Logs, logs and more logs!

We finally got round to hiring a log-splitter last Friday and what an easy job it made of our piles of big logs.  It took us all day, but was nothing like the arm/back-aching work it would have been by hand.  In the morning Ben was around to help and we got quite a rhythm going - one passing logs to the splitter, the splitter and the other loading the split logs into the log store.  In the afternoon, with all our log stores full to the rafters, Bob and I split the remaining logs and piled them up ready for our next store.

And here it is.  As I said before, it's made from the timbers from our old tin barn and is going to have a slate roof so should look quite 'swiss chalet' I think.  This one's not huge, so we'll definitely need another on the other side of the 'carpark'.  You really need to stay two or three years ahead of the game with firewood to make sure you are always burning dry wood, so you just can't have enough log stores!

The hedge we laid is greening up  nicely with loads of new buds, so that's a good sign.  Mind you, when Ben and I were cutting some logs we noticed that some of them had new green shoots on too, so Maybe we'll wait a while before we declare the hedge-laying a success.

A few weeks ago we planted our 'orchard' . . . . does four trees count as an orchard I wonder?  We moved a little pear tree from the other side of the house where it wasn't very happy and bought a cherry, plum and apple to keep it company.  In the Autumn we will plant a Shropshire Damson (makes amazing jam with a dash of Port added) where the pile of logs is at the moment and maybe something else, so that'll be six trees.  There's also a couple of crab apples in our new hedge, so I think that will count as an orchard.  Rob and Becky have also planted a variety of fruit trees the other side of the new hedge, so they'll all help each other with pollination.  At the same time we planted an ornamental quince on the other side of the house between the lounge doors.  The chickens are very grateful for their new bath!

All the Spring flowers are coming out everywhere - we are up to the bluebell stage here, with lots of primroses, wood sorrel, wood anemones and daffodils.  The snowdrops are over and the cowslips are just starting to appear.  Everything is shooting up in the borders too - weeds and plants!  There are a couple of things coming up that have us completely baffled.  One in the middle of a border has a stick next to it to mark where it is, but neither of us can think for the life of us what it is or where we got it from!  Nice to have these surprises . . . every year, I'm not very good at keeping track of where everything is at all!

Our little woodland just covered with primroses, sorrel,
anemones and violets

This isn't a very good photo, but can you see they're even
growing in a crevice of the branch of this Cherry tree
which looks so pretty. 

New Chickens

Yep, we now have our two new (well, second-hand actually) chickens.  Bob went to collect them a week and a half ago along with three for Rob and Becky - Rob was still building the run when Bob set off!  I have to say that these have been the easiest chickens to get settled that we have ever had.  The first time we introduced new ones to our existing ones was just so traumatic that I seriously thought we'd never do it again.  All the books you read say to keep the two lots separate, but so they can see each other and so get to know one another . . . . it was like a cock fight with chicken wire between them and one chicken even pulled a claw out in the violence.  It didn't get any better and they were 'at each other' all the time until we eventually just put them all in the run together and let them get on with it - they still fought but eventually settled and sorted out the pecking order.  We then bought some chickens from an old farmer-type and he suggested we collect them in the evening when ours were going to bed, dust both the new ones and the old ones with mite powder which has a smell, so they all smell the same and then just pop the new ones in the house on the perch next to the others, shut the door and leave them to it in the dark.  The next morning they wake up and they've got new friends who smell the same as they do.  It works and although there was a little bit of pecking and sorting out the order it was much less traumatic for all.  We did this with these ones and they didn't even argue or peck at all and have all settled down together really easily and quickly.  After a couple of days, we let the new ones out of the run for a few minutes while we were close by and made sure they found their way back to the run.  They now come out with the others and roam around all day quite happily together.  They know the lay of the land and know to go back to the nest box to lay their eggs.  After Bob picked them up, we put them all in Rob and Becky's chicken house and collected them at dusk so we could do the night introduction.  When we went to get them, one was standing up, neck stretched almost saying 'Me, me, pick me!' so we did and she's called Mimi because of that.  The other one is a bit smaller and has no feathers at all from under her chin (mmmm, do chickens actually have chins?) down to her chest in a very neat stripe almost as if she'd been to the barber for a shave or has grown sideburns.  So, she's called Sweeney - either after the barber Sweeney Todd or after the John Thaw / Dennis Waterman programme which featured sideburns.  They are both laying well, as are Horse and Lottie, and so we are back to being able to give eggs away, make lots of cakes and squander extra eggs in Yorkshire puds.

