My Gold medal!

I thought I'd show you my Gold medal I won for team sparring in Soo Bahk Do, on November 15th 2009.

Moles, moving and medals!

It's a bit of an obscure title I know, but that's basically what I've been doing recently!

Moles
First off, the moles. Unfortunately, the molehills started again! I say unfortunately, mainly from the mole's point of view really - unfortunate because this new mole obviously didn't realise he'd picked the wrong garden to explore in.

As soon as the first signs appeared, I rushed online and bought three Dufus mole traps.

The next day they arrived, and I buried them in a mole hill to take away the 'newness'. Two days later, and there were 2 more molehills, and various little places where the mole had popped through the turf, so, grabbing my gardening gloves (moles have an excellent sense of smell) and a trowel, I set to work placing the traps around and between a mound or two.

The first day, nothing happened, but my belief in myself as a mole catcher never faltered once.

The second morning came, and I went to check the traps I had set, and lo and behold SUCCESS!

I have now caught moles on both my last attempts in a day or two - I guess I must be getting the hang of it - especially as I don't know ANYONE who has caught a mole before!

Moving
Last week we hired a Luton van with a tail lift to move the last few remaining large items from our other house, which was not too bad, but it tired me out quite quickly.
Shelving units, armchair, other units - all had to be moved, but luckily I managed to borrow a trolley dolly type thing. It's basically a 1" ply board about 3'x2' with big wheels on the bottom, and it was a godsend to me!

I was able to gain some help from a friend of mine, who helped me move the biggest unit to my in laws house 20 miles away, and take it inside to where they wanted it to be.

I brought my bikes and sidecar home too, which was something I've been wanting to do for a while, but with them both in bits or not working, something I could only do with a van like this one.

My Honda CB750 Chop on the left, and my pre-diversion Yamaha FJ600 on the right.



Medals
I may have mentioned in the past that Kane does a martial art called Soo Bahk Do, well it's something that I also started some time ago after Kane started enjoying it.
I go to lessons in my local Leisure Centre, and am taught by Master Andrew Scriven, of Scriven Martial Arts.

Ever since I started, I've tried my best to embrace the art, and all it's parts, and I have a lot of respect for Master Scriven and all the people in the club. So when I was told of a sparring competition, I jumped at the chance!

A month before the even I was really confident, and keen to have a go and join in...

...the further towards the competition, and my confidence really left me - and by the time the day actually came, I was scared of the unknown, and SO unsure of my own abilities.

However, the competition was in two main parts - sparring (Deh Ryun), and forms (Hyung).

Forms are a vital part of training in the Soo Bahk Do art. Forms are prearranged patterns designed to teach not just technique but art. When a form is performed correctly it is a thing of beauty. There are many hyungs taught in Soo Bahk Do.

Students from around the South East came and performed their own slightly customised forms in groups, which was really interesting, and they had all worked hard to make their performances as interesting as they could.

The second part of the competition was the sparring. Although some people were unable to make it, there were still enough for the Little Ninjas, Juniors and Adults to make it a very enjoyable event.

I was asked to keep time for the Junior sparring, and it's amazing how nervous I was just having to press a single button on the stopwatch! All the kids did so well, and I knew quite a few of them, making it an even more exciting and inspiring occasion.

After the juniors, it was time for the adults, we were placed in 4 teams of three, and given two fights each and the points for each individual were all added together to make a total for the team.

I was placed in Team 1, with two guys from my class - a Black belt called Glen, and a Green belt called Dave.

To cut a long story short, we did very well, Glen and Dave beating opponents, and I also won BOTH my fights - which was blimmin amazing! The first of my fights was against a friend of mine called Martyn, so I was totally out of my comfort zone and so nervous - especially as I didn't want to hit a friend! (Control is the word in sparring, we have to 'pull' our punches).

Team 1 actually WON the competition, and all three of us received Gold medals for our efforts!

It's been a long time since I've been that proud of myself, and I can't wait for the next competition - maybe I'll even get to compete as an individual - something that will REALLY test my nerve!

Fight One!
I start on the right hand side of the screen, and my friend Martyn is on the left.



Fight Two!
I start on the left this time, with a guy called Graig on the right from a different club.



Medals!
Medals are given in reverse order, you'll see me - I'm the baldy, beardy one with glasses at the end!



So I guess this means that Team One are Regional Team Sparring Champions!


Soo Bahk!

Small but beautiful!

There's always a lot of fuss over large vegetables. Large vegetables get their own tables at their own shows, but how many times do we think of small vegetables, and how great they are!?

We've had a lot of success with our tomatoes this year, they've produced most the year, and show no signs of slowing down.

I wanted to share todays pick of items that I collected this morning.

First we have the tiny tomatoes, probably only about 10mm (or 3/8") in diameter.



Then secondly, I thought I'd show you an egg from one of our Silkies. They are always small and white, but perfectly formed little wonders.



So next time you go shopping, or pick your produce from your garden, spare a thought for the little things!

Learning to weld!

It's something I've always wanted to do. I think it started when I bought my first motorbike, and has never gone away - the urge to learn to weld.

Last week, we asked Zak's school to fix his tray on his wheelchair, as on one side the weld had broken, and his tray flapped, meaning he wasn't able to use his switches for his pc - a major part of his free time!

We sent Zak in with a message for their engineering department to have a look and fix the tray/chair. Unfortunately, the trained and experienced engineers could figure out that the weld had broken on a certain part, so did pretty much nothing for Zak.

Annoyed by their lack of common sense, I went down to Halfords, and bought myself a welder, and a few welding supplies like electrodes, wire brush and gloves.

Now I have NEVER welded before - not even picked one up, but I was determined to fix Zak's chair - so onto Youtube I went, and began teaching myself how to weld. After about half hour of watching I decided to go and have a little play to see what was what.

After an hour I thought I had picked up the basics and took the part off Zak's chair that needed fixing.

It took me no more than 10 minutes to drill out the plate, push the bar into the hole and weld everything back together.

Now Zak's tray on his chair is fixed, and rock solid I might say - ok it's not the prettiest weld in the world....

...but it works!


I decided today to make Jo a little pressie, so I found some washers and a bolt and got to work.

Everything went well, apart from when it came to welding the support nail - it just MELTED!

I made a blob on the plate, then hurriedly pushed the nail into it while it was still soft - SUCCESS!

The butterfly is quite small - the plate on the bottom is approx 2" long, and the butterfly stands approx 2.5" tall.

Here is Jo's present, it's not pretty, but at least you can tell what I tried to do...


...and remember - this is only my 5th attempt at welding!!

A busy day!

Yesterday I set about working in our paddock cutting the grass, trimming trees and hedges galore.

Luckily, one of my ladies was there to make the final inspection on my little tractor/mower to make sure everything was safe and in good working order.

Hmmmm.... too many leaves on the footplates...

...the seat seems the right height...



...yep - that's the right height for cutting grass...



...and everything looks ok down here too!



After she was satisfied the everything was to her high standards, she hopped off and let me continue.

Spider engineering

I find Spiders fascinating - horrible - but fascinating. How they spin that brilliant web, with such engineering skill is just so fantastic.

I managed to find a nice one, and took a couple of shots to show both sides of the little thing.



I didn't realise he was having a little snack untill i went to his underside - and couldn't help stay watching him for a while.




Tree tidy

I also cleared some growth around the bottom of this tree, cutting back brambles and removing low branches.



Then I removed a few dead branches, and almost dead branches from this tree. There was a low hanging, long branch on the right of the tree as you look at this photo, which I removed as it wasn't too healthy, and was starting to foul in the nearby apple tree.



Then lastly yesterday, I trimmed approx 60M of hedge, side and top (although I haven't taken a photo of the finished hedge) and so all I need to do now is the part of the hedge on the roadside.

Before...



...and during...




Because the hedge has grown so high (approx 9 or 10 foot) I had to stand on the seat of the tractor - even with my mighty KM90's long reach and bendiness, I just needed that extra length to get to the top of the hedge!

A day to relax!

Since recently Jo and I have been working hard, what with both kids being on holiday, and working at the other house, I decided this morning that today would be totally different.

I gave Jo three options. to go to Chichester or Arundel, to go to some place of her choosing, or to go to Hobbycraft in Crawley. Jo chose the latter, so once the kids were off at school, and we'd had our cup of tea, we set off to see what the store was like.



The store itself was on two floors - much bigger than any other craft shop I'd seen (not that I'd seen many before) and luckily there was a PC World shop nearby, so I decided after bravely going inside the craft shop that I would prefer to spend my time drooling at wonderful electronic gadgets, software and books!



I managed to find a great mouse for my gaming, which is programmable, and is SO much faster than my other mouse, I almost have trouble keeping up with it - or seeing where my arrow on the screen is!

It is the 'Deathadder' mouse, from Razer, and it is AWESOME!

I also bought a Roxio VHS to DVD set, which will enable me to sort out my old video tapes of things like our wedding, and dating back to some of my old gigs I played.

After spending as much time as I could possibly muster in PC World, I thought I'd better go and see how Jo was getting on - and if she needed a hand with the multiple trolleys of stick on's she was going to buy( only joking Jo - please don't kill me!).

As it turned out she was still on the ground floor - so like the dutiful husband I am, I bravely walked around the shop trying to be as interested in everything as I possibly could!

Once Jo had bought some rather interesting little items, and some presents for some kids, we paid for the stuff and left the shop - after being directed to a 'local' pub by the man behind the desk. (The directions took about 5 minutes to listen too - and I forgot what he said after the second turning to be honest!)

We drove sort of homish, sort of going the way the man had said, until we eventually - and by massive stroke of luck - found the place!

The place in question was the Dukes Head in Crawley.

If you go to the website you can see the sort of things they do, but we were greeted in a very friendly manner by our waitress, who gave us a choice of tables.

I'm afraid I went for the unadventurous burger and chips option, and Jo went for a pasta with spicy sausage meal. They were both delicious, and we certainly would go there again!

Once we had finished, we made our way home to play with what we had bought.

What a great way to relax and enjoy each others company!

We had a delightful lunch, Jo was great company, and we decided to try to go out more - even just for a couple of hours now and then.

Bees, Mushrooms and morning dew.

This morning we had free, due to the kids both being elsewhere last night, Jo wanted me to take a couple of photos of a mushroom just off the drive, so I thought I'd share them with you.

I love the detail of the underneath of mushrooms - they have incredible architecture!





Since I had my camera in my hands, I thought I'd see what else was out there this morning, and moved to the back garden to explore.

One of the first things that came to mind was the flowerbed by Zak's room, it has some beautiful colours and the flowers are wonderful.

It was while I was deciding which flower to take a shot of, that I noticed a solitary bee hovering from one flower to another, so I took a couple of shots.

The first shot was of a thistle, and the second shot was caught as it was collecting pollen from inside the flower itself.





The last shot I took this morning was of a spiderweb that was covered in the morning dew.



All I could think of when I saw it was, how you could imagine certain parts of it looking like jewelry.

What do you see?

VICTORY!! Stiggy vs Mole update!

It's been a while since I started an assault on a mole that had been causing me no end of trouble and heartache.

The war started with smoke bombs, to try and push the mole out of our back garden, which worked quite well, making Mr Mole scurry into our paddock area. The main problem with this was that he then had free-reign to dig and burrow for all he was worth. This made it very unstable in the paddock, due to the unbelievable amount of tunnels, which collapsed underfoot and under mower!

Enough is enough I thought, and preceded to buy a couple of mole traps which I didn't have much success with to be quite honest. Mr Mole seemed to delight in back filling the traps until they went off, and then tunnelling around them!

The same thing happened when I used a 'Humane' mole trap. The little wotsit just glued the little tin doors up, and then tunnelled round the trap!

Recently though I thought that Mr Mole had moved on to pastures new - to either the field next door - or to the field across the road - that was until I walked round the chicken run and nearly broke my ankle when I trod on a three way tunnel junction...

...I then realised that the problem hadn't gone away - just out of sight!

I wasn't too optimistic about catching anything, but I thought I'd give it a go before I spent any more money buying a few Dufus mole traps, so off I went into the paddock, armed with two of the traps I'd bought previously.

One of the advantages of a long campaign is that you do actually get to know, or recognise certain signs of mole behaviour.

One of these signs is to find a tunnel just under the surface that ends with a little mound of earth. This is one of his exploration tunnels, which he may or may not come back to and continue on his way.

I roughly tore up the roof of the tunnel about 8" before the mound of earth, and set the trap. The second trap I placed in one of the tunnels I knew the mole was still using. You know Mr Mole is still using the tunnel because you have to flatten all the tunnels in the first place to see if he repairs any - then BINGO, you know where he goes!

I went back to the traps the next day, and didn't think anything of the trap that had gone off - but i took it out and looked into the tunnel...

...low and behold, I saw a little tiny paw sticking into the tunnel - I didn't want to get too excited, just in case I'd actually caught a rat or some other animal...

...slowly i grabbed the little paw...

...pulled it out of the tunnel...

...IT WAS MR MOLE!!!

I pretty much whooped with joy - I know it sounds silly, but no-one I know has had ANY success in catching or killing moles.

I was exalted!

Straight away I brought Mr Mole to the house like the proud hunter I was, and showed Jo who took the photos, and although Kane wasn't too impressed with it, hopefully it will help to harden him up to country life a bit.

One thing I remember is a comment on my first post about the moles (which I deleted), from a professional mole catcher - which pretty much pooh-poohed my attempts at mole catching, suggesting instead I contact a 'proper' mole catcher to do the job, as I was unlikely to get any results, and I was just wasting my money.

Well I hope you're reading this Mr Mole Catcher - because you are totally and utterly WRONG!

ANYONE can catch a mole, and it's even easier I hear with the Dufus traps - you just have to know what you're looking for in the first place in order to set the traps in the correct place!

I feel like I have just come of age!

:D

School Sports Day.

Since I'm on the subject of summer, nothing symbolises the break up from school for the long, summer holidays than the School Sports Day.

Kane recently had his, and it's always a great day, with a chance to watch the kids having fun, and (sometimes) getting that competitive feeling.

An awful lot of schools, I hear, in the UK have stopped the tradition of sports day because they don't want their pupils to feel in any way inadequate by losing a race!
Personally I have the opinion that in order to survive this wonderful and difficult life, we have no choice but to teach kids the bad with the good - and how to cope with losing occasionally...

...even if it IS losing the 'running with a plastic cone on the head' race!!

Anyway, I digress.

