Although C weeded the strawberry bed when he took the net off several weeks ago it was full of weeds again. So that was my job this morning, lots of runners cut off too and a few pegged down to root.
Our son came round for dinner last night which was handy as he helped C to move all the chickens up to the big shed at the top of the field. They've really gone off lay over the last two weeks so hopefully a nice clean shed and new grass will help them start laying again.
We sat out for a while this afternoon and I started reading a new library book. I've got to the end of all my fiction books with a week left to library van day and the only non-fiction book that I could get into was 'We can take it: Britain and the memory of the second world war'. It takes a look at how things were reported then and how they have been remembered and portrayed in films and books in the years since. A bit heavy going but a different slant on history.
I'm very honoured as Leigh from Five Acres and a Dream has just become a follower ( I enjoyed her book) and Kim is a new follower on Bloglovin' .
Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday, Jill at Loving the Frugal life asked about sweeping the chimneys.
We have a set of draining rods that double up as chimney brushes with the addition of a screw on brush. C sweeps the living room chimney ( wood-burner) from the top down. He can stand on the flat roof of the dormer windows upstairs and from there it's only a short step up to the ridge.
I'm not keen on watching him up there! The living room chimney is a brick chimney lined with metal flue. We are always surprised at how little soot comes down into the woodburner - doors shut until it settles.
The Rayburn in the kitchen has a double lined flue pipe right up through the roof and this has to be done from the Rayburn upwards, so things close to the Rayburn are covered. Because we don't have a fire night and day -unless its Very cold - the metal flue expands and contracts which helps to loosen the soot. Most of the wood we burn is old scrap wood so no sap which is the thing which gums up flue pipes. When we do use tree wood we make sure it's several years old .
In our 22 years here we have only ever bought wood a couple of times, right back at the beginning before we knew how much free wood there is around - just for the asking. We collect old pallets from a company in Leiston. When C worked for the council he used to get a lot that was cut down from around bridges that were being repaired, we have lots of dead elms around our boundary that we cut, branches from other trees sometimes come down in the wind. We have cleared up the wood from 2 old houses that were being demolished in nearby towns - several years ago now. When the extension was built 3 years ago there was wood from old window frames etc. Nothing is wasted.
Some years we get a bit low in our stored wood, but something normally turns up.
Back tomorrow
Sue
