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.

The Ash man Cometh...

Unfortunately we had a visit from the the Food and Environment Research Agency today. A representative came to discuss the Ash dieback disease Chalara fraxinea recently covered in national news media. 550 Ash trees were planted on our site back in February this year and sadly it looks like this disease is a serious threat to them. The fungal disease has been found in a number of countries throughout Europe with Common ash being the most affected species. Counties in the south east of England seem to be suffering the worst and FERA are currently trying to stem rapid infection of the wider countryside by visiting sites like ours that have inadvertently bought trees from nurseries where the disease has been found.

Aside from the movement of infected plants the disease is spread locally by spores which are released during late summer. As it's November FERA have time to inspect our trees, analyse any that appear to be contaminated and if tested positive remove all 550 trees from site.

Adding to the complication of the inspection is that we have over 1,500 other trees of various species all planted with identical guards to the Ash. It will be a good deal of work to locate and inspect all 550 trees. I'm hoping they can perform a little bit of weeding while they are at it. The sad thing is that there doesn't appear to be a solution to the problem and it is likely that the disease will eventually reach us regardless. There are a lot of questions that we need to consider regarding shipments of plants from other countries and the impact on our countryside. We save a few pounds here and there through economies of scale but catastrophic damage can be caused in the process.

Find the Ash Tree

On a brighter note, we now have doors on the polytunnel, well front doors anyway. The fold up back doors are next to be fitted but they require two people to fit and unfortunately with Jake around it takes us a little time to get the two person jobs done.

Sally very happy with her new doors.

This is how Jake rolls. A proud Dad with his doors