The way the Sports Day works at Kane's school is they have lots of different events placed within the school grounds, each one being run by either a parent or one of the older kids at the school. Last year I ran the 'kick the football at targets on a wall' event, and felt I missed out in a big way from not being able to see Kane compete.

This year was different. This year I decided to drop all responsibility, and to follow Kane round and give him support. Jo and I went together and I decided to take a few snapshots of the day. I wish I could post more than I have here - but to be honest, I actually took 192 photos of the day!

So be prepared for lots of photos here - I'll just put a quick note saying what each one is!

Kane's 1st event of the day - 'balancing 3 tennis balls on a tray race'

Dribbling ball round cones.

Get a score with beanbags.

Standing long jump.

Run to get 1st beanbag and put it in bucket, then 2nd beanbag etc...

...then run carrying bucket to finish line.

Dribble football round cones.

Skipping race (which Kane was WAY in the lead until he got caught up in the rope!)

Famous 'cone on the head and run as fast as you can' race.

Egg and spoon race.

Having a laugh between events!

The sack race.

Get score by throwing balls in baskets.

See how many times you can bounce the ball on the racket event.

Obstacle course race.

Last event - get as many balls through the hoop with 3 balls.

We were so proud of Kane, and the way he handled himself during the day. It was lovely to see how much he had improved at certain events, and just how wonderful he was generally with everything that was given to him to do.

All in all everyone had a really fun day, the kids behaved impeccably (as did most of the parents!) and no one was mortally wounded or put into deep depression by any of the events.

Memories of summer

I haven't really got time to blog in a regular fashion at the moment, but I thought I'd share with you some fun that happened over the summer, when my Mum and Dad came over and helped to set up our crops in our polytunnel.

I thought I'd give my Dad a bit of a laugh - so decided to take him on a race around our garden on my little tractor with him in the trailer!



As you can see he enjoyed himself rather more than I thought he would!

Then we had to get down to the task of moving some of our wonderful, fantastically broken down compost and chicken manure. Part of the reason our manure is so fine, is that when the ladies free range - they scratch around and turn everything over, leaving us with almost a find sand like texture!



We had some great success with all of our crops - in fact probably TOO much success as we have been unable to eat everything we've grown and had to resort to handing out various vegetables to friends and family!

Well, that's me done for a little while - I hope to be able to write more posts as time allows - but seeing as we have both kids now for 6 weeks summer holiday - who knows!?

Take care,

Stiggy

Apologies

I apologise for my lack of posts recently, we've been rather busy in life, but hope to return soon as I get enough time!

I hope you'll still check back once in a while!

:D

Another loss today.

I thought it was sad the other day when Cherie died, but it seems she may not have just 'died' as such.

I was standing in the school playground, chatting to a couple of the dads I know, when my mobile phone rang. Jo was on the phone telling me that a fox had attacked the chickens and one of the hens had been got, so I rushed in to get Kane from school. Luckily it was home time, so I asked Kane's teacher if I could take him right away.

We rushed home to find Jo in the paddock, she told me that she heard some racket, and rushed outside to see what the matter was. Jo saw the fox attacking one of the hybrid hens - the brown ones - and told me that Rhydian had stood up for the girls, clucking and flapping his wings at the fox!

Jo herded the chickens under the big fir tree, and protect them until the fox ran away.

Unfortunately, Jo told me that when she got to the hen that was attacked, she picked her up and she was breathing very fast, then she lay her head on Jo's arm and closed her eyes. Then she was gone.

From now on, I will only let my 'ladies' free range when I'm there to protect them. It's a shame as it's lovely to know they're enjoying themselves without my watchful eye.

I guess it's just the country way.

Overdue update!

Today I thought I'd put some time aside before I start anything else, to update my blog on a few things.

Recently I laid some turf down for our back lawn, it was the first time I had ever tried doing this job, but it seemed to go quite well.

I have had to go back up to twice a day to water some patches that have dried out, but it seems to have been worth the time spent, as the odd strand of green has been seen poking out of the straw coloured turf.

R.I.P Cherie

Unfortunately we found Cherie dead in the paddock the other day - I had let them out in the morning, as is usual, and when I went to put them away, I found poor Cherie lying down.

It seems she may have had the same thing happen to her as one of our older chickens some time ago - although my medical skills are limited, there were no marks on her, and no feathers littering the grass around her - so she must have gone very quick which is a good thing.

Cherie was one of five rescue chickens we picked up last year, and she was especially endearing as she had a twisted beak, which is why we named her after Cherie Blair!

She was one of the few hens that let me pick her up, more than the others anyway, so it is especially sad that she would be the one to go.

Rest in peace Cherie - we'll always remember you!

Kane rises the ranks!

Kane has been doing really well at Little Ninjas, he seems to have a natural flair for martial arts.

Well the other week he successfully passed the grading to give him his new belt - the yellow belt with a green stripe.

Every training session he goes to he receives a tag on his belt, and every time he gets 8 tags on his belt, he is eligible to do the grading for the next belt. Kane now does 2 sessions a week, and gets 2 tags a week, this has cut down the time he takes to get a new belt - not that it's rushed or anything - the test is quite comprehensive for the next belt.

Here he is in a fighting stance, with his new belt!

What a sod!

No - I'm not swearing at anyone - I'm just describing what sort of job I did yesterday!

Now, you may remember I worked very hard at lifting the old turf off our back lawn at our old house...

...well yesterday I spent the day lifting sods and carefully placing them in a weird sort of puzzle on the bare ground.

I was told by the nice man who delivered to me from Perfect Turf that I should lay the turf round the edges of the garden and work to them - that way I'd get a nice clean edge along the border, rather than a jagged line where I'd cut them in.

I started nice and quickly, I think it was because it was a new and exciting job that I'd never done before. Either that or someone had secreted a strange chemical into the turf, cos either way it seemed fun!

I decided (all by myself!) that I was going to lay the turfs in a brick formation, this seemed effective and gave me straight lines that I could work to. I hadn't bothered to set out wires or string, mainly because I couldn't be bothered - but mainly because I didn't have any wire or string to set out.

Now then, I was a little stuck for something to cut the turf with, but I found in a kitchen draw a table knife, so with this in hand I set out to trim that turf!





I had a break to go pick Kane up from school, then I went straight back to the matter in hand.



After finishing the job at last, I plugged the hose in and gave the whole lot a lovely long drink, to give it a good start in life.

Job done!

Ocassionally I find causes that I want to support, and this is one of them. We took some ex batts in last year, and so I feel it's good to give something extra back.

The below rescue is in Norfolk.

The following is what I have been asked to copy and post on this blog;

Little Hen Rescue desperately need homes for the last remaining battery hens of a farm due to shut down. The slaughter man has been booked by the farmer for 29th June, these hens will be slaughtered unless homes are found ASAP. After spending 18 miserable months of their short lives in a hell hole, never seeing daylight or grass, never knowing what the sun feels like on their backs, they will be held by the legs and roughly put into crates, loaded up like rubbish and killed. All for cheap crappy eggs.

Many co-ordination points have and are being set up to accommodate as wide an area for re homing as possible. If you can give a home to some very needy hens, or can help in other ways ie putting up posters or donating, please contact LHR @ http://www.littlehenrescue.co.uk/
If you have been thinking about re homing some ex battery hens but are unsure, please feel free to join the Ex Battery Hens Forum for very friendly and helpful advice http://www.exbatteryhens.com/

If you are a blogger, please pop a post on your blog to help raise awareness.

Please, support LHR and help them to get these hens out.

Many thanks for reading,

Stiggy

To turf or not to turf.

We're sprucing up the house we've just moved from, so we can put it on the market, one of the jobs that we had designated to a pro was the garden.

Since the grass hadn't been cut since last October, it had grown long, bent over and made clumps all over the lawn. Unfortunately, the areas underneath the clumps had been starved of light, and the grass had died away, leaving random lumps and bumps...

...not to mention the size of the ant hills - which stood like mini volcanoes amongst the grass!

We decided to get some quotes for re turfing the lawn - that is, to take up all the old grass and top layer of soil, and replace it all with lovely new turf. After we had spoken to a few people, we received a quote to do 140m2, which we felt was way over what we expected, so we took the decision for me to do it myself. In the meanwhile, I cut the grass to see how bad the problem was.





The problem was, I found a turf website that could deliver all the turf for the job for 1/10 of the quote - and the machine to do the job was only cheap for 2 days - so onto the phone I went to organise the machine to be delivered.



After the turfing machine had been delivered, it took me a little while to figure out how to use it, adjust it and make it work for me, but luckily it didn't take very long at all! (I seem to have an affinity with anything with a petrol engine!)



I decided to do only the main part of the lawn, as the bank was too difficult to get the machine on, and anyway - it's not a well used area of grass.



It took me two afternoons (6 hours) to take the turf off the areas I wanted to, which I was very pleased about, as I had never used one of these machines before.

After all the turf was taken up, I had to order a skip, then another afternoon was spent moving all the old stuff into the skip.

Once everything had been cleared and raked to get the nasty stones and lumps out the way, I went round with my weed sprayer and attacked any weeds I could find.



The two tons of topsoil came the next day, and I set about wheelbarrowing the soil to the back garden.

The quote we received was for a group of men to work for about 3 days to re turf our garden...

...had I been able to work full days at the house I would have been able to do the job - on my own - in just 3 days!

I still have a small area to put top soil on before I order the actual turf, which I'll do today, but the really back breaking work is done now - so I'm happy!

While I was working, I found quite a few slow-worms. Most were small, but one was quite large.





I love snakes (never felt like owning one though!), and although I would never expect to actually see a snake in the wild over here in the UK, it was nice to at least be able to hold a slow-worm, and see it's little tongue darting in and out - tasting the air around it...



...I wonder what it thought of me!

(Jo caught me resting and having a drink after figuring out the turf machine)

Grass fun!!

Well, I'm sure not everyone can say that they have had fun with their lawns...

...but I certainly can!!

I have been REALLY busy recently, doing all sorts of jobs and things that have, in all honesty, totally knackered me out!

A few days ago, the weather started to be nice, dry and sunny, so I took the opportunity to get my little tractor out of the shed and cut the back lawn.

In previous attempts, it has only been towards the end of the job that the lines have been reasonably straight and uniform, but today was my lucky day, and almost straight away they were looking good!



As well as cutting the grass, there are some patches of bare earth, which needed to be sown with grass seed. The largest of all these patches was left when a soakaway (basically a big hole in the ground filled with rubble and stones, to let the rainwater drain away properly) was never sorted out.

Jo took some photos of me in the process of sowing the seed rather well I think - you can see how much effort I put in, and how exciting the job was! You've heard of 'extreme sports' well this was 'extreme seeding'!



Once the seed was sown, the ground was in need of a good watering, which again Jo managed to capture rather well!

(Please note the hose on the extreme right of the picture before you think bad of me!)

I then covered the area with bird netting to prevent the little blighters eating all my lovely new grass seed!

This was the start of my outdoor action hero stuff, more to come very soon!

Not so little Ninja!

Kane has been going to little ninjas for just over a month, and last session he picked up his brand new uniform for it!

Little Ninjas is actually a Korean martial art called Soo Bahk Do, and is taught in our local area by the Scriven family. You can find more information by following their link.

Soo Bahk Do was originally called 'Tang Soo Do', but reverted to it's original native name back in the 80's.

When the children go to Little Ninjas, they do a lot of exercise and practice games with their basic moves, which is a really good way of getting them to perfect each move. So for example, they run around the hall around 4 instructors who are all holding pads to hit, and the kids have to hit the pads with either a palm strike, a punch, a chop or a jump.

Kane loves doing these and you really can see the concentration on his face - it's a joy to behold, especially as some of the kids there are probably made to go by their parents - in fact one parent asked if I was taking Kane to Little Ninjas for the discipline aspect of martial arts, I just laughed because we have no problems at ALL with Kane in that respect, and asked Kane why he wanted to go to L.N, to which he replied;

"I want to learn how to kick butt!"

I think that was all that needed to be said really!

There is a little history in Martial arts in our family - I used to practice 'Wing Chun' before I met Jo and got married.

Wing Chun is the Martial art that Bruce Lee first started when he was around 13, although he took several Martial art styles and blended them into his own made system called Jeet Kune Do - 'Way of the Intercepting Fist'.

Kane and I really enjoy performing the 'Forms', which are a series of moves linked together to create a display of moves that the student has learnt.

For Kane's first belt he will have to perform 2 moves of the first form, something he should easily be able to do as together we have learnt the first 10-12 moves!

He looks forward to every lesson, and receives a tag each lesson. After he has collected 8 tags, he then goes to the grading for the next belt - this system is a wonderful way of keeping the kids interested and focuses on their goal.

Would you mess with this kid!?

Dad's Taxi duties gone mad!

Most parents realise that at some point, their driving skills will be asked for by their children.

Most parents expect the odd lift into town, or to drive their little precious ones to one of their friends houses...

Most parents probably don't get asked to drive them around their garden though!

I had to go to the garden centre and get some compost and top soil, and rather than carry the whole lot round to the back of the house, I decided to use the trailer I'd bought for my little tractor.

Kane saw me hitching the trailer up, and asked if he could go for a ride, so, being me, I found some old carpet and put it in the back of the trailer for him to sit on.



Although I didn't go as fast as he would have liked, Kane definitely loved the experience.

The whole thing reminded me of when I was younger. My parents used to take us on a lot of holidays in the UK when we were kids, and every day was packed with activities or visits to various places, depending on where we were of course.

One of these visits was to a Shire Horse farm type place, where we were pulled around the farm in a big trailer with benches either side.

So back to Kane - I thought he'd be sitting up straight in the trailer like I told him to, and when I turned round to see if he was ok and not being bumped around too much...

...I saw that he was lounging with his arms behind his head!



It just made me laugh, as that's typical of him to relax like that.

Trimming time again!

It's one of those things I've been putting off, and with the bad weather it's not been difficult to wait for better weather...

...but today it's absolutely beautiful here. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the hedge was screaming for a trim!



One of the reasons I've been putting it off is because I didn't have the equipment to do the job, I mean, I have the hedge trimmer, I have the harness and the head/ear protection and now I have the bollards to put in the road to make people aware that something is going on by the side of the road.

I put the bollards outside the double yellow lines, giving me an extra 2' working space on top of the 2' or 3' that I have on the walkway.

Putting on my safety vest, and hoping I wouldn't blind the oncoming traffic too much, I set about trimming.

