All Stoved Up!

Further to last week's post, we are now fully fitted with our new wood-burning stove.


The workmen arrived quite early and proceeded to get on with lining the chimney with the required flexible liner - here seen poking out of the top of the chimney pot.








This seemed to go relatively smoothly, although there was a little shouting down the chimney at one point . . .



The stove itself is a Harmony 23 multifuel model - we haven't lit it yet, as the sealant used needs 24 hours to 'cure', although it's dismal enough outside to merit it! If it stays wet and cool over the weekend, may fire it up then - it needs a good 'burn' to start with apparently, as the surface blacking may give off fumes when first heated through.



It looks good anyway, and hopefully will keep us nice and warm in due course!

Making Hay

Had always vaguely wondered how they got from fields of grass to those huge black plastic-wrapped rolls of hay. Well, with a hay field opposite the house, I've now had a chance to see it happen, from the cutting of the grass, to gathering it up into lines along the field - missed the 'rolling' bit unfortunately, but caught the final stage. The video below shows the apparatus picking up its first 'roll':

Once 'on board' the apparatus starts 'wrapping', but stops to pick up a reserve roll on its way back to the stacking area. The second video below shows the tractor dropping off a finished roll, and starting to wrap its 'reserve':

I thought this was just the coolest piece of kit (or maybe I'm just easily impressed!) - mind you, can see why we don't have a large farming workforce anymore, one man with this must be doing the work of ten at least!

Stoves and Stuff

Well having pretty much caught up on garden, veg and wildlife, time for something a little more topical.

With winter (have we had a summer yet?) on its way decided we needed a little more warmth in the front room than the open fire provided. We're in the process therefore of having a wood-burning stove fitted. Stage 1 involved 'exploratory' work to ascertain what was behind the existing opening and what room they had to play with. So Monday was spent making tea for workmen, and listening to the sounds of heavy drilling . . .

Fair play to them, they worked really hard, and by the end of the day they'd actually got to the point of having rendered the new opening and reconstructed the fireplace. You can see the 'before' and 'after' shots here. They also cleaned up pretty well, except for the dust, which coated every surface we hadn't put dustcloths over!

We're now just waiting for the stove to arrive, and a date for fitting (which is being mooted for next week sometime). It's all happened really quickly in the end - and now it's all underway the weather appears to be looking up (it's a lovely day here today); expect blazing hot weather from next week, just when we wouldn't have minded a cool night to give us an excuse to test it all out . . .

Wildlife

Wildlife is becoming a big part of our lives. One of the first things we did was put up a bird 'feeding station' outside the kitchen window, and it attracts a wide range of garden birds, including Great Tits, Blue Tits, Robins (one of which spent a lot of time attempting to assert ownership; eventually he got tired of chasing all the other birds away!), a small Sparrow colony, Chaffinches, Greenfinches, and the occasional Rook. The Great Spotted Woodpecker pictured on the left was a more exotic visitor, although not exactly rare according to the RSPB.

Then there was the day we came home and discovered the baby Collared Doves under and above the wooden arch - once they learnt to fly properly we saw a lot less of them . . .

Just the other day we found a Common Toad in the greenhouse . . .

And of course, there's always the bunnies . . .

Growing Our Own

We inherited a very lovely garden, as you'll have seen in the last post - and as yet haven't really put 'our' stamp on it. We've confined ourselves to weeding, and waiting to see what comes up / into flower next. So I suppose it's the vegetable patch that we've really taken 'ownership' of.

Not that we were very quick off the mark on this - it was early May before the potatoes and onions went in, and the peas and broccoli took a little longer ... The picture on the left above shows things just planted (if you look at the full-size version you might be able to spot an onion or two), the picture on the right is where we're at now.

You might also notice from this an evolution in fencing technology; this stems from bunny insurgency directed at the first generation broccoli / sprouts - which unfortunately didn't survive.

Luckily we had some extra plants in the greenhouse, so were able to replant once the bunny fortifications had gone in. Thus far these seem to have worked - and our brassicas are growing unmolested.

We've had a few potatoes (leaving the plants to mature now until early August), and the onions are coming along nicely, but it's our peas that are looking most impressive - the plants are approaching 6 feet tall and loaded with pods - just waiting for the peas inside to swell.

Our other success story is courgettes, we've got them in the greenhouse, cold frame (actually a mini-greenhouse taken from the old house and laid down on the ground), and outside - the ones under cover are doing particularly well and generating a good crop.

In addition to the veg patch and greenhouse, we've constructed a couple of raised beds, one for strawberries and one with carrots / beetroot in it (planted very late).

And there are the two apple trees we planted - which can be seen, together with the development of the compost heap (now corralled within some old pallets) - in the third garden picture from the other day (as compared to the second from May). Unfortunately the eating apples didn't survive, and it looks like we'll only get a couple of cookers. We had a sheep invasion one day - five of them squeezed through the hedge, and they took a bit of a fancy to apple tree. That was an interesting morning, herding sheep with my next door neighbour ...

A Few Garden Scenes

A lot has happened since January 19th, and it's hard to decide where to start ... A few pictures maybe? This was our one snowy interval, one morning early in April . . .

And here is the garden in all it's glory in May ...

And finally a couple of photos from earlier today ...

First Post!

Welcome to our blog – it’s taken us a while I must admit. We moved to the 'country' on 19th January 2008, and decided then that it would be good to ‘blog’ our experiences of gardening, growing veg, etc., but things didn’t go quite to plan on the technical front. We thought we’d done everything possible to ensure a smooth transition of telephone / broadband supplier – but it was not to be. It took us nearly a month to get the phone line connected, and broadband, well…

We started with the Post Office broadband – who told us we had a DACS on our line, and that they couldn’t connect us until BT removed it. We switched supplier to BT (in the belief that this might speed things up); they said they would connect us on 4th March; when this date came and went, their excuse was (wonder of wonders) that we had a DACS on our line that would need to be removed. Eventually, after months of being 'reviewed' they worked out that they would need to undertake re-cabling work, which needed authorisation from senior management. Finally, the work was authorised, and we were given a connection date of 17th July. Interestingly although BT did actually meet that date, they don't seem to have realised that they've connected us, since they left us a telephone message to say our next review date is 5th August!

Well, we're online now - and here's the blog - and the first bunny … Why ‘Bunny On The Lawn’ – I suppose because there is, pretty much always, a bunny on the lawn. Quite often more than one. Usually small and very cute bunnies (we must be talking great great great great grandbunnies of the original bunnies by now), sometimes really BIG bunnies. Bunnies on the lawn is fine, bunnies in the vegetable patch was less fun, but more of that later ...