Depressed chickens

Oh, the poor chickens are not enjoying this snow at all.  The last few days they have poked their heads out of the run and then turned straight back round and gone back to bed.  Poor things, their feet don't touch the ground which must be a bit disconcerting.  I did manage to entice them out today with their favourite treats - tomatoes and cauliflower leaves - and got them to come down as far as Bob's workshop.  They are now hanging around the door, knocking to be let in I think!

As you may have gathered, we have had loads of snow and it is showing no signs of disappearing.  On Thursday the forecast was for a foot of snow overnight, but no-one quite believed it and thought that may be just very high up and we'd get a light dusting - it is now Spring after all and British Summer Time starts at the weekend  . . . . how wrong we were.

It is very pretty though, especially yesterday when the sun shone, so here's some pictures of our winter wonderland:-

This poor little Birch sapling is usually standing straight and
tall.  I had a lovely vision of a squirrel jumping on to it, disturbing
the snow and getting catapaulted over the hedge and into the
quarry - oh, that would be so funny to watch!

There is so much snow on the roof that part of the extension
roof almost meets the path.  The snow on the pathway
round the extension is up to the oak room window and when
this lot finally slides off, I don't think you'll be able to see
out of the window at all.

We have some fairly impressive icicles.  As the snow inches
down the roof, these icicles angle in towards the wall and more
form hanging straight down.

This is what we had to dig out on Saturday morning - it took
us about 4 hours to get all the way to the lane (about
100 yds of top-of-the-wellie-deep snow) and clear the
waist-high bank left across our track by the snowplough.
All the time snow kept falling out of the trees down our necks
and branches threatened to fall with it - a dangerous job!  Hope
M&S appreciate the effort we went to so I could go to work!

The view from the kitchen door - all perspective is lost in
so much snow unless the sun shines on it.

All Friday night we kept getting woken up by loud rushing,
grating rumbling as sections of snow slid off the roof and
crashed to the ground.  Wouldn't want to be standing
underneath, they make huge piles of snow!  Needless to
say, the chaps didn't come to fit the woodburner yesterday.
They need to get on the roof and din't really fancy it!!
 

Knackered knees

Well, my shoulder survived a workaout at M&S, but now my knee's knackered!  D'you think I'm getting too old for all this?!  Bob and I were talking the other day about what we thought we'd need first, a hip replacement or a knee replacement.  I think at the time I said hip, but I've changed my mind this week!  I did spend two and a half days on my hands and knees last week and I think I may have twisted my knee without knowing it, disguised by the aches and pains of crawling around for so long!  I went to work on Saturday, spent 8 hours on my feet and then could hardly walk back to my car! 

Extreme cake decorating!

We have tiled the floor in the end bedroom hence the two and a half days on my hands and knees.  Laying these little tiny slate tiles is not a quick job even though they come in foot square sheets so it took a whole day with me laying them and Bob mixing the adhesive and cutting pieces for edges and round door frames, etc.  Then the next day we did the grouting and that takes yonks plus ages!  We tried all sorts to try to make it easier and speed it up.  I even dug out some old icing equipment and cobbled together a piping bag.  This worked quite well to start with and was much neater and less wasteful than just smearing it all over.  Trouble is, the grout mix stiffens up quite quickly and hands and arms can't cope with it for long, so back to smearing it all over!  That is all now cleaned up and just needs a coat of floor seal to bring out the colour of the slate.  The skirting board is all cut and painted and ready to fix once it's properly dry and the curtain poles are up.  So, you know what that means . . . . yep, time to make curtains.  We bought the material last week and I'm really pleased with it - it's maybe not what Bob would choose as it is a bit girly with hearts on it, but it's not that girly!  It is red and beige check with raised embroidery between the checks and little hearts in some of the squares.  Oh, hold on . . . . .  don't go anywhere, I'll be back in a moment. . . . .

. . . . there, a photo, that's easier than explaining!  I like making curtains out of squared material - it makes cutting out and lining up soooo much easier.  Once the floor's sealed and the skirting boards are fitted, we can move the bed, etc out of the oak room and into here and then get on with the floor in there - more little slate tiles, oh joy!  They are perhaps not what we would have ideally chosen for bedrooms, but to be honest you won't see much of them by the time the beds are in and rugs are down and they were so cheap they were a bargain not to be missed!

Here's what Bob saw out of the kitchen window the other
day - can you pick out the two buzzards?  How cool is that?!

Butter and barter

There's been more exciting news all round in the last couple of weeks.  Firstly, Ben has a place at Aberystwyth to do a Masters in something like Conservation and Managing the Environment.  As I said a while ago, his girlfriend Lucy will be doing her teaching thingy there so it's brilliant that Ben has got in too and they can have a year together back in their old university town which they really like.  Big step for them both to give up their jobs to go back to learning, but good for them.