Our flock of four - from left to right Sweeney, Horse, Lottie
and Mimi

We have now cut all our wood to length ready for splitting - we're going to hire a log splitter to get the job done as it would take forever to do by hand.  We have set out some old kerb stones we had lying around (you know I can't imagine not having all this stuff around to use for various projects) for the base of a log store at the end of the 'carpark'.  We are going to use the old roof trusses from the wriggly tin barn for the roof with walls just a couple of feet tall.  Then we are going to try our hand at a random slate roof to use up some of our pile of old slates from the original house roof - it should look really nice when it's finished, especially when it's crammed full of logs.  Do you know, I'm getting quite passionate about log piles!  There is a very definite warm feeling of wealth and security in having a log store full of wood, a freezer full of pies and a shelf full of jam - who needs money?!  Well, OK we all do, but there are different riches too.

By the way, for those of you who are Facebook-minded, Bob has finally taken the plunge and set up a Facebook page (under Robert Shelton Furniture Maker).  Reluctant though we were, it seems it had to be done as websites are just soooo last year!

New cooker

So, what do you think of this idea?  We do quite a lot of cooking and thought that two cookers - matching of course - might be a good idea, as well as the woodburner which has an oven and hotplates.  Or do you think that's perhaps a bit over the top?  For a short while, we did have two cookers in the kitchen.  We bought a new cooker when we moved out of the caravan (so, three and a half years ago) and it has been fine until a couple of weeks ago when the cooling fan stopped working - this blows cool air out under the knobs and stops them getting hot when the top oven or grill is on.  As we had taken out a cover plan we got the engineer to come and have a look.  He couldn't see anything obvious, but thought it might need a new control panel, so he put it all back together again and, as if by magic, it all worked again (loose wire???).  Anyway, he went off to order a new part and we later got a phone call to say they don't make that model anymore and the part was obsolete and so the cooker would be written off!  Can you believe that, just three and a half years old and still looking almost new (I cleaned it before the engineer came!) and it was to be scrapped - what a throw-away society we live in.  So, after much rigmarole with them suggesting a shiny steel replacement, etc we went for one that looks exactly the same but has a gas oven as well as hob.  The electric oven used to take ages to heat up and because Bob makes bread most days we felt we were wasting a lot of energy and money.  So, we now have a new LPG cooker and are trying to get used to a gas oven again - it is nice to only have to wait a couple of minutes for it to heat up.  Bob has had to amend his bread technique to take into account that it is not a fan oven and I made a disastrous sponge cake which had to have its middle cut out, Bob is just about back on track with the bread and I think I know what to do with the cake next time, so we'll get there.  We have the other cooker in storage and will decide what to do with that shortly.

The new hedge across the field is now planted and rabbit-guarded and some of the plants already have tiny, bright green buds on.  It's mostly Hawthorn with a few Field Maple, Gelder Rose and Hazel as well as some tiny holly plants which I dug up from around and about.  There is also a Rowan and two Crab Apples in among them, so it should look quite nice if it all takes.  It's not chicken-proof yet though and they just go wandering off up the field to see what's going on under the neighbour's bird feeder and chat with their cats.   Luckily Rob and Becky don't mind and said they actually spent about an hour just watching the chickens the other day.  We have had to fence off the bottom of the garden outside the kitchen because the chickens suddenly decided to scratch the lawn up and had made quite a good job of it in just one day!  So they have been excluded and I think it came as a bit of a shock to them which is why they have adopted Rob and Becky!  We are getting our two new chucks next weekend and Rob and Becky have decided to take the plunge and we are collecting three for them at the same time.  This could get interesting because they are planning to let them roam around like we do when they are at home and as ours often wander down the field they are bound to meet.  That could either mean fighting for supremacy or they'll be best buddies and think they are all one flock and all come running when we call.  Watch this space!

