The Donated House

Ok, it’s high time we talked about food, though the promised water story will come in a minute. I made barbecue sauce (see last entry) and cooked it down til it was very thick, coated some chicken legs in it, put them in my barbecue cage and raked out some hardwood coals to cook it over the fire.

It was awesome. Absolutely delicious.

We were quieter around the campfire than we’d ever been before.

That was a lovely evening. The weather’s been amazing (well, until today) and it’s finally felt like summer.

We also had another go at devising a haloumi-roasting technique, but the metal skewer version was only marginally better than the old pointy wooden stick version. Still an unacceptably high rate of haloumi loss due to dropping off the end of the stick.

We broke open the various fruit gins I’d made a couple of weeks before, including raspberry (too much like cough syrup), blueberry (ok, but not very exciting), strawberry (life-changingly good) and rhubarb (Anna’s favourite)

Elmo found the stop-tap that should allow us to connect to the water mains, but we couldn’t reach it to turn it off.

We devised a series of tools, culminating in this one with two bolts in the end of a log and a cross-bar to turn it, which worked, but not well enough to completely stop the water. Foiled again. Perhaps Yorkshire Water can help. Elmo promises to call them soon.

Alec and Kate got quite a way towards sinking the stones that will hold up the frame for the outdoor kitchen. In the background, Elmo and I are re-setting one of the wall stones that had been pushed out by roots and was threatening to fall. Dave did quite a bit of digging out roots in the “vegetable plot” (though it may be next year before it contains vegetables at this rate; there are a LOT of established perennial weeds, including mare’s tail.)

We took out the rest of the bits of the willow (not including the massive bit of stump) and Anna and I stacked them on a pallet to keep them relatively dry.

Anna, triumphant.

We picked out a good looking piece of holly and stripped the bark off it to make some kind of art or furniture out of. Not sure of the plan yet, but we thought it was good enough to be worth keeping some of. In the big house, I’d like to use a big piece like this to make shelves in the kitchen.

The finished article is now drying on the couch. I’m sure the right use will present itself.

We (inevitably) whiled away the hours of darkness playing the Zombie game. It has overtaken Robo-Rally as the game of choice around here.

And for no reason other than that it’s a pretty remarkable picture, absolutely ripe for use in a caption competition: a picture of me and Elmo the moment after I got a piece of my own toenail in my eye. Don’t ask. I really must invest in some better toenail clippers.

Anna (and other people) took tons of pictures of all the great stuff we’ve got up to this weekend on her camera. But then we couldn’t find a USB cable, so you’ll have to content yourself with this picture of the barbecue sauce I made for the chicken legs we cooked over the coals of the fire until we find a cable.

It was delicious.

Because apparently jumping up and down on it will not settle it enough and it will settle over time to HALF its current depth if we don’t get a vibrating plate compactor thing. So I rang the hire place and booked one, which, luckily, wasn’t very expensive and we get it for two days instead of one if we have it over Sunday.

Anyway, I piled MORE AND MORE soil on it and it’s now a bit higher than it needs to be, but if Elmo’s right, I’ll be spending all day tomorrow doing the same again after the compactor settles it to almost nothing. But I guess it’s better than having to do it all again in a couple of years.

The observant among you may notice the lack of a water tank. Yes, I finally emptied it and rolled it (like a giant die) to the bottom of the long sheds, where hopefully it will go on collecting water.

I started out by filling buckets and dumping them in the (still unfilled) trench, but Elmo, ever the efficiency engineer, concocted a plan to use the lengths of old drainpipe and gutter to form a chute to the ditch. It worked perfectly and actually made a lovely noise. And effortlessly emptied all the water in about 10 minutes.

Happily, inbetween bouts of digging, I was able to sit down on our newly acquired two-seat plus table bench thingie, given to us by Jim and Arlene (Harry and Peggy’s Daughter and Son-in-law) when they were tidying up the cottage for (hopefully) sale this spring.

May we both get lucky and sell our beautiful, if possibly a bit “niche”, cottages!

Our tenants have just told us that they’re moving out, so we will have to hope we can find another tenant willing to take the place on a month-to-month contract. Bit of a sigh, but we’ve been lucky to have people taking good care of the place.

Or at least I feel like I did.

I’m building up the ground level (and taking it down at the top corner) for the floor of the outdoor kitchen. It’s amazing how many wheelbarrow loads go to make up a very small amount of infill. But it was a good day’s work and I think I’ll finish tomorrow, and then I can peg out for the laying of the paving slabs. I’m going to lay them straight on the (well tamped) soil and plant some kind of greenery between them. Then, hopefully I’m going to get on with building the structure.

In other news, Hywel from Blackbark tree management (from whom we are going to get next year’s firewood) came to cut up the rest of the tree stump. He runs a small business doing tree work around the calder valley and selling the wood for firewood locally. And he’s very good with a chainsaw! Though he accidentally hit a hidden rock and had to sharpen it mid-job. Still, it was only half an hour’s work and cost me a tenner. Bargain!

As this is a photo-heavy entry, I’ve tried the gallery upload method of posting. Descriptions are in the photos. I may or may not use this method again… I feel it might make it harder to scan through the entry… opinions welcome.