Cobbling

We've had another busy day on my day off.  I was hoping for a bit of a lie-in, but as always happens we were wide awake at 6.30am and ready to get up - we forced ourselves to wait until 7am though so I guess that is a lie-in of a whole hour!  So, our first job was to gather some free firewood.  There are lots of dead branches in the wood across the lane which is owned by the quarry.  A while ago the manager said we could help ourselves to dead wood and so we did.  It's surprising how much you can gather quite quickly. This log store was completely empty and it took us about an hour and a half to gather, cut and chop this.  As it has been dead for some time, it is just about ready to burn which is handy, we just need to let yesterday's rain dry off it.

Bob has been and gone and sold another chair at the second Ludlow market on Saturday!  He also took an order for another and sold three of the coat peg boards, so a pretty good day.  Course that means that he has to get on with making some more of everything.  So we had to have a search through our timber store and choose which bits of wood are suitable for what.  While we had the planks out, I treated some of them with woodworm stuff.  Just precautionary/preventative hopefully, but while it was a dry, windy day it seemed a good idea.  We had to buy some bat-friendly woodwormer when we were treating roof timbers and it it really easy to use and not at all noxious, so it was quite an easy job.

After lunch we both got on with different parts of our hard-landscaping in the garden . . . . is that what they call it on Gardener's World?  This is all along the side of the house in various forms.  Bob got on with the next rise of the steps at the top end.  He must be getting bored of them by now I'm sure, but the next stage gets more interesting because we need to build the plinth for the water barrel waterbutt and to incorporate that the steps will have to curve round.  The bit this side of the steps will be a herb garden eventually (when we've got rid of all the builders bags of cobbles and other building rubbish).  At the moment every spare bit of it is covered with wild garlic which the chickens really enjoy . . . . . wonder if we'll have garlic-flavoured eggs?

While Bob was doing that I got on with a bit more of the 'patio' - oh that sounds so pretentious for what it is.  I was doing my bit to empty those builders bags by doing some cobbling.  We have some very big flattish stones which have made up most of the area, but we don't have enough to do all of it so some bits are being cobble.  We dug the stones up from in and around the end barn which is now a bedroom, so it's nice to re-use them.  We researched how to do cobbles and the gist seems to be that you make some 'hoggin' which is a mix of clay and sand and makes a very solid base to hold the stones.  You put a good layer of that down then pack the cobbles as closely as you can and knock them down into the hoggin.  As you knock them in a long way (like icebergs, you only see a small fraction of what's there) they should hold each other firmly in place.  I haven't got them anywhere near as close together as a proper cobbly person would, but they fill the gap.  Once that's done we press lime dust into the joints and ram it in hard and this soon mellows and blends with the old stones - we just made this bit up, but it looks OK.

So, this is how it all fits together.  We need to find
something for the middle bit outside the lounge door.
Unfortunately, I think we might have to buy something -
the rest is all re-used from around the place which
feels very appropriate and green and all that!

Talking of green, there's a definite green haze everywhere as the new little leaves come out on the trees and hedges.  Our bit of laid hedge has green on all the branches and even tiny shoots starting from the cut stumps - phew, we didn't kill it all.  By the end of the summer, it should look quite different.  Elsewhere everything is sprouting and shooting.  We have flowers on the bluebells which seems quite early, there are primroses and cowslips everywhere and the wood anemones and sorrel are coming out in the wood.  Even the roses round the kitchen door have bushed out, shot up and have the first flower buds on.  All the plummy/damsony type things have lots of blossom on them (even the plum tree we pruned quite viciously seems to have forgiven us!).  So, the garden looks quite 'twinkly' just now with little white dots everywhere.  I hope we don't have any vicious frosts now to spoil it all - it's such a lovely time of year.

Blue Lagoon

Well, I've picked a good time to have a few days off again weather-wise.  Actually, I didn't pick the time - it was my weekend off and I swapped today for tomorrow to cover a colleague's holiday and so ended up with a four-day-weekend which has been very nice indeed.  After sleet when I was driving home on Thursday and getting absolutely soaked walking home from the pub on Friday evening the rest of the time the weather has been absolutely lovely.  It's raining again now though, so time to go back to work tomorrow - perfect!

