A Small Swarm - Landing On A Cross

The other day I had my evening planned to perfection. I had a talk quite far away (the other side of stroud) and I always like to leave in good time so I'm not rushing and I'm there nice and early. 

Then I got a knock at the door, our neighbour looks after the church, locking and unlocking it each day. He'd seen a swarm of bees. Now really I'm not next in line to get the bees from the church, having already had some and my friend who normally gets them currently being out of bees. So we, Eldest and I, walked over and had a look, all the while I tried to ring my friend. 

Simple Garden Bench

 I think I was in my late 30s when I put a stool in my workshop and it changed my working day. Getting older I think I need to sit and think occasionally! 

I wanted something for the garden for the same reason. It's good to have somewhere to park your bum and with my eldest spending so much time down there I thought it would be good for her as well. 

I've been reading Aldo Leopold, falling into his mediative essays, and you don't have to do much research about the man before you'll stumble upon one of his benches. 

Simple and quick to make with materials that are easy to find or buy. I had to build one for the veg garden. A few hours is all that's needed for this project. I will post a how-to video in a few days, but honestly even looking at it, it's obvious how to make it, only the angles and lengths need thinking over. The original is meant to be sat either way, backwards so you can rest your elbow to steady your binoculars, but I wasn't too worried about that and opted for a bigger back rest, it also kept all the materials the same. 

I loved building this and I can feel the need for a few more before the spring is out! Maybe even a single seater. 

What type of bench do you like? 

Carved Wooden Attendance Awards

 My wife told me that the award they use for the best attendance had fallen apart. 

Now in all honesty I'm not a massive fan of attendance awards, I feel that a lot of luck is needed to be well all the time, and I doubly think this when we have a a child with a disability. But the schools have targets to hit and I don't think it would be unfair of me to say that some parents let their child have a day off for anything. Growing up it felt like we would have to loose a foot to get a day off school! 

But I said I'd make her a new one, and then once I made one she said that the other half of the school would be sad theirs didn't look so nice - I should have known to make 2 from the start.

But I think as a pair they look really nice, they're both made from 50mm sycamore (so they can't be used as throwing stars) and I hand carved the wording and the design around the outside. Then treated with Briwax to help pick out the detail on the small letters. 

What do you think?

April Homestead Tour

A quick walk around the homestead while everything is bathed in the spring sunshine! 

 It's just glorious at the moment outside. 

How is your plot looking? Did you miss as many winter jobs as I did?

A Nice Day With My Son

Last week my girls and my wife had to go back to school on the Monday, but the youngest got an extra day off. 

I had planned to get some jobs done, as I had only realised he'd be with me the day before! But the jobs would work well together. 

Long May It Last

Just two girls sat sewing their ballet pointe shoes in our messy living room. 

 And long may it last! 

Compost From the Compost Bins

I'm fairly lazy when it comes to compost. I'd rather leave it an extra year than turn it over! But the one bay of my big compost bin was ready to harvest. Some round the edges needs to go on another run, but the middle was absolutely beautiful! 

I had my young garden apprentice helping me. We dug out all we could and put it in the greenhouses. Hopefully this will give us some good crops in each of those this year.  

It's bene lovely having my eldest in the garden with me. It feels very natural to have her just doing stuff. On Saturday she spent time in the garden, then picked dandelions to make a preserve, and then went and picked wild garlic and made pesto! I joke I don't know where she gets it from, but I think I have a fair idea...

Thai Cooking Course

 Today I went on a cookery course with my brother. Both of us are really into our cooking, and this was a present from mum. 

It was at Harts Barn Cookery School, where we've both been to a few different classes now. They've always been really good and I feel I learn lots. 

This one was no exception. the teacher was great and really knew her stuff. We started with Pork toast - which I will be cooking this week for the family! It was delicious! And surprisingly easy. Like most Thai food though it does need a few ingredients I might not normally keep in the house. Luckily the children are very adventurous when it comes to food, so we can try a few different things. 

We then made Pad Thai (no pictures for that one sorry). I love Pad Thai, and realised that I'd been cooking rice noodles wrong my whole life! Apparently I should buy the dried noodles and soak them in cold water for an hour or so before cooking, not buy the ready soft ones like I have been - it's tips like that that make it worth while. 

