A Poultry Investment

The Ex caged chickens have done there job in the garden and eaten all the weeds and grass off.
The trouble is I now want to get tidying up and planting in there but the nine chickens somewhat stop this. I even tried to keep them out of the fruit section of the garden with a fence but everyday they get through (or over despite having their wings clipped).

Fencing them in

They need to be moved.

So I need to do two things: build a new coop (their current one is an old shed which will fall over if I look at it funny), and put up a fence.

For a while I've liked the idea of having some movable netting so every few weeks I can move the chickens onto a fresh bit of grass. Today, armed with a 15% off voucher, my daughter and I went down to countrywide and brought a 50m roll of poultry netting complete with posts. I've already got a fencer unit (well dad has but he's not using it) so that makes it a little cheaper, although at well over a hundred pounds we've got a few eggs to sell to make our money back!

It'll be nice to be able to move the chickens onto fresh grass and I'm sure the eggs will benefit, the trouble is I've now got to build a coop fairly quickly.

Any ideas for a quick build coop?

Also does anyone use this netting and if they do is it any good?

Tree Karma

My brother is a tree surgeon and he often says about the state of his "tree karma". That is how many trees he cut down compared to how many he's planted or saved.
Mine pretty high as I've planted a lot more than I've cut down but sometimes trees have to go.

Ash growing in the wrong place

The Ash tree in the front garden was one that I marked to come out from the first time we looked at buying the house over 12 months ago. Although it's not massive it's growing too close to the house and it's under the power lines so unfortunately it's got to go.

Spot the Idiot

 Why this came about was today some of my family came to see our daughter, my dad being a typical Alviti couldn't just come and relax.

"Lets take that tree down" He said before even going inside for a coffee.

Not how most families spend a relaxing Sunday afternoon together!

I cut all the higher branches down by hand, up in the tree, as we worked out that the tree was going to be longer than the width of the garden. We only just worked this out as we were just going to fell it in one go (good job I'm more cautious than my father and made him work it out! - He has a friend who once got it out wrong and felled a massive tree straight onto his Daihatsu truck). Some of these high branches we tied a rope to and pulled them as I cut them to keep them from falling towards the power lines.

The king of firewood won't go to waste

The light faded fast so I ended up logging it by floodlight, but at least all I've got to do now is split and stack the wood. I might even use a bit of it for a weird carving I've been asked to do.

As for my tree karma I've got 25 trees to plant when/if it drys up so I'm not too worried!

How's everyones tree karma looking?

Axe Workshop And Charcoal Making Course

This is going to be a long post but I'll let the pictures do the talking!

On this blog I'll concentrate on the charcoal making and on my other blog I'll talk about the axe side of things.

Setting up camp in heavy snow was interesting!

A snowy tent

It didn't dampen our spirits though!

Starting to pack in the wood for the charcoal burn

The compost toilet - almost looks picturesque

The barrel full for the charcoal burn, tightly packed in

Tipping the barrel over the fire (that's why the wood is tightly packed into the barrel)

Some time to roast some chestnuts

Watching for the smoke to change

Stopping the burn with soil

The charcoal the next day cooled and ready to bag up

The group next to a "cord" of wood we'd set up

A great weekend learning some new skills and practising old ones.

It was also a great opportunity to camp in conditions where I normally wouldn't bother! I wasn't cold once so I must have dressed right.

The snow made the course more interesting if anything, hunting for fire wood became harder as was keeping the fire going. I also learnt a little more about making charcoal, it was a completely different way to how my brother and I were making it in a 45 gallon drum a few years ago and it reinforced the knowledge I already had about it.

I love weekends like this! If anyone is interested I really recommend their course - http://www.survivalschool.co.uk/.

Camping In The Snow

My wife thinks I'm mad. That's normal. But this weekend she thinks I'm Stark-Raving!

Just because my brother and me are camping out?

Some of my kit for the weekend - two sleeping bags might be a good idea do you think?

My brother and I are both off up to a wood in Staffordshire to go on an axe workshop and charcoal making class this weekend. It involves two nights out under the stars, although with all this snow I don't think we're be seeing many stars in the sky.

This is through Survival School who we've done a couple of courses with before, so we know it's going to be good. Previously we went on an Introduction to bush craft weekend course (back in 2007) where we learnt loads and a week long course for "extreme survival" (2010) into the Scottish Highlands with just one bag of kit each. This week long course was great fun and a good test of team work and skills, from skinning a deer to firing a flare (I might do another post about this course as it was so good).

I love it, we're both into our bush craft and survival skills and its a great way to spend a weekend together where we're not working, just messing around in the woods like we did when we were kids.

The snow should make things interesting as I've never camped in it before.

Any tips or things I should take?

I'm keeping kit to a minimum and I've resisted the temptation to buy more "stuff" to go on this trip with. I've always been told "The more you know the less you need" and hopefully I'm getting pretty experienced at it now.

Storage Problems

I think that most modern families have a common problem - not enough storage. We certainly do.



Just a tiny selection of some of our books!



Our little girl is growing up so quick and getting through clothes at a rate of knots, but as we want more children we don't want to throw any of these clothes away. I have been taking some to my mothers in plastic boxes as well as some of the toys she's grown out of. The trouble is I can see mothers patience running thin as I try to hide another box in her house.

Tiny little loft hatch - not good for much!

I'd like to keep this stuff here if I could, but there's a big problem - or rather a small one. We've got a tiny little loft hatch.

It takes some squeezing through, so large boxes of baby clothes and car seats have got no chance. I finally decided to do something about it when I was putting the decorations away and having to "launch" them through the hole!

I bought a complete loft hatch with its own ladder, sprung loaded and insulated hatch. they're good qualitity and I fitted five of these in the same house i was working at last year so I knew what I was doing. With today's near blizzard conditions I decided to get it fitted.

The new, all singing, all dancing loft hatch!

Now I've got the hatch fitted I'm going to board out the middle section of the loft (I'll raise the floor up so it won't squash the insulation) and fit a couple of lights (this will be another weekend not this one!). That way it will make it much easier to store all our baby stuff for future use and maybe things like camping gear and sewing stuff can go up there to, just coming down when we want to use it. By having the loft easily accessible it means it's not such a chore to go into it.

And before anyone says it  - don't worry I'm not going to overload my loft. All the weight will be spread (there's plenty of load bearing walls that finish in there as well) and nothing of any real weight will be stored in there. Also our roof isn't a modern truss roof designed to the minimum requirements, ours was built at the end of the forties, things were always over engineered then and the ceiling joists seem substantial for the spans (trust me I'm a carpenter...).

Anyone else got any storage solutions? We still need more - books mainly but we don't believe in hiding them away!