Beer and Woodwork

I've spent the weekend in my shed making two things, one I can't say as its a present and the other is a set of shelves/cupboard for my garden shed. This is as well as putting up a shelf in one corner of my workshop for my radio, as everytime I walk past it the damn thing looses reception. The set of shelves are looking quite good but I now need to make the cupboard bit and oil all the wood.

I've also started to make 5 gallons of home brew beer, it shouldn't take long to brew and it'll be ready for our party at the end of March. The total cost is about £7 with the sugar so much cheper than store brought stuff- I just hope its drinkable!

Great week

This week has been great. I had a good couple of days plasterboarding with my brother, trying to get the little utility room ready to be skimmed. Then I worked for Dave on Wednesday in a little woodland in the middle of Ludlow. I grew up in Ludlow and I never knew that there was such a large wood and about 7 fields right near the middle, it was amazing! It was a hard days work but in the end we felled about 8 trees (having to use ropes to get them to fall the right way) and stacked the logs and the brash.

Thursday and Friday were spent (with my brother again) training and taking our trailer test. This is so we can tow a trailer on the road (if you took your driving test after 1997, a bit unfair that grandfather rights never seem to affect me!). We both passed but it was pretty nerve racking as its the same examination as if you did your HGV licence, lots of reversing around cones and trying not to drive with one hand around Gloucester.

My brother is starting a new job tomorrow, so that's going to feel pretty weird as I've been working with him so much over the past couple of months and he's going to be lodging away during the week. It sounds like a good experience for him as it combines tree work and building.

The weekend was lovely and warm so I did a little gardening, planting some broad beans (more than normal as I'll have more space when I get my allotment, the dibber in the picture I made myself at wood turning classes but I'll talk about that on another post) and pruning my apple trees and fruit bushes. I was quite pleased as I seem to have two new gooseberry bushes that rooted themselves from branches of my main bush, so they'll be moving to the new allotment soon!

I also finished the shed, as well as making and hanging the door to make it nice and secure. I'm determined to keep it clean and well organised, so I made a tool rack for my main gardening tools today, every tool now had a space and I'll make sure they go back there! I also plan to make some shelves and a cupboard to store all my nets, cleaners, chicken medicines, glue bands, string, saws, knives, fertilisers, etc.

Anyone else got any storage ideas?

Allotment news!

In the past couple of weeks since my last post I’ve been quite busy.Work wise I’m still working for mum and dad on the farm but I’m starting to look a bit more for other work (although I’m still not sure what I want to do!). I’ve been working with my little brother loads so that’s been really good and he even came round the weekend before last so we had a mess around in the garden trying to light a fire by friction. I think if it hadn’t got so dark so quickly then we would have succeeded but unfortunately we didn’t and we’ll have to try harder next time!

I’ve also started work on the baby shed for all my gardening tools, as the one we inherited when we moved here leaks like a sieve and is a complete mess. I’ve built the shed flat-pack-able so if we move house I can bring it along, but it weighs a stupid amount because I can never build anything small enough!

I managed to get it erected this weekend and most of the roof on so I’m feeling quite good about it, although I’ve run out of cedar and I’ve still haven’t got a door to put on it!

The exciting news is that I’ve been told I can have an allotment! Its about 5 miles away but it will mean I can grow loads more veg and I’m really looking forward to the social side of it. It’s not until April as at the moment it’s just a green field and this is a new site. I'm not sure what to grow but its time to have another look in the seed catalogues, I feel like a kid at christmas!

Dave’s Climbing hole

This is a bit random.
I’ve been putting the floor in the barn/wood shed joined to the house at the farm this week with my brother. The only trouble was when the floor goes in it ruins Dave’s climbing gym where he trains most nights.

Mum and Dad are both big softies so when I suggested we make him an area in the floor to carry on training they agreed, but it did involve quite a bit of extra work.

Once we'd framed out the loft hatch and the cimbing hole with the carcassing timber we completed putting all the floor boards down (this made it easier to complete the frame around the hole as well).
We lined the hole with fair faced WBP ply so it looked better than bare timber. The hole is over twice the depth of the floor and allows plenty of space for his head.

Dave then added his climbing holds and started to show off.

My spoilt little brother, playing in his climbing hole. Maybe I should copyright it!

Weird week

Last week was an odd one. Couldn’t go to the farm for a couple of days because of the snow, I had a rubbish weekend and some really bad news, but I wont go into that here. The days I managed to go to work was the best bit for a change, I’ve got to admit its quite fun working for dad – the drive isn’t though (its not in a tractor!) I managed to do lots of little jobs, like putting tin up the side of some of the barns and sealing them up, also feeding the sheep (which aren’t ours) hay as they can’t get to the grass. On Firday I went to a farm sale to have a look and to try and take some photos for an article I’ve written, but it was far too wet and rainy. decided that my boots aren't waterproof as my socks looked like they had just come out of the wash.
Today has been good fun as I’ve been working with my brother putting a floor above the wood shed, I really enjoy working with him and I love getting my hands dirty again – the more time I spend away from management the more I keep thinking I can’t go back to it!I do wish some divine inspiration would hit me on what job I should do next!
Any ideas?

