Polytunnel starts!

With the rest of the household back from Menorca I flew down to Southampton on Saturday and we all met in Winchester for Tobys dedication which was a lovely day, very hot and a 'breaking in' for im and Ruths new barbeque. We drove home overnight again so that Joe could be at work on Monday morning - madness!

The groundworks for the polytunnel required demolishing a concrete manure store and digging up the base as well as levelling the area which we decided needed the use of a digger rather than us with spades. We had intended to hire a mini digger but were fortunate that Pete has a friend with a very large digger who was willing to come and do the honours. He made short work of the demolition and levelling althought at one point we wondered if he was going to find the legendary tunnel from our house to the island as he went down to such a depth in order to bury all the debris!

With the base completed we needed to dig 0.5metre deep holes to take the base plates -easier said than done given the amount of stone that we encountered on the way down. All of them are complete now and I have constructed the timber doors ready to insert once the structure is up. There were 19 packages of parts and it resembles a giant meccano set for grown ups - not surprising that the first instruction in the 56 pages is to sit down with a cup of tea and read them thoroughly!!

We won't be able to get any further as we are off to Oberammegau today to see the passion play with Daniel and Julie and will be bringing Bethan and Toby back with us for a week afterwards .While I'm sure they would be keen to help, the finished result might not be quite what we are looking for!

The chickens continue to lay well and in fact, at the moment are producing more eggs than we can use, despite a batch of baking for the community coffee morning and several cooked breakfasts! There are rumblings about possibly rearing some turkeys for Christmas next .....watch this space!

Free range!!

A number of people have asked what our temporary house is like so here are some photos. There is a lovely view of the firth and the lawn certainly takes me a lot less time to cut than the one at Keilingha!

On which point the ride on lawnmower has broken again which meant that I ended up cutting the grass in the walled garden with my trusty old petrol mower which started first time despite not having been used since last summer.

Everything is growing fast now that the snow has finally gone (although it is still possible to ski on Cairngorm). The cooler temperatures have meant that things are even more delayed in the garden and as I write this we still have masses of daffodils open even though plants like the rhododendrons are beginning to come into flower!

The rest of the family are away in Menorca this week so I am taking the opportunity to get to grips with the garden a bit. Because everything is so much bigger things take a surprising length of time, nearly four hours to prune all the roses for example, but it is good to begin to get a sense of what is in the garden as I missed much of it last year due to travelling backwards and forwards to Sutton such a lot. Richard won the battle of the polytunnel with the authorities in the end. It seems that the only reason we needed a building warrant was because of the size and if we made it slightly smaller we didn't need any consents - they just didn't tell us that!! The (slightly smaller) polytunnel has now arrived and we are going to hire a digger to level the ground behind the stables and hopefully get it up next week with the help of Pete. At the same time we will level an area in the walled garden where there are already some fruit trees to erect the fruit cage that we took from Tim and Ruths garden. I was given two ready made raised beds and one of them has already been planted up as a permanent asparagus bed. The crowns are putting up shoots already and it is frustrating not to be able to harvest this year but something to look forward to.........The rest of the vegetables are doing well and are going to have to be planted up potager style this year as the vegetable garden won't be ready in time.

The chickens settled down really quickly and we average 2-3 eggs a day from the four who are laying. One, the black rock, is too young to lay and won't start for several weeks yet. The white star lays white eggs, the speckledy, speckled ones and the others lay brown so we have an attractive mix. The first eggs were quite small but they are getting larger as the girls grow.

Today I decided to let them out for a bit as Rhema pretty much ignores them in the run. They were a little tentative at first and stayed close to the run while Rhema took cover behind a pile of pallets but now they seem quite comfortable with each other and enjoyed pecking around the car parking area and dust bathing in the border I had been weeding.

Chickens have an instinctive fear of birds of prey and they became quite agitated as our dive-bombing swallows swooped low overhead - it seems the chickens are as brave as Rhema!

