The Donated House

Well, what a fantastic party that was!

I think we had about 22 people, some of whom hadn’t been there before (score one for the future volunteer force, hopefully!) and many of whom hadn’t been in a while, so I was delighted to welcome old friends and new.

Friday night there were only nine of us, so we managed to fit into the cabin, though I think that was about capacity. It hasn’t even got lifeboats yet! The fairy lights above the table (hung on hooks on the underside of the bed) make a lovely ambiance in the little dining-room nook.

On Saturday, Bob and Simon set about fixing the rope swing, which had fallen off the tyre that’s meant to prevent it harming the tree branch. The spectacle drew something of a crowd.

Bob climbed the rope freehand (with Simon anchoring the other end of a safety rope on his harness that had been thrown over the branch earlier) and strapped himself to the underside of the branch so he could work with the tyre with both hands.

It was all very amusing to the people on the ground.

Bob was triumphantly lowered to the ground by Simon and the rope swing was back in action.

This was meant to be an action shot, but I caught it at just the wrong moment of the swing. So instead, I’ll use it to illustrate the comment that Anna and Lisa both showed some aptitude and enthusiasm for rope climbing and tricks. We all agreed that a full rope course, with ziplines and platforms and rope bridges would be awesome. Sadly, the tree preservation order on the whole plot will probably keep the reality more modest.

Saturday night we built a huge, Elmo-style campfire and roasted the traditional sausages and teryaki steak.

I think this is the best bit about living at Boggart Hall. I will make sure that even when the place becomes civilised and has central heating and running water, we will still have a fire pit and roast sausages.

I also did my first on-site baking in my little plug-in convection oven, with marked success! This is the cakey bit of a sticky toffee pudding, which also had the customary toffee sauce and custard. Went down very well. Much more to come!

The kitchen functioned extremely well, even in its not-quite-finished state. I managed to build the shelf for the “running water” which consists of two brewing buckets with taps, one for drinking water and one for rain water. Makes washing up so much easier. The sink drains into a bucket, which you have to chuck now and again, but it’s a lot more convenient than the old system of two washing-up bowls on the stone wall, rain or shine (or snow).

Bob, Anna and I were delighted to find that there was a little bit of teryaki steak left in the morning, so (lack of refrigeration be damned) we stoked up the remains of the campfire and had steak for breakfast. Bob was charming enough to hold the above pose while I fished out my phone to get the picture.

After a very great deal of cleaning (hooray for the water collection system!) the kitchen units are lined up against the wall in what will be their final places, though we need to do some figuring out in terms of securing them and the wall unit (not yet in the building) and the plywood for the tiles. I also obviously need to cut the leftover bits of countertop to fit. But, excitingly, it begins to look like a kitchen rather than an empty shell. We’re short a few doors, so I’ll make hanging curtains for some bits, and I’ll use some of the tongue-in-groove panelling we rescued from a neighbour’s skip to make a door or two and cover the ugly bit in the foreground above.

I’ve got a bucket on a stool under the sink, which is more or less what the long term plan is, actually. Above it I’m going to build a strong shelf and buy a 25 litre bucket with a tap (and length of hose) to act as running water.

Lucy rescued this awesome candle holder extravaganza from a neighbour who was throwing it away. It’s obviously magnificient as is, but I have some plans to add a few bead swags and a bit of extra sparkle. Watch this space!

As of 13 May we will have owned this delightful bit of ground for one year. We’re planning to celebrate with a relaxing (non-working) weekend and hoping to show a few people around who haven’t made it yet, as well as welcome all the volunteers who’ve helped to make it the amazing place it already is.

I’m flabbergasted, looking back at what we’ve done in a year, that we’re as far along as we are, particularly in light of some of the setbacks and delays we faced last summer.

It all gives me a tremendous well of hope for the coming year. I would raise a glass to the oncoming summer if I wasn’t about to get in the van and drive to Womersley’s to pick up some more lime render…

Anyway, please come and join us the weekend of 11-13 May for a celebration of the year’s progress and a sausage or two over the fire. More info about camping, general arrangements, directions, etc available on request, see contact page above.