On Friday morning we went to pick up the Yew to make a coffee table for the people we spoke to at the Ludlow market a few weeks ago.  We sat with them with a cup of coffee and talked design options before going to pick out the timber we needed.  All very civilised and, I think, just how Bob would like his business to develop.  It's nice when the customer has some input into the design of their furniture.  We then had a nice lunch in Church Stretton and a mooch around the antiques market.  Luckily there wasn't anything we wanted to buy as we couldn't have got it home with the car full of Yew.  We had a flat tyre when we got home - good job it didn't happen (or we didn't notice) on the way home because we'd have had to unload all that wood on the side of the road to get at the spare tyre!

On Saturday we went for a lovely walk taking homemade pasties for lunch partway.  We sat high up on Llanymynech rock looking out over Wales to eat them in shirt sleeves and I think I might even have got a bit of a tan from it.  We haven't walked round our quarry for quite a while and this was the first part of our walk.

I think, if anything, the colour of the water is
even more turquoise in real life than in this picture

There were some huge fallen trees which have now been dealt with and are on someone's log pile.  We met the farmer on our way back and he said that one of the trees was so big that he got 57 logs out of one single slice of it!  Amazing.  He had just helped a sheep deliver three lambs and we had a peek at them on our way past - soooo cute.  Some time ago they stopped working at the far end of our quarry and so stopped pumping the water out.  Over the winter it has filled up and now the water has settled it is an amazing colour.  When the sun's shining on the lakes, they just don't look real, more like a touched-up holiday brochure.  Presumably, there must be copper in the rocks to make the water this colour.


Yesterday we had quite a busy day - the good weather makes you want to get on and do things.  So we started off by cutting half a tree down.  Just next to our beer bench is a large Ash tree and a Sycamore with five reasonable-size trunks.  This casts quite a shade over our bench so we cut down three of the Sycamore trunks.  We'll see what that's like when the leaves are out and maybe cut the rest of them next Winter.  The shade from the Ash is quite nice and dappled, so that can stay.  So, having had that huge bonfire a couple of weeks ago and got rid of all the brash from the hedge-laying, we now have another big pile!  We also have more firewood of course.  I think we may have a look at hiring a log-splitter when we have finished cutting up what we can of the Oak across the lane - it'll take us ages to sort out otherwise.

As you can see, the hedge is a bit sparse-looking just now.
Once the rabbits can't eat it we'll put some more plants in
and then it should start to look better.

Once we'd cleared up from that job, we started our mega rabbit fencing project.  The little bunnies are such a pest that we really need to keep them out - they have acres of woodland to play in, dig up and eat, so they really don't need our garden too!  I have tried to explain this to them, but they just don't seem to get it.  Hopefully this fence will also deter dogs as everyone lets their dogs off their leads as soon as they get to our lane and think it's fine for them to run all around our garden playing with the chickens.  I guess the garden just looks such a mess at the moment that they don't think it matters, but hopefully before too long it'll start to take shape and then we will mind.  So, we have knocked some stakes in along the hedge to start with ready for the rabbit wire which we've had ready to go for a couple of years!  We then have to go up the slope, behind the beer bench and along behind that hedge, put a gate in then somehow fence or gate between out top barns and Bob's workshop and then again between the workshop and the house and then put a gate in next to the lean-to.  It's not an easy garden to fence at all.  Once it's done though, we can take away the bits of individual fencing we have round borders, etc and let plants trail over walls, etc.  Hopefully too, the hedge will start to do something - it really has been hampered by nibbling bunnies.

Next job was to do another rise of the steps next to the house.  So, I cleaned the bricks up and Bob laid them.  Most of them were from around the range in the kitchen and had a really thick layer of very bright red paint to scrape off.  Most of them have the maker's name stamped on them and come from a just few miles down the road which is nice.

So, tree-felling, fencing and step-building - isn't that what everyone does on Mother's Day?!  We slept well last night I can tell you.

Snow!

You know I was saying how lovely the weather was and how Springlike it felt . . . . well, when we opened the curtains this morning it was snowing!  Quite heavily too and in the time it took me to have a shower and get ready for work the garden had a thin white covering . . . . 

