Bolted
January 20th, 2008 - Posted in eco-building - by Brendhan|
We are still plugging away at our workshop here at the croft. We have been able to take advantage of a few sunny days to move onto the next step. As we are not building an areoplane we need to ensure that the garage does not fly away when the wind blows. To achieve this we are drilling holes through the bottom plate every 900mm and at corners, bracing corners and door and window studs. Into these holes we tap in wedge anchor bolts which when tightened wedge into the hole and anchor the wall frame to the concrete floor.
You can see two of the finished bolts in the picture above. The one on the right being within 150mm of the corner stud and 150mm of a bracing strap. The string is set-up so we can ensure the wall is straight before we permanently drill and bolt it!
It’s taking us a long time – drilling each hole takes at least 20 minutes so when you add the time to straighten and check the bottom plate, ensure that the DPM (damp proof membrane) is completely underneath it and then hammer in the bolts and tighten the nuts – we are lucky to complete 2 per hour. We’re getting there though. 19 Bolts in so far – only 15 more to go.
Fleeced!
January 17th, 2008 - Posted in self-sufficiency, sheep - by Sarah|
We finally got around to shearing Cardigan today. Over the last few weeks the weather and building have conspired to make us too worn out to attempt it whenever her wool was dry enough. We used traditional blade shears and took it in turns as it certainly seems to use muscles not needed for anything else. Cardigan stayed very calm although her stomach made some extremely loud noises!
I always thought that getting a fleece off in one piece would be the really challenging part but in actual fact it was so matted together that it held together without us even thinking about it.  The hardest part was actually getting started as once through the felted layer it was much easier to cut. There was a layer of about 20mm of soft fluffy wool next to her skin and it helped that this was also much darker than the wool on the outside.
The whole exercise was arguably more stressful for us than for Cardigan as we had to constantly watch out for her skin especially round the tops of her legs. We managed not to cut her at all (and Brendhan only slightly). Training them to eat sheep nuts out of my hand paid off as I managed to catch her rather than having to round her up into a pen. The other sheep all came by for a fairly close look while the shearing was in progress but then moved away as we finished in case they were next!
As we are not in ideal conditions for scouring and carding we have packaged the fleece off and sent it away to Felt & Fibre in Ashburton. When it comes back it will be packed away until I have a spinning wheel and somewhere warm and dry to sit and spin.
