Bleeding A Digger

Silly mistakes always cost time. 

Normally the sillier the mistake than the longer it takes to sort. Which is what happened today when the digger ran out of fuel.

New Growing Areas Created

Well not completely new it must be said.

I'm going to show you all a picture of what was my soft fruit garden and you have to promise not to laugh!

ARGH! You promised!

This is my not so little corner of shame in my veg garden. It's a real shame because the veg garden, with it's 32 even beds and cordon apple trees down the side is looking pretty good these days, then as you get to the bottom you see this overgrown mess.

New Play Area For The Kids

The kids love being outside at this time of year.

Crafts outside - painting money boxes!

This is great for me as it means I can get on with jobs outside whilst they flit between playing and helping me. They love playing in their Wendy house and have spent many happy hours in there, selling ice creams and being "mums and dads". 

At Christmas their grandparents (my wife's side) brought them a climbing frame. It's huge! I had no idea where I was going to put it up. Ideally it wanted to be somewhere I wasn't going to have to mow around (as I have no lawn mower at the moment) and near enough to the patio so if we have a BBQ we can still keep an eye on them. 

Extension Progress - Footings Dug!

Major milestone today, my dad and I dug the footings for the extension. It's been a long time leading up to this, with work on the patio, boiler and drainage all having to happen first.  

A picture of our future kitchen! 

It took us the morning to get them dug out and I'm so happy that it's done now. 

I've booked the building inspector to come round on Tuesday and hopefully we'll pour the concrete on Wednesday.

I do think we've dug them a little deep, but I'd rather that than too shallow and for the sake of a little extra concrete it's not the end of the world. I can't wait to get this project moving upwards! 

Garden Wall Footings

A few weeks ago dad came over to help me rip down the old wall and put footings in to rebuild it properly. It didn't take much pulling down, we literally just pulled it down by hand. Who ever built this wall one skin thick was a little silly!  

The wall was hiding the neighbours beautiful sheds

Loading the dumper

I think I managed to catch the moment the digger broke perfectly 

Space was tight and worse when wee had to use the bigger digger

We dug out what we could by machine then the rest had to be done by hand.

New footings in

Still need the shuttering to be removed

It was a long day on the Sunday but we managed to get most of the soil out, I then had a few (a lot) hours hand digging as it was all so near to the soil pipe from the house. I had to construct some shutters in a few places before we could concrete on the Wednesday night (the 5th), unfortunately as I was doing this I slipped with the saw and cut into my thumb. 

I needed stitches and I was worried I damaged my tendon so had a little visit to A&E. I helped the nurse hold the wound open and we watch my tendon go back and forth with no visible signs of damage except a slight nic in it, I was lucky. She stitched it up for me and I got back home about 5.30. 

Dad already had a load of concrete mixing so it was a case of wrapping it in some plastic and getting stuck in. Luckily my brother turned up to lend a hand - it was half ten by the time we finished and we were all dead by the end!

I've had most of the bricks come to build the wall and I've moved them with the tractor off the drive. The brick layer, Dill, comes tomorrow so I need to move some bricks today to get ready.

Slowly getting through the jobs!  

Porch Footings And Digger Work

Dad came over on the weekend so we could start on the porch and a little project in the back garden. He came in his usual style, with lots of equipped and machinery, there was even a different dumper for me to play with (I'm not aloud on the digger when he's here!). 

The front door before work started. 

The overgrown area of the back garden. The picture doesn't show it but there's an old dog pen in that mess that needed pulling out with the digger

Removing some horribly invasive shrub. Unfortunately it also showed us how unstable the garden wall is in the back garden.

Digging the footings for the porch. I did very little with a spade, most was done with the digger, luckily

The footings dug. even though it's just the porch we went to the same depth as the house footings. Building inspector was happy.

Concrete poured in. I went for quite a deep fill as it saves a lot of brick and block work. 

Dad's dog found it hard work as well!

I've got a bricklaying friend coming round on Monday to bring the brick and block work up to damp, plus some jobs in the garden and to see what he suggests with the wobbly wall. Hopefully the porch won't take too long and then we can crack on with the extension, although I'm sure it's my bits that will take the time!

