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December Diary 09 7 days of dry frosty weather and sun from morning 'til night - what a boon for winter work when days are short and the sun is low. This week has seen a daily pilgrimage down to the field to press on with collecting firewood and sorting out and burning the stumps left by our skilful diggerman. So are we have almost filled one wall of the new wood shed - the one that doubles as a table tennis arena - and this will all be kept for next winter. My day starts, as always, with feeding the chickens, collecting the eggs and letting them out into the orchard for their day's foraging. Miraculously the sunny weather seems to have encouraged them back into laying. Several of our neighbours have remarked on the same phenomenon. Then it is straight on to sharpen the chainsaw. This 15 minute job is usually accompanied by my listening to BBC Radio 4 - probably woman's hour for better or worse. Refuelling and checking the chain oil take a couple of minutes then I can drop the saw into my large wheelbarrow and plod down to the field. Generally I cut up the remaining trunks in the field so I can leave the sawdust where it lies and load up the cut logs directly into the wheelbarrow in preparation for the tough slog back up the hill to the woodshed. When the ground is muddy it is hard work indeed and I usually limit myself to a target of 2 barrow loads for each session. The logs can then be split and stacked neatly in the woodshed. Naturally enough the ash splits easily - the hawthorn and cherry less so. Where there are really nice large trunks of cherry I split them and store to season. We have been told that this is the best way to stop the logs splitting so they can ultimately be sold on to wood turners for a decent profit - we shall see! The stumps left after the firewood has been extracted vary in size from the small scale hawthorns which a child could lift to huge multiple stumps of ash which will take 2 strong men to move. The pile of stumps is mixed up with debris comprising turf, blackberries and small branches. There are also a few bits of old metal and wire just to add to the jumble. Burning and sorting this lot requires some skill and even more patience. The first essential is to build up a strongly burning heart by cutting suitably small branches and placing them in a carefully crafted lattice over a small quantity of dry timber. Once this is burning well the stumps can be brought around it and the whole edifice kept tightly packed so the flames can take hold. Each morning we rake through the ash and embers of the day before so that we can dig out suitable lumps of glowing charcoal as a foundation for the current day's burning. A small series of puffs with the bellows will quickly bring these up to white heat so that new wood can be added and the whole bonfire restarted. Logs can be cut whilst the new bonfire is drying itself out and getting started. All of this is, of course, much assisted if there is a good strong breeze to fan the flames. Sadly in a frosty anticyclone wind is very definitely not going to be a factor - indeed so still is the air that a sensible hat must be worn to prevent the sparks coming straight back down and burning off what is left of my baldy hair! Today I went into town to buy the last of the fencing wood needed to finish off the new boundary. The sawmill sells 15 foot lengths of cut home-grown timber, treated and 4 inches by one and a half inches thick. We need 17 of these plus 11 uprights. After a bit of juggling around we get the trailer into position and load up. The sawmill has a great tool for tying up and fastening the load. It dispenses, tightens, seals and cuts a roll of something like a half inch nylon tape so that the load can be firmly fixed in seconds. The job can only be released by cutting the tape but it is certainly most secure. So with the trailer heavily loaded I set out for home only to meet the milk lorry on the narrow road between Dunganstown and Killowen. When the road is just 8 feet wide there is just no way that a huge articulated tanker is going to be able to back into space so it falls to the driver of the van with the awkward trailer to set off backing up the hill. A short trailer is no easy thing to back at the best of times so it takes quite a time and no little fing and blinding to retrace half a mile until I can pull into a neighhbour's farmyard. No doubt this is all part of the great cosmic plan if indeed it is not a part of Muggins Law of Bad Coincidences! In the afternoon I took the children over to a neighbour's to collect a new cockerel for our 6 hens. This fine fellow had come out of one of their layers eggs during the summer and has only now begun to try out his morning cock a doodle doo! He seems calm and very fit and active. Just as well as our ladies are not impressed at this early stage and certainly will give him a hard time living and eating with them for the next few weeks. Not surprisingly he is a bit slow to go into the henhouse of an evening but does not protest when he is bodily lifted into place for the night. We hope he will come into his own in time to produce some fertile eggs for the spring when a hen might become broody. |
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