Of this, on the days when I wonder quite what we’re doing. Remind me that when we just do what we came here to do – grow crops and look after our animals I could not be any happier…
This morning Ady got distracted looking at the solar panel which had not been putting charge into the battery. We had pretty much decided it had come to the end of it’s life (they do have a lifespan and our panel is not just old but was cheap anyway and gets a real battering here) so were planning on buying a new one next month but last night the battery it is hooked up to ran out of charge altogether which was strange. Ady spent some time tracking back and testing various bits of the set up and concluded that it was putting charge into the charge regulator but nothing was coming out into the battery. So he has bypassed the regulator for now and we’ve ordered a replacement – turns out both the solar panel and the battery are ok after all – the two pricey bits of the kit and the regulator which is under  a tenner is what needs replacing. Hurrah!
The next job was some maintenance on the flushing loo – I won’t go into too much detail but one of those jobs I am very happy Ady is prepared to do… After some consultation on the best way to approach it I went off to do some weeding and left him to it. Fliss wandered past while I was digging away and stopped for a chat. Ady came to say he had finished and had rung Calmac and our animal feed was coming off the boat today so I came back up for lunch.
We went down to the boat, collected the animal feed, transferred it from one car to the other and I carried on with weeding while Ady unloaded the animal feed and did a fix on the caravan roof he’d been waiting for a sunny day to do. The kids went down to the village for a walk and to check for post and then Scarlett made pizza dough for dinner. Ady brought me down a cup of tea and we fitted the plastic to the polytunnel. The drill ran out of charge before we finished so the last few bits of that are still to finish off tomorrow. It’s going to be awesome though, totally made of reclaimed bits and pieces and screws aside was free 🙂 Next to install raised beds around the edges, fill in a path down the centre, put some shelves in and start sowing. Yay!
I more or less weeded and dug over a raised bed, doing it properly takes forever! Loads of chickens came to help though, they sit and wait for you to break apart chunks of soil so they can nab the worms, they are good company chickens 🙂 Work tomorrow morning at post office and then another afternoon of outsideyness. Good for the soul 🙂