Introducing . . . .

. . . . Horse the chicken and her friend who, as yet, has no name.  Horse is called Horse because she's hoarse.  They seem to be in pretty good nick - they have feathers and everything.  They can drink from a bowl of water, eat proper chicken food, stand on a perch, peck and scratch at the gound - all things Elvis couldn't do . . . mind you, she could barely even stand up.  They are just a bit pale and anaemic looking.  The lady organising the re-homing said that the farmer they got them from is quite soft with them unlike some and it obviously shows in their condition.

That's the new two on the right with Horse on the
far right - they don't look bad do they?

Bob made a temporary enclosure out of some wriggly tin we happened to have lying around and when he got them home he put them in there with a bowl of food and a bowl of water and they seemed quite happy in there eating stones. The other two weren't a bit interested in them at all.  A while after I'd got home we decided to introduce them briefly so we put Peggy and Bonny in the enclosure with them.  There was quite a bit of eyeing up going on and a bit of minor pecking, but nothing major and at one point they were all eating from the same bowl without trouble.  The eyeing up then got a bit more intense - it's like that 'whoever blinks first loses' game.  Bob then enticed our two out with some tomato (so they came out of their own accord and kept their dignity rather than being hoiked out by us).  This little episode obviously awoke some instinct in the non-Horse chicken who then decided to exert her dominance over Horse and pecked her comb a bit.  

We have now put them all to bed together.  We first dusted them all with mite powder which you're supposed to do with ex-battery chickens, but also means they all smell the same.  First we shut Peggy and Bonny in the house, it's a bit earlier than they usually go to bed, but once the door's shut and it's dark they get on the perch and go to sleep.  Then we plonked the other two on the perch, shut the door and walked away quickly.  Well, I did, I was all for putting on some loud music and ignoring any noise.  Bob stayed up there for a while to listen - there was a bit of clucking and a bit of manouevering, but nothing like the cock fighting that used to go on with Sid and Myfanwy.  He's just been up again, and all's quiet - they're either all asleep or they've all killed each other!  I wouldn't say we're out of the woods yet on the integration front, but so far it hasn't been too traumatic for any of us.

How to dismantle a barn

And there it was, gone.  It's a little sad in a way because it was so useful and was a part of the whole mish-mash of buildings we originally bought and it is the one bit of the place you could see from across the valley.  Now when we walk over there I'm not sure we'd be able to pick out our house anymore.  But, it had to go to make way for new and exciting things.  I have been working a fair bit this week, so Bob has done most of the dismantling.  He took all the tin off the walls and some of the smaller timbers out then on Wednesday, when I was off, we tackled the roof.  As predicted, it wasn't so bad once we got on with it.  We put our scaffold tower up inside as we didn't really think it was safe to go up on the roof - one of the uprights was held up only by a bit of woodworm dust and a small piece of binder twine!   Gosh it was hot work though - summer has been here this week and we certainly felt it on Wednesday.  One half of the tin had been replaced I think and that took a bit of getting off, but the other side was quite rusty and was dead easy.  We used crow bars, lump hammers and brute force.  Because the main timbers were still in place, we had to keep taking the top layer off the scaffold tower to move from one end to the other as it was about 2" too tall to get under the middle cross piece!  The chicken's 'bath' didn't really help either as one corner of the tower kept falling down the hole each time we moved it.  On Friday, my other day off we took the roof trusses off.  They were very well made with proper mortice and tenon joints, coach bolts and great big nails hammered into each joint from every angle.  So, we could undo all the bolts, just a squirt of WD40 (oh, what would we do without it!) and they undid relatively easily when you think how long it is since they were done up.  It would then have been easy to knock the joints out if it hadn't been for the pesky nails which meant that no matter which direction you hit it from a nail was stopping it from moving.  Bob cursed all this on several occasions, but did admit that it's just how he'd have built it and he'd hate to have to take apart anything he'd built for just that reason!

