Muddy Mess

I thought I'd post a little video on here to make you all feel better about what your places are like at the moment. 

It is muddy here. 

When you watch the video please excuse all the building materials and diggers, wheel barrows etc. It's just too muddy to tidy this stuff up without making more mess at the moment.

Field drains and soak aways are needed here and will be added in the future. 

I'm hoping that this time next year it should look a lot better than this! 

Recovering From Christmas Excess

Starting to feel normal again after Christmas now. My stomach can't take another chocolate and I've put the rest of the turkey in the freezer to make curries with another day. We've got one Christmasey day left then its back to normal, working Tuesday to hopefully burn off some excess. 

I had a bit of time today organising my workshop and van ready for a busy start to next year, the baby could come at any time so keeping organised is key at the moment. 

 Today I had a walk out round the fields and it's so wet! The sheep are currently on vacation at my fathers farm and it's a good job as I think they'd sink. I left muddy foot prints across fresh grass, ditches are running like streams and the brook is almost across the road. Still we're much luckier than many across the country. 

I need to start putting some thought into where I'm going to lamb as the ewes have been tupped and are due in April sometime! 

I got some great presents over Christmas but who can tell me what these are:

And it you've already seen this question on facebook please don't answer! 

Making More Mud

Now the wall is nearing completion it's time to crack on with the back of the house so we can get the boiler in. 

 Unfortunately this means digging up more of the patio to put in a proper retaining wall. I'm doing this a stage at a time though as we only need to do the first section to get the pipes in for the boiler.

The boiler is going between the two pillars on the wall.

 Unfortunately the day we chose to do this it rained all day, both my dad and I were soaked through and were both ravenous by the lunch time, I think we were burning calories just trying to stay sanding up in the mud!

As usual we ended up concreting the footings in the dark, but I was pleased with the results in the light the next morning. 

Tomorrow we're doing more digging, again regardless of the weather, to lay all the pipes and cables that we need. I have a feeling it's going to be a long, wet & muddy day! 

Mud, Glorious Mud!

 Well not so Glorious really. The mud around my chicken pens and garden is becoming a real pain in the bum. I hate having to walk through it twice a day to feed the birds and leave my muddy boots in our tiny litttle hallway. I've put down wood chip but it soon becomes part of the mud, and I've put down straw but that does much the same, what to do?

Mud!

I have come up with one solution, but t'ts going to involve a bit of effort (mind you all good things do!). It involves around a hundred 2ft x 2ft slabs I've been given (bargain). I've got to pick them up and bring them home first and they need a good wash off as they're quite black at the moment, but they should cover a large area.
I'm thinking of a path down the veg garden and fruit garden and some paths to the chicken pen and feed shed. I'll probably just lay them on soil for now as I'm not sure where everything is going to stay at the moment, but it should go a long way to reducing the amount of mud around the place. I should even have some left over to maybe make a patio for the spring when my little girl should be out and about.

Slabs

The slbas are quite a large long term project - Anyone else got any ideas for reducing mud in this wet year that is a bit quicker?