Lastly we made Thai green curry, making the curry paste from scratch. A bit of work but well worth it. I'll be making it again. 

Like the other courses I've done there, I was well fed, and came home full of ideas for meals to cook - I'll certainly be going to more courses in the future. 

What world food do you like cooking?

Leather Workshop

 A few weeks back I went on a leather workshop for a morning with my mum. 

Each year she buys a course that we go on together. It's been a great thing to do and I have so many fun memories of doing different things over the years. This one was brilliant. 

It was a beginners one, just making a leather belt. 

This involved cutting the leather, skiving it, and stitching it together.

Funny as my old belt had broke just the week before - it must have known! But the lady taking the course repaired that one for me as well. 

I always love learning about different crafts, and having a bit of a go is a great way to learn. Many transferable skills from what I already do each day in the cutting and shaping of the leather. I was surprised I found the stitching so easy, I really enjoyed that part of it. 

I have a feeling it won't be the only bit of leather work I do, and a big part of me would love to take the children (and my wife) on a similar course to this one, I think they'd love it. 

Ever made much with leather?

Beehive inspection - first of the year

So we did our first inspection at the start of the month, on a nice warm Monday evening. 

 We filmed it, but I've only just got it edited and up on YouTube. It's more for our records and my memories, but some might like to watch it, 

Wooden Potting Tray - Metal bottom - for Soil Blocking

 I had a customer ask me about making a tray for their soil blocking. It's something I've always been interested in, basically making compost blocks that you grow your seedlings in instead of using pots. 

I knew it would encounter more moisture so I suggested adding a glavanisied steel bottom to it. I said I wouldn't leave the wet compost in there too long, but this should certainly help it see many years of use. 

I think the metal bottom also looks really smart and I love my customers potting shed - looks a great place to be. 

It might be something I offer off-the-shelf in the future, but currently I can make them to order and get the steel in for it. Find my currently range of trays here on my Etsy store or send me an email (in my contacts page) and I can create the tray that's right for you. 

First Hive Inspection Of The Year

With the sun shining we decided to get our suits on and inspect the hives. Always a little nervous after the winter as never sure how they've done. 

We were really pleased to see all three hives had survived the winter! And all three in good health.

I was a little worried as the one hive we had merged with another at the end of the summer (early autumn really) and I hadn't managed to get the second brood box off. But they had sorted themselves out. There was a tiny bit of mould in that hive on a few frames of honey, but only because some of the newspaper we had left between the two brood boxes remained and I think this stopped the airflow.

 It was great to see that my girls were just as enthusiastic as they were before, both keen to get into each hive and not showing any fear at all. 

I'm looking forward to a fun bee keeping season again this year!

Seeds in

I always feel behind in March, but stuff soon catches up.

 Got lots of Tomatoes in, the following varieties - 

Primabella

Milliefleur

True Black

Hungarian pink

Indigo rose

Cherokee Purple

Shimmer

Tiger Tom

Black Opal

Little Tanyana 

Plus a few other bits and pieces. Also have a cool hydrophonic growing thing in the kitchen which I'lll share with you all later (for growing salad and herbs). 

What tomatoes have you got growing this year?

Carved Phone Stand

 Sometimes I just make something because I think it's a good idea. Or in this case because my daughter thought it would be a good idea. 

Made these simple phone stands with my scout a few weeks back and decided it would make a great magazine article. So set to making one last week. Didn't take long, although it does have a bit of short grain so there is a need to be careful. 

Full set by step should be in woodcarving magazine soon. 

I have a feeling my daughter might take this one from me! 

A Little Taste of Spring

 The world is going to pot again, I always try to stay abreast of current affairs but really I'd prefer not to at the moment. At least I have nature and and family around me. It was a good weekend. Yesterday meeting up with my sister and her family, with swimming and baking.

And today spent outside, I pruned my apple trees, sorted out lots of little jobs. Both the girls came out to help in the garden without being asked. 

The newest batch of chickens have never looked healthier. These hybrids are always the friendliest chickens on earth. Honestly can't get away from theses at times, keep finding them in my workshop if I leave the door open! 

I'm looking forward to a bit better weather in March, can't wait to get my hands into the dirt again. 