The swallows sit on the garage roof waiting for me to let my guard down and leave a door open. The previous owners used to let them nest in the garage and stable roof but the mess was unacceptable as we need to use the buildings so Richard has sealed off the hay loft from the rest of the buildings and we hope that they will be bright enough to find the (large) hole in the door and use that instead.

Never a dull moment!

Phase one of the pond clearance has been done with a thick layer of leaves and mud having to be taken out. This is now staying by the side of the pond and burn to allow any pond life to return and also, hopefully to dry out a little before being composted. There will then be a second session once the water has cleared and we can see a little more what needs to be taken out. Richard was wearing a pair of ordinary marigolds but they really weren't up to the job and he has earned his 'grown up' gloves which come up to his armpits.

To those of you who tried to contact me last week I have a confession to make - having spent the day gardening in the rain I went back to Culloden, stripped off my wet clothes and put them straight in the washing machine while I went to have a bath. On coming downstairs I heard a banging noise coming from the washing machine and realised that my mobile phone was still in the pocket of my jeans - more haste, less speed!! Needless to say, it doesn't work, although my sim survived, so although I now have Tims old phone I have lost a number of contacts which were on the phone as well as all my photos and texts.

We had a busy trip down South again with a funeral on Friday, a visit to the 'Grand Designs' show in London on saturday, dinner with Matt on Saturday evening and then down to Winchester on Sunday, having picked up our Chicken coop and run from Richard and Judith on the way. It was Ruths birthday and we were looking forward to a relaxed couple of days with them but it wasn't to be......

We had just sat down on Sunday night having put the children to bed and were in front of their log fire as the boiler had failed a few days before. We noticed some tar dripping from the chimney and Tim suddenly said 'I don't want to worry you, but I think the chimneys on fire', with which there was a roar from the chimney and smoke and flames began to pour out of the fireplace! As a team we did well with Richard calling the fire brigade, Ruth and I scooped the children up, the lodger closed the doors and Tim threw several pans of water on the fire by which time the room was filled with smoke to within a couple of feet of the floor.

The fire brigade arrived in about five minutes and went in with breathing apparatus. Tims quick action had put the fire out and the firemen were just about to start a huge fan to clear the smoke from the house when the fire broke out again and the firemen had to go back in. Fortunately it was able to be extinguished quickly and we were amazed, when we were able to go back in, at how little damage there was. The house smelt very smoky but we were able to go back in and sleep there although neighbours had offered to put us all up for the night. The firemen returned at 23.00 to check that the chimney was cold which was reassuring. They said it was one of the more aggressive chimney fires that they had dealt with and that we had done all the right things. Perhaps all that mandatory fire training is useful after all.....Once Bethan had recovered from the shock of being whisked out of her bed while soundly asleep she was able to watch proceedings from the house over the road and was very interested to see the two fire engines.

We were able to wash all the curtains on Monday but spent most of the day out of the house allowing the smell to clear and it was noticeably better by the time we left to drive back overnight.

I brought young vegetable plants with me which Bethan helped me plant and dropped some off with Daniel and Julie on the way past Eynsham arriving back at Moy at about 06.30 to drop off the coop and then on to Culloden where we stopped just long enough for breakfast and a shower before returning to Moy to assemble the coop. The dehumidifiers are now in place and the firm are optimistic that it may well only take a couple of weeks to dry out the house so we are hoping that the re-instatement will be able to start more quickly than we thought.

The chickens are now installed in the coop - we intended to buy four initially but somehow ended up with five!! One of them laid an egg on the way back to Moy which was very exciting. We are looking forward to a regular supply and once they have got used to their new home we are hoping that they will be able to be free range. Part of that will be getting them and Rhema used to each other before we can let them loose together. Initially Rhema was very excited but this morning she pretty much ignored them so I am hopeful that it won't be too long before we can let them out together.

Sarah and Joe were supposed to be moving into their own place in Culloden today but due to some communication breakdown the existing tenants aren't moving out until Monday which was a bit of a blow as the furniture is arriving this morning......should be interesting...

Like many people we stayed up to watch the election results come in but when it was clear that there wouldn't be a clear result I gave up and went to bed at about 3.30...after all I'm now a farmer and have chickens to let out....