403 Points! Go Jorja!

Niece Jorja at her 'Debs' just before hearing her
'Leaving Cert' results. Looking good J-M!

Yes. Even before I mention our success in finishing "that shed" or the recent change in the weather that made us all delighted that we had, I must congratulate #2 Irish Niece, long term Friend of the Blog, Jorja on nailing the Leaving Cert exams (Brits think "A" Levels). Although the Exam Board tell you the breakdown of your result by subject (As, Bs etc) what everyone is interested in is THE POINTS - that is what gets you into the University, College, onto your course or into job that you seek. Jorja scored 403 which is a) brilliant and b) easily enough for her to proceed on her chosen path, so well done Jorja - formerly known in this blog as J-M.

Rudbeckia

So, all growed up now, a responsible adult, though to me she will always be the little swaddled up bundle that got handed to me in Maidstone Hospital, her tiny arms wrapped around close to her body like a straight-jacket. No-one else could stop the little mite from crying but when I took her she seemed to like the bass-y voice or something and went off to sleep like a light-switch being turned off. Elizabeth and the new Mum (Mrs Silverwood) could sneak off for some 'fresh air' knowing she was in safe hands.

The first new 'tin' going on on the yard-side (front) of the shed.

Meanwhile in Roscommon, we got a brilliant result too, in finishing our chicken house roof. K-Dub rocked up nice and early and we gave it the whole day round to about 4 pm. We had the purlins to fit (horizontal stringers which pick up the screws coming through the tin) and then 30 sheets of the 'tin' (corrugated iron) plus 2 transparent plastic ones recycled from the roof before. The tin itself was recycled anyway, having been carefully lifted from K-Dub's house roof in Sligo, when we did the rebuild/new roof on that a couple of years back (well covered in this blog); a very generous donation.

The back of the building. You can see the new front.

The gifted sheets of tin dictated to us where our middle purlin would go because the sheets already had the central screw-holes in them and it was better to re-use those holes than cut new ones and leave the roof leaking and in need of something to seal the old holes. They were also about a foot too long but we had a nifty solution once they were all on, garden string and a 'Sharpie' marker to create a line, then a thin disk angle grinder to create a neat 'fringe' that lined up with the bottoms of the transparent sheets. It worked well.

With all the sheets on, K-dub went aloft once more, 'riding' the new roof like a horse, while he pressed down and then screwed home our upside down 'V' section ridge pieces. The east end of the roof received two more of these 'ridge' pieces to make a capping wrapped round onto the gable end to stop any 'Beast from the East' winds getting in under the roof. The west end would get its tin tucked in under a re-instatement of the concrete "barge" capping. With those dark-painted ridge bits on, framing the whole thing and the tin trimmed to length it all looked very neat.

Trimmed, end-capped and ridged it all looks very neat

With the outside all complete, time to go inside and re-instate the electrics. I was delighted with the look of the place inside. All the wood is brand new and pale in colour and the underside of the tin is shiny 'galvanised' grey or silver instead of rusty red. Also, with the tarps now off, light streams in through the transparent plastic panels. I will barely need my electric lights!

Lovely new looking interior.

We have just one little de-snag to do. The metal "bent straps" which do a belt'n'braces job holding your wall plates down to the walls (so the whole roof cannot lift off in one piece) need fixing to the stone walls by screws/plugs drilled into the hard stones (some kind of very hard sandstone). K-Dub has a drill for this but had not bought the right kind of bits, so he will come back next week and finish this little job off. There we have it. A new roof. Time to adjourn indoors for a cup of tea and a chat. I am delighted with it. Huge thanks to K-Dub and Elizabeth for the massive effort.

Almost Biblical rain tests the new roof.

Just a quick follow-up on this story and some more thanks to give out. My friends from archery, Niamh and Con plus their current "Wwoof-er" (volunteer labour like our Help-X people, but from the "World-Wide Organization of Organic Farmers" (hence WWOOF)), Stefan. These good folk had planned a day of taking Con to nearby airfield for a Birthday Present light aircraft flight round Holy Mountain, Croagh Patrick, or "The Reek". Con and Niamh are mad into the pre-Christian / Druidic history of Ireland and The Reek is positively peppered with ancient sites, cairns and so on.

A friend in the village has a new Grand-child. The Knitter of
this House is joining the baby clothes and layette knitting
effort.

However, pretty much as we finished our roof, the weather took a turn for the worse and we have, we are told, another 'named storm' (Ernesto) coming through this weekend. The wind and rain in front of this storm grounded Con's pilot leaving Niamh and Stefan with a free afternoon. Knowing that my Help-X lad had blown out, Niamh decided to come here with her 'Wwoofer' and do us an hour's work. This was very generous, unnecessary and very welcome - we had the new roof up but the old roof scattered about in various piles of rusty tin, concrete, manky wood, nails, tarpaulins, tyres, string and wire. They all needed tidying off the yard so that was the job I gave N+S, with Elizabeth piling in to help. In a fast-moving hour we had the yard back. Thank you very much, all three.

Erigeron, now finally established in our gravel (we hope)

Which only leaves me with two bits of farm news and a quick 'health' update. Firstly, this back end (of week) was the most likely time for our AWOL Guinea-hen to complete her brooding and hatch out any keets out there in the hedges. We wondered whether she might walk them home all romantically like a little 'crocodile' of school children. No such fairy-tale ending so far. We just have the three 'boys' doing their fox-watch alarms and occasionally obsessing about a patch of East Field where 'she' might be. As time goes by, I guess we will have to accept that maybe Brer Fox intervened and this story did not end well.

Soldier has gone AWOL

New to the AWOL list, our black and white (rescue) cat, Soldier, seems to have gone missing. He has always been an outdoor boy and does not very much enjoy being grumped at by big floofy cat 'Blue', so he may have gone to live somewhere where he is more 'welcome'. We have no reason to think he is dead, he just has not been home for a couple of days. We will keep you posted.

Hen and chicks in the orchard.

So, last but not least, my good self. I am still moseying along in my 'probationary' period, 4 weeks back out of the hospital, sticking to the liquid intake limits and taking the meds, seeing if I can stabilize. This with a review clinic at Sligo hospital set for the 4 weeks when I get reviewed by my 2 consultants, with possible decisions being made about the heart valve replacement surgery. It's going OK but I think I am slowly congesting up again. I am sneaking a bit of that weight back on, my ankles are starting to swell again and most of my nights are interrupted by 'productive' ticklish coughing. We will find out the response to all this on my clinic dates, which have now been advised to me. Wish us luck.

Sleeping Through the Night

We are looking good for some fruit types despite the drought

Now there's a subject close to the hearts of all the new parents struggling with sleepless nights and night feeds of the new infant. I have adopted it as a milestone in the slow progress of my recovery from the recent pneumonia. When I first came out of hospital, I had some bad nights with a ticklish, persistent chesty cough which had at me as soon as I laid down to sleep and had me reaching for the trusty Benylin "dry cough" linctus. This may be too much information, but I was also getting up to pee at about 4 a.m. and had the cough all over again when I laid back down.

The only relief then was to sit bolt upright, so I would spend the last 2-3 hours of each night sitting against the head of the bed, usually joined by the cuddle-loving Poppea (dog), until I could realistically give up and get up at 6 o'clock. As the days went by it was encouraging to see these 2 coughing sessions get  better and shorter. I started to be able to get straight to sleep at night and even started to only get the morning one from half past 4, then 5, half 5 and so on. I was looking at being able to sleep right through the night. They were clear improvements on the way to recovery.

A new one for us this year - we may have some damsons.

At the same time, I know that productive cough is good, in that it is the lungs' way of clearing out the muck and dirt of illness. In my case, this silver lining had a small cloud - this new "muck" might be a sign that I was congesting up again. I guess I also have to take on the chin an occasional bad night like last night, where the bedtime coughing just would not stop and still had me sitting upright, sometimes downstairs, till 2 o'clock in the morning. To be fair, I then got to sleep and slept right round to 8 a.m. Swings and roundabouts. No other health news.

Beautifully mowed grass.

That Help-X lad (Rafael) never did show, so we are setting up August accordingly with Elizabeth picking up all the hard work as it comes due and me stuck on 'light duties'. One of these jobs this week was the mowing, her first time using the mower. I'd heard the mower chug into life when I was sitting round the front of the house. She was well away.

By the time I came down from a good nap, the pond garden was like a billiard table. "Good Job!", I said. "It was EASY!" she commented, sounding a bit surprised. I will have to watch that I don't lose these jobs while I'm 'ill'.

The timber arrives for the chicken house roof.

I was more worried about that other big job to which I would have put the missing Help-X-er, that of helping our builder chum K-Dub re-roof the chicken house. I remember from helping K-Dub do his house roof in Sligo, those are some big baulks of timber and , certainly to start with. Charlotte and I had to stand sticking out of the top of the part built house on ladders holding the new ridge-beam up in fresh air where it would ultimately sit, while K-Dub fitted the rafters to it (and nailed them to the wall plates).

K-Dub starts cutting out the 'barge ends'

Looking up at the beam and the sky, with the moving clouds, your eye had no fixed perspective to help balance. You had to keep looking down to the horizon to prevent falling off the ladder. Quickly, K-Dub fixed enough rafters to it that they were taking its weight, and we helpers could let go of it and come down our ladders to safety.

Not to worry. K-Dub turned up today (an EARLY builder!) - he was waiting on a sink for another job, so he had today free and decided to start. He would cut through the concrete 'barge' ends (gables) to free up the rusty old corrugated iron, plus cut all the rafters to shape/length in preparation.

We are looking at a reasonable plum crop.

This roof, he said, would be nothing like as hard as the house, mainly because the ridge beam gets slung between the two gables. There is no wobbling around on ladders. He can fix it in position with battens, while he brings all the rafters to bear. He anticipates being able to do most of the job on Monday - stripping off the old 'tin', demolishing the old timbers with a chainsaw and re-assembling with new wood.

Mum out with 'The Bumbles' in the woods.

If we don't get as far as new 'tin' on Monday, we can sling the good tarpaulin back over the new wood frame overnight to keep the birds dry. Tuesday will be for making good and finishing off the ridge which gets series of 8 foot long 'V' shaped bits overlapping. We had a good day today and got most of it done, till the 110 volt transformer 'died'. Ah well. I had thought we were starting on Monday, so EVERYthing we did today was a bonus.

I found Connie's hidey-hole down behind some scrap plaster
board in the Tígín

Friends of the Blog will recall that we had 2 birds we were calling 'AWOL', rather than dead to fox. I was poking about in the Tígín and happened to pull out some scrap plaster board and I found Connie sitting on 6 (very old) eggs. She was not out in a hedge and vulnerable to the fox after all. That status is now reserved for the female Guinea Fowl.

Snouts down for some apples.

Meanwhile, Brer Fox has changed his tactics again and nailed a couple more birds. He has lately come every day, instead of every 10th day. On Weds morning at about 9, he was spotted by Elizabeth as he first appeared in 'The Woods'. She happened to be looking out of an upstairs window. She shouted, so I let the dogs out of the front door. Unfortunately, months of training told them to turn left and head for the front lawn gate. Mr Fox was to the right, so able to make good his escape.

A nice sturdy cherry tree but no cherries
this year. The drought got them.

At this time of year, 'The Woods' presents a lovely sunny bank in the morning and can be full of birds. Foxy can sneak in up the 5 acre field, nip through the hedge anywhere and ambush a sleepy bird. On Tuesday, I took up position out there with all three dogs and waited all through the 9 o'clock 'slot' thinking I'd deter him. Not that fella. He waited till I went in at 10, gave it half an hour and then bang! He snatched a young poult. He was probably watching all the time and thinking, Matt can't stay here 24/7.

R+R, Roscommon style.

I thought we'd be safe today. This fox has always left us a week or so after a successful raid. I was out there with K-Dub and Elizabeth was about too, setting up to dig the big raised bed. Surely enough human presence to deter a fox? No. He came in at about 9 a.m. and managed to snatch one of the small goslings.

Ah well, enough for this one. Maybe by the time I write again, a completed chicken house roof and no more foxy deaths. Finally, to be fair to Rafael he has apologised for his 'mistake' today in an e-mail. For what it is worth.

Doris Raises The Roof

"Entry Wound"? Only 3 panels ripped off the front of this
out building. 

From an unpromising start, the latest 'named' storm, Doris, blew up to become our scariest and most damaging yet. She felled a tree, ripped a huge hole in the main hen-house, flung two jackdaw pots into our East Field and damaged the poly tunnel. But let me start the story a bit more gently than that while she was still only 'looming' and we were going to bed. We'd seen the weather warnings but by bed time we still only had light winds. I even left a window a-jar to let the cats in and out.

"Exit Wound"? Half the roof is missing this side!

Around midnight I'd been woken a couple of times by the rising wind noise but, you know, cosy warm under the duvet, safe in the nice strong house.... At around 3 a.m. the bedroom door slammed shut - not a normal occurrence. I was immediately awake and quickly aware that there was quite some storm blowing. The a-jar window had been blown fully open and I sprinted round battening down the hatches - pulling all the windows properly closed and closing vents.

We're not leaving the site till this tree is out of the way.
In the right side of the pic between the green and the grey
tree-trunks you can see the root-plate of the down one.

I couldn't stop the noise though and lay there wide awake listening to every blast and buffet, every flex and reaction of the house, every external noise and howl of the wind in the wires and chimneys. I was scared stiff imagining all manner of destruction and wrecking going on out in the dark, unable to do a single thing about it, offering up fervent prayers that surely it would soon be over and the gaps between gusts were surely getting longer.

More firewood. I cut a gap in the tree so that we could come
and go up the driveway.

We woke up at first light - around 7 a.m. to Poppea barking madly - we still do not know what she was hearing; there was plenty of choice once we started looking out and exploring. One of the medium sized trees in our 'woods' had fallen across the drive and was lying half way across the lawn and part buried in the fence. We could see 3 panels had been ripped off the chicken house on the yard side (front). Half the roof was missing from the back, with 8 foot long corrugated sheets and pieces of roof timber strewn across the East Field. One corner of the poly tunnel had been 'walked' sideways so that the door no longer fitted and had been twisted off the bottom hinge. 2 of the jackdaw pots had been flung down from the chimneys; one was half way across the field.

Chicken shed with temporary tarpaulin covers.

But that was it and the rest of the 'damage' was just superficial stuff - pots and an rabbit hutch over-turned. The fence. The garden strewn with blown bits of twig and tree. They were all manageable problems and some even had up-sides. We were just going to have a couple of busy days sorting stuff out. No humans or livestock had been killed or hurt in the storm. The only immediate cost was that I had no tarpaulin big enough to cover that hole at 6m by 6m - I managed to find a 6 x 8 one at €130 on the Internet. The supplier could get it to me by "tomorrow" on the excellent couriers that ply our roads.

Once I had sliced out my chunk of tree
the stump gently rocked itself back upright

3 good friends (Sue and Rob plus 'new' friend Jim B) heard of our plight and volunteered smaller, temporary tarpaulins and the man hours of help needed to rig them. They would also return today when I had my new, big, tarpaulin. Angels. I love that about small-holders. Helping each other in times of difficulty goes with the spirit of the thing.

The trunk appears to hover 3 feet above
the ground. 

Our tree proved to be a black spruce aged 53 years. It had been 22m (72 feet) tall and was 1.42m (4.6') circumference at chest height. It was easy enough to cut out the drive-way gap and the trunk is, amusingly, now suspended at about 3' from the ground sitting on its side-branches as if it was on the perfect saw-horse. The bottom ten feet or so of trunk gently rocked back upright pushed by the springiness of the huge roots and pulled by the weight of the root plate. When you are a rookie chain-saw man you learn that trees can do this violently and with a real whip-action as soon as you cut the heavy top-parts free of the base and if you are wise, you position yourself and saw accordingly.

Life under canvas for the chickens and ducks. 

So with the drive clear, my crew turned up and Sue and Rob had brought spare old tyres (for weighing down the tarps) and a big reel of fencing cable to use as "guy-ropes". That was Thursday and Doris had not quite finished with us. It was still quite squally with some hail-storms so battling the tarps over the roof was quite challenging. It was a cold, wet gang who retreated indoors to welcome tea and buns laid on by the Lady of the House. The chooks were not too keen to re-enter their building - as well as having scared them half to death last night by falling apart while they slept, it was now semi-transparent and had a flappy roof.

That's more like it. Big new tough tarp well lashed down. 

By today my shiny new bigger tarpaulin had been delivered, so all my crew had told me to call them back for Round 2. By today the wind was mercifully almost gone and it had stopped raining and hailing. We made fairly short work of the big new tarp and the house looks like it could cope with a bit of weather again. The birds were much keener to go in on this 2nd day, even though it is now dark inside.

Rosy has been at the mineral lick again.
Note the brown nose and lips!

We are all praying that the next storm (Ewan) does not come along any time soon and that we will fairly soon be able to do a proper repair, replacing all this canvas with new corrugated. Friends of the Blog though, may find all this very reminiscent of the winter snug-down of the Cambria Sailing Barge - tarpaulins laced down with ropes, rubber tyres hung 'over the side' to protect you from damage to the paintwork against stone piers and wharves while you rode up and down on the tide at the moorings. We are very happy with this 'bodge' and reasonably confident of its ability to take some weather. The birds are snug inside. We will cope.

Still in the pet-carrier.

Finally a couple of pics of the new poults, our "Suzy's Six" mentioned in the last post but without a picture. Also a HUGE Thank You to my riggers who generously supplied tarps, tyres, 'string' and manhours, Sue and Rob plus Jim B, and to Liz of course for throwing ropes over the roof in between cooking up marvellous scones, dillisk biscuits, cake and tea. What a team.

Released into the covered rabbit run.

Tough Aul' Birds

I promised to report back on the 'Duxelle' (mushroom and ham based) stuffing Liz created to use up some of our mushroom glut, using the Darina Allen (Ballymaloe Cookery School) recipe, and I am happy to report that it was delicious. Full of flavour, too, was the roast chicken it accompanied, being the tiny carcass of the Sussex Ponte bird we culled just before New Year because she had injured her self 'beyond repair', possibly the rather bedraggledy girl we knew as 'Baldy' last summer. I can not be as complimentary as this about the texture of this bird - we were both really surprised at the toughness of the meat. She had received a fairly standard roast having been spatch-cocked and looked 'normal' but as soon as we started to attack it we were switching to sharp steak knives to cut meat from bone. The meat thus cut was very good and perfectly edible but it was a struggle to bite through the skin and we ended up ripping our half (each) to pieces with our hands and teeth, Medieval Banquet style.

Of course we quickly worked out that these Sussex Pontes, our old originals obtained at point of lay (20 weeks old) in May 2012, are 2 years old, easily the oldest chicken we have ever eaten. Standard commercial birds are pushed to killing weights in just a couple of months, commercial free range and organic birds more like 80-100 days and our own Hubbards were being eaten at between 100 and 140 days. This is why, of course, there are recipes around like 'Coq au Vin' designed to slowly cook a sinewy old bird to edible tenderness. We will know for next time and not try to fast-roast our 'geriatrics'; Heaven knows what the Marans birds will be like - they are more like 6 years old! Ah well, Baldy was left with plenty of meat on her bones when we'd finished our Medieval gnawing (and we were perfectly well fed on the meat we had eaten and the good range of veg accompanying her and the Duxelle stuffing) so she went into the stock pot and got the hours of gentle simmer she'd really needed.

Meanwhile our inner 'tough aul' birds' have been called on over the last couple of days as a result of the weather. Last night another 'orange warning' wind storm came through and blew a hole in my theory that the outbuildings are safe enough as long as the wind is from the south. We heard the mild clang in the dark of a sheet of corrugated iron going air-borne and the dogs woke up and started fretting. In the dark at half six or so, I ventured out with dogs to check on things (the dogs only because dogs fretting in the night can mean that someone has an upset bowel and if they can't get out you will end up cleaning up 'accidents' indoors). Our way up the cattle race was blocked by a long sheet of corrugated iron and a quick scan with the torch showed me that the chickens had lost a roof panel. I think it had simply shaken loose on its nails and slid down like an avalanche to land in the yard; the wooden frame of the roof there is quite badly rotted and probably long overdue replacement. In the dark, though, with the wind blowing a hooley and the rain coming down, there was not a lot I could do - the chickens were all OK not being directly below the new hole. I went back to bed to sweat out the wind noises and pray that no more panels went for a fly about.

That was our job, then, for the morning, trying to shore up and replace rotted roof timbers, then slide the sheeting back up its 'slot' and fasten it down with new screws and waterproof washers. Luckily the wind had abated a lot and the rain was now in bands between which you could nip out and scramble reasonably safely on roof ladders. It remains to be seen whether our repair will hold, the forecast has several more wind systems coming through. Mercifully, we only lost a roof panel and that not damaged. The internet and news are full of homes flooded, power lines down, rivers bursting their banks and coast roads impassable. Our sympathies to anyone who is really struggling through all this. We also take our hats off to the earlier Irish resident 'tough aul' birds' who survived all this kind of weather and mud without the benefit of modern outdoor clothing, power tools, light aluminium ladders and Posidrive screws.

Christmas is all over. The tree has been stripped of its finery and now languishes on the pile of 'sneddings' awaiting its fate on the range fire. The tinsel, baubles, pine cones and fairy lights are back in their crates in the Utility Room till next time. The cards are in the recycling. The Christmas Cake is all gone, the huge pud is cut up into sensible one-meal portions and frozen. Liz had blitzed through the house sweeping up the shed pine needles, pieces of dog-chewed decorations and rescuing the (thankfully plastic these days) silver baubles which we'd displayed artistically in a big bowl on the coffee table. Blue the cat had invented a good game of scooping them out of the bowl with a front paw and watching them roll onto the floor, whence they ended up under the sofa, the settee and the tree. Thank you, Blue, we have retrieved them all now.

Air-borne Corrugated Iron and more

My brother, Mark, took his family to Galway and Connemara in the summer of 2011 and, among the rest of his always beautiful and scenic holiday snaps was a picture of a porta-cabin type caravan on a rocky hilltop near the coast. The cabin had attracted his attention because it was lashed to the ground by two massive guy ropes, one long-ways and one side to side. The ropes looked as thick at ship hawsers and they were fixed to the ground by massive ground anchors of the sort used by the telecoms people to anchor the guys on telegraph poles. How we laughed (as they say) and commented on whether they might be expecting a bit of wind. If I can borrow the pic from Mark, I will post it here.

We are a bit inland from Galway here so we don't see the full brunt of Atlantic gales but we do get some fierce winds and we try to make sure everything is well fixed down. Yesterday as the snow melted and the temperature rose, the wind swung round through westerly to the NNW and suddenly increased in strength. Coming from that direction is the only time it hits the house and outbuildings WITHOUT being first filtered through our stands of huge black spruce, blasting in from Sligo and Clew Bay. We knew it was getting up when it started to move my 2CV Trailer, pushing it along our cattle race till I put it back and chocked the wheels.

We were indoors, fed and watered and watching a bit of TV when we heard a thump and the dogs all went ballistic. The stack of old cut-up floor boards I use for kindling, stacked against one of the cattle race walls, had been kept dry by 2 curved sheets of corrugated iron about 7 feet long (part of the roof of our former Dutch barn), held down by a 6 inch concrete block which I struggle to lift. The whole structure is now inside the big rabbit run and has been adopted by the rabbits who burrow around under and through it and actually like to climb up the slope of the sheeting to give them a high viewpoint.

A gust of wind must have managed to get under this sheeting and hoyed it up and over the wall with the concrete block still on it. The thump was the block landing in the cattle race. One sheet landed in the race and stayed there to leeward of the wall but the other went completely air-borne, passing through the kitchen garden and out onto the front lawn (about 50 metres we estimate) where it landed convex side up and dug in, making an impressive slash in the grass. Luckily no-one got in the way - that could have given someone a nasty cut or other injury. The rabbit hutch roof was also flipped up by the wind, so the poor bunnies were homeless.

Well, we were out there in coats and hats with torches for a good half hour rounding up the sheets and creating a temporary shelter, handling the sheeting very carefully and wedging everything down more securely to give the rabbits somewhere to take cover from the wind. All the loose stuff we stowed to leeward of the house where we could sort it out in the morning.

The only other wind related damage we can see is that a branch on one of our big trees had now sagged and is twanging off the telephone/broadband cable. Now if there's a service to this house that we would hate to lose (we'd almost trade electric lighting, water and a few trees blocking the drive rather than lose broadband!) it is that. It is too high for us to reach it and Telecom Éireann will not touch it if is our tree on our property, so we had to get on the phone to our old chum Aerial Keith (he of 3rd Jan last year, who took down our old saggy TV aerial and cleared the gutters) who will come out and do tree surgery for us.

Finally, I was delighted to get my 2CV club magazine this month as it contains my own article about the adventures of moving the 2CV from Kent to here, exporting it and re-registering it as Irish. Liz is now calling me "the acclaimed author and journalist, Matt C". Fame at last!

Barns and Outbuildings.

Friday 11th, a beautiful day for a change, sees us out doors sorting out barns and outbuildings. The out building we call milking shed and calf house has, from the start had old, perished, broken transparent corrugated panels as its 'roof lights'. These let in the rain and short-term, Dad had just patched them up with metal sheets and planks, but now was the time to do a proper job, getting up on the roof and pulling out the twist-nails and washers holding the remains of the old panels in place. The roof is not particularly strong, with some dodgy rafters and some rotted out horizontals (battens or 'nailers') but the ridge is OK and the walls are the usual poured concrete with rocks, so Sparks and Dad figured that if the hung a ladder over the ridge and didn't put any weight on the corrugated sheeting, they'd be safe. They wore Hi-Viz coats, too as they are known to keep you safe! What could possibly go wrong? They had bought the transparent panels and a roll of bitumen tape. The existing corrugated iron panels, although reasonable, did have a few rust holes which would need patching. Working like this, they were quickly able to replace the transparent panels, with the chickens looking up at Sparks curiously from below, and Sparks slowly falling in love with the chickens, which are indeed, very watchable and intriguing beasties. Mum and Dad could sit and watch them for hours as they bimble about making little 'bwook-bwook' noises. They moved on to the tape patching. The tape, which came from LIDL as a special, turns out to be good stuff, which adheres well to even rusty sheeting. They patched all the holes they could see, then sent Dad inside the barns to look up at the roof to look for tell tale spots of sunlight shining in, mainly at nail-holes. Then it was time to move on to the hay barn. The big tall "3-Bay Hay Barn" as advertised in the Estate Agent's particulars rapidly turned into 'useless, tumble-down piece of scrap metal' at the first viewing, way back in Autumn 2011. The side walls are reasonably strong (and Thank God for that because...) the curved roof has collapsed and the curved panels hang on at the gutter facings only, flapping around in every breeze. The western end wall is gone completely, lying in a heap inside the barn. The end nearest the house we had thought was OK and indeed we have been parking cars near it and walking to and from under it confidently. Dad even leant the lengths of skirting board against it to dry once they'd been painted with sanding-sealer. Over the winter one of two sheets of currugated had come adrift and Dad had gone up a ladder to free up the remaining nail so that they fell safely to the ground and could no longer fall on someone, causing bad injury. Today, though, Sparks decided to bite the bullet and go up there with his angle-grinder, with Dad holding the bottom of the ladder. Sparks quickly realised, once he was aloft, that the top rail (the gutter facing) was not attached at either end and was held up only because it was nailed to the wall panels. He quickly came down a few feet and rested the ladder on a safer beam. Now he could cut away 2 panels and a block of three which brought him to the end of the barn nearest the house. Climbing the ladder again he saw to his horror that the barn end, a structure 25 feet long by about 10 feet tall, all 8 feet above the ground, was held to the side walls only by a piece of what looked like thick trellis wire and a nail or two. As he freed the last panel the vertical on which he was leaning moved 3 inches and the barn end with it. He shouted "You better MOVE THE CARS! This is coming down! RUN!" Dad rapidly moved the Fiat and then managed to flood the carburettor of the 2CV, so they shoved this bodily backwards free-wheeling!. Sparks moved his ladder to a safer place and the last wire on that end un-pinged, allowing the barn end to slowly swing out like an enormous gate, hinged on the other corner. It must weigh half a tonne. This was decidedly dangerous. Sparks moved the ladder round to the 'hinge' end of this new 'gate' and started to explore how to get the thing down, very aware that when the weight was released his end might buck and throw him off the ladder, but also that any wires or fixings might whip back and catch him that way. Mum was called to stand by with camera to catch the drama. With great care Sparks started to hacksaw the few remaining nails and wire, not quite able to believe how this barn stayed up through the winter winds. Then almost silently and calmly the great mass of timber and sheet steel came away and sagged to the ground, falling flat on its face. Mum retreated indoors to cook supper and open the wine. The boys decided to leave the south wall sheeting for another time. 19:20pm, after a full and tiring day, is no time to start a 2-hour, dangerous, barn-wrangling job. It is rather a time to square away tools and to chase Mum indoors before she necks too much of the wine. Deefs