The chickens inspecting Bob's handywork on the kitchen floor. There's just a
little bit left to do in the corner under the stairs, but we need to sort out oak
newel posts and things before that, so a job for another day.  We should have about
three spare tiles and some broken bits left, so that was close!



Yesterday we put the shower screen in.  It was relatively easy once we'd got our
heads round all the parts and which way round they had to go.  I siliconed
around it straight away - get it over with! So, if it hadn't been tipping down all day
and the sun had come out, we could have had a solar heated shower today
 . . . . maybe tomorrow.



Yesterday afternoon we lit the Ironheart for the first time using the rest of the
little logs that had been drying in the bread oven for the last 40 years and a
couple of small 'new' logs.  You have to start with a couple of gentle burns to allow things inside to dry out and settle - it wasn't really cold enough for a roaring fire anyway. 



With just a small fire it did start to heat the water in the heatstore
(just a couple of degrees) and the oven got to the 'cool' setting, so I could
have made meringues!  We did use it to keep the teapot warm.  The chickens
seemed to like it and at one point were walking around underneath - do they
count as combustable material?  The manual is very specific about distances to
combustable material but it doesn't say anything about chickens!



Here's me doing my Victorian housework - blacking the bread oven.  I don't
suppose they used rubber gloves and a toothbrush though, did they?



And here it is in place.  We got the door from the reclaim yard and Bob just
had to do a bit of fettling today to get it to fit.  Jolly good it looks too.  Inside the
bread oven is quite big and arched from every direction to the centre - very clever.
I'm not sure the bricks are still solid enough to try heating it though which is a shame.



So, that's what we've been up to for the last few days.  We had home-grown potatoes for tea a couple of times.  They are so different to shop ones.  I did intend to leave the skins on, but just a gentle rub to clean the soil away peels the skin away too - none of this scraping away with a knife!  It is a very weird feeling to forage around in the soil with your hands and find potatoes.  Today it rained so hard that when I went to look at the builders bag plants, four potatoes had dug themselves up and even washed themselves - they were just sitting on the surface ready to gather!

This weekend is Oswestry Food Festival and the smallholders group has a stall there tomorrow.  We volunteered ourselves to set up, do the first hour, do the last hour and dismantle, so that is tomorrow pretty much taken care of.  Phil and Ann have invited us for dinner though, so that is a bonus - no tea to cook.  The food festival completely transfoms the town centre and it is buzzing with loads of stalls and thousands of people so it should be quite good - just hope the sun shines!