Time to warm up

Things are pretty cold at the moment and all covered over so today I cleared an area on the lawn and up some fruit and nuts on it for the birds. The blackbirds had the bits of apple away in minutes. My chickens enjoyed having some of their pen cleared, as well as some cut up spouts for them to peck at. We also needed some warming up so I decided to cook one of my childhood favourites – Jam Roly Poly. It’s really easy to make, just add 8oz of self raising flour, 3 oz of suet & a pinch of salt to a bowl. Mix it all with a bit of water, roll it out about 5mm thick and then spread loads of homemade jam on it. Roll it up and pop it in the oven for 40 minutes – Lovely & stodgy! Snuggled on the sofa with full bellies I think I ruined the moment by wanting to watch a DVD my Dad had lent me on sheep farming in New Zealand. This was called “Sheep Station NZ” and I’m sure I enjoyed it more than Claire but it was really good. Farming over there is so different to what we’re used to. It makes keeping 300 sheep, like we used to, seem like a little hobby! These farms are huge, some having up to 40,000 sheep with over 30 sheep dogs; this was as well as rounding them up in helicopters and controlling wild pigs and goats everyday.
I went backpacking to NZ when I was 19 and loved it, I only really went to the toruisty places but watching this DVD really makes me want to go back and experience work and how they do things (rather than drink), the trouble is I’m not sure I’d come back (they've got so much space)!

Heavy duty shelves

Well I’m not going to talk about the snow (I think everyone else has done that) but I did have some time on my hands yesterday so I though it was time I built some heavy duty shelves to house my power tools and other bits and pieces.

Lately I’ve been feeling very disorganised with my tools and I’m going against what I was taught when I was an apprentice:
“A place for everything and everything in its place”
It was important then as I could have been on five different sites in a week and loosing tools cost money and time. In five years of being a site carpenter I never lost a tool – now I’ve not lost any but I can’t find them either!

When I lived at the farm I used to have a small workshop with a set of shelves next to the door, this used to hold all my usual power tools and made them easy to load into the van. This is what I’ve made for my workshop to do the same type of job.

I started by working out the height of the shelves to make sure that the power tool boxes would fit and my tool box that contains my hand tools (which is very heavy) would fit underneath. I also wanted to make sure it could house some stacking boxes to put all my none carpentry items in (electric, plumbing and painting stuff but organised so I can find things).

I decided to build it almost to the door (about 1.1m) leaving enough room to hang a coat on the end. The height would be almost to the ceiling but with enough room to store boxes of nails and tubs of glue. Cutting the 4 timber posts to length I then marked out the ‘housing’ cuts. I used my mitre saw to trench these out, but you could easily do it with a saw, making lots of cuts and then removing the waste with a chisel. The housing joints mean that the shelves can take a lot more weight as they’re not reliant on mechanical fixings.The cross-rails then just have to be cut to length and knocked into the housing joints. I’ve decided not to any glue as the temperature is so low it won’t work very well and I might want to take them apart when its time to move on, so I just used 50mm screw. (The screws I used were self cutting but if you’re using cheaper screws you might have to drill a pilot hole first to stop the wood splitting)With two ‘H’ frame assembled I then needed to connect them up with more rails, I wanted the shelves to be 500mm deep so I took the depth of the two frames off that measurement and cut the rails to length. To make sure they held the frames nice and solidly I notched these rails around the post, they won’t be taking much weight so they’re just screwed into the posts.For the shelves I used some 9.5mm ply I had left over from cladding the inside walls of my shed. (The items I’m storing span the whole width of the shelf so the ply isn’t important, if it was smaller, heavier items I’d use thicker ply.) I notched this around the posts and fixed it down using 25mm screwsAlthough the shelves are very stable I still fixed them back to the wall before I filled them up.

10 seconds after I'd put them up the shelves were full. I think I might have to build some more!

No rabbits for tea

Well today hasn't really gone as planned.
My brother and I worked all day clearing out the old wood shed ready to put the floor in tomorrow but with the snow I almost didn't get here, it was falling thick and fast and the lane up to the farm was like a sheet of glass.
The talkabout Victorian kitchen gardens that was ment to be held tonight has been cancelled as the speaker can't get to the village hall where it was meant to be held. I'm really disappointed as I was looking forward to that so I just hope it's put on later in the year.
In the end Dave and I just went shooting (as the picture shows I have a terrible habit of dressing like a hill-billy!). I think we both knew we weren't going to see anything as it was snowing quite heavily and any animal with some sense would be tucked up in their burrow. It was nice to go for a walk in the snow though. The animals had obviously been busy as there were tracks everywhere and we both enjoy trying to figure out what had been going on, we even found where a fox had been stalking some rabbits. I hope he had more luck than us!Forecast is more snow in the night so I don't know if I'll be getting home tomorrow night either.