The only way to take the 'wall plate' timbers off was to saw through one end then wiggle them about until the nails at the other end came out.  They are quite long and heavy so my job was to hold them in place while Bob sawed and then we both did the wiggling and lowered them carefully to the ground.  Well, we were careul at the house end because it was quite close to a big window and it would be a bit of a shame to drop one through it!  Some of the others we just pushed off and let gravity rip the nails out - much easier and more fun!  Part way through this part, Laura phoned for a chat and it made me smile to see the saw stuck in place where the workman had abandoned his post until the full team was back!   Today Bob took the remaining timbers down and, once again, we have piles of stuff (good wriggly tin, rusty wriggly tin, rotten timbers, good timbers, roof trusses) everywhere to be disposed of or stored.  I think Bob may be off to the tip again tomorrow!

On Wednesday we had a really good Smallholders meeting.  We learned how to make linen from flax and we had a go ourselves and I managed to get the fibres from the stalks ready for it to be spun into linen thread and Bob and I made a piece of string out of the waste material.  It is amazing how it makes such a strong thread out of just plant stalks.  We have about three stalks of flax growing in the garden - slugs, mice or rabbits always seem to eat it - so I'm not sure we'd make much out of that!

Next week we have Sophie and Ellie, my nieces, coming to stay for a couple of days.  It's the first time they've stayed although they've been for days a few times.  They will be in a unique postion of being able to see the view from the end bedroom up to the cliffs at the back of the wood.  Once the workshop is built that view will disappear again, so not many people will see it - I hope they feel priviledged! 


Tomorrow we are getting some little friends for the chickens.  Won't they be pleased when we introduce them to the two ex-battery chickens that are going to share their housee, run food, lives!!!  I just hope they aren't quite as pathetic as Elvis was when we first got her and can hold their own while the pecking order gets sorted out.   

Another caravan fire

We can now truthfully say that the caravan is well and truly gone, no more, deceased!  The scrap man has been with his oxyacetelene (I'm sure that's not how you spell it) torch and cut up the chassis and he's taken that away along with the aluminium.  He's weighed it in and split the money between him and us giving us £70 . . . . I'm not sure that we've had such a good deal on all that really, but, hey ho.  I don't really know what else we could do.  If we'd cut it up with the disc cutter we'd have had to buy loads of discs and then lots of trips to town to get rid of it, so we wouldn't have made much more out of it in the end.

On Sunday we had a good big bonfire and got rid of the scrap wood. I was a t work until 4pm so Bob started it after lunch and we were out there until gone 7pm, so it took a while. But, you can't beat a good bonfire and it was a significant one - clearing away one stage of this project ready for the next one, the workshop and as that was one of the main reasons for this move, it felt quite momentous!



That piece of plywood is actually in mid-flight although
it doesn't look like it on the picture.



It was quite a blustery day and the wind acted
as a wonderful set of bellows and got the flames
leaping quite high at times.  The overhanging hawthorne
is now a little curly!

And, of course, having put the last piece on we celebrated
in the traditional manner!

Our next job is to dismantle the wriggly tin barn.  This is probably reasonably old and has been really useful for storage.  Probably though I will miss the undercover washing line we rigged up in there which has been so useful (especially with this delightful summer weather we've been having).  It is now just about empty and ready for dismantalization.  There are pieces of railway track concreted into the ground which are attached to the upright timbers and then clad all round with wriggly tin.  It is quite high, so it'll be interesting getting the roof off - no doubt, one of those jobs that'll be fine once we get on with it.

We have taken a couple of wall panels off, just to give us an idea of how easy it's going to be . . . . not too bad is the verdict.  We just need to re-home Bob's motorbikes temporarily until their new store has been built.  Luckily Roy has very kindly agreed to livery them with the horses (they don't need as much feeding, mucking out or exercise as the horses!).

I think the chickens might also miss the
barn as they have made themselves a
lovely deep bath in the dry dust and mud  and spend many a happy hour making themselves beautiful in there!  I think we may have to build them a little shelter
where they can make another bath!

