ilultham

About 6 years ago I started to plant up some patches of willow . It's grown well and I just love standing in the little coppice in the summer where the young trees tower over me.  When I planted it up most was planted for short rotation  firewood for a wood stove, but it has been really useful for other things. When ever I've done bushcraft lessons I've harvest poles for use for cooking over the fire, last spring we started harvesting bean poles (which we stripped the bark to stop them growing) I think firewood should always be the last thing wood is used for, so any other uses it has first is ideal and I need to start doing this more. The chicken coops needed some new perches and I'm automatically thought I needed to buy some batten to do the job. But then when I have a large patch of willow with lots of the wood being the right diameter, it seems daft to use anything else.   So I rounded up the children and went to coppice a few trees for what we needed (my daughter

These photos popped up on my timeline today and I thought I'd share them with you all.  Some earlier chicken keeping.  After I had left the family farm and my wife and I we living in a little village just outside Evesham. This was a time before children and I honestly have no idea what we did with out time!  We had a good sized garden that I was slowly turning into a farmyard! The rescue hens we originally got were in the small movable ark (the one I fixed up last year in fact) but were slowly destroying the lawn daily.  So my brother came over for the day and we made them a chicken run between the lawn and the veg garden. It worked well to separate up the garden and give the chickens a bit more space.  Once we had it fence the birds loved it.   The next week I built a better coop for them and one that the eggs could be collected without having to even go in the pen.  I loved keeping chickens there, My one neighbour, who we got on really well with, was so sceptical of the birds t

With this Avian Flu lockdown we've been having it's been tricky to keep the chickens clean with their much reduced pens sizes. I've been using my wood shavings from my carpentry, but I only produce so many and they do soak in far too easily with all this wet weather we've been having.  So I put in a message to a farming friend to see if he would be happy to sell me a few bales of straw.   He only had big bales, but luckily I managed to get him to deliver it and sheet it up until we could use it.  Then I didn't want to use it all at one time. So I hammered a pin through it to be able to retie the string in the middle.  Luckily this worked really well and I could straw down all 8 poultry pens!  So lots of happy chickens and ducks after my little trip round all the pens. I think straw wins out when it's really wet like this as it forms a mat that the animals can stand on. I'm almost looking forward to putting all this on the compost heap when the lockdown for t

My wife and I don't "do" valentines but today our middlest child made us a lovely valentines pineapple upside-down cake.   It was lovely! She even tried to trick me into thinking it was just a sponge before it was put out! 

 So I thought I'd do a few posts with some products I currently sell online. The first is my potting trays, ideal to keep your greenhouse or potting shed tidy!  The potting trays I make in three standard sizes - medium, large and jumbo. This is the medium one, I tend to make small batches and can never predict if I'll sell more medium or large ones - basically I tend to sell more of the one I made less of!  I do make trays from reclaimed timebr but due to a few different reasons (and volume of sales) I'm struggling to get enough to meet demand. So I've make these with joinery quality softwood. The base is rebated into the sides to provide extra strength. When I have finished them I then oil them with one coat of linseed oil that I have added a natural pigment to to darken them down a bit, then once that is dry I oil them a second time with just plain boiled linseed oil.  The medium trays are 58cm wide by 40cm deep and about 17cm high. You can find the link to buy them h

So after about 18 months I managed to get round to blocking up the hole in the side of the house.   It was kind of blocked off before with the blockwork on the inside skin being finished, but decided it needed completing.  Part of the delay was indecision, I wasn't quite sure what to do with this space. It was the old kitchen window so now has the pantry and our little tiny utility room behind it.  Part of me wanted to make a window frame up, but glaze it with a mirror. In the end I decided to brick it up. I didn't tooth the brickwork as there is no hiding the fact it was a window (the lintel was staying in anyway), so I put wall ties in and just built it flush with the existing wall. Something I've probably overthought and should have just got on with ages ago.  It's certainly nice to have it done and feels great for the mice not to have easy access to our cavity wall! Yes my bricklayer would have made a better job, but it's not too bad and only cost a bit of sand

Be that annoying dad that drags your 9 year old daughter out to the workshop before her ballet lesson to show her how to change the belt and blade on a bandsaw...  

 The other day we found a bit of time to make some easy walking sticks with the children.  We just made them out of some willow, so they won't last long, but good enough for the children to play with. It also meant my eldest could try her new drawer knife out on the shave horse!  They all got to have a go, although I did sit with my youngest.  They then carved their initials into the sticks so they could tell them apart.  A lovely way to spend a few hours with each other.  The sticks have been much loved over the last few weeks since they made them - taken on every walk, a few lightsabre battles and sword fights. Child hood is more fun with sticks to play with! 

I know we're not alone on this front but it is so wet here at the moment.  These pictures are from our bottom "field" or as it is at the moment - a pond.  It always lies wet in winter but I've never seen it this bad in the nine years we've been here. Water drains away but very slowly - not helped by some o the road ditches being dug the wrong way.  Until we get a barn here over wintering our legged animals really isn't an option, they would puddle the ground in no time. The other two fields are better but it is still a bit like walking through slop.   But I'm honestly not complaining. Life is good, a few wet fields don't change that - they make it a bit more tricky but I'm still thankful for what I have.  Roll on the summer!