La Darnoire

…Less than four hours later, we’ve already got results!

Today we collected four new family members. I have been busy constructing a chicken run, and today we fetched its new occupants!

Yesterday we had our first strawberries of the year; the week’s sunshine was just what they had been waiting for. As they are growing in such profusion, I suspect we’ll be having some every day for the foreseeable future! I may try drying some, which reminds me – I still haven’t had the time to make a solar food dryer.

I have, however, completed the construction of the composting enclosure, and also put the remaining pallets to good use, starting an additional woodshed. The base is complete, as is the first course of the walls. I think another six pallets should do the job.

Today I retrieved a heavy steel frame from the aged FIL’s pile of scrap. I intend putting it to good use as an apple cider press frame, using an hydraulic car jack for the pressure. I had previously made a similar cider press when we lived in Britain, constructing it out of several layers of marine plywood according to a diagram I’d found on the Internet. Unfortunately it was not up to the job and cracked. As the Mark II model will be made of steel girders, this should not be an issue! It’s not going to be much fun moving it around though, so I may have to decide on a permanent location for it.
The home-made apple scratter is still in working order, so crushing the fruit should not be a problem. There are quite a few apple trees scattered around the property, and this year the blossoms are in profusion; probably the trees are trying to make up for last year’s late frost which killed every single one.

The pear tree in the garden is also making good progress and as long as nothing unforeseen occurs we can look forward to a bumper crop of edible pears as well. There are some pear trees at the aged FIL’s property as well, but these are apparently not very nice to eat. I think some perry manufacturing may well be on the cards!

Speaking of making alcoholic beverages, today we visted J. She had telephoned early this morning to inform us that all her elder trees were in full flower. Half an hour’s labour saw us with several plastic bags full of the flowers. The next batch of elderflower champagne is thus under way, and LSS will also be making some elderflower syrup tomorrow. (We’re unable to complete it today as we’ve run out of sugar!)

Ooh, sunshine! For the second day running. Finally we are getting some much-needed Vitamin D.

It would also appear we still have eleven ducklings – of course they are extremely difficult to count as they don’t stand still for five seconds. I neglected to mention last time – they’re wild ducks, not farmed. They have at least doubled in size! Apparently it takes up to three months before they are ready to fly, so it looks like we’ll have them for a while yet.

LSS is an even happier bunny now – the washing machine is now up and running, so she no longer has to go down to the river and bash the clothes on a flat rock. No, just kidding. We have been using the aged FIL’s washing machine.

I have now completed the guttering for the workshop and garage, so at least now we won’t get dripped on when opening the doors when it’s raining. I need to lead the workshop rainwater away to the closest ditch, which will involve laying pipe in a trench about thirty metres in length.

As it was such a lovely day I carried on tackling the fallen oak tree at the aged FIL’s house, cutting it into firewood-sized logs with the chainsaw. After lunch I split the logs and stacked them in the wood store; I’ve started the second tier now! As it will supposedly be sunny tomorrow as well, I may repeat the exercise.

Last Saturday we were able to recuperate a trailer-load of pallets, so these are also awaiting my attention. They will be used to finish the construction of the composting area, and to start the second woodshed. It seems my “To Do” list just keeps getting longer!

Just a short post today, to mention that we now have eleven little ducklings following their mother around the pond!

LSS is over the moon today. The simple reason being: I have finally installed the dishwasher!

Obviously the kitchen counter tops have been cut to size and installed, the plumbing under the sink was completed, so today was the day that the dishwasher came out of the barn and into the kitchen. However, we can’t use it yet because we can’t find the rinse aid anywhere!

The kitchen wastewater pipe simply drains into a 20-litre bucket at the moment, which I empty every morning. This is obviously a temporary arrangement until the reedbed is up and running.

I also moved the washing machine from the barn. It has gone into the outbuilding housing the old “ballon” (pressure vessel fed from the well) as this is the only viable place for it. I connected up a water supply from the kitchen using the old underground waterpipe which used to feed the kitchen tap from the well water. The only problem with this is that there is a lot of sludge and rust in the old (steel) pipe even after I’ve flushed it through, so before we can use the washing machine I need to get and install another water filter. I can see another trip to BricoDepot in Orleans is on the cards.

Despite the rainy weather, LSS cut the grass in the borehole field with the tractor – this was necessary as the grass was nearly chest height and could have hidden any number of wild animals.