Our current project outside is firewood.  Ben and I spent an afternoon chopping all the Oak we got out of the quarry wood last winter to length ready to be split and that should hopefully be ready to burn next winter.

The bigger diameter Oak for splitting . . . . 

. . . .the smaller Oak stacked ready for next Winter . . . . 

. . .  and then there's this - right had side for next Winter and
left for the Winter after . . . . 

. . . and this from our end of the hedge-laying . . . .

. . . and this which the quarry people left for us to pick through.
There are some really quite big logs in among this tangle.  So,
that should all keep us busy for a while!  Oh, and of course
we need to build log-stores all over the place to keep it all dry.

Ben starts his new job tomorrow at long last.  This morning we went on a tree identification walk to up his plant knowledge a bit - part of the initial surveys he will have to do include recording the type of plant-life, trees and hedges there are in the area which in turn gives and indication of the type of animals that may live there.  So, a steep learning curve ahead I think - course he has an intimate knowledge of Hazel and Hawthorn from laying the hedge here, so that's a start!

This is Bob's latest creation - a sweet little writing
desk in Cherry and Burr Maple for a lady in Oswestry.
Isn't it pretty?

Breakfast Pie

Woo Hoo!  We've finished the hedge-laying - all 70m of it!  Yesterday we put the finishing touches to it by planting in the gaps and weaving twigs and branches into the bottom to protect the new shoots.  That means that we can now plant our new hedge to divide the field (didn't want to do that while we were felling quite big trees or it'd get squashed).  We are also going to plant a few fruit trees in our bit - I think Rob and Becky are going to plant some in their half too, so they should all happily pollinate each other.  In my week off we also chopped down the other half of the Sycamore next to the beer bench (we did the first half last year) which was quite big and overhanging the bridleway.  We started sorting through the timber left by the quarry when they cleared the bit opposite, so we now have lots of wood to log (and loads more to pull out) which is all good.  We're going to hire a log-splitter for a weekend and get it all sorted at some point, it'd just take sooo long to split it all by hand.

We had a good few days in Hereford - strange for us to stay in a city (just 10 mins walk from the centre) instead of out in the middle of nowhere, but it made a nice change.  We had to do an emergency funeral before we set off though.  Bob went to let the chickens out for a bit before we went and found Dot stretched out on the floor of the chicken house.  Usually we have a fairly good idea that one is going to die because they go off their food, look pale and listless, but she was her normal greedy self the day before so we had no inkling at all.  She hasn't laid eggs for a couple of years and definitely ate more than her fair share of everything so perhaps that had something to do with it!  So, we have two second-hand chickens on order and should be able to get them in the next few weeks, just depends when the next cull at the chicken farm is.  Horse and Lottie both seem well and are looking pretty smart after their Winter moult.  Lottie was laying an egg every other day without fail until Horse started laying again (they stop for a while in the Winter), but since Horse started, we haven't seen a single egg from Lottie?????  Does that mean there's a pile of eggs under a bush or something?!

Way back on a rainy, cold day in November, we'd finished eating lunch and were sitting round the table when one of us brought up the idea of a breakfast pie.  An hour and a half later we'd come up with a plan with drawings and everything.  It was a very detailed planning meeting covering everything from what should be incorporated, how to segregate it so you don't get black pud if you don't like it to whether it should include fried bread (it shouldn't by the way).  By far the most time-consuming bit was how to have the eggs and how to keep the yolk runny.  So, three months later and after much subsequent discussion, we finally got round to making the prototype this weekend for Sunday brunch.  This is how it goes - shortcrust pastry base followed by a mixture of beans and cooked mushrooms, then a layer of thinly sliced cooked sausage.  Now it gets a bit complicated - an outer ring of either black pud or sausage and then partition walls to match and divide the pie into portions.