Our exciting news is that, after more than four years of trying, we think we've finally done a deal to buy a bit of the field next door.  The chap that owned the field and cottage it belongs to always said we could buy part of it, but never kept to his promises, was something of a money-grabber and generally just messed us around for three years.  The young couple who moved in last year are much more straightforward and amenable.  We talked about it last summer and they said they'd be happy for us to have some of the field and last week we got round to talking details and agreed on where to put the boundary and also the price  . . . . we are going to do some tree-planting and hedging for them in exchange.  How cool is that - just like the olden days, a good old bit of bartering. 

So, this is the bit we're having which is actually a fairly small proportion of the whole field, but will make a huge difference to us.  It means that we can park the cars in one corner and have room to turn around so visitors don't have to reverse down the lane.  It's surprising how many different cars we've reversed down there because no-one else likes doing it!  We will probably also plant some fruit trees and perhaps have some wood or timber stores.  It also means that the bit of ground nearer the house which would have had to be carparking can now be a veg garden which in turn means that the other side of the house can be a more traditional cottage flower garden (eventually!).  You know, it's funny but the chickens don't really go in this field although there's nothing to stop them, but when we turned round after shaking hands on the deal, there they all were happily pecking around - so they approve.  We've spent this afternoon trying to get to grips with the jargon on the Land Registry forms - oh what fun!

I have now finished painting for a while.  I ran out of the yellow claypaint with just a couple of square metres left to do - it's behind the settee, so that doesn't really matter does it?!!  Don't worry, I will do it and we've ordered some more paint but will wait for the decorators merchants to put together a bigger order so we don't have to pay £10 delivery.  I pulled a muscle in my shoulder a few days ago and it was quite painful, so I had to rest it for a couple of days and so just did bitsy painting like door frames.  Shoulder's much better for the rest, but I hope it can withstand the next three days of humping boxes around at M&S!

Bob has built the hearth in the lounge for the woodburner to stand on.  The bricks are wet on this picture - they'll look better once they've dried out and had a good wire-brushing.  Fitting the woodburner has given us nightmares.  We could quite easily buy the flue and other gubbins and do the work ourselves.  The trouble is that you are supposed to have a HETAS certificate to say it is properly installed - without one the house insurance may be invalid.  HETAS engineers won't sign off someone else's work which I guess you can understand, but if we pay them to do it it costs twice as much.  The alternative is to get Building Control to inspect it, but of course you have to pay them several hundred pounds, so it's not that much cheaper than getting someone else to do it for us.  So, the woodburner itself cost about £500 - we had one quote for £1,200 to fit it!!!!  They obviously keep the woodburner costs down and then sting you with everything else you need.  We've gone with a much cheaper chap to fit it (still way more than the price of the burner itself), but he seemed really professional and conscientious.  So that is being done in a couple of weeks. 

Today we completely cleared the lounge, vacuumed all the dust up and sealed the floor with watered down PVA.  We have done it before, but it had obviously worn off and there was just sooooooo much dust everywhere.  It looks so strange in there now - it has been a building site and workshop for so long.  Hopefully now we can keep it fairly clean in there.  Next job is to move all the boxes out of the end bedroom and lay the floor in there - hopefully we can get on with that next week.  Then curtains - tee hee that is exciting.

Bob has also been doing a bit of furniture restoration.  Some friends offered us an old cupboard and a set of drawers, but they have been stored in an old container and are a bit the worse for wear.  So, they've had a good douse with woodworm treatment and Bob is busy taking drawers, etc apart to clean up and re-glue.  They should look good when they're finished though - very much in keeping.  He has also been cleaning up a big pile of oak joists that the builder who helped us with the extension brought round.  They are from a bungalow that he is adding a second storey to.  He is having a coffee table out of some of it, but Bob can have the rest.  We're busy thinking of all sorts of things to do with them.

Another of Bob's skills - he's a chimney sweep!

We had one of those 'This is what it's all about' moments last week.  At the end of the day at work there were some tubs of organic cream which were going to be thrown away, so I bought them for 10p each and made butter out of them.  It's really easy - you just over-whisk the cream until it splits.  You then pour the butermilk off (the chickens adore this!) and put the butter into several changes of cold water and squidge it around to wash the rest of the buttermilk out.  Then you sprinkle some salt on and squidge that in and dah-dah you have home made butter.  Four half pint tubs made the equivalent of three packs of butter all for just 40p.  Anyway, back to our 'This is what. . .'  moment - Bob had made bread as usual and so we had warm bread spread with butter that was just a few minutes old and it was delicious - sounds corny, but what more could you want?  I'm a simple soul at heart!