week I just have two days, and next week I am doing 20 extra hours!  This all makes planning house activity quite difficult, but hey ho.  I have a WHOLE WEEK off in February!  Then back in for a week and then over two weeks off.  Because I haven't taken any holiday since I started in August I have had to cram it all in before the end of March.

The window frames are now all made and are at various stages of painting/wood preserving, so we need to order the glass for them now.  That is usually ready to pick up within the week, so should fit in quite well with painting.  Here's the trial run of the smallest window.  We have left the original wooden lintel in (don't worry, there's at least two new concrete lintels behind so this one is only decorative really).  It is so NOT level!  Bob had to make the frame slope at the top to fit, but leave the casement for the glass square so it all looks really wonky which I love.  I don't actually think you'll notice it as much once it's all painted the same colour.  The new slate sill looks as though it's always been there doesn't it?

We made some marmalade last week which seems to have turned out rather well though I say so myself.  We used brown sugar so it is quite dark and very orangey.  I'm in the middle of another batch, but this time a lighter one with white sugar and a couple of lemons added for a bit of variety.  I invented a new dessert (well, I've not seen it before though it may exist) using the dark marmalade stirred into a dark chocolate ganache on top of a biscuit base.  This was inspired by a cake my nephew made us for Christmas using the same flavours and it worked really well.  Luckily, I wrote down the recipe as I made it up, so I should be able to replicate it.  Phil and Ann came for dinner on Friday, so they were my guinee pigs!  I don't think they minded too much.

Right, this week Tuesday night is my Saturday night (in my M&S work pattern) and we're having curry, so it's time to crack open a beer and get the naan bread dough on the go!