After all that snow, Vidi saw one more day of sunshine before it was time for her to go home. To make the most of it, we headed to the climbing wall with Tarje and had a great time enjoying the rock, the views and the sunshine. It was beautiful. The next morning we waved goodbye and good luck to our last volunteer of 2018. Thank you Vidi for all your help and your eternally cheery demeanour!
A few days of wind and rain followed and we enjoyed vegging out for a bit. The post-snow chaos was still not over. There were broken trees everywhere! The local council was working through its backlog of jobs for weeks. The worst of it got tidied by villagers for firewood but there are still plenty of impassable paths.
We’ve been doing our bit too, clearing paths and chopping up fallen branches and trees, accumulating a decent pile of firewood in the process.
Following the destruction of the tent, we had a very cluttered house and no space to work in. Tarje and Signe kindly offered up a space in the bottom of their house which we have filled with stuff we don’t need at the moment. That gave us space to get to work removing one of the feed troughs from the ground floor. We broke up the breeze blocks, took them out to the rubble pile, cut out the rebar that was sticking out the ground then removed the wooden beam. That gave us space to do the pointing on the side wall. And with that wall done, we put up some shelving and got the tools organised. It’s so good to be able to find things again!
After that we turned our attention to removing the second feed trough. That went fairly swiftly since we already had our technique down. After removing the upper beam, we were left with a rather large hole in the back wall, which Dave spent a few days filling in bit by bit to let the mortar dry in between.
Having removed the second feed trough, the bulging wall was a lot more noticeable than it had been when it was in the background. We looked at it worriedly and scratched out heads. Dave talked about trying to rebuild it. I had a bit of an internal meltdown. I’d already been feeling stressed and weighed down by the scale of the tasks ahead of us and this extra unknown, potentially disastrous task was too much to handle. I called a professional to come and look at it and waited out the stress until he could come out and offer his opinion.
The bulging wall is looming
My Mum and Dad came to visit us for a few days. It was the first time they’d seen the new roof, let alone everything else that has happened since then! It was great to realise how much progress we’ve made in the year since they were here last. We had a great time chatting and planning. And they got stuck in for a day oiling wood, shifting piles of tiles and pollarding trees. It was so lovely to see them and show them what we’re up to, and of course they had lots of useful advice for us too.
We helped Tarje and Signe install their new roof window. Tarje had already prepared the space for it to go in so we just spent a few hours getting it in its place. It looks great! They’ve made a surprising amount of progress for parents of two and it’s always exciting to see the latest developments in their house and garden.
Our own garden has been receiving a little bit of attention here and there when I don’t feel like working on the house. Parsnips and beetroots have been harvested and put into storage buckets. Peppers and tomatoes have still been producing in the greenhouse. Garlic, onions and leeks have been planted and empty beds mulched and covered until spring.
I’ve also sowed some forest garden seeds that need to experience cold winter temperatures before germinating in spring. Some tree species like Italian alder and Mulberry and lots of berry bushes like Juneberry and Oregon Grape. We’ll see if anything pops up next year!
Good news came on Tuesday when the professional wall guy came to look at the house. He said lots of things that made lots of sense and overall made me very happy indeed. We won’t be rebuilding any walls and we have a plan to damp-proof the whole house. That won’t happen until next summer since the machines can’t get in across the wet field. But in the meantime we have a whole upstairs to build, so that’s fine. We have our plan and we can carry on at usual levels of stress – phew!
Meanwhile, Dave made a great discovery. He noticed one of the corner roof tiles was cracked, which is hopefully the reason for the leak we spotted a while back. He used the grinder to cut out the old one and put a new one in on some cement. Another stress ticked off the list.
We spent a few days moving all the bricks and wood off the balcony and onto the old tent platform. Then Dave put a tarp roof over everything to keep it dry. Now we’re busy with the last of the downstairs pointing. After that we plan to make the front doorway higher so we don’t have to duck to get inside any more. Let’s hope the weather in December is nice to us so that we can get on with it.
-Anna
for people. for nature. 