I cut some overhanging branches on the road between the two farmhouses, so the road is once again passable.

The garden isn’t doing very much at the moment, again probably due to the cool cloudy weather. I’m starting to get sunshine withdrawal symptoms!

Isn’t it amazing how time flies? It has been a month since my last post; I hope this is not a trend. But I’ve simply been too busy.

The first problem which had to be resolved was with the new boiler stove. Well, actually, it wasn’t the boiler stove itself. Everything worked fine for a week, but one particularly overcast and rainy afternoon I opened the bedroom door to find that the room was full of smoke. There was no smoke near the stove itself, none in any of the other two rooms, and the stovepipe and chimney seemed to be leak-free as well.

When LSS arrived home after having given an English class (did I mention she teaches English to individuals?) we investigated.

It turns out that some bricks had dropped down inside the chimney at the loft floor level. This exposed the air space between the loft floor (where the thermal store is kept) and the ceiling of the living room. Smoke was entering into this air space, drawn by the VMC vents in the bedroom, and the only way out was through the bedroom ceiling.

I have therefore had to spend time dismantling part of the upstairs chimney in order to create a hole into which I could crawl, in order to access the inside of the chimney to repair the dropped bricks using lime mortar. Then once that was done, I had to replace the bricks which I had removed to create the hole. Not much fun at all really. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic.

Then the local village contractor turned up to repair the road running past our entrance. Of course, this did not go smoothly either. On the first day he spread a layer of building rubble/landfill. That evening we strolled along the road removing bits of plastic bags and other rubbish. The following day a layer of pond mud went down. It must have been pond mud because the smell was unmistakeable. Of course the following day it rained. And the resultant muddy soup had to be seen to be believed. Trucks, tractors, or Land Rovers would have been able to get through, but we couldn’t.

Fortunately we have an escape road via the aged FIL’s farm, so LSS went to see the mayor of the village to complain that the road was now in a worse state than it was before the work started. A few more days went by, and another layer of stuff was added to the mud; some grey clay chippings. With the aid of the increasingly rare sunshine, this dried out the part of the road in front of our driveway; but further away it’s still very soft and squishy. Fortunately the muddy soup had been seen by the councillor in charge of roads (and his son is currently benefitting from English lessons…. small world!) so we have been promised that further material will be added to the remaining squishy bits. We live in hope.

We managed to find some more pallets and I have now started constructing a composting area which will consist of four “compartments” with the walls being made from recycled pallets. This in itself has been an issue; because the rare pallets we are able to find are not exactly perfect. The nicely square solid ones are all “consigned” which means they are destined to be returned to the delivery company. In other words we end up with the odd-sized ones which nobody else wants. Still, at least they’re free, so I shouldn’t complain. It just means I need to add more slats of wood in order to create pallets of uniform size. And the little half- and quarter-pallets will come in handy too; I will cut the slats into uniform lengths and make them into shingles for the future porch over the kitchen door.

More bad news is that it looks like my bonsai trees have died (with the exception of two pines). It was obviously too warm and dry inside the house. But if we’d left them outside they would have frozen solid anyway. Pity.

The kitchen is now starting to take shape; the old kitchen sink was removed, and I used my rotary hammer to take the old tiles off the wall (they were stuck in place with high-powered industrial concrete, not tile adhesive, and I’m not joking). I’ve also built a supporting wall for the worktop. Now I need to fabricate some more copper pipe connections and the waste water connections, and the new kitchen sink can go in. I also need to use the router on one edge/end of the two pieces of worktop so that they form an “L” shape.

At least the gas cooker is now back in the kitchen instead of being in the living room, and I’ve drilled a hole through the external wall for the gas supply pipe. (There won’t be enough room for the gas cylinder, so it will have to go outside). This means I need to build an outside “cupboard” for it. So I may as well divide this cupboard into two sections with the upper section being used to store some firewood. Which means I then need to make a hatchway through the kitchen wall so that the wood can be accessed. Oh there’s no end to the fun! Still, this will free up even more room in the kitchen as we can then get rid of the woodbox (which is a home-made cupboard constructed from what looks like the shell of an old kitchen range).

We now have HOT water.

