I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. It's scary how quickly that passed by, and now almost half of January is gone already...
Well, since my last post we've had pretty much everything go wrong. Bad luck is meant to come in threes, but we've had more than this so we've obviously upset somebody!
Our washing machine broke...multiple times, and has just decided to again after we thought it was fixed, so that's annoying. On a positive note, it was still just about in warranty, usually things wait until about a week past the date, so that's a bit of a silver lining I suppose. Lots of other smaller things went wrong as well, such as the chainsaw and lawnmower etc, but the biggest thing which has made life quite stressful has been the power failing.
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| Random picture of some of our bulbs sprouting to add a note of positivity! |
For reasons unknown to us so far, the power has been pants. We think the batteries might be fried, but also the inverter is playing up. Whether that's due to the batteries or not I don't know. Now, this alone wouldn't be the end of the world, however, our back up generator is also broken...sigh.
Again, no idea why, it's been taken apart and put back together by various people and had money thrown at it, but despite seeming in tip top condition, it's being a moo. Even worse, it sometimes starts and sometimes doesn't, it sometimes runs for an hour and then turns off for no reason that we can see. It's being very temperamental.
It's been a very long and tedious month, and the problems aren't solved yet, so I think we'll have a bit more stress to come, but I'll just say thank you to everyone who has been helping us either try to fix things, through moral support or by giving us a rest by feeding us and doing our washing! Thank you, we love you and appreciate you very much. :)
In amongst fixing things (or trying to) and cursing, we've been starting a few jobs. Not many are finished due to interruptions of things failing, but it's nice to have some progress anyway.
We've finally covered the polytunnel! We started to think that would never happen, so that feels like a nice achievement. Thank you Hilary for helping with that. We've made one door, but need to make another for the other end, but this at least can be fitted in as and when, unlike covering the hoops where we needed a still, dry day, so I'm happy we can do it now. :)
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| Polytunnel with plastic covering |
We've also been pruning back the established trees. This will be good for the trees as they had some rubbing branches and will mean they can better survive strong winds, but also gives us some firewood once it's seasoned. There's still a lot more to do on this front, but I think we're making good progress.
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| Field maple having a haircut |
We thought this was also a good time to look at our wood storage, as we've whittled down our supply a fair bit, so have room to shift things about. The way we currently stack logs is brilliant for seasoning and drying the wood, it's proved to be a lot more effective than we thought, so I'm feeling quite proud in that sense. One problem with it though, it that the wood isn't near the house. Until it was icy outside, this hadn't been an issue, but the bad weather made us re-think the idea of a wood store right by the back door. (We've been contemplating this since we moved in, but it hadn't been a priority).
Now, we could continue stacking the wood as we are, and then move the logs into a store we build once they're seasoned, but this does mean stacking the logs more than once and so is unnecessary work when we already have too much to do. We decided we don't want to add to the workload, so how about a stacking system where you can move the pile of logs as an entirety into the store, then simply pop a new lot in the slot once it's run out...
This brought us to the idea of wire cages on wheels;
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| New log storage idea |
So we've bought a few old supermarket trolley things. :)
They're strong enough to hold loads of logs, but have good airflow to allow the logs to season inside. We'll then build a log store outside our house which is big enough to house one trolley and switch it out for a new one when we need to. I just hope I'm strong enough to wheel it when it's full!
Wildlife wise, it's been very noisy with the swans around! It's nice to see them flying over our land in little groups and hear them honking away to each other, we are lucky to live near a lovely river. :)
We also had a little vole keep us company whilst we had a bonfire, he was very cute. The silly thing kept trying to go towards the fire and we lost sight of it in the end, so I hope it didn't do anything daft.
I've not seen Barney for a while again, maybe we've been too noisy with trying to start the generator and things. Hopefully he's still around and about, I still want to get a good photo!
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| River by our house looking very full |
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