Last year I trimmed the inside of the hedge, in our paddock, but I couldn't reach the very top of the hedge - at least the outside of it - so this was, if you like, the completion of a job started last year!

Half way along I realised I was very hot - being a very sunny day and all, and I took off my harness, my safety vest and my padded thermal builders shirt...

...soon as I had done so, I suddenly realised that my T shirt was soaked in sweat and with the breeze it made me totally frozen, so, I waited for all the traffic to go by that had seen me take all my gear off, then hurriedly put it all back on again!
The main problem with this was that my T shirt and my shirt had cooled down in the breeze, making all my stuff wet AND cold...

....NIIIIICE!

I moved the traffic cones up for my next section and carried on with my work, fussing slightly over the odd twig sticking out of the hedge - can't have wispy bits on OUR hedge you know!

Just as I got to the end of the hedge the engine started to run out of petrol, and luckily I just managed to finish the top before the engine cut out completely.



Today we're having a gardening day. Potatoes need to be planted (a little late) and we have several small shrubs to be planted on.

Maybe the rotorvator will come out today - who knows!

;)


I know one thing - we're going to spend as much time outside today as we can, as it really is such a wonderful day!

At the farm

Jo and I took a short drive up the road to the local farm the other day, this farm has a 'Maize Maze' and lots of animals to look at and learn about, and a lot of local schools go there for a visit so the children can see animals they might not ordinarily see every day.

Just as you drive in there are a few bits of land that hold sheep, pigs and goats. The goats were soaking up the rays on a lovely and warm sunny day!



This one was fast asleep in the sun.



I tried to get some good shots of the sheep that were there but they kept running away or doing rude things!



This photo of one of the pigs doesn't do it justice as far as scale goes - it was MASSIVE!




** EDIT **

Just put the pig photo in it's rightful place - thanks Jo and Ads!

Moles, mowers and Little Ninjas!

This week has been quite busy, what with one thing and another, and I haven't had time to do a post a day - I'm sorry!

Mole attacks!

It started off this week, with more attacks from the mole - THIS time the little wotsit had tunnelled alongside of the humane trap I put in his tunnels!!

Down went two Talpex traps, nothing yet, but I have high hopes as I found the main run between the paddock and the back lawn.

We will see how that goes.

First time for everything!

This week I went out on my lil tractor mower thingy, and not only skimmed the grass and made it all uniform length, it also flattened all the molehills that were over there - after I had dug up the molehills of course! ;)

...but the thing that I wanted to mention, was that one of my ladies - I'm pretty sure she is one of the rescue hens, the one that took on Rhydian once. She has a large comb, quite dark pink/red, but she always follows me round.

Some of my ladies let me stroke them when Rhydian isn't looking, but don't usually do more than that.

Today was different - the aforementioned hen jumped up on my leg as I was sitting on the mower!!

It was really nice chatting to her gently and having her up on my leg - it was a brilliant moment - and a first for me!

Little Ninjas!

Kane has wanted to do martial arts for a long time now. We went to look at a class, about a year ago, called 'Little Ninjas' which is taught at our local leisure centre.

It teaches Soo Bahk Do that originated in Korea, and is a martial art that actually evolves rather than sticking to old forms and techniques.

Kane had remembered all the moves he saw on that one visit to watch a class a year ago so well - he jumped straight in the class and looked like he'd been doing it for ages!

I am SO proud of my boy - he did REALLY well!!

One of the tutors gave him a second hand belt for FREE! Kane also got a 'tag' of insulation tape on his belt.

How the tags work is that you get one tag after each lesson, and once you have eight tags you are then able to do a 'grading' or test in front of the tutors, if you pass you go to the next colour belt!

Oh it's all so exciting, and Kane loves it!

I even got offered a months free trial to see if I would like it - I used to do Wing Chun kung Fu quite some years ago, and want to take up something alongside my (starting soon) gym work.

Here's Kane showing us a 'high block'.

Trimming time!

The other day we decided collectively that the hedges needed a trim, so out with my KM90 I went to smarten up the high hedges in the front.

I have to say here, that my love for power tools and engines really comes into it's own with jobs like this - I could quite happily work all day long doing anything that involved powertools or engines!!

Anyway - back to reality here - it was the first time that I've done the front heges, so I wasn't quite sure of the actual 'shape' of the things, so I went very carefully, and didn't scalp them too much.

Once the cutting had been done, Kane decided to want to help me pick the trimmings up, so after getting dressed for a cold day, we both ventured out, armed only with a fork, rake, wheelbarrow and tons of enthusiasm!



I obviously had to make sure he was doing the job properly, so I found myself in a supervisory role most of the time (below) - mainly as Kane refused to give me the rake! (see picture above)



Although Kane was really helpful I couldn't help feel sorry for the little chap when it came to using the tools and also moving the wheelbarrow, but he did a valiant job. We went to the shed to get his own wheelbarrow which is about 2 feet long and is much, MUCH lighter - also his trowel and hand fork.



Complete with his own gear, his enthusiasm was renewed, and off we went again - first raking into separate piles, then lifting the trimmings into our respective barrows.



Kane was a great help, and we had a lot of fun do 'extra' raking and clearing, as for some unexplained reason, the trimmings seemed to fly across at each other ...

...I have no idea how that happened at all!?!

;)

Mole Update No.2

Well the mole hasn't shown much activity recently apart from 2 mole hills, but the little wotsit is digging furiously around our paddock and garden, 2" under the surface and creating a very unstable ground to walk on!

The other week I was trying to buy some 'Victor©' mole traps - a plunger with spikes on - but unfortunately, although they are one of the most effective mole traps in the world, the UK doesn't like them - so there you go, no dead moles!

I did however manage to find another type of trap, which I am trying out at the moment, called a Talpex trap.



I have set them and they've gone off, but no success at the moment - BUT I recently read that to set these babies properly, you have to literally JUST set the trigger - as fine as you can, and also lay them slightly on their side.

I put both these snippets of information to use yesterday, as I went on a flurry of trap setting!

First I managed to find 2 big runs, main runs, in which I set 2 Talpex traps - then I managed to find the main run going from the paddock, under the path, and into our back lawn. Here I placed a humane mole trap, with the hope that should it get scared by the Talpex's going off - it may run into that one instead!



Mole watch is certainly getting interesting - you start to get to know the 'ways' of the mole you're hunting - it really gets quite personal after a while!

Jo says to get a 'Moleman' in to get rid of our problem, but being a normal, typical man, I just HAVE to sort this out myself!

:D

Be aware of Strokes - act F.A.S.T.!

I'm not usually one for this sort of thing, but recently there has been a lot of publicity on Strokes in the UK - no I'm not talking about loving encounters between partners, but the medical condition.

No-one I know has had a stroke, but the symptoms can sometimes be quite small - so I imagine a lot of people have strokes without even knowing that they've had one!

A quote from the NHS (National Health Service in the UK) F.A.S.T. website;

A stroke is caused by a disturbance of blood supply to the brain. Strokes are the leading cause of disability in the UK and the third most common cause of death after cancer and coronary heart disease. There are two main types of stroke, ischaemic and haemorrhagic which require different types of treatment.

What the campaign is saying is the following;

F - Has their face fallen on one side? Can they smile?

A - Can they raise both arms and keep them there?

S - Is their speech slurred?

T - Time to call 999 if you see any single one of these signs.

More from the NHS website;

A stroke is a medical emergency that requires immediate medical attention. So
recognising the signs and calling 999 for an ambulance is crucial. Quick
diagnosis of stroke is important to understanding the cause, the damage done and
what immediate medical treatment is needed. The sooner somebody who has had a
stroke gets the right medical attention the better their chances of a good
recovery. So minutes really do matter.

I thought I'd do a little research into the subject since I have no prior knowledge of strokes, and found a very interesting couple of pages on what Strokes actually feel like, so here's that link too;

http://dailystrength.org/c/Stroke/forum/474410-answer-does

As I get older, things like this stick in my mind, let's be honest - they scare me!

I'd like to say I played a small part in making people aware of this serious, but misunderstood, medical emergency.

If you click on the picture on the right it will take you to the NHS website on this campaign. - please take a moment and visit - it could save you or someone you love!

Visit to the seaside.

The other day, very soon after receiving my new lens, Jo and I decided to take a visit to a nearby coastal town.

We dined at the most magnificent MacDonalds, and then took a stroll around, over a bridge and back again to our car.

Every time I drive into this town I always love the boat that greets you as you enter - and since I've had my camera, I always say - every time - I really MUST take a few shots of it!

Well today was perfect, so I thought I'd show you what it looks like.



What I love about this old boat is the ropes. You can see over the years where new ropes have been added and tied together, and the wonderful colour of the rust just adds to the whole feeling of a boat that's been loved for a long time.




This next shot is one of my favourites, if not my favourite shot. I wanted to capture the vivid blue of the old tarpaulins, and the ropes hanging, what with the rust in the foreground, it makes for a great view!



It started to turn really cold - especially with the wind chill, so we decided to make our way back to the car. Walking across the bridge, we noticed the timber moorings and decked area across the other side;



..one thing I said I wanted to do with my new lens, was to catch a bird in flight - this one is an ordinary Seagull, but I was amazed at how good the zoom was on my 55-200mm lens, after I had a closer look at this shot!



All in all it was a great afternoon, I really enjoyed myself - and Jo did too - albeit a little on the chilly side!

;)

It's almost DONE!!

I have now combined both of my blogs into this one.

I have tagged all the posts from my other blog with D40 - clicking on this in the 'tag cloud' will show you all the posts, I thought I'd do this to save any confusion.

Hopefully this new and improved blog will entertain the photographers amongst my readers AND my chicken crowd!

I hope you enjoy your stay!

Stiggy

:D

Normal service will be resumed shortly!

I would like to apologise to anyone who reads this blog regularly, if the colours or layouts are strange for the next short while.

This is because I have decided to combine my photography blog with my normal blog.

I will also be changing the graphics, colours and fonts in time, not all at once, and that is why I am apologising in advance for the mayhem that may ensue!

Some items are missing like my blog roll and friends etc, but stick with me, and everything will be sorted as soon as I can possibly manage!

Many thanks,

Stiggy

:D

New toy!

Today Jo received an interesting package in the post...

...it was my Birthday present which Jo very kindly said I could have early!

It's a 55-200mm VR DX Nikon lens!!!

I was so happy to get this, I tried it out on various things, and soon discovered I loved it!

Here are a couple of my first photos to be taken with it!

Early Birthday Present!!

WOOHOO!

Well, this morning came an AWESOME surprise!

Jo had bought me a 55-200mm VR DX Nikon lens!!!!

I've been after one of these for a little while now, so hopefully I should be able to get a lot better and closer shots to the wildlife in our gardens!

Here's one of the first shots I took (through a window!)



I shall have fun with this - I've already thought of loads of ideas!

:D

Snow!

I took a walk around the local area this morning, as we had 6" of snow fall, and what a sight - it's amazing at how you want to capture EVERYTHING!

However, I did managed to take over 400 photos, so you'll have to excuse me if they sort of filter onto this blog - there's a lot of sorting out to do.

I haven't touched up these photos, as I'm still unsure of which ones to properly mount and display, but these should give an idea of the wonderful countryside we live in.

The main (ish) road outside our house...



The path walking down to the fishing lakes...



I loved seeing this - the eye wants to follow the path up and past the sign...



This is a box to hold the local fishing information leaflet...



A similar shot to one on an earlier post...



I loved the reflections on the lakes, it's almost like a winter wonderland.



I hope you enjoy these photos!

Snow! Lots of snow!

Well what a surprise - I was only reading my friend Don's blog about the snow they've been getting recently, and lo and behold - we get it this morning!

I went out early to take some photos, walking down to the fishing lakes a few hundred meters away - you can see them on my photography blog here.

Both Kane and I made sure we were warmly dressed before venturing out to the garden centre a few doors down to buy Kane some Wellies, which luckily they had in his size!

Once we were TOTALLY prepared, we went to the back garden to have a muck about and make a snowman.

Kane spent a lot of time running around in the snow - it's the most snow he has ever seen!



He also made a couple of 'snow angels', but by the time he was finished, he was caked in snow from head to toe, and with a massive smile on his face.

We usually have a theme when we build our snowmen, you see usually we make them on Jo's car as we don't get that much, so we have to make mini snowmen...

...last year or the year before we made the three monkeys (hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil)...



...and this year we were able to make a big snowman due to the amount of snow we have. In places the snow is 6" deep, and as I write, the snow is falling heavily again, so expect possibly up to another 6" of snow today!



Anyway, getting back to the snowman, this year it sort of evolved into a 'Stiggy snowman' I made the beard and put my hat on - can you tell the difference?



Zak was watching from inside in the warm, and Kane and I decided to give him a snow fight, so we made lots of snowballs and threw them at the patio doors - Zak REALLY enjoyed his part, and loved every snowball that hit the glass.



With all this snow falling, who knows - we may even be able to make an igloo or something else...


...we shall have to wait and see!

;)


(**EDIT**

I just added the photo of the 3 monkeys...I mean snowmen!)

Photos from Kane's Birthday!

I forgot to put these on the other post about Kane's Birthday - so here they are!

Kane's Invite to his party!



Kane Skywalker!



Lio and Kane



Serious player!



Fun Stiggy!



Important business at Pizzahut!



OIY!



And Kane's Nintendo DS cake!



Kane's Birthday card from us (made by little old me)

6 already!

Our son Kane was 6 yesterday.

I took him Bowlplex and then to Pizzahut with two of his friends, in Brighton Marina.

We took a while to get to the Marina, as the traffic was surprisingly bad on the way, but we made it with a couple of minutes to spare - unfortunately the others were a little late and didn't turn up til just before we were booked to start, but that was ok as the queue at Bowlplex was massive - so we would have had to wait anyway!

Soon as we had our shoes, we made our way to 'Lane 25' which was to be our lane for the evening.

After opening the presents that his friends brought him, we settled down to play a very serious game.

When the scores started to come in, and I had hit my first strike, I decided to make teams up, with me and Kane being 'Team K'.

Luckily we did quite well, and although not bothering the pro's, Kane racked up a very decent score of 96, while I managed to get the top score of 124 - making 'Team K' the winners!

Next to Pizzahut - again it was really busy, with the queue going out the door - but again, SuperDad strikes again, and we had booked a table in advance - one of the circular booths which we could see from the door.

My American friend somehow made his way past everyone to ask a waitress if that was indeed our table - which it was - so we all piled in and took our places.

