Tag Archives: wood ash

Thursday 12th August 2010 – I shan’t be sorry …

… to see the back of this roof. The rainstorm that we were promised for today never arrived and so we were up there all day. Well, Terry and Simon were mostly. I was out for some of the morning looking for supplies. And you can’t believe that a builders’ merchant would have no 40×27 laths in stock, and not expect any more until September. I had a little bit of a hunt to track some of them down after that.

But once I returned and we carried on with our production line method of roof-building, we made enormous progress as you can see in the photo below.

roofing chevrons lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome france We’ve attached chevrons to the top crossbeam that we fitted to the house wall a couple of days ago, and you can see them fitted to the other crossbeam that we embedded in the cement on the top of the wall that we built up previously.

And now it’s all looking thoroughly impressive. I reckon that another 10 working days or so might see the job completely finished. And I shan’t be sorry for a moment.

So when we knocked off this evening I had to move Caliburn, and Simon got into his van and piddled off – and so did Terry – leaving me to put the tarpaulin on all on my own. Luckily Terry remembered and came back to help, otherwise it would have been embarrassing.

Once everyone had cleared off I took my life in my hands and moved the methane digester that had been by the barn. And once I had manhandled … "PERSONhandled" – ed … it down to the compost bin that I built the other day I tipped it all in and covered it with wood ash.

That’s the end of my experiments with the methane digester for now and I’m not sorry about that either. I can sit out on my terrace now.

After that I came in and crashed out again. I’m totally whacked. I’m not as young as I was and it’s not so very encouraging.

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Sunday 8th August 2010 – It was Sunday today.

And there was a vintage vehicle exhibition and brocante at St Maurice pres Pionsat as well.

And so I stayed at home.

Mind you it was … errrr …. 11:30 when I woke up and so I’d missed a good deal of the day. And then with working on my web site until 14:00 I missed a good deal more. But I went into Pionsat to the baker’s – and it was shut! It seems that last Sunday was a one-off seeing as how it ought to have been Pionsat’s brocante last week. But as I was quietly GRRRRRing to myself, out of the door came the boulangere, and so she sold me what I needed. It must have been my lucky day!

Back at the ranch, seeing as I wasn’t going anywhere I lit a huge bonfire and burnt a pile of stuff that has been lingering around here, and I also burnt the dried weeds that I had pulled up when I was working with Lieneke. In fact one of the reasons why I’m still awake now is that the fire is merrily burning away and I can’t go to bed leaving it unattended. But make the most of the sunny day – it won’t last, this weather.

modular home made composting bin les guis virlet puy de dome franceI also installed the compost bin properly in its proper place this afternoon after the temporary installation last night and added the compost from the collapsed plastic composting bin. At the moment it’s four sections high and the three that are currently unused are in shot. I’ll have to think of a place to put them.

You can also see the chassis for the Citroen 2CV that formed the basis of the Lomax kit car I once owned. There’s also a solar garden light and one of the solar cookers for the composting toilet. The others have now been incorporated into the compost and given a liberal dosing of potash.

Nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus are the essential ingredients for any fertiliser. There are plenty of nitrogen and phosphorus in the contents of a composting toilet and wood-ash is a good source of potassium. So all the essential ingredients for my garden are right to hand. Now all I need to do is to work out how I can move the methane digester and add the contents of that to the compost. I reckon that I ought to neutralise its contents with plenty of wood ash and sawdust first though but that will just add to the weight.

Nevertheless, things are slowly moving around here. The composting bin was another thing that I’ve been meaning to do for ages and I’m glad it’s in position now.

I was so engrossed that it was 18:30 when I knocked off. And on a Sunday too! A nice hot 41°C shower rounded the day off quite nicely. Tomorrow I imagine that we will be back on that blasted roof.

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Thursday 18th March 2010 – My progress knows no bounds

2 raised beds old ford cortina mercedes 240d w123 greehouse cloche les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe now have, from right to left, a greenhouse, a cloche with 5 strawberry plants, a home-made bird scarer, a raised bed with garlic and onions, and a raised bed that is empty but covered with a sheet of black plastic.

First thing though was to scrape up all of the wood ash from the big fire. That’s my source of potash and it’s threatening rain – I don’t want to lose that. And I noticed something curious, namely that I’d set the fire over some tree stumps in the hope that I could burn them out but despite the raging fire all day Monday they are but scorched and it took me ages to pull them up today.

When I finished the raised bed I started on the organising of the seeds and I’ve now sown in seed trays some lettuce, peppers, aubergines, chili peppers and turnips. There’s loads more stuff to do. And I’m down on seeds too – there’s about 6 missing so I’ll be doing a megashop on Saturday.

I had a surprise visitor this morning – Liz came round with some of this compressed hardwood that a friend of hers sells. I invited her onto my terrace and we had coffee. It’s getting mighty civilised here these days – not like me at all. But it’s a major sign of progress all the same.

But there’s a couple of things that aren’t quite right. This compost bin is …errr … not much good and when I heaved a load of stuff into it, it all came apart. I had to empty it so that I could reassemble it and now it’s held together with a load strap. I dunno how long it will last – not very, I suspect.

The second thing is not quite so good. It concerns the composting toilet and a manure-water distiller that I’ve invented. This isn’t the place to discuss it – you’re probably eating your tea right now – but basically I wish I had put it somewhere else as it’s in the wrong place and it’s now too heavy to lift. The hot weather we have had is accelerating the distillation process and it’s making its mark on my close environment.

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