Oooh, such luxury! I installed a temperature probe in the top of the thermal store, at the level at which the water exits the boiler stove, and ran a wire through the ceiling (using the hole which used to be for the television aerial) to the gauge. This is obviously a temporary measure; I will be making up a panel which will have 5 gauges;
Temperature at top of tank
Temperature at bottom of tank
Temperature of hot water supply
Temperature of solar panel outlet
Room temperature upstairs.

If you’d like to read about the construction of the thermal store, it’s detailed on this page:Thermal Store. Yesterday we had finally purchased the two missing pieces of stovepipe, so these were installed. It looks very odd to have a great big stainless steel pipe running across the lounge just below the ceiling! This morning (because even though the outside temperature had reached a balmy 9 °C it still felt cold) we then put some paper and kindling in the boiler stove, lit the touchpaper, and stood back.

The stove took a while to get going, but we watched the temperature gauge with fascination.
10h45: Stove lit. Temperature of water 13.1 ° C
11h33: Now at 16.7 ° C
11h55: 42.3 ° C
12h02: 46.8 ° C
12h13: The magical 50 ° C
The temperature seems to have stabilized at around 51 ° C (well I estimate we have around 450 litres of water to heat up). But at 12h30 we couldn’t wait any longer, and turned on the hot tap. Well, I say hot tap. There is a tap, but it’s a stopcock-type, leading to a flexible tube which will eventually be connected to the kitchen sink tap. Imagine our delight when hot water started flowing! We may even be able to have a bath tonight without having to heat the water in large saucepans on the wood stove. Having piped hot water is definitely a first for this old house!

So, today’s labour saw me putting the finishing touches to the manufacture of my steampunk-style electric hot water-cylinder workshop woodstove. I will be putting a page on the website detailing its construction, with photos of course. But as it was a rainy afternoon, I figured that I just HAD to test it.

I’m pleased to report it works fine! The only downside is that we will soon have three wood-burning stoves at La Darnoire, which means some poor unfortunate person will need to cut a lot more wood. Oh, that would be me.

The boiler stove installation is progressing nicely; I resolved the leak in the thermal store by using some silicone sealant, and now all we need is to get about 3 metres of stove-pipe. I enlarged the current hole in the lounge ceiling to take the larger 139mm diameter stovepipe (the old pipe was 100mm, and this size does not appear to be available any more). I used lime mortar to seal around the edges of the hole. Plastering upside-down is probably one of my least favourite jobs in the entire world. Lime mortar went all over the place including up my sleeves (or I should say down my sleeves as my arms were in an upright position…)

LSS harvested the remaining parsnips a couple of days ago (all except a few plants) and the next batch of parsnip wine is brewing. Nothing was wasted; once the parsnips had released their juice for the wine, LSS turned them into a parsnip lasagne (just like a normal lasagne but instead of using pasta, you use the sliced parsnips!)

I’ve also made a couple of racks to fit in our lightbulb-powered food dehydrator, so when our next crop of tomatoes is ready for harvest, we’ll be ready to dry some. If we ever get around to planting them – spring still hasn’t arrived!

This morning we went to the local quarry (15km away) with the trailer, and came back with 700kg of 8/16 gravel. I used half of it as hardcore for the floor of one of the little rooms next to the workshop; this room will be used for storage, but we need a solid floor first. The layer of compacted gravel will be covered with a thin layer of lime, then a membrane, and then finally a lime concrete floor. Unfortunately it’s not warm enough yet to pour concrete, so the tractor-powered concrete mixer is still in the aged FIL’s barn; we’ll bring it to La Darnoire once the weather warms up.

I am currently filling up the thermal store in stages. It is now three-quarters full, but unfortunately I have noticed a leak where the topmost copper coil exits the cylinder, so I had to drain some of the water off again. Once the connection has dried out tomorrow, I will see what remedial action can be carried out – probably by using silicone sealant.

This afternoon I continued working on the ST1100; the wheels have now been reinstalled and the new stainless steel brake lines fitted. Whilst the front wheel was off I changed the coolant, using propylene glycol instead of the less ecological ethylene glycol. Now I just need to bleed the front brakes and put the body panels back on.

LSS took advantage of the sunshine to use the rotavator on the garden, ploughing in the rabbit-dropping compost. I suspect the first plants will soon be sown.

I sprayed the four peach trees with a copper sulphate solution this afternoon as the buds were about to break, and last year they suffered badly from peach leaf curl. As long as we don’t get any unseasonal frost this year we may even get some fruit – unlike last year when we didn’t get a single peach, pear or apple!