Mae hi'n braf, yn y diwedd

The day started off wet and grey, We spent the morning inside low-lying  cloud, there was no colour and no visibility past a few hundred yards. This prompted me to create a shelter where I could work on the timber store without getting completely soaked. Fortunately we had an old tarpaulin, from the days of The Dolphin, and this was pressed into service. This should also help next winter's fuel dry faster.

In the afternoon the sun did come out and the temperature rose to the giddy height of 21 degrees Centigrade. While working near the back of the house I noticed that we had small lizards. Probably two of them (but they are fast and difficult to count) about 4 inches long.  They looked like common lizards (lacerta vivipara or zootoca vivipara), brown with lined markings and scaly skin. They were impossible to photograph as I could not keep track of them and this speed itself make it more likely that they were lizards (as opposed to newts)

In the late morning we had a new bird visit us. A Blackcap,  a male , was in the small field foraging between there and the feeder at the front door. This had quite a clear and identifiable call and one can see why it was sometimes called the northern nightingale. It is straneg to think that this small bird, about the size of a robin, has probably travelled all the way from Germany to visit us.

Our own birds remain productive with a further 8 eggs this morning. We will have to find out which one is not pulling her weight and giver her her cards. We will also have to find a lot more egg based recipes as we are starting to fall behind.

Outside the office window the tree has just burst into flower. It is heavy with large, white flowers and really brightens that area of the garden. It is unfortunately yet another plant I can not identify, hopefully the gardening club members will be able to help when the meeting is in our house next month. I wonder if it is a type of Hibiscus or cotton rose, though the centre of the flower is not of this type.

Today was also the day to change the water filter. We had changed the UV light filter, which hopefully kills all the bugs, previously but guessed it must be time to change the mechanical filter, which gets rid of all the gunk. There is no good way of telling by looking at them when they are past their best. I think we will just change this 5 micron filter every three to six months. Another task for country living.

Rain stopped play

Sheep

The sheep might be regretting the loss of their fleece as it has been cold and damp. However, they don't seem to be distressed and have spent their day in the big field eating and ruminating.

Poultry

Eggs Today :6

The hens have looked bedraggled all day. The girl with the prolapse seems better with no scouring and a less of a prolapse.

Bees

A quiet day for the bees, we will need to check sooner (if this rain persists) if they need further feeding.

Weather

A pleasant start to the day, warm and dry with a light breeze and cloudy skies. Unfortunately this was a false start and by mid-morning the skies were grey and there was constant drizzle. This grey, wet theme continued for the rest of the day

This was perhaps the wrong setting to receive the letter saying our Solar Panels were now set up to receive the Feed-In-Tariff. When opening the letter we were generating only 368 watts under the weak and insipid sky. (However, since they have been installed we have generated a total of  1134kWh in about three months)

There was a temporary break in the rain, not exactly stopped but no longer annoying, when we were able to get the birch tree further logged. It has contributed well to the winter's fuel

Vegetables

The cold drink make from sticky willy tasted exactly as one might have imagined water infused with weed extract might taste. It tasted slightly of pea (The legume, that is).
It is no surprise there is no large scale commercial enterprise using this recipe.

Hedgerows

The main flowers in the hedgerows just now are wild honeysuckle, foxgloves and dog roses of various colours.

A new chimney

We have a new chimney. The Rayburn has been connected and is functioning. We are now in the happy position of being able to cook and generate heat from the wood on our own land. The new flue draws well and burns cleanly. After a short period of time the oven was up to 200 degrees and the hotplate was able to boil water with ease. However, the most exciting aspect is that the kitchen was comfortably warm.

Meanwhile the solar panels are working well. They are generating about 14 Kwh per day in the recent sunny weather.

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

Be Prepared.

As befits January the theme over the last few weeks has been "Be prepared!" We have started on the vegetable garden and have broken open 6 beds. Digging a clay soil in the rain never gets easy but we have the foundation for raised beds and, as I mentioned previously, we have found some mature (and large) compost heaps which will come in handy.

We have also started to get ourselves ready for next winter. To ensure we don't freeze to death the wood pile has been started in earnest. With my neighbour's help we have a respectable start. Our festive period visitors enjoyed helping in this task as it also allowed them to return to the city with their car boots filled with logs.

Further, I was able to get a one-to-one tutorial on chainsaw use which should allow me to keep the same number or digits and extremities with which I was born. On the theme of education and getting ready, today also saw my enrollment in the local college's Welsh Course. Unfortunately there are perhaps too few course members to make this viable and it may be cancelled. So,  no sooner than I have learnt to say "Dw i' newydd ddechrau dysgu Cymraeg" than I am not !

Not as uneventful as we thought.

I thought that we had avoided any major damage from the winds. I was not right. Our neighbour lost four large trees (beech and birch) which fell crossing and blocking the road and taking our fence with it. He has cleared the road and at the weekend we will cut up the remaining.

The first fortnight

We have survived our first fortnight. We have moved in, without furniture which remains in storage, and have started to find out how things work. The house is sited jnside its land and the fields are clearly going to require sheep, or some other ruminants, to help us keep them in control.


The views are better than I remembered them with good aspects over Cadair Idris.

There have been a number of urgent tasks. We have started to look at our land and size up sites for a vegetable garden. We have discovered that the soil is largely clay so it will require quite a bit of work. We will need to work in a lot of organic matter into raised beds.

The first steps in this reminded me how difficult clay is to dig and prompted the thought that we might consider pottery as an alternative.

Most of the manuals suggest that, with enough work, clay soils can be fertile but they generally do suggest it is a major undertaking. We will need to look at local sources of manure.

We have made the hen-house so that we can arrange the flittings of our hens.  This came as a flat pack system and was remarkably easy to put up and much cheaper than the ones in the stores.


The shock of the move for the hens might be lessened when they discover that we intend them to share their new home with a cockerel.

The next major task has been to secure fire and wood. It prove very easy to set up the stoves and these have been very effective at bumping out heat. However, the collecting of wood has been much harder. 

A new axe made the felling of some trees reasonably easy work but we spend two days cutting this into a third of a cord. This work was dreadfully strenuous and slow. We alternated between the bow saw and, in desparation, an axe. However, after a trip to the local store and the purchase of a new saw we discovered the importance of a sharped and clean blade. Now we were slicing through logs like butter. A bad workman may blame his tools but bad tools do make a crap workman.