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? ;-))

 

New phone

I went into Hereford on Saturday..I was meant to be being "Compostwoman" on the recycling bus in High Town BUT I got delayed by a tractor and trailer losing its load on my lane so was too late....

apart from the other stuff I needed to do, I also went into my mobile phone provider shop, to look at phones. There was much merriment on the part of the assistants (!) in the shop when they realised I had STILL got the phone I bought from them 6 years ago.................and it still worked!

I bought a newer phone because my old handset is getting a bit unreliable and I NEED a phone I can rely on, working, when I am doing Forest School stuff in the woods with children..otherwise I would NOT have bothered to change my phone!

I settled for a £29 model, it is a rugged, water resistant model, it has a camera AND it makes calls (!) and I have given my old phone to Compostman ( who had never yet had one.....)

the sales person was obviously disappointed I didn't want the "bells and whistles " phones BUT I made it clear I ONLY wanted something to make calls on, rather than something I would carry around welded to my ...................(!)

I have a good camera, an MP3 player.....Why TF would I want to pay extra to have these incorporated ( at a lower spec ) into my phone, is beyond me...............

I guess I AM a Luddite, after all..!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Water ( or lack thereof...)

Hot, muggy and murky here today...
AND we have no water here at the moment - we get all our water from our own borehole and it looks like either the control box or the pump has gone wrong. I hope its just the control box and NOT the pump, as the pump is 100 ft down the hole and we will have to haul it all up for mr compostwoman to fix it.



Thank goodness I have some waterbutts full up or all the tomatos etc in the Polytunnel would be dead by nightfall.......(well wilting, anyway..)





(LATER ON)
have just had to haul up pump from down hole! but when mr compostwoman checked it the pump is working ok.......

so what the heck is wrong?

really worried now..have total faith that my dear husband mr cw will solve problem (he's good like that, its what he does!) BUT all the plants in the polytunnel will start to wilt if they don't get watered tomorrow and I don't have enough water butt capacity to do more than 2 days worth..( notice I don't care about loo flushing or washing etc, just my precious plants...) ;)

(Even later on still)
Mr cw fixed water pump ( hurrah) it was a capacitor in the control box which had died so he replaced it and we then had to lower the pump and the water pipe back down the hole and get it all working again, but not until we had rescued a small shrew (which fell into the water pump pit) so it didn't jump down 90 foot deep bore hole and..........



a) drown........... and
b) contaminate our water supply.....

WHY is life NEVER simple?

But it really makes you appreciate water , when suddenly you don't have it anymore....