The boys has an individual pizza, while me and my mate got stuck into a free pizza which had been made wrong but was free!

While Martin and I were tucking into our proper pizza (meat feast of course!) the boys were tucking into their icecream and sweets from the icecream 'base'.

All in all it was a great afternoon/evening, and everyone enjoyed themselves with out too many tears.

In the evening I helped Kane making his lego models, and we relaxed in front of the TV tired out from the earlier excitement.

:D

Noooooo!

I can't BELIEVE it!

It's back again - and this time with vengance and furious anger!

The mole has made not one, not two, but THREE mole hills!

I crept out there this morning with spade in hand, ready to bop the lil fella on the head when I saw one hill moving. Crouching not 3 foot away from the animated mole hill, I waited, like a hunter hunting it's prey - spade in hand!

Just as the zenith of mole hill eruption hit, I brought down the spade with all my might, but after having a look - the thing had run off - honestly - how the heck does it move so fast!?!?

I'm going to be out there this afternoon after our special Macdonalds takeaway, putting the next level of trap - the humane mole trap!

Rest here ye weary traveller.

Ever since the builders had finished, there was something missing in a little tiny room between the utility room/ Jo's workshop, and the side door and Kitchen.

We keep our empty egg boxes and things there, I did put up a coat hook a little while back, but still something was missing.

Almost every day I have to take my boots off out there and because of the egg boxes and other nic-naks laying about, there is only just enough space for my boots to go, so I decided to make a little bench, so I could sit down and take my boots off in comfort, and also to be able to put my boots underneath nice and neat.

I spent a few hours measuring up, making and varnishing the bench, and personally speaking, I'm very pleased with it - and it's look.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you...


...Stiggy's Bench!

Quick update!

Well, that was funny...

...I was just answering the comments on my post about the Barn Owl, when Jo walked into the room and asked if there was any mole hills today, so I told her I had noticed a small fist-sized lump next to an old mole hill and thought nothing of it.

Jo went in to get Zak dressed for the day, when I heard a little squeal, and Jo shouted out that the hill was moving!

So I took a look, and sure enough the molehill WAS moving, so I rushed and got my coat and boots on to go outside.

I picked up a spade from by the shed, and tip toeing round to the hill I braced myself.

When I was within 10 feet of the hill I took a few large steps and...


...WHAM!!!!!

I brought the spade down on the mole hill, and dug frantically to see the mole.

Unfortunately the little wotsit had already gone, but it must have moved incredibly quickly to get away, as the hill was still moving when i was 1 step away from it.

Thinking I'd take action against this little critter, I put a smoke bomb down into the tunnel, and hopefully the coating of castor oil will put him off again for a while!

Barn owl visits us!

Last night, just as the Sun was thinking about going to bed, we noticed something circling and swooping the field next door to us.

We looked a bit closer and saw it was an Owl!

I have never seen an Owl in the wild before, so I was very excited, as were the rest of the family.

Unfortunately it isn't my Birthday yet, so I wasn't able to zoom in as much as I'd like to, but still, I managed to capture it sitting on one of the posts on our boundry.

Like the Woodpecker shot, I have provided a zoom pic so you can see a little bit more detail.

Back to it!

Well, today I received two packages, one containing smoke bombs, and one containing humane mole traps.

The smoke bombs certainly seemed to do wonders - of course they may have just stunned the moles into submission, but who cares when they aren't pushing up as much soil or breaking peoples ankles on their tunnel network...

...WHICH by the way is totally ridiculous! You'd be amazed at how many tunnels these things can do.

Aparrently they can tunnel 4M in one hour...

...that's just over 13 FEET in ONE hour!!

It's not the fact that the tunnels are only about 2 inches in diameter, it's the fact that there are so MANY tunnels, and sometimes they make a sort of junction under the grass, thus making the tunnel into a small cavern underneath - i've lost my footing more than once in these junctions, I can tell you!

So anyway, I got these things in the post this morning, and I will eagerly use them as soon as there is more evidence of moles again - for at the moment everything is quiet on the front line.

I took my mower/tractor out onto the back lawn, and drove around flattening the tunnels and molehills so I would be able to see any new ones, or signs where the little blighter was living and hunting.

So far no signs of life - which may be a good sign that they've moved on.

Of course, it may be a sign that they've decided to breed like mad, then come at me with a whole army of tunnelling little horrors!

Luckily moles are solo animals apart from at breeding time, and very territorial, so I probably actually only have two moles on our land (well hopefully anyway!).

Let's see what happens over the next few days - I'll keep you informed!

A break in the fight.

It's not all doom and gloom at our place, we have a regular visitor that seems to live in our garden - a Green Woodpecker.

It loves to peck on our 'Nothing Tree' - so named by our builder who's family were farmers, and as he walked round telling us what each tree and plant was, on a break from working, he walked past this tree and just said;

"This Tree - oh it's nothing"

So we decided to call it the 'Nothing Tree'!

Anyway, our Woodpecker likes nothing better than to sit on this tree and peck away, probably for food.

It also flies down and gets food from our lawn, and I managed to snap it with my standard lens on my camera. (I'm getting a zoom lens for my Birthday I hope!). It was sitting just outside the window where my PC is.

Here's a close up.

New year walk.

I managed to get out with my camera and go for a little walk down the fields next to our house, and found a really nice little path running along the Hedgerow.

I was experimenting with various things, shutter speed, aperture etc and was quite pleased with the results, I WILL get to be off the auto modes... I WILL!!

I've been reading a lot about various techniques and although I'm not ready to try most of them, I thought I'd just go out, play about with the settings, and see what happened.

So here we go...

The bottom of the field next door - I love the shape of trees in Winter, and hedges - gotta love hedges!




I saw this Ivy on a tree and loved the icy leaves, with the flash it really brought the Ivy out from the background.



This is looking towards Lewes, but again, the frostiness of the nettles seemed to grab me when I walked past. I love taking this sort of photo, with the depth of field thing going on!



This next photo was one of my more experimental photographs, I have seen in books wonderful long exposures of waterfalls, rocky coast lines...

...unfortunately all we have round our place is a pipe sticking out the ground with a little stream (although we DO have the fishing lakes at the bottom of the field next door - photos to come one day).

I decided to use the Gorilla tripod I got for Christmas, plus my shutter remote.
I experimented with lots of different settings, a lot of my photos were over exposed, and I soon learnt that I didn't have to have the shutter open for too long to get the effect I wanted. I also experimented with Iso's and aperture sizes.



I like this next photo - it's one of my faves so far. This is one of about 10 or so I took of the same view.

I like the way the eye gets drawn into the photo, it's a very interesting area for shots like this.



As I was walking back home, I quickly snapped this shot - again it relates to how excellent trees look in Winter, and how sometimes they make an excellent frame.



This was one of my last shots before heading back home. The frost on the weeds was amazing - as I trod through them, it flew like dust around my feet.

I found the trees in the background so interesting, I thought I'd combine them with the frosty weeds here.

It's amazing how the frost makes such fantastic crystals and architecture within itself.



I really enjoyed going out on my own to take these photos, I hope you enjoy them. These have been chosen out of about 180 photographs I took that morning in about 1-2 hours.

Memory.

I found this photo of Kane and I looking in amazement at the first eggs we ever found...

...you can tell by our faces how excited we are - although I must admit Kane looks more like something smells bad!!

Guerilla warfare begins!

Today plans are being drawn up, tactics are being written and equipment made ready for the assault on the moles which are infesting our paddock and back lawn.

This morning smoke bombs arrived - these little babies will be lit and pushed as far down the tunnels as possible, and will coat the inside of the runs with castor oil, which aparrently make the moles move on to pastures new, as it stops the moles from feeding in the treated areas.

I am not looking forward to the next step, which is setting traps for the little things.

First off will be scissor traps, which go in the runs and close onto the furry tunnellers.

The second type of trap is the Dufas trap which is a lot bigger than the scissor trap, but apparently more effective.

I will keep you informed of my progress, but I expect this to be a very drawn out battle, and hopefully... HOPEFULLY I will win the war!

New year chill!

The last year has been very busy for us here, not only have we bought a house and had dramatic changes done to it, we've also moved in last October and had Christmas to contend with, so life here has been non-stop, and quite stressful.

Now it seems, life is slowly returning to 'normal' whatever that may be. We still have a stupid amount of stuff at our other house which we need to move, and all this on top of all the new duties given to us by our new home!

One thing that has made things harder has been the really cold weather - not only for us, but for my ladies in the paddock. Their water has been frozen every morning, the ground underfoot has been like steel, and they haven't been able to go for walks too freely thanks to a roaming fox.

All this is about to change though, with the warmer weather (hopefully) coming, changes can be made to house all our ladies more comfortable, and jobs that I couldn't start last year can be started this year.

I had to take a few photos of the girls recently, probably because I never thought they would have frost on their wings - but one or two of the chickens like to roost on top of the old coop instead of inside with the others in their warm coop - which is packed with straw and is really quite warm considering.



I do feel sorry for them though, so this year their entire enclosure will be changed, moved, made bigger and better. Their runs will have interesting things for them to sit on, and hopefully this year I can get my relationship back with them, because of the lack of time I've had with them, hardly any let me touch them any more - which I find quite sad, but understandable.

Although it has been so cold, my ladies still like to get out and about...

...a few of them even went over the other side of the paddock - which is quite a journey for their little legs, and they probably went back telling all the other girls to go their on their next excursion.

Focus

I thought I'd have a little play around with my photo editing software this morning...

...taking a self portrait, I blurred the original file so the skin tones and details were much softer, then I took the eye, kept the detail and overlaid it onto the blurred background.

This gives a strange depth of field illusion, one that I really liked doing, and one that has opened up a whole new avenue and excitement for me!

My first photography competition.

Recently I sent off one of my photographs, the portrait view of Mount Caburn early in the morning with the mist in the valley, to a competition after Jo suggested I should.

I ONLY WENT AND WON!!

I won first prize, and my photo was put on the monthly E-Newsletter for a garden centre called 'Garden Pride'.



Although there were a lot of entries, I managed to win, and I received a £15.00 voucher to spend in their shops!

I will be sending off more photographs I think!

Free-ranging!

, moultingIt's been ok weather really... when you think how bad it could be. I mean, looking at friends blogs round the world, it could be worse.

On the sunny days, my ladies (and Rhydian) like nothing better than to take trips round their estate, and to peck at fineries scattered around as a snack to eat.



Being free-range suits them down to the ground, as it gives them a chance to mill around like teenagers in a park, scratching here, there and everywhere - looking for the tastiest morsel of food they can find - I usually scatter some corn down as an incentive for them to leave the warmth and safety of their coops.



I took a few photos recently, to show the moulting of some of the birds - some of which are over 6 years old aparrently!!



The eggs have all but stopped for us now, although I must admit, we've been getting one or two a day recently.

We had the famous fireworks here in Lewes in November, followed by a bad storm, followed by some idiot of a dog walker letting their dog bark at our ladies through the hedge, thus scaring them everyday!

I'm VERY tempted to put a sonic device over near the chickens to shut the dog up - but would probably get sued or attacked for doing so - you know what todays society is like!

Anyway, the ladies are all happy (if a little bare here and there) and living the high life in their stately home!

Winter time again.

Well it certainly feels like Winter here - the air is fresh every morning, carrying on throughout the day, but one thing I've noticed is that our ladies have started to moult.

I didn't really know about chickens moulting - especially in Winter!

I mean, what's the point of losing all your feathers when it gets cold!?

Shouldn't it be more reasonable to expect them to lose their feathers when it's nice and warm?

Well anyway, I find it all rather strange - PLUS the fact that they all stopped laying at the same time - weird huh!?

Jo thinks it's because of the very bad storm we had here a week or so ago - it could have been the fireworks scaring them...

...I have another possible reason - they're all lazy wotsits!!

Parading around like they own the place - eating and drinking for all their worth - I mean, it's like they live the high life and have now decided to stop doing the one job they are MEANT to do!

It's not as though they have a pressing schedule or anything - in fact - because it's been sunny and rather warmish weather for the few hours around lunchtime and to mid afternoon, they've even been having excursions out in the paddock - so I have no idea what is going wrong.

I'm going to try and sneak up and get a photo of the moulting ladies - although they won't be too happy showing their 'undergarments' for the world to see I bet!

:D

Morning glory

Here are some photos of views from our new home.

A view looking south.



A view looking East towards a local landmark - Mount Caburn in portrait and a couple in landscape - it's amazing how different the same shot can be.







I ALMOST took my Nikon off Auto for the landscape shot - I'm going to be brave and take the plunge into manual mode soon!

:D

Lasting memories

I thought I'd show a few photos that I've taken recently which make me smile, or wonder.

The first is a photo of Kane I took in our Paddock. I love taking photos of the boys as they are both so cheeky!



The second photo is of a view from one of the top rooms first thing in the morning. It shows the mist rolling over the valley, and the local hill to us called Mount Caburn.



Here is another view from our garden first thing in the morning...



...it just makes us all feel so good in the morning.

Compared to our old view of fences 15' from our windows, this truely feels like our own slice of heaven!

Our new place!

Well...

...we have been SO busy the last few weeks it's been like working 24 hours a day (or feels like it anyway!).

Over the last week though, we've been moving a lot of our 'stuff' over to the new place - which now is our home!

Last week I rented a Luton van with a tail lift, so I was able to move all the big appliances, like the washing machine, dryer and American fridge freezer easier than in our normal van. All went smoothly until it came to the big fridge/freezer - which went up the ramp i made ok, but didn't like going through any of the doors in the house. This resulted in taking off the door to the house, getting it through into a small lobby - then having to take the doors of the appliance - which was an absolute nightmare! But safe to say - I managed it!!

We spent our first night in our new home without Sky tv, only DVD's and it took a further 4 visits from Sky - all failures - until we decided to go with a NON-Sky tv person to fit our Sky dish. They even got to our place in around an hour which was amazing considering Sky did their usual " can't make it this week" line.

I spent the first morning trimming the doors to the boys bedrooms so they would close over the new carpet, and putting up 3 curtain rails for their bedrooms.

Both boys came home the next day after sleeping over at school and Grandmas, and at last it was definately HOME!

The only problem we've been experiencing has been our Broadband connection, but that seems to have been sorted now I've changed the router back to our old one.

What we are very pleased about is the fact that EVERYTHING is set up for us - it means Zak has access to the entire house (apart from upstairs, in which case I would lift him should he want to go up there). The paved area out back is just great, and Zak has already said he looks forward to driving his chair around their like a bat out of hell! Kane can also ride his bike on it.



