work,work,work

5.4.2011

BUILDING NEWS

More fine weather and building steams ahead. This week Geoff is working on the short internal walls. Like the other walls they are made of concrete blocks core filled with more concrete. The idea is that they are part of the thermal mass that helps keep the house temperature stable.
These walls have brick arches in them, so Edd and I are struggling to have the formwork ready for when it is needed. The second arched doorframe went in today and they are now setting everything ready to build the first of the large arches.

OTHER NEWS

The working B on Saturday only consisted of Edd and I, and Bo and her kids but we got through all the tasks we had planned. Bo dug all the rubbish out of the large polyhouse and her boys lit a bonfire and burnt everything possible. Edd and I bagged up all the chooks and put them together in the lower chook shed to wait until their new home was ready.
The next stage was for us all to get together and wriggled the big chook shed onto the ute by tipping it on one side. It was then possible to drive it down to the new location. Our battles were still not over because some how it had to be put inside the polyhouse.

We tipped it off the ute into an up right position and man handled it until it lined up with the door but alas, it was fractionally too wide at the roof. We were all exhausted and made a unanimous decision to chisel wood off the doorframe rather than admit defeat. Once this was done we used our standard method of rolling it through on pine posts. By nightfall the chooks were all in their new house, they were confused but in much better shape than the rest of us were.

Sunday needed an early start too. We had over twenty students from Melbourne booked in for a tour as part of their Permaculture studies. They turned out to be a really lovely group of people and we got them all milking goats and tasting goats cheese and milk. Part of the deal was that I provided morning tea so I had spent Saturday evening cooking cakes and biscuits.
When the group left Edd and I drove up to the sailing club to find out how the rest of the family was getting on. Edd and I had secretly brought them an old sabre sailing boat during the week and when they got to sailing club they found out. Everyone looked pretty happy when we got there. It was rather a cold miserable day so Al brought his group back to our place and we cooked sausages and ate the remains of the morning cake.

We hoped that yesterday would be more relaxing but a new complication arrived in the form of our cow, Donna. She has been away for several months visiting a neighbour’s bull. We did not have much time to get anything ready for her and we were worried that if we let her loose with the other animals she might get hassled at this late stage of her pregnancy. The only option we could think of was to put her in the croft behind the dairy with a slip rail at the top gate so that the goats can go off but she has to stay in. We will have to sort something better as soon as possible.