Pick 'n' Mix

Never again… I was told, so I handed the phone over to Jon who was going to stop them in their tracks. Next thing I knew he was chatting away to the person on the other end of the phone like they were lost long buddies. Yes, he’d blown it. Here we were doing yet another interview for a paper. The positive was that we could take our own photograph, though at the last minute this was reneged upon. A professional photographer descended upon us…for four bleedin hours…. Can you just move a little to the right, you er, ummm (he just couldn’t remember our names and when he called Her Next Door Grandma, I thought his cuppa would end up over his head).

The photograph was in last week’s national paper – and I hated it! 

Back to earth with a bump after our flirtation with the paps and celebrity lifestyle (albeit double F grade), we supplied some manual labour and helped out on the village common, just tidying up really. This year though we benefited from a huge tree that needed to come down. There is still some two thirds to collect from the common land but the photos show the new wood in the store, then turning round towards the garage you see some more queueing up to go in. When it's all collected hopefully we'll be full to the brim.

Waiting wood.

Wood store slowly returning to health.

There was a great honour bestowed upon me too, I’ve been chosen to be a World Book Night giver. I’m not a great wordsmith (oh you’ve picked up on that have you?) But I do love books and reading. I’ve never had 24 pristine books in my possession before. What a fantastic treat to be able to give them away and spread the joy of reading. I have clubbed together with Maggie and Wendy to gift all our books during the morning of Saturday 28th.

Harlequin....

In between that lot, we even managed an all too short four day nuclear family break in the Easter holidays. We raced up to Aberystwyth to have a little time away. That's the main disadvantage of working for ourselves, we don't get looooong paid holidays... those sadly are just dim and distant memories. Still, we try to make the most of the time we do have instead.

Wood pile

I was galvanised into (supervising) action by reading littlegreenblog.

Him Next Door has been raring to go and worried about our log reserves since before we started using last winter's store.  We are lucky and have an abundant supply of logs to hand as we have common land trees next to our garden, which we help manage.  I was quite shocked to find that even wet softwood logs can cost from £70 per 1m3.  The price only goes up with quality and dryness, about £130 for kiln dried.  1m3 wouldn't last long at all. 

Our main problem is that the logs are still attached to the growing trees.  The job of lobbing off and then pulling up branches from the rather steep valley is very firmly in the domain of the men of this clan.  Thank goodness for the ride on mower, which doubles as a miniature haulage vehicle.  Once the branches have been brought to the top of the valley the mower is used again, complete with a trailer made from an old plastic container fortified with a wood frame.  The cut logs are carried using the trailer to their penultimate resting place, the wood store.

Our wood resource - free, bar the labour.

Him Next Door recently built a second wood store, which is much nearer the house than the old one.  The old one now stores wood that we have acquired or can reuse and that is perfectly good for DIY projects in the future.

Our new wood store.

We (that's the royal we) need to continue filling our new store, which goes three logs deep, to see us out this winter.  At least now we're half way there.