This photo shows the back of our home, with the patio, and Kanes room he'll move into in a couple of weeks being the nearest upstairs window to the camera.

The other thing of course which makes things better - for the ladies at least - is that we can let them out every day - although at the moment the weather is so horrible they are staying under their mini extension or staying in their own coops.

Family visits the ladies.

Recently we went to show the kids how the build was going, and we decided to take them along and see how our ladies were doing.

They were all in good spirits, and looking well. This may be because for the last month or two I have been giving them a supplement in their water. It turns the water a lovely pink colour, and I thought that the girls would love this addition to their run!

:D

Zak and Kane were also in good spirits as this picture shows!




I was really pleased with the detail on this photo!

Kane, cards and insects

Here is a photo of Kane taken at my mums. He was leaning against a wall so I couldn't take his photo, but I managed to swing it under him and take a snap.

The card was made for my friend Dr Michael Bull, funnily enough, the worlds leading expert in IPods and mobile media! It was his Birthday, and Jo and I created this funny card - can you work out what it is? I treated him to a pint and a fairy cake with a little candle in it too.



The photo of the Bee was great - I was taking some other test photos when I saw him (or her) flying onto these yellow flowers/weeds, and I thought what a cool shot it would make if I could get the camera on macro and take a shot. Luckily, it came out very well, and I must admit it's one of my nature photos I'm most proud of so far - I just love the detail!

To trim or not to trim

That is the question.

I haven't trimmed any of the photos on here, and to be honest I'm not sure if I should. I would like to try to see the whole picture, and to frame images in a way that pleases me.

I'm sure at some point I'll want to perfect each photo, but for now I'm happy with the whole scene.

:D

A new blog for a new subject

I've started a new blog for my photography, called 'Stiggy's world'.

It's not going to be a threat to David Bailey, but it's my own account of how me experience with a new camera I bought is going.

I hope to find a better platform to show off my photos at some point, something like a gallery - but I'll sort that out at a later date, since our house move is imminent!

:D

More beginner photos

Here are some more beginner photos I took when I first got my camera.

The Walnut is from our very own tree in our paddock, the Tayberry from our veggy plot, and the flower was one at my mums.

I took the walnut photo by first focusing on the walnut, then locking the focus, and setting the nut in the corner of my shot. It's a tecnique I really like, and I have done it on some landscape photos as well - it gives that wonderful blurred background effect.

I took them all with the macro setting - when I get more used to the camera I'll start to experiment, but until then I'm afraid it's only the standard settings I'll be using!

:D

My first photo

I was so excited to get my new camera I ran outside to have a go at some macro photography...

This was my first ever attempt at it, and I was really pleased.

I couldn't believe the detail I was able to pick up!

My photo blog

I decided that I would like somewhere to show my photos from my new camera, so here we have it....


...Stiggy's world!


I recently bought a Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera. At the moment I use an 18-55mm lens.

I am a TOTAL beginner at photography, so hopefully you will see me improve over the coming decade or so!!

;)

Unexpected visit.

You know when things happen and you take a while (or ages) before the fact of the matter sinks in?

Well Saturday evening was one of these occasions!

I heard a car drive over the gravel outside our house and wondered who it was (the bane of our life is people turning on our parking area outside who have no connection with us in the slightest!). The car actually drove up to our front door and I was just about to open the front door with a flourish of the hand or a gentle verbal assault when the person driving got out and walked towards me.

It actually turned out to be mine and Zak's friend Paul, who had emigrated to Australia, and whom we never thought we'd see again unless we went on a holiday!!

WOW is all we could say for ages, we were so knocked back that this man had travelled across the world, for whatever reason, and had travelled to see us!

We were overjoyed (can you tell!?).

We all met in an online game called Eve-Online, which is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) set in space, and one we have been playing for about 4 and a half years there abouts. We were in the same corporation together (group of players) and then we made our own corporation and did things together in there - it was great fun!

Unfortunately Paul had to go after and hour or two, but it was great to see him, we still haven't met his other half Kirstin, but I'm sure we will one day!

:D

My new camera.

I've always wanted an SLR camera, and I was unable to have one until recently.

I bought a Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera, which I'd read a lot of reviews for, and thought it would be nice to be able to take proper pictures, instead of using our little family Digital Camera (which has done us very nicely so far thank you!).

I was so excited, I part charged the battery and went outside to try and do something similar to the ones I had seen on my friend Don's blog, done by his very competent photographer wife Ruth (who also has a blog with spectacular images on.

Now ok - I had it on AUTO and I wasn't about to change that for now - but WOW!!!

What a fantastic thing!

It's not often I get wow'ed by stuff (ok ok! every time i go into an Electronics shop, farm equipment shop, gadget shop, tool shop etc etc) but this was just BRILLIANT!!

I have been really impressed when someone takes a photo of, say, a flower with it all blurred in the background - so I attempted to take my first EVER D-SLR picture - and here it is - it's a little Dandelion clock just outside our back door!



I've been taking quite a few picture of the new place with it, and found a yellow flowery weed growing on a patch of the uncut grass.

After walking to look at it, I noticed there was a bee flying from one flower to the next - so quickly I took the camera lens off and took a few photos of it as it fluttered around.

Here is My first attempt at a wildlife photo!



I am really pleased with these photo's and one day I hope to be able to take it off of AUTO - or the preset settings!!

:D

Almost done it.

Yes the shed is pretty much done - just a bit more cladding (or siding for others) on the sides and some roof felt on the roof and it's done!

At least now it's pretty watertight and I've managed to get my tractor/mower in there - so I'm now clearing out the main workshop and making plans to store things that at the moment reside in our garage.

Talking of the mower - even though I changed the starter solenoid, it STILL wouldn't start when I turned the key, so using a bit of mechanic know how, I bypassed the solenoid and started the old thing up...


...streaking across the long grass like a rally driver, I managed to cut the grass reasonably quickly, which inspired me to get out my Stihl hedge trimmer.

It's funny how you get carried away - one minute I was smartening up a fir hedge, the next minute I was doing all the hedges... well a few not ALL the hedges - that would just be plum CRAZY! lol!

Still, after about 30-45 minutes of arm juddering fun, I realised I wasn't able to use my left arm very much - it was the arm that supported the trimmer up in the air - OUCHY!

I was happy with the work I'd done though - and it felt good to put some hard labour which made so much difference to the back garden area.

Good afternoon!

I went back down the new place after lunch, and set about putting some serious effort into the shed.

I'd like to go down there tomorrow to hang the double doors, that is, if it stops raining for a bit!

However it was a glorious sunny day today, and I was able to do quite a bit.

First off I finished fixing the roof sections, then I put some doors on the side of the frame, and managed to find even MORE timber from the rubbish skip out front to fill in the front 2 panels.



Now all that needs to be done is to buy some featheredge board (thin triangular timber) to clad the shed with and hang the doors!

Oh yes, changing the subject somewhat - here is a photo of the lady that lost all her feathers.



Sorry about the photos recently, but I've been using my phone...

...I'm looking forward to my new camera coming through the post early next week - a Nikon D40 Digital SLR!

I shall be going over to my friend Dons wifes' Blog to check out how to REALLY take photographs!

:D

I got it covered.

WOOHOO!

It's weird how time is recently - I went down the new place to do some work and to let the ladies out only to find NO Builders!!!

After a frantic phone call to report this fact to Jo, I was reliably informed that it was in fact, Saturday!

I had to think about this for a moment before having to accept that it was indeed Saturday.

Weird!



Anyhoo, I had to finish the shed roof this morning, put a tie across the mid rafter and sort out the position and fastening of the electric cable. This afternoon I plan to put some more recycled doors around the frame.



The ladies.

The ladies seem very happy at the moment, maybe it's because I've been giving them some supplements in their water, and have been puffing mite powder all around the coops and in the corners (where they live).

One of the chickens that we rescued looked awful a couple of weeks ago - she is right down the bottom of the pecking order, and she had lost a lot of feathers - probably due to stress of moving house (Jo and I know all about THAT!).

Now she has grown back pretty much all her feathers, and is wonderful light brown colour - much lighter than the other hens.

I'm still alive!

I wanted to post that I haven't dissapeared or fallen off the edge of the world, but it's been almost impossible to get around to posting any new stuff on here for a while.

What with both kids at home, and the build needing some attention, i just haven't had the inclanation to write about anything.

I have taken some photos so I'll HAVE to put those on soon!

;)

Where does the time go!?

Blimey!

It seems like 5 minutes since I wrote the last post on here, but it seems it's been a while.

We've been out buying bathrooms and tiles for the floor and walls these last weeks, it takes a lot of looking to find the perfect tile!

As well as floating from showroom to showroom, we've got both lads home for the 6 week summer school holiday, so it's not so easy to just pop out for a few hours - since we'd have to take them both with us. It's not SO bad though, I got to pop down the new place and do a little bit to my infamous shed.

The photo above was taken on my phone - apologies if it's not too clear - it was also taken a few days ago and it's changed a bit since then, but it gives a rough idea.

I have built the frame for the walls, and it's ready for the salvaged doors to be fixed to it. These doors will not only provide shelter from the elements, but also serve to strengthen the frame I've made, so making the whole thing nice and strong.

I started sorting out the roof yesterday, and I just have to measure and make the end piece before the rafters - then the exciting bit of putting the roof sheets on!

Once the shed extention is done, I can move the tractor/mower into it, shelve the main bit, and start bringing the stuff we have in our garage where we live now.

All very exciting - well it IS for ME anyway!

:D

Shed extension and other stories..

It's been a while since I have any time to go down the new place and actually do any work - the big summer holiday from school has hit us like a freight train and to be honest I'm still in a state of shock trying to adjust to all day every day having the boys around...

...that's not to say, of course, that I have any problem with having the boys at home, it's just it's a little hard leaving Jo on her own with both and going out, so I try to take what time I can when I can!

The shed has been neglected, as far as doing any further work to the mini extension that has been mutually agreed by Jo and I. So the other day, I had a meeting with our project manager on site, and I realised this was my chance to do something constructive.



I've been digging the hole for the base to go onto/into - I say into as the main shed/workshop is on a slope, so I've had to dig into hardcore and MOT stone, which hasn't been too bad but hard work - especially when I'm digging about 15 minutes at a time. It wouldn't be too bad, but every shovel full means 5 minutes using a pickaxe to loosen the stone!

Friday I visited one of the builders merchants I used to work for and bought some timber for the base, made a frame approx 10'x8' and started to noggin it out (noggins are the short bits of wood between the long bits of wood - in case you didn't know!). As you can see from the photo, the noggins are at one end so far - that is the end where the doors will go onto, and therefore the noggins are where the mower/tractors wheels will be going over, they will support the weight nicely.



What I'll be doing next is to continue the alternative noggins across the frame, then put it in situ and place concrete blocks under the frame making the whole thing nice and solid.

Once that has been done, the 3/4" OSB board will go on top to make the floor, then a small frame, then I'm going to use the internal doors that I managed to salvage from the house to make the walls. If it needs weather proofing after I'll get some 6" feather edge timber and clad it.

Anyway - at least it's progressing slowly!

:D

One man and his chickens wins blog award!

Yes, thanks to Little Veg Patch, both myself and Jo my wife have won an award for our blogs!

The rules state to name 7 other blogs, but since I've only just done something similar, I shall point people to my post below this one and hope to get away with just doing that!

link - Tag I'm it!

(I hope I don't get into any trouble for this!)

:D

R.I.P Polly.

I'm sorry to announce that Polly has passed on.

Very sad about doing this today.

:(

Tag I'm it!

I’ve been tagged! My friend Don at A view from the Green Barn tagged me to share six random things about me, and then tag six others.

I probably won't be as good at this as him though...

So Here are my six random things:

1. I learnt to play the drums at 8 when my Dad let me use his set.

2. I have really small hands!

3. Even though I shave my head, my hair has lasted me longer than my Dads hair has lasted him!

4. The thing that made me sit up and notice my wife when I first met her was her beautiful green eyes!

5. I used to help Zak score goals at 'Seagull Specials', which is a football team for kids with special needs, supported and run by Brighton and Hove Albion - our local team.

6. One of my old motorbikes won 'Worst Rat' at a bikers rally- which means it was the worst bike in the entire rally. (think Mad Max type of bike! Matt black and using beer can for air intake)

I’m tagging:

Jo my wife at Jo Blogs - it's amazing how she thinks up all those ideas - and I'm so so proud of her for being asked to have her designs published in international magazines! and she has another blog too - Jo Blogs Outdoors (Love you Jo!)

Connie at Cetta Cheese Chatter - she is my friend in Hawaii who is in Television, also does a lot of crafting - her charms and jewellery is fantastic!

Greta at Little Brown Hens - she says she's a 16 year old stuck in the body of a 50 y/o. She really cares for her ex-battery hens, as you will see when you visit her blog!

LVP at Little Veg Patch is another on my blog list, she has a town garden that she has transformed into a hive of activity, with her ex-battery chickens and vegetable patch.

Angel at Stormdreaming - she has firm opinions and will let you know about them! She loves art and graphics, and takes some cool photos.

Math from Ramblings of a Technomage - he and Angel are online gamer friends, Math writes programs and stuff for his Mac PC including some stuff he develops. Math is also an accomplished cook, and loves to share recipies for cakes!

It's difficult for me to do this, mainly as I don't have time at the moment to go blog surfing, but I hope those that are mentioned here will get a few more readers!

Tag Rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on the blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post.
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Emergency at the coop!

I went down the new place last night and found that one of our chcikens had had a prolapse while laying an egg.

Not a very nice thing to experience, I can tell you.

I cleaned her up as best I could last night and made her as comfy and as clean as I could - after pushing everything where it should be.

Polly, as I've named her for obvious reasons, was a little better this morning when I got there earlier, she still had a prolapse, but it was only half as bad as it was the night before.

I found our plastic pet carrier and took a towel down to the new place along with a nice clean newspaper. Once there I managed to catch her quite quickly and easy (my confidence at picking them up is improving every time I do it) and put her gently into the carrier, where she sat nice and quiet on the newspaper.

I put her in the back of the car, and driving carefully so not to let her slide around in the back, I drove down town to get some Preperation H. Prep H is a hemorrhoid cream, non greasy. (I used to use it on my tattoos to keep them nice).

When we got home, i brought her out of the carrier and covered her front half with the towel so I could work on her back half. A washing up bowl filled with warm salty water was by my side along with lots of sheets of kitchen roll to dry and clean with.

