Week 10 Morning all! Monday morning again, not that it really matters here. Up early this morning as it promises to be a scorcher today with temperatures around 35 degrees. It is 21 degrees already at 07.00. As we reported, the tyre foundations are finished and now the real building can begin! Well done to Becks who was closest in guessing the number of spade fulls of sand fitting in the tyres. Progress will be more of a upward movement as to going down into the ground! The next stage is putting a wooden frame onto the foundations on both houses so we can put the floor on to it. We are hoping to use the wood we have on Duck Springs but need to wait until the saw mill arrives to see what we can produce out of the pines here. Unfortunately the joists that can be cut from them are only as wide as the thinner top part so even if the tree is wider at the bottom the joist will be the maximum taken from the thinner end. I’m sure we will put some pictures to show you. The other option would be to buy in the joist and use the round wood for the roof construction. This will be decided this week. Once the framework is finished we can put on the flooring to be able to start building with the straw-bales-, the straw-bales that we still do not have. The estate agents sourced some for us but they were too small and too light. We are now in the process of contacting straw-bale dealers- yes, there are such people, and as they don’t usually stand around in dark alleyways we are using the Internet! If anyone happens to have 500 straw-bales in their garden that weigh in around 25Kg, please feel free to contact us! As not much building is going on, we have been busy in the gardens and paddock. Kim and Ines have cleared around more fruit trees so we can water them better and they have been fertilized and organically sprayed against bugs of all kind. The heat is causing problems with some, specially Mrs Persimmon who is losing all her leaves. She has been given special treatment with Potash, fertilizer and has been given a lot of water. She is covered with Persimmons, some may know these as Sharon fruit, and we would be sad to lose them all. Our orange and kumquats look much better after the spraying and all the little nasties are gone. The leaves are looking much fresher and they are promise to bear a lot of fruit. The garden is coming on really well now and after the fertilizing (organically) things seems to be on the move. Zucchinis, squashes and pumpkins have exploded taking over the garden. Corn and beans are doing really well and the radishes are huge! We are now able to eat a lot of the stuff we grow and along with our own eggs are able to make great salads. The Feather Girls are laying three a day almost every day and Ines is kept busy finding protein snacks, ie. Grasshoppers to keep them laying. On the bug side we were shocked at first to find loads of orangey coloured larvae stuck to all the leaves but after careful investigation found out they are Lady Bugs and these have now hatched to give us an army of greenfly munchers. Good news! The praying mantis eggs have not yet arrived but when they come they will join in the crusade against green and black fly. Watering has to be done twice a day now and although we have mulched most veg the heat dries up the ground quickly. The little plants have to have special attention and watering otherwise they die quickly. Unfortunately a lot of melon plants have gone this way and we have planted out some more to replace them. Sunday is our quiet day and not being able to sit around to long I experimented on a solar oven. This is something you can do at home as well. Take a cardboard box, banana boxes are good, line the box with polystyrene which should about at least an inch and a half, cover the polystyrene with aluminium foil so that the inside of the box is completely covered. Now all you need is a glass plate, usually found in the back of the shed to cover the box. If you put a saucepan of water in the box, it will begin to heat up and we almost had the water boiling yesterday. Reckon a bit of tweeking and we will be able to cook in it! Updates will follow. Oh, by the way, the washing machine was a fail and alas, the girls are still hand washing. We are still trying to think of a way to rig some kind of mechanical assistance, a bicycle driven washing machine could be the way forward! Meanwhile, many thanks for Ines and Kim who keep us in clean clothes and bedding. Second experiment was to plant out some kitchen herbs - coriander, black, brown and yellow peppers, star aniseed, fennel, mustard seeds and cloves were put into seeding compost to see if they grow. We also planted garlic that had sprouted and that has taken off straight away. Garlic is good around your garden keeping off bugs and any sprouting cloves that you have, just bung them in a pot or your garden. They taste bitter anyway. Mally has to go to the vets today as his right cheek is badly swollen and looks like he has an abscess. Lugh strained a muscle in his shoulder but after an few days hobbling around is back to his old self. He spends most of the day in the shed as it’s the coolest place he can find. The scorching sun is no fun with a black fur coat on! Louzou caused a scare the other morning as she was not at home, unlike her to leave the vicinity of the tent at all, and after a few hours of calling, she was found up in the bushes on the hill next to the paddock. I cannot think of anything else so will end the update as the watering calls. Hope you enjoy the news from Duck Springs and wish you all a stress free week. Take care.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 07:07:36 +0000
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