St. Dwynwen's Day

St. Valentine's Day has come around again, fortunately we didn't have to celebrate it this year as on the 25th of January we ignored St. Dwynwen's Day instead. Unfortunately,St. Dwynwen's Day has started to become commercialised like its sassenach sibling.

However, these festivities, in part, herald spring and the last two days have been much milder. The temperature is still in single figures but at least it has been greater than one and at last small bursts of colour are starting to appear. Now in addition to the snopwdrops the croci have started to appear.

The colour in the crocus has not been the only yellow to appear. The trail gold mine has been producing more water and the cave is now quite full. This water is a strong yellow/orange and remains this colour down into the leat. Interestingly the opening has been hewn from what appears to be good quality slate. I still have not been brave enough to try and pass beyond the water level. This seems to be a summer, rather than winter, project if I ever pluck up the nerve.

The building work is progressing well and the kitchen and boot room have been partitioned. Large slat slabs have been found under the concrete at  the door to the porch. This raises the hope that there may be more under the dining hall. This may prove a good alternative the the floors  we had considered. The solar panels are due to arrive soon and hopefully will be fitted shortly afterwards.

Mobile Sawmill

In a break from logging trees in the wood I went to the neighbour's wood where he had hired a mobile sawmill. This is a cost-effective way of working in less accessible rural areas. It is very impressive to watch the machine pick up an entire tree and in a few minutes convert it to one inch planking.  As it had been cedar trees which were being prepared the smell was wonderful and added to the morning's work

February Diary

This blog entry is simply a diary entry to remind me, at a later date, of a typical day's work. It will not be of any great interest to
a passer-by.

• Cleaning the leat. Pulling out the dead leaves and re-establishing a good flow. The water coming out of the gold mine is an strong orange colour and the new flow also allowed the pond level to rise about 2 inches.
  
• Creating a new compost heap. This was manufactured from corrugated iron found in the shippon. We are going to try for a three bay system - (3) ready, (2)getting there, and (1)  being collected. It looks as if we can use the wood ash, in moderation, in the compost as it is quite alkaline. The sawdust we are creating also usefully adds  to the volume.
  
• Partition wall work. The Extractor hood has been removed and the kitchen cabinet has been dismantled and removed. We will need to also remove a breeze block wall which has been uncovered.
  
• Removing the nails from the recovered oak lintels. This will allow me to sand these are repair them so that they can become an architectural feature rather than being hidden behind plaster board, as had been the case.
  
• Creating another raised bed using scrap wood from the living room's skirting boards and window seat. We still have a surplus of compost to fill this bed (tomorrow's task).
  
• Logging (as usual)

Gracious Living