Once everything was clean, and covering the tips of my fingers (I wore surgical gloves) with prep H, I made sure everything was where it should be. Holding my hand there for a few minutes, she sat nice and calmly.

Polly was then put into our old rabbit hutch, a lovely big hutch - 4' x 18" x 2' high, that I had transformed into a comfy rest home for her for a few days. She had everything she needs, food, water and a soft towel to rest on, plus I put a black bin liner over most of the door so she remains calm in the darkness, but can still see enough to eat and drink.

Hopefully tomrrow it will be better than it was this morning, and maybe soon she will recover totally - I hope so, because the alternative is not a good one.

Highly trained chickens!

This morning I went to see the chickens after taking Kane to school...

...I was rather pensive as the holding pen is an unknown as far as safety from Mr Fox is concerned.

As I walked up to the run from the veggy plot, I noticed something strange...

...one of the chickens didn't have a chicken wire pattern on it.

It was a few seconds before my brain put two and two together and realised that the hen was actually OUTSIDE the run!

I hastily unlocked the gate and ushered her inside...PHEW! I thought, and I suddenly couldn't see the other four... my mind raced as the worst situation possible came into my mind - Mr Fox must have taken them...

... it was only after I looked round the back of the coop that I found the other ladies...PHEW! I thought for the second time.

We went to a fairly local big supermarket and decided to pop home to eat a spot of lunch, then the idea was for me to go back down the new place and put the netting over the top of the holding run so no more could escape.

It was weird, I looked at the runs, and could have sworn that there was more in one run than I had previously thought.

Indeed there was - one of the new ladies had done something so clever that I now don't think chickens are so stupid after all.

What this hen had done, was to jump up onto the old coop, walk along the apex, jump onto the netting over the main run, then she had walked over the netting (the holes are just over 1" square) and managed to fall down a hole right by a corner!!

I put the one I thought was new, but unfortunately i made a mix up and put the 'leader' of the new ladies in with the old lot.

Why I say unfortunately is because the leader of the new ladies didn't only get angry at Rhydian the cockrel, she absolutely kicked his behind into next week!

It was like looking at a spitting cobra - her feathers all around her head and neck exploded into action, making her look very scary (even to me!) and she made short work of getting Rhydian... he was cowering and running away from her she was so viscious!

I managed to get her away from Rhydian and into the holding run - but BOY was she miffed!

Later that afternoon I managed to cover most of the run with the netting, but one hen still tried to get up on the top of the coop again.

A very strange day.

Chickens saved from certain death!

Yesterday was the day we went to fetch our 'rescue chickens'. Above is their 'Chicken Limo'.

We were told to meet up in a local park, where we thought we would be going off to help catch the birds and put them into boxes for transportation.

When we got there at 10am, we were told to put a name on the box and how many chickens we wanted. The idea was for the organisers and a few helpers to take the boxes, fill them and then to bring them back to us.

We went home for a bit to have some lunch, and were back at about noon. There were a lot more cars and people milling about, and the park Rangers were not happy. They kept stopping and coming over to the organisers and asking how long they would be as they'd had complaints about the parked cars along the road.

At about 1:30/2pm we saw the horsebox containing all the boxes arrive, and without further ado we went and waited for our name to be called so we could collect our new ladies.

We were finally called, and Jo and I took one end each of the box and carefully took it to our car.

Once the windows were down, we set off, and I very carefully drove to our new place.



I gently dragged the box in the 'holding run' and opened the box to let them out - they all seemed more than happy to stay in there!





After a wiggle of the box they came out - the box was moved, and i put some corn and grass on the floor for them to forage through.



Meanwhile, one of the Silkies - the smallest most picked on and most broody one - went to say hello to the new ladies, by scrambling under the middle gate!



All in all a good day!

:D

Blackberry or Raspberry or maybe something else...

My parents visited the new place last week, and one of their observations was that the Blackberries didn't look...

...well, Blackberry-like.

After a little tasting session, my Dad decided they were Tayberries.

I tasted one, and I must admit it didn't fill me with joy, or make me see angels or anything...

...still, they were ok, and I imagine with copious amounts of sugar they could be quite bearable!

Oh and the reason I mentioned this, is that they are the fruits that are safely tucked away under the netting away from the birds!

:D

Networking in the veggy plot

We went down the new place earlyish today, as we knew we had some work to do.

Personally I wanted to do a bit more to the shed extension, but after sitting down with Jo for a drink, we noticed a bird swoop down and take a bit of our fruit!


"ACTION STATIONS STIGGY!" said Jo...

...well maybe not exactly those words, but I knew I had to get off my behind and sort something out!

One of the end posts had to be replaced, so I concentrated my efforts on that that - making a nice sized hole with my pointed heavy metal bar, I made sure that I'd made it nice and deep to support the wires with the stems hanging off them.


Unfortunately I wasn't tall enough to hit the post in, so using some bits of scrap sheathing ply and joists, I made a makeshift step about 1' high.

"AHA!" I thought - NOW I can do the job!

Standing on my pedestal (I think Jo was swooning at me at this point - or maybe it was just the heat) I was able to use my small club hammer to help the post on it's way into the ground.

Once the post was in nice and firm, I transferred the wires from the old post, and fixed them as tight as I could. Then I found some old metal poles we were using for our peas (they were eaten) and put them at diagonals against the posts.

After they had been bashed into the ground with my trusty club hammer, we started to fix the netting, with a length of wire linking each post, acting as a ridge pole.

Once over, I preceded to join the ends, which were carefully 'stitched' together with wire sleeving, and VOILA! It was finished!

Save the chickens!

Today we were told by our site manager at our new place, that there are 13,500 freerange chickens going to be slaughtered unless people go and help to rehouse them.

I just couldn't believe this, but it gets better....

...the chickens are being slaughtered, not because they are sick, not because they are old, but because the shells on the eggs they lay are TOO THIN FOR THE SHELVES!

Yes - you read right - our favourite supermarket Tesco has stopped getting these chickens eggs, because the shells are too thin to be packaged and put on the shelves!!!

You can see our local animal welfare group here - http://brightonanimalaction.org

Unfortunately I haven't got round to renovating our vintage coop - I'm going to have to work on our existing shed/coop to fit them in - but I'll be blowed if I'm not going to do anything at all!

Here's the local paper quote;

Lay-off for hens
By Simon Barrett

A charity is trying to find homes for 13,500 free range chickens which are being given away because their eggs' shells are too thin for supermarket shelves.

Animal lovers have a month to claim them before they are sent to slaughter for dog food.

The 18-month-old birds from a farm in Brighton are now too old to eat, but could lay eggs for another six years. Tara Maher from Brighton Animal Rescue said: "Supermarkets don't want eggs from older chickens because their shells break more easily during packing

It's strange how peoples values change - before I had kids I wouldn't have even bothered to read the article - let alone care enough about it to do anything to help!

Just makes me glad to me me NOW!

:D

My new toy

People who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I am a great fan of the power tool.

Power tools bring so much enjoyment and relief at being able to do tasks simply and properly.



For example, recently I bought a hedge trimming attachment (135 deg adjustment for those powertool geeks) for my Stihl KM90 combi engine. I already have a rotorvator attachment for it, which is incredibly useful in the veg plot.

I first tried this mean machine in our back garden - because we've been taking care of the new place almost everyday, our home we live in has been left to overgrow a bit. The grass was up to my waste and the weeds were over 5' tall!

I thought I'd test my new cutter on the garden, and low and behold, it was like a hot knife through butter - it literally took minutes to do almost the whole lawn (which normally took me 1.5 hours to do with the small electric mower we have).

After that successful trial, I took the trimmer down the new place and did a little practice on one of the hedges.



WOOHOO! I thought as I gently stroked the hedge with the cutter end - it was so easy!

With my new harness all of the weight of the engine section was supported, and with how the strapping was routed meant that I could hardly feel I was carrying anything at all!

Instead of dreading trimming the hedges with a hand tool, I can now look forward to hours of fun with my trimmer ...

..*COUGH!* I mean I can look forward to working hard shaping the hedges to a better form!

;)

Park fun

Last week it was really nice and sunny, and after school one day, Kane decided he'd like to go to the play park in our village.

So, armed with a carrier bag of goodies - some Quaver crisps, some mini Jaffa Cakes and some drinks, we ventured along the road and into the park.

It's only a smallish park, but it has some very fun climbing equipment and a couple of small slides and some swings.

Kane took me to the back of the park where it is overgrown, but there is a little path running along the length of this area which the kids use to hide and play 'jungle'. I didn't like it as I was too tall for the path - I got a little fed up after walking into the third branch, and my idea of fun is not seeing Kane having to wrestle with brambles the thickness of his arms, but we eventually made it to the other end, albeit with a few more scratches than usual!

After that we went on the swings, with Kane being quite brave and wanting to swing quite high. Then it was time for the climbing frame and the monkey bars - which Kane has never really shown any interest for - nor me actually, I've never really been able to use them!



Sitting down for our little picnic was nice, as we chose a great tree to sit under. The dappled shade was cooling on a hot day and the rest did us both good.

Ever the adventurer Kane wanted to climb the tree we were sitting under, and, with a little help he managed to scramble up to a great spot!

After a bit more running round and chasing each other it was time to go home, but we both agreed it was a very fun time!

MMMMMM! Apples!

Just a quick post to show my ladies eating out as they do frequently.

Today's menu comprised of layers pellets and apples, gently laid in random places through out the run, and the whole meal was free!

I must admit, it's not my idea of a fancy night out, but for my ladies - well, they just love it!

Letting them eat apples makes a major difference in the taste of the eggs as well!

:D

New gateway opens!

Here it is, the moment Jo's been waiting for...


...the moment the gate between the vegetable plot and the paddock is up and working properly!

It's a classic 5' field gate, (I didn't make it) hung on strap and adjustable galvanised hinges for the ironmongery geeks out there.

Building update

I thought I'd write an update on here today, but the only thing is, the pictures are a few days old...

...not a problem you say, but with the current speed of the builders, it could already be finished! (we wish!)



So without further ado, here we go - scream if you wanna go faster!
The first picture is the front, with the porch to be tiled. The ramp for Zak's chair will be going from the porch along the wall to the right as we look at it - with a 'landing' area for Zak from the lift on our van, which will be a nice flat area.



This is the lounge, the photo taken from one of the patio doors at the back of the house.

Already you can see the way the open plan is going to work. The front door leading into a fair sized hall, the stairs will go on the wall next to the kitchen wall, near to the small window by the front door, with the kitchen area on the right of the photo (the sink will be going in front of the window). The kitchen stops at the short piece of wall jutting out - so it's basically a square shape.

The lounge is going to be our family room, with no computers apart from a Nintendo Wii - which the whole family can join in with - basically it's our chilling out room.



This view shows the 2 large dormers upstairs, and Zak's lounge which is the furthest patio door opening on the left. There has been quite a bit of building work with approx 7' being added to the back of the property along the whole length.



This view shows the dormers in better detail, with Kane's bedroom being the nearest window to us, and the spare bedroom/playroom being furthest away.

I must say that although I have known a lot of builders etc, our builders are the fastest, most professional, most helpful, polite (and cleanest! they sweep out the property every night!) I have ever had the pleasure to work with (or for us rather!).

The snake charmer!

..well not exactly a snake, but a slow worm.

Interesting fact for today:

Slow worms are a protected species, found in Eurasia (Europe and Asia), and is in fact a member of the lizard family, rather than the snake family!



I found this one while moving an old garden parasol, and showed it to Kane who thought it was absolutely "cute" and although he thought it was a snake, showed no fear at all or hesitation in holding it!



After Kane had these photos taken (taken by Jo) we put it gently back where we found it, and made sure it was safe.

Chick, chick, chick, chick chickens!

This is our 5 year old son Kane singing one of his favourite little songs.

He asked me if it could go on my blog, so here you are!

:D

Summer has arrived.

The weather today was pretty good - not great, but it was nice, dry, warm and not too humid.

Rydian took his ladies to the hedgeside to dust themselves thoroughly and soak up some rays - he certainly had a lot to crow about today, surrounded by 8 ladies and fully in control as I was elsewhere.



The funny thing was, after I finished mowing the paddock yesterday, I decided to take some photos...

..one shot I didn't take was of one of the hens walking up to the others right in front of me, turning her back on me about 3' from my face, and doing a poo...

..CHARMING!!

Suddenly I realised that perhaps lying in the grass next to a load of chickens probably wasn't the best idea I could have thought of!

(EDIT: changed spelling of Rydian to proper spelling of Rhydian)

I love my tractor mower!

Now I KNOW I've mentioned this before once or twice (ok LOADS!) but I love my tractor mower - I really don't know what I'd do without it...

..in fact I DO know what I'd do without it - it'd be having to mow 1.5 acres with a poxy little electric mower that I have to use at our home now!

I hate it - in fact hate is a little weak for how I really feel about it - but my hate only REALLY bubbles up when I have to use the small thing - it has a cutting width of about 2" and it weighs almost 3 tons...

..well, slightly exaggerated, but I'm sure you have used something as useless as it I'm sure!

Anyway back to my mythical steel charger, my mower..

It suddenly dawned on me that if I had to use it on our new place, I'd be dead after a week, because that is how long it would probably take me to cut all the grass!

I cut the grass in the paddock yesterday, and this is how much there was - bearing in mind the post at the front of the bay is about 3' high, and the bay about 4' deep!


Lest to say, it took me about an hour and a half, mainly because after pushing it back to it's home 2 days ago when it broke down, I discovered that the starter motor had broken, so armed with my trusty screwdriver to bypass the thing, I set to work cutting the grass.

I shall have to fit one of those speedo things to one of the wheels, to see how far I actually travel on the tractor - I'm sure it would be a few miles!

Herding time again.

Yes, after my digging and moving, it was time for the ladies to be locked up safely for the night.

Today, all my practice seemed to pay off, as I managed to herd not only the ladies but RHYDIAN as well!!

I know this may come as a surprise to some, but today really WAS the day!

For the first time, Rhydian was herded into the run without even any bread!

Here I am jubilant and triumphant!!

Mucking out day!

Never let it be said that I don't know how to enjoy myself!

I had a wash, put my best green clothes on, and my bestest boots and jolly well went out the house and down to the new place....

.. today was the day, oh yes, today was the day...


...that the chickens had to be mucked out!