. . . . and here it is - can you believe it?!  Actually no - it did really snow and cover the garden this morning, but this picture is the view exactly one year ago today when it took us four hours to dig our way out so I could go to work.  Strangely, it was hot the week before this happened too and I got sunburnt shoulders in the 25 degree heat.  How bizarre, eh?

Bob and I have been doing some furniture-making together which is quite nice.  Almost a year ago, we were frantically trying to get the house ready for Mum and Dad bringing their friends from the Netherlands to stay and we needed an emergency coffee table.  We had a very burrey piece of Elm which we wanted to use, but didn't have time to do the rest properly so, as a temporary measure, we stuck some spare chair legs in it and dah, dah one coffee table.  Not actually ideal - when Ben was here at Christmas and wanted to move the table he picked it up rather than drag it so it didn't scratch the floor (what a good boy).  Course the legs promptly fell out and he was left with a surprised look on his face holding a table top complete with magazines, TV remote, etc while Bob and I fell around laughing.  

Since Bob is now making chairs again, he really needed the chair legs back and so we thought it was about time we finished the table properly.  We wanted an organic look as the top is very natural, but that certainly made doing the joints a lot harder with curves going in all directions.  We're really pleased with the finished article though and hopefully it won't fall apart again!

Bonfire success at last!

I'm here on my tod at the moment while Bob is over in the east helping his sister to fit out her new shop.  They are putting timber cladding up on some of the walls and he just rang to say he drilled through a cable in the wall this morning which wasn't the best of starts.  He didn't get electrocuted or anything, but it limited what they could do as the shop's quite dark without the lights on.  So, the electrician is coming first thing tomorrow and they were out looking for a cable detector for tomorrow!  It's strange being on my own here as it doesn't happen very often . . . . must remember to lock the door when I go out (I don't usually need to think about that!).

Bob did the Shrewsbury market by himself last week as I was working.  He didn't sell a chair (just as well really as the new batch aren't finished yet!), but he did sell every single coat peg board we had.  He's going to call at our old woodyard again on his way back from his sister's to get some more interesting bits of wood - surely there must be somewhere nearer than Northamptonshire to get this wood from!  He has a couple of commissions from the two markets so I think he's made a really good start.  He is still doing the scaffold board furniture, but just not quite so much.  I found this picture of one of the table ends where he was having a bit of trouble with the wood splitting and it made me laugh because it does look a bit over-clamped doesn't it? 

I had a couple of days off last week using up bits and bobs of holiday before the end of March which meant that I had nearly a week off in total.  What a good week to pick too - apart from the fog on Wednesday it has been just lovely.  The daffodils are well and truly out and there are lots of primroses around and plenty of bluebell leaves.  Do you know, each year I collect the seeds from our bluebells and either sprinkle them in pots or just strew them over the garden.  Last year I hoed the bed where I'd thrown them the previous year forgetting what I'd done and it was only as I was finishing that I noticed new little bluebell leaves in one corner - darn!  This year though I have remembered and won't be hoeing and there are loads of tiny little plants.  They just look like twin grass stalks at the moment and it'll be a few years before they flower, but the ones I didn't hoe last year are quite sturdy little things.  Won't that be nice when we have an eye-achingly beautiful carpet of bluebells?  I did throw some around in our little wood, but they'll be far too tiny to notice among the leaf litter.  I guess in a few years I'll just have a nice surprise when they do their thing.  So, just now our garden doesn't look too bad (this is relatively speaking of course) if you stand back and fuzz your eyes up it almost looks cultivated.  I'm putting this on record because I know that in about three weeks the nettles will have taken over and everything will be waist-high.

