Saturday 13 August 2016

On avance!!

Work continues on the land
 
Two young wwoofers, Quentin and Kevin digging
up potatoes .....
 
Clara weeding in the round garden ....

Harvesting comfrey for the compost bin ...

Wwoofer Gwendal helping me
to plant lettuces and leeks in
a sheet mulched bed ...

The round garden gets a makeover ...


Roumanian workaway volunteer with the Roumanian
lettuces ......

Bastien, a mechanical engineering student tackles the
ferns with the brushcutter - to be used as mulch.

Florentina tidies up the greenhouse.

Gwendal laying the cardboard
around the round garden before
adding woodchip.

Florentina and newly arrived wwoofer
Andrea collecting wild food for supper.

Gwendal collecting Nasturtium
leaves and flowers to make a
pesto....
Bastien making bundles of twigs for starting fires ...


Wild axe man Steve, taking down the old fruit tree
that is past its prime ....

 
Sandis and I went on a cardboard run .... a local
furniture company lets us take all the cardboard
they would otherwise throw out.  We use it for
sheet mulching .....


Corinne explaining to Bastien and Quentin how
to prepare a bed for planting.




A Hive of Activity with various woodwork projects



Sandis and I went on a pallet hunt ... success!!
 

The pallet dismantling team ....
 
Medical student, Bas, from Holland starts to sand
wood found on the land ... the idea is to make
a dining table ...

Meanwhile Kevin decides to build a much needed
door for the bathroom.

Bastien joins Bas on the table project ....

Bastien helping me to construct
some pallet shelves for the bathroom.
 

Steve starts the pallet bathroom
cabinet project ...


... and Sandis takes over when Steve leaves ...
 

 

 

 

 
Sandis, proudly sanding the cabinet ...
Ecoconstruction continues

Bastien filters the earth into water in the bath.  Soaking
the earth 24 hours before mixing the render makes it
more sticky.

Wwoofers Quentin and Kevin work
hard to straighten the wall with the
middle earth coat.


Sandis helped me to calculate
how much cow manure we
would need for the earth floor
we will do soon.

... and we worked out several
different recipes for the finished
layer of the earth floor ... test
patches
 
 
 

Creative and healthy communal cooking and eating

One of our homegrown edible flower salads ...
 
... for which there is much appreciation ...


Steve made some wonderful cakes ...
 



Multi-tasking - food preparation and
yoga .....





 
Dry toilet in a barrel gets a new look
 

A group project - how to construct a new roof for
the dry toilet in a barrel using willow cut from
the land and recuperated plastic sheeting from
one of the DIY shops.

The willow dome takes shape.

Florentina and product design student, Andrea
from Holland fit the willow dome to the
top of the dry toilet barrel.

 
 At Leisure
 
Workaway volunteer Corinne, a trained and experienced
ecologist, biologist and horticultural worker gives a workshop
on edible wild plants .....

Volunteers making use of the extensive library of
books on ecoconstruction, permaculture, well being
etc etc

Gardening, ecoconstruction and cooking .... June and July

Garden Makeover
 
Workaway volunteer Clara helping me to plant
Yacon in the forest garden.  It is an unusual
root vegetable with a taste between cucumber
and apple ........
 
Clara and I went to collect bamboo
canes from a friend's woodland - they
are always useful in the garden for
building trellises and tipis for
climbing plants.

Workaway volunteer Corinne transforming the round
garden.  Here digging up potatoes ....
 
Steve and Clara bottling up the nettle tea - to be
used to feed plants in the garden ...

Some garden produce ...
 
 Ecoconstruction
 
Workaway volunteer, Sandis - from
Latvia, preparing the earth for rendering
in the house ....

Sandis wets the wall before applying
the earth render.
 
Preparing the concrete mixer ...

Clara makes the flour glue that we add to the earth
render mix to make it more sticky ...
 
The concrete mixer team ...
 
Rendering the wall - the idea of this middle layer
is to straighten the wall as much as possible before
applying the finishing render.
 
Making pallet structures
 
Corinne and I went on a pallet finding mission with a friend's trailer.  It is getting harder and harder to find companies willing to give them away and there are more and more businesses springing up that will buy up and repair old pallets .... nevertheless we were able to find enough for our needs ...
 
Steve and Corinne start dismantling the pallets ... not
always easy .....

 
Starting to measure up ...
 
The pallet compost system almost
finished .....
 
Et voila!!
 
 
Corinne cut some comfrey down
to the ground - to be used as a
compost activator.  It can be cut
several times a year and quickly grows
back.  It is a wonderful mineral
accumulator ... its roots bring up
minerals deep in the soil.
  
 Cooking with produce from the land
 

An accomplishedc flexitarian cook,
Corinne spent many hours preparing
delicious meals from garden produce.

A group creative cooking session in the newly
transformed pallet and recycled wood kitchen.