 | LES GUIS - THE PHOTOS FROM 2003 |
| LES GUIS - THE PHOTOS FROM 2003 |
THE FARM
MY LIFESTYLE
ON MY TRAVELS
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1- Amazing what turns up on eBay! Here's the new residential accomodation for summer 2003 - a leaking but complete caravan, bigger than the old one, with oven and fridge (no heater, unfortunately) and all for £62 ($100)! Get this off its chassis and into the barn, and no-one will ever notice the leaks! Then I can get my old one out and go off on holiday every now and then!
It also gives me a chassis to make a trailer to move around small cars and items of plant.
Fetching this from the UK gave me an opportunity to give the Passat a good run out.
2- 1001 uses for a 12-volt winch, a German "Starthilfe" battery pack and a length of chain Part One.
Moving the firewood skip (formerly the white Transit roof) out of the way of where I want to put the greenhouse. Paul found me the winch and the battery pack (good on you, mate) and the chain is, needless to say, part of my own collection (ho ho)!
3- 1001 uses for a 12-volt winch, a German "Starthilfe" battery pack and a length of chain Part Two.
Moving the car body panel container (formerly the body of the white Transit) out of the way. Not for any particular reason other than the fact that I had the winch and the battery pack out.
You can see some blossom on one of the apple trees I planted in 2000, and also (in the bottom right corner) the handle of the Finnish lumberjack axe I received from the Finnish Government for having driven General Hagglund around for a week in 2001. That's a mighty piece of work and I wouldn't like to be in the way of someone swinging that around!
4- Now, when has anyone ever seen the orchard looking this clean? Compare it with this one from 1999, for example and you'll see what I mean!
This was about 2 days of hard work with a powered motor mower and a machete!
You can also see the greenhouse I erected - bought from one of these travelling tool lorries they have round here in "France Profonde".
5- Compare this with this one taken, would you believe, only 7 months ago. See what I mean about two days with a powered motor mower and a machete! No wonder I slept for twelve hours solid that night! That powered motor mower is certainly one of the best things since sliced bread. Thanks to Paul's mate Robert for donating it to the cause.
6- The patent irrigation system, from the rainwater butt, down past the solar light I bought in Colorado last summer, past the sand heap, over the gravel pile, past the Merc and the old Cortina, and into the greenhouse
7- Inside the greenhouse, where the pipe coming in joins up to the circular system I "invented". That consists of my old hosepipe I had in Crewe 15 years ago. It already had a few holes in it from those days, so I added a few more with a hammer and nail.
250 more, in fact.
8- Inside the greenhouse where you can see the tomato plants and the pots containing some forsythia cuttings and where you can't see (for obvious reasons) the onions I planted.
Before anyone writes in complaining; yes there are too many tomato plants in here. The truth is that I didn't expect so many seeds in the packet but nevertheless I planted them all expecting, with my luck, maybe about ten or so to actually come up. However, most of them managed to struggle into life and there's a limit as to just how many you can give to your neighbours. Everyone on the mountain is now frantically cultivating tomato plants, and as for the rest, seeing as they'd die if I left them outside, I may as well plant them inside the greenhouse where they'd have just as much chance.
In any case, this soil hasn't been worked for maybe 30 years and it's the best soil I've ever seen, so you never know your luck!
9- The shower cubicle! And it works!
There's a solar camping shower, and a solar heat exchanger I built out of a refrigerator heat exchanger. The camping shower is fine, but the solar heat exchanger doesn't work as well as I'd like so I'm going to redesign it. Maybe I'm being a bit too ambitious trying for 25 litres of water at a time so maybe I should try to find a black 10-litre container. That'll still give enough water for a reasonable shower. But this is what experiments are for, as it cost me absolutely nothing at all, being built out of bits and pieces I had lying around.
10- One of the Air 403 wind turbines I bought in Arizona, up on a 4-metre pole and anchored in three places to the various walls. The pole is actually resting on the floor (the "old" wind turbine is up on the barn roof on a pole in the background) and so hardly turns at all due to the effects of wind shading, but I wanted to erect it to as a "trial run" where I could work out all the shortcomings of a fitting technique (and believe me, there were more than a few!) before trying it "for real" 50 feet above ground on the top of a ladder balanced on the top of a scaffolding tower! It's a heavy (and expensive) piece of machinery.
11- Another view of the wind turbine showing how well the new mower (background) cuts compared to the previous one, as you can see .
12- Half of the Christmas present I received from Paul and his family - a small solar panel .
13- The other half of my Christmas present from Paul and his family - a solar-powered PIR light that works a treat. This way when you step out of the barn at night you can see what you're falling over. It's nice to have good friends like this.
14- Old Ford Transits don't die - they just become towers for wind turbines! Here's the second of the two wind turbines I bought in Arizona.
Again though, it's not high enough to catch the wind and cutting back the trees in the background didn't help very much. The problem is that the wind is blocked by the barn belonging to my Dutch neighbours. Next time I go back down to the farm I'm taking a couple of sticks of Semtex with me! That will solve THAT problem!
15- A better photograph of the solar heat exchanger and water tank. I reckon a smaller tank inside a box filled with insulation, a redesigned exchange panel, an adjustible support to vary the presentation of the panel to the sun according to the season, and cutting back the trees opposite the panel, and I could really be in business.
16- I went down to the farm for a few days around Christmas 2003 Nothing was accomplished, because the weather was really bad. It was freezing cold and there was snow absolutely everywhere. Here you can see the footpath covered in snow.
In fact, the snow was so heavy that it broke one of the conifers I had planted. .
17- Here, you can get a view of the new wind turbine that Claude and I put up. It's only a temporary installation and will be improved in due course, but at least you can get an idea of how it looks.
Ideally it needs to be another 10 metres higher at least, so I reckon that's a 8-metre pole on the side of the barn.
18- Here's another view of the wind turbines. You can see the temporary pole and brackets we put up, together with the Heath-Robinson wiring installation.
It does in fact turn round occasionally, and a charge has been recorded on the Xantrex C60 controller in the house, but it's going to be moved to the barn in due course when I feel up to it.
19- So this is how I left everything - covered in snow and overgrown.
And yes, I did leave the window open up there in the barn, as I realised when I saw the photo. Poor Claude had to go round later and close it for me.
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