sustainable house open day

Sept 18 2017

Yesterday was mega.  Al had organised us to have an open day as part of sustainable house day. I had spent the last week making sure the house was as presentable as possible and Edd fixed up the sign he has been working on for the front gate.  He also fixed up the last unit in the mudroom and the kitchen bench back plate.  These small jobs have been hanging around for ages with out coming to the top of the priority list so it was a real bonus to get them done.

The weather has been awful. Freezing, cold nights and sheeting rain in the day. Yesterday something completely amazing happened. The sun came out, the skies were clear blue, the wind dropped and even the mud on the roads dried out. All this made the fact that there were 170 visitors that turned up for a look possible.  Al arrived early in the morning and helped putting the signs up before he found some paint and painted the plastic down pipes.  (Another job that never made priority status).  He felt that the outside look was compromised and it obviously offended him.

Before 10am, when things were due to start, cars began arriving and just kept coming all day.  Indi greeted the guests and got them signed in and then I collected them into tour groups and Al and Barry (an architect who works with Al took groups round the house.  The guests who came were really focussed on getting information and asked lots of questions. By the end of the day Al had no voice left!  Edd took the outside tour over the roof and through the farm buildings showing everyone how the water power and light systems worked from outside. 

Indi, Barry and I also did the outside tours as Edd faded.  This went on all day and we were forced to take turns eating lunch, on display like zoo animals. On the positive side when the cars stopped arriving and at 4.30 everyone had left the house still looked squeaky-clean and lots of people had taken Al’s business cards. The weather had been perfect for showing the house at it’s best. There had been a frost over night but we had not lit the fires because I had cleaned them and wanted them pristine in the morning.  The house was 22 C when we woke and with the sun pouring in it warmed a further and staid warm even with the doors open for most of the day.  This was a very convincing demonstration of thermal mass in action. Edd and I still had the goats to milk and other animal work before we could relax, so we feel pretty exhausted today.

Three goats have kidded so we have bottle-feeding four times a day and extra milking. The machine was not working and it is only in the last two hours that Edd has got it running again.  I was threatening to go off and buy a new machine I was so worn out. We just managed to get last years goatlings trained to come into the milk room and jump up on the bale before kidding started.

This group of goatlings had attitude.  They trained to jump up all right but then they refused to leave the milk room. They could see no reason to go out into the rain and mud when they were quite happy with food in a nice clean dry room. Usually young goats shoot out and are easily hurried along by banging the brush against the bale or squirting water at them but this time Edd had to get really fierce before they learnt that rules were rules.