Tuesday, 28 April 2009
A roof, willows, leeches and mud
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Wonderful weather and a great new view
Sam got them both in over the weekend (with a bit of help from a neighbour to get the glass in – as yours truly point blank refused to be responsible for ‘helping’ with that) and we were amazed at the great views we have from them. Try as I might I can’t get any pictures that do it justice, but trust me, they are fab.
The ducks have settled in really well and love the new duck pool (a cheap storage box sans lid), seen in blue.
Their latest trick is to run from under the chicken house to the pool, have a quick dip, then run back under. Sam thinks they really LOVE me, as they follow me about (and laugh when I can’t catch them at bedtime). I’ve spent time everyday wiring the outside of their enclosure for extra fox protection and they follow me around as I work. I’ve taken to singing to them (well, who can resist a captive audience) – watery songs of course – and they actually seem to like it .. or at least haven’t developed their art critic faculties yet.
Sally won’t go down there now, as she got a blast of the lecky fence – turned up high – on her nose and was very unimpressed.
The roof is going up this week but all else seems to be on the long finger. I am determined to sow more seeds today and the polytunnel is rumoured to arrive sometime next week. There’s even talk of duck tractors and compost heaps manifesting out of thin air. We shall see.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Oops - the great seed disaster.
Monday, 13 April 2009
A nice week for ducks
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Latest building and planting progress
We really did so well with having Neil over for two weeks of hard graft. As well as the highlight of 'studding' they got loads done.
In theory the chicken house is portable, but in practice it is a bit of a struggle - with two people .. but it is VERY sturdy!
Anyway, this week I've finally got on with some seed sowing (and ordered my severely oversized polytunnel!). I've sown tomatoes, sweet peppers, chilli's and melon. First I sprouted them for 24hours in tepid water (it works for sprouted seeds for eating, so I think it will help the seeds germinate quickly), ... I had a lot of varieties so had each variety in water in a tea light case and put them all in eggboxes ..
then I put them in damp compost in seed trays and took them around to my lovely neighbour Jenny, who is kindly letting me start them off in her wonderfully warm airing cupboard - thank you Jenny! The hot water bottle propagator is not forgotten though - I'll get that up and running to keep the chill off the seedlings when they are little. The polytunnel is due to arrive in a couple of weeks, so should be offering them some protection pretty soon afterwards.
The rest of my potatoes went into car tyres and old compost bags and next up for planting will be the jerusalem artichokes and Oca (other odd tubers).
I also had some edible seeds sprouting - alfalfa (which suffered in the cold), aduki beans and sunflowers. As usual, I felt guilty eating the sunflowers (I keep imagining all those sunflowers that would never be if I ate them - silly, but true) so I potted up some of the more advanced ones.
Work on the house has slowed a bit this week (we're suffering from the loss of Neil - he was such a hard worker .. I fear we are slacking a bit!) and we seem to be mostly moving wood about so we can move more plasterboard in.
It may just look like a big clay puddle to you, but to me it holds great mystical charm. I am utterly amazed at how captivating a body of water can be (I've never had a pond before - could you guess?). There are already water boatmen and other creatures finding it and when the sun shines I could spend my entire day just gazing into it. I love how the sky reflects in it, how you can see the wind and rain affecting it (whilst sitting dry in the house), how the refections change when you see it from a different angle. I'm looking forward to getting a few pond plants in and getting more life in there.
Finally, we've had an article about the house posted in the county paper - the Leitrim Post - and .. it was all good (they found out about it from the blog apparently).
Well, it isn't everyday a house appears in 12 hours. People are still stopping buy for a look, even now.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
spuds and studs
The studs were happy to pose for photoes (as were the lads - they'd been waiting all week to be 'studs'). This is the start of our first internal - stud - wall. Very exciting for us.
Here are my spuds in builders bags - very exciting for me. I'd been chitting them for ages and even though it's good to wait unti after the frosts I felt I had to plant them out. Mad as it is I'm not planting anything in my3 acres of ground yet - I want time to improve the soil and decide where to put things - so it's container planting for now, hence the builders bags (filled with a fix of compost and soil).