Crack an egg into each partition . . .

. . . carefully lay cooked bacon on top, trying
not to pop the eggs followed by more of the
bean/mushroom mix.  Add the pastry lid being
careful to mark it in some way to show the partitions
and indicate which bits have black pudding.

And, tah dah!  One very tasty (and very
filling pie.

It should be noted that this is the prototype and more work needs to be done on its design - namely, how on earth do you cook the pastry, but keep the yolk runny?  We hoped by cooking all the ingredients and keeping the pastry thin and with the eggs in the middle they might just stay a bit runny, but they didn't.  Very tasty, but how fantastic it'd be to cut into your portion and yolk oozes out . . . . . . work in progress!

Getting the life/hedge balance right!

Never mind that old thing about getting the life/work balance right, just now we're having to contend with the life/work/hedge balance!  For the last few weeks I'm either working or hedge-laying it seems!  Most days off seem to involve a bit of hedging somewhere along the line.  Still, the end is in sight aand I think we've got about 10m left to do.  We seem to have managed quite well with felling the bigger trees with Bob on the chainsaw and me (and Ben if he's around) on the end of a rope in the field.  More by luck than design, they have fallen very gracefully just about where we want them to which is a bit of a bonus.  We have this system of attaching a rope as high up as we can reach and then Bob cuts a wedge out of the side we want it to fall (standard practice) and then he cuts almost, but not quite, through the other side.  Then with my superior strength pulling on the rope the tree gently topples over.  Anyone watching might even be fooled into thinking we know what we're doing!  We did have a three-man tree to do this morning - actually two trees that had grown twined round each other and completely covered in ivy.  It was quite windy too, but luckily Ben was around to help and so we managed it without too much of a problem.  It's funny, we spent quite a while discussing how to do it, should we try and chop one first, untangle the ivy, have two ropes (one for each tree), try to climb up and cut a big branch off . . . . . in the end we said 'sod it just chop them both together and lets see what happens!' .  So, that's what we did and it was fine.

This is a bit deceptive and foreshortens it quite a bit - it's
quite long really, honest!

Rob and Becky are going to have to have a massive bonfire at some point - we've been piling all the branchy stuff for them on the other side of the field and then made lots of piles of wood for cutting for firewood along the edge of the hedge as we go along.  They have some catching up to do, but it should keep them going for quite a while!

The loneliness of a long-distance road sweeper!

Now that all the leaves and needles have fallen off the trees, Ben kindly spent a day clearing our lane.  It's surprising how thick the layer of sludgy stuff becomes.  Half the lane is fairly smooth tarmac and that's relatively easy to shovel up, but then the far end is quite rough and it is really hard work.  Sensibly, Ben started with the difficult end (there, can you just see him all that way away . . . he's got quite a lot left to do hasn't he?!), last year when I did it I started with the easy bit and it ended up taking me about three days!  So, now we need a good downpour to rinse off the remains.  Poor Ben pulled a muscle or something in his leg doing this and so is hobbling a bit.

Guess what this is? . . . . . . 

. . . . . hard to believe, but this is actually going to be a kitchen cupboard . . . . for us!!!!!  This will replace the caravan cupboard and worktop we are still using.  It has taken about 18 months to get this far because Bob had started it and just roughly cut the timber to size when he started making the pub furniture out of scaffold boards and got really busy with that, and then started making proper furniture for other people, doing shows and so on and so this got put on hold.  He could have just done a quick job on this, but we'd always planned that this would be a proper piece of furniture with dovetailed drawers etc and so we're sticking to that - it'd be a shame to bodge it.  We have a big slab of slate from a snooker table for the top and this Oak is all quite local, so it should look lovely when it's done.

Bob and I are going away for a couple of days tomorrow leaving Ben house/chicken sitting.  Before Christmas we planned to have a couple of nights in Hereford and do a bit of Christmas shopping, go and see the Mappa Mundi (a map of the world from the days of the crusades which, incidentally, a chap we know locally has just re-framed) and the Chained Library and generally mooch around.  We didn't go then though because we were going to have visitors, then we weren't, then we were, and then we weren't and by the time that was decided it was too late to go and so now we finally have it planned (but we won't have to do Christmas shopping which is a bonus!).

