Some random pics of my hens

 

Poor old Coriander (ginger hen), seen here in front of her friend Cumin.  She is OK, but I have kept her and Cumin inside the Eglu for a few days to make sure she is recovering from the fox attack.

mad Vanilla  the Cream Legbar. I have decided to go and buy a Leghorn, to get white eggs and also so Vanilla isn't the only mad looking hen!

hens still have not worked out how to get the gate open!

See the Photovoltaic panels on the garage roof and the Solar Thermal tubes on the house roof?

Energy from the Sun

 

A gratuitously self indulgent post, this one! Notice anything different about the woodstore roof, beyond the polytunnel? And can you see the solar thermal tubes on the house?

Thanks to these wonderful bits of kit, for the last week we have been generating around £7 worth of        electricity per day, (thank you, Feed in Tarrif) AND our bought in electricity usage has dropped to less      than 5 units per day. We have also had a seemingly endless supply of hot water! We have had to adjust our usage patterns but that's OK, I don't feel its a hardship to have to wait for the cooker to finish before running the washing machine. The electricity we sell back to the grid then goes off to be sold to other people , thus helping THEM to use truly renewable energy as well. 

Hurrah! *We* are generating clean, renewable energy, which gets sold to Good Energy! How cool is that idea!  Compost Mansions electrons!                                                                                                                                                   

Its wonderful, simply wonderful, to sit and use this computer now, using solar generated electricity, while     drinking a cup of tea made with solar generated electricity, while the washing machine is washing clothes using solar generated electricity and hot water heated by the sun, water which was pumped up from our borehole by, yep, you guessed it, solar generated electric. Between the PV's, the Solar Thermal tubes and   the  woodstore, I feel pretty damn  like the cat who got the cream, right  now !                                                                                            

Sorry, I'll take my grin somewhere else, shall I? ;-))

 

Hot water from sunshine :-)

Oh joy!

Compost Mansions has a new addition! Its up, on the S E ish face of the(newly tiled) roof !



Compostman starting to carry tubes up the scaffolding yesterday afternoon



Work partly done, yesterday afternoon. Heavy rain called a halt to proceedings yesterday



But the tubes were still getting the water to a respectable temperature this morning with only half of them installed...




Late this morning and all tubes are plugged in and working.



So the temperature of the water in the tubes rose...



And rose....we have NOT had a very sunny day here today, it has been warm but not hot, and overcast at times. BUT by 4.30 pm it was blooming hot in those tubes! 49 celsius!

Can I just say here that Compostman is an absolute STAR for installing this system, he has worked really hard these last few weeks to get all the parts together and install it and I love him very much indeed.

oooohh I can't wait to have a shower :-)

A very catch up post!

Gosh, I have not posted for more than a week!

The reason being, it is *that* time of the year! Like many of you I am madly busy in my veg patch, the first crops are now ready to harvest (new potatoes, carrots, broad beans, spinach, courgettes, shallots and onions, strawberries, cucumbers, salads.....) and weeding weeding weeding is a priority!

As is grass mowing and compost making...Compostman has been scything the long grass and the comfrey today, and I have been filling up the newly emptied compostbins.

The compost has been dug out of them to go in various raised beds, and I have been planting climbing french and canadian beans up beanpoles cut from our own woodland ( feel very smug about this!) as encouraged by the Small Woods Association, of which I am a proud member! and who I occasionally work for...If you want a great place to go, visit the Green Wood centre in Coalbrookedale, its wonderful!

In the last 10 days I have also done 5 full days of Master Composter stuff which I organised, booked, transported the display etc to and from (and made sure the lovely other Master Composters had a good time )



This is me joining in the drumming at the World Environment Day stands at The Big Event.

I spent Sat and Sun this weekend just gone at Hellens in Much Marcle, at The Garden Festival, which is the Hereford Waldorf School Summer fair. A wonderful place and a very worthy cause to help, and it is a pleasure to go and do a stall at such a lovely event.

While I was there I did an interview on BBC Hereford and Worcester..click here to listen...go to 45 mins into the programme.

Last week I started the first session of a new Eco Club I have been commissioned to run at a school near Bromyard and I went to a meeting of the new Transition Town Ledbury group and have been asked to join the Steering Group, to help get things "transitioning".

So lots of outside activities going on here, must be because it is approaching Midsummer! I DO feel energised and buzzing with life at the moment, I must say, despite still feeling a bit rough from the nasty flu bug thingy.

At Compost Mansions, as well as all that harvesting and weeding and compost moving and making, I have earthed all up the spuds again, harvested a lot of new ones, planted out climbing beans, mowed(with the push mower!) around the edge of the veg patch and I have cleared all round the clearing and log circle in the wood. I have potted on numerous brassicas and salads both for home and for the school garden use.

I am preparing for a couple of days of school party activities in the wood at the end of this week which is very exciting. I have also been writing course notes and brochures and web pages for my environmental activities in the wood and I have planned a series of courses to be held here in the wood in 2010, training early years practitioners in "having fun in the woods" type of stuff.

AND we now have a house wreathed in scaffolding, as we are having a few bits of work done/doing a few bits of painting on the roof and up the top of the walls and Compostman is going to be putting up THE SOLAR PANELS !!

Yes, the ones which he was going to do last year, but then he had to have an operation so couldn't . But now he is well again and we are SO excited about the fossil-fuel-free hot water we will be getting.

Having scaffolding and building work going on does make it more "challenging" to try to get on with anything, however......

And sadly as a result I have been unable to do much in the way of housework AT ALL as there is too much other stuff to do..

So thats a shame ;-)