Of chickens and eggs

Monday/Tuesday 30 & 31 July 2012

Well, we were still wondering if the chickens were ever going to be more than just entertainment, and they were obviously feeling a little guilty themselves - I found them queueing up for the barbeque:

but then, the day before Dave was due back from skippering, I found this sorry specimen in the hen house.  I think it must have popped out when they were roosting, and I caught Daft in the process of pecking at it.  The books say you mustn't let them get a taste for their own eggs, or you'll not get any for breakfast, so I grabbed it quick and chucked it on the compost.  A while later I thought - 'but that was our first egg' - so I took a photo:

On Monday, having recovered from skippering and Sunday turnaround work, Dave set out to see if they really had started laying, and found this in a hollow of cypress roots:

We tested them for freshness, and boiled them up for breakfast.  Look what I found in mine!

Since then, we've taken delivery of two warm brown eggs every day.  They lay late morning, so not quite handy for breakfast.  And even Megachuck, who is a month or two younger, has produced a couple of tiny white eggs, just to show she can.  At least we know no-one is a rooster!

Clearing up the site

Week 22 to 29 July

Dave had gone off for a full week skippering, so each morning and evening I put on my big boots and floppy hat and went to work on clearing up the site.  I wanted it safe for us to walk around, which meant getting rid of the nail-driven wood, first off. 

Given that it was only comfortable to work between 8 and 9 each day, am and pm, I didn't get on very fast, but by Wednesday I had stacked away the wood that was worth saving for the stove in the winter, with splinters saved for kindling.  I was also collecting the bent nails, as these are very handy in a cob build, nailed into logs which are known as 'deadmen' that are embedded in the cob - the nails helping to key the wood to the cob.  The deadmen are then used for screwing window and door frames in to.  The picture shows my red bucket for nails and wire, black recycled-tyre bucket for wood splinters, and in the background, a huge blue carrier, full of re-useable shuttering for the bits we have to add concrete to.

Most of the rebar had been bent by the workmen when they took out the shuttering, but bent rebar is easier to pull out of the ground than straight pieces, although straight pieces are much more useful afterwards.  We may be able to cut the bent bits off, leaving some useable straight bits.  I didn't want to leave the bars in the ground, as they would prevent even tamping down of the underfloor surface.  I rescued seven short shuttering boards, and surprisingly, found just 14 straight pieces of rebar, and made some useful steps down the earth bank at the end of the site.  Good, hey?

This is our mountain of earth, to go back into the structure to be the underfloor.

One of the larger chunks of splurged concrete, prized up off our gravelly soil, and me in floppy hat and big boots, taken by the auto setting on the camera.

An even bigger splurge, that needed a mega-tool and archimedes ('give me a long enough lever and somewhere firm to stand ...') to lift off the ground.  This one was outside the structure, in the area where we want to dig a drainage ditch, so it had to go.  I couldn't get it further than this - it has to wait for Dave to break it up now.

 When I popped down the shop for a large crowbar, he only had this one.  It's nearly as tall as I am!  Bound to come in useful.  And below - my trusty set of site-clear-up tools (in pretty colours).

 

The Aftermath

Friday 20 July 2012

The lads came back on Thursday and took all the shuttering down.  That left us with the site ready for the next stage - or not.  There was concrete rubble everywhere, including big slabs on the ground where the machine had splurted.  There was wood still nailed down where they couldn't prise it off.  Wood in splinters, wood with nails sticking up everywhere underfoot.  Pieces of bent rebar.  Rebar embedded in the ground where they couldn't remove it, bent and and rusty nails, rebar off-cuts.  All very scruffy, and dangerous underfoot.

And in one corner, an error.  I had spotted this when it was shuttered, and mentioned it to Constantine, but then forgot about the crucial bit and just got it part fixed.  Not clever.  The photo below (in which my poor camera shows how it is suffering from all the work it has to do and has stopped opening its shutters properly) illustrates how the extended footing for the cob wall has been mislaid through the utility room space.  The footing in the foreground needs to be as wide as the footing in the distance.  Also, because the cob wall has been forgotten, the utility room is far too narrow.  I didn't spec this bit, I was just going to put a lean-to on afterwards, but Constantine and the concrete man wanted it to have proper foundations.  Unfortunately, this is at the highest point of the gable wall, where we have nearly 5 metres of cob.  We are going to have to drill holes, glue in rebar, attach steel and pour more concrete to extend the footing about 20 cm.  Meanwhile, I decided that if I've got this space, I might as well use it as a root cellar, and put a concrete skim in the base and a wood floor with trap door access on top. (Eventually).

Chickenfeed

Thurs 19 July 2012

For some reason woke at dawn and took pink photos of the site (see yesterday's post).  Put out food for the cats and watched the chickens come running.  They are very smart those chickens.  The cats seem a bit overwhelmed, especially by Megachuck.

All for you, my Plinth!

Weds 18 July 2012

No more hanging about, it seems.  The lads arrived early to get the shuttering finished.  The boss arrived and I asked him to organise the missing metalwork.  He asked one of the lads to do it, told me he'd be back with the concrete around 2 ish, then left.

Constantine arrived.  Looked around, agreed that we needed more metal.  Told one of the lads.  Then remembered he had to get a stamp from the police station on the permit, and left.

The windscreen repair people rang to say they were in town two days earlier than they'd said, and could I meet their repair man in Nidri.  I worried about the car and the repair van getting stuck one side or the other of a number of concrete vehicles and shot off to meet him, leaving the car and the repairer by the side of the road about 300 metres away from the site.  Then walked back uphill in the heat.

