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Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15932

Posted: Thu May 16, 19 6:59 am Post subject:
We have been fortunate with the weather lately as it has been mainly dry, although generally a bit cool. Seems to be warming up a bit now though, so plenty of charcoal orders. Husband and son will be firing the kiln again today, while I go off being an engineer for the morning anyway. Sadly I have picked up husband's cold, so bit snuffly at the moment.

gregotyn

Joined: 24 Jun 2010
Posts: 2201
Location: Llanfyllin area

Posted: Thu May 16, 19 1:43 pm Post subject:

Lovely day today, and have done work from 6am till just after 1pm, been all go all morning! I am not sure why, but it could be the sunshine, making hay and all that. Harvest has not yet got into full swing even with silage, not all first cut is in yet. Those who have done some harvest are wanting rain to bring on the second cut and those who haven't cut yet are praying for rain to get more bulk

Sorry you have a cold, MR, if you call it hay fever then it won't seem so bad! I am in that situation now with the pollen about; I never had a problem till I moved to Wales. We used to have to run 3 miles to the rugby field when I was in the first 2 years of school. The early years were in an annex away from the main big school. Even the big boys had to do the same for a while but their games were always in the afternoons ours were in the morning. The summer work starts for you now it seems!

I am sorry you are having bad weather Jam Lady, it will come to us soon enough-my mother's 3 week rule. This is the time to "prepare", when the weather is bad-the preparation is done and you waste little or no time in planting when the weather improves, all good theoretical stuff, mother nature will no doubt give it a twist at some stage.

I hope Cassandra is well down under and winter not too bad. My school friend in Aus. has e mailed to say that it is not too good there cold and very wet. He is coming over later this year and then going to Italy where his last child is getting married to a German lad she met in Canada where she works! They keep asking me to go but you know I don't like planes very much and alone it would not be much fun and would need at least 2 months supply of tablets. They go to Tasmania every year so i could have the chance to meet Cassandra! We'll see.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15932

Posted: Fri May 17, 19 6:29 am Post subject:

It would be interesting for you to visit Australia, and you would have friends to be with there. Cassandra seems well and interested in their elections and various other political things like keeping a cable car off a mountain. She is still doing spinning and knitting.

We were out until 10pm last night with the kiln again. It seemed to be dropping in temperature, which means the burn is finishing, but then it decided to heat up again, so had to stay with it until it was really finished. Hope that it was worth while and that we get a good yield out of it.

Went to a sixth form college yesterday to judge an engineering competition. There was a very good one that was the definite winner, with another one pretty good and 3 very much also rans, so clear winner this year.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46168
Location: yes

Posted: Fri May 17, 19 12:22 pm Post subject:
what won? there have been a few such completions where the best one turns out to have real world use.

gregotyn

Joined: 24 Jun 2010
Posts: 2201
Location: Llanfyllin area

Posted: Fri May 17, 19 2:07 pm Post subject:

Yes it would be good to go to Australia-but I hate flying and for such a haul in one go is not my idea of fun, and a break in Kuwait or Vancouver may allow leg stretching, but I think i would rather take a boat via the Panama canal. If I go, I suspect I will have to fly or I may die at sea before I reach the other side of the world. I have been to the states, but it was long ago and that was with Laker. On the journey back my Asian neighbour was talking before take off saying "this was the plane that fell out of the sky", as you can imaging panic set in! I have a school friend who married a girl from Walsall and they went to live in Aus due to his mother not liking her son being engaged to a "tradesman's daughter".
The mother turned out to be the fake in the end and was not the Irish nobility she claimed to be! Anyway I was best man at the wedding and off they went to Aus., to a wonderful life in their mid 20's and had 3 very good, clever children. They would like me to go, but I panic. They are coming over in the late spring and I will be going down to the cotswolds to see them or they will come up and to see me for a night or so.

Glad the kiln is going for you, MR. I hope all well with the second filling. It is getting to that time of the year when there is less rain and a bit of sunshine in Wales than normal times, and so the kindling sales are slowing down to a trickle, and allowing me to get stock built up a bit, at least 100 now. I need to get to 300 before the end of August. But there is always another factor. A friend older than me and a wizard with the chainsaw, has decided to fell some rather tall trees at the back of my house and is going to do this with a bush saw and off a ladder to where he can get, then shimmey up the trees, he is over 70 now. I don't want him to do the job, but when I get home he is there up the ladder or the trees.

Always good to get a clear winner in anything competitive, MR, it saves the others around getting upset. In any event to be in the first 3 is good.

See you all next Tuesday.

I am away for 2 days to my Bridgnorth friends', where the lady of the house is having a significant birthday party. And having a day off on Monday to drive home and cut some more wood!

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15932

Posted: Sat May 18, 19 8:10 am Post subject:

Hope you have a good weekend Gregotyn. You do seem to be getting on well with the log nets. I had to make 13 log sacks up yesterday to finish off an order, and another for 10 next week. This is while charcoal sales are ramping up well. The charcoal seems to have fired well. Husband and son opened up the kiln yesterday and just got a bit out for the end of an order. Son took that off in his car, and we took the log sacks off in the other direction, so we could have a day off today.

Dpack, I think the winner, an idea for storing keys, may well have potential for development. Son says he thinks he has seen something similar for sale, but this lad has addressed all the problems and it works well.

