Home with the Mixer

31 May 2017

Having become utterly fed up of waiting for a mixer that may never arrive, and we have no claim on, anyway; we pooled our resources and reckoned we could afford our own mixer.  Taa-daa: we bought it on Tuesday, and it arrived Tuesday night (while we were out).  Dave moved it into position on Wednesday morning, greased it all up, threw the switch (it is electric - hurrah!) and made our first mix of 2017!

What a joy to have an electric one - no petrol, no pull cord, no carburettor to clean out frequently.  It takes 700 watts, so it is only slightly more demanding than our little kettle.  Solar powered mix!

 Lugging into position

 I'm helping by taking photos, honest!

 Levelling in the right spot

 Newly greased, very fresh and sparkly - Dave throws the switch ...!  Actually, he presses the button, and it purrs into action ...

 ... and not too long after, three sections of the utility are freshly plastered (by me, so I did do something!)

Eggs update

30 May 2017

The garden is getting horribly overgrown.  Our strimmer won't be fixed, and the friends we've asked to help are too busy.  I have a house on the market in Liverpool, and if it sells, we are determined to get electrical garden equipment - strimmer, hedge trimmer and chainsaw - all using the one battery.  meanwhile, we are overwhelmed by metre-high thistles!

 The salad garden is doing okay, although the celery that lasted through the winter has gone to flowers - so we eat the flowers.  The borage has taken very well, although it is now threatening to take over.  Not as successful as last year, unfortunately.

 The six chickens, well settled in and not scared of us any more.

 There are two types - three that are a slightly darker brown, with straight beaks, and three that are more gingery, with beaks like a dodo's.   These are the two ringleaders of each type: Ginger on the left, and Sparky on the right.

Ginger - who has the most contorted beak of the Dodos, but is otherwise very beautiful

 Sparky (short for Bright Spark) is constantly on the alert, checking out the run - we think she's head of the escape committee

A very nice crop of eggs - four a day, now.

More woodwork

20 May 2017

Still no returned mixer.  We went to visit Robert, who lent it to us, he has borrowed it back because he is building a family house from a pre-fab, and keeps thinking of more things he needs the mixer for.  So, we continued with the woodwork.  Dave did more windows outside, and I started on the music room window boxes, and did some doors, too, for good measure.

 Also this little triangle on the stairs

 

The east-facing music room window, finally painted white.  With trim round the outer frame, and also where the box meets the house frame - including a fancy bit of 45 degree mitre-ing.  The outside still needs doing, so there remains masking tape on the glass.  But otherwise it smartens up the room lots.

 The loo and music room doors, trimmed and painted.  Also various embedded plywood carriers for the light switch and sockets.  I reused the front door blue, as it was what we had, but it looks rather nice, so that's okay.

The west-facing music room window: painted, but not trimmed round the house frame as we ran out of trim.

Eggstremely eggsciting

19 May 2017

We had thought we would need to wait six to eight weeks for our first eggs, but it seems we have a very early laying breed of chickens.  They're called 'Golden Comets' and can lay as early, it would seem, as three and a half months:

 Very small, and the only one, but the next day, we had two, and two days later, we had four, and they are getting bigger.  So well done chickens, we're very impressed.

Off-road choir performance

12 May 2017

Rosa, the choir mistress, suggested the choir have a summer party, and chose a part-renovated old school house up in the village at the top of our mountain, Neohori.  It was a beautiful location, we performed a suite of songs, everyone brought food for a buffet, and it was to follow up with an outdoor gig by Dave and Panos and various others.  Unfortunately, it rained, just after we'd finished singing.  So the gig was moved inside - where there is a very incomplete floor.  So the audience huddled on one side of big holes in the floor, and the band on the other.  It could only happen here!

 Dave sets up the band gear, while Rosa sets up the buffet and audience area

 We sing our songs

Lucy, Mark, Dmitri, Panos and some others party into the night (the chairs are covering the biggest holes in the floor)

Mitred corners

9 May 2017

On with the fancy woodwork.  Each of our window boxes: 20mm plywood constructs that fix to the house frame and support the window frame on the outside of the bales, need interior trims to mask the various-sized gaps between box and frame.  The gaps have been stuffed with insulation, and once the trims are in, the box can be painted.

 Dave presses on with the external frames - the gap on the left is the one under construction, the orange one on the right is next to be done

 

 I set out my corner-mitre-ing equipment ...

 and measure up for a little window to practice on

 This is a close up of the gap between the plywood box and the orange-painted frame, stuffed with fluffy insulation - reused polyester pillow innards.

 Some time later - the gap has been covered with mitred trim, and everything has been painted white.  A lot more light is reflected in when this is done.

Dave's workstation in the garden, waiting for paint to dry!

Still no mixer

9 May 2017

As there seems to be no sign of any immediate return of 'our' borrowed mixer, and now the chicken run is finished, we decided to get on with some woodwork around the house - mainly windows.

I started by clearing out the amazing amount of clutter that had built up in the little room behind the front door.  It was meant to be an entryway and coat store, but has become a general utility, tool dump and bike shed.  Dave started on the window frames.  The fixed frames are all done, but the opening casements each needed lifting out and beading put round the glass edge, then masking and painting.

 The utility - after I've done some sorting out.

 and in the other direction

 Dave finishes the two casements on the 'Cathedral' window

 I decide the garden is overgrown enough, and while Dave tries to fix the strimmer, I hack down the wilderness of thistles to rediscover the Moringa beds (sadly without Moringas at present).

 While the chickens have become very curious and keen to be fed interesting grasses

Getting settled

1 - 7 May 2017

On the first evening, we had to catch each chicken and fling them into the chicken house for the night.  They didn't like being chased around.  Then on the first morning, we opened the door and they wouldn't even look out.  Clearly, the poor things had been psychologically damaged by their first three months on a chicken farm.  So we opened the big cleaning flap at the the back of the house, and 'persuaded' them out with a stick. 

Every day after that, they became a little more confident, and started to grasp the idea that the house was up the ladder, and they could use the ladder, and they should come out in the morning and go back in at night.  After we'd pushed the straw bale up to the ladder so it was only half the distance, they definitely started to get the idea. 

 Tentative examination of the open door ...

 Meanwhile, we finished fixing the wire to the hut, to complete the security arrangements

 Day two - out, but huddled together in 'worry corner'

 Day three - a bit more willing to trust their surroundings.

Satisfied chicken keepers!