This week I haven't done any extra hours at work so I haven't had to be in after Monday's shift until 7am tomorrow (Saturday) and so we went on a grand tour of the family.  We started at Mum and Dad's in Norfolk on Tuesday (had to fix a leaking radiator pipe on the car while we were there as the engine got a tad hot on the way over and it took 3 litres of water to top the radiator up - oops!).  Then the next day we went to Peterborough to Jan's (Bob's stepmum) calling on the way to see Sophie, my niece, to find out how her trip to Nepal to do her Duke of Edinburgh Gold went (very well I think apart from the leeches and toilets, yuk on both counts there apparently).  At Jan's we set to clearing out the two garden sheds - loads and loads of useful and useless stuff that accumulates over the years to sort though and lots of trips to the tip.  It made us appreciate our nice, new tip in Oswestry as the Peterborough one is a bit of a nightmare if there are more than three cars there and in the pouring raining climbing the steps up to the skips is a bit dodgy (at ours all the skips are below the level of the car bit so you can just drop stuff in).  We then had an evening and overnight at Ben's -it's his birthday tomorrow, so it was nice to see him for a bit although rather brief as they had to go to bed quite early ready for work today.  All in all (and apart from the car) it was a good trip and nice to catch up with everyone.

The caravan's on the fire!

Yes, as you do, we've put the caravan on the fire  . . . . well, doesn't everyone do that?  Over the last few days Bob has worked hard sorting out all the rubbish generated by Friday's mass destruction - I've been working every day unfortunately.  First he had to clean up the aluminium from the walls and roof and take out all the screws and staples (of which there were millions).  The scrap man will only take it if it's clean.  Then he ripped the walls apart - taking the hardboard off the struts.  We can saw up the struts for kindling - tonnes of it!  The rest will make a good bonfire before too long.  Next was the carpet (which has got well and truly sodden with all the rain of the last few days) and the lino that was under that.  Today I haven't been at work so we took the plywood floor up.  We've cut some of that up to make new sides and floor for the trailer and the rest we took to the tip - they're getting to know us there now after so many trips over the last week and we had quite a chat with them today.  Last thing was to take out the wooden struts under the floor and those we sawed into short lengths for fire wood.  We've run out of logs that are dry enough to burn because we didn't really expect to still be having fires in July!  This wood is nice and dry having seasoned under the caravan for about 30 years and it burns really well.  So, all we have left is a neat pile of aluminium, a bonfire pile, tonnes of potential kindling and the chassis.  The scrap man from the next village said he'd come round and cut that up for us and take it away along with the aluminium and we should get a bit of cash for it.

So, this is our very own scrap yard.  Can you see the green
thing sticking up from the end of the chassis?  That's the bird
table Dad made us with an upturned mixing bowl painted green
to stop squirrels climbing up onto it.  Looks funny with just that
left, but even that's gone now.

Here you can see just a bit of the kindling wood.  I've already
cut up the wood from the internal walls into two tightly packed
sacks and there's much more here to do!  We'll have
to have a log store just for kindling.  Still, 'waste not want not' and
you can never have enough kindling.  Other people have Kindles, we
have kindling . . . . . and books!

We really have had a lot of rain over the last few days (though not as horrendous as some people, so I'm not complaining), but it has meant that the oak barrel water butt has filled up and the overflow system well and truly tested - and it works beautifully.  The sweet peas we planted round the door seem to have enjoyed the rain and they are now at least a foot higher than they are in this picture which I took a week ago - you can almost see them growing.  I've picked my first little bunch - I just love sweet peas.

The quarry have now moved their operations back to our end which means it is a bit noisier, but also means we get a better view of what they're doing and it's quite interesting trying to work out what they are up to.  It also means we can provide entertainment for visitors as we did for Carol and Graham on Friday when we arrranged a blast specially for them!  This is what you can see from our garden when they blast at the moment.  We didn't really arrange the blast for Friday by the way, we don't have that much influence on the quarry!

