Garage Update

 Andy: The retaining wall at the back of the garage is now complete. I'm guessing that the build will be fairly straight forward from here on in (crosses fingers). We've also laid insulation and poured in the concrete floor.

The retaining wall still drying

100mm of insulation to stop the chill in winter

Concrete, looks good enough to swim in

While all this is going on Sally and I have been either looking after Jake or working in the garden. Current projects include tidying up the parts of the garden that don't have massive mounds of subsoil in them and planning/preparing our fruit growing area.

Sally's meticulous planning

Mature currant bushes kindly donated by Nellie & Reuben

A van full of bushes and canes

Potatoes

 Andy: We left nearly a complete crop of potatoes in the ground in Autumn last year. Our reason was the ground being too wet to dig. Oh how foolish. As if it was ever going to get any drier?! The thing is if we were to dig the crop back then, admittedly in the wet, at least we'd have been rewarded with some lovely edible spuds. Ok i know it's obvious but I didn't really appreciate, or perhaps turned a blind eye to the fact that we'd have to dig up the potatoes at some point regardless. So there I am just the other day digging heavy wet soil to collect lots if stinky soggy potatoes mixed with a few that are still just about edible.

I'm not great at maths but while I was digging I was thinking there must be a mathematical way to determine the level of stupidity involved in planting potatoes and not harvesting them until they are rotten. Key variables would be: -

- Time spent planting
- Time spent harvesting and sorting rotten from good
- Time spent cleaning and again sorting rotten from good
- Time at osteopath sorting bad back
- Money involved from start to finish

- Opportunity cost of dicking about with soggy potatoes rather than doing something more constructive

The answer would be something like: yes we are incredibly stupid, particularly me as i'm the one who does the digging from start to finish.

The problem is that we couldn't just leave the potatoes in the ground, not for the obvious reasons like disease and escapees interfering with next years rotation plan but because an Irish friend (who shall remain nameless but loves potatoes) was due down for a long weekend and it would be just plain rude to leave unwanted potatoes in the ground during her visit. 

Come out come out wherever you are

A stinking waste

A few good ones amongst this lot

Garage Blocks

Andy: Due to bad weather the bank behind the retaining wall of the garage has not held up as well as the builders would have liked. It's been a struggle to hold the earth back from knocking down the wall built so far. The idea is still to get as much of the retaining wall built as quickly possible and then tank with a waterproof membrane, drop in a perforated pipe / drain and infill with clean stone. Part of the problem is that the campsite owners have built up the ground levels against the original building so water is pushing down through made up ground and then pouring out at the original ground level and making things unstable. The middle section or earth has collapsed up against the wall so the plan is to lay pipe and stone at the two ends and then back fill these sections by using the collapsed earth in the middle (where the boards are in the picture below) and then lay the middle section of pipe, insert the membrane and join up with the two ends before backfilling with stone and earth.

The brown sheeting is the waterproof membrane

Special Helpers

Andy: We had a group of very special helpers turn up at our door yesterday. They had a choice of tasks to tackle. We split into two teams, one of four who handled the important responsibility of nappy changing, colouring-in and sustenance. The other group of three (later to be joined by a key player among the four) handled hedge mulching and pruning. All tasks were completed to a great standard. Colouring in, cooking and nappies were perfect, unfortunately we ran out of mulch for the hedge which was a shame. The wooded area in the field was cleared and opened up giving us a heap of firewood and lots more sunlight to make it more attractive. We were happy to find lots of daffodils appearing and i'm hoping that the work we have done will perhaps encourage a few more plants to make a come back. Unfortunately i didn't have a camera with me but i'll pop down and get some more photos shortly.

Happy Helpers

Mulching the hedge

Bad Driving on Black Monday

Andy: We had a block delivery arrive a day early. I actually watched the driver drive off the drive and onto our lawn and get stuck. As soon as he moved those few centimetres in the wrong direction I winced and mentioned to Sally that he really didn't want to do that. After some serious rocking to and forth he decided he'd unload the blocks in the wrong place (more stress for the builders) and then try his escape again. This time he thought he'd drive forward into the middle of the lawn with a view to driving straight out. I could have told him no chance, he got himself even more stuck. After some serious swearing from the driver we finally managed to get a tractor up from the neighbouring farm and pull the lorry out.

Very stuck

Black Monday

Nigel and his team were't best pleased with having to excavate the collapsed bank, i don't think anyone likes doing the same job twice but for a builder as long as they are making progress they are relatively happy, if they are going back to do the same thing twice it rattles them. I mean... imagine having to spend the rest of your working life in the this muddy hole.

