A day at home planned for today, particularly as the weather forecast proved right and it was lovely and warm and sunny. Everyone slept in and Ady did a fab cooked breakfast at about 10am which saw us through the day.
I’d brought home a Ray Mears dvd on Friday and the kids and I had watched some of the extras where he made containers from tree bark, lit fires, made drinking water safe and used an axe. Davies particularly liked the axe clips so we all watched some of those again and then Davies and I watched a 4 seasons episode where Ray Mears travels round the UK as the seasons pass and does various bushcraft things in various places.
We all went out into the garden with the plan of clearing the patio area out the back ready to put some crops in. We had a very productive day including chopping up an old rabbit hutch we used to use for the chickens which was so rotten and patched up it was only good for firewood, emptying out loads of old pots of things into the chickens area, clearing loads of rubbish, moving an old green cone and generally tidying up and clearing space.
Both the kids had a go at chopping firewood and did really well with the small axe, Davies created a whole pile of kindling for the fire for the next few nights 🙂
Scarlett installed a stepping stone path in the chicken run with some old roof tiles, Ady dug over the borders and I did a couple of runs to the tip with unfreecycleable / reusable rubbish. We put in some seed potatoes (the growing for schools ones that had been chitting indoors for a few weeks) and Ady and I assembled the mini greenhouse and got some seeds potted up and put in there. More about growing and stuff over on self-suffish for interested parties.
We also cleared the front garden a bit and have another good days work ahead next weekend to get various growing areas we’ve nominated up and running and then we’ll have plenty of stuff growing here at home as well as up at the allotment, which will be great :).
We finally came in at about 5pm just as it was getting colder, the kids had a bath as they were filthy from helping in the garden – Davies said ‘I love days like this, I feel like we really do live on a farm’ :). Ady cooked a lovely roast dinner but it ended up rather later than was ideal and the kids were very hungry by the time dinner was ready at 7pm ish.
We all watched Masterchef Australia and Come Dine with Me before packing D&S off to bed and collapsing into bath / sofa / chilling out. A really nice family weekend 🙂
” old green cone “?
Comment by Michelle — 22 March 2010 @ 10:00 pm
Recycling thing for composting- yes?
Comment by Roslyn — 22 March 2010 @ 10:34 pm
yes – it’s a food digester. It’s for kitchen waste only and you can put pretty much anything in it and providing it is dug in properly and sited in the right location it composts everything down and leeches into the soil below.
We had it years ago when they were given out free, it didn’t work, quickly filled to the top and so we covered it up and left it.
I learnt about them on my course and realised it had not been the right thing for us given the location (it needs full, direct sunlight) and so yesterday we checked it, it had indeed finally composted everything down so we moved it and will use it as an overflow composter if ever needed using just the top bit rather than as a digester.
If anyone is genuinely interested happy to further explain – I did get 97% on my exam 😉 😆
Comment by Nic — 22 March 2010 @ 10:39 pm
thank you 🙂
Comment by Michelle — 22 March 2010 @ 11:54 pm