Preparing for Christmas Day

A friend gave us a goose and a duck (Muscovy which are huge!). We picked them up today, and killed and prepared them so that they could hang for a while. The goose we will eat on Christmas Day and the duck will go in the freezer - perhaps we will eat it next week.

Doug klonked them on the head and then I slit their throat to bleed them out. Slight incident when the duck made a break for it, but the dog helped catch him again.

I was tempted for a minute to keep the goose as it was a female and goose eggs would be amazing - plus she was a beautiful animal. But practicality ruled. We don't have the time for more animals, where would she live etc. Maybe in the future we can have geese. They have really stinky slimy poo though...

Goose before plucking

Goose during plucking. The feathers weren't too hard to pull out but the whole thing was quite an effort because of the amount of down. It was like being in a snow storm and took forever to pull them all out.

Finished and gutted. Now going to hang for a couple of days

The duck. He is a muscovy duck which are huge and the only type of duck not related to the mallard apparently.

We had a nightmare plucking the wings, so in the end I just skinned them. I think I will chop them off and make stock before I roast it as they will tend to burn and dry out without skin on. The stock will be useful for making gravy to eat it with.

Mmmmm yum.

Fan for fire

Not super exciting perhaps to normal people but we found it so.
This fan is powered only from the heat of the top of the stove. It moves the air around so that all the heat does not disappear up to the ceiling and therefore here up stairs through the hole above the fire.
The flash froze it but it is a blur to the eye as it whizzes round

Old pylon has gone

ERDF (who manage the hardware for EDF) have finally come and removed the old pylon and filled in the track they dug to get in there. They seem to have dug out the old concrete and everything.

All looks much nicer now with wooden pylon and only one cable neatly wrapped in black

Solar panels

I kind of mentioned it when I was talking about the heating, but the solar hot water panels are now connected up and generating heat. They were installed some time ago but have been covered up until now - and not connected to anything. They have raised the tank (2000 liters) by a few degrees each day it looks like. There were about 4 hours today that it was heating for (it was cloudy in the morning so startd at midday). The tank has been settling down and all coming to an equal temperature so we will see more clearly as time goes on. Of course at the moment we are not using any heat from it.

We hope to get the radiators working for a test run next week.

Free (ok not free - pre paid) heat!

Lots of the windows are fitted

Eventually the outside will be re rendered also which will cover the old bits showing round the edge of the new surround.

The bedroom

These windows in the roof will be replaced tomorrow. They will still be drafty round the sides as there is no insulation yet round the windows or above them. But overall the house envelope (as they call it) is getting more air tight.

Window delivery

He is coming back next week to install.

Firing up the wood burner

The instructions seemed long and complex, but sure it is fine once we have done it a few times. There are a lot of dials and controls. Basically the whole setup isn't very complex, but it looks more so because it is important that water goes in to the tank at a level with similar temperature so that the water stays stratified with hot at the top and cold at the bottom otherwise we would have a large tank of warmish water rather than one which is hot enough at the top to provide water for showers. Then there are a number of pumps and dials for the solar hot water and for the wood burner.
The radiators are connected up basically but not fully yet.
The red tank you can see a bit of is the expansion vessel to cope with the water increasing in volume as it gets hotter. The grey pipes just right of center are the solar hot water going in and hot water coming out. The wood burner is on the left.

Lighting the wood burner

Control panel on the wood burner - tells you whether fans are on, temp of chimney (which is important I guess so that the boiler can control itself to achieve the correct temperatures and air supply to achieve gasification)

The super hot flame roaring down from where the wood is being heated to create wood gas above. The boiler is called a wood gasification boiler because it burns the wood very efficiently by gasifying the wood and then burning that gas

The tank on right is to provide flow if there is a power cut and the system is too hot and needs cooling - as we would have no water pressure at that point as our water is provided by a pump

Double skin chimney out the back