This was right at the end, I didn't have time to take
a photo earlier

Finally, on the third attempt, we managed to have a good bonfire with all the brash from laying that little bit of hedge back in the Autumn.  Carol and Graham were here for a short visit so Graham could do a bit more to the rocking chair he's making.  So while he was doing that Carol and I had a go at the bonfire and once we got it going properly, we could hardly keep up with feeding it branches and we reduced two huge piles to one little, neat pile of ash in just over an hour - how satisfying.  In the process I singed my fringe when the wind changed direction just as I was trying to get a big branch right into the middle and both of us have arms covered in scratches. Oooh!  I nearly forgot to tell you, we finally own the piece of field Carol's standing on in the picture!  After almost 6 years of trying we've finally done it!  The sales details of this cottage said the land may be available by separate negotiation and we have been separately negotiating ever since.  This little bit of field will be really useful as we can park on one corner which will mean you can turn round and go out forwards (we have to reverse a surprising number of cars out for people), we will also plant some fruit trees, build a good-size log store and I think this bonfire patch will be a permanent feature so we might as well make it official with a stone boundary.  It's a real shame that, because the solicitor worked at a snail's pace taking 6 months to do the tiny bit of paperwork we hadn't already sorted, it is now too late in the season to lay the hedge and it wouldn't be a good idea to plant the new boundary hedge until we've finished dropping trees all over the place.  Hey, what's another year in the scheme of things?!  So anyway, we now own our surroundings which is a really nice feeling . . . . suppose we could try getting the quarry to let us have the wood across the lane next! 

We're in business!

This is the stall which looks rather cluttered.  When we use
our own stall it has a back and sides so you can see the
wares more clearly without looking through to the next stall.
Mmmm, we may have to work on that.

I take it all back, people do just nip into town with the cash in their pockets to buy a chair! Yesterday we did the craft market at Ludlow as I mentioned last time. Although it was really cold, it was a beautiful day - clear blue sky and sunshine.  We were alright after about 11am when the sun had moved round and over the old prison building (a lovely old black and white building) and reached our stall.  It was a strange day all in all - we sold one card, one slate picture and a chair (all for cash) and the people who bought the chair were going to take it home with them on the bus!  We had a couple interested in a dining table and chairs, another wanting a coffee table made out of a Yew tree they'd had stored in their barn for 12 years and someone else who needed some Ash bending for the restoration of a pre-war Jaguar!  What a mixture.  I think, in a way, Bob was a bit shocked to have sold a chair - it was his showpiece (the one on the table in the picture).  Now he'll have to make another and he's not sure when he'll have time!  

Our other piece of news is that we have finally got round to building a website.  Its address is:

www.sheltonfurniture.co.uk

if you want to take a look.  It's way, way down on the Google search, so probably best to type in the whole address or use the link above.  We have more work to do on the site to make it more interesting, but just wanted to get something done so we have an address to put on the leaflets, etc.

We're having a lazy day today (after a very long day yesterday) and so I'm in the middle of making crumpets.  I've been meaning to have a go for ages and bought some crumpet rings way back last summer I think.  The woodburner is lit so we'll be able to cook them on the top of that.  I'm not sure that they're going according to plan as, just now, the mixture doesn't look anything like I'd expected it to from reading the recipe.  Well, we'll know in about an hour's time I guess!

We now have violets, primroses and snowdrops out up by our beer bench and the daffodils are so nearly ready to come out that I have to keep checking on them.  Don't think they'll be able to hold out much longer and then it'll really feel like Spring is here.

Look what Bob did!  180!!
That's good apparently and he had to leave the darts
in place for me to see when I got home from work.
Now, how do I know they were thrown not pushed?!

Firewood gathering

We went for a walk round last weekend to check on storm damage in the neighbourhood and there are lots of really big trees having a lie down - quite sad to see really, but I guess that's nature.  When we got back, Bob commented that everyone else would have plenty of firewood and we've just been able to gather a few small branches!  We are quite relieved that none of our immediate big trees fell down of course (although listening to it outside right now, there's a fair old breeze blowing!).  

The next day the Quarry Manager came round (inspecting damage on the quarry land I suppose) and found Bob in the workshop to tell him we could help ourselves to as much of the big oak tree cross the lane as we wanted.  So, next day, that's just what we did.  After a morning's work you could hardly see that we had touched it so we had an afternoon at it on Thursday too.  Starting at what was the top we cut all the smaller branches away to clear some space - you have to be really careful because a lot are caught on other little trees which can whip back upright when released.  One end of this tree (which actually looks a lot, lot bigger when you're standing right next to it) is folded right in two where it hit and slid down another big pointy tree.  Interestingly though, the roots at the other end are really quite weedy for such a big tree - no wonder it fell down.  I suppose it was actually growing on rocks so there's not much depth of soil at all. We then cut the bigger branches into four or five feet lengths and hauled these through the wood to the boundary, tipped them over the wall and then loaded them into the back of the car to bring home.  It's only a few hundred yards, but fresh oak is really quite heavy!  We now need to build another log store, cut them up and split them and then store them for a year or two.  It's all a bit of a hassle and your muscles certainly know you've done it the next day, but it's a good way to spend a few hours and nice to be outside and tired from fresh air and exercise.  And firewood is bloomin' expensive to buy - it doesn't just grow on trees you know!  So, we could have another couple of gathering sessions before the trunk gets too big for our chainsaw and that'll be a good job done and should get us ahead a bit for our firewood stockpile.