We are still feeding the birds (feeling sorry for them in this horrid weather I suppose).  It does mean that the jays are getting much tamer than they were.  When we were in the caravan a jay would come to the bird table for just a couple of weeks and sometimes land on the peanut feeder, but only while it's chicks were in the nest and needing constant feeding and then it would revert to being very shy and staying in the woods across the lane.  We now have them in the garden almost constantly and for the last couple of days there have been four of them there nearly all the time.  There's either three kiddies and one parent or two parents and two babies, not sure which.  There may even be more of them, but we've definitely seen four at once quite a lot.  It's really nice to see so much of them as they're usually so shy, but I do wish they'd learn to sing nicely - they have a horrible raspy squawk.  One of them left a little bright blue feather on the ground for us which was very kind and I have stuck it in the oak beam above the kitchen window.  Last weekend we went round to the rocks to see if we could spot the peregrine and, sure enough, there it was sat on exactly the same ledge as when Ben took his photo.  After a while we could hear another one call to it and then it flew off and we watched the two of them cirlcling around before they landed on a jutting out corner at the top of the cliff.  We walked along and could see one of them standing on the top before it turned and walked away from the edge - could this be where the nest is?  I don't imagine they do much walking except around the nest site.  We then walked a bit further on to see if we could see it from the other side of the jutting out bit and there was one just standing there, but it looked as though it had a teddy bear outfit on because it was browner and fluffy.  It was a baby!  It was quite happily standing there having a bit of a preen and looking out at the world and we could see it with our naked eye instead of through RSPB telescopes as we have in other places.  Just amazing!  AND  the ground was absolutely covered in wild orchids - thousands of them.  We had one of those odd moments where we just looked at each other and said 'Do you realise how lucky we are to live here'.  Now that sounds corny, but  . . .baby peregrines and wild orchids just around the corner - what can we say!

Another lovely summer's day . . . .

So, today it has been tipping down, absolutely pouring, incessantly and non-stop.  What do you think we've been doing in this horrid weather?  Catching up on paperwork, knitting by the fire - no, we have Carol and Graham here for a couple of nights, so this is what we've been up to . . . .

As a nod to the weather, we decided to do some inside
work first.  So we took the remaining inside walls out
of the caravan. 

But then we thought 'Sod the weather, let's just get on with
it!'.  Carol and Graham had come specifically for some mindless
destruction and we didn't want to disappoint. 

So we pulled the aluminium off the sides. . .

. . . then folded it up and took all the masses of thick
insulation out of the walls.  That's it look - less than 10mm
of ordinary polystyrene!  When Graham was prising off a
piece of gutter it suddenly gave and he got covered in slimy
rotting leaves and stuff.  Poor thing, but it was quite funny and we
weren't much help because we were laughing too much.

Now we have a wooden caravan . . . .  a big pile of
aluminium sheet, and a trailer full of polystyrene.

But, we decided it was a bit dark inside and so we should
try taking the roof off to bring a bit more light in.  So, back
inside to rip down the ceiling and remove yet more
insulation - 1" of rockwool.  D'you know it's a wonder we
didn't roast in that caravan!

And then you can just lift the roof off!

Strangely, when we'd taken out all the roof timbers, the
ceiling seemed a lot lower, much lower and we
couldn't walk around.  Then one bit sagged in and all
the water that had gathered there slopped in.  Luckily, none of
us were standing there at the time!

Oooh!  Andy Murray just got through to the final at Wimbledon!  Just got a bit distracted by that, sorry.

We then pulled the roof into the caravan and literally just rolled it up!
Then all that was left was to collapse the walls inwards.
Job done!  Not bad for a morning's work I don't think.

By the time we had finished we were all well and truly soaked through to the pants and there was nothing for it but to strip off and all get in the shower (not all together!), put the washer on and light the fire and have a lazy afternoon. . . . .  oh, and now we're having a beer to celebrate (of course!).