Constantine had not returned.  The concrete hadn't arrived.  The metal hadn't been fixed, but the lads were still finishing the shuttering, and our pallets around the compost heap had mysteriously disappeared.  I later found the site of disembodiment, a few splinters remaining, where they had been broken up to nail across the shuttering to stop it spreading when the concrete was poured.

The glass repair man rang to say he was finished only 30 minutes later, although the office had said he'd take 1.5 to 2 hours, so I belted off down the field again to sort that out.  I left the car there, out of the way, and walked back up the hill.

Still no Constantine.  Then it was 4 pm and the trucks started arriving.  I still didn't have metal where I wanted it.  I had scavenged around the site and found pieces to fit, but the broken pallet pieces were now spanning the gap that they had to go in.  The boss arrived.  I jumped up and down a bit, and he shouted at the lads and they pulled the wood back off, fitted the metal and stood back, seconds before the concrete started pouring.  Whoops!

It took about 30 minutes to fill the plinth.  Then they all left.  The pouring arm truck has a reservoir of about a cubic metre that can't be sucked up, and we had asked for this to be dropped on the track where it has worn away during the winter rains, so I grabbed a spade and set off after the truck.  He dropped it where I asked.  There's a lot of concrete in a cubic metre, and it's very soggy.  Terrified of overbalancing and ending up like some mafia victim, I shoveled frantically to distribute the heap into the ruts before it set.  Stinging sweat dripped into my eyes.

Then I set about watering the plinth.  Then I had a cold shower.  Then I collapsed on the decking sofa.  And THEN Dave chose to return - complaining about a hard day at work (motoring to Kioni and back).

Amateur Boatbuilding

17 July 2012

I had some things to drop off around Vlicho bay in Geni, so I took the opportunity to call in on some friends, Rowan, Paris and Connor, recently qualified art students, who live over that way.  They were engaged in building boats, variously from a book or the internet. Hugely enterprising.

 Rowan and Paris' open Canadian canoe, made of strips of sapele wood, ready for varnishing.

Connor's Dory, an American fishing classic.

Someday my Plinth will come ...

Tuesday 17 July 2012

They were back bright and early on Tuesday, taking the shuttering off the foundation block and positioning it around the plinth that stands upright on top of it.  Nice easy day, they finished around 2pm with the job looking nearly done.  I rang Constantine and said I was concerned that the reinforcing steel didn't reach right to the ends where the plinth is extended to hold up the roof pillars.  I had mentioned this several times to several people, in pidgin Greek, and they had all nodded and smiled and humoured me.  I'd also had to get them to move the stopper ends further back, because they'd shuttered up to where the metal stopped (back to front thinking, there).  Constantine said not to worry, they weren't going to pour the next bit for some days and he'd stop by before then.

They'd told me they were pouring tomorrow, around 2 pm.

Dave had positioned a waste drainage pipe for the shower and/or bath below floor level through the plinth.  On four separate occasions I had to retrieve the pipe from where it had been moved out of the way while they put up shuttering and then forgot to put it back.  The final time I stood over one of the lads while he hacked into the shuttering to make a space for it.  Then tapped my feet until it was securely wired in place.  Phew!  How come Dave is always away skippering when things kick into action?

All at once

Monday 16 July 2012

Just like buses, nothing happens for ever then three come at once.  Monday started unpropitiously.  Dave was off on a day-skipper charter for the week, and was in a pre-work twitch about what his guests would be like and what they would want, so I attempted to distract him by suggesting he use the slingshot on one of the roaming cats that come to steal left-over cat food.  The pebble (which never hits the cats) ricocheted off the drive and tapped my back windscreen.  A second frozen in time, then it crazed and fell in.  Dave was even less relaxed when he went off to work!

So I got on with the washing, but was surprised to hear chainsaws around lunch time.  The chainsaw season is well over (January), so I wondered what was going on, until I saw the first of the concrete trucks arriving (they were chainsawing clearance down the track - regardless of land ownership - it's all very blase:

 Squeezed in between conifers in front of the camper van,

 the stabilising arm only just fit in front of the Zone (I didn't think those panels were going to make it!).

 Megachuck taking cover

 Then the second truck - the mixer - arrived

 and started a multi-point turn to come in backwards

 some time later ...

 even more time, sweat, and moving our old rib, later ... (oh, and look through the trees, number two mixer has already arrived.  I had a fit of giggles at this point!).

 Finally in position.

 Getting the pouring arm in place

 The wellie man has a horrid job in this weather - he slooshed out those boots inside and out when he was done.

The first layer was done by 2 pm and everyone left to siesta.  My job was to water the concrete to stop it cracking.  My limited Greek understood that this was to be done 'for 4 hours'.  When I rang Constantine he said it was to be done 'every 4 hours'.  I tried putting a sprinkler on it, but it kept blowing off, so I got soaked more than the concrete, but at least I didn't crack!

More Tipota

Then nothing happened again.  I rang Constantine and asked when they might pour the concrete and he said when it gets cooler, so I replied, about two months, then?  and he said, No.  Which didn't really tell us much.  So we went back to being unstressed about it all.

Sweltering in the heat now.  Over 36 degrees during the day, and no respite - only the hut with two fans on, trying to siesta in the afternoon.  Roll on cob walls - we need you.  The chickens are collapsed panting under the hut, clucking in annoyance at intervals.

Iron at last

Weds 4 July 2012

We were just thinking about getting up around 8ish Wednesday morning, when we heard a lot of motorbike engines coming down the track - the iron men had arrived!  They got stuck into the job, and by 3 o'clock thursday our site looked like this: