Chicken House Roof

Stripping off the old 'tin'. 

Away and by far the biggest news for this post is our superb progress on the chicken house roof replacement. Having surprised us by turning up 3 days early on Friday to make a start, builder/carpenter buddy 'K-Dub' carried on the good works on Monday and today (Tues). With me on light duties and the Help-X lad having blown us out, K-Dub was working solo for a big part of this time, but assisted by Elizabeth when there were chunks of new timber to be brought round from cutting-place to the shed, or chunks of old rotten roof to stack away for burning later.

Dismantling the electrics.

The jobs, in roughly chronological order were to carefully remove the good tarpaulin and the small two tarps which went on first back in the post Storm-Doris days. Next up, the electrics had to be peeled away from any wood which was now going to be removed. Next, K-Dub stripped off the old 'tin', sliding the sheets down for us to stack on the ground. Sharp edges on those rusty sheets, so gloves were vital.

Nifty chain-saw action while balanced on a wall.

The next stage involved some rather nifty 'high wire' balancing along the tops of walls (none of the woodwork would have taken the weight of anyone the size of K-Dub (or me)) armed with a chain saw. We'd shut all the fascinated chickens out of the building so that K-Dub could go all round cutting old rafters till the roof woodwork, almost in one piece, collapsed into the shed. He then went into the shed and chopped it up into bite size pieces that we could haul out and stack. Finally on the demolition phase, he had to dig out the wall-plates (timbers which sit a-top walls to take the bottom end of rafters.)

Here the old roof timbers have completely collapsed into the shed.

You know how these builder types, when asked for an estimate, suck in a breath between their teeth and say something like, "We won't really know till we get going - you can find all sorts of horrors when you start demolishing roofs!" Well, here, I could see that minor escalation in action and I couldn't argue with the man. The walls of these barns are almost a 'dry-stone wall' construction with very little in the way of mortar between the stones, maybe some mud thrown in on top to fill some gaps.

Some new timbers going in, mainly so that we could sling the
tarp back over the unfinished roof on Monday night.

Well now, 150 years+ later the wall tops are not so much 'wall' as loose small rubble and dusty dry soil. As K-Dub prised the old wall-plates out of their grooves, the sides of each groove simply land-slid in. We decided that this roof should get, for safe keeping and to ensure that the wall plates did not 'walk' away from each other under the load of the new tin, sagging our nice new ridge-beam, 2 extras.

It's not all chicken houses. Elizabeth, Queen of the Pointy
Shovel takes on the mighty job of digging that raised bed over.

Firstly we would span the building with 4 horizontal 'joist' beams. We actually used the spare 4' length off-cuts to make the rafter pairs between these joists into 'A' frames, which neatly gave the Guinea Fowl back their perches. Secondly we would mix a sloppy cement and pour/spread this along the wall tops around and under the new wall plates to give some grip onto the loose rubble. The top 6 inches of wall is probably now the strongest bit, and would be called a 'ring beam' if we had done it all round the building.

Those last 2 jobs were today's and, for another night we have slung the big tarp back over the work to give the chickens a bit of shelter in case it rains in the night. K-Dub is sure we can finish tomorrow. That would be the remaining purlins, the new tin, 'flaunching' the tin in to the gable at the 'windy' end, fitting the ridge pieces and a capping on the East end, strapping down the roof to the walls, re-assembling the electrics and cleaning up. Busy old day. I will tell you all about it in the next post.

A spindle bush recovering from sheep browsing in our 'Woods'

Meanwhile, in the down time (Yes, we do get some! Light duties, remember) I have been enjoying the various groups of birds coming of age and starting to sort out their grown-up family dynamics. The ducks, you will recall, are a young male Khaki Campbell hatched by us this spring, and a Mum and 5 youngsters of 'Silver Appleyard' variety bought in a couple of months ago.

Well, now they are all full size and the KC has started doing odd 'display' moves to various other ducks. He alone has differentiated into a definite drake (dark head, bassy 'quack', curly-up feathers just above the tail). We know that Mum is Mum, but the 5 youngsters are keeping their sex secret for now, from us anyway. KC-Drake's moves include a rearing up on his back end, standing up on the water with his chin pressed down into his chest, and zooming forward across the water with his neck stretched out forward and his chin almost touching the water. Are these moves designed to impress any coming of age males, or females? We have no idea.

Then yesterday, early in the morning, our alpha rooster, Gandalf came into view followed by an entourage of 15 adult and half grown chickens. Up to now the half grown babies have pretty much kept to their clutch-groups. Are they now feeling the changes of teenager-hood and starting to align with the dominant male, playing their cards right, as it were. More on these stories in future posts. Now I must wrap up as the Woman of the House is off out tonight to a meeting for which she needs this lap top. Talk to you again soon.

A Mum-Seeking Missile

Our two new kittens, who came to us on the day after Brexit-vote day (24th June) are, we estimate, now 4 months old. They are big and lively and have long out-grown their willingness to stay contained within the Sitting Room so we leave that window ajar for them and have taught them to come and go through it so that they get access to the whole garden and yard.

Chip (boy)

They are, however, a bit small  and silly yet to be able to cope with a chase or an attack by the terriers. Deefer would possibly be OK on her own but the 'pups' in pack-mode are a different species, rushing in teeth-first, desperately trying to get in faster than their sibling. Real 'red mist' stuff with no thought to whether this is allowed prey or just ratty vermin needing several bites and shakes to kill it as fast as a dog can. The kittens have showed a tendency to try to get back into the house through the other (non-Sitting Room) windows or doors, which would (and has) land(ed) them in the doggy parts of the house. A mad scramble then ensues to rescue the silly kitten and secure the dogs. We have to remember when we open the Sitting Room window, to close all the others far enough to prevent kitten ingress.

Chivers (girl)

We have started to warily try out some controlled 'meetings' and looking at options like crating the kittens in a room to let the dogs get a bit familiar with them and calm down the killer instinct a bit. Liz tried one yesterday where the 'pups' were locked in the bedroom and Deefer was allowed access downstairs. She apparently walked right past the kittens to go steal their food. Progress of a sort, we guess.

The Araucana x game cock-bird always
manages to look totally demented.

This morning, though, a rude awakening of a new sort. We were lying there semi-asleep in the last few minutes before my alarm goes off (07:30) with the dogs scattered over the duvet as normal. I had every reason to think the alarm would sound, I would get up and then prod some snoozing dogs into action so that I could take them out for a 'comfort stop'. Suddenly all hell broke loose and the three dogs were charging about the bedroom down and around each side of the bed, round the foot-end or over the top (and us).

Guinea Fowl also managing to look demented. 

They can't actually get under the bed as the space is full of suit cases, crates of bed linen and 'other season' clothes but the spaces are small enough to allow in cats and Soldier in particular likes to wake me up for (his) breakfast by playing with the dogs and winding them up. In the half light I assumed he would be, as usual, on my bed side table 'asking' to be let out (and then fed downstairs, of course). Then I saw the real cause of the chaos - a kitten was running around and diving under the bed whenever a dog got too close for comfort. Luckily he was still intact and Liz, awake and out of bed in an instant was able to scoop him up while I tried to hold all three dogs at a distance. Obviously we had left too many windows open and the bedroom door, and the kitten had woken up, then gone out, come back in through the kitchen and hunted us down in our sleep. "That boy is like a Mum-seeking Missile" was Liz's comment. Luckily, no harm done and a lesson learned.

K-Dub hacks off render with the medium
sized kango hammer. 

Meanwhile, work has started on the kitchen extension. First job once the site had been cleared was to hack off the render on the house side of the new space, so that we get a lovely attractive stone wall in the kitchen, instead of the stippled "gravel-dash". The plan was to hack off this, rake out the (pointing) cracks between stones and repoint with pale mortar which will contrast with the beautiful dark grey of (we hoped) the lovely quarried, shaped stones.

Raking out the old pointing and the 'gobs'
of render in the cracks

We were not at all sure that the stone would be beautiful, of course. Plenty of the internal walls proved to be a right old mess of concrete blocks, old bricks and re-used rubble. But 'no', we were delighted to find quality stone work with big blocky 'coin' stones at the corners and well bonded rows of good stone throughout. Some of the coins are 13" high and one was a gorgeous black stone which will make quite a feature. We were also delighted with how "handy" (well) the render came away. You can be days chipping away inch by inch. You don't know till you start. The kango-ing, raking out and then wire-brushing were all dusty, messy jobs and my hair felt like a Lego man's one-piece plastic wig by the end. It was pure joy to be able to get into the shower.

Lovely stonework revealed. 

Since these pics were taken we have moved on. The plumbing has been moved to accommodate the new roof (mainly sneaking the vent 'stack' out sideways through what will be a block-work in-fill mini-wall so that we do not have to make a big hole in the new roof). We have also measured up and now ordered all the timber for rafters etc. That should arrive tomorrow. More on this in the next post.

The Buff chicks are a month old now. 

Tonight we will be a bit more careful with the windows at lock up. By the way, I love that the spell-checker on this site offers you 'mango' for Kango. While trying to work out what a Mango-hammer might look like, I am also trying to see tropical fruit used to remove concrete render from the outside of a house.

Of Christmas Jumpers and the Like

Standing among my Irish sheep, sporting a Scotch Lamb
Christmas Jumper

(Rambling, Shaggy-dog story alert!) Way back a couple of months ago I was browsing around in Facebook and came across a rather eye-catching short video taken from one of these new camera-drone helicopters. It showed a hundred or two sheep being driven out of a barn and along a public highland road by 7 sheep-dogs and a couple of people on quad bikes or running behind the group till the sheep were then diverted left into a field. It was beautifully edited and ran to the exciting theme music of  "Mission Impossible".

I was quite taken with it and I was obviously not alone, thousands and then tens of thousands of people shared it and tagged it around the internet, 'liking' it (as you do on FB) and making amazed and delighted comments about how well the dogs worked and how much they enjoyed watching. In my case I wanted to know more and to see if there were any other such videos, so I looked into it and found that it was actually the work of a family farm in Highland Sutherland run by one Joyce C.

Santa's little helper?

Joyce runs a farm of a gazillion sheep up there and has recently won the Scottish "Sheep Farmer of the Year" award. She turned out to be a lovely, friendly person more than happy to share her life and work with all us "wannabes" on FB and I have had some lovely 'chats' with her, all be it in the limited way that you do on FB. She is also given to  a very Scottich sheep-farmer line in jargon and we (the fans) have some fun with her, persuading her to explain some of these terms - gimmers for example, or "driving the lambs out of the fanks after speaning".

On the left the pot formerly known as "our biggest pot". This
was never going to accommodate our 6 kg ham. 

In the run up to Christmas she was involved, via 'Quality Meat Scotland' (QMS) in promoting a Christmas Jumper sold in aid of a charity of which I must confess I had never heard. RSABI (Royal Scottish Agric' Benevolent Inst') looks after old folk down on their luck, who have made their living on the land (crofting, forestry, farming and so on). How could I resist? I ordered one and promised to send photo's in to RSABI, QMS and Joyce herself if these might be of any use to them.

Merry Christmas, Mum.

Meanwhile in my own run up to Christmas, after a bit of a fight in which we completely failed to get some flowers delivered by a Swindon florist down to Mum (Pud Lady) who is spending Christmas with my brother (no names for this florist and no packdrill) we would like to big up the Flower Factory of Farringdon Road (Swindon) where lone ranger 'Rachel' saved our lives by being able to do the order exactly as asked. Because Mum is a keen gardener and plantswoman we always ask for something a bit unusual in the species line to be included and because she does not do the girly pinks, we ask for hot colours (red, orange, yellow). I phoned this order in to Rachel at around 2 pm on the day after the failure (ie the 22nd of Dec - she would have been well justified in saying she was snowed under) and they managed to get this lovely arrangement out to my brother's place by half past 3! An angel, surely!

Doing a happy dance while wandering about on loose planks.

And a fine 'landmark' achieved out at the Sligo house rebuild for Christmas Eve-Eve. The boss out there has been working like a demon over the last couple of weeks. The walls of the extension have gone up to roof height and now been bonded in to the old walls. I helped last week to make the 'ring beam' around the tops of walls. The top stack of the old chimney has been pulled down using the digger to land with a loud rumbling roar in what will be #1 daughter's bedroom.

The start of a roof!

I spent a morning clearing up all that mess and masonry while the boss put up stud-walling to divide the space into future rooms and then, after I'd gone, whizzed round the place installing joists and the wall plates so that yesterday we could leave the 'wet trades' (cement, concrete) behind and start on the roof. This was exciting enough for me, who had never done one, but for the boss, a carpenter by trade, this was very Heaven. "Wood!" he shouted joyfully, "Hammers, nails, chisels and saws!" Number 1 daughter joined us for that day, back from college, so we got on like a train - with people to hold ends of rafters while they were hefted and nailed into place at the other end, and all the lengths pre-cut before we started hefting, we could get each straight simple section (15 pairs of rafters in each, or there abouts) in about an hour each.

Builders' pie. The bricklaying trowel serves as delicate cake slice!

There though, we had to leave it for the day as the boss had a job to do in Dublin. The task of joining these 'L' shaped ends together at the elbow is much more complicated as it involves 'valley' boards and ever shorter 'creeper' rafters plus there is currently nowhere to walk while you join the bits. I have been off doing our own Christmas prep today but I think boss and daughter were out there today, so they may have got into this job.

That just about wraps it up for us pre-Christmas. I wish all my readers the very best of Festive Seasons and a lovely time with you and yours.