:(

With my trusty shovel in hand, and the wind blowing sweetly over my bald head, I made my way over to the chicken run.

Luckily only one run had to be mucked out today, but that WAS the biggest run. At 6M x 6M and at parts 4-6" deep, the combination of straw, mud and poo had to be transported to our compost area.

It was harder than I though, mostly because all the straw had matted together, and with the mud and poo, had formed a weird sort of concrete crust, with really horrible mush underneath.


Lucky for the chickens they were allowed out in the paddock, so they didn't have to witness the horror that I experienced.


Although I worked hard and moved about 15-20 full wheelbarrow loads, there was still a bit left to do, which I shall do tomorrow, but at least the 'ladies' had a clear area to run about on.

Hopefully the air will dry out the muddy layer over the next few days and get the run back to what it was, but it'll take some time.

Here is Kane pointing to the transported muck!

Not all gloom and doom!

WOOHOO!

Did I say that out loud?!?

Jo and I went down the new place last night and took some photos of the building as usual, but we were both amazed by the fact the builders have started on the roof now!!

Here are the obligatory before and after photos...

When we had our second viewing last October...


And the same (ish) view last night...


Jo took some photos of the flowers , so here are a couple of them..

..Some Peonies..


..and some others I don't know the name of..


Going back to the building again...

...I decided to go up on the scaffolding to have a look at what had been done up top, wow! It's coming on so fast!

Action shot...


And a random shot of me going into the main run...

A very sad day.

Today was a very sad day for me.

Hatty, one of our oldest chickens has been quite sick recently, she has been sleeping a lot and generally not being very feisty.

She has been coming out of the run, finding a nice spot in the sun, and then sleeping pretty much all day, and when it's time to get back in the run, instead of running in she's just been walking slowly in. We've been keeping an eye on her, but Saturday when I went round she was hardly moving at all, choosing to sit in a corner asleep.

I put her in a separate box with plenty of clean straw, and a cup of water in one corner, close to her so she wouldn't have to move to drink, and some food next to that for the same reason.

When I went to check on her Sunday morning I wasn't too hopeful, but she seemed ok, she was perched on the edge of her box, with her eyes fully open, and I was quite pleased that she had perked up! I went to the veggy patch to sort a few things out, and I heard Rhydian making a fuss, so I walked back to the chickens, only to find Hatty flapping about with her head in a corner of the coop, things didn't look good and I had to make a very difficult decision.

It was a very quick ending for Hatty, who was our favourite hen - she was big and fat with all her feathers, and had a great temperament. It was also the first chicken I have ever had to put down in this way, so it effected me quite a lot - it wasn't a nice thing to experience, but I'm glad I did it, as I couldn't see her in pain like that.



So here's to you Hatty, may you rest in piece.

Hatty is the buff hybrid on the far right.



Hatty is the buff hybrid on the far right.

Steel beam delivery!

Well today was one of the most exciting days on the build...

...the big steel beam was delivered, and a crane came to put it in place!

WARNING: The following video lasts about 5 1/2 minutes... it WAS over 20 minutes filming, but I'm sure people wouldn't sit through all that! Also YOUTUBE compression takes a lot of the picture quality out!

Listen out for Rydian - 1:53 and about 2:20 into the film - he's such a loudmouth!



Amazing eh!?

Here are a couple of photos showing after the crane had left.


..and another one showing the recent brickwork and small steel lintels above windows etc.


We have to keep pinching ourselves to remind us that we are still only 3.5 weeks into the build!

:D

Builders building fast? Surely not!

Contrary to popular belief, our builders are making the most of the good weather we seem to be having at the moment and building at a mad rate of knots!

I took these photos on Friday evening and that was the end of the third week!



The big steel beam is coming tomorrow, and I'm taking Kane to see it gently laid onto the back of the house by a massive crane! I'm going to try to take a bit of film of it, as it swings over the roof and down into position - so we'll have to see how that goes.

The Steel beam will be going a long way down the length of the house, for the roof conversion to sit on, and promises to be a quite exciting sight to behold!

Attack of the killer birds!

The last few days I've been finding eggs with holes in and eaten. We've seen a few big black birds swooping down, maybe a Magpie, but didn't really take much notice.

Yesterday I went to collect the eggs - usually 7-9 a day we get....only to find 4 eggs - and one of those was broken!

So today I went to the garden centre and bought 20M of this black netting, 6m wide. I'm not sure if it IS the birds that are attacking the eggs, but at least with the netting over the chicken run we'll find out for sure.

It's only going to be there temporarily, as I intend to completely enclose the runs after I have renovated the old coop.

Hopefully it IS the birds and not a rodent of some sort - as they are hard to stop.

Jo's new friend!

Oh yeah....

...while I was rounding up my 'ladies' (and Rydian) Jo was sitting on the bench, and this little fella landed on her from one of the trees....


..photo taken by Jo.

:D

Moving along nicely.

Well, it's been a little while since I posted anything...mainly because I've been so ill, what with yet another mystery illness taking over, and breaking half my molar tooth off! (dentist today - what fun!) don't worry - I won't post a piccy of it!!!

I thought I'd show some of the building work going on - more has been done since these pictures were taken, I'll take some more at the weekend to show the progress.


This was the sight that greeted me when I popped in the side door to have a nosey at the builders work the other day! The entire garage roof has been removed, it's actually a brilliant view, but I guess the rain would ruin it somewhat.



The internal walls across the back have mostly been taken down now, along with the chimney (and fireplace-which I demolished and saved the cast iron fireplace from it). There is a big steel beam going across the front room gap now, and we are all very excited about the next steel going in - it will stretch across ALL the length of the house, and will be put in place by a crane next week - I will try to film it if I get a chance!



This is the view across the back - the wooden frames marking the spaces to be left by the bricklayers for the sliding glass doors. Again, there has been more walls put up, but I need to take some more photos this weekend.

I WAS going to make this a long post, but unfortunately I'm in too much pain to concentrate that much today - lets hope the dentist can help me out today - otherwise I'll be climbing the walls until he does!

Meet Zak.

I've mentioned Kane already, but I haven't really mentioned Zak - my stepson who has been my son for the last 6 years - but known me for 7 years.

The photo was taken at one of our many gigs we've been to - this one was when we went to see 'Pink'.

Zak is 17, into punk and heavy rock/metal music, has severe Cerebral Palsy and the main reason we bought the new place. He is certainly unique - he is the top of his school, and almost everything we do concerning his education has never been done before, and I am EXTREMELY proud of him!

There are a lot of things he did before anyone else, and many things he was the first to do - such as the following few examples;

At his current school they have awards for IT, Bronze, Silver and Gold. The Gold award being something which is sometimes awarded to young adult at school leaving age if they work really hard...

...Zak won it at 12!

Because he won the highest IT award so early, the school then had to invent another award called the Platinum award, which he one too - and because he won that they had to invent ANOTHER award called the Diamond award, which he is still working on, and hopes to finish before he leaves his school.

He was the first young adult from his school to go to a mainstream college course at 16, and he was the first young person at the college with special needs to do a mainstream IT course too! The college and I had to CREATE a course for him, and the IT course he was very profficient at, although with the amount of work he had to do, and the length of time travelling everyday we decided to stop, leaving the door open to go back at a later date and the head of the Department saying she would love to see Zak back some time so he can teach her and her staff a few things!

As I've already said, I am VERY proud of Zak!

We are converting part of the bungalow into his own 'batchelor pad' with his own lounge, bedroom, bathroom and carers room - all with very specialised equipment and gadgets.

The concrete path which measures 167M x 1.2M wide (almost 350' x 4') that I mentioned in an earlier post is for him to drive round the property - pretty much to every aspect of the garden.

The reason I'm mentioning him, is basically because he bullied me into putting a picture of him on this Blog - he wants to be famous (although how famous he'll get from my blithering I have no idea!).

Trailer life.

Now then, I'm sure you all realise by now that I just LOVE power tools, engines and other gadgets, but today I bought a great addition to them all.

A TRAILER!

It attaches to my little tractor/mower and can carry about 650lbs, which is just what I need to move all the feed, soil and peat around the garden.

Here's my tractor/mower with the grass collector taken off...

..quite a cute little thing really...

Here is my trailer built and attached...


..and here is the trailer closer up.


It tips up as well which is going to be great when I come to make the 167M concrete path around the garden for Zaks wheelchair!

..and I know I shouldn't REALLY be this excited about a trailer, but I can't help it - it's GREAT!

:D

The Builders cometh!

It had to happen sometime - the tranquility of working alone at our new place was too good to last!

NEWSFLASH.. what was known as 'the shed' shall now be called 'the workshop' from now on, as this is a far better term for what it represents and IS!

Sorry, had to get that out the way!

Anyway, our builders started Monday at 7:30am, which is great considering we aren't there at the moment.

We are adding about 6-7' onto the back of the bungalow, and having a loft conversion done too. This will enable Zak to have pretty much his own flat! (Actually it's his own annexe, with his own lounge, bedroom and bathroom - all kitted out for his needs - including a hoist and special equipment that he needs/wants.

Here is the view 2 days into the job.


And a view of the trench.


There are other shots, but I don't wish to bore anyone.

Coming On

Almost finished the floor now, apart from a bit under the units on the right.

Wibble wobble!

Well...

...todays blog is to show what I managed to do in a couple of hours, even though most of today was spent running around for materials and bits and pieces!

I managed to lay 2 sheets on the floor - doesn't sound much I know, but driving around takes time, and energy, and I was pretty knackered by the time I got to the house...

... but the difference those few boards make on the floor is incredible - it actually feels really solid and stable...

..which is great, because after closer inspection, my pride and joy ISN'T as solid as previously thought...

...I mean, I knew some of the frame was a bit wet, and a little rotten in places, but now when you look at the corners of the shed (on the right hand side of the photo) , you see daylight - which obviously isn't as super duper as I'd have hoped!

Still - I'll MAKE it solid any way I can, using various angle brackets....and magic if I have to!

(...and I was able to use my new circular board saw today :D )

Ahhh PANIC!

We're hoping that the builders will start this coming Wednesday, so there are a few jobs I have to rush to get done!

One of the jobs is taking everything out of the house that I can use like old doors, cupboards, units or shelves...anything that MAY be useful at some point in the future.

But before I start ripping things out of the new house, I have to make sure that at least half the shed is dry and good to put things in. Today I made a start, and reinforced the frame and overboarded the floor with 3/4" OSB and the wall with 1/2" OSB. I hope to finish the entire shed like this, and may remake the roof some day too.

The best thing about this morning was using my brand new circular saw - it cuts through boards like a hot knife through butter! (I know it's sad, but I just LOVE power tools! - think Tim Taylor from 'Home Improvement'! ARRF ARRF!)

I also want to put another shed below the current shed - for my mower, and also for my motorbikes and sidecar.


Me about 25 on my Honda CB750 chop



My combo unit - the sidecar will be adapted for Zak our oldest son to go in.

Silkies

Recently our Silkies have been getting very fluffy. I think it has something to do with the nice weather, due to the fact they aren't being pelted with rain every hour of the day!

Today I took a couple of photos with my phone - so sorry about the quality.

One of the Silkies is growing feathers down her legs and on her feet, I'm not sure if this is normal, or we have a mutant Silkie on our hands - either way she looks great!

Renovation project

I love this coop. From the moment I first saw it, to now, I love it!

I don't know WHY I like it so much but it's probably because it looks like a proper coop, rather than the shed the chickens are using at the moment.

When we first went to look at the property, the silkies were in the shed, and the rest of the hybrids were in this one, but I feel there was a security issue with the run, as one of the chickens - a rather nice Speckled Sussex went missing, and I ended up finding it's foot and body in our vegetable plot about 6' apart.

One of my ongoing projects is to make our chickens as comfortable as I can, without going over the top, so I've decided to renovate the old coop and make the runs more secure from foxes - I shall probably completely enclose them in with netting over the top.

The roof will be the first job - 4 sheets of OSB 3 should do the trick, cut to shape with felt over the top, and timber frames for the windows, which I'll use my new router for....

...so new in fact I haven't bought it yet!


While I was taking photos, Rydian seemed to have 'his' ladies round him - the pecking order is plain to see, with one of the bigger, more fluffy silkies being his main lady, and the skinniest, more matted silkies being the bottom of the group - she seems to be constantly broody - or at least she is always sitting on eggs or in the nesting box all day.

I try to push them out into the paddock when I can, but soon as an egg is laid, she's straight back in there - whether or not she is in there to hide from the abuse from the other chickens I don't know, but I'm keeping my eye on her!

Almost 100%

Well, after a week of the medication I finally feel almost 100% again now - apart from the occassional cough I still have, but another check up on Wednesday should see that off.

It looks like I actually had Bacterial Pneumonia...

...possibly from the chicken coop - from the pellet feed dust, the hay dust and all the poop dust (sorry) that I kick up - god knows how the chickens are!

So that is yet another job I have to sort out - clean and possibly rebuild the inside of the coop so it's a bit easier to clean.

Personally I'm ok - I'll wear a dust mask when I collect the eggs from now on!

At least I won't run out of jobs....


...EVER!

:D

Change of weather.

Well, what a difference from the snow yesterday was!

The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Kane was chomping at the bit to go to the shop, get some goalposts and go to the new place to play.

We were told by the 'weather experts' that it was going to rain, so I didn't envisage playing for very long - if at all!

The chickens were let out as soon as we arrived, and they bundled up like a mosh pit crowd, trying to force their way out of the run - if they could have squeezed through the chicken wire, I'm sure they would have....

...it was like seeing the horses bolt out from the starting line, although Rydian - still very weary of me (after I chased him for attacking Kane - and yes, the cooking pot WAS mentioned!), stayed at the back, then with one mad squawk lunge, bolted past me and out into the paddock, where they enjoyed the corn I threw down for them.

Then to the matter of the football.

We set up Kane's goalpost nets on our lawn (freshly cut of course!) and set about having a bit of fun and larking about.

Kane soon found his niche, and decided he wanted to be in goal and save my shots....

...which actually, he did very well!


After about 5 minutes of trying to canter after the ball, the canter soon turned into a walk, as my stupid lung infection took over and I became breathless again.

Kane decided I should walk, so that's what I did - football in slow motion.

While Kane was being Indiana Jones in an aeroplane, running about the grass, I went to spy on the chickens to see what they were up to - and it was quite funny to see them gallivanting around, like kids on holiday - running around flapping their wings, scratching at the earth or just sunning themselves in a nice dusty bath.