Well, we no longer have a shortage of water, that’s for sure. There’s been a month’s rainfall in the last few days, and we managed to collect much of it in our new 1000 litre container, which is good, because I’m convinced a landslide would have taken the cabin right down the hill if we hadn’t.

Elmo bought it on ebay and I took the trailer to Huddersfield to pick it up. The timing was excellent because I got it here during the last of the dry weather.

As there was just me, I had to do a bit of creative thinking to get the thing down the wall. Luckily, it wasn’t all that heavy and a controlled drop went as planned.

It looks more like an accident, but actually it went exactly as planned.

I then managed to roll it like a giant die into place and put it up on some bricks. Having not made any plans about getting the water to it from the downspouts, I had to improvise using what I had around the place.

It looks a bit of a contraption, but it got the water to the container, which was about 3/4 full when I left.

With nothing to do outdoors without getting soaked, I spent two days working on the clay topcoat. I had some remedial work to do because I’d been unaware that the best way to get a decent finish was to use something hard and plastic when it was just going dry, so I had to wet down and re-work a lot of it, with… acceptable results. However, the stuff I’ve done new is pretty good, not dead smooth, but wibbly and organic, as I’d pictured. I ended up using bits of plastic bottle that I’d cut up to make smoothing tools, with decent results. I will get my plastic trowel out and try to get a really flat finish on a bit of it just to see whether I can, but I’m pretty happy with this. And, that’s the last thing I needed to do before moving the majority of the kitchen into place. So I await the drying of it somewhat impatiently!

In other news, we’ve made a start on cutting down the big willow tree that’s in the way of our driveway. Simon brought his climbing harness and tied himself to the tree and to Elmo via several safety points and climed about sawing big branches off. It was exciting to watch, and will provide us with a fair amount of firewood for next year or the year after, depending on how long we season it.

We got quite a lot of the more difficult stuff down and I am hoping that Bob will bring his climbing gear and help take down the rest.

The new plum tree has got one little branch to show for the spring’s work, and half a dozen blossoms. There are quite a few other buds, and the cherry trees are looking very vigorous, so I’m hopeful that in a year and a half I’ll be eating plum jam and cherry pie, albeit probably in miniature.

Not long now til the trees are in leaf and we’ll say goodbye for another year to beautiful sunsets like this.

… with a couple of weeks worth of posts.

Easter Saturday we went over to Bacup to see the world famous Brittania Coconut Dancers (also know as the coconutters, or just the nutters.) They were on fine form and drew a pretty impressive crowd.

We wanted a cup of coffee while we were there, and although most of the cafes in the town didn’t look like much to me, there was one that had tables outside (mismatched, with even more mismatched chairs, always the sign of a good cafe, in my experience) and the inside proved to be one of the most eclectic, not to say bizarre, cafes I’ve ever had the pleasure of. It seemed to be a junk shop also, with various piles of used goods, carpet squares, furniture for sale (too new to be antique, maybe just about retro if you were generous) and a handful of locals enjoying conversations about local happenings. Fantastic.

The tree above is the one we are going to cut down to make way for our spiral driveway. Simon says he can come and have a look whether he’d be happy to get his harness on and help us take it down. I’m certainly happier with someone with a harness and a bit of experience, rather than Elmo just swinging around up there with a little bow saw and not much in the way of H&S.

Val came over and helped with putting the topcoat of clay on, as well as joining me for a mooch round the market (Thursday is junk day, we found lots of good stuff, including a new double pulley wheel that will do nicely for the bed.

We’ve managed to get a lot of the bed/living room half of the room done. Looking really good.

I picked up the first 14 buckets of a 48 bucket order of lime render for the exterior of the building. Those buckets are SO heavy. I managed to get 12 of them down behind the house before I gave up.

Aquilegia and snapdragons I couldn’t resist planting, even though it’s definitely not past all risk of frost.

Blueberries promising a harvest of some sort, at least. Hopefully blueberry pie this summer.

Anji delivered a mattress she’d spotted in a local newsletter, and I thanked her with a bowl of red pesto spirals. She stayed for a lovely long lunch of conversation.

And I figured out what the wren we could occasionally see peeking in the window was up to. The above hole was neatly packed with moss and other wet bits of soft stuff. I’m afraid I took it all out, before it rotted my walls, and the poor wren will have to start all over again.