Straw at last
Now that the floor is fixed down, we’ve been able to get on and get the strawbales in. First, wooden spikes made of willow are driven into holes in the floor – Then the first layer of bales is placed onto the spikes which prevent them from moving...
Getting creative
Pargeting isn’t a word you hear very often, but it’s a wonderful technique that involves making raised designs in (commonly) lime or earth plasters. From the very start, this is something we’ve really wanted to have a go at, and here are some...
Douglas comes to stay
Well at last we managed to sell enough things to pay for some flooring in the build. Clarke Cunningham supplied us with some rather fine Douglas Fir boards, which look great, although they aren’t fixed down yet. They’re windproofed from underneath,...
Making connections
One of the things that really cheers us up is when we hear from people who’ve stayed, or maybe just come across the blog and email to say ‘Hi, we’re out here’. Here’s Lyra with Clare, who came to volunteer for a week recently, and...
The morning after
No amount of careful preparation can protect against damage like this, and we woke up to find that a huge piece of our largest tree had come down. Amazingly it missed both chicken houses, and the tipi poles, but our poor tree is looking rather sorry this morning, as...
Weathering the storm
So the first proper storm of autumn is coming tonight, and rather than wait for mother nature to do her thing, and then clean up the mess afterwards, we decided to be more organised this year and take down the tipi, wind turbine and firepit shelter, just in...
Meet the boss
Today it was time to get cracking and make cob – lots of it. Lyra might only be two, but between us we used nearly a ton of sand in the mix, and yet we aren’t half way yet. Lyra is particularly keen on working with her trowel, and is genuinely quite good...
Lighting the rocket mass heater
Today we pushed on, built a brick support around the base of the firebrick burner, – above, and then backfilled all the gaps with perlite and a clay mix to thoroughly insulate the fire itself, which we want to burn as hot as possible. The clay mix...
Rocket mass heater progress
Having tried (and failed) to get clay soil cleaned up enough to make smooth clay mortar, I just went out and bought some clean clay, which was thirty quid well spent, and allowed the burner for the rocket mass heater to get built. Several of you will be...
Fluffers does it again
The unstoppable broody Fluffers has done it again, this time vanishing to hatch 8 healthy chicks, returning to parade them around the place today. She’s perfected the knack of sashaying about with them underneath her, which is quite a sight, and here they are...