Next weekend is an exciting one!  Bob has a stall at the craft market in Ludlow - it's a bit of a trek, but is quite a 'well-to-do' area so it'll be interesting to see what the interest is like.  The next weekend he has a stall at the one in Shrewsbury - ditto the affluence of the area.  These are monthly markets and our past experience shows that you need to be somewhere regularly for a few months before you can really tell if it's worth doing.  I guess people don't nip into town on a Saturday with the cash in their pockets to buy a chair, but if they know you're going to be there they may order one at some point.  To start with we just need to get the name known, give out loads of leaflets and then cross our fingers, toes, legs, eyes and anything else.  I'm not working next weekend so can give a hand, but for the Shrewsbury one Bob'll be on his own.  Wouldn't it be funny if we sold everything at Ludlow and had nothing at all for the stall in Shrewsbury except a few leaflets!  I don't think for a minute that would happen really.

We had our first two-egg day for a very long time today!!  How exciting is that - Horse and Lottie both laying at the same time.

We have primroses out in our little wood . . . . . Spring must be just around the corner and we can't wait!

Weather report from North Shropshire

Well, we go away for a couple of days and all hell lets loose!  While we were in Norfolk this area has had a really tough time.  The electric to the whole area went off on Wednesday night and our village was off for 17 hours, but some places were only just getting their power back yesterday evening.  We went to the pub when we got back yesterday and everyone was saying how horrendous the wind had been - worse than any of them could ever remember.  A builder friend said he'd lost several ridge tiles on his roof and they in turn had cracked quite a few of the other tiles on their way down and he said when he went to the roofing place to get replacements he couldn't get in the carpark they were so busy!  Lots of big trees have fallen down - our road home was blocked by a tree that had fallen onto a hump-back bridge (guess they have to check the structural integrity of the bridge before they can re-open the road).  The road between here and Oswestry had also been closed by a huge tree and there are whole trees, branches and tops all over the place in the fields around - the chainsaws will be busy!  Just along the lane from us a couple of big trees have fallen very neatly behind the fence on the quarry's land (so not causing any problems) and apparently Phil and Ann were walking past when one of them fell.  That must have been a truly awesome sight (and I mean that in the proper sense rather than the teenage over-exaggerated sense).  I've never seen a whole tree fall down naturally.

We have been lucky in that we have only had small branches and bits of tree fall down and none of it has done any damage.  We just had to gather up recycling boxes, bits of wood and the canoe and put them back in their rightful places.  After the tales in the pub we inspected our roof very carefully in the daylight today and thankfully everything is intact . . . we obviously did a decent job of it, phew!  My nice tidy lane that I spent ages clearing was completely covered in branches and debris - aarghhh!!

Our journey to Norfolk was quite interesting from the flood-damage point of view.  We crossed the River Severn in two places and it was totally unrecognisable - about a mile wide!  Yet the river at Oundle which we've seen flooded a few times was not really too bad and we've seen it much worse.  When we crossed the fens we actually saw a farmer ploughing his field - I doubt there are many farmers in the country can do that at the moment.  I guess though that shows the benefits of careful land management.  There are ditches and dykes round every field in the fens and they are well maintained by the farmers because they know that the land is reclaimed from the sea and could very easily return to the sea if they don't.  I'm assuming that the Somerset Levels which are in a similar position have not had the same time and effort spent on them.

The chickens seem to have survived on their own through the exciting weather without any problems.  Peggy doesn't look so much like a penguin, Horse is still laying, there were no Lottie eggs (which makes us think we probably won't find a big pile of rotting eggs under a bush somewhere which is good) and Dot is just Dot.