Only after the foundations were clear the concrete could be poured into the trenches for the foundations of the lower part of the garage (our side). The next problem was that due to the additional digging the trenches ended up bigger than needed meaning that there wasn't enough concrete to do the job. The only option was to use a mixer and a shovel to make up the rest of the concrete by hand.

All the while that these works are going on there is a soggy clay bank hanging perilously over the site poised to collapse and move everything back to square one. The approach at the moment is to move as fast as possible and keep our fingers crossed.

Spring Watch

Andy: It's not quite Spring but we're showing signs of the season changing. The snowdrop bulbs planted last year have been a success. We have other bulbs planted too. I can't remember all of them right now (must ask Sally). There was certainly snowdrops, bluebells and possibly wood anemone? or is that an insect? Wild Garlic and maybe one other type too. Hmm, i'll hopefully update you on these as they come into season.

Wow, the first sign of our Snowdrops!

Speaking of coming into season i'm going to get Sally to be guest editor for a period or at least add a post from time to time, it's about time we heard from her (she usually has so much to say). Mind you with her broken collarbone typing with one hand may take some time.

5 weeks to go until she can lift heavy items again

Day to day stuff

Perhaps its a bit wasteful but we had some left over reclaimed pine floorboards, they were pretty tatty and I couldn't think where we might want to use them, so I knocked up a box to store our welly boots and old trainers in. Without thinking about how much the materials must have cost us i'm quite pleased with my tatty beat up box.

My box

On another note we had our treatment plant emptied this week. I can confirm that it doesn't like nappy liners. In fact other than the obvious only toilet paper should be flushed down the loo. The pooper scooper man was not happy to have his hose blocked by Jake's nappies.

After emptying the tank we had to fill it back up with water pretty quickly to stop the weight of the ground surrounding the tank from crushing it. A minor victory for our frugal ways is that we were able to do this using a 12v leisure battery and a pump taking water from the harvesting system. It was quite a bit of water so we can stick two fingers up in the direction of south west water who meter our mains supply.

Harvesting tank

Filling the water treatment plant

Did the earth move for you?

Friday night we had a slippage of earth from the bank excavated for the garage. A fair bit of earth has slumped into a trench prepared for the foundations giving our builders a clear up job ready for the cement delivery that is due to arrive this coming Monday afternoon.

A collapsed bank... not more quantitative easing?

The important thing is that nobody was hurt, the problem is that it isn't all that easy to clear up the mess. The damage is on the far side of the hole which is now impossible to get to with the JCB. We may be able to lower a small digger into the pit with a bigger digger and get the spill out that way.

The recovery operation

The other problem is safety. Aside from the risk of falling earth into wet foundations we need to sure up the bank to make the site safe for the builders to start laying blocks. We've had torrential rain today and everywhere is flooded which is only going to add to our difficulties.

The Levels

We now have a fairly big hole in the ground which gives us the ability to drop the surrounding levels of the yard to the same level as the house. Up until now the house was built and left to sit in a hole. When the garage is finished we'll have everything on the same level so getting in and out of the house will be much easier with Jake and his pram. This gives us an opportunity to design then landscape the area around the house, we're finding the design side of things really hard to do. The spoils from the concrete yard will help form a track into the field. Some of the excavated earth will form banks to offer wind protection for the growing areas.

digger digger digger (Sally can say this over and over really quickly, its one of her key skills)

The small brick is the finished floor level

We boarded up the neighbours to keep things tidy.

Phase 1 of Phase 2: The Garage

Work has started to knock-down and rebuild our garage. The old garage had an asbestos roof, leaked like a sieve and had a door that swung in the wind. It was basically an old storage shed that we share with our neighbours Martin and Louise. Martin has very kindly created some drawings that allow us to rebuild the garage so that we have separate units that fit within the exact footprint and height of the old building. The great thing for us is that we have been able to squeeze in an additional level giving us extra space for storage etc.

It was a bit of an eyesore.

Careful not to harm anything next door

Hmm a chicken house... more on that soon

That view I was talking about

Garage gone

Excavating

Caravan Gone

Sadly we've said goodbye to our trusty Atlas 29'. She served us well and many a good time was had in her. Henry the wood burner will be most sorely missed, he was a beauty.

Jake & Sally happy that the old girl was leaving

The new view

It's great not having to look out of the lounge window onto the back of a 1980's caravan. I forgot just how good the view is.

Bye bye

Back Doors and Flapping

We fitted back doors to the polytunnel but they got blown off again.

We've also found that the tension of the plastic pulling against the door frames has caused them to twist allowing the plastic to become loose so that it flaps in the wind and makes my erection look a bit sloppy... not a good story. The problem is that the ground is so wet and muddy that everything is moving, we might have to concrete the door frames in place come the summer when things are a little drier.

Got the all clear

Phew, we got the all clear on the trees. Very happy.