Sash Window Repair

It's been wet and miserable so I've hardly left the workshop.

I have a few other little jobs on. Had to remove this sash window the other day, and I'll be doing the repair in the next few days. 

They shut the window and the bottom broke off, completely rotten. 

 They were lucky not to cut themself. 

It means completely stripping down the sash, removing the paint, taking out the glass, then making a new bottom rail and fitting it. Hardly a fun job, but pays the bills. 

Tips on Electric Fencing

My childhood was different from a lot of peoples. Of course when you're growing up you think everything is normal, and it's only when you look back that you see it wasn't, but I think even at the time I knew it wasn't like everyone's.

There was a lot of "jobs" involved, we were forever helping dad on the farm. I can remember being picked up in the carpark of school and dad throwing our overalls and wellies out to us (my brother and I, along with my sister when she was old enough), telling us to get changed before we got in. The dog would jump all over us and we'd then go off to manage some of our sheep or some other job that needed our attention. 

Seems like a lifetime ago that we had the sheep here. Part of me misses it, but then a big part of me likes staying sane...

Dad would plan the jobs around what help he had, every job with the sheep was easier with one of us helping, this could be drenching them or sorting them, but more often than not it was was doing something with the electric fencing. 

All of our land was rented, and most had questionable fencing. Our land was fields dotted about the place that dad had managed to rent from different people, every time we moved the sheep it was with a stock box, and before we could let them out, we'd walk the perimeter and see how bad the fences were. 

A field I used to rent. I'd love to go round and visit all the fields dad used to rent and get pictures one day.

Electric fences became our first line of defence. This is also my very early memories of driving (very young), dad would sit the Landrover in low box (1st gear) and I'd steer it along the field at walking pace. He would walk behind and take the fence posts off the trailer, counting his paces to make sure they were spaced evenly. 

Then we'd each get a reel of wire and walk along the posts he had just laid out. The reel would be held on a fence post so it could unravel easily, dad would walk behind and clip each one into a slot on the post.

Then with an old car battery dad would power it all up, and we'd go quiet waiting for the rhymic "click, click, click..." to show it was on. Dad would always try to get one of us to touch it, saying we needed to test it properly, but even holding a piece of grass on the fence it would send a shock down your arm. 

We learnt a lot doing the fencing, but a few tips - 

The sheep had to fear the fence, if they got through it once, without it kicking them, then chances were they'd try again, it made us really good at changing the batteries (before the days of solar chargers) as the last thing you wanted was the sheep thinking it's not on. 

The fences worked better near another barrier, so a electric fence alongside a hedge would always work better than one cutting a field in half. 

You made sure it was clear under the fence when you put it up. Chances are the sheep would keep it clear afterwards, but was worth cutting where the fence was going to go with a strimmer (brushcutter) or at least driving the tractor wheel to flatten the grass. If grass could touch it then it would often short the circuit and not work properly. 

You took care when you wrapped the fence up. Rushing the packing up would cost so much time when it came to putting the fence out again. We used to make sure the reels were wrapped tight and the posts all laid the same way. You got a nice pace as you walked and wrapped, but as the wire got older I would hold a handful of grass in my hand to stop the stray wire from cutting me. 

You didn't leave it up longer than it had to be. It was easy to wrap it straight away when the grass was short, but if the grass grew long around it, you'd have a game trying to remove it. 

You left the fence unit out of sight - we only ever had one lot go missing, but they took the time to wrap it all up and take the posts as well. We used to chain the expensive unit to an old wheel or something tricky to move. Probably not so effective now with cordless angle grinders, but I feel you should make it as tricky as possible for them. 

I dread to think how many times we put up fences! Worst was as we got into our teens and dad would make my brother and me go and do it on our own. We then lived in fear of the sheep getting through one of our fences and knew where the blame would land! 

Do you use electric fencing much? 

Do you have any tips for using it?

Was it a part of your childhood like mine? 

Saving Rain Water On The Homestead

I said to my wife the other day that it feels like it's been raining for 40 days and 40 nights now. So, at times like this it's sometimes hard to think about the possible dry times ahead and storing water for use around the homestead. But as always it's best to be prepared, especially with some of the summer we've had lately. 

