Time Flies

Posted by Simon

I've just seen that it is two weeks since I've done a blog. Well I'm still here and now wondering where the time has gone.

Well I have been plodding on with the gite and have finished the beams and joists. Today I finished digging out the lower ground floor. I found it was easier, on the poor old muscles, to do a little each day rather than in one one hit - I know 'poor old boy'! This area is for the proposed living/dining room. The next stage is for the hempcrete floor, which I'll explain as we go along.

I have put in the timber for the stud wall for the bedrooms. It may be a little early but it does give us a good idea of exactly what we want and will help in planning the location of the wiring. It has also helped with the placing of the window openings and in fact by marking the proposed window openings on the walls we have decided that one in the living/dining room would not look right and, therefore, now not required.

Speed of work has not been helped by the weather. Either extremely hot or heavy rain. I think the heat really slows me down the most though. There again the rain has been so heavy all of us have been soaked through at some time. Tom and I took up tree hugging the other day when the heavens opened whilst walking the dogs -it was the only shelter we could find and both of us ended up having to have a complete change of clothes. Rosie went to check the sheep today and came back dripping. She did try and share the sheep's shelter but they would not let her in - well they were there first!

My last blog was about getting the other field cleared, ready for the sheep. Well moving them to it turned into an Oscar winning performance. One of the ewes definitely getting the Oscar for Being the Best Pain in the Backside. I built a field pen that I could reverse the vehicle up to. Would the sheep go into the pen - would they hell. After they gave as a major run around I made another pen in the middle of the field which we managed to get them into. One by one we pushed and pulled them over to the other pen and into the vehicle. Rosie and I were absolutely exhausted by the end. The sheep were not much better but have settled into their new field now. The ram must be happy - he's back to ramming me again. That's gratitude for you.

We also have two pigs arriving Saturday and I had to cut the thistles down, in their pen, before they get here. As I strimmed away I saw something flutter up. Well the massive man eating butterfly turned out to be a rather large grasshopper. I've never seen one that big. Fantastic. And we did leave an area of thistles for him. Oh, and the pen marks on Ben's face well he's being a tiger - obvious surely?