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!