New Cockerel

Someone gave us a cockerel to eat. He is the same breed as our two ginger chick (which are Warrens) who are super friendly, so we decided to keep him instead of our current guy (who is for the pot now) so that when we have chicks hopefully we will get a few more friendly chickens. They are meant to be good egg layers too. We do like the Marrans (we have three, and the old cockerel is this breed) because they lay well in the winter, maybe half Warran half Marrans will lay in winter AND be friendly.

Heating is in (it is HUGE)

Look at the size of it! Although we did technically know the dimensions of the 2000 liter water tank, we hadn't taken on board just how huge it would be.

I am also wondering how on earth we are going to plaster the wall behind it... We could just leave it, but the hempcrete is quite crumbly and I imagine eventually it would all fall off, so we probably need to get a layer of something over most of it somehow. Maybe we could send a small child back there?!?

More photos in better light tomorrow, and we are getting a lesson on how it all works (plus I think there are a few final bits to do still). There are a lot of dials.

Excitingly the window man is coming tomorrow to deliver the windows too. Then fitting them next week.

Exciting progress

Here is the water tank 2000l ie HUGE. Quite a challenge fitting it under the beam apparently.

In the door is the wood burner - quite big

In addition there is a 200l expansion vessel to adjust as the volume of the water increases with temperature and a 300l emergency flow pressure vessel to provide cold water flow to quench fire in case of a power cut at peak temperature.

Will it all fit on the tiled area!? Also stress because the emergency flow vessel still has to turn up - due tomorrow. 

Exciting!

Eggs

The chickens hve been on strike for some time. We were down to only a few after the fox got some, then we bought 5 more about a month ago. We got one egg from the new ones, then nothing until now.

Today 3 of the new ones and one of the remaining Marrans laid eggs. The quail have slowed right down as they don't lay over the winter, but the current warm weather seems to have encourage a few out of them.

I wouldn't expect the same number tomorrow as when they start, they often get going slowly but hopefully we will start getting some at least - and the fox will leave them alone for a while.

The new chickens are two Warrens (ginger and very friendly) and three limousine (grey). We have also been given a cockeral which is a Warren so we are debating over whether to keep him and eat the Marrans one we have, as the Warrens are so nice and friendly. We are going to give the Warren a trail run in the flock this week (the existing cockeral will have to go in a cage otherwise they will fight).

Hanging for ski gear

We had a shonky hanging thing that we were using for ski gear for the short while until the house was done. Obviously it has taken infinity longer than we initially dreamt, and that thing gave up the ghost. Doug has built a new one using the same metal bar to replace it (just for the short while until the house is finished... just a decade or so...). This is much better than a heap of ski clothes on the floor - which didn't bother us so much over the summer, but now we want to use them it really wasn't convenient.

Ski area opened today

Beautiful weather as you can see.

Tiling the utility room floor

Or we should call it the living room/bathroom/kitchen/dining room floor in the mean time as this space is going to be all those things for us while we are doing the main part of the house. This part of the floor is where the heating system which will be installed next week will stand. It will take up quite a lot of space with a huge wood burner and a 2000l water tank plus another 300l tank which will provide water in the case of power cut to take heat out of the fire if it is going at the time. This is a sensible safety feature for most people who have mains water which works during a power cut, but a bit more complicated for us.