We have a number of ways of collecting water. Most are cobbled together from a time when we were on a very tight budget. I have always dreamed of installing some much larger water tanks which would mean I could dispense with some of the maintenance that goes with having linked storage barrels. The one lot are filled from the roof of my workshop, although I could easily add gutter and more barrels to the other side as well. 

A bit of green growth around the fittings - tell tale signs it's leaking. 

Last summer was case in point of this, where I had both sets of linked barrels leak. The barrels in question are old olive barrels, bought cheap. I try to make sure I never have more than 4 barrels linked up in a series. This is then is about a thousand litres, The row of 6 (in the picture above) is linked as two lots of three, with a filling pipe placed at the top to link them up. That way if one leaks it won't drain the whole lot so we're not left without water when we need it most. 

The problem from these barrels comes from the fact that they are very curved on the inside, so any fitting I use is a bit of a bodge, using silicone. The other problem comes from the top of the barrels not accepting my broad shoulders, so every time we've added some of these to the homestead, one of the children has had to go inside to hold the spanner to tighten the fitting! 

It's worth fixing these leaks now though, while there is plenty of time for the barrels to fill back up. A job on my list is to empty them all out, clean them and then refit the fittings, possibly replacing a few of the older fittings. 

The one's in the garden, much the same set up, fed off the shed roof. 

The other thing we do is have areas set up for making sure the water is something the animals want to drink! My boy has an area where he cleans the chicken waters each week (scrubs them), and tops them all up with fresh water. I love seeing that he has used this old toy table as a workbench to clean them out. A while ago I added an outdoor hot tap and this has been brilliant for jobs like this. He uses the watering cans to then take and fill up the tubs we use for the chicken's water, knowing how far he can fill them and still be able to carry them using the gauge on the side of the can. When he's done he puts it all away neatly - quite organised really! 

Further down the garden, the water tanks are used to fill up a small plunge tank, this is ideal when watering the garden, and so long as you use a lot of the water it doesn't have time to go green. This will need cleaning out properly before the growing season starts however! The mesh screen I made stops any animals or birds falling in when it's not in use. 

The other job I like to do every couple of years is to change the "O" rings on all the hosepipe fittings. It's a quick job, and can save many litres of water from slipping away, but it's also a job that's really easy to ignore. 

We have experimented with many things over the years to save moving so much water about. Having barrels next to the pens works on the short term, but we find them very hard to keep clean, and without lids there is always the risk something will fall in. 

We tend to only fill these when we go on holiday now, to make looking after the chickens easier for whoever we rope in to do the task! 

I'd love to have more water stored here on the homestead, and it's something I need to put some serious thought in to improving in the coming years. More potable water that we can drink as well would be great (or better ways to filter it), and some proper water storage tanks for that would be incredible when we save the money for it. 

How do you store water for use on the smallholding or garden? 

How many litres do you think you have stored when it's all filled up?

What maintenance jobs are you doing over winter in relation to water storage?

Latest Woodcarving Magazine Article

I think I've been in the last 25 issues or so of woodcarving magazine now - time really does just slip by! 

I got to do the opening to the magazine in the latest issue, a part I always love doing. I got to include the bit about medieval carpentry with my boy and a few lovely pictures from the weekend. 

This issue also features one of my favourite articles I've written for the magazine, the carved axe cover. Hopefully people will like it!

Always nice to see your name in print! 

How To Make A Carved Sliding Axe Cover - Video

A follow on from my other post a few days back. The carved axe cover for my son. 

I've managed to put a video together showing how I carved it. I've left it  little longer than some videos as I wanted to show as much of the carving as possible. 

Give it a watch and let me know what you think! 

Extra Mason Jar Storage

 Another project for another magazine article! This time some extra storage for mason jars. 

I've been planning to make this since I made the door for the pantry. I built the door strong enough to take it. 

Carved Wooden Axe Cover - No.2

 My Son recently turned 10. He asked for an axe for his birthday - who wouldn't? 

I managed to pick up three really beautiful axes for him to work up to. The biggest was a lovely old Brades axe, in need of a cover though!

I'd been thinking of making another style of wooden axe cover for a while and I had a woodcarving magazine article due.