Building A Greenhouse Base

I've been on about getting my "new" greenhouse up for ages now and time is rapidly ticking away until I'll really need it. 

On Friday dad sprung the news on me that he was going to give me a hand on Sunday and to make sure I was ready!

 The trouble is where I wanted to put the greenhouse has been, how should I put this, somewhat neglected.

 A few hours moving bit of rubbish and chopping down all the nettles and I was ready for dad to arrive.

 As usual he arrived in style! A trailer full of stuff and the knowledge that we'd have a hard afternoon a head of us!

 It's pretty handy having a dad that has a digger (well multiple diggers) and is rather good when he's in control of it! The site slopes quite a bit (probably around 18" over the 12ft) so we levelled it off first, making a large pile in the garden to be moved at a later date. 

 Then using a narrower bucket on the digger we dug a strip for the foundations of the greenhouse, levelled it up and began mixing concrete.

 It took around 20 barrows of concrete for the base. As I took this picture dad shouted "Is that so you can remember what I was like before you killed me!" I guess that we were working rather hard on a Sunday afternoon.

 The 12ft by 8ft strip foundation. I'll lay a concrete block one layer high all round this and fix the greenhouse to it to give me a little extra height.

The last picture shows where it will sit next to the smaller greenhouse. I'm looking forward to having some more under cover growing space. I'm planning on lots of tomatoes and chillies!

Now the question is what should I do with the floor of the greenhouse. Should I have beds and clean them out every year or grow things in  pots/buckets and have slabs under them?

Landscaping Farmer Style!

Our smallholding of 5 acres is amazing but we've only just enough parking for two cars making it difficult when friends or family turn up (kind of like water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink - but more like space, space everywhere but not a place to park). 

A large front garden that I we won't really use

We decided enough was enough and with the help (and digger) of my father we decided to pick the wettest most miserable weekend to start it on!

Pulling the tree over with the digger - I only had to cut one root

First off we removed a tree farm style - roots and all - using the mini digger and set about clearing the area to be dug.

Taking the tree down has let in much more light and made the space feel bigger.

fir tree on the ground - a bit or rubbish firewood for the winter to mix with the good stuff

The next job was digging up and moving the soil to allow stone in its place. Dads a master on a digger and I manned the dumper truck in the driving rain - I wish mine had a cab, dad couldn't understand the glum look on my face!

Dad loves playing on his diggers

Looking quite wet stood on my dumper truck

A trailer full of hardcore delivered by tractor and a wet spaniel

Once we'd tipped the hardcore we could see how much stone we need to order. Dad did manage to make a path across the mud and level enough ground to park the car and the van on the drive again. We'll have to try and finish this next weekend - I hope it doesn't rain too much and become a swimming pool! 

Cost Of The Good Life

By this I mean work!

A very busy Sunday.

New ericaceous raised bed

• I started all my tomatoes and peppers off (late I know),
• Planted courgettes and cucumbers, leeks and peas, (all under cover)
• Cobbled together a plastic 4 tier greenhouse that should have been chucked away at the end of last year,
• I made a large (10ft by 4ft) raised ericaceous raised bed out of 6x2, filled it and planted 4 blueberry bushes (I've had one of them in a pot for 9 years).
• Planted 3 blackberry bushes by our fuel tank
• Pruned all my Autumn raspberries (late again but they only went in last week)
• Collected all the spare soil from where I'd been planting our orchard
• Planted a small bit of rhubarb
• Sorted out all my crop netting and tied it into bundles

Then dad turned up with the digger!

Sump removal with the digger

He kindly dug round the veg and fruit garden with a narrow bucket to make it easier to put the rabbit wire in, he also did a bit of stump removal whilst I removed all the stock fencing to be replaced with rabbit wire. In doing this job he's saved me so much digging and time and as spring is pretty much here I need all the time I can get.

Much easier to dig in the rabbit wire now!

We also dug round the area which will be the chicken pen (to make it more fox proof when the wire goes in). I also made a start on removing a large clump of hazel which I should be able to coppice for bean poles in the future and get some fire wood from it for next winter.

Feeling quite stiff tonight so I think I've got a good day in.