One thing that is getting increasingly hard to do now is to get them into the run - it's ok if I have my secret weapon - bread - but if I don't i have to rely on their HOPE that I have bread, or 2 long sticks which i have to herd them with!

Rydian REALLY doesn't like me any more, he always makes me put up extra barriers and makes me work to get him in the run - you'd think he'd be grateful that I was making him safe...

...still - at least the 'ladies' like me!

:D

A great tonic.

The last week or so I've been pretty ill, first off, with a hot/cold no sleep, sick making sort of illness....

...then with a wheezy, coughing, breathlessness sort of thing.

I went to the doctors the first week, mainly due to being gently encouraged by my wife's foot. I swear the only reason she did that was so I would have to come back and stand there in front of her to tell her that..

.."the doctor said there was nothing wrong with me" sort of thing...

...which he kind of did...

.. well he told me to take Paracetamol to sort the temperature out.


But THIS time, THIS time was different!

I saw a different doctor, and he ended up sending me to the Chemists to collect Antibiotics, Steroids and two inhalers for my lungs.

Anyway - a few days into the treatment and I was feeling a bit better, so i went down to take a few units off the kitchen wall.

Which ended up with a visit to the shed and a lot of grunting and puffing (carefully putting on my super duper fine dust mask - before you say anything!) due to the fact I ripped a load of 6mm hardboard off one end of the inside of the shed.


I had previously bought some timber sheeting, which was for the internal floor, walls and roof - to make the shed a nice dry, wonderful place to be.


After I'd ripped all this sheeting off everything, I had a look at the structure and decided a lot had to be done to make it last another 10-20 years. The framework would have to be strengthened, and I would have to put a new roof on....

...the roof can wait until we're in and comfy, but the floor and walls need to be done soon - it's pretty damp and loose around the edges.

I must admit - an afternoon of hard labour made me feel incredibly good, the exertion really opened up my lungs, and I felt great!!

Fred the snowman.

All Kane wanted to do today was to build his own snowman, something we do everytime it snows here.

He had been out earlier in our back garden of where we live now, and run in the snow, thrown snow, and even piled up snow in a big heap at the bottom of his slide and slid down into it!

So it was only fair we let him out into the back garden again for a bit (even though he WAS a bit cold) to have a bit more wintery fun!

After seeing him perservere and try again and again to build one, I decided to go out and help the little chap make what he really wanted - a snowman.

So here he is - Fred the snowman!

Winter wonderland!

Well, slap me with a fish and call me Shirley! The snow that came today was about as expected as the Spanish Inquisition! (Jo said she knew it was coming, but no surprise there!)

I couldn't believe my eyes when I was was told to look out the window this morning.

"Ah it'll only be a light dusting" I said to myself, as I stared at the falling specks of snow, falling to the ground and melting.

How wrong could I be!?!?

Well, the answer is VERY wrong!

I kept looking out at the slowly engulfing snow blanket, and eventually I plucked up the courage to go down the new house and sort the chickens out - taking with me our 5 year old Kane, so he could play a bit in the snow.

We both wrapped up as warm as we possibly could, and set off in the van down the road. Obviously I only went about 20 miles an hour - the snowfall had turned into a mini blizzard - and there was a good 4 inches of snow on everything.

We got to our destination and I quickly took a couple of photos of the unspoilt ground before letting Kane loose on the unsuspecting snow.


We walked around the place, taking as many photos as possible, and then went to check the chickens to see if they were ok and to collect the eggs.

When we saw the chicken run we were amazed to see all the chicken wire filled with snow - it looked like someone had draped white sheets all over it, and I wondered just how happy my little friends were. Luckily, they were mostly all huddled under my mini extension I'd built as a dust bath, and all clucked excitedly when they heard us.

Kane and I made sure they had enough feed, and the water was clean and clear from ice, then started on our way back to the van.


We stopped to take a few more photos - one of a fir tree covered in snow, and one of the snow that had fallen in 15 minutes on my hat, then we decided enough was enough (or I did anyway!) and off we went - Kane all the time throwing snowballs at my behind!

One man went to mow...

Up to now, the only thing i've really used the tractor for is riding round wildly whooping and a 'ollering, and basically trying to go as fast as I can!

But Thursday was different - I had a purpose!

I woke up in the morning, looked out the front door and decided today was the day that I was going to cut the grass with the tractor.

After I had taken Kane to school, I psyched myself up, and went down the new place. I made sure the fuel was topped up, and the flat tyre which was, was still pumped up.

Opening the garage doors I started to get excited.....

...I was about to try something new - ok it was 'only cutting the grass' but it was the method I was excited about. A man with a purpose, a man with a ride on lawn mower!!!

I drove the mower onto the main lawn, and very carefully, drove around the outside of the entire lawn, making sure I didn't behead any plants or flowers on my way. The run went amazingly smootly, i was amazed at how easy the job was!

However, I had to blink a few times before the reality actually hit me.....

.... I hadn't actually cut a SINGLE blade of grass!

Although I had carefully lowered the grass collector and made sure it was working correctly, although I had switched on the cutting blades....

...I had forgotten the golden rule that the previous owner had so carefully explained to me....

...I had forgotten to LOWER the blades to the correct height!!

Therefore all I had managed to do was to firstly carefully fan the grass as I drove over it, then I totally squashed it and rolled it flat with the metal roller at the back!

Oh dear... time to rethink my greatness at this outside life.

Ok - this time I had it - the cutters switched on and lowered, the grass collector lowered and switched on, THIS time It was going to work.

I started on an easy bit, gradually gaining confidence as I circled the snowdrop bed and pear tree area.... ok so maybe I didn't have to go round quite so many times, but I just HAD to make sure ... i just HAD to!



Once I had grasped the basics of the job, nothing could stop me - I was about to attempt striping the lawn.

The first few stripes admittedly went pretty badly, looking like meandering rivers, sometimes together, they differed in size, but once I figured out that I had to line up the front of the mower rather than look down at the cutters, I was set.

I must admit, the last few stripes on the lawn were the best, and I even found a way to get the thing into reverse without having to smash my hand each time, but all in all it was a very successful day - that is until the cutters stopped working!


Luckily I had already finished, well, all apart from a sliver, so I wasn't too bothered.

Anyway - tinkering with engines is yet another fun activity I enjoy, so still no complaints there!

My friends.

Well, I know what the blog is called, so maybe it's time to show them.

One of the things I love about our chickens, is that they are quite tame, and follow me around all over the place. Usually when I'm holding or giving them food is the best time to get a complete compliment of followers, but when I've been working on putting the fence up, they mill around me, and generally hang out with me.

I was taking the chickens back to their coop/house - whatever you want to call it, and Jo decided to film the procession.



I don't have to be holding food though - I also whistle to get them to come to me, or failing that I just shout at them very loudly!

A seat in the country

The thing about our new place is that it's beautiful. Not beautiful in the pretentious overly crammed with fancy flowers sort of way, nor in the "yes, we have rare flowers in OUR garden, and aren't they the biggest you have ever seen" sort of way either.
Our place has a tranquility about it that has come from years of love and proper use of the land. The vegetable garden in nicely laid out, with a greenhouse and a big poly tunnel, the large lawn is expansive and lush, and the paddock is an area full of interesting little plants, flowers and trees. The paddock has one section almost hidden from the rest, it has a large fir tree and a willow separating it from the rest of that area, and that is where Jo mentioned she would like a bench.

After the success of my gates and the mini extension to the chicken coop (meant as a dust bath for the chickens - basically a lean-to) I decided to try to make a garden bench.

Having never made one wasn't really a problem, and I was excited as I thought how to make it.

I decided to try to use old fashioned methods to make it, and to make it sturdy enough to last at least a few years. So I set about buying some round and half round timbers to build it with. The first thing I did was to mortice out the front legs for the rails that would hold the thing together, remembering how in the old days they used to use wooden dowels instead of nails or screws.



The rest of the bench was pretty easy to do, although I was getting frustrated with the time involved as I had other jobs I was trying to do at the same time (post on fencing coming later).

I found a way to utilise the nice big front legs as a hand and mug rest which pleased me no end, as I had spent some time wondering how I was going to do it, without it looking rubbish.



So, once the handrail had been sorted out, it was plain sailing through the rest of the build, and at last it was finished! All that remained was to treat the timber with an extra coat of wood preserver (the timber was already vacuum treated with preserver), let it dry, and to move it into the paddock!

So here we have a couple of pictures before and after the treatment.




And hopefully this week, the bench will finally give Jo the peaceful spot she's wanted for years.

Ray of sunshine

Going from the driveway to the paddock was never an easy thing, at least not with the roughly made wire 'gate' that was there to torture you as you tried to fix it securely with some string, a hook and a prayer!

A new gate was needed, so I set about finding some timber in my shed to make a quick simple thing with a bit of chicken wire on to stop the chickens escaping again (more on this later). I knew I had to make it quick and not to spend much time on it, as I had many other things to do that were a bit more important. The gate was made, very simply as just a square, but then I looked at it and wondered if it was finished, which it wasn't really, so i stuck a couple more cut timbers in and VOILA! It was finished!



The main reason for wanting to make the paddock secure with the fencing is because very soon after the house became ours, one of the chickens escaped through the wider wire fencing that was there originally!

Queenie (named later after Steve McQueen) managed to get through the wire holes and get between the fence and the large hedge running along the roadside. After attempts to woo her with delicious pellets failed, and the threats to stick her in a pot didn't have any effect, I decided more drastic, pro-active measures were needed.
After a quick survey of the state of the hedge and possible ambush points, I grabbed the nearest solid looking long stick and started to gentley herd Queenie towards my parents, who had popped over to see the place, and Jo. At first the plan worked - Queenie slowly moved towards the group of people, but then, just as I thought I was able to reach through a hole in the hedge and grab her, she turned in the opposite direction and clucked her way towards the road.
Now my mind was racing.... could I save her from a horrible squashy death? Would she sanely climb back through the hole in the fencing? I had no time to even think of possible answers as she stepped into a slight clear patch of hedge... thinking not of my own safety or of possible consequences I dove into the hedge, arms outstretched in a cricket style sideways leap and put my hands perfectly round Queenie, holding her wings tight to her body!!

Now then.....
....what I obviously hadn't done, was to look before I leaped - a saying possibly made centuries ago JUST for this occassion. Once the initial adrenaline and excitement of catching Queenie has passed, I then had the horrible realisation of where I was.
I don't think the pain set in immediately, but as I scrambled around on my back holding Queenie above me, I realised I had dived like an idiot into a well established thorn bush of pain! Wishing my forearms were coated with a thick layer of teflon body armour, I started the long process of trying to stand up as my first priority (think tortoise on it's back holding a chicken), and then to try to pull the twisted, thorny mass off my skin.

The pain was soon gone, but the scars remained for a GOOD few days, so at least for that week, the school gate club was (I'm sure) totally spellbound and enthralled by my stories of heroism.

The dream continues!

One thing I have neglected to mention so far was the fact that the property has a very large lawn, and to mow this lawn the previous owners had a very large mower.

In fact is wasn't so much a mower, as it was a small tractor!

After speaking to the previous owners, and finding out they weren't able to take it up to Scotland, we managed to come to a deal which then made it MY mower.

Oh yes.... I had a tractor!



That's me trying it out in our paddock. Is it fair that one man have so much fun!?

Chicken surprise.

There was another bonus that came with the property (although at first I certainly didn't see it as a bonus) which was chickens.

Now all I saw when I looked at the corner of the paddock was a wire box with horrible scratchy, smelly, NOISY chickens.

My wife Jo fell in love with them, making a string of approving sounds such as "awwww" and "oh lovely". I WASN'T so keen, knowing full well (like with previous examples of pets of kept animals) that it would be me trudging out to look after them, feed them, water them, clear them out and generally keep them after her initial enthusiasm of throwing a few food pellets through the wire had worn off.

To cut an extremely long story short (and indeed, cutting out a lot of detail that would take me pages - and days to write) we managed to get the property, and all the other boring processes had begun, like planning applications and other legal whatnots.

One thing I knew I had to do was to finish the fine job of putting up a chicken wire (or as we country outsidey folk say - rabbit fencing) fence around the entire paddock that the previous owner had started. The other job I just HAD to do was to make a new gate/door for the chicken run, because the old one was completely rotten, the hinges rusted up and it was generally falling apart.

Suddenly I realised that I was actually able to do it myself (I did an apprenticeship in Carpentry and Joinery when i was 16) so I went to work making a new door, which actually turned out to be really good fun and looked the part too - which was a bonus.

This gave me a little boost, and I started to think of other jobs I was able to do. I carried on with the fencing - getting materials very cheaply from builders merchants I had either managed or worked at in the past - at last all those days of putting things on shelves, shuffling paper and getting it in the ear from moany employees was starting to pay off!!

It has to start somewhere....

Well I guess there has to be ONE first post, so this may as well be it!

When we decided to move, I was extremely excited - I mean like schoolboy excited - in my own head I had already built my 'super shed' and fitted it with the most up to date power tools, gadgets, made a workshop for my motorbikes and set up a bar in the corner for my new found friends from my sons school gate club (men only of course!).

The reality of the move started to take it's toll though, as one after another the property information sheets started to drip through our letterbox.

It wasn't as if we didn't know what we wanted, because we did - we wanted a bungalow close to where we live that had a large garden so we could build maybe an outside office, or that had potential to extend, so at last we could have enough room for all our stuff. The main reason for needing this space was to give our oldest son his own space, and to allow us to get all the equipment he needs. (Zak is 17 has Cerebral Palsy, is in a chair and is brilliant at IT - think Stephen Hawking).

We had wondered if such a place existed in our local area, but we had seen a VERY nice place up North near to where my wife had been born which had made us think very carefully whether we should stay down South or up sticks and make a new start.

We had become really deflated, and did wonder if we were asking too much.....

....UNTIL one day my wife saw this property on a website that made her jump up and get very excited!

This property was a 1930'2 bungalow, had been extended to allow the owners mother to live in an annexe with a separate entrance, AND came with approx 1.5 acres of land!! The best bit about the property though was that it was literally at the other end of the village we live in - so our youngest son would still be able to go to the same school.

We phoned up the estate agents and pretty much went straight round there, fell in love with the place and just KNEW we had to live there. The property had good potential for further extending which meant that not only did Zak have his own batchelor flat that could be optimised for him, there was enough room for Kane to have his own bedroom and playroom, Jo had space for her crafting......

......and I had my very own 10'x20' nice, dry, accessible SHED!