We have snow on the ground at the moment - just a very thin layer, but a couple of weeks ago we had quite a lot and Ben took this photo of dawn making our house glow!

Happy New Year!

Oh, my goodness, what happened to December?!  I know, it's getting to be a bit of a habit starting each entry with 'where did the time fly to', but I honestly don't know where December went.  Stupidly busy at work as you can imagine with the amount of food and stuff people think is essential to buy for Christmas - I don't think anyone in Oswestry will have starved!  Ben was busy, busy, busy too trying to find space in the warehouse for the huge deliveries.  All that has, thankfully, calmed down now and things are at last getting back to normal and the Easter stuff is on the shelves in good time so we don't need to panic about that which is, of course, a relief (you know I think I'm just too cynical for this game!).

We had a good Christmas - quiet and quick.  I actually did quite well for time off with the way my normal days work and had a three-day weekend just before, three days over Christmas itself and then four days over New Year, so I can't really complain.  We did our usual family tour the weekend before which was good if a little rushed.  Laura came for a few days over Christmas before travelling around seeing family and friends and then calling in overnight on her way back to Scotland yesterday.  As I said, Ben was busy with lots of hours at M&S, but finishes there on Saturday.  Best news though is that he has a job starting at the end of February working for the company who did our bat survey when we first moved here.  Ben had met the chap at a volunteering day a few weeks ago and then on Christmas Eve he knocked on the door completely out of the blue to ask if Ben wanted some work as his assistant doing bat/newt surveys - fantastic.  I think Ben was beginning to think he'd have to find any old job for money and do lots of volunteering to gain experience.  Now he'll be able to kill two birds with one stone (oops, probably not a good choice of phrase given the job we're talking about).

Our main project at the moment is hedge-laying.  We've started on the neighbour's hedge which was part of the deal for having a bit of their field.  It's going quite well I think and we're getting better at it.  We have done several sessions and got about 20m done which is about a third of the total.  It's quite good fun, but you certainly know you've done it after with aching shoulders and arms.  There are some gaps of course, but once this is done we need to plant a hedge across the field and so we'll get extra plants and put them in the gaps protected by some of the brushwood and, come the Spring, you won't recognise it.

Spot Bob!
There are some fairly large trees in this hedge, some of which are
staying and some not.  As there's a telephone wire across the path
we have to be a bit careful and this is Bob climbing up to lop off some
branches to make it easier to fell.

So, now our 'carpark' bit looks exposed and open, the far end of the field is opening up and over the last two days the bit right next to our house has undergone a transformation!  The land the other side of the bridleway is still owned by the quarry although it is no longer worked.  There is a wooded slope which opens onto a flat piece which is covered in wild flowers in the Spring including lots of orchids.  In the last year or so the small saplings have started to take over and it's not as pretty as it used to be - that's what happens when land is just left to its own devices.  

Sorry, this is a bit dark, but it was getting a bit late in the day.

A good way to maintain the limestone grassland is to graze sheep on the land for part of the year and grants are available to do that.  So the quarry are going to fence part of it so a local farmer can bring his sheep there for a few weeks every now and then.  Before the fence can be put up though some of the trees need felling and space needs clearing and so for the last couple of days a couple of men have been here with their chainsaw and digger and have made a huge difference.  We knew about this a couple of months ago as the quarry manager told us what they were planning.  I must admit when I saw them with their digger I was a bit worried and then when Bob told me on the way home from work today that they had cleared loads of trees I was dreading it, but it actually looks tonnes better.  We have a view down the valley from that corner now and it will be much lighter.  It will be quite nice to have sheep there now and then.  Bob has been chatting to the blokes doing the work (and making them coffee of course) and they are quite happy for us to help ourselves to any wood we want - they even left a pile cut up right next to the fence for us!  So, all in all, our world's opening up!