Jam Lady

Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 2566
Location: New Jersey, USA

Posted: Mon May 20, 19 1:42 pm Post subject:

More rain. Thunderstorm yesterday evening and overnight with a total of 1.57 inches / 3.987 cm in less than 12 hours. We're on a hill so managing O.K.The fellow I'm getting asparagus from, and buy peaches and apples from later in the year told me a few of the Saturn peach trees are dying. Even though the orchard is on the top of a sloping property the rain is just not letting up. A friend across the river in Pennsylvania has had even more rain, has a flat property and clay soil. She's muttering about planting rice.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46168
Location: yes

Posted: Mon May 20, 19 6:07 pm Post subject:
damp can be worse than drought, at least with the latter the use of a bucket can mitigate some of the problems

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15932

Posted: Tue May 21, 19 6:36 am Post subject:

Depends on how long it last, and having had to use the bucket method once when I was a child, it is over rated, believe me. We had a sudden storm and the 'concrete' out the back of the house as we called it (patio unknown in those days), flooded, and we had to bale the water into the drain to stop it getting above the damp course. Clay soil, and I suspect, already wet ground, but can't remember best part of 60 years later.

Hope things dry up for you Jam Lady. It has been pretty dry here, but we have had the odd wet day and shower. I think our water table came through the winter not too low as the winterbournes are running.

Jam Lady

Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 2566
Location: New Jersey, USA

Posted: Tue May 21, 19 1:00 pm Post subject:
My friend across the river in Pennsylvania has gotten 9.5 inches / 24 cm of rain. That's more than they usually get in all of May, and the month is not yet over.

gregotyn

Joined: 24 Jun 2010
Posts: 2201
Location: Llanfyllin area

Posted: Tue May 21, 19 2:15 pm Post subject:

I had a good time at the 70th B'day party of one of my friends. The place I go whenever they ask as Jill can really cook. She hit the significant birthday, but is still a year or so below me and her husband. I don't know why, but I was on the children's table-maybe because I like kids-never having had any myself I am probably more tolerant than the others to their antics at the dining table. But they throw food about and I wouldn't have got away with that at home where you didn't get a pudding if you didn't eat all the first course, that was a rule carried out, but I was allowed to leave any fat. I still don't like fat! The place was a new golf and country club at Cleobury Mortimer in South Shropshire. The place was pleasant, airy with everything flowing from one room to another in the clubhouse. There will be some 'spoilage' as they are putting up chalets and having a caravan park there as well so I expect it would be too much of a good thing for me-but I no longer play golf. Back to work and normality today.

We await the storms and wet in a week or two, I expect, Jam Lady. I hope all goes well for you and no damage, but 9.5 inches is a lot of rain. I have a ditch round all the upper sides of my house which carries the water out to the drains in the road, occasionally I get some water in my cellar but not often. Also I have a home paddock above the house and buildings and there is a wide ditch there which has not over flowed yet so I get further protection about 50 yards above the house. The perimeter ditch flows all the year round, not so much in the summer, but it gives me another layer of protection a further 100 yards up from the house.

I am more or less close to where I want to be with the firewood, although a 100 more would see me relax a bit and get on with the logs rather than the kindling. I am half hoping the tree feller doesn't come today and I can get on with some sawing blanks ready for a chop in at the weekend We'll see if he is there I will have to hold the ladder whilst he cuts, if he is not, I can do what really pays the bills!

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46168
Location: yes

Posted: Tue May 21, 19 10:20 pm Post subject:

a month in a go is wet.

i was in a place where we had some serious rain, a 7 1/2 inch tall coffee jar rain gauge was full after a few hours.

it was on a hill and i had goretex and a nice bender but the valley was 20ft deep in places
it was not just the rain direct that created a second derwent water in the uk but the big dam up top was already full when it started raining hard so they had to dump a lot of water rapidly which added to the stuff falling out of the sky lower down.

in the bit we occupied, described as temperate rain forest by a fairly decent botanist, we thought we probably got about a foot in 7 hours.
our bit sloped 600ft into the valley in a mile so you can sort of picture the hydrology.

Jam Lady

Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 2566
Location: New Jersey, USA

Posted: Tue May 21, 19 10:39 pm Post subject:
Perhaps I was not clear. To clarify - the 9.5 inches of rain was the total for so far in May. Not in one deluge. I have visited the Hoh temperate rain forest in the Pacific Northwest. Annual rainfall is a staggering yearly total of 140 to 170 inches (or 12 to 14 feet!) of precipitation each year.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46168
Location: yes

Posted: Tue May 21, 19 11:07 pm Post subject:

ah , the temp rain forests are ace

the one i know is a microclimate one where various factors make a pretty small area far wetter than the quite wet area around it

a three mile strip along one side of a valley and only half a mile top to bottom at the widest is a fairly small patch

the moss folk found 36 known and 7 unknown in a couple of hours, in the uk it takes 40 spp for sssi .

ace place , the national trust have it now

ps it has some good archaeology as well

an odd thing about it is that although the slope is wet as a wet thing the flat bit on top is dryish heath with a few residual tundra spp

ace landscape

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15932

Posted: Wed May 22, 19 6:39 am Post subject:

Glad you had a good time Gregotyn. I am afraid I won't tolerate food throwing as it is messy and a waste, but then I do have my moments as a grumpy old woman.

We are starting to get the summer orders for firewood in, and are well into the charcoal season at them moment. Husband and son decided yesterday that they would build me another raised bed, so they spent most of the day doing that while I waited within earshot of the front door for a pick up. Someone ordered 3 besoms, and the only way to send them is by a courier who picks up from the house rather than where you can drop them off at a shop. Trouble is, I have some more log sacks to make up and more besoms to make. Still, I got the petty cash in order and went through the accounts a bit, so hope it reconciles now I have found a few errors. It made my brain ache though.

Once the pick up was done, I relaxed a bit by digging out a compost heap into the new bed, so a bit of time in the sun anyway.

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