Mean lack of blogging…
Friday – we spent the day playing with mud. All outside, all collecting samples. We dug some holes down where we want to build and took some samples. We did various tests with them and deduced the soil was not clay-ey enough for cob building. We had lunch and then sent the kids down to the village to get some stuff out of the freezer while Ady and I did some more digging. First at the very top of the croft where the top soil (bad quality top soil it has to be said) goes way deep and everything is wet and boggy. Then to the far west side of the croft where it turns out we found clay. We gathered lots of samples, did jar shaking tests and then went down to the riverside to collect some sandy stuff and experimented with some cob mixes to see what works. We did ball test (drop from waist height and see what happens to the ball) and made various bricks which are in the polytunnel drying out to test further.
I made pizza and bread dough, constructed pizzas and then went down to the village for band practice and did some singing. Was fun 🙂 Back home for dinner but then Scarlett called me to her bedroom and talked to me for about an hour about Stuff She Is Worried About (standard 11 year old girl stuff, nothing that concerns me but obviously needed an audience) after which I was exhausted and went to bed!
Saturday morning Scarlett came to work with me. We had a nice couple of hours, calling at the freezer on the way home to collect some food and popping in to see Fliss and deliver a Herman cake starter to her. Deb took one, as did Abby so that is our four distributed.
Home for lunch and then Ady went down to the village to watch rubgy at Lesley and Bad Neil’s. The kids and I chatted, read, listened to music and just hung out. I popped out to feed the animals and got rained on. I delayed starting dinner as although Ady was supposed to be eating down at the rugby I suspected he may come home hungry. As indeed he did 🙂 I cooked and other than Davies managing to lose two wobbly teeth during the course of dinner it was enjoyable!
Today was a lie in for everyone, except Ady but he never lies in anyway! So brunch rather than two meals. Ady had already been down to the polytunnel for a while but we went down together to do some more and got it all sorted and ready for working in again. I’m now looking forward to spending some time in there and getting things growing.
I had an email from Deb inviting us round later for games, tea and cakes. It was from 430pm so we said we’d be there after 5pm animal feeding and put dinner in the oven really low. We expected to be there for an hour or so but didn’t leave til nearly 9pm which meant it was 930 by the time we’d walked home (and bumped into Gav and Finn, then Bad Neil and Evil Cammus on the way). So we sat down to dinner at Goddard O Clock which we’ve not done for a while. It meant everyone was late to bed and in theory I lost another evening but I have stayed up later to catch up on the basic that it might be Monday tomorrow but I don’t have to get up for work! 🙂 We had a really nice time with Mike & Debs and they have lots of amazing skills we could learn – Debs is teaching me to spin and Mike is going to help us create a sustainable woodland plan for our proposal to rent some woodland.
Tomorrow is Rum Rumble sorting out day.